Women of the Transcendentalist Club

This book brings together 13 short biographies of women in the Transcendentalist movement. Each chapter details that particular subject’s connection to Transcendentalism, while the book begins with a working definition of the movement. Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson wanted to address transcendence in nature, while Henry David Thoreau focused on self-reliance. While they are familiar names in American history, Elizabeth Peabody, Sarah Freeman Clark, Pauline Hopkins, Edmonia Highgate and the others in this volume deserve to be more familiar to the public too. These women contributed much to the writing and activities of the Transcendentalist movement, and, as such, this volume fills a major gap in existing studies on the movement.