Emerson: The Mind On Fire
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
At the crossroads of American intellectual life stands Ralph Waldo Emerson — poet, philosopher, and prophet — whose restless, blazing mind reshaped the very foundations of Western thought, and Robert D. Richardson Jr.'s monumental biography chronicles that extraordinary inner life with breathtaking precision and depth. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century New England, this landmark work traces Emerson's journey from a grief-stricken young minister who abandoned his pulpit to become the towering father of American Transcendentalism, mapping his voracious appetite for ideas drawn from science, Eastern philosophy, literature, and classical antiquity. Richardson reconstructs not merely a life of events, but a life of the mind — illuminating how Emerson's journals, friendships with figures like Thoreau and Carlyle, and relentless self-examination forged the essays that would electrify generations of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Richardson's approach is as intellectually rigorous as it is elegantly readable, presenting biography as an act of intellectual archaeology, unearthing the sources and struggles behind Emerson's most celebrated ideas. The book argues compellingly that Emerson's genius lay not in serene transcendence, but in a fierce, ongoing wrestle with doubt, loss, and the demands of creative life — a portrait far more human and dynamic than the marble sage of popular myth. Enriched by a striking frontispiece by master artist Barry Moser, Emerson: The Mind on Fire stands as an indispensable work for anyone who has ever felt the spark of an idea catch flame.
Author: Robert D. Richardson Jr.
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
At the crossroads of American intellectual life stands Ralph Waldo Emerson — poet, philosopher, and prophet — whose restless, blazing mind reshaped the very foundations of Western thought, and Robert D. Richardson Jr.'s monumental biography chronicles that extraordinary inner life with breathtaking precision and depth. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century New England, this landmark work traces Emerson's journey from a grief-stricken young minister who abandoned his pulpit to become the towering father of American Transcendentalism, mapping his voracious appetite for ideas drawn from science, Eastern philosophy, literature, and classical antiquity. Richardson reconstructs not merely a life of events, but a life of the mind — illuminating how Emerson's journals, friendships with figures like Thoreau and Carlyle, and relentless self-examination forged the essays that would electrify generations of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Richardson's approach is as intellectually rigorous as it is elegantly readable, presenting biography as an act of intellectual archaeology, unearthing the sources and struggles behind Emerson's most celebrated ideas. The book argues compellingly that Emerson's genius lay not in serene transcendence, but in a fierce, ongoing wrestle with doubt, loss, and the demands of creative life — a portrait far more human and dynamic than the marble sage of popular myth. Enriched by a striking frontispiece by master artist Barry Moser, Emerson: The Mind on Fire stands as an indispensable work for anyone who has ever felt the spark of an idea catch flame.