The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883. 8vo. Very Good Condition. Item #18195
A lovely 14-volume set of the works of America's 19th century intellectual leader, and founder of the Transcendentalist movement.
Emerson was a fierce proponent of man's individuality and his connectivity to nature, believing that man, nature, and divinity are for all intents and purposes, one and the same.
"Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "The Poet," and "Experience". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets. He instead developed ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach, by rejecting views of God as separate from the world" - wiki
Fourteen volumes. Maroon cloth with leather title labels to spines. titling in gilt. Square tight bindings. Clean interiors. Mild rubbing and edge wear to bindings as well as spine labels.
Overall, a very handsome, uncommon, and desirable set.
Price: $500.00