Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought

While the names of Mary Baker Eddy, Ernest Holmes and Charles Fillmore are familiar to scholars of Christian Science and New Thought, the mention of Emma Curtis Hopkins is likely to elicit some blank stares. Yet this woman, argues Gail M. Harvey in Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought, was something of a mother to the New Thought movement, evidenced by the fact that she taught both Holmes and Fillmore. As a biography, Harvey's book can be dry and dissertation-like, and she is sometimes too eager to cast Hopkins as an early feminist. Still, a study of this overlooked foremother of American religious history is long overdue and fills an important void. ( May)