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John Matteson (born March 3, 1961) is an American professor of English and legal writing atJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.[1] He won the 2008Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his first book,Eden's Outcasts: The Story ofLouisa May Alcott andHer Father.[2]
Born inSan Mateo, California, Matteson is the son of Thomas D. Matteson (1920–2011), an airline executive jointly responsible for developing the theory ofreliability-centered maintenance, and Rosemary H. Matteson (1920–2010), who worked as a commercial artist before becoming a homemaker.
Matteson attendedMenlo School inAtherton, California. He graduated with anA.B. inhistory fromPrinceton University in 1983 after completing an 178-page-long senior thesis titled "The Confederate Cotton Embargo, 1861-1862: A Study inStates' Rights."[3] He then received aJ.D. fromHarvard Law School in 1986, and aPh.D. in English fromColumbia University in 1999.[4] He served as a law clerk forU.S. District Court JudgeTerrence W. Boyle before working as a litigation attorney at Titchell, Maltzman, Mark, Bass, Ohleyer & Mishel inSan Francisco and with Maupin, Taylor, Ellis & Adams inRaleigh, North Carolina. He has written articles for a wide variety of publications, includingThe New York Times,The Wall Street Journal,The New England Quarterly,Streams of William James, andLeviathan. His second book,The Lives ofMargaret Fuller was published in January 2012 and received the 2012Ann M. Sperber Prize as the year's outstanding biography of a journalist or other figure in media. It was also a finalist for the inaugural Plutarch Award, the prize for best biography of the year as chosen by the Biographers International Organization (BIO), and was shortlisted for thePEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. HisW. W. Norton & Company annotated edition ofLittle Women was published in November 2015, featuring many exclusive photographs from Alcott's childhood home,Orchard House, as well as numerous illustrations and stills from the various film adaptations.[5] Matteson's most recent book,A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation, was published in February 2021.[6][7] It focuses onWalt Whitman,Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,Louisa May Alcott,Arthur Buckminster Fuller, andJohn Pelham.
Matteson appeared in the 2018 documentaryOrchard House: Home of Little Women.[8]
Matteson is a former treasurer of theMelville Society and is a member of the Louisa May Alcott Society's advisory board. Matteson is a fellow of theMassachusetts Historical Society and has served as the deputy director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography. He married Michelle Rollo in 1991. Since 2023, Matteson has divided his time between his principal home in theBronx, New York and a secondary residence inLyon, France.
He is not the same person as the John Matteson who, as a professor of speech atLos Angeles City College in 2008, allegedly barred a student from giving a classroom speech in opposition tosame-sex marriage.[9]
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography from 1917–2022 | ||
| 1917–1925 |
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| 1926–1950 |
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| 1951–1975 |
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| 1976–2000 |
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| 2001–2025 |
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