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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was Emerson like as a student?
(a) Exceptional.
(b) Middling.
(c) Distinguished.
(d) Unsuccessful.

2. In what movement does Richardson say was Lidian ahead of Emerson?
(a) Abolition.
(b) Opposition to the Indian Removal.
(c) Women's suffrage.
(d) Advocating the independence of American thought.

3. Where was Emerson going on Christmas Day, 1832?
(a) Boston.
(b) South Carolina.
(c) New York.
(d) Europe.

4. What imagery filled Emerson's prose and poems in 1836?
(a) Forging and birth.
(b) Health and insanity.
(c) Illness and death.
(d) Travel and arrival.

5. Who influenced Emerson during this turning point?
(a) Mary Moody Emerson.
(b) Edward Everett.
(c) Samson Reed.
(d) Edward Channing.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Richardson say his book illustrates in Emerson's life?

2. Where did Emerson move, in advance of writing Nature?

3. What was the title of the lecture series Emerson delivered in 1837?

4. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's second wife?

5. How did the event described in the Prologue change Emerson's life?

Short Essay Questions

1. What kinds of images does Richardson say dominated Emerson's thinking and writing in 1836?

2. How did Emerson describe Ellen's death?

3. What Quaker belief of Mary Rotch's did Emerson find compelling?

4. How does Richardson describe Emerson as a student?

5. What was the 'immovable anchor' in Emerson's thinking, according to Richardson?

6. How was Emerson's "American Scholar" talk received?

7. How did the birth of Emerson's first son change Emerson's intellectual interests?

8. What turning point did Emerson reach in his junior year of college?

9. What was Emerson's relationship with tuberculosis?

10. What was Emerson's view of American literature?

(see the answer keys)

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