Autograph letter, signed ‘R.W. Emerson’, 1 page, 8vo, on lined paper, Concord [Massachusetts], April 10, 1874, asking his publisher to grant permission to J.R. Osgood & Co. to print 150 copies of his lecture Representative Men, two fold creases, reading: ‘Concord / April 10, 1874 / Messrs. Welch, Bigelow, & Co. / Gentlemen, please permit Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Company to print 150 copies from the plates of “Representative Men.’ / I oblige yours respectful, / R.W. Emerson’, framed
With bookseller's note on back: 'Emerson's 'Representative Men', originally published in 1849, contained biographies of Plato, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe. He lectured on it in England in the year of its publication, and renewed the literary friendships he had made on his earlier visit in 1833, when he had met Coleridge and Carlyle. Emerson, originally a Unitarian minister, came to believe in moral individualism and advocated the ethics of self-reliance and self-expression. A "trancendentalist" and rationalist, he was accused by his critics of giving an influential voice to selfish egoism. Nathaniel Hawthorne described him as "that everlasting rejecter of all that is, and seeker for he knows not what."'
h. 6 w. 5 in. (sight)
overall: 11 x 9 in.