The 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 protégés, 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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an essayist, poet, philosopher, lecturer, and abolitionist whose ideas championed the importance of individualism and nature.

Jeffrey S. Cramer is the Curator of Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods. He is the editor of the award-winning Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition, The Quotable Thoreau, among other books. He lives in Maynard, Massachusetts.