Originally published in 1858, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table is a series of personal essays ostensibly recounting the boarding-house breakfast-table conversation of "the Autocrat" and his table-mates: the Professor, the Landlady, the Schoolmistress, the Divinity Student, and so on. The book is both a timeless depiction of a witty, urbane, and genial critical intelligence, and a vivid record of 19th-century America in general, and Boston intellectual circles in particular.