![]() | First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process Subjects: Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803–1882; Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803–1882 -- Knowledge and learning; Authors American -- 19th century -- Biography; Books and reading; Creative writing; Creation (Literary artistic etc.); Writing was the central passion of Emerson's life. While his thoughts on the craft are well developed in "The Poet," "The American Scholar," Nature, "Goethe," and "Persian Poetry," less well known are the many pages in his private journals devoted to the relationship between writing and reading. Here, for the first time, is the Concord Sage's energetic, exuberant, and unconventional advice on the idea of writing, focused and distilled by the preeminent Emerson biographer at work today. Emerson advised that "the way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent." First We Read, Then We Write contains numerous such surprises--from "every word we speak is million-faced" to "talent alone cannot make a writer"--but it is no mere collection of aphorisms and exhortations. Instead, in Robert Richardson's hands, the biographical and historical context in which Emerson worked becomes clear. Robert D. Richardson is the author of William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, which won the 2007 Bancroft Prize, Emerson: The Mind on Fire, which won both the Francis Parkman Prize and the Melcher Book Award and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, which also won the Melcher Book Award. |
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