Born in Killingly, Connecticut, on September 2, 1853, Emma Curtis was educated at the Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, Connecticut, where she was subsequently a teacher for a time. In July 1874 she married George Hopkins, also a teacher. Of the next few years of her life little is known. In December 1883 she was in Boston and enrolled in a course in Christian Science conducted by Mary Baker Eddy. She joined the staff of the Christian Science Journal shortly thereafter and in September 1884 became editor of the monthly. After about a year she left that post, and by 1886 she had broken with Eddy and settled in Chicago. In 1887 she established the Christian Science Theological Seminary in her home and began taking students. From 1887 to 1897 she published a magazine, Christian Metaphysician, and she was also a frequent lecturer.
Hopkins╒ personal magnetism was widely testified to, and the gentle persuasiveness of her unsystematic theology, which she later called ╥Spiritual Science,╙ drawing on the Bible and other sacred texts, philosophers, and mystics, spread her influence abroad. At length students of hers were conducting classes in San Francisco, Kansas City, Boston, New York, and elsewhere. Among those directly influenced by her were Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, founders of Unity, Malinda E. Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, founders of Divine Science, Annie Rix Militz, founder of The Home of Truth, and Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science. Thus within the loose amalgamation of the many religio-metaphysical groups that were known collectively as the New Thought movement, Emma Hopkins became known as the ╥Teacher of Teachers.╙ In 1920╨1922 she published High Mysticism in 12 small volumes. She spent her later years in New York City, where her students included Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and John Jay Chapman. She died in New York City on April 25, 1925.
