Ralph Waldo Emerson Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pages of these five journals from the years 1843 to 1847 document Emerson's struggle to formulate the true attitude of the scholar and disinterested, independent writer to the vexing question of public involvement. He notes to himself that he "pounds...tediously" on the "exemption of the writer from all secular works."