author
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
1804–1894
A lively force in American intellectual life, she helped bring the Transcendentalists into print and later opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Her story connects big ideas about education, childhood, and reform with the everyday work of teaching and publishing.
3 Audiobooks
Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School
by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Sarah Winnemucca's Practical Solution of the Indian Problem A Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbot of the "Christian Union"
by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.
by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
About the author
Born in Billerica, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1804, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody became one of the most energetic cultural figures of 19th-century New England. She worked as a teacher, writer, bookseller, and publisher, and she was closely involved with the Transcendentalist circle in Boston and Concord.
Peabody is especially remembered for two lasting achievements. Early on, she helped support and publish important writers and thinkers, including work connected with Bronson Alcott and the Transcendentalist movement. Later, after studying new ideas about early childhood education, she opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States, becoming a leading advocate for the idea that young children learn through active, meaningful experience.
She died on January 3, 1894, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. What makes her life stand out is the range of it: she was not only present at the center of major literary and philosophical movements, but also deeply committed to improving how children were taught.