The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall

Boston derives its nickname the “Hub of the Universe” from a quote by the writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. highlighting the city’s intellectual and cultural pride of the mid-1800s. It is into this world that three sisters from Salem, Massachusetts, enter and establish themselves as smart, talented, independent, and resourceful.

Drawing on well-researched notes, author Megan Marshall shapes the narrative of how Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody struggled for standing and yet at the same time exerted influence in Boston social circles.

The cast of real-life characters often reads like a Who’s Who—Horace Mann, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Holmes himself—yet most intriguing are the details and nuance that Marshall uses to flesh out what made these people tick. And along the way, she helps reveal what is so special about New England, as the home of so many notable writers and thought leaders. —Katrina Farmer, Yankee associate editor

Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways our American Brontës. The story of these remarkable sisters—and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day—has never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshall's monumental biography brings the era of creative ferment known as American Romanticism to new life.

Elizabeth, the oldest sister, was a mind-on-fire thinker. A powerful influence on the great writers of the era—Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau among them—she also published some of their earliest works. It was Elizabeth who prodded these newly minted Transcendentalists away from Emerson's individualism and toward a greater connection to others. Mary was a determined and passionate reformer who finally found her soul mate in the great educator Horace Mann. The frail Sophia was a painter who won the admiration of the preeminent society artists of the day. She married Nathaniel Hawthorne—but not before Hawthorne threw the delicate dynamics among the sisters into disarray.

Marshall focuses on the moment when the Peabody sisters made their indelible mark on history. Her unprecedented research into these lives uncovered thousands of letters never read before as well as other previously unmined original sources. The Peabody Sisters casts new light on a legendary American era.

• Publisher: ‎Mariner Books
• Paperback
• Print length:‎ 624 pages
• Item Weight:‎ 1.6 pounds
• Dimensions:‎ 6 x 1.44 x 9 inches