Ralph Waldo Emerson 1812-1892

Abstract The study of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s biography has long challenged both general readers and specialists in American literature. As the bibliographies printed in this volume indicate, Emerson, whose private and public writings alone now approach fifty printed volumes in modern editions, has been the subject of numerous book-length biographies. A recently published chronology of major events in his life extends to well over five hundred pages.1 A person who engaged in complex personal and intellectual relationships with many persons in America and abroad, who had something to say about every important religious and philosophical controversy, political and social event, and scientific discovery that came to his attention between the 1820s and the late 1870s, and who nearly filled four notebooks with the titles of books he considered essential to read, Emerson defies easy summary.2