Emerson (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert D. Richardson
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1803-1882
- Setting: Boston and Concord, Massachusetts; various other American cities; England; continental Europe; Egypt
- Principal Characters: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Moody Emerson, Lydia “Lidian” Jackson Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Fuller
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Philosophy or philosophers, Authors or writers, Literature, Religion, Friendship, Writing, Reading, Transcendentalism, Thought or thinking
- Locales: Europe, Boston, MA, England, Egypt, Concord, MA
Why another life of a man whose life has already been written many times? Apart from the subjective need of an author fascinated with his subject and the commonly felt need to reinterpret periodically a major American literary and intellectual figure, Ralph D. Richardson, Jr., is responding to the need for a more comprehensive study of the intellectual influences on Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (1986), Richardson focused on the relationship between his subject’s reading and writing. In the preface to this later biography he admits, however, that...
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