Nonfiction · 1841
Essays
First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first collection of essays was published in 1841 and contains the pieces on which his reputation rests: “Self-Reliance”, “Compensation”, “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “Friendship”, “History” and the rest — twelve in all. Grown out of his lectures, they are written to be read aloud, in sentences that are remembered as sayings.
The twelve essays keep the habits of the lecture hall they came from: assertion rather than argument, and the sentence built to be carried away on its own. What holds them together is a single claim — that the authority a reader looks for outside himself is already in him, and that books, institutions and creeds are worth exactly what they return to it. “Self-Reliance” states the case, “Compensation” and “Circles” work out its consequences, and “The Over-Soul” gives it a metaphysics.
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The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of Great Essays.
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About the author
1803–1882 · Victorian
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was born in Boston, the son of a Unitarian minister, and was himself ordained before resigning his pulpit in 1832. Nature (1836), the address “The American Scholar” (1837) and the Essays (1841, 1844) made him the central figure of New England transcendentalism and the most influential American thinker of his century. He lived in Concord, Massachusetts, from 1834, lectured widely for forty years, and was the friend and patron of Thoreau.
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