- 57
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Estimate
7,000 - 10,000 USD
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Description
- paper and ink
Poems. London: Chapman, Brothers, 1847
12mo (7 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.; 194 x 120 mm). Half-title. Full red morocco panelled gilt, the spine in six compartments (two lettered) elaborately gilt, gilt dentelles, teal-coated endpapers, edges gilt; three small scrapes to lower board with minor loss.
12mo (7 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.; 194 x 120 mm). Half-title. Full red morocco panelled gilt, the spine in six compartments (two lettered) elaborately gilt, gilt dentelles, teal-coated endpapers, edges gilt; three small scrapes to lower board with minor loss.
Provenance
Thomas Carlyle (inscription on title-page, stamp of his later residence at Mechet Court, Hampshire, on half-title). Acquisition: James Cummins
Literature
BAL 5210
Catalogue Note
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the title-page in Thomas Carlyle's hand "T. Carlyle | from the Author." During a tour of Europe (1831–1832), Emerson met Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. It was through Carlyle that he became immersed with transcendental thought and its sources in German idealism. "[Carlyle] impressed Emerson with his wide range of literary and philosophic knowledge and with the broad motifs of his non-sectarian spiritualism ... [and] felt that Carlyle's charismatic presence and power for spiritual good overrode their differences of personality and belief" (ODNB). The encounter between Emerson and Carlyle forged a lifelong friendship and correspondence that lasted almost forty years.
In a letter dated 31 January 1847, Emerson modestly wrote: "Long before this time you ought to have received from John Chapman a copy of EMERSON'S POEMS, so called, which he was directed to send you. Poor man, you need not open them" (Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, II:147). Carlyle replied on 2 March with effusive praise for the book: "I read your Book of Poems, all faithfully, at Bay House (our Hampshire quarters); where the obstinate people,—with whom you are otherwise, in prose, a first favourite,—foolishly refused to let me read aloud ... so I had to read for myself; and can say, in spite of my hardheartedness, I did gain tho' under impediments a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal Melodies sounding afar off, ever and anon, in my ear? ... [Y]ou do not fall on me like radian summer rainbows, like floods of sunlight, but with thin piercing radiances which affect me like the light of the stars" (Correspondence, II:151).
In a letter dated 31 January 1847, Emerson modestly wrote: "Long before this time you ought to have received from John Chapman a copy of EMERSON'S POEMS, so called, which he was directed to send you. Poor man, you need not open them" (Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, II:147). Carlyle replied on 2 March with effusive praise for the book: "I read your Book of Poems, all faithfully, at Bay House (our Hampshire quarters); where the obstinate people,—with whom you are otherwise, in prose, a first favourite,—foolishly refused to let me read aloud ... so I had to read for myself; and can say, in spite of my hardheartedness, I did gain tho' under impediments a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal Melodies sounding afar off, ever and anon, in my ear? ... [Y]ou do not fall on me like radian summer rainbows, like floods of sunlight, but with thin piercing radiances which affect me like the light of the stars" (Correspondence, II:151).