Concord-born Henry David Thoreau is among the town’s most quoted writers. One of his best-known sentiments is telling the reader that you should “endeavor to live the life that [you have] imagined.” But not even he could imagine where part of his life’s work would end up one day.

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. 

In 1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family returned to Concord after living abroad for seven years. Now, back in the home they called The Wayside, the Hawthornes would rejoin their circle of literary friends.