The Ph.D. Program in History

at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

GC Events

March 9 Lecture “‘For the Love of Your Sister’: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and the Emerson Legacy”

Women Writing Women’s Lives

Dorothy O. Helly Works-in-Progress Lecture

“‘For the Love of Your Sister’: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and the Emerson Legacy”

 

Capture 22

 

Monday, March 9, 2015, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Free and open to the public

 

Kate Culkin will discuss her joint biography of the daughters of Lidian Jackson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Never married, Ellen (1839-1909) remained in the family home, Bush, in Concord, Massachusetts, until her death. She began running the house as a teenager and often served as her father’s secretary; as they aged, Ellen was responsible for caring for her parents. Edith (1841-1929) married William Forbes in 1865 and moved to Milton, Massachusetts. She had eight children and a happy, chaotic home, with summers spent at Naushon Island. Despite their differences, the sisters’ lives were closely intertwined. Ellen regularly decamped to Milton to help with her nieces and nephews; Edith intervened when she felt the strain of caring for their parents became too much for Ellen. Their extensive correspondence details their daily lives, their evolving relationship, their experiences with, and as the daughters of, their famous father, and their attempts to preserve and shape his legacy after his death. The photo shows Edith and Ellen as young girls in the 1840s.

CUNY Graduate Center
Room 9204
365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street

Co-sponsors: The Leon Levy Center for Biography, CUNY Graduate Center’s PhD Programs in History and English, MA Program in Liberal Studies, Center for the Study of Women and Society, and Center for the Humanities