About this Event
Author James Marcus discusses his new book, Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, available March 5 from Princeton University Press. Copies will be available to purchase. Hosted here at the church connected to both Ralph Waldo Emerson (one-time pastor of Second Church in Boston) and his father, the Rev. William Emerson (minister of First Church in Boston, 1799-1811).
Click to view the official Princeton University Press Release
“A lively, intimate, absorbing account of the sage of Concord.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Marcus’s instincts are a good guide to the shifting sands of Emerson’s life and thought. . . . The result is a discerning take on an essential 19th-century American thinker.” —Publishers Weekly
Today we know Ralph Waldo Emerson as the poster boy for self-reliance. In GLAD TO THE BRINK OF FEAR (publishing March 5), James Marcus peels back the curtain and reveals a much more three-dimensional figure.
This Emerson is a rebel. He is also a reluctant theological seminary student and erstwhile pastor; a devoted husband and father; and a prototypical American celebrity, one who attracted a cult following on his cross-country lecture circuits and held crowds in thrall with his musings on “the infinitude of the private man.”
Drawing on telling episodes from Emerson’s life alongside landmark essays like “Self-Reliance,” Marcus complicates our understanding of a mythic figure that we thought we knew, and positions Emerson as a true visionary who anticipated the culture wars of contemporary American life.
James Marcus is an editor, translator, and critic who has written and lectured widely on Emerson. His essays and criticism have appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, the Times, Literary Supplement, and Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
First Church in Boston, 66 Marlborough Street, Boston, MA, USA, United States
USD 0.00