Walt Whitman, whose Leaves of Grass echoed Emerson, wrote about him, as did (from various points of view) Henry James, William James, John Dewey, D. H. Lawrence, George Santayana, and many others who achieved recognition and influence through their own work. A range of important twentieth-century American scholars — Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiessen, and Lewis Mumford among them — examined Emerson's work and assessed his significance. Religious thinkers and historians have analyzed his role in the development of Unitarianism. Today, a number of scholars are at work on critical, intellectual, biographical, and bibliographical studies of Emerson, as well as on authoritative editions of his writings. In 1955, the newly formed Emerson Society began publication of the Emerson Society Quarterly, which became ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. Although the intensity of British regard for Emerson — strong in the nineteenth century — has waned, American interest in him continues to grow.
Emerson's writings have been readily available to readers since their first publication in the nineteenth century. Collected editions were published in the author's lifetime. Edward Waldo Emerson edited the long-standard Centenary Edition of his father's writings (published 1903–1904). Modern scholars have prepared editions of Emerson's early sermons, his lectures, and his journals. A new edition of his works, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, began publication in 1971. A variety of popular twentieth-century collections (for example: the Modern Library Edition of The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Brooks Atkinson; Mark Van Doren's The Portable Emerson; William H. Gilman's Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson; and the Library of America volumes) have kept Emerson's thought accessible to a broad audience.
Today, Emerson is widely taught at the college level, in courses on American literature, Romanticism, and other topics as well. His writings provide a ready source of inspiration for public speakers, who frequently introduce or illuminate some point by reading an appropriate quotation from Emerson. His thought has seeped so far into popular culture that passages from his writings — and sometimes passages mistakenly attributed to him — are found in greeting cards. His home in Concord is visited by pilgrims from all over the world. Although there may not be consensus about the exact nature of Emerson's significance, his primary position is unquestioned.
