Emerson visited England twice - in 1833 and again in 1847. On his first visit, as a young and unpublished writer, he travelled to meet the men whose works had inspired him, the giants of 19th century English literature. With Coleridge, 'old and preoccupied' in the year before his death, Emerson discussed religion and the merits of Sicily and Malta; in a desolate house in the Scottish hills he met Thomas Carlyle, the 'lonely scholar', whose humour and lively stories enchanted him and with whom he discussed Rousseau and Robinson Crusoe. With Wordsworth in London, they talked of America and Americans and Wordsworth recited three sonnets of poetry, just composed. On his second trip, having published his celebrated Nature and Essays, he had himself become famous and was feted by politicians, artists and aristocrats in salons and social gatherings across the country. In England, Emerson recognised the source of everything American - from the laws of society to the plot of a novel. Though he admired her triumphs he also presciently sensed the demise of a country weighed down by the 'drag of inertia'. And though mesmerised by her literature, he would later encourage American writers to forge a style all their own. Written during a decade of great flux for America, England and for Emerson himself, 'English Traits' illuminates Emerson's visionary thought as much as it vividly portrays 19th century England.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1863.

Metaphors are ubiquitous and yet-or, for that very reason-go largely unseen. We are all variously susceptible to a blindness or blurry vision of metaphors; yet even when they are seen clearly, we are left to situate the ambiguities, conflations and contradictions they regularly present-logically, aesthetically and morally. David LaRocca's book serves as a set of 'reminders' of certain features of the natural history of our language-especially the tropes that permeate and define it. As part of his investigation, LaRocca turns to Ralph Waldo Emerson's only book on a single topic, English Traits (1856), which teems with genealogical and generative metaphors-blood, birth, plants, parents, family, names and race. In the first book-length study of English Traits in over half a century, LaRocca considers the presence of metaphors in Emerson's fertile text-a unique work in his expansive corpus, and one that is regularly overlooked. As metaphors are encountered in Emerson's book, and drawn from a long history of usage in work by others, a reader may realize (or remember) what is inherent and encoded in our language, but rarely seen: how metaphors circulate in speech and through texts to become the lifeblood of thought.