Emerson in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

Description

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was one of the seminal figures in American intellectual history, literature, and culture. In his time he was the acknowledged leader of the Transcendentalist movement; his poetic legacy stretches from Walt Whitman to Allen Ginsberg; his educational ideals have been embraced by many; and his religious concepts greatly influenced the development of the Unitarian (later Unitarian Universalist) church. The impetus for Emerson in His Own Time is the bicentennial celebration of Emerson's birth, Emerson in 2003, organized by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society in Boston and Concord, which begins with a large exhibition at Harvard in March 2003. Yet even without the reminder sparked by this anniversary, the timing is right to revisit the man praised as “our one clearest, purest and most exalted American mind.” Reprinted are the most important adulatory and critical ?rst-hand accounts by many major and minor literary figures in Britain and the United States as well as by Emerson's children. From Whitman's record of his visit to Emerson in Concord to Bronson Alcott's reports on his personality, from Jane and Thomas Carlyle's comments on their meetings with him during his visits to Britain to Margaret Fuller's and John Muir's reminiscences, these recollections provide wide-ranging descriptions of his life and time. Each entry is prefaced by an essay that provides contextual and historical information, and the volume includes a useful chronology of Emerson's life.