Drawing primarily from previously unpublished manuscripts in the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, recent editions of Emerson's correspondence, journals and notebooks, sermons, and early lectures have provided authoritative texts that inspire readers to consider Emerson's place in American culture afresh. The two-volume Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843–1871, presents the texts of forty-eight complete and unpublished lectures delivered during the crucial middle years of Emerson's career. They offer his thoughts on New England and “Old World” history and culture, poetic theory, education, the history and uses of intellect—as well as his ideas on race relations and women's rights, subjects that sparked many debates. These final volumes contain some of Emerson's most timelessly relevant work and are sure to engage and inform any reader interested in discovering one of our country's greatest intellectuals. The following sections, although appearing only in the volume designated, contain information that pertains to both volumes and are available on the University of Georgia Press website. Volume 1: 1843–1854 contains: Preface Works Frequently Cited Historical and Textual Introduction Volume 2: 1855–1871 contains: Manuscript Sources of Emerson's Later Lectures in the Houghton Library of Harvard University Index to Works by Emerson General Index

A collection of writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, including sermons, poems, and journal excerpts, as well as a portion of his contributions to "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," with critical interpretations, and essays that examine the context in which Emerson wrote, and his critical reception.

This is the first and only comprehensive selection of lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his era’s most prominent American man of letters and one of the foremost architects of our intellectual culture. Based on authoritative texts selected and edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson--the most experienced Emerson editors working today--these twenty-five addresses collectively exemplify the lecture style for which Emerson was famed in his day. Best known to his contemporaries as a lecturer, Emerson delivered some 1,500 addresses over the course of his career. Because his most important ideas were worked out in his lectures, they provide the best record we have of his evolving thought--and thus are a key to our understanding of his essays and other printed works. Gathered here are lectures on American culture, literary theory and aesthetics, moral and, as Emerson called it, "intellectual" philosophy, and social and political reform. They are taken from speaking engagements in the United States and the British Isles over the period 1833-1871, during which Emerson often spent four to six months a year on the lecture circuit; lectures from the earliest years of Emerson’s career (1833-1842) have been newly edited for this volume. The volume’s introduction draws on contemporary accounts to describe Emerson’s idiosyncratic but utterly memorable manner of speaking. A headnote provides context to the composition and delivery of each lecture, and footnotes identify Emerson’s allusions to persons, places, occasions, quotations, and books. "By examining his lectures and how they were delivered," say Bosco and Myerson, "we can look into the laboratory of Emerson’s intellectual and compositional process and see his published writings gestating."