Margaret Fuller

A New American Life

By: Megan Marshall

Narrated by: Cynthia Barrett

Pulitzer Prize, Biography, 2014

From an early age, Margaret Fuller provoked and dazzled New England’s intellectual elite. Her famous Conversations changed women’s sense of how they could think and live; her editorship of the Transcendentalist literary journal the Dial shaped American Romanticism. Now, Megan Marshall, whose acclaimed The Peabody Sisters "discovered" three fascinating women, has done it again: No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving. Marshall tells the story of how Fuller, tired of Boston, accepted Horace Greeley’s offer to be the New-York Tribune’s front-page columnist. The move unleashed a crusading concern for the urban poor and the plight of prostitutes, and a late-in-life hunger for passionate experience. In Italy as a foreign correspondent, Fuller took a secret lover, a young officer in the Roman Guard; she wrote dispatches on the brutal 1849 Siege of Rome; and she gave birth to a son. Yet, when all three died in a shipwreck off Fire Island shortly after Fuller’s 40th birthday, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by tragedy and scandal. Marshall’s inspired account brings an American heroine back to indelible life.

©2013 Margaret Fuller (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Earphones Award, 2014

"Cynthia Barrett's witty, intelligent narration enlivens Marshall's 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Margaret Fuller.... Barrett brings humanity to Marshall's impeccable research, introducing an extraordinary woman whose life was shaped by her struggle for gender equality and touched by joy, scandal, and tragedy." (AudioFile)

Margaret Fuller Biography

The author describes the life of Margaret Fuller who could be said to be a feminist/journalist. Her father prepared her for her career. He was a taskmaster making her study for many hours in a day. When he passed away of cholera, responsibility for her family fell to her. She worked for Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune. She also worked for Ralph Waldo Emerson at The Dial, a transcendentalist journal. Then The Tribune sent Margaret to Europe—-specifically England and Italy. There she met her boyfriend/husband (history is not certain that Giovanni Angelo Ossoli was Margaret’s husband). They lived together in Florence, Italy and had a son. Then in 1850, the three boarded the ship, Elizabeth to New York. There was an accident involving the ship hitting a sandbar near Fire Island outside of New York and the three of them died. Margaret accomplished a great deal as a journalist and editor in her short life which thankfully is documented by various people. I highly recommend this book.

Details And style of writing

Engrossing and why hasn’t Margaret Fuller been more prominent in history of feminism and suffrage struggle

A masterpiece of a biography

Megan Marshall's ability to weave such an evocative story out of the minute detail she gathered from her research is exquisite. Though of course this is the story of a feminist and a revolutionary for 19th century Republican ideals, it is also the story of a human being trying to find personal happiness in relationship and, ultimately, figure out how society could be structured differently to allow for happy relationships. Thank you for bringing us Margaret Fuller, who has as much to offer our generation as she did her own.

loved it

highly recommend! I really admire and relate to Margaret even more now. her life abroad is fascinating.

The Writing Of, and By.

Creative non- fiction is the best. Adhere as best one can to the facts and the likely.