EMERSON, RALPH WALDO

born May 25, 1803, Boston, Mass., U.S. died April 27, 1882, Concord, Mass. American lecturer, poet, and essayist, the leading exponent of New England Transcendentalism. Additional reading Collections of Emerson's writings include The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. by Edward Waldo Emerson, 12 vol. (190304, reissued 1968); Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, ed. by William H. Gilman et al., 16 vol. (196082); and Emerson's Literary Criticism, ed. by Eric W. Carlson (1979). See also The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. by Ralph L. Rusk, 6 vol. (1939, reprinted 1966).Contemporary biographies include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1885, reprinted 1980); and James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vol. (1887, reprinted 1969), by Emerson's literary executor. The standard scholarly biography is Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson (1981). Other modern treatments are Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1949, reissued 1967); and Donald Yannella, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982).Robert E. Burkholder and Joel Myerson (comps.), Critical Essays on Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983), is a useful collection. Aspects of Emerson's works are discussed in Arthur Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott (1932, reissued 1978); Vivian C. Hopkins, Spires of Form: A Study of Emerson's Aesthetic Theory (1951, reissued 1965), a discussion of Emerson's employment of Romantic organicism; Lewis Leary, Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Interpretive Essay (1980), a general introduction to Emerson's art and thought; Sherman Paul, Emerson's Angle of Vision: Man and Nature in American Experience (1952, reissued 1969), a discussion of the Law of Correspondence, which lies at the core of Emerson's epistemology; Hyatt H. Waggoner, Emerson As Poet (1974), a depiction of Emerson as a major figure in the development of American verse; Stephen E. Whicher, Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2nd ed. (1971), a study of the modification of Emerson's idealism.