Margaret Fuller

An important social and cultural critic in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, MF published in a variety of forms, including travel literature, translations from German (notably Goethe , about whom she also published critical work), poetry, letters, and journalism. She was first editor of The Dial, journal of the Transcendental Club, and the earliest influential US woman journalist. She is perhaps best remembered today for Woman in the Nineteenth Century, described by one critic as the first American book defining the place of women in society, and offering a coherent alternative to their position.