OTHER WRITING

“Free For A While,” Harvard Review 59, Summer 2022

Reconsidering Thoreau in a Burning World,” Literary Hub, October 29, 2021.

“Without,” Harvard Review Online, posted September 21, 2021

"Remembering Lois Palken Rudnick: A Biographer Who Never Stopped Exploring," Literary Hub, September 13, 2021

“Amaryllis,” Plume Poetry June 2021.  Read Marshall’s account of how the poem came to be written here

Megan Marshall remembers Scott Harney, excerpt from Marshall’s introduction to The Blood of San GennaroLitHub, October 21, 2020

Megan Marshall remembers biographer Robert D. RichardsonLiterary Hub, July 10, 2020

“What My Grandfather Saw Photographing the 1919 Typhus Epidemic in Poland,”
Literary Hub, May 29, 2020

Chalk Talk,” a short essay on children’s messages written on the sidewalks of Belmont and Cambridge, Massachusetts, under shelter-in-place orders, April 2020, Arrowsmith Journal 8.

“Place of Rest,” an essay on walking in Mt. Auburn cemetery in our time of contagion, Arrowsmith Journal 7, March-April 2020.

“Reviving Emily Dickinson in Ten Episodes,” review of Martha Ackmann’s These Fevered Days, in New York Times Book Review, February 25, 2020.

“The World Belongs to Him Who Has Seen It,”
photo essay, Harvard Review 55, January 2019.

“The Second Man in the Front Row:  A Forgotten Story of the First World War,”Reading my grandfather’s letters on the centenary of the Armistice – NewYorker.com  November 10, 2018.

"Nostalgia" Vogue, March 2017 issue.

The Mouse That Scored,” AGNI blog, posted February 27, 2017

“On Margaret Fuller and Woman in the Twenty-First Century,” The New Yorker online, November 15, 2016

Elizabeth and Alice:  The Last Love Affair of Elizabeth Bishop and the Losses Behind ‘One Art’”  The New Yorker online, October 27, 2016.

Biography Without Modifiers,” Pulitzer Centennial website, June 2016


From the New York Times Book Review

The Reawakening,” review of O My America! by Sarah Wheeler, October 27, 2013.

Breaking New Ground,” review of The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine—Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary by Jenny Uglow, February 3, 2013.

Dark Hours,” review of What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness by Candia McWilliam, April 22, 2012.

American Heiresses on the World Stage,” review of Sisters of Fortune: America’s Caton Sisters at Home and Abroad by Jehanne Wake, April 10, 2011.

The Voyager,” review of The Passages of H.M.: A Novel of Herman Melville, by Jay Parini, November 28, 2010.

Return of the King,” review of A Gambling Man: Charles II’s Restoration Game, by Jenny Uglow, January 10, 2010.

John Singer Sargent’s Model Children,” review of Sargent’s Daughters: A Biography of a Painting, by Erica Hirshler, December 13, 2009.

Married With Children,” review of We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals, by Gillian Gill, June 21, 2009.

A Life Less Ordinary,” review of The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh by Linda Colley,
September 16, 2007 (chosen one of the top ten books of the year by NYTBR).

The King’s Bed,” review of Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser, October 15, 2006.

He Wrote the Words,” review of The Librettist of Venice by Rodney Bolt, July 30, 2006

War Correspondence,” review of Blood and Roses by Helen Castor, May 7, 2006.

Women’s Ways of Knowing,” review of A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight,
March 19, 2006.

Something Happened Here,” review of The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez, February 5, 2006.

His Brilliant Friends,” review of The Wit in the Dungeon: The Remarkable Life of Leigh Hunt by Anthony Holden, January 1, 2006.

From Slate.com

Hey, Mr. Postman: Why e-mail can never replace the letter,” review of Thomas Mallon’s Yours Ever: People and Their Letters, posted December 7, 2009.

The Impossible Art of Deciphering Manuscripts,” slate.com posted February 8, 2008.

The Women’s History Boom: Transforming a Profession from the Inside,” review of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, posted September 4, 2007.

The Spirit of the Letter: What biographers find in other people’s mail,” posted May 17, 2005.


Miscellaneous:

Poor Little Not-So-Rich Girls,” Women’s History Month blog post on ClassismExposed, March 2016

Three Lives,” a Recommendation in Post Road, Spring-Summer 2015

Self-Interview,” Digital Americana, Summer-Spring 2014

"75 at 75: Megan Marshall on Elizabeth Bishop,” 92Y On Demand, posted March 28, 2014

"Hanging on Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore" by Linda Leavell, reviewed in the Washington Post, November 15, 2013.

The ‘Soledad Brother’ had a real brother,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2013.

Tipped Off,” New York Times “Draft” Opinionator blog, March 23, 2013.

Literary Boston: Two Sides of Beacon Hill,” touring advice for AWP Boston participants, Ploughshares online, February 27, 2013.

American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath” by Carl Rollyson, reviewed in the Washington Post, February 18, 2013.

Academic Discourse and Adulterous Intercourse: What Campus Novels Can Teach Us,
The Atlantic, fiction issue, August 2006, 22-26.

Why Biography?common-place.org October, 2007.

The Other Sister: Was Nathaniel Hawthorne a Cad?” The New Yorker, March 21, 2005, 40-47.

Pretty Letters,” review of Peter Ackroyd’s Poe: A Life Cut Short, in London Review of Books, February 21, 2008.

Let Them Be Sea-Captains,” review-essay of Charles Capper’s Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life: The Public Years, in London Review of Books, November 15, 2007.

Sophia’s Crimson Hand,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, v. 37 no. 2, Fall 2011, 36-46.

Donating Family Archives to Schlesinger Library,” Schlesinger Library Newsletter, Spring 2011, 3-4.

Margaret and Her Sisters,” Journal of Unitarian Universalist Historyv. 34 (2010-2011), 19-25.

“Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: The First Transcendentalist?” Massachusetts Historical Review, v. 8, 2006, 1-16.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," unpublished essay on new editions of the novel, November 2009.

The Page 99 Test” applied to The Peabody Sisters, April 18, 2007.

Women’s Work: The Female Transcendentalists and How We Read Them Today,” Dana S. Brigham Memorial Keynote Address, Thoreau Society Annual Gathering, Concord, MA, July 10, 2010.