Joel Myerson - Böcker

There is no question that Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) has maintained his place as one of the seminal figures in American history and literature. His poetic legacy, education ideals, and religious concepts are integral to the formation of American intellectual life, and scholarly interest in him continues unabated. Myerson has over the course of two decades made himself the most authoritative, respected, and prolific scholar working in this important period. His volume gathers essays that discuss biographical details of Emerson's life as well as women's rights, slavery, transcendentalism, and religion.

There is no question that Emerson has maintained his place as one of the seminal figures in American history and literature. In his time, he was the acknowledged leader of the Transcendentalist movement and his poetic legacy, education ideals, and religious concepts are integral to the formation of American intellectual life. In this volume, Joel Myerson, one of the leading experts on this period, has gathered together sparkling new essays that discuss Emerson as a product of his times. Individual chapters provide an extended biographical study of Emerson and his effect on American life, followed by studies of his concept of individualism, nature and natural science, religion, antislavery, and women's rights.

The transcendentalist movement is generally recognized to be the first major watershed in American literary and intellectual history. Pioneered by Emerson, Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott (among others), Transcendentalism provided a springboard for the first distinctly American forays into intellectual culture: religion and religious reform, philosophy, literature, ecology, and spiritualism. This new collection, edited by eminent American literature scholar Joel Myerson, is the first anthology of the period to appear in over fifty years. Transcendentalism: A Reader draws together in their entirety the essential writings of the Transcendentalist group during its most active period, 1836-1844. It includes the major publications of the Dial, the writings on democratic and social reform, the early poetry, nature writings, and all of Emerson's major essays, as well as an informative introduction and annotations by Myerson.

The transcendentalist movement is generally recognized to be the first major watershed in American literary and intellectual history. Pioneered by Emerson, Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott (among others), Transcendentalism provided a springboard for the first distinctly American forays into intellectual culture: religion and religious reform, philosophy, literature, ecology, and spiritualism. This new collection, edited by eminent American literature scholar Joel Myerson, is the first anthology of the period to appear in over fifty years. Transcendentalism: A Reader draws together in their entirety the essential writings of the Transcendentalist group during its most active period, 1836-1844. It includes the major publications of the Dial, the writings on democratic and social reform, the early poetry, nature writings, and all of Emerson's major essays, as well as an informative introduction and annotations by Myerson.

The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters is a narrative and epistolary biography based upon the lifelong correspondence exchanged among the four Emerson brothers: Charles Chauncy, Edward Bliss, Ralph Waldo, and William Emerson, as well as Charles' 181 letters to his fiancée Elizabeth Hoar (one of the few extended series of courtship letters surviving from this period) and 86 letters from the brothers to their paternal aunt Mary Moody Emerson in which they discuss their moral and theological upbringing and views. Often composed as "round robin" exchanges among and between the brothers, the Emerson brothers' correspondence is the last great untapped body of personal writings remaining in manuscript from within the Emerson family. These letters illuminate aspects of Waldo's character and personal and intellectual development that, lacking access to the letters, even his most sympathetic biographers and critics have thus far failed to appreciate fully; reveal that all of the brothers were invigorated by their shared sense of origin as well as by a sense of duty to improve upon their ancestors' literary and intellectual work; shine new light on Waldo's debt to William for his first serious encounters with German Higher Criticism in the midUL1820s; present new evidence about the devastation Waldo felt at the death in 1831 of his first wife, a correction to Waldo's own sometimes under-recorded sense of grief at her passing; demonstrate that Waldo's desire for financial security for himself, his mother, and his brothers was at least as powerful a motivation behind his resignation from Boston's Second Church in 1832 as were Ellen's death and his reservations about the Lord's Supper; and mark Waldo's self-conscious and steady progress away from the forms of institutionalized religion toward the career of lecturer, essayist, poet, and social reformer which earned him his reputation as a principal architect of American culture.

The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism offers an eclectic, comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to the immense cultural impact of the movement that encompassed literature, art, architecture, science, and politics.

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.

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.

This book presents the first comprehensive and authoritative collection of Emerson’s writings against slavery and the subjugation of American Indians—writings that reveal Emerson’s deep commitment to social reform. Included are speeches and lectures that have never before been published or collected in any other edition of Emerson’s writings."Taken together, this group of writings constitutes a critical mass of evidence that demonstrates Emerson’s continuous involvement in protest against slavery and other forms of social oppression much more dramatically than has been done before." —Lawrence Buell, Harvard University"This valuable collection contains eighteen works by Emerson on the subject of slavery written between 1838 and 1863. . . . The texts are well annotated, and a historical introduction rightly demonstrates Emerson’s important participation in the abolition movement." —Nineteenth-Century Literature"This new volume . . . seeks to put Emerson’s views on abolitionism in a clearer light while fitting the writings into the larger frame of his philosophy of social reform. . . . A skillfully edited volume . . . [that adds] to a deeper understanding of Emerson’s thought." —Charles Sermon, State

Famous for her classic novel Little Women, and regarded as America's best-loved author of juvenile fiction, Louisa May Alcott is not readily identified with page-turning thrillers and sensational tales. Freaks of Genius, however, presents a collection of previously unknown sensational narratives by Alcott, originally published in the weekly storypapers of the 1860s and never before reprinted. The stories are startling examples of an atypical Alcott, delving into such subjects as violence and insanity, revenge and murder, and narcotics addiction and evil.Included in the collection are six of Alcott's tales of the sensational: A Nurse's Story, The Freak of a Genius, La Jeune, A Laugh and a Look, The Romance of a Bouquet, and Mrs. Vane's Charade. Their themes include the blight of inherited insanity, the power struggle between man and man, the sexual power struggle between man and woman, a Faustian/Mephistophelian pact (later used in A Modern Mephistopheles), the passions of actors and actresses, and feminist triumphs and failures. These skillfully plotted stories are sure to interest the general reader with their narrative excitement, and to fascinate the scholar trying to reconcile their darkness with the sweetness and light tone that has always been associated with Alcott's work. In addition, the book includes the first complete bibliography of Alcott's known thrillers, both anonymous and pseudonymous. For libraries, general readers, and courses such as American literature and feminist studies, Freaks of Genius will be an essential publication.

Scholarship on Ralph Waldo Emerson has expanded considerably during the past decade. Since Emerson is the subject of historians, philosophers, and literary scholars, there is a need for an efficient and effective means to access information within an extraordinary range of critical approaches and perspectives. This bibliography lists and annotates writings about Emerson published in English between 1980 and 1991, and complements earlier Emerson bibliographies.Because the response to Emerson has evolved greatly over the years, the contents of this bibliography are arranged in chronological order. This arrangement allows the user to trace the progression of certain critical approaches to Emerson and to follow the development of critics who have made numerous contributions to Emerson scholarship. Each chapter is devoted to a particular year. Within each chapter, entries begin with book publications arranged alphabetically by author, followed by annual journals alphabetized by journal title and journal articles arranged by date of publication. A detailed index locates works by subject, author, and title.

One of the most influential American women writers of the 19th century, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) played a vital role in the shaping of New England Transcendentalism and the birth of the women's movement. Her Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) was the first thorough discussion of feminism by an American. As a feminist manifesto, her treatise examined the economic, political, and cultural roles of women in society. As the editor of The Dial, the quarterly literary and philosophical publication of the Transcendentalists, she was in close contact with Emerson, Thoreau, and other leading thinkers of the era. As a staff member of the New York Tribune, she developed a widespread reputation as a critic. Her influence was so great that her ideas and persona were reflected in the literary works of Hawthorne, Lowell, and other writers of the period.For many decades, Margaret Fuller was largely neglected by the scholarly community. While she was always considered a pioneering feminist, she was also seen as only a peripheral figure of the American Renaissance. In recent years, however, scholarship on Fuller has exploded, and her great contributions to 19th century American literature and culture are receiving much attention. This bibliography cites and annotates several hundred scholarly studies about Fuller published between 1983 and 1995. It also provides entries for roughly 100 works about Fuller not included in the author's previous bibliographies. Entries are grouped in chapters devoted to each year, so that the reader may trace the growth in Fuller scholarship. A comprehensive index allows the user to locate sources according to author, subject, and periodical title.

The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau is intended as an accessible guide to reading and understanding the works of Thoreau. Presenting essays by a distinguished array of contributors, the Companion is a valuable resource for historical and contextual material, whether on early writings like A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, on the monumental Walden, or on his assorted journals and later books. It also serves in some ways as a biographical guide, offering new insights into his turbulent publishing career, and his brief but extraordinarily original life. In short, the Companion helps the reader come to Thoreau's writings, as he would say, 'deliberately and reservedly' by suggesting how Thoreau uses language, how his biography informs his writing, how personal and historical influences shaped his career, and how his writings function as literary works.

The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau is intended as an accessible guide to reading and understanding the works of Thoreau. Presenting essays by a distinguished array of contributors, the Companion is a valuable resource for historical and contextual material, whether on early writings like A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, on the monumental Walden, or on his assorted journals and later books. It also serves in some ways as a biographical guide, offering new insights into his turbulent publishing career, and his brief but extraordinarily original life. In short, the Companion helps the reader come to Thoreau's writings, as he would say, 'deliberately and reservedly' by suggesting how Thoreau uses language, how his biography informs his writing, how personal and historical influences shaped his career, and how his writings function as literary works.

Letters and Social Aims, published in 1875, contains essays originally published early in the 1840s as well as those that were the product of a collaborative effort among Ralph Waldo Emerson, his daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, his son Edward Waldo Emerson, and his literary executor James Eliot Cabot. The volume takes up the topics of “Poetry and Imagination,” “Social Aims,” “Eloquence,” “Resources,” “The Comic,” “Quotation and Originality,” “Progress of Culture,” “Persian Poetry,” “Inspiration,” “Greatness,” and, appropriately for Emerson’s last published book, “Immortality.”The historical introduction demonstrates for the first time the decline in Emerson’s creative powers after 1865; the strain caused by the preparation of a poetry anthology and delivery of lectures at Harvard during this time; the devastating effect of a house fire in 1872; and how the Emerson children and Cabot worked together to enable Emerson to complete the book. The textual introduction traces this collaborative process in detail and also provides new information about the genesis of the volume as a response to a proposed unauthorized British edition of Emerson’s works.Historical Introduction by Ronald A. BoscoNotes and Parallel Passages by Glen M. JohnsonText Established and Textual Introduction and Apparatus by Joel Myerson

With the appearance of the tenth and final volume of Collected Works, a project fifty years in the making reaches completion: the publication of critically edited texts of all of Emerson’s works published in his lifetime and under his supervision. The Uncollected Prose Writings is the definitive gathering of Emerson’s previously published prose writings that he left uncollected at the time of his death.The Uncollected Prose Writings supersedes the three posthumous volumes of Emerson’s prose that James Elliot Cabot and Edward Waldo Emerson added to his canon. Seeing as their primary task the expansion of the Emerson canon, they embellished and improvised. By contrast, Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson have undertaken the restoration of Emerson’s uncollected prose canon, printing only what Emerson alone wrote, authorized for publication, and saw into print.In their Historical Introduction and Textual Introduction, the editors survey the sweep of Emerson’s uncollected published prose. The evidence they marshal reveals Emerson’s progressive reliance on lectures as forerunners to his published prose in major periodicals and clarifies what has been a slowly emerging portrait of the last decade and a half of his life as a public intellectual.

Upon its completion, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971–2013) was hailed as a major achievement of scholarship and textual editing. Drawing from the ten volumes of the Collected Works, Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson have gathered some of Emerson’s most memorable prose published during his lifetime and under his direct supervision. The editors have enhanced those selections with additional writings to produce the only anthology that represents in a single volume the full range of Emerson’s written and spoken prose genres—sermons, lectures, addresses, and essays—that took on their public life in the pulpit or lecture hall, or on the printed page.Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose demonstrates the remarkable scope of Emerson’s interests, from science, literature, art, philosophy, natural history, and religion to pressing social issues such as slavery and women’s rights, to the character of his contemporaries, including Lincoln and Thoreau. Emerson’s classic essays Nature, “Self-Reliance,” and “Experience” complement his less familiar but no less vital texts, including the deeply heterodox sermon on “The Lord’s Supper,” which effectively announced his resignation from the ministry, and late essays on “American Civilization,” “Character,” and “Works and Days.” Edited according to the most rigorous modern standards, Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose provides an authoritative compendium of writings by one of America’s most significant literary figures and public intellectuals.

Picturing Emerson reproduces and explores the background of all known images of Ralph Waldo Emerson created from life, including drawings, paintings, silhouettes, sculptures, and photographs. The book provides dates for these images; information about their makers and Emerson’s sittings; as well as commentary by family members and contemporaries. The resulting work makes it possible for the first time to trace Emerson’s visage over seven decades.Dating and correctly identifying images of Emerson has long challenged scholars, collectors, and the general public. By examining over fifty years of archival and published research—including web resources, library catalogs, and correspondence with international collections—the authors have been able to locate nearly 140 images dating from 1829 to immediately before Emerson’s death in 1882.Joel Myerson has written or edited over sixty books on Emerson and the Transcendentalists, most recently Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose with Ronald A. Bosco. They have jointly received the Julian P. Boyd Award, the highest award presented by the Association for Documentary Editing. Leslie Perrin Wilson is a curator at the Concord Free Public Library, a repository known for significant holdings of Emerson portraiture. She has written extensively on local historical and literary topics.

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The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott contains a broad cross-section of letters from the correspondence of the creator of Little Women and provides a compelling autobiography of this most autobiographical of writers. Spanning a period of forty-five years, this collection provides vivid accounts of Alcott's life and development as a writer.Episodes in Alcott's life are candidly reflected: her youth, when the prototype of Jo March was already being shaped; the 1868 publication of Little Women and the prosperity and renown the book brought its author; her never-ending struggles for her family; the final years spent caring for her niece and an invalid father. Alcott's letters also furnished a vent for the pressures she felt to write a sequel to Little Women and play matchmaker for the novel's heroine. Writing to a friend in early 1869, Alcott remarked that "Jo should have remained a literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didnt dare to refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect."The correspondence sheds light on Alcott's relationship with her publishers, such friends as Emerson and Thoreau, and members of her family. Of particular note are her observations—many of them firsthand—on such major issues of the day as abolition, the Civil War, and the women's rights movement.

From her eleventh year to the month of her death at age fifty-five, Louisa May Alcott kept copious journals. She never intended them to be published, but the insights they provide into her remarkable life are invaluable.Alcott grew up in a genteel but impoverished household, surrounded by the literary and philosophical elite of nineteenth-century New England, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like her fictional alter ego, Jo March, she was a free spirit who longed for independence, yet she dutifully supported her parents and three sisters with her literary efforts. In the journals are to be found hints of Alcott's surprisingly complex persona as well as clues to her double life as an author not only of "high" literature but also of serial thrillers and Gothic romances.Associate editor Madeleine B. Stern has added an in-depth introduction to The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, the only unabridged edition of Alcott's private diaries.

This is the first and only comprehensive selection of lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his era’s most prominent American man of letters and one of the foremost architects of our intellectual culture. Based on authoritative texts selected and edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson—the most experienced Emerson editors working today—these twenty-five addresses collectively exemplify the lecture style for which Emerson was famed in his day.Best known to his contemporaries as a lecturer, Emerson delivered some 1,500 addresses over the course of his career. Because his most important ideas were worked out in his lectures, they provide the best record we have of his evolving thought—and thus are a key to our understanding of his essays and other printed works. Gathered here are lectures on American culture, literary theory and aesthetics, moral and, as Emerson called it, "intellectual" philosophy, and social and political reform. They are taken from speaking engagements in the United States and the British Isles over the period 1833-1871, during which Emerson often spent four to six months a year on the lecture circuit; lectures from the earliest years of Emerson’s career (1833-1842) have been newly edited for this volume.The volume’s introduction draws on contemporary accounts to describe Emerson’s idiosyncratic but utterly memorable manner of speaking. A headnote provides context to the composition and delivery of each lecture, and footnotes identify Emerson’s allusions to persons, places, occasions, quotations, and books. "By examining his lectures and how they were delivered," say Bosco and Myerson, "we can look into the laboratory of Emerson’s intellectual and compositional process and see his published writings gestating."

Drawing primarily from previously unpublished manuscripts in the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, recent editions of Emerson’s correspondence, journals and notebooks, sermons, and early lectures have provided authoritative texts that inspire readers to consider Emerson’s place in American culture afresh. The two-volume Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843–1871, presents the texts of forty-eight complete and unpublished lectures delivered during the crucial middle years of Emerson’s career. They offer his thoughts on New England and “Old World” history and culture, poetic theory, education, the history and uses of intellect—as well as his ideas on race relations and women’s rights, subjects that sparked many debates. These final volumes contain some of Emerson’s most timelessly relevant work and are sure to engage and inform any reader interested in discovering one of our country’s greatest intellectuals.The following sections, although appearing only in the volume designated, contain information that pertains to both volumes and are available on the University of Georgia Press website.Volume 1: 1843–1854 contains:PrefaceWorks Frequently CitedHistorical and Textual IntroductionVolume 2: 1855–1871 contains:Manuscript Sources of Emerson’s Later Lectures in the Houghton Library of Harvard UniversityIndex to Works by EmersonGeneral Index

Drawing primarily from previously unpublished manuscripts in the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, recent editions of Emerson’s correspondence, journals and notebooks, sermons, and early lectures have provided authoritative texts that inspire readers to consider Emerson’s place in American culture afresh. The two-volume Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843–1871, presents the texts of forty-eight complete and unpublished lectures delivered during the crucial middle years of Emerson’s career. They offer his thoughts on New England and “Old World” history and culture, poetic theory, education, the history and uses of intellect—as well as his ideas on race relations and women’s rights, subjects that sparked many debates. These final volumes contain some of Emerson’s most timelessly relevant work and are sure to engage and inform any reader interested in discovering one of our country’s greatest intellectuals.The following sections, although appearing only in the volume designated, contain information that pertains to both volumes and are available on the University of Georgia Press website.Volume 1: 1843–1854 contains:PrefaceWorks Frequently CitedHistorical and Textual IntroductionVolume 2: 1855–1871 contains:Manuscript Sources of Emerson’s Later Lectures in the Houghton Library of Harvard UniversityIndex to Works by EmersonGeneral Index