Essays: First Series

The book contains:

1. "History"
2. "Self-Reliance"
3. "Compensation"
4. "Spiritual Laws"
5. "Love"
6. "Friendship"
7. "Prudence"
8. "Heroism"
9. "The Over-Soul"
10. "Circles"
11. "Intellect"
12. "Art"

Many noted the influence of Thomas Carlyle. An anonymous English reviewer voiced the mainstream view when he wrote that the author of the book "out-Carlyles Carlyle himself," "imitat[ing] his inflations, his verbiage, his Germanico-Kantian abstractions, his metaphysics and mysticism."{{Cite book |title=Emerson and Thoreau: The Contemporary Reviews |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1992 |editor-last=Myerson |editor-first=Joel |location=Cambridge |pages=95 |chapter=Emerson's Essays}} Jane Welsh Carlyle agreed, giving her impression in a letter to John Sterling: "I find him getting affected, stilted, mystical, and in short 'a considerable of a bore' A bad immitation [sic] of Carlyle's most Carlylish translations of Goethes [sic] most Goetheish passages!"{{Cite book |title=The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle |publisher=Duke University Press |editor-last= |volume=13 |location=Durham |pages=122 |chapter=JWC TO JOHN STERLING, 29 April 1841 |chapter-url=https://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu/volume/13/lt-18410429-JWC-JOST-01}} For his part, Sterling described them to William Coningham as "the only book of any pith and significance that has dawned here lately . . . which at a glance, seem far ahead in compass and brilliancy of almost everything England has of late years (generations) produced".{{Cite book |title=Sterling's Letters to Coningham |year=1872 |pages=22 |chapter=20 June 1841}}

Three fragments from the essay "Spiritual Laws" form the backbone of composer Kaija Saariaho's True Fire for baritone and orchestra (2014), a piece of music that collages texts from various sources. The piece's title is taken from the essay's final sentence, that concludes also the setting: "We know the authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises."{{Cite web |title=True Fire {{!}} Kaija Saariaho |url=https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/52026/True-Fire--Kaija-Saariaho/ |access-date=2023-12-17 |website=www.wisemusicclassical.com |language=en}}

• Essays: Second Series

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{{wikisource|Essays: First Series|Essays: First Series}}

• {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ralph-waldo-emerson/essays |Display Name=Essays (compilation of First and Second Series) | noitalics=true}}
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=nAw6AQAAIAAJ&dq=essays%20first%20series%20emerson&pg=PP11 Essays: First Series] at Google Books.
• {{Librivox book | title=Essays First Series | author=Ralph Waldo Emerson}}

{{Ralph Waldo Emerson}}

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Category:Essay collections by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Category:1841 essays

Category:1841 books

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