This collection of 19th-century essays explores Emerson's thoughts about transcendentalism, individualism, and romanticism. The title essay--Emerson's masterpiece--explains the need for individuals to avoid conformity and false consistency so that they will be able to follow their own instincts and ideas.and ideas.

In an 1841 essay, American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a stirring call for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency and to follow their own instincts and ideas. It contains one of Emerson's most famous quotations: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Self-Reliance, possibly Emerson's most famous essay, is an investigation into the nature of the "aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded." It was first published in his 1841 collection, Essays: First Series. Emerson helped start the beginning of the Transcendentalist movement in America.