Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne

About this book

"This book illuminates Elizabeth Hawthorne's early life; the trauma caused for sister and brother by the death of their father; her and her brother's education; and the tensions the two children experienced when they moved in with their mother's family, the wealthier Mannings, instead of the poorer though socially more venerable Hawthornes, following their father's death. The letters portray Elizabeth's constrained relationship with Nathaniel's wife, Sophia Peabody, and counter Sophia's portrayal of her sister-in-law as a recluse, oddity, and "queer scribbler."" "The letters also reveal Elizabeth Hawthorne's tremendous gifts as a thinker, correspondent, and essayist, her interests in foreign languages and a lifelong drive toward self-edification in many fields, and her extraordinary relationship with Nathaniel. As a sibling and fellow authors, they were sometimes lovingly codependent and sometimes competitive. Finally, her writing reveals the larger worlds of politics, war, the literary landscape, class, family life, and the freedoms and constraints of a woman's role, all by a heretofore understudied figure."--BOOK JACKET.