Emerson at Dartmouth

Prof. Herbert F. West '22 has written an introduction for a new edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Oration, Delivered beforethe Literary Societies of Dartmouth College,June 24, 1838. The volume, issued by Westholm Publications at Hanover, is entitled Emerson at Dartmouth, a Reprint of His Oration: "Literary Ethics," limited to 300 numbered copies. Professor West has also supplied a section of notes on the address.

Emerson's address was delivered to members of the Dartmouth Literary Societies and their friends. According to Mr. West, it has not been reprinted in its entirety for more than fifty years. The address, considered by Thomas Carlyle to be one of Emerson's noblest utterances, has been used in the publisher's Comp Lit courses for many years and "appears to have pertinence today more than ever," he says, "owing to the prevailing substitution of a pragmatic view of truth for a transcendental or idealistic one."