Emerson's Essays (1920)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a tireless and diligent public intellectual who would give over 1500 lectures over the course of his career, educating thousands of people within academia and wider society about his beliefs, principles and personal philosophy. The son of a Bostonian minister, Emerson was giving good schooling, and was influenced by his father's professional capacity for speech. Upon establishing a school in Massachusetts, Emerson's thoughts on freedom and the place of the individual were to evolve. Over the course of his life Emerson's outlook on personal freedoms and independence would be massively influential on the young United States, immeasurably shaping the nation's development and outlook. Adventurous even in old age, Emerson would in 1871 take a trip on the barely-completed Transcontinental Railroad, touring California and meeting many dignataries during his trip. His final writings were the poetic anthology Parnassus. After years of failing memory Emerson perished from pneumonia in 1882.