Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Personal

Born May 25, 1803, in Boston, MA; died April 27, 1882, in Concord, MA; son of William (a minister) and Ruth (Haskins) Emerson; married Ellen Tucker, September 30, 1829 (died 1831); married Lydia Jackson, September 14, 1835; children: Waldo, Ellen, Edith, Edward. Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1821; attended Harvard Divinity School at Cambridge, 1825 and 1827.

Career

Poet, writer, lecturer. Teacher in Boston, MA, c. 1821-26; preacher in New England, 1827-29; Second Church (Unitarian), Boston, assistant minister, 1829, head pastor, 1830-32; itinerant preacher in England, Scotland, and the United States, beginning 1832; lyceum speaker in Massachusetts, Missouri, and Iowa, beginning 1833; founder of Dial (transcendentalist magazine), 1840, editor, 1842-44.

Awards, Honors

LL.D., Harvard University, 1866.

Writings

Nature, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1836.

An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 13, 1837, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1837.

An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge . . . 15 July, 1838, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1841.

Essays, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1841, expanded edition, 1847.

Nature; An Essay, and Lectures on the Times, Clarke (London, England), 1844.

Orations, Lectures, and Addresses, Clarke (London, England), 1844.

Essays: Second Series, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1844.

Poems, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1847, revised edition published as Selected Poems, Osgood (Boston, MA), 1876, revised edition published as Poems, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1884, revised edition, 1904.

Nature; Addresses, and Lectures, James Munroe (Boston, MA), 1849, published as Miscellanies; Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, Phillips, Sampson (Boston, MA), 1856, published as Miscellanies, Macmillan (London, England), 1884.

Representative Men: Seven Lectures, Phillips, Sampson (Boston, MA), 1850.

English Traits, Phillips, Sampson (Boston, MA), 1856.

The Conduct of Life, Ticknor & Fields (Boston, MA), 1860.

May-Day and Other Pieces, Ticknor & Fields (Boston, MA), 1867.

Society and Solitude, Twelve Chapters, Fields, Osgood (Boston, MA), 1870.

Letters and Social Aims, Osgood (Boston, MA), 1876.

The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3 volumes, Bell (London, England), 1883.

Miscellanies, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1884.

Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1884.

Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1893.

Two Unpublished Essays: The Character of Socrates; ThePresent State of Ethical Philosophy, Lamson, Wolffe (Boston, MA), 1896.

The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 10 volumes, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1909-14.

Uncollected Writings: Essays, Addresses, Poems, Reviews and Letters, Lamb (New York, NY), 1912.

Young Emerson Speaks: Unpublished Discourses onMany Subjects, edited by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Jr., Houghton (Boston, MA), 1938.

The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), Volume 1, edited by Stephen E. Whicher and Robert E. Spiller, 1959, Volume 2, edited by Whicher, Spiller, and Wallace E. Williams, 1964, Volume 3, edited by Spiller and Williams, 1972.

The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of RalphWaldo Emerson, 16 volumes, edited by William H. Gilman and others, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1960-83.

COLLECTIONS

Emerson's Complete Works, 12 volumes, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1883-93.

Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 12 volumes, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1903-04.

The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3 volumes to date, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1971—.

EDITOR

(Editor and author of preface) Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, James, Munroe (Boston, MA), 1836.

(Editor with William Henry Cahnning and James Freeman Clarke) Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 2 volumes, Phillips Sampson (Boston, MA), 1852.

(Editor) Parnassus, James R. Osgood (Boston, MA), 1875.

LETTERS

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph WaldoEmerson 1834-1872, 2 volumes, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, Osgood (Boston, MA), 1883.

A Correspondence between John Sterling and RalphWaldo Emerson, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1897.

Letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson to a Friend, 1838-1853 (letters to Samuel Gray Ward), edited by Charles Eliot Norton, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1899.

Correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Grimm, edited by Frederick William Holls, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1903.

Records of a Lifelong Friendship, 1807-1882: RalphWaldo Emerson and William Henry Furness, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1910.

Emerson-Clough Letters, edited by Howard F. Lowry and Ralph Leslie Rusk, Rowfant Club (Cleveland, OH), 1934.

The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 6 volumes, edited by Ralph Leslie Rusk, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1939.

One First Love: The Letters of Ellen Louisa Tucker toRalph Waldo Emerson, edited by Edith W. Gregg, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1962.

The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, edited by Joseph Slater, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1964.

OTHER

Contributor to periodicals, including Dial, Massachusetts Quarterly Review, and Atlantic Monthly. The Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association collection at the Houghton Library at Harvard University houses the majority of Emerson's papers.

Sidelights

Ralph Waldo Emerson was "the prophet of his generation," according to critic Mark van Doren in an introduction to The Portable Emerson. Poet, essayist, and lecturer, Emerson was "perhaps the single most influential figure in American literary history," as a contributor to the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Colonization to the American Renaissance, 1640-1865 noted. "More than any other author of his day, he was responsible for shaping the literary style of the American Romantic period." These words are echoed by Joel Porte writing in the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "It was Emerson who, in literary terms, really put America on the map; who created for himself the practically nonexistent role of man of letters, and for about half a century . . . criticized, cajoled, sometimes confused, but mainly inspired audiences in America and abroad." Emerson's sayings, phrases, epigrams, and excerpts from poems—such as "Hitch your wagon to a star," "To be great is to be misunderstood," "Every hero becomes a bore at last," "Trust thyself," "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one," and "The shot heard round the world"—have all entered the daily lexicon of Americans. So familiar are such phrases that few wonder about their attribution, or of their real meanings. The Emerson creed of self-reliance has also entered the American psyche, as has his emphasis on individualism and the primacy of instinct over rational thought.

In works such as Nature, Essays, Essays: Second Series, The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address, and Poems, Emerson established a distinctly American philosophy that blended an optimistic faith in the potential of humanity with a belief in individuality and a touch of mysticism into a philosophy that became known as the Transcendental movement. A former minister who turned writer, Emerson stressed a religion that backed away from the importance of the miracles of Jesus and rather focused on the miraculous in each human. Emerson's thought contained the Eastern concept of the universality of all life; for him nature was the source of revelation and inspiration. His work, all of which grew out of such ideas, inspired an entire generation of writers and poets, from Henry David Thoreau to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The "Sage of Concord," as he became known, Emerson worked most of his adult life in the small Massachusetts village that became a Mecca for American thinkers and writers. Still, in his days and in ours, he "has been called everything from a fraud and a lunatic to 'the key figure in American literary history,' and 'the Buddha of the West,'" according to one of his biographers, John McAleer. "[Emerson] continues to elude easy labeling," McAleer further noted.

Inauspicious Beginnings

"For the first thirty years of his life, Emerson did nothing to distinguish himself from respectable mediocrity," the contributor for Concise Dictionary of
American Literary Biography noted. Born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts, he was groomed from an early age for the ministry. His father, William Emerson, was a minister, and there were numerous others in the family before Emerson's time who were also in the ministry. His mother, Ruth Haskins Emerson, was also a devout woman, bordering on the austere. One of seven children, Emerson was a serious child more inclined to be at his books than outside playing. Still, compared to his over-achiever brothers, Ralph was not considered very brainy or ambitious by the family. The pleasant, easy life they lived in Boston changed drastically in 1811 with the death of his father; Emerson's mother was now widowed with six of her children under the age of ten.

With the intercession of Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, the boys were given a good education, despite their relatively straitened material circumstances. He was sent to Boston's Latin School in 1813, and in 1817 attended Harvard College on a scholarship, lodging in the president's house and earning a wage for being a messenger. He also waited on tables at the college restaurant and tutored in his spare time. Thus, Emerson was not a coddled upper-class youth; he had to work for what he achieved in life. Though he did not excel in any one subject during his years at Harvard, Emerson did exhibit an early penchant for literature by joining the college literary society, the Pythologian Club. During his third year at Harvard he began keeping a journal. He continued writing his journals for over fifty years and referred to them later in his life as his "bank account," for he took inspiration from topics raised there for his lectures which he in turn transformed into published essays.

Graduating from Harvard in 1821, Emerson went into teaching for the next several years, first working for his own brother, and then taking over the school himself. He never had much faith in himself as a teacher, and in 1825 finally gave it up after saving enough money to put him through Divinity School at Harvard. Emerson had finally decided to follow in the steps of his ancestors and become a minister. However, ill health ended his first attempt at divinity studies after only a few weeks. Recovering, he visited more lectures and was taken on by the Middlesex Association of Ministers, delivering his first sermon in October of 1826. Once again, however, Emerson's poor health interceded and he was forced to go to a warmer climate in Florida and Georgia for the winter. Back in Boston in the spring, he continued attending Divinity School classes and also preaching in churches throughout New England. It was on one such trip to Concord, New Hampshire, in December 1827, that he met the seventeen-year-old girl who became the great passion of his life. Ellen Louisa Tucker was a renowned beauty, and Emerson courted her energetically. By the following year the couple was engaged. They married on September 30, 1829.

Emerson became minister at Boston's Second Church that same year. To outsiders it would appear that Emerson had everything going for him. However, Emerson was dissatisfied with his new career. Not only was he a shy man and somewhat uncomfortable at the pulpit, but he also had doubts about the whole idea of institutionalized religion and about specific aspects of church doctrine. As the contributor for Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography noted, such doubts focused on the "insistence on the supernatural basis of religion, on the necessity of accepting the miracles of Jesus as the decisive proof of the authenticity of his mission." For Emerson, religion should not be based solely on blind adherence to tradition and ritual, but instead rely on the spiritual inspiration in each believer. His beliefs were influenced by a wide range of readings during the 1820s, including the works of Plato and the Neo-Platonic school, the writings of the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, and by the works of European Romantics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his stress on intuition over rational thought. Emerson's doubts about organized religion were magnified when, seventeen months after his marriage, Emerson's young bride died of consumption. He went into a period of profound mourning. Out of it, however, also emerged an insight, one that unlocked a new meaning of life for Emerson. He finally understood that God is not outside of humans, but rather resident in each individual human soul. In a way, each individual person is identical with God; it was necessary, however, to awaken the individual to this latent possibility. Partly influenced by Eastern religions, Emerson discovered that each person needed to break free from the illusion or maya of the everyday world in order to see the godliness in the inner self. From this insight Emerson quickly developed his theory of "self-reliance," the core of a new philosophy that would fuel much of the work of the remaining fifty years of his life.

The Making of a Writer

The first thing Emerson did with his insight was leave organized religion. The specific grounds for his resignation came in 1832 when he refused to administer the Lord's Supper if bread and wine still had to be part of the sacrament. Following this, he set off on a ten-month journey to Europe, where he met many of the philosophical heroes who had influenced his own thought. In England and Scotland

he met Coleridge, the poet William Wordsworth, and the writer Thomas Carlyle, with whom he would maintain a correspondence for the next forty years. Also while in Europe, during a visit to the Jardin des Plants in Paris, Emerson had a revelation about the interconnectedness, or "correspondence" as he put it, between humankind and other forms of nature. This mystical relationship between all parts of nature, a harmony of union and oneness, formed another cornerstone of Emerson's belief system thereafter.

Returning to America filled with new ideas and inspiration, Emerson first needed to sort out a career. He found his path in the foundling lyceum movement, a community-based program that promoted visiting lecturers and performers. This movement sprang up in New England in the 1820s, and by the 1830s had begun to spread westward as well. For this former minister, public speaking proved a way to not only spread his theories, but also to refine his ideas and get them into publishable form. Thus in 1833 and 1834 Emerson started his lyceum career with a series of four lectures on natural history. Soon he developed a pattern of speaking engagements that he maintained throughout much of his career: giving from six to twelve lectures in Boston each year and then traveling around the country for other speaking engagements. Topics for such lectures ranged from English literature to the philosophy of history, subjects that he had touched on in his journals and then developed as lecture notes. Such lecturing was Emerson's main source of income for the rest of his life.

In 1834 Emerson moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where many of his ancestors had lived. Setting up house at first with his mother, he soon bought a new house on the edge of the village where he and his second wife, Lydia Jackson, established their home. For Emerson, this second marriage was less a love match than it was an intellectual and domestic partnership. The couple had four children together, and for Emerson this steady domestic life was important. His children would often sit in the study with him as he worked, and he was known to devote much attention to them. Emerson also made a new group of friends in Concord, including Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others who would soon help to form a distinct national literature that became known as the American Renaissance. Stimulated by these men and women, Emerson helped to form, in 1836, the Transcendental Club, which met together off and on until 1840. The Transcendental philosophy that resulted from this group was not one unified program; rather it was a patchwork of beliefs and theories that saw a fundamental unity in all creation, that viewed humanity as essentially good, and that trusted insight over logic to provide the deepest revelations about life. There were also social reform aspects to the movement, including a staunch anti-slavery or abolitionist stand. However, not all members agreed on all points, and neither did all members take part in all aspects of the movement. For example, Emerson stayed clear of the utopian living experiments promoted by some of the members, such as Brook Farm.

In 1836 Emerson also published his first work, Nature, both a lyrical declaration of a spiritual philosophy and a quasi-scientific treatise. According to the contributor for the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, "this slim volume is the most memorable American statement of the Romantic idea of nature as a substitute for Revelation." As with all of Emerson's later essays, this one achieves part of its strength from its very organization, developed in an ascending order of importance of arguments, very much like the order of nature itself. He lists four uses of nature, including as a material resource, as a standard by which to measure beauty, as a reservoir of visible symbols out of which we construct language, and as a way in which we can come to comprehend the difference between "Understanding" and "Reason." Emerson uses these phrases in the manner of Coleridge. Understanding, in this meaning, implies logic and rational process, while Reason is a higher intuitive power. This odd use of Reason has confused readers ever since. In Nature, Emerson expanded on his theory of the correspondence between man and nature, an example of the unity of all creation and a source of real spiritual inspiration and revelation.

Published anonymously, Nature managed to attract a good deal of critical attention at the time and also sell out its first printing in only a month. Writing in the Boston Reformer of 1836, Orestes Augustus Brownson found Nature a "singular book." Brownson further commented, "It is the creation of a mind that lives and moves in the Beautiful, and has the power of assimilating to itself whatever it sees, hears or touches. We cannot analyze it; whoever would form an idea of it must read it." Van Doren, writing in the introduction to The Portable Emerson, called it Emerson's "most systematic" book. According to van Doren, "Its symmetry he never captured again, though its ideas are distributed through all of his other works—in maturer language, for this manifesto still has something in it of the callow and incomprehensible." Van Doren went on to note that though the beginning of the essay is hopeful, "in the ensuing chapters Emerson is less successful when he attempts an ordered statement of the functions Nature has in man's life." Van Doren concluded that this first book presents Emerson "hoping to be a philosopher, which he never was."

The Miraculous Years

Between 1836 and 1844 Emerson was at the peak of his powers and produced some of his most lasting and influential work. In addition to Nature, he gave addresses, published Essays and Essays: Second Series, and helped found and edit the Transcendental journal, The Dial. Emerson followed up the success of Nature with two public speeches, later published in book form, that further expounded his beliefs. The American Scholar of 1837 was the product of a speech given to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society. In it, he laid out the need for a distinctly American literature, independent of Europe and England. This was, as the American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes later said, America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence." The following year Emerson spoke to the graduating class of Harvard's Divinity School in the "most controversial, subversive, and electrifying speech of his career," according to the critic for Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography. Here he expanded on his ideas for a religion not determined by ritual and church doctrine. He called for reform in organized religion, and for these young ministers to go out and seek revelation not in the miracles of Jesus, but in individual experience. This event marked Emerson's final break with organized religion and caused a storm of controversy. Emerson would remain persona non grata at Harvard for over three decades.

Together with Margaret Fuller, Emerson helped found The Dial in 1840. Dedicated to publishing the literary works of Transcendentalist writers, the magazine played an important part in helping to develop a unique American voice in literature. From 1842 to 1844 Emerson took over the editorship himself. But the magazine ceased publication in 1844. Meanwhile, Emerson continued his career as a lecturer, and his fame as a public speaker continued to grow each year, despite the fact that his topics were challenging and often difficult to follow. His Essays appeared in 1841, and the twelve pieces on religious, moral, and intellectual topics each grew out of lyceum lectures. One of his best-known essays, "Self-Reliance," appears here. In it, Emerson attacks the idea of conformity. We must all depend on our own individual intuition or sense of who we are, according to Emerson. He also provides an explanation of his theory of the godliness in each individual in "The Over-Soul." This Over-Soul, in Emerson's system, is the supernatural essence or spirit of which we are all a part.

Essays: Second Series appeared in 1844. However, in 1842 Emerson's first son and favorite child, Waldo, died at the age of five from scarlet fever. As with the death of his first wife, this passing deeply touched Emerson and shook his beliefs. He partly dealt with this death by writing the poem "Threnody," but it would seem also that this tragedy began to change the underlying structures of his thoughts. With Essays: Second Series, his beliefs became more conservative and less optimistic about the possibilities of individual transformation, as can be seen in one of the most famous essays of the collection, "The Poet." Some have also attributed this conservative shift in Emerson simply to the fact of his success. By this time his name was becoming a household word in the United States. Perhaps Emerson began believing his critics and started seeing himself as the grand old man of American letters.

Poetry and Prose

Emerson brought out his first book of verses, Poems, in 1847. A second volume followed twenty years later, May Day and Other Pieces. While most critics agree that Emerson was not as strong a poet as he was an essayist, they also confirm that his lyrical style and experiments in poetry influenced later American poets, including Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Included in this first collection is "Concord Hymn," a celebration of the American Revolution and its opening battle, from which the famous line, "the shot heard round the world" comes. Other well-known poems from Emerson include "The Sphinx," "The Rhodora," "Brahma," "Each and All," and "Threnody." While some of Emerson's poetry details local events, much of it further explains and gives resonance to his philosophy.

In 1847 and 1848 Emerson again traveled in Europe, this time presenting a highly popular lecture series in Great Britain, where his fame had spread thanks in part to Carlyle and his promotional efforts. Back in the United States, Emerson next published Representative Men in 1850. Here he presents portraits of six great men, the Greek philosopher Plato, Swedenborg, the French essayist Montaigne, the English bard William Shakespeare, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and the German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The very choice of such a man of action as Napoleon shows a further hardening of Emerson's conservative thought. Though the book was praised partly because it was more accessible than his earlier work, modern critics have found that with this publication Emerson had passed his peak as an original thinker. Other successful titles followed: English Traits in 1856, another very accessible and readable title, and two more volumes of essays, Conduct of Life in 1860 and Society and Solitude in 1870. From Conduct of Life comes two further original essays, "Fate" and "Illusions." With "Fate," Emerson seems to have come full circle from his original thoughts about nature. In the 1836 Nature, it was seen as a possibility, as inspiration for revelation, but in "Fate," nature is a destructive force, a limitation.

Emerson also became more active in public life during these years. Not usually one to become involved publicly in social and political issues, Emerson was moved to speak out against slavery, and in particular the Fugitive Slave Law, which required whites to return runaway slaves to their captivity. Emerson said that was one law he would gladly disobey. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he became an ardent proponent of the Union cause. Socially he became more outgoing, as well, joining a new group, the Saturday Club, which met for dinners in Boston. Here he met with fellow writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He continued to keep the same schedule he had for years: writing in the morning, walking in the countryside in the afternoon, and socializing with friends and family in the evening. However, by the mid-1860s Emerson's memory began to fail and it soon was no longer possible for him to lecture. When his house in Concord burned down in 1872, he was stunned. The tragedy caused Emerson's health to further deteriorate.

Friends of Emerson started a fund and raised money to rebuild his house while Emerson traveled with his daughter Ellen to Europe and Egypt. He was greeted by the entire village of Concord upon his return in 1873, and took up residence in his new home. Emerson's last years were peaceful, but he could no longer work much. With the assistance of his secretary, he prepared several volumes of essays, most of them derived from earlier lectures. In April of 1882 he caught pneumonia and died, honored as one of the country's literary giants.

If you enjoy the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you enjoy the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, you may also want to check out the following:

The writings of Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, who were influenced by Emerson.

Since his death, Emerson's reputation has gone through several phases. Revered as one of the most influential figures in American literature until about World War I, he began to attract more negative criticism between the wars. This prophet of individualism was blamed for some of the worst excesses in American life, such as out-of-control capitalism and consumerism. Critics also began to describe his theories as naive and obscure. Since World War II, however, Emerson has undergone another critical re-evaluation to become the ultimate Romantic. Whatever the critical judgment, Emerson had a profound influence on the world of letters in the United States. He almost single-handedly created an atmosphere receptive to a national literature, one that did not simply copy English precedent, but that struck out on its own with a blend of Yankee pragmatism and optimism about the human condition and man's potential for growth and self-realization. Emerson is, as Frederick Turner noted in the Smithsonian magazine, "a renaissance voice." An American original, Emerson "never gave up hoping that Americans were as superior as he suspected they were," van Doren concluded in his introduction to The Portable Emerson.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Allen, Gay Wilson, Waldo Emerson, Viking (New York, NY), 1981.

Anderson, John Q., The Liberating Gods: Emerson onPoets and Poetry, University of Miami Press (Miami, FL), 1971.

Bercovich, Sacvan, The Puritan Origins of the American Self, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1975.

Berry, Edmund G., Emerson's Plutarch, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1961.

Bishop, Jonathan, Emerson on the Soul, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1964.

Blanck, Jacob, The Bibliography of American Literature, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1959.

Brooks, Van Wyck, The Life of Emerson, Dutton (New York, NY), 1932.

Bryer, Jackson R., and Robert A. Rees, A Checklist ofEmerson Criticism, 1951-1961, Transcendental Books (Hartford, CT), 1964.

Buell, Lawrence, Literary Transcendentalism: Style andVision in the American Renaissance, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1973.

Burkholder, Robert E., and Joel Myerson, Critical Essays on Ralph Waldo Emerson, G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1983.

Burkholder, Robert E., and Joel Myerson, Emerson:An Annotated Secondary Bibliography, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1985.

Cabot, James Elliot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 volumes, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1889.

Cameron, Kenneth Walter, editor, Emerson amongHis Contemporaries, Transcendental Books (Hartford, CT), 1967.

Carpenter, Frederic Ives, Emerson Handbook, Hendricks House (New York, NY), 1953.

Charvat, William, Emerson's American Lecture Engagements, New York Public Library (New York, NY), 1961.

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography:Colonization to the American Renaissance, 1640-1865, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Conway, Moncure Daniel, Emerson at Home andAbroad, James R. Osgood (Boston, MA), 1882.

Cooke, George Willis, A Bibliography of Ralph WaldoEmerson, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1908.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1: The American Renaissance in New England, 1978, Volume 59: American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1800-1850, 1987, Volume 73: American Magazine Journalists, 1741-1850, 1988, Volume 183: American Travel Writers, 1776-1864, 1997, Volume 223: The American Renaissance in New England, Second Series, 2000, Volume 270: American Philosophers before 1950, 2002.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Portable Emerson, edited and with an introduction by Mark van Doren, Viking (New York, NY), 1968.

Feidelson, Charles, Jr., Symbolism and American Literature, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1961.

Firkins, Oscar W., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1915.

Geldard, Richard G., God in Concord: Ralph WaldoEmerson's Awakening to the Infinite, Larson Publications, 1998.

Geldard, Richard G., The Spiritual Teachings of RalphWaldo Emerson, Lindisfarne Books (Great Barrington, MA), 2001.

Harding, Walter, Emerson's Library, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1967.

Hopkins, Vivian, Spires of Form: A Study of Emerson'sAesthetic Theory, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1951.

Makinson, Robert, Ralp Waldo Emerson BicentennialHandbook, Makinson Publishing, 2000.

Matthiessen, F. O., American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1941.

McAleer, John, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1984.

Miller, Perry, editor, The Transcendentalists: An Anthology, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1950.

Myerson, Joel, A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Paul, Sherman, Emerson's Angle of Vision, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1952.

Pommer, Henry F., Emerson's First Marriage, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1967.

Porte, Joel, Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists inConflict, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1966.

Porte, Joel, Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Times, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1979.

Porte, Joel, and Saundra Morris, editors, The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1999.

Putz, Manfred, Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Bibliography of Twentieth-Century Criticism, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1986.

Reference Guide to American Literature, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Rusk, Ralph R., The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Scribners, (New York, NY), 1949.

Scudder, Townsend, The Lonely Wayfaring Man: Emerson and Some Englishmen, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1936.

Snider, Denton J., A Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Harvey Miner (St. Louis, MO), 1921. Wagenknecht, Edward, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Portrait of a Balanced Soul, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Waggoner, Hyatt, Emerson as Poet, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1975.

Whicher, Stephen E., Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1953.

Woodress, James, editor, Eight American Authors, revised edition, Norton (New York, NY), 1971.