Under Emerson’s gaze, Marshall enthralled with account of Fuller’s Roman adventure.

Author Megan Marshall read excerpts from her new book, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life at the Concord Free Public Library on April 5. She gave an animated account of Fuller’s years in Rome, where Fuller, already respected as one of America’s leading intellectuals, “crossed the line” from the world of ideas into the world of life-changing experiences in a passionate encounter with the young Italian soldier who would become her husband.

160 people packed the Library’s rotunda to hear Marshall’s account, and lingered for an hour afterward to buy books, meet the author and get autographs, socialize, and enjoy sumptuous Italian-themed refreshments at a reception in the Reference Room. One audience member blogged about his experience under the title “Sex and the Single Transcendentalist.”

The Transcendentalism Council of First Parish is grateful to our co-sponsors: the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, The Thoreau Society, and Thoreau Farm: Birthplace of Henry David Thoreau. (Event photo by Deborah Bier.)

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Boston Globe: Author celebrates Margaret Fuller biography

The Boston Globe posted this item on its web site on March 31, 2013: “The Concord Free Public Library will host author Megan Marshall at 7 p.m. Friday to celebrate the publication of her biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. Fuller was a 19th-century author, social reformer, and transcendentalist. She was a frequent visitor to the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, and served as Henry David Thoreau’s editor at a literary journal, The Dial. Marshall will speak on ‘Margaret Fuller in Love,’ an aspect of Fuller’s life about which little had been known, during the free event at library, 129 Sudbury Road.”

“No more fitting place than Concord” for “Margaret Fuller in Love”

On March 27, the Concord Journal announced Megan Marshall’s April 5 presentation, “Margaret Fuller in Love,” saying “There could be no more fitting place than Concord for Pulitzer finalist Megan Marshall to speak about her new biography on Margaret Fuller: ground-breaking author, social reformer, and Transcendentalist.”

Read the full story here.

The New Yorker: A world of souls at “a white heat”

In the April 1, 2013 issue of The New Yorker, critic Judith Thurman examines the life of Margaret Fuller through the eyes of her biographers. Megan Marshall, writes Thurman, “is a gifted storyteller steeped in the parochial society of nineteenth-century Boston and Concord–a world of souls at ‘a white heat’ . . . Marshall excels at creating a sense of intimacy–with both her subject and her reader.”

Here’s a link to the article on The New Yorker site.

Video: Megan Marshall on “Writing Writers’ Lives” panel at CUNY, March 18

Megan Marshall joined fellow authors John Matteson, Jeffrey S. Cramer, and David S. Reynolds in a program titled “Writing Writers’ Lives: Writing the American Renaissance” at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on March 18, 2013. In this YouTube video, at 21:30 Megan describes going to the Houghton Library at Harvard and opening Margaret Fuller’s journal, recovered from the shipwreck that took Fuller’s life.

Boston Globe: “Thoroughly absorbing, lively new biography”

In the March 23, 2013 Boston Globe, Kate Tuttle writes: “[T]horoughly absorbing, lively new biography . . . Fuller, so often misunderstood in life, richly deserves the nuanced, compassionate portrait Marshall paints . . . Fuller’s Marshall, seen in the round, was flawed and human and magnificent.”

Read the full review here.

Rare unpublished Emerson letter yields insights on Margaret Fuller

In the March 23, 2013 New York Times, biographer Megan Marshall writes: “[A man] approached me after a speech I’d given to tell me about . . . a rare unpublished letter by Ralph Waldo Emerson concerning the 1850 shipwreck in which his dear friend Margaret Fuller had drowned at age 40. The tragedy was among the most famous in American literary history. Fuller, a pioneering feminist and foreign correspondent for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, was returning from Italy with her much younger husband, a soldier in the Roman Guard, and their 2-year-old son, conceived out of wedlock . . . When the trio drowned, just 300 yards offshore at Fire Island, the triple-masted Elizabeth driven into a sandbar by a ferocious storm, they were widely mourned. Emerson sent Henry David Thoreau, then in 1850 still a little known writer, to help search for the bodies . . . The four pages that I held in my hands brought together in a moment of palpable crisis three 19th-century geniuses whose ideas still challenge us today.”

Read the full story here.

NY Times: Megan Marshall is Fuller’s “ideal biographer.”

In the March 12 New York Times, Dwight Garner writes, “Fuller’s was a great life, flush with drama, and Megan Marshall’s new biography rises to it in ways small and large . . . [It] pushes Ms. Marshall into the front rank of American biographers.”
Garner continues, “She is comfortable with subtle intellection as well as the sweep of history . . . [Marshall’s book] is as seductive as it is impressive. It has the grain and emotional amplitude of a serious novel . . . [I]n Ms. Marshall, Fuller has found what feels like her ideal biographer.”
Read the full review here.

“Margaret Fuller: A New American Life” Published

March 12th is a banner day for fans of Transcendentalism! Megan Marshall’s new biography of Margaret Fuller has been published. It has gotten fabulous reviews. Look for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life at your favorite local bookstore. Copies will also be for sale at the “Margaret Fuller in Love” event in Concord on April 5. Congratulations, Megan!

Margaret Fuller in Love

Biographer Megan Marshall takes the occasion of the anniversary of Margaret Fuller’s first meeting with her Italian lover Giovanni Ossoli to give an account of Fuller’s years in revolutionary Rome as war correspondent, hospital director, and romantic.  The event celebrates the publication of Marshall’s Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.