as if I should fly to be up and doing. I have always determined not to force the creative power but wait till it mastered me and now I feel as if the time had come and such freedom and revelry of spirit does it bring!}} Sophia Hawthorne's artistic endeavors were hampered not only by the restrictive expectations placed upon women of the Victorian era, but also due to the objections of her husband who attempted to "colonize Sophia's talents, allowing her to hold the brush in order to paint his inner life rather than her own." Sophia briefly studied sculpture with Shobal Vail Clevenger and produced a bas-relief medallion portrait of her dying brother George Peabody and, shortly thereafter, a similar work of Ralph Waldo Emerson's dead brother Charles. Later, she tutored her daughter Rose in art. During their courtship, Sophia created an illustration for Nathaniel's tale "The Gentle Boy". After completing it, Sophia asked him if it looked like the main character, Ilbrahim. He answered, "He will never look otherwise to me". The story was republished with Sophia's illustration as The Gentle Boy: A Thrice Told Tale in December 1838, subsidized by a Salem hostess named Susan Burley. The book was dedicated to Sophia, inscribed: "To Miss Sophia A. Peabody, this little tale, to which her kindred art has given value, is respectfully inscribed by the author". When Nathaniel moved to Boston, Sophia painted two landscapes to decorate his apartment. On January 2, 1840, he wrote to her, "You cannot think how much delight those pictures are going to give me... I never owned a picture in my life." He later asked her to illustrate a reissue of his children's book Grandfather's Chair. Notes References Cheever, Susan. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Detroit: Thorndike Press, 2006. Large print edition. . Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. . McFarland, Philip: Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2004: . Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. . Schriber, Mary Suzanne. Writing Home: American Women Abroad, 1830-1920. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. . Wineapple,