The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson

In 1939 Columbia University Press published the acclaimed first volume of The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which presented a deeply personal portrait of the real Emerson, previously unknown to the American public. Through these letters readers gained a new insight into the mind of this seminal figure in American literary and intellectual history. Now, for the first time, readers can find Emerson's best letters distilled in one volume. Distinguished Emerson scholar Joel Myerson has selected 350 letters written between 1813 and 1880 that best represents the scope of Emerson's correspondence.

Joel Myerson is former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and the Carolina Distinguished Professor of American Literature at the University of South Carolina. He has written and edited numerous books on nineteenth-century American writers.