The first letters in Volume I are those of a seven-year-old child; the last were written by an uncommonly well-educated woman ready for a larger challenge than schoolteaching could offer her. The letters tell the story of her work with Amos Bronson Alcott and his experimental Temple School, of the early days of her friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, of the beginnings of her life as a writer, and of her important work as translator and critic of Goethe.