https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/c27a05dff31e59ae10c928f699b7a068.jpeg 6079174ccf3cee9a7b9d41b3f41d1f0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Emerson had begun to think about the book that would eventually be published under the title Nature as early as 1833. After he moved to Concord in 1834, he worked on it while boarding at the Manse and then in the Coolidge house. In preparing it, he drew on material from his journals, sermons, and lectures. On June 28, 1836, he wrote to his brother William, “My little book is nearly done.” Nature—a lengthy essay divided into chapters—was published in September of that year. At the beginning of Nature, Emerson posed the questions, “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” For Emerson, the presence of the divine spirit in both nature and the human soul made a direct understanding of God and openness to the natural world key to the understanding of broader truth. In each manifestation of God, man could discover in encapsulated form all universal laws at work. What was required for such perception was neither the received dogma of traditional systems of belief nor reasoned logic, but rather a more mystical intuition capable of revealing truth and morality in the various expressions of the divine. Slim volume though it was, Nature drew response from reviewers. Orestes Brownson wrote about it for the Boston Reformer, for example, the conservative Francis Bowen (a critic of Transcendentalism) for the Christian Examiner, Samuel Osgood for the Western Messenger, and Elizabeth Peabody for the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. The book generated mixed reactions. Even those reviewers sympathetic to Transcendental thought found aspects of Emerson’s presentation radical, unsettling, and unconvincing. Peabody—in many ways the consummate Transcendentalist—urged Emerson in her favorable review to write another book to clarify the philosophy that the reader could only understand “by glimpses” in Nature, and to expand upon certain of his religious ideas. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1836 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Public Library Concord Emerson Transcendentalism