With a grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840, she also opened a bookstore that held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations".

[6] Her sisters were Mary, reformer, educator, and pioneer in establishing kindergarten schools and Sophia, painter and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

[4] Elizabeth Peabody operated a school from the family home, providing a classical education for boys and girls.

[7] Peabody developed an interest in philosophy, theology, literature, and history over the years and she spoke ten languages.

Peabody taught from an enlightened perspective, helping her students build character, grow spiritually, and engage in discussions about school work.

[4] In 1825, Peabody and Mary lived in a boarding house on Beacon Hill,[9] where they met a fellow boarder Horace Mann in 1832[4] or 1833.

[11] The sisters were Unitarians who embraced the Transcendentalism movement and supported fellow Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who married Sophia.

[4] In 1833, Mary went to Cuba, where she worked as a governess and looked after her sister Sophia, who went to the country to recuperate from some medical conditions.

They sought to question traditional religious and societal thinking, and develop their political, philosophical, and literary views of the world.

[4] During 1834 and 1835, Peabody worked as an assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston.

[20] When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to Germany.

[citation needed] She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel,[4] particularly after meeting one of his students, Margarethe Schurz, in 1859.

The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens: The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons… will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country.

[23] Peabody purchased foreign journals and books for her business, which was part bookstore, a lending library, and a place for scholars, liberal thinkers, and transcendentalists to meet.

[32] Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great questions" facing women: "What were we born to do?

which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by",[33] Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis,[34] and Maria White Lowell.

In 1844 the magazine published Peabody's translation of a chapter of the Lotus Sutra from French, which was the first English version of a Buddhist scripture.

[41] Peabody published antislavery literature and books, like Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and children's stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne.