Emerson: Essays and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (Editor, Notes); 1983. Hardcover. (Library of America)

Library of America volumes have a ribbon bookmark, acid-free paper, and sewn bindings that lay flat.

This volume includes the following essay and lecture collections:

Nature; Addresses and Lectures (1849); Essays: First Series (1841); Essays: Second Series (1844); Representative Men (1850); English Traits (1856); The Conduct of Life (1860)

Here are Ralph Waldo Emerson's classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance," the embattled realizations of "Circles" and "Experience," and the groundbreaking achievement of "Nature." Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he calls "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Also gathered here are his wide-ranging discourses on history, art, politics, friendship, love, and much more.