The Book Shop of Elizabeth Peabody (1804-94) is best known as the location of the 1839-44 Conversations led by Margaret Fuller (1810-50), which helped crystallize New England Transcendentalism, a movement encouraging the perfection of each individual. A regular participant in these Conversations was philosopher and activist Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney (1824-1904) who, at age 16, was the youngest participant. Fuller received an intense classical education from her father and became known as an intellectual prodigy. Working with Ralph Waldo Emerson and others, she edited the transcendentalist journal The Dial and was the first woman journalist for the New York Tribune. Her essay Woman in the Nineteenth Century is an American feminist classic. Elizabeth Peabody, who was also a Transcendentalist, founded American kindergartens and here at the Book Shop became the first woman publisher in Boston. Her younger sisters were each married in the family parlor behind the Book Shop. Sophia Peabody (1809-71), an artist, married author Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mary Peabody (1806-87), an educator, married Horace Mann, considered to be the father of American public education.
