The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition
FAIN: RQ-50719-13
Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA 16802-1503)
Sandra H. Petrulionis (Project Director: December 2012 to May 2018)
Noelle A. Baker (Co Project Director: December 2012 to May 2018)
Preparation for digital publication of the final thirty-six folders of the Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863), American scholar and aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson. (36 months)
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the eve of the American Revolution, Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) was a self-educated scholar and author whose intellectual production bridges the 18th and 19th centuries. Most widely known as the brilliant aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Emerson anticipated her nephew's work and published her own pseudonymous essays; her most significant literary production is a series of unpublished manuscripts she called "Almanacks" (c. 1804-1855). Spanning over 50 years and 1,000 pages, these documents feature characteristics of the spiritual diary, commonplace book, and epistolary essay and reflect the ways in which early American women adapted traditionally "masculine" genres and subject matter, demonstrated their literary artistry, and engaged in emerging public spheres. The editors are collaborating with the Brown University Women Writers Project to publish a digital edition of the complete Almanacks in its subscription database, Women Writers online.
Associated Products
“Mary Moody Emerson’s Almanacks: How Digital Horizons Advance Teaching and Research" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Mary Moody Emerson’s Almanacks: How Digital Horizons Advance Teaching and Research"
Author: Noelle A. Baker and Sandra H. Petrulionis
Abstract: This presentation to a panel sponsored by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society at the annual conference of the American Literature Association focused on two of the eventual features of our digital edition that we expect to enrich scholarship and teaching: 1) the ability to view the text to display substantive differences between Waldo’s transcriptions of Mary’s Almanacks and her original text; and 2) the ability to create multiple page orders, both within a given folder and across multiple fascicles, thereby enabling readers to create multiple new “editions” of the Almanacks.
Date: 5/21/15
“Women Reading, Women Writing: Mary Moody Emerson and Transatlantic Connections.” “Intercontinental Cross-Currents: Women’s (Net-)Works across Europe and the Americas (1776-1939)" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Women Reading, Women Writing: Mary Moody Emerson and Transatlantic Connections.” “Intercontinental Cross-Currents: Women’s (Net-)Works across Europe and the Americas (1776-1939)"
Author: Noelle A. Baker and Sandra H. Petrulionis
Abstract: Presentation at the first conference of International Cross-Currents, held at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
Born in Concord, Massachusetts on the eve of the American Revolution, Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) was a self-educated scholar and author who is most widely known as the brilliant aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In her writings, Mary Emerson anticipated her nephew’s work and published her own pseudonymous essays. Her most significant literary accomplishment, however, is a series of unpublished manuscripts she called “Almanacks” (c. 1804-1855). Spanning over fifty years and one thousand pages, these documents feature characteristics of the spiritual diary, commonplace book, and epistolary essay and demonstrate the ways in which early American women adapted traditionally “masculine” genres and subject matter, demonstrated their literary artistry, and engaged in emerging public spheres.
Date: 12/07/2013
Primary URL:
http://www.crosscurrents.uni-halle.de/archive/crosscurrents_2013/Primary URL Description: Intercontinental Cross-Currents: Women's (Net-) Works across Europe and the Americas (1776-1939)
"Mary Moody Emerson's 1807 Almanack: Property Ownership and the Single Woman" (Article)Title: "Mary Moody Emerson's 1807 Almanack: Property Ownership and the Single Woman"
Author: Jennifer Cowfer and Anne Maucieri
Abstract: Over the course of several days in January 1807, Mary Moody Emerson's Almanack encapsulates a central period of her adult development, as she documents in almost painstaking detail her “hop[ing] & struggl[ing]” for “nothing but nearer conformity to [God].” Residing occasionally in Malden and traveling frequently throughout Massachusetts at this time to care for relatives, a thirty-two year old Emerson records her mixed feelings about the sale of the Malden estate, which she co-owned, and where she grew up with her surrogate parents, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan Sargeant. In January 1807, Emerson; her uncle, Samuel Waite, Ruth's second husband; and her mentally unstable, widowed aunt, Rebecca Brintnall, sell this property, a transaction that causes Emerson to wrestle with, in her view, its unfair terms. Poignantly, and throughout this Almanack, Emerson vacillates between competing secular and religious tensions brought to bear by this property sale ––on the one hand, between her natural desire, especially as a single woman, for worldly security; and on the other, her enduring pursuit of a charitable Christian sensibility.
Year: 2015
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Emerson Society Papers
Publisher: Emerson Society
"Family" (Book Section)Title: "Family"
Author: Noelle A. Baker
Editor: Wesley T. Mott
Abstract: What, for Ralph Waldo Emerson, constitutes “family”? It is, for one, a historical sense of ancestry embodied in two centuries of New England ministers with high-minded ethics – and the aunt who invoked them, Mary Moody Emerson. It is also fraternal bonding forged in bereavement, since brothers Edward, Charles, and Bulkeley suffered some form of the family’s “constitutional calamity”: ambition, tuberculosis, and mental instability (JMN 3:137). The death in 1831 of first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, followed in succession in 1836 and 1842 by the deaths of brother Charles and Waldo, cherished son from a second marriage, devastated Emerson. These events may be credited in part for his ongoing attempt to theorize, rather than simply experience, ethical human relations, including friendship.
Year: 2014
Primary URL:
http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=fsapp1-55027-i8q438c5-jzyzjs:entitypagenum=3:0:recno=3:resultset=1:format=FI:next=html/record.html:bad=error/badfetch.html:entitytoprecno=3:entitycurrecno=3Primary URL Description: World Cat
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: Emerson in Context
ISBN: 978-1-107-0280
The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)Title: The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition
Author: Noelle A. Baker
Author: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
Abstract: Our digital edition of Mary Emerson’s Almanacks is being published in phases. The edition adheres to editorial reporting standards established by the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions and is conformant with TEI Guidelines for XML encoding. A foundational text in Women Writers Online—representing the collection’s first manuscript series—The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson complements the works of other women writers in the database, which reaches an international audience of scholars, students, and the general public at nearly 220 subscribing institutions, with free research access to the source data granted on request. Emerson’s Almanacks contribute significantly to women’s intellectual history; document the extent to which early American women embraced transatlantic culture; and evidence the ways in which Emerson anticipates signal aspects of Transcendentalism, the antebellum movement for which her nephew is considered the primary spokesman. Our edition demonstrates that in adopting self-development as a conduct of life, Emerson serves as one of the earliest illustrations of an emerging critical reconsideration of Transcendentalism, envisaged through women. Highlighting the manuscripts’ material culture, the edition demonstrates Emerson's ongoing engagement in manuscript circulation, generic experimentation, social authorship, and self-cultivation, attributes that anticipate the similar but more radical experiments of Emily Dickinson; it also provides specific examples of the modes of intellectual transmission between Mary and Waldo Emerson.
Year: 2016
Primary URL:
http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/wwo/Primary URL Description: "Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible. The range of genres and topics covered makes it a truly remarkable resource for teaching and research, providing an unparalleled view of women’s literate culture in the early modern period."
Secondary URL:
http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/research/projects/manuscripts/emerson/index.htmlSecondary URL Description: "Since 2007 the Women Writers Project has been collaborating with the editors of The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition, Noelle A. Baker and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, on an experimental electronic edition of the Almanacks. Because of the length and complexity of these manuscripts, it offers a challenging test case for the WWP as we think through issues of display, reading practice, the representation of documentary materiality, and the development of editorial practice for manuscripts to be published within WWO. As a first step in these experiments, we have created a prototype display of a few Almanack folders, available below, to explore and demonstrate some of the features we envision. As we build the next version of the main WWO interface, these experiments will form the basis of a manuscript-specific interface that can be extended to other manuscript publications in WWO."
Access Model: Six volumes are open access in a prototype site; the other six volumes are subscription only
"A Lady of Much Wit and Genius": Mary Moody Emerson in Concord (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: "A Lady of Much Wit and Genius": Mary Moody Emerson in Concord
Abstract: "Born in Concord, Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) grew up in near by Malden, Massachusetts, but her connection to her native town remained close throughout her life. The aunt of Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Emerson was a brilliant intellectual in her own right. Not only did Bronson Alcott and Henry Thoreau compliment her "wit and genius," but Henry Thoreau also called Emerson at age eighty-one "the youngest person in Concord." Mary Emerson's most significant writings are a series of unpublished manuscript journals, which she kept for over half a century. In this talk, Sandra Petrulionis will discuss her collaboration with Noelle Baker to produce a digital edition of these writings, Mary Emerson's long history with Concord, and her overall significance to American women's intellectual history."
Author: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
Date: 07/26/16
Location: Concord Museum, Concord Massachusetts
Primary URL:
http://www.concordmuseum.org/calendar.phpPrimary URL Description: Concord Museum calendar of events