History

"History," first published in Essays (First Series) in 1841, is widely considered to be a corollary thesis to the definitive statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of individualism, "Self-Reliance". The essay is a fabric woven of many threads, from a journal entry written as early as 1832 to material first delivered in lectures between 1836 and 1839. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first series of essays grew out of the public lectures he gave after resigning as pastor of the Second Church of Boston. Though a great number of parallels exist between the essays, “Self- Reliance” and “History”, there is no intended coherence in the volume as a whole.