Margot Peters
Biographer of Broadway

Featured Speaker, Sunday, Oct. 5, Edgerton Public Library reading room
"Misadventures of a Biographer"

A Lake Mills, Wisconsin, biographer of the first caliber, Peters has chronicled the follies, foibles and far-flung adventures of such theatrical giants as George Bernard Shaw, the Barrymore family, and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Winning a well-deserved reputation as the “foremost historian of stage make-believe,” the former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater English literature professor has also written standard “lives” of iconic writers Charlotte Bronte and May Sarton. When she’s not busy doing other things, Peters writes novels and poetry. Among her books are “The House of Barrymore,” “Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, A Biography,” “Unquiet Soul: The Life of Charlotte Bronte,” “Bernard Shaw and the Actresses,” “Mrs. Pat: The Life of Mrs. Patrick Campbell,” and “May Sarton: A Biography.” Her mystery novel, “Wild Justice,” was published under the name Margaret Pierce. Peters, who holds a doctorate in Victorian literature, has established herself as one of contemporary America’s premier tellers of life stories. Her books have twice won the Banta Award of the Wisconsin Library Association and she has lectured at Harvard University, served as the Kathe Tappe Vemon Chair of Biography at Dartmouth College, and has received research fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations.

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