Representative Men

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Representative Men is a collection of seven lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published as a book of essays in 1850. The first essay discusses the role played by "great men" in society, and the remaining six each extol the virtues of one of six men deemed by Emerson to be great:Plato Emanuel Swedenborg Michel de Montaigne William Shakespeare Napoleon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe