The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson with a Biographical Introduction and Notes by Edward Waldo Emerson and a General Index.

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo.

$3,800.00

Item Number: 144526

Cambridge: Printed at the 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, original publisher’s cloth with printed paper spine labels, illustrated with numerous mounted photogravures, frontispiece portrait of Emerson to Vol. I with lettered tissue guard. One of 600 numbered copies signed by the publisher and with an original double sided manuscript in Emerson’s hand bound into volume one, this is number 515. The manuscript leaf reads in full, “Will anyone question the will of an aristocracy? Not, whilst there is any remainder of the substance in the form. For the name is a verdict. The noble ennoblis. That is his use. Can there be any greater? … two to make and atmosphere. I am acquainted with persons who go attended by this ambient cloud. It is sufficient that they come, it is not important what they say. The hospitable soul makes me wiser + bolder by provocation. There are others who have no deference, + who … one of all attributes but material values. As much health + muscle…” 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).