Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Self-Reliance

We all read it in high school: Emerson's classic essay on Self-Reliance. I used to have a bookmark to a particularly interesting example of this public-domain essay on the web. The URL was http://bellsouthpwp.net/k/e/kerjsmit/self_reliance/self_rel.htm and then later, http://ra.msstate.edu/~kerjsmit/self_rel.htm. Both of those links are now dead.

This was a version of the complete essay annotated by Kerry Smith, who at that time was a librarian at Mississippi State University. I believe he now may be a public school teacher, perhaps in Alabama. His annotated version of Emerson's essay was clearly intended for a high school audience, but is nevertheless a wonderful way to get into the material in some depth.

Therefore, I have resurrected Mr. Smith's version from a copy available at the Internet Archive, meanwhile updating some dead links and a few other doo-dads, and placed it back on line at

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