Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo.

Item Number: 119476

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904.

Centenary edition of the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Octavo, 12 volumes, bound in half morocco over marbled boards, illustrated with 5 frontispiece portraits of author, gilt titles and tooling to the spine,  raised bands, top edges gilt, marbled endpapers. In fine condition. A very sharp example.

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).