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Mr. Emerson’s Lectures on American Life. Season Ticket.

[U.S., circa 1860.]. Ticket and schedule printed on both sides of pink cardstock, 1.8” x 3.4”. CONDITION: Very good, light wear.

A rare season ticket for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s six-part lecture series American Life, which he delivered throughout the 1850s and ‘60s.

Emerson wrote this series of six lectures in the 1850s and delivered them extensively. The lecture titles and dates are printed on the verso, as follows: Education (10 February); Social Aims (17 Feb.); Resources (24 Feb.); Table Talk (3 March); Books (10 March), and Character (19 March). According to Emerson scholar Lynda Beltz, the most popular lecture in the series was Social Aims. Emerson is known to have delivered his American Life lectures in Boston before the Parker fraternity (27 Nov. 1864–1 Jan. 1865); in Amherst, Mass. at the Baptist Church (17–25 Oct. 1865), and in Williamstown, Mass. before the Literary Societies of Williams College (late 1865), among other locales.

No examples recorded in WorldCat.

A rare and appealing piece of Emersoniana.

REFERENCES: Beltz, Lynda. “Emerson's Lectures in Indianapolis.” Indiana Magazine of History Vol. 60, No. 3 (Indiana University Press, September 1964), pp. 269-280; Bosco, Ronald A. and Joel Myerson, Editors. The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871, Vol. 1 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001), pp. 278-279; Mudge, Jean McClure, Editor. Mr. Emerson's Revolution. Openbookpublishers, 2015.

Item #7486

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