A01=Kate Culkin
American imperialism
American imperialism cultural context
American literary families
archival letters and correspondence studies
archival research
Author_Kate Culkin
biography
biography of overlooked women
biography rooted in letters
caregiving and cultural production
caregiving in literary households
caretaking
Category=DNB
Category=DNBL
Category=DS
Category=DSBF
Category=JBSF1
Civil War
Civil War era families
Concord
Concord literary circle
Concord Massachusetts history
Concord Transcendentalist community
correspondence
daily life
daughters of famous thinkers
domestic intellectual partnerships
elite Boston families
Emerson descendants in Milton
Emerson family correspondence
Emerson family legacy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family life
family networks in intellectual history
gender roles in nineteenth century America
gendered divisions of labor
hidden contributions to male genius
hidden female influence in literature
intellectual women in New England
letters
Lidian Jackson
Massachusetts
mothering and intellectual life
New England domestic history
nineteenth century American biography
nineteenth century sisterhood
nineteenth century women's education
nineteenth century women's voices
primary sources
private lives of public figures
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson household
sibling partnership studies
sisterhood
sisterhood in American letters
suffrage
Transcendentalism
transcendentalist women writers
travel
women and intellectual labor
women as editors and secretaries
women balancing family and scholarship
women historians' discoveries
women preserving literary reputations
women shaping cultural memory
women shaping historical memory
women traveling abroad in the 1800s
women's history
women's history archival research
women's impact on Transcendentalism
women's intellectual agency
women’s history
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348777
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 Jul 2025
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Ellen Tucker Emerson and Edith Emerson Forbes, the daughters of Lidian Jackson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, grew up in the heart of Concord, Massachusetts’s famed literary community. In a culture that celebrated self-reliance, Ellen and Edith formed a partnership that only strengthened as their paths diverged, with Ellen remaining in the family home and Edith marrying William Forbes, moving to Milton, Massachusetts, and having eight children. The partnership allowed them to tend to the demands and opportunities created by their father’s career, including serving as his secretaries and editors, and helped them shape his posthumous image. It also enabled them to adapt to historical developments stretching from the Civil War to American imperialism as well as personal ones, including Edith’s growing family and travel and study abroad, and inevitable ones brought on by the aging processes of their parents and themselves.
Emerson’s Daughters is a biography of a sisterhood, the first full-length study of Ellen’s and Edith’s lives. Building on archival research into the extensive correspondence between the sisters, it adds to the growing body of work on women’s contribution to Transcendentalism while opening a window onto the rich, and understudied, family life of the “Sage of Concord.”
Emerson’s Daughters is a biography of a sisterhood, the first full-length study of Ellen’s and Edith’s lives. Building on archival research into the extensive correspondence between the sisters, it adds to the growing body of work on women’s contribution to Transcendentalism while opening a window onto the rich, and understudied, family life of the “Sage of Concord.”
Kate Culkin is professor of history at Bronx Community College. She is author of Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography and an associate editor of the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and outlets including New England Quarterly, New York Archives, and Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.
