- 624 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
Pulitzer Prize Finalist: "A stunning work of biography" about three little-known New England women who made intellectual history ( The New York Times ). Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways the American BrontĂ«s. The story of these remarkable sistersâand their central role in shaping the thinking of their dayâhas never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall's monumental biography brings the era of creative ferment known as American Romanticism to new life. Elizabeth Peabody, the oldest sister, was a mind-on-fire influence on the great writers of the eraâEmerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau among themâwho also published some of their earliest works; it was she who prodded these newly minted Transcendentalists away from Emerson's individualism and toward a greater connection to others. Middle sister Mary Peabody was a passionate reformer who finally found her soul mate in the great educator Horace Mann. And the frail Sophia, an admired painter among the preeminent society artists of the day, married Nathaniel Hawthorneâbut not before Hawthorne threw the delicate dynamics among the sisters into disarray. Casting new light on a legendary American era, and on three sisters who made an indelible mark on history, Marshall's unprecedented research uncovers thousands of never-before-seen letters as well as other previously unmined original sources. "A massive enterprise, " The Peabody Sisters is an event in American biography ( The New York Times Book Review ). "Marshall's book is a grand story... where male and female minds and sensibilities were in free, fruitful communion, even if men could exploit this cultural richness far more easily than women." â The Washington Post "Marshall has greatly increased our understanding of these women and their times in one of the best literary biographies to come along in years." â New England Quarterly
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Table of contents
- Title Page
- Contents
- Copyright
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- The Peabody Family Genealogy
- Preface
- Prologue: July 9, 1842
- PART I
- Matriarch
- Legacies
- Seductions
- âBelindaâ
- Flight into Union
- PART II
- âMy Hopes All of Happiness
- Salem Girlhoods
- The Doctor and His Wife
- âHeretical Tendenciesâ
- âBeginning to Liveâ
- PART III
- Lancaster
- Boston
- Maine
- PART IV
- âI Am Always My Own Heroineâ
- âThere Is No Scandal in Brooklineâ
- âLife Is Too Interesting to Me Nowâ
- An Interior Revolution
- PART V
- Dr. Walter
- âMy Soul Steps Forth upon the Paperâ
- âFirst Retreat into Solitudeâ
- âScatterationâ
- PART VI
- Chastity
- Blind Fair
- Cuba Journals
- PART VII
- Temple School Revisited
- Little Waldo, Jones Very, and the âDivinity School Addressâ
- The Sister Years
- PART VIII
- Conversation
- âMr. Ripleyâs Utopiaâ
- Two Funerals and a Wedding
- Epilogue: May 1, 1843
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
- ...
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