Portable Emerson

"A comprehensive collection of writings by "the most influential writer of the nineteenth century" (Harold Bloom) Ralph Waldo Emerson's diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind. Literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman were among Emerson's admirers and proteges, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in transcendentalism. This long-awaited update-the first in more than thirty years-presents the core of Emerson's writings, including Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon"--

Philosopher John Dewey called Ralph Waldo Emerson "the one citizen of the New World fit to have his name uttered in the same breath with that of Plato." Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own contexts. With his central text, Nature, he singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in Transcendentalism. Editor Jeffrey S. Cramer has chosen texts like Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters and poetry revealing a stirringly human writer.