Originally titled “An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, [Massachusetts,] August 31, 1837,” Emerson delivered what is now referred to as “The American Scholar” essay as a speech to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society, an honorary society of male college students with unusually high grade point averages. At the time, women were barred from higher education, and scholarship was reserved exclusively for men. Emerson published the speech under its original title as a pamphlet later that same year and republished it in 1838. In 1841, he included the essay in his book Essays, but changed its title to “The American Scholar” to enlarge his audience to all college students, as well as other individuals interested in American letters. Placed in his Man Thinking: An Oration (1841), the essay found its final home in Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849).

The text begins with an introduction (paragraphs 1-7) in which Emerson explains that his intent is to explore the scholar as one function of the whole human being: The scholar is “Man Thinking.” The remainder of the essay is organized into four sections, the first three discussing the influence of nature (paragraphs 8 and 9), the influence of the past and books (paragraphs 10-20), and the influence of action (paragraphs 21-30) on the education of the thinking man. In the last section (paragraphs 31-45), Emerson considers the duties of the scholar and then discusses his views of America in his own time.

Readers should number each paragraph in pencil as these Notes make reference to individual paragraphs in the essay.