Word: emerson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...many ways Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most satisfying of American writers. The fame of other great New Englanders seems to vary with literary revivals, new discoveries and new editions, but neither changes in literary fashions nor new research have reduced Emerson's stature in the slightest; he grows more impressive, in his unassuming serenity, as more is known about him. He is as eloquent as Herman Melville but without Melville's frequent posturing and bombast, as civilized as Henry James but without James's mannerisms, as imaginative as Poe but without Poe's melodrama...
This new biography makes it clear how Emerson struggled to keep close to the common life. It was not easy. Born in Boston in 1803, the son of a preacher, forbidden to play with "rude boys," Ralph Waldo used to hang on the fence, peering down the street in the hope that he would discover what a rude...
Palms in Paris. No previous biographer has detailed the nagging poverty of the Emerson family as closely as Author Rusk -the boarders in the house, and the gifts of money that arrived at the last moment. Other biographers have told the story of Emerson's teaching after his graduation from Harvard; Biographer Rusk gives the subjects he assigned to his girl students for English composition, his comments on their papers. Other biographers have touched lightly on the tragedies in Emerson's family; Rusk tells in detail of his brother Bulkeley, who lived past middle age without developing mentally...
Pastor of the Second (Unitarian) Church in Boston at 26, making five pastoral visits a day and caring for his young bride (who died after a year and a half of marriage), Emerson revolted against what he called the "official goodness" of his position. The arguments that led to his resigning his pastorate (his refusal to administer the Lord's Supper) seem somewhat unreal in this account; more clearly traced is his growing conviction that the only way he could be a good minister was to leave the ministry...
Freedom in Concord. At first glance, Professor Rusk's biography seems to tilt the figure of Emerson as Americans have come to know him. The work of a 60-year-old professor at Columbia University, it is a massive, detailed, thorough, factual study, the first biography in 60 years to reflect a careful sifting of Emerson's unpublished manuscripts and papers. Heretofore, the standard source books on Emerson have been the work of his literary executors, James Elliot Cabot and Edward