Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1822-1826

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

ISBN 10: 0674484517 / ISBN 13: 9780674484511

Published by Harvard University Press, 1961

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 1546886-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1822-1826
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1961
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674484517
• ISBN 13: 9780674484511
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man and thinker, will be fully revealed for the first time in this new edition of his journals and notebooks. The old image of the ideal nineteenth-century gentleman, created by editorial omissions of his spontaneous thoughts, is replaced by the picture of Emerson as he really was. His frank and often bitter criticisms of men and society, his “nihilizing,” his anguish at the death of his first wife, his bleak struggles with depression and loneliness, his sardonic views of woman, his earthy humor, his ideas of the Negro, of religion, of God―these and other expressions of his private thought and feeling, formerly deleted or subdued, are here restored. Restored also is the full evidence needed for studies of his habits of composition, the development of his style, and the sources of his ideas.

The second volume prints the exact texts of nine journals and three notebooks. It reveals the shape of some of Emerson’s enduring interests, in embryo “essays” on the moral sense, moral beauty, taste, greatness and fame, friendship, compensation, and the unity of God and the universe. Restored from oblivion are suppressed passages on the Negro and revelations of acute melancholy and rebelliousness. These records of his developing thought are also the history of his early obscurity, when the fame he sought was still painfully remote.

About the Authors

William H. Gilman is Professor of English at the University of Rochester.

Alfred R. Ferguson (1915–1974) was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Merrell R. Davis was Professor of English at the University of Washington at the time of his death in 1961.