Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the
history of American thought, religion, and literature. The
vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example
continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his
death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson
very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage
of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including
correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a
rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the
whole man. These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken
widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding
genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and
self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an
activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew
how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and
who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age.
Richardson has, as much