Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways our American Bronts. The story of these remarkable sistersand their central role in shaping the thinking of their dayhas never before been fully told. Twenty years in the making, Megan Marshalls 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 eraEmerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau among themshe also published some of their earliest works. It was Elizabeth who prodded these newly minted Transcendentalists away from Emersons 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 Hawthornebut 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.