This edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America's greatest philosophers and poets.The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity.

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America's greatest philosophers and poets.The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As explored in this volume, Emersonian thought is a unique blend of belief in individual freedom and in humility before the power of nature. I become a transparent eyeball, Emerson wrote in Nature, I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.Written over a century ago, this passage is a striking example of the passion and originality of Emerson's ideas, which continue to serve as a spiritual center and an ideological base for modern thought.

Foreword by Robert D. Richardson Jr

NATURE (1836)

Introduction

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

Commodity

CHAPTER III

Beauty

CHAPTER IV

Language

CHAPTER V

Discipline

CHAPTER VI

Idealism

CHAPTER VII

Spirit

CHAPTER VIII

Prospects

EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES

Pray Without Ceasing (1826)

Ethics (1837)

The American Scholar (1837)

Cherokee Letter (1838)

The Divinity School Address (1838)

From ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES (1841)

History

Self-Reliance

The Over-Soul

Circles

From ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES (1844)

The Poet

Experience

Politics

From REPRESENTATIVE MEN (1850)

Uses of Great Men

Montaigne; or, the Skeptic

LATER ESSAYS AND LECTURES

Emancipation in the British West Indies (1844)

Woman (1855)

Thoreau (1862)

POEMS

Concord Hymn

The Rhodora

Each and All

Brahma

Hamatreya

The Snow-Storm

The Sphinx

Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing

Uriel

Threnody

Blight

Days

Terminus

Poet

Additional Reading