> Skip to content
  • Published: 25 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9780143107460
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $75.00

The Portable Emerson



"I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man."

Philosopher John Dewey called Ralph Waldo Emerson "the one citizen of the New World fit to have his name uttered in the same breath with that of Plato." Critic Harold Bloom called him "the most influential writer of the 19th century" and deemed him "The Prophet of the American Religion." Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne numbered themselves among his friends and protégés, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in Transcendentalism. On a quotidian level, Emerson's quotations appear today as inspiration and commentary within discussions on virtually every subject, yet that visibility hardly plumbs the profundity of his influence. In short, Emerson's diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind, divorcing it from the yoke of Continental philosophy by elevating nature and the individual over history and materialism.

With such a towering icon, the weight of Emerson's reputation and the cosmic optimism of his vision risk overrunning a presentation of that central Emersonian tenet: an individual in all his infinitude. In this update to Malcolm Cowley and Carl Bode's classic The Portable Emerson, editor Jeffrey S. Cramer takes a wider view of both the work and the man, offering key texts like Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon, revealing a stirringly human Emerson that, like Whitman, contains multitudes.

A comprehensive collection of writings by “the most influential writer of the nineteenth century” (Harold Bloom)

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind. Literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman were among Emerson’s admirers and protégés, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in transcendentalism. This long-awaited update—the first in more than thirty years—presents the core of Emerson’s writings, including Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

  • Published: 25 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9780143107460
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $75.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Date: 2013-08-06
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803­-1882) was a renowned lecturer and writer, whose ideas on philosophy, religion, and literature influenced many writers, including Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. After an undergraduate career at Harvard, he studied at Harvard Divinity School and became an ordained minister, continuing a long line of ministers in his family. He traveled widely and lectured, and became well known for his publications Essays and Nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the son of a Unitarian minister and a chaplain during the American Revolution, was born in 1803 in Boston. He attended the Boston Latin School, and in 1817 entered Harvard, graduating in 1820. Emerson supported himself as a schoolteacher from 1821-26. In 1826 he was 'approbated to preach,' and in 1829 became pastor of the Scond Church (Unitarian) in Boston. That same year he married Ellen Louise Tucker, who was to die of tuberculosis only seventeen months later.

In 1832 Emerson resigned his pastorate and traveled to Eurpe, where he met Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. He settled in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1834, where he began a new career as a public lecturer, and married Lydia Jackson a year later. A group that gathered around Emerson in Concord came to be known as 'the Concord school,' and included Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller.

Every year Emerson made a lecture tour; and these lectures were the source of most of his essays. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy, which views the world of phenomena as a sort of symbol of the inner life and emphasizes individual freedom and self-reliance. Emerson's address to the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard (1837) and another address to the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity School (1838) applied his doctrine to the scholar and the clergyman, provoking sharp controversy. An ardent abolitionist, Emerson lectured and wrote widely against slavery from the 1840's through the Civil War.

His principal publications include two volumes of Essays (1841, 1844), Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and Society and Solitude (1870). He died of pneumonia in 1882 and was buried in Concord.