“Emerson’s Daughters" Lecture with author, Kate Culkin

“Emerson’s Daughters: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes and Their Legacy” with author Kate Culkin

Thursday, May 21, 2026

Richard I. Burnham Resource Center | 82 Touro Street, Newport

Admission $15 – $20 per person | *Student Discounts now available $10 with valid student ID

6:30 to 7:30 PM; doors open at 5:30 PM for a complimentary reception

As part of an ongoing attempt to uncover women’s history, this book explores the significance of the Emerson daughters in their father’s success as a poet, philosopher, and Transcendentalist leader. As Culkin writes, “[Ralph Waldo Emerson’s] ability to express such ideas in print and tour the country to deliver them in person was dependent on his daughter’s labor as housekeepers, secretaries, accountants, and hostesses to the stream of visitors who came to speak to the ‘great man.’”

Emerson first called on his daughters for support in their adolescence, handing them the responsibility of running the house. As the girls grew older, they took on the duties of preserving family transcripts, contributing to their father’s writing, and, in Emerson’s later years, editing his work.

Although the two women made notable contributions to their father’s accomplishments, Culkin notes that “the significance of Ellen’s and Edith’s lives goes beyond the support they gave their famous father.” Emerson’s Daughters also examines the letters written by the women to one another, and the stories captured in their correspondence. Journal letters, detailed logs of their days, and business letters—evidence of a partnership—were sent by Ellen and Edith, capturing social and cultural history.

Culkin calls her work “a biography of correspondence,” outlining Ellen and Edith’s importance in Transcendentalism, literature, and nineteenth-century history through their words to one another, a glimpse into the storied lives of the women behind Ralph Waldo Emerson.