Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) settled in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1834, where he began a career as a public lecturer. Every year Emerson made a lecture tour, the source of most of his essays. His principal publications include
Nature (1836), two volumes of
Essays (1841, 1844),
Poems (1847),
Representative Men (1850),
The Conduct of Life (1860), and
Society and Solitude (1870).
Joel Porte (1933-2006), volume editor, won the Bowdoin Prize in 1962 for his essay on Emerson, and was granted the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Emerson Society in 2006. He authored many studies of nineteenth-century and modern literature, including
Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict, The Romance in America, and
Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Time.