Emerson and Thoreau: The Contemporary Reviews

by Joel Myerson

Overview

This book represents the first comprehensive collection of contemporary reviews of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Many of the reviews are reprinted from hard-to-locate contemporary newspapers and periodicals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521383363
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/26/1992
Series:	American Critical Archives , #1
Pages:	482
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.57(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface; Introduction; Part I. Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1. Nature (1836); 2. The American scholar (1837); 3. Divinity School address (1838); 4. Literary ethics; (1838); 5. Essays [First Series] (1841); 6. The method of nature (1841); 7. Essays [Second Series]; 8. Poems (1847); 9. Essays, lectures and orations (1847); 10. Nature, addresses and lectures (1849); 11. Representative men (1850); 12. English traits (1856); 13. The conduct of life (1860); 14. May-day and other pieces (1867); Society and solitude (1870); Letters and social aims (1876); Part II. Henry David Thoreau: 15. A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849); 16. Walden (1854); 17. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Thoreau'; 18. 'A Parish Priest', 'Henry D. Thoreau'; 19. [James Russell Lowell], 'Thoreau's Letters'; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"All libraries serving serious students of literature should have these volumes." Q. Grigg, Choice

"The usefulness of such a collection is related to the quality of the reviews themselves. In this case, their range, seriousness, and number, particularly in response to Emerson's work, is an index of mid-nineteenth century New England's cultural synergy. Most of those reprinted here have something substantial to say, and many are long essays that meet Emerson with something like his own intensity and seriousness, engaging his ideas and analyzing his style....[T]hese early responses remain valuable to all serious readers of Emerson and Thoreau, not just to literary historians. Among other things, they are a kind of casebook of 'the new importance given to the single person' (Emerson, 'The American Scholar') that Emerson and Thoreau discerned and fostered in their own time." Bruce Greenfield, Dalhousie Review

From the Publisher