Description: Emerson's second essay collection appeared in 1844. It includes eight essays--"The Poet," "Experience," "Character," "Manners," "Gifts," "Nature," "Politics," and "Nominalist and Realist"--and one address, "New England Reformers." These essays have a lightness of tone and an irony absent from the earlier writings, but are no less memorable.
Brief description: The late professor Joseph Slater was General Editor of the Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson until 1996.