NYSWI: John Matteson reads from and signs The Lives of Margaret Fuller (NYS Museum)

John Matteson, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, is the author of the new book, The Lives of Margaret Fuller
(2012), a portrait of the fiery 19th century social critic who was the
most famous American woman of her time. Author of the first great work
of American feminism, and a celebrated columnist for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune,
Fuller was a leading Transcendentalist, a war columnist in Italy, and a
free spirit who conceived a child out of wedlock with an Italian
nobleman. 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.