Today we’re talking about a charming 1835 letter—recently found in a New England attic and purchased by the shop—from Ralph Waldo Emerson to a girl named Lucia. In the letter, Emerson exhorts his young correspondent to listen in solitude to the voices of nature, to the “great old gray ocean” and the “withered leaves that chatter in the cold March wind.” These themes would recur in his 1863 essay, Nature, a foundational text of the Transcendentalist movement. Although this particular letter is not in perfect condition, the author’s voice shines through, kindly and respectful, carrying a message that can still touch our lives today.
Brattlecast #81 - One Book Collections
Perhaps amassing 2000 copies of Walden isn’t exactly what Thoreau meant when he exhorted us to ‘Simplify, simplify,’ however, some collectors do simplify their libraries by collecting different editions of a single book. Books like the Bible, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the works of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Dante Alighieri have been published so often, with such a variety of bindings, languages, and illustrations, that a collection of even one of these books would be impossible to ever complete. We’ll take a look at a few of these monomaniacal collections on this week’s brattlecast.