Corresponding natures: Ralph Waldo Emerson's letters

Greenham, David

Abstract

This article explores the significance of letter writing in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's letters were sent to family members and friends and ranged across his long life. What this chapter addresses is, firstly, the emergence of key Emerson ideas in the letters (e.g., reason and understanding), and secondly the ways in which he would use the letter form to explore his correspondent's possibilities, drawing out their best potentials, always seeing them a particular reflection of a larger whole.

• Publication Date: Feb 15, 2016
• Deposit Date: Apr 1, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 319-331
• Series Title: Edinburgh Companions to Literature
• Book Title: Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing
• Keywords: Ralph Waldo Emerson, American letter writing, nineteenth-century culture, intellectual history, Caroline Sturgis, transcendentalism, New England culture, American renaissance
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/919316
• Publisher URL: http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748692927
• Contract Date: Apr 1, 2016