It's sad to envision the everyday unfairness faced by these three enterprising women. Megan Marshall describes how Elizabeth assesses if it is appropriate for a woman to establish a bookstore, how Sophia accepts that she will never see Italy because she is not married and how Mary quietly waits, waits and waits... in disguised desperation for the man she loves. Elizabeth suffers whispering campaigns, digs on her appearance and from loneliness as her sisters find true love with the men for whom she provides the entre.

The Peabody women not only contend with a social structure which accepts unfairness to women, these family breadwinners face the downward mobility of their time. They compete with male teachers and artists who have an education from which females are excluded. The sisters' access to the synergy of a network is compromised by the mores of the time which destroys reputations for the least sign of familiarity with men who comprise the network. The progressive men in Elizabeth's circle may give her support, but it is always qualified. While she could not succeed without these men, Bronson Alcott being the most egregious example, each takes more than he gives.

The 3 Peabody brothers are not just lackluster but also irresponsible towards the family. The one who survives to middle age might just be the "Joe Six Pack" of his day. An appraisal of family dynamics considering communication patterns, paternal (lack of) nurturing and birth order would be interesting.

Elizabeth is clearly the star of the show. She is the one to whom the modern world can more closely relate. She dominates the biography as she probably dominated the lives of her siblings, a dominance both used and resented by her sisters. She is remarkably alone.

The ideas that Elizabeth and her transcendentalist friends proposed are now mainstream. Like all who are ahead of their time, they were met with both skepticism and outright hostility. I was struck by how the break from Calvinist self abnegation was the opening for what we call today, self-esteem. While I often wonder how Washington, Adams and Jefferson could relate to today's world, Elizabeth as presented by Marshall, would be even more at home now than then.

For reseach and documentation, this is a 5 star book. I give it 4 because there are times when the documentation gets in the way of the prose making it too academic for the general reader. Also, the book abruptly ends. In a short chapter called "Epilogue May 1, 1843" the sisters' next 40+ years are summed up. I hope there is a volume 2. I'd like to know more of the sisters as the Civil War develops and unfolds.

Interesting that this was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Prize winners in 2008 and 2007 are Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father and The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher respectively. Is it that this period of history has captured the reading and reviewing audience or has it captured the best writers of our times?

The author attempts to run the three biographies in parallel but what really happens is that she jumps from one place to the other, so none of the biographies unfold properly. I found it utterly unreadable. On top of it to add to my frustration, there are generalities, like Elizabeth fought with her mother "like all adolescent girls do" or romantic creations "like on this day if you didn't watch out a dog might have showered you with water". I wanted to read a proper biography and not a society novel. I had read "Eden's Outcasts" by John Matteson before and came away with a more lively picture of Elizabeth Peabody and her involvment in the Temple School then from this book. If you are interested in the transcendentalist movement, the time, or women I highly recommend "Eden's Outcasts: The story of Louisa May Alcott and her father".

The Peabody Sisters is a wonderful book. It was so interesting and fast-paced, it reads like a novel. The women of the Transcendentalist Movement have been so poorly remembered it is possible to learn something new on every page. Megan Marshall's writing style is relaxed and conversational, a good balance to the 19th century melodrama, angst, sentimentality, and lofty philosophies of the sisters and their circle. Although Marshall quotes letters, sermons, poetry, reviews, journals, reports, and literature from many sources, it is done sparingly and logically integrated.

The Peabody sisters were extraordinary women living in extraordinary times. A case can be made that Elizabeth Peabody, the oldest sister, is one of the most important figures in Transcendentalism. Barred from college and commerce by poverty and sex, she still managed to be more educated than many of the men she befriended and promoted. Many of the relationships we take for granted in Boston and Concord of the era can be directly linked to Elizabeth Peabody's tireless efforts to intellectually support interesting, creative individuals, make introductions, even find people jobs and students, housing, mentors - all while she is shut out and struggling to support her parents and five younger siblings while teaching herself Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish. Also: teaching children and adults, writing articles, editing and publishing, and keeping up a lively correspondence with teachers, philosophers, artists, poets of the era. Her sisters Sophia and Mary are hardly less accomplished.

And yet Megan Marshall always keeps things grounded. The sisters are always real people who display very normal sibling rivalries manifested in jealousy, competition, ambition, despair, frustration and anger. There was also commitment, love, affection, support, delight and generosity.

What is most amazing is the strength of the women in this group. They are creative, adaptable, intelligent, extraordinary in many ways. They are continually held back by the convention of the time that women were somehow frail and that ambition and accomplishment were unseemly in the "fairer sex." Considering what hothouse flowers many of the men in this group proved to be, it's all the more unreasonable that the inequality of the sexes persisted.

Megan Marshall never harangues - the rant is purely my own. Marshall simply gives us the benefit of her prodigious research in the most straightforward and appealing manner. Don't be scared off by the length of the book: the last 100 pages or so are notes and index. The book itself speeds by and the reader is left at the point when the sisters are taking up their own separate lives.

Somehow I overlooked this book when it was released, but thank goodness I discovered it later. The author takes readers back in time to share the amazing lives of these sisters. In the process, acquaintances of the Peabody family, that readers already know as historical figures, are brought to life as real, flawed but remarkable people. Readers will identify with these women as they strive to achieve and practice their own talents in a society that shares possibilities and limitations not so different from our own.

I only get to read on the train to and from work. This book makes my daily trip a real treat. I'm only half through, but hooked from page one. Not only does Marshall make a fascinating biographical and historical account of the Peabody sisters, but she provides answers as to why strong, ambitious, smart women have been so frustrated for so long. Society supressed gifted women in the 1800's so much so that women either became outcasts because they had to find expression, which in itself was restricted to motherhood, housewife or teacher, or they retreated into themselves in the form of illness or depression. Indeed, the contributions to romanticism by the Peabody sisters came at a very high cost to them. And now I can read about them and think "How strange that society was so close-minded back then!"