Biography:
In 1973 the University of Wisconsin Press published Margot Peters’ first book, CHARLOTTE BRONTE: STYLE IN THE NOVEL, a study of the great Victorian novelist’s compelling prose style. Feeling that she had more to say about Brontë from a feminist perspective, she continued work on the author. UNQUIET SOUL: A BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE was published by Doubleday in 1975. It was, according to Margot’s now-famous editor Lisa Drew, the best reviewed Doubleday book of the year; and won the 1975 Friends of American Writers Best Work of Prose Award.
Meanwhile, having earned a PHD in Victorian Literature and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Margot taught English, linguistics and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Put off by the often-impenetrable jargon forced upon scholarly writers, she returned to biography and her longtime love, the theater. BERNARD SHAW AND THE ACTRESSES (Doubleday 1980) and MRS. PAT: THE LIFE OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL (Knopf 1984) both won the George Freedley Award for Best Drama Book and Banta Award for contributing significantly to the history of ideas.
Pursuing her passion for the theater, but returning stateside from across the Pond, she undertook the major job of telling the story of the legendary acting families, the Drews and the Barrymores. THE HOUSE OF BARRYMORE (Knopf, 1990) won the English Speaking Union’s Ambassador Book Award for best interpreting American culture to other English-speaking countries.
Margot has been the grateful recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, American Council of Learned Societies, and Wisconsin Institute for Research in the Humanities fellowships. She held the post of Kathe Tappe Vernon professor of biography at Dartmouth College in 1978, lectured at Harvard University, spoke at international biographical conferences, and has been a frequent guest speaker at Shaw Festival seminars in Canada and the United States. She is also the author of numerous essays and reviews about theater, the Brontës, biography, and women’s issues.
Like many scholars, she had a novel in her drawer–as well as a play. Her thriller WILD JUSTICE (under the name Margret Pierce because her agent thought it would ruin her reputation) was published in 1995 by St. Martin’s Press in hard and paperback (MOST WANTED), and her play PERSUASIONS, written about her old pals Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, has been given dramatic readings in New York, Milwaukee, and London. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals.
May Sarton–American novelist, poet, lesbian, and the author of widely-read journals like JOURNAL OF A SOLITUDE, PLANT DREAMING DEEP, and THE HOUSE BY THE SEA– was a decided departure as a biographical subject for Margot, chiefly because Sarton was living. Between 1991 and 1995, Margot flew four times a year to York, Maine, to spend days interviewing Sarton on tape. Her book MAY SARTON: A BIOGRAPHY, published in 1997 by Knopf, won the Triangle Publishing Group Judy Gran Award for the best book published that year about a gay/lesbian.
After five difficult yet rewarding years with Sarton, who died before the biography was published, she returned to the theater to write the lives of the great actors Wisconsin-born Alfred Lunt and his British wife Lynn Fontanne. DESIGN FOR LIVING: ALFRED LUNT AND LYNN FONTANNE (Knopf 2003) was sheer joy to write, the biography coinciding with the restoration of the Lunts’ Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, estate Ten Chimneys, spearheaded by the visionary, late Joe Garton, now skillfully overseen by Sean Malone.
Besides afore-mentioned awards, Margot has received five Wisconsin Library Association awards for “Outstanding Achievement by a Wisconsin Author” and is an inductee into the Milwaukee Library’s Wall of Fame. “This thrills me,” says Margot, “because my name is right up there beside that of the great Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker.” Margot’s seventh biography, LORINE NIEDECKER: A POET’S LIFE, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press, Fall 2011.
Margot is the mother of Marc and Claire Peters. She lives in Lake Mills with her husband Peter Jordan, Sean the collie, and their Persian cats, Plumchin and Sweetie Pie. She is a passionate bridge player, gardener, jigsaw puzzle worker, movie goer, collector of antique Halloween, and almost knows how to operate her digital camera.
Works by Margot Peters:
Books
In 1973 the University of Wisconsin Press published Margot Peters’ first book, CHARLOTTE BRONTE: STYLE IN THE NOVEL, a study of the great Victorian novelist’s compelling prose style. Feeling that she had more to say about Brontë from a feminist perspective, she continued work on the author. UNQUIET SOUL: A BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE was published by Doubleday in 1975. It was, according to Margot’s now-famous editor Lisa Drew, the best reviewed Doubleday book of the year; and won the 1975 Friends of American Writers Best Work of Prose Award.
Meanwhile, having earned a PHD in Victorian Literature and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Margot taught English, linguistics and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Put off by the often-impenetrable jargon forced upon scholarly writers, she returned to biography and her longtime love, the theater. BERNARD SHAW AND THE ACTRESSES (Doubleday 1980) and MRS. PAT: THE LIFE OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL (Knopf 1984) both won the George Freedley Award for Best Drama Book and Banta Award for contributing significantly to the history of ideas.
Pursuing her passion for the theater, but returning stateside from across the Pond, she undertook the major job of telling the story of the legendary acting families, the Drews and the Barrymores. THE HOUSE OF BARRYMORE (Knopf, 1990) won the English Speaking Union’s Ambassador Book Award for best interpreting American culture to other English-speaking countries.
Margot has been the grateful recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, American Council of Learned Societies, and Wisconsin Institute for Research in the Humanities fellowships. She held the post of Kathe Tappe Vernon professor of biography at Dartmouth College in 1978, lectured at Harvard University, spoke at international biographical conferences, and has been a frequent guest speaker at Shaw Festival seminars in Canada and the United States. She is also the author of numerous essays and reviews about theater, the Brontës, biography, and women’s issues.
Like many scholars, she had a novel in her drawer–as well as a play. Her thriller WILD JUSTICE (under the name Margret Pierce because her agent thought it would ruin her reputation) was published in 1995 by St. Martin’s Press in hard and paperback (MOST WANTED), and her play PERSUASIONS, written about her old pals Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, has been given dramatic readings in New York, Milwaukee, and London. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals.
May Sarton–American novelist, poet, lesbian, and the author of widely-read journals like JOURNAL OF A SOLITUDE, PLANT DREAMING DEEP, and THE HOUSE BY THE SEA– was a decided departure as a biographical subject for Margot, chiefly because Sarton was living. Between 1991 and 1995, Margot flew four times a year to York, Maine, to spend days interviewing Sarton on tape. Her book MAY SARTON: A BIOGRAPHY, published in 1997 by Knopf, won the Triangle Publishing Group Judy Gran Award for the best book published that year about a gay/lesbian.
After five difficult yet rewarding years with Sarton, who died before the biography was published, she returned to the theater to write the lives of the great actors Wisconsin-born Alfred Lunt and his British wife Lynn Fontanne. DESIGN FOR LIVING: ALFRED LUNT AND LYNN FONTANNE (Knopf 2003) was sheer joy to write, the biography coinciding with the restoration of the Lunts’ Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, estate Ten Chimneys, spearheaded by the visionary, late Joe Garton, now skillfully overseen by Sean Malone.
Besides afore-mentioned awards, Margot has received five Wisconsin Library Association awards for “Outstanding Achievement by a Wisconsin Author” and is an inductee into the Milwaukee Library’s Wall of Fame. “This thrills me,” says Margot, “because my name is right up there beside that of the great Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker.” Margot’s seventh biography, LORINE NIEDECKER: A POET’S LIFE, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press, Fall 2011.
Margot is the mother of Marc and Claire Peters. She lives in Lake Mills with her husband Peter Jordan, Sean the collie, and their Persian cats, Plumchin and Sweetie Pie. She is a passionate bridge player, gardener, jigsaw puzzle worker, movie goer, collector of antique Halloween, and almost knows how to operate her digital camera.
Works by Margot Peters:
Books
- Charlotte Brontë: Style in the Novel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Pres: 1973.
- Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Brontë: New York: Doubleday, 1975. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975. Paris: Editions Stock, 1979. Reprint New York & London, 1986, 1987. Paris: Editions Stock, 1979.
- Bernard Shaw and the Actresses. New York: Doubleday, 1980.
- Mrs. Pat: The Biography of Mrs. Patrick Campbell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984; London: The Bodley Head, 1984; Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
- The House of Barrymore. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
- Wild Justice. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Published in paperback as Most Wanted, 1996.
- May Sarton: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997; Ballentine, 1998.
- Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. New York: Knopf, 2003.
- “Marriage.” Wisconsin Academy Review, Fall 2005.
- “Flow.” Wisconsin Center for the Book bookmark, 2006; Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, 2006.
- “Leaving.” Free Verse 84, 2006.
- “Groove.” Free Verse 86, 2006.
- “Front Page.” Cup of Poems 3,10, 2006.
- “Standing in the Kitchen.” Free Verse 91. 2007.
- “Second Chance.” Free Verse 91, 2007.
- “Signals.” Free Verse 91, 2007.
- “From My Window.” Free Verse 93, 2007.
- “Pueblo Vase.” Free Verse 93,2007.
- “Primo, Secondo, for Ruth.” The NeoVictorian/Choclea, 10, 1, 2007.
- “Grandmother.” Free Verse 91, 2007.
- “Cry.” Fox Cry Review, XXXII, 2006.
- “So June Is Gone.” The Brewer Times, Summer 2007; Free Verse 96, 2008.
- “Ever Seen That Old Movie?” Free Verse 96, 2008.
- “Moonlight.” Wisconsin Poet’s Calendar, 2008.
- “Walking Through Walls.” Free Verse 99/100, 2009.
- “Dissolve.” Free Verse 99/100, 2009.
- “They’re Not There Anymore.” The Deronda Review II, 1, Winter 2009.