Showing posts with label WESTERN AUTHOR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WESTERN AUTHOR. Show all posts

A BIOGRAPHICAL DETAIL OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS.

 



 

 

Tennessee Williams



 







One of the most well-known playwrights in America, Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi.

 

Here are some key details about his life:

 

  • Early Life: Williams was raised in a difficult background. His mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, was a nervous former schoolteacher, and his father, Cornelius Williams, was a traveling salesman. Rose, his sister, suffered from mental illness, which had a lasting impact on him. Williams and his parents had a complicated connection. While his father was frequently absent and emotionally detached, Edwina, his mother, was extremely strict and controlling. These relationships helped young Williams develop feelings of alienation and loneliness, which would return in his writing in the future.

 

  • Education: Williams studied drama at the University of Missouri, where he was honored with multiple awards for his work. After that, he changed schools and resumed writing plays at Washington University in St. Louis, where he graduated in 1937 with a degree.

 

  • Career: In the 1930s, Williams migrated to New Orleans, which had a big impact on a lot of his writing. Williams authored a number of plays that were performed in nearby theaters while he was a college student. These early encounters gave him the groundwork and self-assurance he needed to pursue a playwriting career. While little attention was paid to his early pieces, he really came into his own with "The Glass Menagerie" (1944). Other masterpieces such as "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955) came after this. His plays frequently deal with themes of desire, societal degradation, and human weakness.

         








 

  • Personal Struggles: Williams struggled drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental health disorders throughout of his life. He was greatly affected by his relationship with his sister Rose, who spent a large portion of her life in an institution.




 







 


  • Later Life and Death: Throughout his life, Williams wrote and was praised for his works, even though his later ones were frequently not as well accepted. Williams experienced health issues from an early age, including a case of tuberculosis that required a lengthy hospital stay. He felt even more alone and different from his peers as a result of these health problems. His last years were spent on the road and in different places. He passed away in New York City on February 25, 1983, for reasons that are still not entirely apparent but were connected to his battles with drug misuse.

 

Williams' plays continue to be essential to American theater, and his examination of difficult social themes and human emotions has strengthened his status as a prominent writer.

 


A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS OF EARNEST HEMINGWAY.

 

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
                                                    

                                                               ― Ernest Hemingway















Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)


Ernest Hemingway, one of the most prominent American writers of the 20th century, was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899. Hemingway, who is well-known for his distinctive writing style that is defined by simplicity and clarity, frequently addressed themes of masculinity, war, and the human condition in his works.


Ernest's mother, a highly religious and pious woman with an understanding of music, had hoped that her son would take an interest in music. she herself had once hoped for an operatic career, but during her first recital at Carnegie Hall, the lights were so intense for her defective eyes that she gave up performing.In high school, Ernest tried his hand at playing the cello, but it was obvious right away that he was not a musician. Rather, he was a great fan of the great outdoors, just like his father.


Ernest's father gave him an all-day fishing trip for his fourth birthday. Ernest started fishing when he was three years old. His grandfather got him a 20-gauge single-barrel shotgun for his twelfth birthday. He was one of the well-known group of foreign writers living in Paris when he soon set off on a life of travel, skiing, fishing, and hunting, activities which would serve as inspiration for his short stories featuring Hemingway's youthful fictitious character, Nick Adams.


His career as a journalist started after graduation. During World War I, he received injuries while driving an ambulance. The novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) came after his story collection In Our Time (1925). A Farewell to Arms (1929) and To Have and Have Not (1937) are examples of later novels.


His long-standing passion for Spain, which included a fascination with bullfighting, brought him to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he worked as a correspondent and wrote the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Winner Take Nothing (1933), The Fifth Column (1938), and Men Without Women (1927) are some such collections of short stories. He was born and raised in Cuba, where his novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952, Pulitzer Prize) is set. He moved there around 1940.


In 1954, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hemingway's unhappy years continued into the following few years, with attacks of high blood pressure and clinical depression in 1961. During his two lengthy stays at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, he was administered shock therapy; However, the majority of the recommended treatments for his depression proved to be unsuccessful.


Hemingway shot himself in the head and passed away at home on July 2, 1961. There seem to have been two Hemingways at all times. The bearded, grin-wearing "Papa" from the news photos was the adventurer; the other was the skillful, sensitive writer Hemingway, who carefully wrote, revised, and corrected his pieces.


Hemingway's term for his short stories, "gems," describes each of the collected short stories covered in this volume as a polished, completed work. There is no need for additional words, and no word is unnecessary. Literary commentators rank Hemingway as one of the greatest authors of short stories in history, ranking him alongside such well-known authors as Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and William Faulkner.











HIS FAMOUS WORKS :

Big Two-Hearted River (1925)

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

A BIOGRAPHICAL DETAIL OF W H AUDEN

 



W H AUDEN.




 






Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William BlakeEmily DickinsonGerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford, his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.

In 1928, Auden’s collection, Poems, was privately printed, but it wasn’t until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation.

Ever since, Auden has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse.

Auden visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil War, and, in 1939, moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. 

His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. 

A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

W. H. Auden served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.

A Brief Biography of George Bernard Shaw.

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George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)



 










George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a dramatist, critic, and polemicist from Ireland. In 1856, Shaw was born in Dublin to George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. A civil servant's son. As a novelist, he began his literary career. He was also skilled in journalism, music, and literary critique. Shaw attended several schools during his childhood, although he was always unfriendly to schools and teachers.

Shaw quoted as saying that “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents”.

As a young man, he travelled to London and established himself as a writer and novelist. By the mid-1880s, he had established himself as a respected theatre critic while also penning his own plays. Shaw's political awakening occurred throughout the 1880s. He read Marx and joined the socialist Fabian Society. His opinions were frequently aggressive and controversial. He was a profound vegetarian who utilised his plays to express his views on politics and society.

In 1898, at the age of 41, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend. They renamed their Hertfordshire home Shaw's Corner and stayed together till Charlotte died. George Bernard Shaw died in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November 2, 1950.


Important Literary Works of G B Shaw.

The majority of Shaw's early plays emphasised capitalism's flaws and explored existing moral and social issues. Widowers' Houses (1892) and Mrs Warren's Profession, originally presented in 1902 but written several years earlier (it was initially banned by the Lord Chamberlain for its clear treatment of prostitution), are examples of early plays. Shaw's first commercial triumph was 1894's Arms and the Man, a play influenced by Ibsen's work, though it would take him some time to recreate its popularity. He kept writing and was politically involved.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw established his name as a dramatist. Over the course of five years, Harley Granville-Barker's company at the Royal Court Theatre staged 14 of Shaw's plays. Man and Superman (authored in 1902 and presented at the Court in 1905), Major Barbara (1905), and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906) were among them. Shaw's work got more formally adventurous as well.

In 1912, he composed Pygmalion, one of his most successful plays. It premiered in London in 1914, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as professor of phonetics Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.

He was the first person to be awarded the Nobel prize for Literature as well as an Oscar (for his work on Pygmalion, which was an adaptation of his play of the same name). He wrote 60 plays, most of which deal with social themes such as marriage, religion, class government and health care.

After the First World War, during which he published tracts that jarred with the patriotic mood, he wrote Saint Joan in 1923, now regarded as a late masterpiece.

Shaw remained a Fabian, but he became less active as he aged. He did, however, invest in The New Statesman, a new socialist journal launched by Beatrice and Stanley Webb.Shaw, according to critic Kenneth Tynan, "cleared the English stage of humbug and the English stage of cant."

Bernard Shaw's comedy of manners, as Archibald Henderson put it, makes the audience "laugh with one side of his mouth and cry with the other."


His Style.

The following components constitute the key elements of "the Shavian drama": (G B Shaw’s Drama)

· Realism: The new play no longer dealt with historical topics or locations that were out of time or place. It attempted to establish a tradition of natural communication by discussing common man's difficulties.

· Revolt Against Conventional Morality: Everything on stage was now being investigated. The old certainties were destroyed, and the dominant views, beliefs, and concepts were fiercely criticised by the new dramatists. New interpretations emerged, and people began to question old phenomena, including religious ones.

· Lack of Action: For ages, 'action' has been the essential ingredient of classical play. Until the new drama overemphasised the inner conflict, the outer conflict remained dominating. The modern theatre has become more static as a result of its use of mental arguments. The study of the mind aroused the curiosity of many people, including "new wave" dramatists.

· Adopting Scientific Theories: During the later years of the nineteenth century, new discoveries in numerous disciplines of science predominated, and as a result, they began to creep into various elements of life, including the theatre. Since then, dramatists have included scientifically established viewpoints in their plays in an attempt to be more realistic. New inquiries into the meaning of love and sex, which Schopenhauer's philosophy provided to the nineteenth century and Freud's to the twentieth, were now staged, shattering people's earlier conceptions. The new dramatists took a scientific approach to life.

· The New Comedy of Manner: When dramatists attempted to analyse people's behaviours in a clever satirical manner, the comedy of manner emerged. The comedy of manners reintroduced in the new theatre is essentially the same as the eighteenth-century comedy of manners. Both were intended to shake individuals out of their "lethargy in thought."

· Symbolism: Since the new drama's focus has shifted from outside conflict to interior contradiction, symbolism has been used as a tool for expressing inexpressible concepts, emotions, behaviours, and so on. The new dramatists discovered that simple and direct language were insufficient, which explains the extensive use of symbolism in modern theatre.

A Brief Biography of Peter Carey (Australian Writer).

 An Advantageous for JRF, NET, GSET, GATE, PG, UG Aspirants.

PARAMAR BHAVESH G.

PhD (PURSUING), M.A. (ENG)

JRF, NET, GSET, GATE 2022/23.




Peter Philip Carey (1943)



 







Peter Carey, who was born on May 7, 1943, in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia, has made a significant contribution to the literary world. Peter Philip Carey was born into a household that valued books and storytelling.

He attended Geelong Grammar School before attending Monash University in Melbourne, where he majored in science. Despite his scientific studies, he was always drawn to writing. Carey worked in advertising for several years after finishing his education, both in Australia and in London. This event influenced his writing later on, since he frequently examined topics relating to consumerism and media manipulation. Carey's writing career got off in 1981, when his first novel, "Bliss," was published. The novel was well appreciated by critics and marked the start of his busy literary career.

Following works that mixed historical events with inventive narration earned him international acclaim. Carey's examination of Australian identity, historical events, and societal challenges has had a significant impact on how regional literature is understood and appreciated on a global scale. Carey was granted dual citizenship in Australia and the United States. In the 1990s, he moved to New York City, where he has since continued to live and work. Carey has taught creative writing at universities such as New York University in addition to writing.

He has been an outspoken supporter of literature and creativity. Peter Carey's legacy goes beyond his literary accomplishments. His imaginative narrative and thought-provoking ideas have left a lasting mark on Australian and international literature.

In 1998, Carey was accused of snubbing Queen Elizabeth II by declining an invitation to meet her after winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Jack Maggs (1997).

In April 2015 he, alongside Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, withdrew from the PEN American Center gala honouring the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with its "Freedom of Expression Courage" award.

Carey has won the Miles Franklin Award three times and is usually mentioned as Australia's next Nobel laureate. J. G. Farrell, J. M. Coetzee, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood are the only five writers who have won the Booker Prize twice. Carey received his first Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda, and his second in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. He was shortlisted for the Best of the Booker Prize in May 2008.

 

His Style.

Peter Carey is noted for his distinct and varied writing style, which has changed over his career. His writing is distinguished by its inventiveness, vivid imagery, and fusion of historical, political, and personal topics. 

Here are a few highlights of Peter Carey's writing style:

Narrative Experimentation:  In his novels, Carey frequently engages narrative experimentation, experimenting with form, perspective, and voice. To produce a deep and layered reading experience, he may employ several narrators, non-linear timeframes, and unorthodox storytelling strategies.

Distinctive Characters: Carey's characters are frequently complicated and unique, with flaws and eccentricities that appeal them to readers. He investigates their personality, motivations, and inner problems in depth.

Linguistic Playfulness: Carey's work is linguistically playful, merging several registers of language, accents, and voices to represent the varied linguistic landscape of his places and people..

Humor and Satire: Carey's writing frequently employs satire and humour to remark on cultural conventions, consumerism, politics, and other important topics. His wit and irony improve his narration.

Historical Fiction with a Twist: Carey's novels are mostly historical fiction, in which he reimagines and fictionalises genuine historical events and individuals. He mixes historical accuracy with innovative storytelling, frequently presenting new views on well-known events or people.

Sense of Place: Carey's works, whether set in Australia, London, or elsewhere, immerse readers in a deep sense of location. He deftly describes landscapes, cityscapes, and environments, fitting them into the tale.

Cultural and Historical References: Carey's work usually includes cultural references, historical occurrences, and literary allusions. This improves the reading experience and enables readers to explore new levels of meaning.

Exploration of Identity: Personal and national identity are common themes in Carey's works. He frequently investigates the complex aspects of Australian identity, particularly as they relate to colonial history and cultural diversity.

Social and Political Commentary: Carey's writings are frequently used to make social and political points. He addresses modern concerns through fictional stories, providing thought-provoking insights into society and power dynamics.

"I do not know what way you will look at this story. In a way that it is true, or in a way it is not true. I tell you I do not care. I will tell you only what happened."

                                                                             -  The True History of the Kelly Gang

Important Literary Works of Peter Carey.











"Oscar and Lucinda" (1988): This novel earned the Booker Prize and demonstrated Carey's narrative ingenuity. It depicts an unexpected love connection between two eccentric people in nineteenth-century Australia.













"True History of the Kelly Gang" (2000) : This work, also a Booker Prize winner, is a fictionalised chronicle of the life of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, told in Kelly's own voice.













"Jack Maggs" (1997): This novel, based on Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations," reimagines the story in 19th-century London and Australia.


Notable Works. 
  • Novels.
  •  Bliss (1981)
  •  Illywhacker (1985)
  • Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
  •  The Tax Inspector (1991)
  •  The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994)
  •  Jack Maggs (1997)
  •  True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)
  •  My Life as a Fake (2003)
  • Theft: A Love Story (2006)
  •  His Illegal Self (2008)
  •  Parrot and Olivier in America (2010)
  •  The Chemistry of Tears (2012)
  •  Amnesia (2014)
  • A Long Way From Home (2017)

  • Short story collection.
  • The Fat Man in History (1974)
  • War Crimes (1979)
  •  
  •  Non-fiction.
  •  A Letter to Our Son (1994)
  • 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account (2001)
  • Letter from New York (2001)
  •  Wrong about Japan (2005)

 

A Brief Biography of Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian playwright).

T.Y.B.A. (ENG)                                                               PARAMAR BHAVESH G

SEM : 5                                                                            PhD (PURSUING), M.A. (ENG)

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Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)



 






Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway on March 20, 1828. He was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. He was known as the "Father of Modern Prose Drama." He was the youngest of six children. Ibsen's father was a wealthy merchant who went bankrupt when Ibsen was eight years old, thus he lived much of his childhood in hardship. From 1851 through 1864, he worked in theatres in Bergen and Oslo (then known as Christiania). At the age of twenty-one, Ibsen penned his first play, Catiline, a five-act tragedy. Catiline, like much of his early work, was written in verse.

Ibsen married Suzannah Thoreson in 1858 and had one son with her. Ibsen believed that husband and wife should live as equals, free to become their own human beings, rather than just cohabiting. (This belief is seen in his play A Doll's House.) As a result, Ibsen's critics accused him of disrespecting the institution of marriage. Ibsen's literature, like his private life, tended to raise delicate societal topics, and some sections of Norwegian society mocked on it. Ibsen travelled to Italy in 1864 after receiving a travelling grant and a stipend from the Norwegian government after receiving criticism in Oslo about both his work and his personal life..He spent the next twenty-seven years living abroad, mostly in Italy and Germany.

Ibsen's early years as a playwright were not financially rewarding, but he did gain significant experience. Ibsen's first significant theatrical hit, a lyric drama called 'Brand', was released in 1866. He followed it up with 'Peer Gynt', another well-received verse play. These two works contributed to Ibsen's status as one of the foremost Norwegian dramatists of his day. Ibsen's masterpiece, “A Doll's House”, was published in 1879, while he was residing in Italy. A Doll's House, unlike “Peer Gynt” and “Brand”, was written in prose. It is widely regarded as an important turning point in the evolution of what quickly became a popular theatre genre realism, which attempts to show life honestly while rejecting portrayed conceptions of it.

In A Doll's House, Ibsen combines traditional tragedy themes and structures while writing in prose about ordinary, unexceptional individuals. Ibsen's concern for women's rights, and for human rights in general, is clearly prominent in A Doll's House.








Following A Doll's House, Ibsen wrote two more plays in an innovative, realistic style: “Ghosts” in 1881 and “An Enemy of the People” in 1882. Both were a huge success. Ibsen's works began to earn international acclaim, and they were produced across Europe and translated into other languages. Ibsen's later work diverted away from realistic drama to address psychological and subconscious issues. As a result, symbols began to take centre stage in his performances. During this symbolist period, he composed “The Wild Duck (1884)” and “Hedda Gabler (1890)”. Ibsen's final play while living abroad was Hedda Gabler. He returned to Oslo in 1891. Among his later works are “The Master Builder (1892)” and “Little Eyolf (1896)”. Ibsen eventually became afflicted with a terrible illness that stopped him from writing. He passed away on May 23, 1906.

 

Important Plays of Henrik Ibsen.


Catiline (1850)

The Burial Mound (1850)

St. John's Eve (1852)

Lady Inger of Oestraat (1854)

The Feast at Solhaug (1855)

Olaf Liljekrans (1856)

The Vikings at Helgeland (1858)

Love's Comedy (1862)

The Pretenders (1863)

Brand (1866)

Peer Gynt (1867)

The League of Youth (1869)

Emperor and Galilean (1873)

Pillars of Society (1877)

A Doll's House (1879)

Ghosts (1881)

An Enemy of the People (1882)

The Wild Duck (1884)

Rosmersholm (1886)

The Lady from the Sea (1888)

Hedda Gabler (1890)

The Master Builder (1892)

Little Eyolf (1894)

John Gabriel Borkman (1896)

When We Dead Awaken (1899)

 

A Brief Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Writer).

                                                                              BHAVESH G PARAMAR.

                                                                                       PhD (PURSUING), M.A. (ENG)

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RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

 


                                              










“Trust Thyself.”

                              - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803. He was a poet, essayist, lecturer, and philosopher. He was one of the most prominent writers and philosophers in the United States of America during the nineteenth century. Emerson's initial encounter with non-Western works came through his father, William Emerson, a Unitarian preacher with a polite interest in learning and letters. Emerson's formal education began in 1812, when he was nine years old, at the Boston Latin School. Emerson entered Harvard College at the age of 14 in 1817. Emerson had few opportunities to study the different literary and religious traditions of Asia and the Middle East while at Harvard.

However, as seen by his diaries and library borrowing records, Emerson paid close attention to the wider European Romantic interest in the "Orient" or "East" in his spare time. Emerson gained much of his knowledge of India from British colonial agents, reading treatises, travelogues, and translations of legal, theological, and poetic literature published in the aftermath of Britain's imperial push into India.

Emerson's "Indian Superstition," a densely allusive poem he wrote for the graduation ceremonies at Harvard College in 1822. Emerson portrays in the 156-line poem how "Superstition," the personification of religious oppression in Asia, has enslaved "Dishonoured India." "Indian Superstition" may be closer to caricature than literary art, with its Romantic primitivism and enormous imagery. Emerson's poem is significant for diverging from a popular era formula that held that a debased India could only be rescued by Western colonialism.

Emerson's wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson, died of TB in 1831, causing a flurry of personal and professional events in his life. Emerson was deeply impacted by her death and paid frequent visits to her grave in Roxbury. He wrote in his journal on March 29, 1832, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin."

Emerson returned to his ancestral home in Concord, Massachusetts, after travelling around Europe and meeting literary giants such as William Wordsworth and Thomas Carlyle. He launched a nearly 50-year career as a public lecturer and married Lydia Jackson, whom he affectionately referred to as "Mine Asia"—a play on Asia Minor, the location of Lydia's ancient kingdom.












“Nature”, Emerson's first significant declaration of mature philosophy and a landmark book that generated the Transcendentalist movement in New England, was released in 1836. Following this effort, he delivered a speech titled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. saw as America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."








Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, and Henry David Thoreau were among the New England Transcendentalists, a diverse group of theological, literary, educational, and social reformers. In July 1840, the transcendental group launched its flagship journal, The Dial. Emerson published The Dial, a Transcendentalist periodical, from 1842 to 1844. They began planning the journal in October 1839, but it did not begin until the first week of 1840. The managing editor was George Ripley. Margaret Fuller was the initial editor, when Emerson approached her after numerous others declined the position. When Emerson took over, Fuller stayed on for nearly two years, utilising the journal to promote brilliant young authors such as Ellery Channing and Thoreau.

 

Emerson frequently wrote poetry. His poetry reflects spiritualism, religion, and man's first relationship with God. Emerson's poetry was written between 1844 and 1854. Poems was the first book published in 1847. May-Day and Other Poems was published twenty years later in 1867. Emerson, like Thomas Hardy and D.R. Lawrence, preferred poetry over prose. His first love was poetry. In his March 1842 address in New York, he made it quite plain.

 

Emerson considered poets to be seers. The old English refer to him as a bard. Bede is referred to as venerable, while Shakespeare is referred to as 'Bard of Avon.' The poet is an idea collector. Emerson considers the poet to be the sayer, namer, and representer of beauty.

 

Emerson considers literature to be a magnificent art form in and of itself. There, words are deeds. Poetry is visual music. It's an enlightening experience. Poetry's duty is to make visible and specific the link between the human and the divine. It was taught to Emerson by English metaphysical poets. At the same time, Emerson believed that poetry should accompany science. Emerson made use of symbol appropriations. He felt that the mystic and the science must become one, and that the symbol is the only way to achieve this union.
 
In his essay "The Poet," Emerson outlines his conviction that poetry, like any other kind of art, should be organic rather than metrically or musically beautiful. Emerson employs imagery. 'Mottoes,' 'Days,' 'The Sphinx,' 'Hamatreya,' 'Uriel,' 'Brahma,' 'The Snow-Storm,' and 'Merlin' are examples. According to Robert Spiller, the poet used his full rights with volatile nature, employing the evidences of the pines, the sea, and the stars to its own ends and demonstrating the relationship of the law of things to the law of God.
 
"Woodnotes," "Threnody," his odes, and "The Rhodora" are examples of his message and effect. Dickinson's use of imagery is reminiscent to Emerson's use of visual image. In "Days," his intricate and ascending imagery come together to form a singular sign of revelation.

His Essays in 1841 and Essays: Second Series in 1844, Emerson emerged as a trans-Atlantic literary celebrity. Emerson’s other volumes include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and English Traits (1865). His best-known addresses are The American Scholar (1837) and The Divinity School Address, which he delivered before the graduates of the Harvard Divinity School, shocking Boston’s conservative clergymen with his descriptions of the divinity of man and the humanity of Jesus.

Friedrich Nietzsche considered him "the most gifted of the Americans" and Walt Whitman referred to him as his "master". Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.

 

“Many time the reading of a book has made the future of a man.”


                                                                                   - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literary Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Collections

·         Essays: First Series (1841)

·         Essays: Second Series (1844)

·         Poems (1847)

·         Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849)

·         Representative Men (1850)

·         English Traits (1856)

·         The Conduct of Life (1860)

·         May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

·         Society and Solitude (1870)











 

Essays

·         Nature (1836)

·         Self-Reliance

·         Compensation

·         The Over-Soul

·         Circles

·         The Poet

·         Experience

·         Politics

·         The American Scholar

·         New England Reformers

·         History

·         Fate

 

Poems

·         Concord Hymn

·         The Rhodora

·         Brahma

·         Uriel