The richness of the unprinted material in Emerson's diaries has been known to the reading public ever since Elliot Cabot drew upon it for his "Memoir" of Emerson. It is not known when Emerson first began to keep a journal, but there are fairly full records from 1820, when he was seventeen, to 1875, when he was seventy-two. The present editor, with the permission of Emerson's surviving children and with the cooperation of his publishers, has undertaken this work with the belief that a single volume of the Journals will be welcomed by the ever-widening circle of readers of our most distinguished American writer.