This comprehensive new edition presents the core of Emerson's writings, including Nature and The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon. Editor Jeffrey S. Cramer's update to his classic collection offers the staggering breadth of Emerson's ideas while introducing a stirringly human portrait of the man in all his infinitude.


A comprehensive collection of writings by "the most influential writer of the nineteenth century" (Harold Bloom)

Ralph Waldo Emerson's diverse body of work has done more than perhaps any other thinker to shape and define the American mind. Literary giants including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman were among Emerson's admirers and proteges, while his central text,Nature, singlehandedly engendered an entire spiritual and intellectual movement in transcendentalism. This long-awaited update-the first in more than thirty years-presents the core of Emerson's writings, includingNatureand The American Scholar, along with revelatory journal entries, letters, poetry, and a sermon.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.