Emerson: The Mind on Fire

Robert D. Richardson

Published by University of California Press 2015

Emerson

The Mind on Fire

Robert D. Richardson

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520918375

Overview
Contents

About this book

Recipient of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man.

These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age.

Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.

The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature.

Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings—from Persian poets to George Sand—and to his many friendships and personal encounters—from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston—evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.

Author / Editor information

Richardson Robert D. :

Robert D. Richardson Jr. (1934-2020) was also the author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (California, 1986), which won the Melcher Prize in 1987. Barry Moser is one of the foremost wood engravers and book illustrators in America.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
The Student Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Divinity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
The Inner Light Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Nature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Go Alone Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
These Flying Days Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Children of the Fire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
The Natural History of Intellect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411
The Science of Liberty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	457
Fame Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	505
Endings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	541
Genealogies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	574
Chronology of the Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	577
Principal Sources Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	579
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	585
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	657

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 684

eBook

Published: April 22, 2015
ISBN: 9780520918375