"A comprehensive collection of writings by "the most influential writer of the nineteenth century" (Harold Bloom) Ralph Waldo Emerson's diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind. Literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman were among Emerson's admirers and proteges, while his central text, Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in transcendentalism. This long-awaited update-the first in more than thirty years-presents the core of Emerson's writings, including Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon"--

With Selected Journals 1841--1877 and its companion volume Selected Journals 1820-1842, The Library of America presents the most ample and comprehensive nonspecialist edition of Emerson's great work ever published--one that retains the original order in which he composed his thoughts and preserves the dramatic range of his unique style in long, uninterrupted passages, but without the daunting critical apparatus of the 16-volume scholarly edition.