Scholarly infighting can get a lot more violent than most outsiders realize, but most of the time, that violence is confined to the printed page. Not so in Concord, Mass., where the arrival of Homer Kelly, a well known expert on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, has stirred up passions concerning a manuscript that may or may not have been written by Henry David Thoreau, one of Emerson's colleagues. Things come to a head during the town's annual re-enactment...

In this engaging biography, Firkins provides a comprehensive account of Emerson's life and a scholarly review of his writings. A narrative filled with colorful excerpts from Emerson's letters, journals, and other writings, as well as anecdotes from Emerson's family and friends, this work brings to life a leading figure of American thought.

A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.

Fuller was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.