“Good writers,” says the author, “write the kind of history good historians can’t or don’t write”
Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody managed to extend the boundaries that cramped the lives of nineteenth-century women. Elizabeth introduced the kindergarten movement to America, Mary developed a new philosophy of mothering that we now take for granted, and Sophia was liberated from invalidism by her passionate love for her husband.
Had Thomas Morton raised his maypole anywhere but next door to the Pilgrims, history and legend probably would have no record of him, his town, or his “lascivious” revels
Walden is here, of course; but so too is Fanny Farmer’s first cookbook
How a champagne picnic on Monument Mountain led to a profound revision of Moby Dick — and disenchantment
The Literary Lights Were Always Bright at
At Brook Farm a handful of gentle Bostonians launched a noble but short-lived experiment in communal living.
Nathaniel was poor and sunk in his solitude; Sophia seemed a hopeless invalid, but a late-flower love gave them at last“a perfect Eden”