This was just awesome. The Peabody sisters were in the thick of intellectual life in New England (specifically the Boston area) in the first half of the 19th century. They knew all kinds of people who were famous or went on to be famous - one of them married Nathaniel Hawthorne and another married Horace Mann. One of them foreshadowed a lot of what Emerson made famous in his essays. And yet no one has ever heard of them.

The best parts of this book for me were about the sisters themselves and their interactions with each other. If you have siblings, you know that the connections and inner workings of that relationship are incredibly fraught and complex and difficult - sometimes all at once. This book really brought that to life for me.

Also, I felt a real kinship with these women - they were all way way ahead of their time. It's just incredible what they were able to accomplish when you consider the limitations put on women in those days.

It's a long book, but a fairly quick read anyway ( )

Heavily detailed history of the three sisters who inspired some of the great romantics - Nathaniel Hawthorne for one. ( )

An excellent, intelligent rendering of life in the Northeastern U.S., post-Revolutionary War/pre-Civil War. Although the book focuses on the lives of the talented Peabody Sisters (middle sister Mary was a teacher and essayist who married and influenced education innovator Horace Mann, youngest sister Sophia was an artist who married and served as muse to Nathaniel Hawthorne) it's through oldest sister Elizabeth--the glue, fulcrum and primary breadwinner of the Peabody family--that we come to understand the societal limits placed on women of that era. Elizabeth was a brilliant, disciplined thinker who taught and founded groundbreaking schools, wrote essays and books, and established and ran a Boston-based bookstore and small publishing house. Yet her primary purpose was in prodding, nurturing and supporting men who saw the world as she did: men such as Mann, Hawthorne (she was one of his earliest publishers, and found for him the infamous Customs House job, which is described in the beginning of The Scarlett Letter), Emerson, the Reverend Ellery Channing and Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson.

I have some minor quibbles. Margaret Fuller (editor and cofounder, with Emerson, of the transcendental journal "The Dial") appears a couple of times in the book before we are told who she is and her relationship with Elizabeth Peabody is never really explored. Also, the book ends prematurely with Mary and Sophia's marriages to their more-famous husbands (Elizabeth never married), which leads me to hope that a part II is in the works. ( )

A combined biography of Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody. Sophia married Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mary married Horace Mann (educator). I really enjoyed it; it had a fun combination of literary info and gossip. It was a good way to tell a biography. I even read all the notes.
I know a few things about the 19th c. and boring dead white males. It's nice to be reaffirmed in my belief that behind every one of them is a once vibrant dead white woman.
I did not know that Eliz. Peabody was such an intellectual. I find it not surprising at all to learn that R. Waldo Emerson lifted her ideas for his sermons (I never have liked him) and also William Ellery Channing. I was also not aware of her own ideas about transcendetalism and how foresighted and on the cutting edge she was.
The stuff about Hawthorne was great. I love that he romanced both Elizabeth and Sophia and could not entirely give up on E.P. because she was good for his career. Looks like she was good for the careers of lots of people. It's too bad Poe didn't set up shop in Boston or Salem; she could have found him a job or patrons as she did for Hawthorne.
Very readable. I recommend it. ( )

I received this as a Christmas present. I have only begun to read it, but so far I find it fascinating.