Introduction by Mary Oliver

Commentary by Henry James, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau.

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry. It chronicles the life’s work of a true “American Scholar.” As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized “the splendid labyrinth of one’s own perceptions.”

More than any writer of his time, Emerson forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson’s essays “the most important work done in prose.”