Estimating Emerson

David LaRocca (Ph.D Vanderbilt University) is Writer-in-Residence in the Frederick Lewis Allen Room at the New York Public Library, USA, and Coordinating Producer and Consulting Editor for the ongoing documentary film project The Intellectual Portrait Series. He studied philosophy, film, rhetoric, and religion at SUNY-Buffalo, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, and at Harvard University, where he was Sinclair Kennedy Traveling Fellow in the United Kingdom. Author of On Emerson (2003) and editor of Stanley Cavell's book Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (2003), he writes regularly on topics in aesthetics, literary theory, and film. His essays have been published in volumes such as Nietzsche e L'America (2005), New Morning: Emerson in the Twenty-first Century (2008) and Emerson for the Twenty-First Century (2010).

This is the definitive anthology on America’s premier man of letters—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• INTRODUCTION1840-1860 THOMAS CARLYLE Preface by the English Editor to Essays: First Series HENRY DAVID THOREAU Letter from Thoreau to Emerson NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Selected Letters EDGAR ALLAN POE R. W. EmersonCHARLES DICKENS Boston ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY Nature, A Prose PoemORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON Nature; Emerson's Essays; On the Divinity School Address ANDREWS NORTON A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Oration MARGARET FULLER Essays: Second Series AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT Essays ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Stanzas Occasioned by a Passage in Mr. Emerson's Journal, Which States, That on The Mention of Lord Byron's Name, Captain Demetrius, An Old Roumeliot Burst Into Tears THEODORE PARKER The Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson1861-1880 MATTHEW ARNOLD Written in Emerson's Essays (Sonnet); Emerson CHARLES BAUDELAIRE My Heart Laid Bare JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Emerson's Birthday AMES RUSSELL LOWELL Emerson the Lecturer; Mr. Emerson's New Course of Lectures; The Conduct of LifeOLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A Tribute on the Occasion of Emerson's DeathCHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT Emerson HORACE GREELEY Letters from Greeley to Thoreau about Emerson WALT WHITMAN How I Still Get Around and Take Notes (No. 5); Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them); The Superiority of Emerson; By Emerson's Grave; And selected letters \HERMAN MELVILLE Selections from Correspondence, and Miscellaneous Notes 1881-1900 HENRY JAMES, SR. Mr. Emerson HENRY JAMES, JR. Emerson and His Age; Emerson; Carlyle and Emerson WILLIAM JAMES Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord JOHN JAY CHAPMAN Emerson FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Selected Letters and Passages on Emerson 1901-1920 D. H. LAWRENCE Americans JOSIAH ROYCE Selected Letters; The Decay of Earnestness JOHN DEWEY Ralph Waldo EmersonGEORGE SANTAYANA EmersonROBERT MUSIL Selections from Diaries MARCEL PROUST Selected Mottos and Letters, and Excerpts from NovelsMAURICE MAETERLINCK Emerson (from On Emerson and other essays)CHARLES IVES Essays before a Sonata (Emerson) 1921-1940 VIRGINIA WOOLF Emerson's Journals T. S. ELIOT "Cousin Nancy" and "Sweeney Erect" [poems]; Selections from Letters; Clark Lecture, CambridgeF. O. MATTHIESSEN In the Optative Mood 1941-1960 ROBERT FROST On Emerson JORGE LUIS BORGES Emerson; Selections from Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges 1961-1980 JOSEPH BLAU Emerson's Transcendentalist Individualism as a Social Philosophy PERRY MILLER From Edwards to Emerson; Emersonian Genius and the American Democracy1981-present JOHN UPDIKE Emersonianism; Big Dead White Male WILLIAM GASS Emerson and the essay RICHARD POIRIER The Question of Genius JOHN J. MCDERMOTT Spires of Influence: The Importance of Emerson for Classical American Philosophy RICHARD RORTY Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism; Professionalized Philosophy and Transcendentalist Culture HAROLD BLOOM Mr. America; The Freshness of Transformation: Emerson's Dialectics of Influence CORNEL WEST The Emersonian Prehistory of American Pragmatism STANLEY CAVELL Thinking of Emerson; An Emerson Mood; Emerson [chapter 1 of Cities of Words] LIST OF SOURCES INDEX