The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo .

$9,500.00

Item Number: 138934

Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1903.

The Autograph Centenary edition of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of 600 numbered copies containing a double sided manuscript in Emerson’s hand bound into volume one. Octavo, 12 volumes, publisher’s original three quarter morocco over marbled boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, top edge gilt, illustrated with numerous mounted photogravures. One of 600 numbered copies signed by the publisher, this is number 46. The original manuscript reads, “But whilst race works thus immortally to keep its own, it is resisted by other forces. The Arabs of today are the Arabs of Pharaoh, but the Englishman of today is, on the whole, a very different Person… Civilization is a strong re-agent, and eats away the old traits. It is noticed that each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have a well marked face; the Quakers have, the nuns have. An English man will pick at a dissenter by his manners. Trades and professions… carve their own lines on face and form. This is not easy. It is not easy to find more points of contrast than between the French and English people. Whites and negroes are hardly more unlike.” 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).