The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism » (None)

Megan Marshall worked for two decades on her award-winning biography The Peabody Sisters, spending many years tracking down the sisters' letters and journals. Her work was supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate and other publications. She is now at work on a biography of Ebe Hawthorne, sister of Nathaniel, for which she has received a Radcliffe Institute fellowship.

Fascinating, insightful, and wholly engrossing, The Peabody Sisters is a landmark biography of three women who made American intellectual history.Though theirs may not be household names, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody had an extraordinary influence on the thought of their day, the movement of intense creative ferment known as American Romanticism. Megan Marshall adeptly brings to life the sisters and the men they loved and inspired, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In a work filled with startling revelations, Marshall presents a vivid and nuanced psychological portrait of a sisterhood rife with shifting loyalties yet founded on enduring affection.

The Washington Post - Gillian Gill

In human history, many women of distinction and originality have given their thoughts and perceptions to the men they loved without thought of reward. Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody differ in that so many of their letters and diaries have come down to us. (Hawthorne, however, burned Sophia's letters.) Through Marshall's beautiful book, we can taste the flavor of three remarkable lives and pay tribute.