Essays and Poems, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) lead Transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century and greatly influenced the later New Thought movement. Summing up his work, Emerson said that his primary principle was "the infinitude of the private man", and advised to "make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you." His Second Series collects together the following 9 essays: The Poet, Experience,

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In 1834, Emerson, formerly a Unitarian minister, began a new career as a public lecturer. Many of these lectures formed the source material for his essays. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy, which views the world of natural phenomena as a sort of symbol of the inner life and emphasizes individual freedom and self-reliance. Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a collection of twelve of his most...

Emerson's treatise on the nature of friendship. "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

In "Gifts" Ralph Waldo Emerson muses on the function of and expectations surrounding the giving of gifs. He touches on what gifts communicate about the nature of the giver and receiver, and how the best kind of gift is a gift of love.

The essay on "Prudence" was given as a lecture in a course on Human Culture, in the winter of 1837-8. It was published in the first series of Essays, which appeared in 1841. In it, Emerson describes Prudence as "The virtue of the senses" and admits to having little of it in himself.

In The Poet, an essay by U.S. writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the author expresses the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's virtues and vices. It is not about men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in meter, but of the true poet. After reading the essay, Walt Whitman consciously set out to answer Emerson's call. When the 1855 edition of Leaves Of Grass was first published, Whitman sent...

Self-Reliance is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains a stirring call for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and to follow their own instincts and ideas. It contains one of Emerson's most famous quotations: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." The essay, possibly Emerson's most...

For more than fifty-five years Ralph Waldo Emerson kept a journal, recording his thoughts on books, authors, and religion, among other subjects. In this engrossing volume editor Perry Bliss presents the best from these journals, carefully selecting passages to create both a revealing portrait of this formidable thinker and a social and historical record of the era in which he lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays and poems on the transcendental movement in the United States became some of the most important literary pieces in American History. In this culmination of essays, Emerson takes the reader through different forms of philosophies that attempt to explain the world and man's purpose within it. Heavily vested in the philosophy of transcendentalism, though not one to label himself a true follower of the movement, Emerson...