https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/589a89259704f829c5472dbf140ae3af.jpeg 67869489b9c441742521f1fe8bdd16ef 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 Phi Beta Kappa Oration Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource On behalf of the Phi Beta Kappa standing committee at Harvard, Dr. Cornelius Conway Felton asked Emerson to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration on August 31, 1837. Ironically, he was requested to make what would turn out to be one of his most influential addresses in place of the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, who had agreed to speak but had backed out not long before the event. Emerson referred to the upcoming speech in a letter to his brother William on August 7th, and on August 17th wrote Margaret Fuller, asking her to return from Cambridge to Concord with him and Lidian after its delivery. The Emersons planned a meeting of “Mr. Hedge’s Club” in their Concord home the following day. Emerson read the speech, which lasted an hour and a quarter, after noon on the appointed day, in the meetinghouse at Harvard. His audience included more than two hundred Phi Beta Kappa members and some of his close friends and associates, Bronson Alcott and Frederic Henry Hedge among them. The orator called for a new American thought based on intellectual self-reliance rather than the thought of the past, for a new breed of American thinker freed from slavish devotion to inherited culture to realize his divinely inspired human capabilities. Emerson closed the address powerfully: “A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” The importance to Emerson of the unifying universal soul underlying the soul of each individual was jovially alluded to in a toast made at the dinner following the speech: “ … I suppose all know where the orator comes from; and I suppose all know what he has said; I give you The Spirit of Concord; it makes us all of One Mind.” The Phi Beta Kappa oration was first published in September, 1837, in an edition of five hundred copies, all of which were sold within a month’s time. (The copy shown here was inscribed by Emerson for Convers Francis, his fellow member of the Transcendental Club.) It was well-received, although—as with Nature—generally favorable reviewers offered criticism as well as praise. In the Boston Quarterly Review, for example, William Henry Channing judged Emerson “true, reverent, free, and loving” but regretted “that Mr. Emerson’s style is so little a transparent one.” It was later described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” 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 1837 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Harvard