Described by Harold Bloom as 'the most influential writer of the nineteenth century,' Ralph Waldo Emerson is widely considered the founder of American's intellectual tradition. Friend and mentor to literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman, Emerson did more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind through his diverse body of work, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in transcendentalism. This comprehensive new edition presents the core of Emerson's writings, including Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon. Editor Jeffrey S. Cramer's update to his classic collection offers the staggering breadth of Emerson's ideas while introducing a stirringly human portrait of the man in all his infinitude.

About the Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) began his career as a teacher and became an essayist, poet, philosopher and leader of the Transcendentalist movement. He urged his readers to accept fully the truths and beauty emanating from nature, to break from the staid ideas of Continental philosophy and to see the world with fresh eyes. Jeffrey S. Cramer is Curator of Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.