In the Twilight of His Career, Ralph Waldo Emerson Completes An Entire Section of His Final Published Work

If Henry David Thoreau was the heart of the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson was its mind.  A Unitarian minister, Emerson rebelled against the institutional thinking of the establishment, authoring essays that embraced nature, independent thought, and God.  He spent a lifetime developing and encouraging others to develop a purely American body of literature, recognizing the talent of a young Thoreau and Whitman, of whose work he wrote, “I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion.”

In 1872, Emerson’s house burned to the ground.  His neighbors and friends paid for him to travel to Europe and surprised him by rebuilding his house in his absence.  With his daughter, Emerson went to England, mainland Europe and Egypt.  He visited his friend Thomas Carlyle for the last time.  About this trip, Charles Eliot Norton, who traveled with Emerson toward the end, wrote, “Emerson was the greatest talker in the ship’s company.”

Emerson returned to the United States to complete an anthology and series of essays, the last major publication he would write. Letters and Social Aims, published in 1875, contains essays originally published early in the 1840s as well as those that were the product of a collaborative effort among Ralph Waldo Emerson, his daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, his son Edward Waldo Emerson, and his literary executor James Eliot Cabot. The volume takes up the topics of “Poetry and Imagination,” “Social Aims,” “Eloquence,” “Resources,” “The Comic,” “Quotation and Originality,” “Progress of Culture,” “Persian Poetry,” “Inspiration,” “Greatness,” and, appropriately for Emerson’s last published book, “Immortality.”

“Poetry and Imagination” was a lecture first delivered as “Poetry and English Poetry” in Philadelphia in 1854.  It was repeated in Massachusetts in 1858 and then delivered as part of a lecture series on Natural history and intellect at Harvard in 1870.  He changed the title to include it as “Poetry and Criticism” in his final work.  It would revert back to its original. Emerson’s work progressed slowly, a function of his age, his declining mental state, and the collaborative method of its creation.

This letter, sent to his publisher, James Osgood, in which Emerson sends him the complete section, “Poetry and Imagination,” which he refers to as Poetry and Criticism, is cited in the introduction to The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII, the final volume.  It shows Emerson in the twilight  of his great career.

Autograph letter signed, Concord, September 27, 1875, to James Osgood.

“Dear Sir, I sent you this noon by express all the printed part, old and new, of “Poetry and Criticism,” and almost all the rest in manuscript.  I now send an addition to the 7th section, “Bards and Trouveurs,” to finish that chapter.  Also, the chapter of Morals (No. 8) I send entire; and the whole of Transcendency, No. 9, which finishes Poetry and Criticism.   I trust you received the package safely and we are now diligently at work and mean that you shall not have to wait long for us again.

“An important fact I have to add.  Young Mr. Auerbach (the son of the novelist) who visited me when he was in this country – perhaps a year ago – has since written me to request me to allow him to translate our new book in German, and offered a price if I would send me the sheets fast as they are corrected – so to secure him from competition in Germany.   I consented, and he has sent the money.  I must therefore ask you after each batch of proofs is corrected to send them him a clean copy.  His address is…. But I cannot at this moment find it and will send it to you at an early day.”