The Heart of Emerson's Journals

“Mr. Bliss Perry has performed his editorial task with great skill and discrimination, and it is now possible to read in a convenient form the intellectual log book of the Concord philosopher, to obtain an informal, but truer picture of Emersonian thought than in the ‘Essays.’”— Independent. From about 1820, when he was 17, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) kept a personal journal. Over the next 55 years, he continued to make entries, recording a wide range of thoughts and impressions about books an