Margaret Fuller

By: Megan Marshall

Narrated by: Cynthia Barrett

Length: 19 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

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)

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.

2 people found this helpful

good and insufferable

Meticulously researched and a fascinating glimpse into the life and mind of Margaret fuller and some of early America's most brilliant thinkers ( and the relationships between them), I learned much from this book, and felt transported to another era. However, I found the narrator's voice quite irritating, and it detracted greatly from my enjoyment of the book. For lack of a better word, the whole thing was read with a monotone kind of "snootiness", an annoying affect that made the book almost insufferable to get thru. Unfortunately I think the narrator colored greatly my perception of the book and Margaret Fuller. I found it much more enjoyable once I read the actual book myself.

2 people found this helpful

Good narration is critical

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The narrator had a predictable rising and falling sing song quality to her voice whether the subject was studies or heartbreak/

Would you be willing to try another one of Cynthia Barrett’s performances?

Not any time soon.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Margaret Fuller?

The content was interesting, just had to stop listening.

Had to stop listening

Would you try another book from Megan Marshall and/or Cynthia Barrett?

Yes for Marshall, no for Barrett

If you’ve listened to books by Megan Marshall before, how does this one compare?

I have not.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Everything. I had to stop listening because her narration was driving me crazy. She over-enunciated, had little variety in her tone, and frequently mispronounced words or incorrectly inflected phrases, so much so that it threw me out of the story.

2 people found this helpful