• Introduction; 1. The Mystic and the Self-made Saint; 2. Politics and Ecstasy; 3. The Text of Experience; 4. 'Here or Nowhere': Essays: Second Series; 5. The Eclipse of the Hero: Representative Men; 6. The Old and New Worlds: English Traits; 7. 'Work is Victory': The Conduct of Life; 8. 'Plain Living and High Thinking': Society and Solitude; 9. Toward a Grammar of the Moral Life; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

"[a] mature, well reasoned, and readable study...Robinson expertly and in a pleasantly unemphatic way contextualizes Emerson's later essays and lectures within both Emerson's own biography and the social and economic realities of nineteenth-century American and British life...David M. Robinson's well-written, carefully researched, and sincerely argued presentation of Emerson's pragmatism and ethical purpose in the second half of the nineteenth century serves also to point to a sensibility that, I think, is much needed now." Gertrude Reif Hughes, Nineteenth Century Literature

• Introduction; 1. The Mystic and the Self-made Saint; 2. Politics and Ecstasy; 3. The Text of Experience; 4. 'Here or Nowhere': Essays: Second Series; 5. The Eclipse of the Hero: Representative Men; 6. The Old and New Worlds: English Traits; 7. 'Work is Victory': The Conduct of Life; 8. 'Plain Living and High Thinking': Society and Solitude; 9. Toward a Grammar of the Moral Life; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

"[a] mature, well reasoned, and readable study...Robinson expertly and in a pleasantly unemphatic way contextualizes Emerson's later essays and lectures within both Emerson's own biography and the social and economic realities of nineteenth-century American and British life...David M. Robinson's well-written, carefully researched, and sincerely argued presentation of Emerson's pragmatism and ethical purpose in the second half of the nineteenth century serves also to point to a sensibility that, I think, is much needed now." Gertrude Reif Hughes, Nineteenth Century Literature

• Introduction; 1. The Mystic and the Self-made Saint; 2. Politics and Ecstasy; 3. The Text of Experience; 4. 'Here or Nowhere': Essays: Second Series; 5. The Eclipse of the Hero: Representative Men; 6. The Old and New Worlds: English Traits; 7. 'Work is Victory': The Conduct of Life; 8. 'Plain Living and High Thinking': Society and Solitude; 9. Toward a Grammar of the Moral Life; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

"[a] mature, well reasoned, and readable study...Robinson expertly and in a pleasantly unemphatic way contextualizes Emerson's later essays and lectures within both Emerson's own biography and the social and economic realities of nineteenth-century American and British life...David M. Robinson's well-written, carefully researched, and sincerely argued presentation of Emerson's pragmatism and ethical purpose in the second half of the nineteenth century serves also to point to a sensibility that, I think, is much needed now." Gertrude Reif Hughes, Nineteenth Century Literature