Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody of Salem lived their lives in a splendid period of splendid personalities, among which they moved with vigor, charm and brilliance. The great New England names of the middle of the century -- Horace Mann, Emerson, Channing, Hawthorne, Melville - were the names of husband and friend, mentor and neighbor of the three sisters. Sophia, the artist, married Nathaniel Hawthorne, here is the Hawthorne love story for the first time. Elizabeth and Mary charmed Horace Mann, but it was Mary he married. Emerson was Elizabeth's friend, Alcott her adversary till the passing years and Elizabeth's greatness of heart overcame him.

From girlhood the sisters had to make ends meet financially, and they did it by rolling up the parlor rug and teaching little children. Elizabeth at the age of four had resolved to spend her leisure in reading; Mary, school out, liked to play, or to sing; Sophia, brought up by a mother who decided she was an "invalid," only after her marriage was allowed to become the happy, normal girl she really was. The artists Elizabeth brought to meet Sophia were impressed with her talent, and she did her share to help Lizzie work for her independence by copying oil paintings for Boston parlors, though she longed to create her own landscapes.

Elizabeth Peabody, who ran a one-woman publishing house, and wrote transcendentalist