Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II: 1836–1838

“[T]he really striking fact about this volume is that not only is it a volume that will satisfy the scholar, it also is a volume that every layman who is at all interested in Emerson will want to read.”—The Chicago Sunday Tribune

“The task of editing these pieces [the lectures] for publication has been performed not only with scholarly care and thoroughness but with commendable taste and an eye to the needs of the ordinary literature reader as well as of the special scholar. A general introduction supplies just the amount of information about Emerson’s beginnings as a lyceum speaker that is required, and there are brief and useful introductions to the separate parts. The result is a really important addition to the corpus of Emerson’s works. No reader who cares seriously for the greatest of our wisdom-writers will wish to be without it… There is hardly a page of this volume, however, that is without an interest, and often an extreme interest, for the reader of Emerson.”—The New York Times