Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Infinitude of the Private Man

Emerson once wrote that the times we are born in are the best of times, if only we know what to do with them. His life spanned the crucial years of the nation’s youth — the first tests of its shop-new Constitution; the explosive expansion into the untamed West; the great conflagration of the Civil War and the destruction of slavery; and the pains of rebirth and reconciliation that carried the United States to the eve of emerging as a world power.

In the midst of this swirl of upheaval and change, Emerson turned his attention inward — to the citizen, the individual, who must find his or her own inmost truth and bring that one fact of being to perfect expression in the world, learning to believe the faintest presentiment of the self against the testimony of all history. As a lecturer and essayist, Emerson was a catalyst who sought through his daily work to wake the long-slumbering soul of the farmer, mechanic, businessman, and politician — to show the common person that the divine and extraordinary are present in every hour of the day.

His efforts triggered a cultural tidal wave, inspiring a generation of authors, poets, teachers, and social activists who built the very foundations of culture in America. This biography takes a fresh look at Emerson through his Journals to trace the story of his own self-development, and the hidden life’s work that makes him as relevant to our time as to his own.

Table of Contents

Preface
Prologue: The Sage of Concord

1. Ancestral Voice
2. Ordeals of Soul
   • The Hollowness of Academia
   • I Love My Wide Worlds
   • The Selfishness that Chills
3. Triumph of the God of Fire
   • The Dupe of Hope
   • The Specter of Weakness and Decay
   • The Family Calling
4. Hitch Your Wagon to a Star
   • Crossing the Water
   • Awake, Thou Godlike that Sleepest!
   • Man-Lecturing
5. The Transcendentalist
   • The Siege of the Hencoop
   • The Fall of the Morning Star
   • Serving the Concord Circle
6. To the Mountaintop
   • The Uses of Great Men
   • A Whip for my Top
   • The Reluctant Abolitionist
7. Something Less Than My Best Task
   • England, England, England
   • The Poet Arrives
   • A Beeline to an Axe
8. A New Power of Vision
   • The War-Note
   • The Deeds of the Hero
   • The Window of Opportunity
9. The Masterwork
   • Return to Harvard
   • The Constitution of Man
   • Its Most Illustrious Halo

Genealogy · Chronology · Selected Bibliography · Notes

About the Authors

Maurice York and Rick Spaulding write together on the founders of American culture and letters. Alongside this biography of Emerson, their work includes The Founding of American Literature and the Promise of the Great American Novel, a study of the rise of American literature through the essay, poetry, and the novel in the work of Emerson and Whitman. Their books are published by the Wrightwood Press of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a nonprofit devoted to enriching American culture and a uniquely American path of self-development.