The Peabody Sisters

Twenty years in the making and greeted by stunning reviews, The Peabody Sisters is a landmark biography of three women who made American intellectual history.The story of the Peabody sisters and their central role in shaping the thought of their day is a piece of history that has never before been fully told. Megan Marshall's masterly and vivid work brings the sistersour American Brontsto life, along with the men they loved and influenced, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Marshall casts new light on a legendary American era in an epic tale with the scope and fascination of the great nineteenth-century novels.

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.