The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo .

$7,000.00

Item Number: 104898

Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1903.

Autograph Centenary edition with a double sided manuscript in Emerson’s hand bound into volume one. Octavo, 12 volumes, bound in three quarters contemporary morocco over cloth, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. Numerous mounted photogravure illustrations. One of 600 copies. In near fine condition.

When Emerson died in 1882 he was the most famous public intellectual in America. This edition of the Complete Works includes all of Emerson’s poems, lectures, biographical sketches, letters, and his famous essays, several of which are here printed for the first time. Their "ethical inspiration and stimulation, their occasional startling phrase, their individualistic idealism, which stirred renascent Yankee New England to its depths, speaks with the same simple power and force in the midst of modern complexities" (Grolier, American 100 47).