The selections include Emerson's major sermons, lectures, essays, addresses, and poems, as well as excerpts from his journals, notebooks, and correspondence.

Contexts addresses the topics of American Transcendentalism, philosophy, and Emerson's contemporary reception.

Criticism includes thirteen twentieth-century essays by O. W. Firkins, Stephen E. Whicher, Perry Miller, Joel Porte, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Julie Ellison, Michael T. Gilmore, Barbara Packer, Stanley Cavell, Cornel West, Len Gougeon, Richard Poirier, and Saundra Morris.

A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index are included.