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PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING BIOGRAPHER, AUTHOR OF NEW BOOK ON 19TH CENTURY FEMINIST FIREBRAND MARGARET FULLER,TO SPEAK NYS Writers Institute, March 22, 2012 8:00 p.m. Reading | Huxley Theatre, New York State Museum, Cultural Education Center 4:15 p.m. Seminar | Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
PROFILE A brilliant writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. Outspoken and quick-witted, idealistic and adventurous, she became the leading female figure in the Transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, and served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. A free spirit, she fell in love with an Italian nobleman nearly ten years her junior, and conceived a child with him out of wedlock. In 1848 she joined the fight for Italian independence and, the following year, reported on the struggle while nursing the wounded within range of enemy cannon fire. Amid all these strivings and achievements, she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Despite her brilliance, however, Fuller suffered from self-doubt and was plagued by ill health, including frequent and debilitating migraines. Tragically, she died at age forty at the peak of her career, together with her little family, in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York in 1850.
Matteson received the Pulitzer Prize for his previous book, Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (2007), a dual biography that explores a rich father-daughter relationship and intellectual partnership. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Martin Rubin said, “One of the pleasures of the book is to be taken back to a time and place of intellectual and moral grandeur…. In producing such a rounded and compelling portrait of Louisa, Bronson, their family and times, Matteson has provided us with a valuable context for appreciating that enduring masterpiece, Little Women.” John Matteson is Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Cosponsored by the Friends of the New York State Library For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst. |