Analysis of a Prose Passage: Ralph Waldo Emerson

As he returned from Europe in 1833, Emerson had already begun to think about the book that would eventually be published under the title Nature. In writing Nature, Emerson drew upon material from his journals, sermons, and lectures. The lengthy essay was first published in Boston by James Munroe and Company in September of 1836. A new edition (also published by Munroe, with Emerson paying the printing costs, his usual arrangement with Munroe) appeared in December of 1849. This second edition was printed from the plates of the collection Nature; Addresses, and Lectures, published by Munroe in September 1849. (The second edition of this collection was published in Boston in 1856 by Phillips, Sampson, under the title Miscellanies; Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures.) Nature was published in London in 1844 in Nature, An Essay. And Lectures on the Times, by H. G. Clarke and Co. A German edition was issued in 1868. It was included in 1876 in the first volume (Miscellanies) of the Little Classic Edition of Emerson's writings, in 1883 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Riverside Edition, in 1903 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Centenary Edition, and in 1971 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Collected Works published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Nature has been printed in numerous collections of Emerson's writings since its first publication, among them the 1940 Modern Library The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by Brooks Atkinson), the 1965 Signet Classic Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by William H. Gilman), and the 1983 Library of America Essays & Lectures (selected and annotated by Joel Porte).

Emerson prefaced the prose text of the 1836 first edition of Nature with a passage from the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus. The 1849 second edition included instead a poem by Emerson himself. Both present themes