English Traits A Portrait of 19th Century England

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Lopate, Philip

• ISBN13: 9781848855885
• ISBN10: 1848855885
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-13
• Publisher: Atlas Books

Summary

Emerson visited England twice - in 1833 and again in 1847. On his first visit, as a young and unpublished writer, he travelled to meet the men whose works had inspired him, the giants of 19th century English literature. With Coleridge, 'old and preoccupied' in the year before his death, Emerson discussed religion and the merits of Sicily and Malta; in a desolate house in the Scottish hills he met Thomas Carlyle, the 'lonely scholar', whose humour and lively stories enchanted him and with whom he discussed Rousseau and Robinson Crusoe. With Wordsworth in London, they talked of America and Americans and Wordsworth recited three sonnets of poetry, just composed. On his second trip, having published his celebrated Nature and Essays, he had himself become famous and was fêted by politicians, artists and aristocrats in salons and social gatherings across the country. In England, Emerson recognised the source of everything American - from the laws of society to the plot of a novel. Though he admired her triumphs he also presciently sensed the demise of a country weighed down by the 'drag of inertia'. And though mesmerised by her literature, he would later encourage American writers to forge a style all their own. Written during a decade of great flux for America, England and for Emerson himself, English Traits illuminates Emerson's visionary thought as much as it vividly portrays 19th century England.

Author Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was one of the most influential literary figures and the leading voice of intellectual culture in 19th century America. An essayist, philosopher, poet, and founder of the Transcendentalist Movement, his many now-iconic writings include Nature, The American Scholar, Self Reliance, The Over-soul, Society and Solitude, and Concord Hymn. Mentor to great writers such as Walt Whitman and Henry Thoreau, Emerson continues to exert a powerful influence on Western thought and literature.

Table of Contents

"The book has no equal in its kind. It is the wittiest work of America's wittiest writer."
-- Mark van Doren, American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, writer, and critic

 

"A book all full of thoughts like winged arrows." -- Thomas Carlyle, satirical writer, essayist, historian