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ItemID: #106130
Cost: $12,500.00

Complete Works

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“THE IMAGINATION IS NOT A TALENT OF SOME MEN, BUT IS THE HEALTH OF EVERY MAN”: EMERSON’S ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE WORKS, WITH FINE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LEAF

EMERSON, Ralph Waldo. Complete Works. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1903-04. Twelve volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter green morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled endpapers and boards, top edges gilt, uncut and unopened. $12,500.

“Autograph Centenary” edition, number 37 of 600 copies, illustrated with 56 photogravures, with original manuscript leaf in Emerson’s hand discussing poetry and imagination mounted in Volume I, handsomely bound.

This edition includes all of Emerson's poems, lectures, biographical sketches and letters, as well as his famous essays, several of which here see print for the first time. Their "ethical inspiration and stimulation, their occasional startling phrase, their individualistic idealism, which stirred renascent Yankee New England to its depths, speaks with the same simple power and force in the midst of modern complexities" (Grolier, American 100 47).

The manuscript leaf, from either a draft of Emerson's essay "Poetry and Imagination" (1875) or a lecture based on the essay, is classically Emersonian in its rejection of analysis and materialism in favor of inspiration and imagination. It reads: "Of course, rhyme rises soars and refines with the growth of the mind. The boy liked the drum, and the people like the 'Thirty days hath September,' or an overpowering jewsharp tune. By and by, when they apprehend real rhymes, namely, the correspondence of parts in nature,—acid and alkali, nature and art, body and mind, man and maid, character and history, action and reaction, they do not longer value any longer rattles and ding-dongs, or barbaric word-jingle. Astronomy, botany, chemistry, hydraulics, the elemental forces, will furnish them with grander pairs and alterations, and they will require an equal expansion in the metres of the poet. And I am not surprised at the wavering opinion of Ben Jonson, as recorded And I am not surprised at the wavering opinion of Ben Jonson in his opinion, as recorded by Drummond, 'that works stood by sense, without either colors or accent,—which yet at other times he denied.' As the imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man, so also is this joy of musical expression. I know the pride of mathematicians and materialists, but they cannot conceal from me their capital want. The critic, the philosopher, is a failed poet. Gray avows 'that he thinks even a bad verse as good a thing or better than the best observation that was ever made of it.' I honor the naturalist; I honor the geometer […]"


Illustrated with 56 engravings and photogravures.

Short split along fold of manuscript leaf. Interiors fine, minor expert restoration to two spines. A very handsome set in fine condition.

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