<P>“Pitches Ms. Marshall into the front rank of American biographers . . . <I>Margaret Fuller</I> is as seductive as it is impressive . . . It delivers a lovely and bumpy coming-of-age story, one of the best such stories nineteenth-century America has to offer.” —<I>New York Times </I></P> Pulitzer Prize finalist Megan Marshall recounts the trailblazing life of Margaret Fuller: Thoreau’s first editor, Emerson’s close friend, daring war correspondent, tragic heroine. After her untimely death in a shipwreck off Fire Island, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by scandal. Marshall’s inspired narrative brings her back to indelible life. <p>Whether detailing her front-page <I>New-York Tribune</I> editorials against poor conditions in the city’s prisons and mental hospitals, or illuminating her late-in-life hunger for passionate experience—including a secret affair with a young officer in the Roman Guard—Marshall’s biography gives the most thorough and compassionate view of an extraordinary woman. No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving.<br>