Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.
Peabody was also the first known translator into English of the Buddhist scripture the Lotus Sutra, translating a chapter from its French translation in 1844.
Early years
Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts on May 16, 1804. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth ("Eliza") Palmer (1778–1853), and spent her early years in Salem.
Career
After 1822, she resided principally in Boston where she engaged in teaching. She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental movement. During 1834–1835, she worked as assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. After the school closed, Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school and Alcott's philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on German models.
Bookstore
She later opened a book store, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's West Street Bookstore, at her home in Boston (c. 1840–1852).
It was there that the "Conversations" were held, organized by Margaret Fuller. The first of these meetings between women was held on November 6, 1839. Topics for these discussions and debates varied but subjects were as diverse as fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature. Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great questions" facing women: "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by". Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis, and Maria White Lowell.
The 1840 Catalogue of the Foreign Library offered several hundred titles in German, French, Spanish, Italian and English languages, including:
Mrs. John Adams' Letters
Andryane's Memoires d'un Prisonnier de'Etate au Spielberg
Bentley's Miscellany
Bonnycastle's Spanish America
Boston Quarterly Review
Buche's Ruins of Cities
Channing's Slavery
Crocker's Fairy Legends
Dumeril's Elemens des sciences Naturelles
Mrs. Farrar's Howard's Life
Fraser's Magazine
Guarini's Pastor Fido
Haydn et Mozart lettres
Herder's Hebrew Poetry
Junger's Lustspiele
Lanzi's Storia Pittorica
Lessing's Nathan der Weise
Metropolitan Magazine
Miss Mitford's Our Village
Musical Journal
Isaac Taylor's Natural History of Enthusiasm
Sara Coleridge's Phantasmion
Pringle's Residence in South Africa
Revue des deux Mondes
George Sand's André
Madame Necker de Saussure's Notice sur le caractère et les écrits de Mme de Staël Cockton's Valentine Vox, illus. by Cruikshank Vie de Poussin
In 1852, the bookstore and library located at 13–15 West Street in Boston closed down. Members of the Transcendentalist movement had begun to disperse since the mid-1840s and income from the bookstore gradually declined. In 2011, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the building as a Boston Landmark.
The Dial
For a time, Peabody was the business manager of The Dial, the main publication of the Transcendentalists. In 1843, she noted that the journal's income was not covering the cost of printing and that subscriptions totaled just over two hundred. In 1844 the magazine published Peabody's translation of a portion of the Lotus Sutra from French, which was the first English version of a Buddhist scripture. The publication ceased shortly thereafter in April 1844.
Kindergarten
When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to Germany. She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel, particularly after meeting one of his students, Margarethe Schurz, in 1859. In 1867, she visited Germany for the purpose of studying Fröbel's teachings more closely. Through her own kindergarten, and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in American education. She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause. The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens: