Conversations Then and Now: Recovering Transcendentalist Women

ABSTRACT

A generation of recovery work has made possible the ongoing interpretation of American transcendentalism as a culture shaped by women as well as men. Phyllis Cole describes her work on Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller, from manuscript to broad reframing. This has been a collaborative effort especially made possible by the author societies of the American Literature Association, where she has taken part in conversation that, as Mary Moody Emerson commented, “makes the soul.”