Emerson.
Place and Imprint: Cambridge: Privately Printed, 1865.
Edition: First edition, privately printed, one of 50 copies.
Bibliographical References: BAL 109, binding B, no priority.
Condition: Front free endpaper skillfully reinforced at the gutter; edges slightly rubbed; fine copy.
Book ID: 28949
Physical Description
8vo, original brown morocco, blind rules, blind stamp of a small Aladdin's lamp on the upper and lower boards, marbled endpapers, gilt inner dentelles, a.e.g. Photographic frontispiece of a bust of Emerson.Comments
A laudatory essay written in tribute to Ralph Waldo Emerson on his birthday, May 25, 1865, by his friend and “the most transcendental of the transcendentalists” (Seven Gables Catalogue 34), Amos Bronson Alcott. "His genius is ethical, literary; he speaks to the moral sentiments through the imagination, insinuating the virtues so, as poets and moralists of his class are wont . . ." Alcott compares Emerson's genius to that of the great writers who proceeded him, among them Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Montaigne, Goethe, Coleridge and Emerson's friend Carlyle. The essay was published in a trade edition in 1882, with the addition of two poems. See BAL 127. Copies of this privately printed Emerson were given away by both Emerson and Alcott. BAL identifies four bindings. Of those, bindings A and B are found in identical examples and were likely bound for Emerson's and Alcott's distribution. The other two examples were more likely the examples that that were given out in sheets, which the recipients had bound. Of all the examples, this morocco binding is the finest. Bookplate of American collector Bruce Lisman on the front paste-down.Price: $3,750.00
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American Literature,
Transcendentalism
See all items by RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Amos Bronson Alcott