{"product_id":"9781784010935","title":"The Complete Essays","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis Tribeca Press edition includes the full original text as well as an easy to use interactive table of contents.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRalph Waldo Emerson was known first as an orator. Emerson converted many of his orations in to essays.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEmerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled \"The American Scholar\" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's \"Intellectual Declaration of Independence\".\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEmerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEmerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's \"nature\" was more philosophical than naturalistic: \"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was \"the infinitude of the private man.\" Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tribeca Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47140051681520,"sku":"9781784010935","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781784010935_p0.jpg?v=1763726181","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781784010935","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}