ABSTRACT
The Aesthetic Papers are intended to provide new, integrating visions of a variety of subjects, not only artistic, with a view to guiding and renovating public opinion through a series of theoretical and practical explorations of problematic issues of the time. It was an educational project for adults intended to spread some of the principles of Transcendentalism, especially its concern with social reform, but at the same time it was a call for a renewed understanding of religion and a sense of unity and integration. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's Aesthetic Papers was a short-lived attempt to create a serial publication that would translate the spirit of Transcendentalist reform into a series of practical readings that would spread its philosophy to a general audience. The application of many of the educational ideals of Transcendentalism remained an abstract possibility, and the absence of an ultimately religious import in many of its representatives did not help her project.
