These are the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) in PDF Acrobat Reader format. They derive from the 1904-14 edition of the Journals edited by Emerson's son Edward and form 5000 pages of material. Volume 10 (1864-1876) completes the journals and reveals Emerson's mental decline in the 1870s. The journal relates the events of his trip to the West Coast and his final trip abroad, to Egypt, a trip undertaken after his house suffered a nearly devastating fire. Emerson lived for another three years after he stopped writing in his journal and died on April 27, 1882, aged 79.

From the Publisher:

        The Digital Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson is an archive provided by The Ralph Waldo Emerson Institute and www.rwe.org for the use and convenience of interested students of the life and works of America’s Founding Thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The source of these digital Journals is the ten-volume Edward Emerson edition, originally published in Boston from 1904 through 1914, and comprising over 5,000 pages of material.

        The main advantages of the Digital Journal Archive over the printed volumes are the search and read aloud features available in Acrobat Reader. Users can find names, dates, places, and, most important, words and ideas in a relative instant. Emerson used his journals as his “savings bank,” as he called them, to record and then use thoughts and insights for later use in essays, lectures and sermons. Therefore, the journals hide the seed of an entire essay, but they also reveal more private thoughts and personal observations which never found their way into the Complete Works. In all, the Journals are a fascinating and valuable record of a lifetime of inspiration and insight.

         Richard G Geldard, PhD,

         General Editor, Digital Archive