RUNNING FOR LUCK

Although the publication of Society and Solitude came in 1870, a decade after that of The Conduct of Life, the two volumes are closely interconnected, originating in significant part from Emerson's lectures of the 1850s. An 1860 journal entry concerning the plans for The Conduct of Life (JMN, 14:346–7) suggests that the two books were conceived originally as a single work of two volumes, and the draft of the proposed contents shows a significant overlapping of the essays that were finally divided into the two books we now know. The distractions and difficulties of the years of the Civil War account in large part for the delay of publication of Society and Solitude. The book is thus connected more closely to Emerson's creative burst in the 1850s than its publication date might at first suggest.

The volume that followed in 1875, Letters and Social Aims, marked the beginning of the end of Emerson's creative career. His struggle to arrange lecture and journal material into a finished volume was punctuated by the fire at his home in 1872, which forced a long recuperative tour while the house was restored.