In Memoriam: Martha Porter Saxton, 1945-2023

Martha Saxon, an author and long-time faculty member at Amherst College in Massachusetts, died on July 18 at her home in Norfolk, Connecticut. She was 77 years old and had suffered from lung cancer.

A native of Manhattan, Dr. Saxon earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Chicago. After graduation, she returned to New York to work in the publishing industry and to do freelance work for magazines.

Saxon published her first book Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties in 1976. She later penned biographies of Louisa May Alcott and Mary Washington, the mother of the nation’s first president.

After establishing herself as an accomplished author, Dr. Saxon earned a Ph.D. in history at Columbia University. She turned her dissertation into the book Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America (Hill and Wang, 2002).

Dr. Saxon joined the faculty at Amherst College in 1997. She was named professor emerita in 2015.