ESSAYS: with ESSAYS: SECOND SERIES

Boston: James Munroe, 1841 & 1844. First Edition. Hardcover. Tasteful bookplate on each front pastedown; somewhat faint dampstain to preliminaries and first 10 pages of the second volume. Near Fine. First Editions of Emerson's two essential collections of essays, each uniformly bound in later 3/4 brown morocco leather and boards with gilt rules, gilt-lettered spines with five raised bands, top edges gilt. Half-title in first volume, second volume bound without advertisements. One of the defining texts of American Transcendentalism. BAL 5189 and BAL 5198; GROLIER AMERICAN 47: "In effect a single book.... Timeless, and without a trace of 'dating'"; MYERSON A10.1.a and A16.1.a-b.