Emerson
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780520206892
Paperback|9780520206892
✨ Featured Offer
Used, Very Good
$12.30
List Price: $33.95
🚚
See all 5 offers from $10.27 FREE standard delivery by: 29 Mar 2026
Overview
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man.
These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age.
Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.
The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature.
Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings-from Persian poets to George Sand-and to his many friendships and personal encounters-from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston-evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.
These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age.
Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.
The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature.
Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings-from Persian poets to George Sand-and to his many friendships and personal encounters-from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston-evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.
| ISBN-13 | 9780520206892 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0520206894 |
| Weight | 2.20 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 6.00 x 1.90 x 9.00 In |
| List Price | $33.95 |
| Edition | 1st Edition |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Pages | 686 pages |
| Publisher | University of California Press |
| Published On | 1996-11-06 |
View All Offers
Sort by:
Price
Condition
Seller
Seller Comments
Price
Used, Good
Seller details
VeryWord
Bethesda, MD, USA
Regular used book. No underlining or highlighting.
Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026
✨ Used, Very Good
Seller details
HPB-Diamond
Dallas, TX, USA
Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and ...
Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026
Used, Good
Seller details
SurplusTextSeller
Columbia, MO, USA
Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust j...
Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026
Used, Very Good
Seller details
Magers and Quinn Booksellers
Minneapolis, MN, USA
May have light to moderate shelf wear and/or a remainder mark. Complete. Clean pages.
Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026
Used, Very Good
Seller details
HPB-Diamond
Dallas, TX, USA
Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and ...
Free delivery by: 29 Mar 2026