The first full account of the "American Brontës" focuses on Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody--three sisters who were essential to American Romanticism as editors, writers, reformers, and ground-breaking thinkers. 25,000 first printing.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

Biographies & Memoirs

Marshall, Megan

Community & Culture

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

The Cost of Living: Women and the New Fear of Intimacy

The cost of loving: Women and the new fear of intimacy

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

PUTNAM

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography
"Thoroughly absorbing, lively . . . Fuller, so misunderstood in life, richly deserves the nuanced, compassionate portrait Marshall paints." — Boston Globe
Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall recounts the trailblazing life of Margaret Fuller: Thoreau’s first editor, Emerson’s close friend, daring war correspondent, tragic heroine. After her untimely death in a shipwreck off Fire Island, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by scandal. Marshall’s inspired narrative brings her back to indelible life.
Whether detailing her front-page New-York Tribune editorials against poor conditions in the city’s prisons and mental hospitals, or illuminating her late-in-life hunger for passionate experience—including a secret affair with a young officer in the Roman Guard—Marshall’s biography gives the most thorough and compassionate view of an extraordinary woman. No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving.
“Megan Marshall’s brilliant Margaret Fuller brings us as close as we are ever likely to get to this astonishing creature. She rushes out at us from her nineteenth century, always several steps ahead, inspiring, heartbreaking, magnificent.” — Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
"Shaping her narrative like a novel, Marshall brings the reader as close as possible to Fuller’s inner life and conveys the inspirational power she has achieved for several generations of women." — New Republic

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

Mariner Books

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a brilliantly rendered life of one of our most admired American poets Since her death in 1979, Elizabeth Bishop, who published only one hundred poems in her lifetime, has become one of America’s best-loved poets. And yet—painfully shy and living out of public view in Key West and Brazil, among other hideaways—she has never been seen so fully as a woman and an artist. Megan Marshall makes incisive and moving use of a newly discovered cache of Bishop’s letters—to her psychiatrist and to three of her lovers—to reveal a much darker childhood than has been known, a secret affair, and the last chapter of her passionate romance with the Brazilian modernist designer Lota de Macedo Soares. These elements of Bishop’s life, along with her friendships with poets Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, are brought to life with novelistic intensity. And by alternating the narrative line of biography with brief passages of memoir, Marshall, who studied with Bishop in her storied 1970s poetry workshop at Harvard, offers the reader a compelling glimpse of the ways poetry and biography, subject and biographer, are entwined. Finally, in this riveting portrait of a life lived for—and saved by—art, Marshall captures the enduring magic of Bishop’s creative achievement.

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

Arts & Literature

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography From an early age, Margaret Fuller provoked and dazzled New England’s intellectual elite. Her famous Conversations changed women’s sense of how they could think and live; her editorship of the Transcendentalist literary journal the Dial shaped American Romanticism. Now, Megan Marshall, whose acclaimed The Peabody Sisters “discovered” three fascinating women, has done it again: no biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving. Marshall tells the story of how Fuller, tired of Boston, accepted Horace Greeley’s offer to be the New-York Tribune’s front-page columnist. The move unleashed a crusading concern for the urban poor and the plight of prostitutes, and a late-in-life hunger for passionate experience. In Italy as a foreign correspondent, Fuller took a secret lover, a young officer in the Roman Guard; she wrote dispatches on the brutal 1849 Siege of Rome; and she gave birth to a son. Yet, when all three died in a shipwreck off Fire Island shortly after Fuller’s fortieth birthday, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by tragedy and scandal. Marshall’s inspired account brings an American heroine back to indelible life.

History

After Lives: A Poignant Memoir Collection That Examines Biographies as a Genre, Perfect for Winter 2025, Reflect on Life's Lessons Through Compelling Stories

Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways our American Brontes. The story of these remarkable sisters — and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day — has never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall's monumental biograpy brings the era of creative ferment known as American Romanticism to new life. Elizabeth, the oldest sister, was a mind-on-fire thinker. A powerful influence on the great writers of the era — Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau among them — she also published some of their earliest works. It was Elizabeth who prodded these newly minted Transcendentalists away from Emerson's individualism and toward a greater connection to others. Mary was a determined and passionate reformer who finally found her soul mate in the great educator Horace Mann. The frail Sophia was a painter who won the admiration of the preeminent society artists of the day. She married Nathaniel Hawthorne — but not before Hawthorne threw the delicate dynamics among the sisters into disarray. Marshall focuses on the moment when the Peabody sisters made their indelible mark on history. Her unprecedented research into these lives uncovered thousands of letters never read before as well as other previously unmined original sources. The Peabody Sisters casts new light on a legendary American era. Its publication is destined to become an event in American biography. 
This book is highly recommended for students and reading groups interested in American history, American literature, and women's studies. It is a wonderful look into 19th-century life.

“A shapely experiment, mixing memoir with biography . . . [Elizabeth Bishop] fuses sympathy with intelligence, sending us back to Bishop’s marvelous poems.” — Wall Street Journal Since her death in 1979, Elizabeth Bishop, who published only one hundred poems in her lifetime, has become one of America’s most revered poets. And yet she has never been fully understood as a woman and artist. Megan Marshall makes incisive and moving use of a newly discovered cache of Bishop’s letters to reveal a much darker childhood than has been known, a secret affair, and the last chapter of her passionate romance with Brazilian modernist designer Lota de Macedo Soares. By alternating the narrative line of biography with brief passages of memoir, Megan Marshall, who studied with Bishop in her storied 1970s poetry workshop at Harvard, offers the reader an original and compelling glimpse of the ways poetry and biography, subject and biographer, are entwined. “Marshall is a skilled reader who points out the telling echoes between Bishop’s published and private writing. Her account is enriched by a cache of revelatory, recently discovered documents . . . Marshall’s narrative is smooth and brisk: an impressive feat.” — New York Times Book Review

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography"Thoroughly absorbing, lively...Fuller, so misunderstood in life, richly deserves the nuanced, compassionate portrait Marshall paints." —Boston GlobePulitzer Prize finalist Megan Marshall recounts the trailblazing life of Margaret Fuller: Thoreau’s first editor, Emerson’s close friend, daring war correspondent, tragic heroine. After her untimely death in a shipwreck off Fire Island, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by scandal. Marshall’s inspired narrative brings her back to indelible life. Whether detailing her front-page New-York Tribune editorials against poor conditions in the city’s prisons and mental hospitals, or illuminating her late-in-life hunger for passionate experience—including a secret affair with a young officer in the Roman Guard—Marshall’s biography gives the most thorough and compassionate view of an extraordinary woman. No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving."Megan Marshall’s brilliant Margaret Fuller brings us as close as we are ever likely to get to this astonishing creature. She rushes out at us from her nineteenth century, always several steps ahead, inspiring, heartbreaking, magnificent." —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity"Shaping her narrative like a novel, Marshall brings the reader as close as possible to Fuller’s inner life and conveys the inspirational power she has achieved for several generations of women." —New Republic

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's Record of a School is a collection of notes on Bronson Alcott's dialogues with his students at the Temple School of Boston. It was first published in 1835. In 1836, after half of the first printing of 1,000 was destroyed by fire, a second edition, with a new preface, was printed. The book received considerable attention in the New York press, which was unusual considering that it was a small volume about a tiny school. By 1838, the school was shut down after Bronson Alcott had shocked Boston with a subsequent publication about the school. However, the importance of the Temple School, Bronson Alcott, and his methods has been acknowledged by generations of educators, and the book is the remaining record of the school. Contains an informative introduction by Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters.

Record of a School (Applewood Books)

Americas

Applewood Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marshall, Megan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Marshall, Megan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marshall, Megan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

The cost of loving: Women and the new fear of intimacy

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

After Lives: A Poignant Memoir Collection That Examines Biographies as a Genre, Perfect for Winter 2025, Reflect on Life's Lessons Through Compelling Stories

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

Record of a School (Applewood Books)