Megan Marshall
{{short description|American scholar, writer, and biographer (born 1954)}}
{{BLP sources|date=March 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2019}}
Megan Marshall (born June 8, 1954) is an American scholar, writer, and biographer.
Her first biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) earned her a place as a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Her second biography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013) is an account of Margaret Fuller, the 19th-century author, journalist, and women's rights advocate who died in a shipwreck off New York's Fire Island. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Biography
Marshall was born in Oakland, California. Her mother was a book designer; her father worked in city government. Marshall came East to attend Bennington College as a literature and music major, but she left college without finishing and later enrolled at Harvard College, where she studied with poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Fitzgerald, and Jane Shore. She earned a BA degree in 1977 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Before turning to writing, Marshall worked in the publishing industry and taught. From 1980 to 2007, she was married to author John Sedgwick.
Her first book, published in 1984, was The Cost of Loving: Women and the New Fear of Intimacy, which examines the impact of the feminist movement on its followers.
Marshall is particularly interested in uncovering and exploring the lives of women who have been forgotten by traditional historians and biographers.
Supported by grants and teaching, she worked on the book The Peabody Sisters for nearly 20 years, reading original letters and documents as well as delving into the newspapers and literature of the era. The book focused on the lives of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, and Sophia Hawthorne. Her second biography is Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.
In a conversation in Radcliffe Magazine with author Margot Livesey, Marshall spoke about the connection between the two biographies: "I wrote The Peabody Sisters partly to prove that the New England Transcendentalists included other brilliant women besides Fuller. Then I discovered that during the 20 years Iād spent researching the Peabodys, Fuller had been largely forgotten. No one recognized her name anymore. This was a shock to me, and a loss I wanted to repair."
In addition to her books, Marshall writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, and other publications. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2006ā07,{{cite web |title=Megan Marshall |url=http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/megan-marshall |publisher=Harvard Radcliffe Institute |access-date=February 26, 2025}} and writes book reviews for Radcliffe Magazine.
Since 2007 she has been assistant professor in writing, Literature & Publishing at Emerson College.{{cite web | url=http://www2.emerson.edu/writing_lit_publishing/faculty-detail.cfm?facultyID=2513&filter=F | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719192050/http://www2.emerson.edu/writing_lit_publishing/faculty-detail.cfm?facultyID=2513&filter=F | archive-date=July 19, 2011 | title=Emerson College }}
Marshall lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Books
- The Cost of Loving: Women and the New Fear of Intimacy, 1984.
- The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, 2005.{{cite magazine|last=Stansell|first= Christine|author-link=Christine Stansell|title=Review: The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall|date=October 10, 2005|magazine=New Republic|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/mary-elizabeth-sophia-peabody}}
- Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, 2013.
- Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, 2017.
Honors
Marshall, who was named the most promising writer in her Harvard class of 1977 by Harvard Monthly, is the recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute.
Aside from being a Pulitzer finalist, The Peabody Sisters was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction.
Her biography of Margaret Fuller won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. {{cite press release |author= |date=April 14, 2014 |title=Columbia University Announces 98th Annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama, and Music |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/files/2014/2014_LongList_PressRelease.pdf |location=New York, NY |publisher=Columbia University Office of Communication and Public Affairs}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.meganmarshallauthor.com website] Megan Marshall author website
- {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20111121002817/http://newbooksinbiography.com/2011/04/15/megan-marshall-the-peabody-sisters-three-women-who-ignited-american-romanticism-houghton-mifflin-2005/ Interview]}} with Marshall on "New Books in Biography"
- {{C-SPAN|1012669}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080222103510/http://www.radcliffe.edu/fellowships/current/bio.php?id=216&year=2006-2007 Radcliffe Institute bio]
- [http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/authordetail.cfm?authorID=2008 Houghton Mifflin Books bio]
- Audio file, interview with Marshall about The Peabody Sisters [http://thoughtcast.org/casts/the-peabody-sisters]
- Audio file, reading by Marshall from "Margaret Fuller: A New American Life" [https://soundcloud.com/radcliffeinstitute/megan-marshall-author-of-margaret-fuller]
{{PulitzerPrize BiographyorAutobiographyAuthors 2001ā2025}}
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Category:Emerson College faculty
Category:Harvard College alumni
Category:Writers from Oakland, California
Category:Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners