Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, from one of the most influential philosophers in American history. Emerson was influenced by a liberal religious training; personal contact with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous sense of individualism and self-reliance. Here Emerson’s prose shows him to be both a vigorous thinker and a profound mystic, a man of exquisite feeling combined with stern moral fiber. These essays contain Emerson’s most important writing and radiate with sensitivity and wonder. His writings, his philosophy, and his strong character left their stamp not only on such writers as Thoreau, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson but also on the American character at large.
