Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Centennial Books) (Paperback)

~ Robert D. Richardson Jr. (Author) "ON MARCH 29, 1832, THE TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD EMERSON visited the tomb of his young wife, Ellen, who had been buried a year and two months earlier..." (more)
Key Phrases: divinity school address, representative men, New York, Margaret Fuller, New England (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The maverick intellectual life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) is the focus of this imposing, highly erudite biography. In 1832, Emerson resigned his Boston ministry to pursue a career as an essayist, orator and poet, delivering more than 1500 lectures in his lifetime, including "The American Scholar" (1837), and publishing essays such as Nature (1836) and Representative Men (1850). As America's foremost prophet of individual experience, he was also a founder of the Transcendentalist Club, editor of the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, and spokesman for many reformist causes. Drawing on unpublished personal journals, correspondence and lectures, Richardson (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind) charts, in exacting detail, the minutia of Emerson's daily life in Concord, Mass., and extensive travels; the literature and philosophy he read over several decades and how his reading shaped his steadily evolving intellect. Although the nuances of Emerson's personality are eclipsed by textual analysis, Richardson balances the often chilling puritanism of Emerson's writing with a portrait of the man as hungry for friendship, maintaining close relationships with Carlisle, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller; and whose icy doctrine of individualism reflects the loneliness caused by the premature deaths of his beloved first wife, his two younger brothers and numerous friends.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Using freshly available materials on Emerson, Richardson (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, LJ 8/86) here fashions a lively intellectual biography of the "sage of Concord." In exacting detail, the author traces the development of Emerson's great imagination from his early student days at Harvard to his later associations with Coleridge and Carlyle. Through a study of Emerson's wide-ranging reading, Richardson reveals the origins of key Emersonian doctrines such as self-reliance, the transcendence of the soul, and the mind as an ever-erupting volcano. The great value of the biography lies in its exploration of the influences of Coleridge, Goethe, Madame de Stael, and Hindu thought on Emerson. While the intimate detail in which Emerson's life is examined is reminiscent of the pedantry of much late 19th-century American biography, Richardson offers a captivating account of the originality, creativity, and genius of the American Coleridge. This biography goes beyond John Mc-Aleer's Emerson: Days of Encounter (LJ 8/84). Recommended for large public libraries and academic collections.
Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 684 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (November 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520206894
• ISBN-13: 978-0520206892
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #58,344 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emerson opens the mind like no other., October 5, 2000

By	James H. Fedor "Inner Artist" (Kansas City, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Hardcover)

Richardson has given us a profound biography of one of the world's most profound men. And in this case, I'm almost as impressed with the biographer as the man he reports. This book has 100 chapters, each one as full of outstanding ideas as some entire books I've read. I owe many wonderful evenings and mornings to Richardson who has given me the keenest insights into my favorite teacher and author. Richardson so accurately portrays Emerson's journey of a self-realized soul marching in his conviction of the final authority of the individual Self, that at times I felt I was making the same journey myself. In so many moments, something swelled within me while reading this book, and I thought perhaps even such a one as myself might grasp these elevated concepts Richardson so lucidly explains. Emerson himself said, "only that book is good which puts the reader in a working mood." While reading this book I have felt encouraged in my quest to do the work of unfolding my own nature with reverential awe--as Emerson admonishes us--by keeping a journal and studying to unify myself with the eternity at the core of my being.

Richardson not only studied Emerson to write this book, he studied the books that Emerson studied, thereby showing Emerson's method, intellectual origins, and native genius that courageously broke with contemporary traditions to create a cohesive world-view so inspirational to many.

Emerson, more than any other author I have read, believed in the grandeur of the soul--not just his own--but in each of us. He wrote in his journal, "When I look at the rainbow I find myself the center of its arch. But so are you; and so is the man who sees it a mile from both of us. So also the globe is round, and every man therefore stands on the top. King George, and the chimney sweep no less."

If you are looking for a book to not only stretch your limits of understanding but help you realize the helping hand at the end of your own arm, enlighten yourself by studying Emerson with Richardson. You might also consider spending the extra few dollars and get the hardback . It'll last a lot longer under the wear you'll give it referring to it again and again.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding biography of America's first literary giant, March 16, 2002

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I must confess that I don't understand the reader review below who found this biography of Emerson to be a difficult read. Although not quite a page-turner, I managed to read this in very little time at all. I must also confess that I do find Emerson himself incredibly difficult to read. But what I find to be the case in Emerson himself, I did not find to be true in Richardson's biography. While I find that Emerson constructed one stunning sentence and aphorism after another, I generally find his essays to be slow going. Nonetheless, while I am not his biggest fan, he is unquestionably one of the four or five greatest figures in American intellectual history, and Richardson's biography does him great justice.

The great merit of this biography is that at the end of it, you feel that you have gained considerable insight both into Emerson and New England intellectual life in the 19th century. I was especially intrigued with Richardson detailing of Emerson's reading. Emerson was, without any question, a great reader. Great readers rarely read books from cover to cover. Samuel Johnson, who was himself one of the most accomplished readers in the history of civilization, once said that we have more of a need to reread than to read. But he also once quipped, "What, you read books all the way to the end?" Emerson did not read books all the way to the end. But like Johnson and other great readers, he had a genius for picking out the most important points. What Boswell wrote of Johnson is true also of Emerson: "He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end."

One comes away from the book also enormously impressed with Emerson's character. He seems by any standard to have been a remarkably good human being. He was both a man of high principle, and a man of powerful attachments to other human beings. I found the accounting of his various friendships, many to equally famous individuals, to be of the utmost interest. Also, he seems to have met virtually every important thinker and writer in the English-speaking world, from Coleridge to Carlyle to Melville.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain a deeper knowledge of Emerson's life and work. By any standard, Emerson is one of the giants in American life. His influence on American thought is incalculable. Consider: not only was he the major influence on such American literary figures the magnitude of Thoreau and Whitman; he was a profound influence on artists such as Thomas Cole, Moran, and Bierstadt. America's deep-rooted environmentalism is steeped in Emersonian Transcendentalism. John Muir was a devoted reader of Emerson. One could make a case for Emerson having had perhaps more influence in the shaping of American thought than any other individual. This biography is an outstanding introduction to that person.

34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable biography, January 10, 2001

By	C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A remarkable biography of an enduring genius in American history.'Emerson: The Mind on Fire', is a reading experience that was at once moving, educationally rewarding and, above all, inspiring. The book is a well- crafted, well- researched analysis of 'the' American philosopher of the 19th century. After completing the work, I felt as though I knew the great man intimately, and found myself feeling sad that he wasn't in the phone book or had an email address to invite him and his family over for dinner. As Thoreau once wrote, "Surely joy is the condition of life." And this is most certainly the leading emotion that I felt while reading this book. And as Emerson wrote: "The purpose of life is individual cultivation, self expression, and fulfillment." At the risk of sounding too praiseworthy, Richardson's commendable biography has given me the opportunity to experience all three of the above. Since a freshman in highschool, my predelication to Transcedentalism has moved in and out of my life like a warm breeze. This particular work has re-lit this old philosophical spark,causing the winds to rise again, so to speak, creating a kind of intellectual excitment. I have read hundreds of biographies on many great individuals, but this one ranks as one of the best. I recommend this book highly.