Nature.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo.

Item Number: 95308

Boston: James Monroe and Company, 1836.

Scarce first edition of Emerson’s important anonymously published essay collection which established the principles of Transcendentalism. Octavo, original blind-stamped cloth with gilt title to the front panel. In very good condition. A previous owner has inscribed Emerson’s name to the title page. Scarce and desirable.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures delivered throughout the United States. When it first appeared in 1836, Nature was “both welcomed and damned as the first clear blast on New England’s Transcendental horn” (DAB III:136), expressing in print for the first time the new philosophy’s belief in the purity of nature and its power as a source of divine strength. Second state with page 94 correctly numbered.