Emersonian Circles pays tribute to an essential tradition of literary scholarship and to the figure who has perhaps done more than anyone to sustain its vitality over the past generation. Bibliographer, editor and interpreter of the American Renaissance, Joel Myerson has devoted his academic career to recovering the literary legacy of the Transcendentalists and reconstructing the biographical and historical contexts in which they lived and wrote.

This valuable collection gathers together original essays by fourteen scholars who share Joel Myerson's commitment to historically grounded investigations of American literature. Centered on Emerson and his circle, the pieces connect Transcendentalist thought to diverse contexts in antebellum America: family and gender relations, personal and professional friendships, the politics of antislavery, the transatlantic dialogue of American and British intellectuals.