Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism

Emerson delivered "The Divinity School Address" at Harvard on July 15, 1838, by invitation. The address was first published in August 1838, by James Munroe, in an edition of 1,000 copies, which sold quickly. It first appeared in England as part of the collection Orations, Lectures, and Addresses (London: H.G. Clarke) in 1844, and was included in Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (later titled Miscellanies; Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures), published in Boston by Munroe in 1849. 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 Harvard-published Collected Works. A Danish edition of the address appeared in 1856, the first separate English edition in 1903. The Unity Publishing Company issued it in 1884, and reprinted it many times. The American Unitarian Association published editions of it in 1907 and 1938. "The Divinity School Address" has been printed in numerous popular collections of Emerson's writings, among them the 1940 Modern Library The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by Brooks Atkinson), the 1946 The Portable Emerson (edited by Mark Van Doren), 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).