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Megan Marshall (born June 8, 1954) is an American scholar, writer, and biographer.
Her first biographyThe Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) earned her a place as a finalist for the 2006Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Her second biographyMargaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013) is an account ofMargaret Fuller, the 19th-century author, journalist, and women's rights advocate who died in ashipwreck off New York'sFire Island. It won the 2014Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Marshall was born inOakland, California. Her mother was a book designer; her father worked in city government. Marshall came East to attendBennington College as a literature and music major, but she left college without finishing and later enrolled atHarvard College, where she studied with poetsRobert Lowell,Elizabeth Bishop,Robert Fitzgerald, andJane Shore. She earned a BA degree in 1977 and was elected toPhi Beta Kappa.
Before turning to writing, Marshall worked in the publishing industry and taught. From 1980 to 2007, she was married to authorJohn Sedgwick.
Her first book, published in 1984, wasThe Cost of Loving: Women and the New Fear of Intimacy, which examines the impact of thefeminist 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 bookThe 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 ofElizabeth Palmer Peabody,Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, andSophia Hawthorne. Her second biography isMargaret Fuller: A New American Life.
In a conversation in Radcliffe Magazine with authorMargot 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 I’d 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 forThe New Yorker,Slate,The New York Times Book Review,The London Review of Books, and other publications. She was a fellow at theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2006–07,[1] and writes book reviews for Radcliffe Magazine.
Since 2007 she has been assistant professor in writing, Literature & Publishing atEmerson College.[2]
Marshall lives in Belmont,Massachusetts.
Marshall, who was named the most promising writer in her Harvard class of 1977 byHarvard Monthly, is the recipient of awards from theGuggenheim Foundation, theNational Endowment for the Humanities and theRadcliffe Institute.
Aside from being a Pulitzer finalist,The Peabody Sisters was awarded theFrancis Parkman Prize, theMark Lynton History Prize, and theMassachusetts Book Award in nonfiction.
Her biography of Margaret Fuller won the 2014Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[4]
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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