To my editor at Penguin, Elda Rotor, for seeing the need for a new edition of The Portable Emerson, first edited by Mark Van Doren in 1946 and reedited by Carl Bode in 1977.
To the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association for permission to include the selection from Emerson’s correspondence.
And to my family—Julia, Kazia, and Zoë—for sharing our home with yet another Transcendentalist.