The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson presents Emerson at his most guarded and his most vulnerable, writing to other Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, to his wife and brothers, to friends like Longfellow and Whitman. With effusions of love, messages of condolence, letters of support for Thoreau and Whitman, and critiques of friends' writings, this extraordinary collection presents an Emerson deeply connected to the world around him.