Ralph Waldo Emerson. Centenary Edition. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1903–1904. 12 vols. Uncollected Writings. Essays, Addresses, Poems, Reviews, and Letters, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1912. The chief works appeared in book form originally as follows: Nature, 1836; The American Scholar, 1837; An Address delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 1838; Essays, 1841; Essays, Second Series, 1844; Poems, 1847; Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, 1849; Representative Men, 1850; English Traits, 1856; The Conduct of Life, 1860; May-Day and Other Pieces, 1867; Society and Solitude, 1870; Letters and Social Aims, 1876; The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1883; Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1884; Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers, 1893; Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations, 1909–1914.

Bibliography

A volume compiled by G. W. Cooke. 1908. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 551–566.

Biography and Criticism

The standard life is by James Elliot Cabot. A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1887. 2 vols.

Boynton, Percy H. Democracy in Emerson’s Journals. New Republic, Vol. I, No. 4, pp. 25–26.

Boynton, Percy H. Emerson’s Feeling toward Reform. New Republic, Vol. I, No. 13, pp. 16–18.

Boynton, Percy H. Emerson’s Solitude. New Republic, Vol. III, pp. 68–70.

Brownell, William C. Emerson, in American Prose Masters. 1909.

Burroughs, John. Emerson. Birds and Poets. 1877.

Chapman, J. J. Emerson, Sixty Years After, in Emerson and Other Essays. 1898.

Concord School of Philosophy. The Genius and Character of Emerson. Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy. F. B. Sanborn, editor. 1885.

Emerson, Edward Waldo. Emerson in Concord. A Memoir. 1889.

Firkins, O. W. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1915.

Garnett, Richard. Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1888.

Higginson, T. W. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Contemporaries. 1899.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1885. (A. M. L. Ser.)

James, Henry. Emerson. Partial Portraits. 1888.

Lowell, J. R. Mr. Emerson’s New Course of Lectures, in My Study Windows. 1871.

Maeterlinck, Maurice. Emerson, in Sept Essais d’Emerson. 1894.

More, Paul Elmer. The Influence of Emerson, in Shelburne Essays. Ser. 1. 1904. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, Bk. II, chap. ix.

Payne, W. M. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Leading American Essayists. 1910.

Sanborn, F. B. Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Beacon Biographies.) 1901.

Sanborn, F. B. The Personality of Emerson. 1903.

Stedman, E. C. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Poets of America. 1885.

Stephen, Leslie. Emerson, in Studies of a Biographer. Ser. 2. 1902.

Whipple, E. P. Recollections of Eminent Men and Other Papers. 1887.

Willis, N. P. Emerson. Second Look at Emerson, in Hurry-Graphs. 1851.

Woodberry, G. E. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1907. (E. M. L. Ser.)

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS

Read the introductions and conclusions of the essays of 1836, 1837, and 1838 and note the poetical setting into which the essays are cast. With these in mind read the foregoing comments on Emerson’s poetry (pp. 213–215).

Compare the Emerson and Lowell essays on Shakespeare.

Compare any corresponding sections in Emerson’s “Representative Men” and Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship.”

Read Emerson’s “English Traits” and Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home” for a comparison in the points of view of the two Americans.

Read any two or three essays for the nature element in them, the kind of things alluded to, and the kind of significances derived from them.

Read any one or two essays for Emerson’s allusions to science and to the sciences, the kinds of allusions made, and the kind of significances derived from them.

Follow the footnote on page 214 for a comparison of Emerson’s treatments of the same theme in prose and verse. Read also his poem “Threnody” and the corresponding passage in the Journal for the winter of 1842.

Read the essay on Goethe and see whether in Emerson’s judgment of Goethe as a German national character he agrees with or dissents from the judgment of the twentieth century. Compare with Santayana’s estimate of Goethe in “Three Philosophical Poets.”

A sense of the ecclesiastical and theological unrest in Emerson’s day can be secured through the reading of Mrs. Stowe’s “Oldtown Folks,” Charles Kingsley’s “Yeast,” Anthony Trollope’s “Barchester Towers”; or in poetry, in the poems of doubt of Arnold and Clough and Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”

Read “The American Scholar” with reference to the three influences surrounding the scholar, and then read Wells’s “The Education of Joan and Peter.” Are there any points in common? Compare the section on Beauty in Emerson’s “Nature” and Poe’s discussion of beauty in “The Poetic Principle” and “The Philosophy of Composition.”