Features a narrative and epistolary biography, based upon the correspondence exchanged among the four Emerson brothers and the women who were most important to them. The Emerson brothers' correspondence is the last body of personal writings remaining in manuscript from Ralph Waldo Emerson and his extended family.

The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters is a narrative and epistolary biography drawn from the unpublished lifelong correspondence exchanged among four brothers: Charles Chauncy, Edward Bliss, Ralph Waldo, and William Emerson. This is an extensive correspondence, for not
counting Waldo's previously published letters, there are 768 letters exchanged among the brothers and an additional 483 unpublished letters from the brothers to their aunt Mary Moody Emerson, mother Ruth Haskins Emerson, and Charles' fiancee Elizabeth Hoar, among others.
While lesser figures might have faltered under the burden of having been born an Emerson, with social, political, and ecclesiastic roots extending back to the first century of New England settlement, the brothers' letters reveal that all were invigorated by a shared sense of origin and aspired to
make a significant reputation for themselves. Across six richly developed chapters, the signal events and friendships that shaped the Emerson brothers' lives are strung together to reveal a remarkable family culture. For the first time, The Emerson Brothers treats the illustrious history of the
Emerson family in America as a foreshadowing of expectations the brothers inherited; defines the extent of Waldo's debt to William for his encounter with German Biblical Criticism; develops Charles' and Edward's incredibly promising but ultimately tragic lives; examines the profound emotional and
intellectual impact of Aunt Mary on the younger Emersons; considers the three-year courtship between Charles and Elizabeth Hoar in the context of Waldo's own marriages; and studies the brothers' preoccupation with financial security for "thefamily" (revealing, too, that finances were at least as
powerful a motivation behind Waldo's 1832 resignation from Boston's Second Church as were the death of his first wife and his religious doubts).
This biography approaches Waldo's inner life in a way that makes him a f

This 'biography in letters' supplements the traditional biographical narrative with letters taken from a vast body of correspondence, resulting in a study that refuses to single out the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, providing instead a portrait of an illustrious nineteenth-century family.