Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family HistoryOxford University Press, 1998 M02 26 - 400 pages Mary Moody Emerson has long been a New England legend, the "eccentric Calvinist aunt" of Ralph Waldo Emerson, wearing a death-shroud as her daily garment. This exciting new study, based on the first reading of all her known letters and diaries, reveals a complex human voice and powerful forerunner of American Transcendentalism. From the years of her famous nephew's infancy, in both private and published writings, she celebrated independence, solitude in nature, and inward communion with God. Mary Moody Emerson inherited both resources and constraints from her family, a lineage of Massachusetts ministers who had earlier practiced spiritual awakening and political resistance against England. Cole discovers a previously unexamined Emerson tradition of fervent piety in the ancestors' own writing and Mary's preservation of their memory. She also examines the position of a woman in this patriarchal family. Barred from the pulpit and university by her sex, she also refused marriage to become a reader, writer, and religious seeker. Cole's biography explores this reading and writing as both a woman's vocation and a gift to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Helping to raise her nephews after their father's death, Mary Moody Emerson urged Waldo the college student to seek solitude in nature and become a divine poet. Cole's pioneering study, tracing crucial lines of influence from Mary Emerson's heretofore unknown texts to her nephew's major works, establishes a fresh and vital source for a central American literary tradition. |
Other editions - View all
Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History Phyllis Cole Limited preview - 1998 |
Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History Phyllis Cole Limited preview - 2002 |
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Alden Bradford Ripley Almanack amidst Ancestors asked Boston brother Bulkeley CFPL Charles Charles Chauncy Christian church Concord conversation Daniel Bliss daughter death declared Diaries and Letters divine Edward Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Elizabeth Peabody Ellen England Ezra Ripley Family Additional Papers father female Gage Family Additional Hannah Harvard Haskins heaven History of Waterford intellectual Joseph Emerson journal July later lecture Letters of MME Lidian live Malden Manse Mary Moody Emerson Mary Wilder White Mary wrote Mary's Massachusetts Millerite mind minister ministry Minutemen MME-EH Monthly Anthology mother nature nephew never Newburyport Peabody Phebe Bliss preached Puritan quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson Rebecca recorded religion religious Ruth Samuel Moody Sarah Alden Bradford Sarah Bradford Schalkwyck Sept sermon sister Society solitude soul spirit theological thought town University Press Vale Waterford Whitefield William Emerson woman women writing York young
Popular passages
Page 3 - England, and marks the precise time when the power of the old creed yielded to the influence of modern science and humanity. I have found that I could only bring you this portrait by selections from the diary of my heroine, premising a sketch of her time and place.