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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 ("the Philosopher")
• Emanuel Swedenborg ("the Mystic")
• Michel de Montaigne ("the Skeptic")
• William Shakespeare ("the Poet")
• Napoleon ("the Man of the World")
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ("the Writer")

See also

• On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History – a similar series of lectures given by Thomas Carlyle, Emerson's Scottish contemporary
• Parallel Lives – classic work by Ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, outlining the lives of elite individuals and the virtues they represented.

External links

• Representative Men public domain audiobook at LibriVox

v t e Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speeches	"The American Scholar" (1837) "Divinity School Address" (1838) "New England Reformers" (1844)
Poetry	"The Rhodora" (1834) "Concord Hymn" (1836) "Uriel" (1846) "Brahma" (1856) "Boston Hymn" (1863)
Essays	"Nature" (1836) "Self-Reliance" (1841) "Compensation" (1841) "The Over-Soul" (1841) "Circles" (1841) "The Poet" (1844) "Experience" (1844) "Politics" (1844)
Essay collections	Essays: First Series (1841) Essays: Second Series (1844) Representative Men (1850) The Conduct of Life (1860)
Related	Rev. William Emerson (father) Edward Waldo Emerson (son) Mary Moody Emerson (aunt) Ezra Ripley (stepfather) The Atlantic Correspondence with Carlyle "Letter to Martin Van Buren" Ralph Waldo Emerson House The Old Manse Transcendentalism Transcendental Club Concord Museum

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