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Contributors -- Foreword: Emerson's Renewing Power / John Stauffer and Steven Brown -- Introduction: Emerson as Spiritual and Social Revolutionary / Jean McClure Mudge -- The Making of a Protester. 1.1 A Legacy of Revolt, 1803-1821 / Phyllis Cole -- 1.2 Becoming an American "Adam, 1822-1835" / Wesley T. Mott -- Public and Private Revolutions. 2.1 The "New Thinking : Nature, Self, and Society, 1836-1850 / David M. Robinson -- 2.2 Dialogues with Self and Society, 1835-1860 / Jean McClure Mudge -- Emerson the Reformer. 3. A Pragmatic Idealist in Action, 1850-1865 / Len Gougeon -- Emerson's Evolving Emphases. 4. Actively Entering Old Age, 1865-1882 / Jean McClure Mudge -- Emerson's Legacy in America. 5. Spawning a Wide New Consciousness / Jean McClure Mudge -- Emerson in the West and East. 6.1 Europe in Emerson and Emerson in Europe / Beniamino Soressi 6.2 Asia in Emerson and Emerson in Asia / Alan Hodder -- Emerson: A Chronology -- Selected Bibliography -- List of Illustrations -- Index. "This volume traces the life, thought and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a giant of American intellectual history, whose transforming ideas greatly strengthened the two leading reform issues of his day: abolition and women's rights. A broad and deep, yet cautious revolutionary, he spoke about a spectrum of inner and outer realities--personal, philosophical, theological and cultural--all of which gave his mid-career turn to political and social issues their immediate and lasting power. This multi-authored study frankly explores Emerson's private prejudices against blacks and women while he also publicly championed their causes. Such a juxtaposition freshly charts the evolution of Emerson's slow but steady application of his early neo-idealism to emancipating blacks and freeing women from social bondage. His shift from philosopher to active reformer had lasting effects not only in America but also abroad. In the U.S. Emerson influenced such diverse figures as Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson and William James, and in Europe, Mickiewicz, Wilde, Kipling, Nietzsche, and Camus, as well as many leading followers in India and Japan. The book includes over 170 illustrations, among them eight custom-made maps of Emerson's haunts and wide-ranging lecture itineraries as well as a new four-part chronology of his life placed alongside both national and international events as well as major inventions. Mr. Emerson's Revolution provides essential reading for students and teachers of American intellectual history, the abolitionist and women's rights movement--and for anyone interested in the nineteenth-century roots of these seismic social changes."--Publisher's website
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