Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher:
Published: 2015-07-01
Total Pages: 394
ISBN-13: 9781330536131
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Excerpt from English Traits and Representative Men Emerson, who was born in New England, that is at Boston, in 1803, set foot in old England for the first time in 1833. The year before this English visit had been a dark and a sad one - the darkest, Dr. Emerson reminds us, in his life. He had lost his wife, "a beautiful and spiritual woman," practically lost too his brother Edward, and given up after a struggle the religious career for which he had been trained. With this 1833 journey to the Old World, then, this apostle of the New began his second period and ended an intellectual probation. He realised himself and his American world and his home in New England the better for having seen the old country, and talked with Coleridge at Highgate, Wordsworth in the Lake Country, and Carlyle - above all Carlyle - on his Scottish moor at Craigenputtock. Landor he had already seen in Italy. On the eve of his return, writing at Liverpool, with the ship, as it were, before his eyes, he thanked God for having shown him these men, and thereby "comforted and confirmed him in his convictions." The second visit to England was in 1847. He had been invited to lecture there, and it was during his stay that he repeated the course on "Representative Men," already given at Boston. Thus the two books, here reprinted together, the result of these experiences, fall into a natural sequence, the earlier portions of the "English Traits" preceding and the later succeeding the course of lectures, if we count them in their due biographical order. In the interval that lies between the entries in his 1833 journal, converted into the text of the travel-book, and the 1847 passages, other books had appeared, and other lectures had been delivered. "Nature" was published in 1836. In 1837 he had given his address on "The American Scholar" at Harvard, which has been called the American "intellectual Declaration of Independence." The "Essays," first and second series, had appeared in 1841 and 1844. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
