With Selected journals 1820-1842 and its companion volume Selected journals 1841-1877, the Library of America presents the most ample and comprehensive nonspecialist edition of Emerson's work ever published--one that retains the original order in which he composed his thoughts and preserves the range of his style in long, uninterrupted passages, but without the daunting critical apparatus of the 16-volume scholarly edition. Selected journals 1820-1842 begins with Emerson's first journal entry, on January 25, 1820, and follows him through his early years at Harvard College and the Divinity School, his ordination as a Unitarian minister, his marriage to Ellen Tucker and her untimely death, his decision to leave the ministry, and his travels in England and on the Continent. It offers perspective on the intellectual currents of the day--the emergence of Transcendentalism; the furor over Emerson's "Divinity School Address"; the founding of The Dial; experiments in communal living at Fruitlands and Brook Farm--and intimate sketches of Emerson's friends and contemporaries, including Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others--Book jacket.