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Emerson cover art

Emerson

By: Robert D. Richardson
Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
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Summary

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 chapters 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 as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.

The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature.

Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings - from Persian poets to George Sand - and to his many friendships and personal encounters - from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston - evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.

©1995 Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

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A life wasted reading books!

My title is somewhat tongue in cheek, but if you read this book you may draw a similar conclusion.

This is a long winded account of the life of a long winded (but good) person. Emerson consumed books the way the rest of us consume oxygen. I am sure Richardson’s lists of books Emerson read in any particular month are not comprehensive (nor do they try to be), which makes Emerson’s bibliomania even more striking.

But what did Emerson achieve? I was left with the impression that he did little with his acquired knowledge. Perhaps I need to read more of his original work to correct this impression? This book is almost devoid of any sense of achievement. Is that the fault of the book or the man? His best friend Thoreau always seemed more practical and action oriented to me (and I love his writing).

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Transcendent

Excellent presentation of Emerson's thought and life, deftly written, thoroughly researched with superb narration. An inspirational listen!

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Amazing

So surreal to read about someone you never met with this level of intimate detail. I finished it feeling like I knew Emerson better than many of my friends (or at least my idea of him based on his life and journal entries).

It enriched my understanding of his essays and gave new insights into the context of each one.

Such a great book about such an inspiring mind. I rarely commit to long books and this is only my second ever biography but it was worth every second.

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