ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY (16 May 1804-3 January 1894), friend and associate of the leading figures in the Transcendentalist movement, is remembered for her various educational interests, for her publication of the Dial (1842-1843) and Aesthetic Papers (1849), and for her founding of the West Street Book Shop and publishing house (1840-1850), which became the Boston gathering place for intellectuals and reformers.

Born in Billerica, Massachusetts, she was the oldest of seven children of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician and pioneer dentist, and Elizabeth Palmer, schoolteacher, both of whom came from solidly established New England families. After being educated in her mother's home school, Peabody herself began her career as a teacher at the age of sixteen, when the family had moved to Lancaster in the hope of improving her father's practice. She shared her responsibilities with her sister Mary, the future Mrs. Horace Mann, and took a lively, if somewhat imperious, interest...