Emerson's Daughters: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and Their Family Legacy - Hardcover

by Kate Culkin (Author)

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.

Author Biography

KATE CULKIN is professor of history at Bronx Community College and teaches research methods in biography and memoir in the biography and memoir master's program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is author of Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography.