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  • Allen, Gay Wilson, Waldo Emerson: A Biography. New York: Viking Press, 1981, 751 p. (Critically acclaimed biography focusing on Emerson's intellectual sources.)
  • Anderson, John Q., The Liberating Gods, Emerson on Poets and Poetry. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971, 128 p. (Discusses Emerson's views on poetry and other poets through a study of his essays, journals, letters and poems.)
  • Arnold, Matthew, "Emerson," in Discourses in America, pp. 138-208. 1884; rpt. New York: Macmillan Company, 1924. (Faults Emerson's poetry stating that it lacks concrete imagery, energy, passion, and grace.)
  • Biasing, Mutlu Konuk, "Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essaying the Poet," in American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms, pp. 67-83. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. (Provides an overview of Emerson's poetry and essays "in terms of their different yet complementary intentions.")
  • Bickman, Martin, "From Emerson to Dewey: The Fate of Freedom in American Education," American Literary History 6, No. 3 (Fall 1994): 385-408. (A review of Emerson's contributions as an educational thinker, citing examples of his educational principles in his essays.)
  • Bosco, Ronald A., "The 'Somewhat Spheral and Infinite' in Every Man: Emerson's Theory of Biography," in Emersonian Circles: Essays in Honor of Joel Myerson, edited by Wesley T. Mott and Robert E. Burkholder. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997, pp. 67-103. (Outlines Emerson's philosophy of biography in the context of the Plutarchan model.)
  • Brittin, Norman A., "Emerson and the Metaphysical Poets," American Literature 8 (March 1936): 1-21. (Reviews Emerson's poetry as exemplifying the metaphysical style of poets such as George Herbert.)
  • Burkholder, Robert E., "History's Mad Pranks: Some Recent Emerson Studies," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 38, No. 3 (1992): 231-63. (A review of ten Emersonian studies, including several reprints of his sermons and philosophical essays.)
  • Burkholder, Robert E. and Myerson, Joel, Emerson: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994, 234 p. (Annotated bibliography of writings on Emerson, arranged chronologically between 1980 and 1991.)
  • Burkholder, Robert E. and Myerson, Joel, Emerson: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985, 842 p. (Annotated bibliography of writings on Emerson, arranged chronologically between 1816 and 1979.)
  • Cabot, Eliot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889, 809 p. (Written by Emerson's friend, literary executor and authorized biographer, it contains material from Emerson's private papers, journals and correspondence providing the standard source for biographical information through the midtwentieth century.)
  • Cameron, Kenneth, Transcendentalists in Tradition: Popularization of Emerson, Thoreau and the Concord School of Philosophy. Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1980, 263 p. (Reveals the roles of Charles Malloy and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn in popularizing Emerson's poems.)
  • Carpenter, Frederic Ives, "The Wisdom of the Brahmins," in Emerson and Asia, pp. 103-60. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930. (Applies Hindu philosophy to the poems "Hamatreya" and "Brahma.")
  • Coltharp, Duane, "Landscapes of Commodity: Nature as Economy in Emerson's Poems," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 38, No. 4 (1992): 265-91. (Contends that in contrast to Emerson's prose writing, which presents a serious examination of social, political, and economic issues, his poetry contains great ambiguities and personal ambivalence.)
  • Conway, Daniel Moncure, Emerson at Home and Abroad. 1882; rpt. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1968, 383 p. (An entertaining collection of incidents in Emerson's life set forth from private reminiscences and literary sources.)
  • Eberhart, Richard, "Emerson and Wallace Stevens," in Of Poetry and Poets, pp. 153-71. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979. (Compares the characteristics of Emerson's and Stevens's poetry.)
  • Francis, Richard L., "Archangel in the Pleached Garden: Emerson's Poetry," Journal of English Literary History 33 (December 1966): 461-72. (Reviews Emerson's mythological and ontological poems that express the "Order" of the universe.)
  • Garrod, H. W., "Emerson," in Poetry and the Criticism of Life: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures for 1929-1930, pp. 85-107. 1931; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963. (Considers Emerson's poetry to be epigrammatic but, nonetheless, deserving of more praise than it had formerly received.)
  • Gelpi, Albert, "Emerson: The Paradox of Organic Form," in Emerson: Prophecy, Metamorphosis, and Influence, edited by David Levin, pp. 149-70. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. (Examines Emerson's theory of poetics, focusing on the relationship between inspiration and poetic form.)
  • Gilman, Owen W., Jr., "Merlin: E. A. Robinson's Debt to Emerson," Colby Library Quarterly 21 (September 1985): 134-41. (Reveals similarities between Robinson's poem and Emerson's two "Merlin" poems.)
  • Gougeon, Len and Joel Myerson, Emerson's Antislavery Writings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 232 p. (Reprints Emerson's essays regarding antislavery, including textual commentary and an essay providing historical background on the antislavery movement.)
  • Hakutani, Yohinobu, "Emerson, Whitman and Zen Buddhism," Midwest Quarterly XXXI, No.4 (Summer 1990): 433-48. (Discusses Zen concepts evident in Emerson's poems.)
  • Hubbell, George S., A Concordance to the Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1932, 303 p. (Provides a useful concordance as a means to tracing imagery and interpreting symbolism in Emerson's poetry.)
  • Kennedy, William Sloane, "Clews to Emerson's Mystic Verse," American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 29 (Winter 1976): 2-20. (Reprints an essay originally published in 1903 explicating mythological, mystical, and occult elements in Emerson's poetry.)
  • Kreymborg, Alfred, "The Intoxicated Emerson," in Our Singing Strength: An Outline of American poetry (1620-1939), pp. 67-83. New York: Coward-McCann, 1929. (Discusses Emerson's poetry emphasizing his occasionally robust tone.)
  • Kronick, Joseph G., "Emerson and the Divisions of Criticism," in Review, ed. James O. Hoge. V. 21 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999): 59-98. (An overview of varying critical responses to Emerson, including a review of several books that examine Emerson's writings in the context of his transcendentalist beliefs.)
  • Levin, Jonathan, "Life in the Transitions: Emerson, William James, Wallace Stevens," Arizona Quarterly 48, No. 4 (Winter 1992): 75-97. (A comparative analysis of the dynamic processes that infuse the working of language in the works of Emerson, James, and Stevens.)
  • Malloy, Charles, A Study of Emerson's Major Poems, edited by Kenneth Walter Cameron, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1973, 123 p. (Reprints Malloy's explications originally published in literary magazines during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.)
  • Masters, Edgar Lee, "Presenting Emerson," in The Living Thoughts of Emerson, pp. 1-41. New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940. (A laudatory presentation of Emerson's philosophy as found in his essays and poetry.)
  • McAleer, John, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1984, 748 p. (Focuses on Emerson's interaction with family and friends.)
  • McEuen, Kathryn A., "Emerson's Rhymes," American Literature 20 (March 1948): 31-42. (Defends Emerson's often imperfect rhymes as evidence of his breaking from tradition rather than examples of stylistic incompetence.)
  • Meyer Jr., William E. H., "Faulkner, Hemingway, et al.: The Emersonian Test of American Authorship," The Mississippi Quarterly 51, No. 3 (Summer 1998): 557-71. (Examines the influence of Emerson's philosophy of American writing on the styles of American writers, including Ernest Hemingway.)
  • Miles, Josephine, Ralph Waldo Emerson. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, edited by William Van O'Connor, Allen Tate, Leonard Ungar, and Robert Penn Warren, No. 41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964, 48 p. (A cogent biographical and critical introduction to Emerson.)
  • Morris, Saundra, "The Threshold Poem, Emerson, and 'The Sphinx,'" American Literature 69, No. 3 (September 1997): 547-70. (A review of “The Sphinx” as an overture or “threshold poem” to the material that follows it in Emerson's Poems.)
  • Myerson, Joel, Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982, 802 p. (Lists and describes works written or edited by Emerson, arranged chronologically.)
  • Myerson, Joel, ed., Emerson and Thoreau, The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 450 p. (Reprints criticism that appeared within a year of the publication of Emerson's works.)
  • Newfield, Christopher, "Controlling the Voice: Emerson's Early Theory of Language," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 38, No. 1 (1992): 1-29. (An examination of Emerson's theory of language as outlined in his Nature, stressing the relationship between invention and imitation.)
  • Orth, Ralph H.; von Frank, Albert J.; Allardt, Linda; and Hill, David W., ed., The Poetry Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986, 990 p. (Provides Emerson's poetry journals containing previously unpublished verse and details on the composition and publication histories of the poems.)
  • Pommer, Henry F., Emerson's First Marriage. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967, 126 p. (Provides a sensitive portrait of Ellen Tucker and Emerson's relationship with her.)
  • Porte, Joel and Saundra Morris, editors, The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 280 p. (A collection of critical, biographical, and interpretive essays on Emerson's works, including bibliographical references and indices.)
  • Richardson, Robert D., Jr., Emerson, The Mind on Fire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, 671 p. (A definitive biography, presenting an intellectual, personal and social portrait.)
  • Rusk, Ralph L., The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Scribners, 1949, 592 p. (A seminal biography, it provides an abundance of facts gleaned from Emerson's original manuscripts as well as prior critical and biographical sources.)
  • Santayana, George, "Emerson," in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, pp. 131-40. 1900; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989. (Praises the beauty and originality of Emerson's poetic style.)
  • Strauch, Carl, "The Mind's Voice: Emerson's Poetic Styles," Emerson Society Quarterly 60 (1970): 43-59. (Discusses Romantic, Old English, Bardic and Neo-Platonic influences on Emerson's poetic style and defends the poetry as experimental in meter and rhyme, arguing for its effectiveness.)
  • Strauch, Carl, "The Year of Emerson's Poetic Maturity: 1834," Philological Quarterly 34 (1955): 353-77. (Discusses "Xenophanes," "Each and All," "The Rhodora," and "The Snow Storm" and the influence on Emerson of works by Coleridge, Goethe, and Wordsworth.)
  • Sudol, Ronald A., "'The Adirondacs' and Technology," in Emerson Centenary Essays, edited by Joel Myerson, pp. 173-9. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. (Provides background and analysis of Emerson's 342-line poem, 'The Adirondacs.")
  • Thomas, Joseph M., "'The Property of My Own Book': Emerson's Poems (1847) and the Literary Marketplace," New England Quarterly 69, No. 3 (September 1996): 406-25. (An examination of Emerson's handling of his authorial affairs using the 1847 edition of Poems as an example.)
  • Thompson, Frank T., "Emerson's Theory and Practice of Poetry," PMLA XLIII, No. 4 (December 1928): 1170-84. (Traces the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge on Emerson's poetry.)
  • Tuttleton, James W., "The Drop Too Much: Emerson's Eccentric Circle," The New Criterion 14, No. 9 (1996): 19-27. (A biographical overview of Emerson's social circle, which included Henry David Thoreau, Edward Thompson Taylor, and several other contemporary intellectuals.)
  • Winters, Yvor, "Jones Very and R.W. Emerson: Aspects of New England Mysticism," in Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism, pp. 125-46. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions Press, 1938. (Condemns Emerson's poetry as expressing immoral, "pernicious" views.)
  • Yoder, R. A., Emerson and the Orphic Poet in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, 240 p. (Regards Emerson's views on poetry and the role of the poet as adapting and redirecting the convictions of European Romanticism.)
  • Yohannan, J. D., "Emerson's Translations of Persian Poetry From German Sources," American Literature 14 (January 1943): 407-20. (Examines and lists the translations of and essays about Persian poetry read by Emerson written by German literary historians.)
  • Yohannan, J. D., "The influence of Persian Poetry on Emerson's Work," American Literature 15 (March 1943): 25-41. (Examines Emerson's references to Persian poetry.)

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo (Poetry Criticism)
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