Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Written by: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
Unabridged Audiobook
Release Date:01-10-12
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Publisher's Summary

Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series from
one of the most influential philosophers in American history.

Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps America�s most famous philosopher, did not
wish to be referred to as a transcendentalist, he is nevertheless considered the
founder of this major movement of nineteenth-century American thought. Emerson was
influenced by a liberal religious training; theological study; personal contact
with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous
sense of individualism and self-reliance. Emerson�s best work was done between 1836
and 1860, a period which includes his famous Essays.

These essays contain his most important writing and radiate with sensitivity and
wonder. Here Emerson�s prose shows him to be both a vigorous thinker and a profound
mystic, a man of exquisite feeling combined with stern moral fiber. His strong love
of retirement from life, contemplation of the sublime and the mystic, his self-
reliance, and his strong character left their stamp not only on such writers as
Thoreau, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson but also on the American character at large.

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. He led the
transcendentalist movement in America in the mid-nineteenth century. He is perhaps
most well known for his publications Essays and Nature.

Public Domain (P)2001 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What the Critics Say

�Emerson�s influence�continues to be profound on American thought.� (Masterpieces

of World Literature)