In her engaging biography, Emerson’s Daughters, Kate Culkin brings out of the shadows two of “Concord’s favorite daughters,” Ellen and Edith, who had a “sisterhood built on correspondence,” and whose contributions have been all but lost until now. Culkin takes us inside the dynamics of the Emerson family, so often shaped by family needs, sickness, faith, and loss. We are brought face to face with critical issues of the 19th century, including abolition, religion, and women’s suffrage; topics that sometimes divided even the sisters. Culkin weaves Emerson family history with the history of the time with biographical exactitude.
In this timely portrait of a family, town, and era, Culkin paints a multilayered picture of a politically and socially tense era where divisions threatened to pull families and communities apart. By the late 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson was so highly revered, according to Len Gougeon, that his “testament would provide the way, the truth, and the light that would guide the nation’s destiny in the 20th century.” This was a time when sons and daughters who had inherited the America their forefathers fought for were tasked with navigating a new cultural era. However, as Culkin writes, “Americans had very different opinions about what that way was.”
Emerson’s Daughters explores how other members of the Emerson household were influential in shaping Waldo’s views, including his wife, Lidian Emerson. We are privy to how the Forbes and Emerson families became inextricably linked together, principally through Edith’s happy marriage to William Forbes. We learn of Edith planting gardens wherever she lived, being a mother to eight children, and later writing and publishing children’s books. Meanwhile, older sister Ellen felt the pull to caregiving at home for her mother and, later, her father. Yet she was also a critical player in editing and compiling her father’s lectures into cogent essays for publication as his memory declined, being involved with their local church, and taking up the role of “family historian.”
The sisters traveled with their father, family, friends, or independently, and readers are taken on several transcontinental trips through the sisters’ letters. Yet despite the sweeping joy produced from overseas travel, Culkin quotes Ellen saying, “The advantage of living in Concord seems to be so very great that I think there is no place to be compared to it.”
Through Culkin’s careful extraction from letters, we see both Ellen and Edith gaining confidence as women, writers, and as individuals beyond their roles connected to men. We learn of several local momentous events, including the inauguration of the Concord Free Public Library, as well as Edith’s critical role in preserving Walden Pond, a site associated with both Emerson and Thoreau.
The sisters, like the two elegant pillars at the entry of the Emerson household, are shown to have been significant in upholding the weight of the Emerson legacy. Kate Culkin’s biography is a resource for scholars and curious readers alike, showcasing how the Emerson women were integral contributors to Concord’s literary and social history.