Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). The Complete Works. 1904.
Vol. I. Nature, Addresses and Lectures
Preface
T
The speeches at the John Brown, the Walter Scott, and the Free Religious Association meetings had been printed, probably with Mr. Emerson’s consent. The other pieces included by Mr. Cabot, namely, the speeches on Theodore Parker, the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln, at the Harvard Commemoration, “Woman,” the addresses to Kossuth, and at the Burns Festival, had not been published.
All that were in Mr. Cabot’s collection will be found here, although the order has been slightly changed. To these I have added Mr. Emerson’s letter to President Van Buren in 1838, his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law in Concord soon after its enactment, that on Shakspeare to the Saturday Club, and his remarks at the Humboldt Centennial, and at the dinner to the Chinese Embassy; also the addresses at the consecration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and at the opening of the Concord Free Public Library. The oration before the New England Society of New York in 1870, printed by them in their recent volume, is not included, as most of the matter may be found in the Historical Discourse at Concord and in the essay “Boston,” in Natural History of Intellect.
I have given to the chapters mottoes, the most of them drawn from Mr. Emerson’s writings.