Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Fuller
-
Standard Name: Fuller, Margaret
Birth Name: Sarah Margaret Fuller
Married Name: Sarah Margaret Ossoli
Used Form: Margaret Fuller Ossoli
Titled: Sarah Margaret, Marchesa d'Ossoli
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.
Rosenthal, Bernard, and Margaret Fuller. “Introduction”. Woman in the Nineteenth Century, W. W. Norton, p. v - ix.
MAK
thought that the existential angst she suffered during her childhood was unique until she read Margaret Fuller
's Memoirs.
Kelty, Mary Ann. Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling. W. Pickering.
134
She felt her unhappiness as a child and young woman was good for...
Friends, Associates
Camilla Crosland
CC
's friends and acquaintances were varying and numerous. In her youth the radical politician John Cartwright
was a neighbour. Her literary work as an adult led to the formation of a number of lasting...
Friends, Associates
Eliza Fletcher
Hamilton, herself a conservative, set about de-demonizing EF
's political reputation. She had good success in persuading her friends that Mrs Fletcher was not the ferocious Democrat she had been represented, and that she neither...
Friends, Associates
Julia Ward Howe
In her early twenties, Howe became acquainted with the prominent women's-rights activist Margaret Fuller
, who was a journalist and editor of The Dial. Fuller was one of the first to recognize Howe's talent...
In the USA HM
became a good friend of Margaret Fuller
, although differences developed between them after Martineau published Society in America, which she saw as objecting to Fuller's gorgeous pedantry and disregard...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB
met American feminist Margaret Fuller
, by then Margaret Fuller Ossoli, a year before the latter's death.
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography. Grafton.
239-40
Hewlett, Dorothy. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Cassell.
243
Friends, Associates
Lydia Maria Child
She enjoyed an early friendship with Margaret Fuller
, who wrote before she was out of her teens that the future LMC
's conversation is charming,—she brings all her power to bear upon it; her...
Health
Adrienne Rich
After her third delivery she decided to be sterilised, though she met with social disapproval even from nurses caring for her in hospital: Had yourself spayed, did you?
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, pp. Review 20 - 3.
22
She later recalled her isolation during...
Health
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB
's health began to decline at about this time. It was worsened by such non-medical factors as sorrow over the death of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
(which roused her memories of older but nearer losses)...
Intertextuality and Influence
Germaine de Staël
After completing this novel GS
wrote, I'd like a really big [writing] table, it seems to me I've got the right to it now.
Kobak, Annette. “Mme de Staël and Fanny Burney”. The Burney Journal, Vol.
4
, pp. 12-35.
19
Corinne was enormously influential for nineteenth-century women writers. The model...
Literary responses
Louisa May Alcott
A recent surge of interest has produced (as well as John Matteson
's and Eve LaPlante
's studies of LAM and her father and her mother) a monograph by Harriet Reisin
, 2009; a study...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
Margaret Fuller
considered this a hasty book, although HM
claimed that it took three years to write.
Chapman, Maria Weston, and Harriet Martineau. “Memorials of Harriet Martineau”. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, James R. Osgood, pp. 2: 131 - 596.
507
Critic Susan Hoecker-Drysdale
, on the other hand, judges it to be among the most thorough sociological...
Occupation
Ralph Waldo Emerson
RWE
studied theology at Harvard
but eventually left the priesthood when he came to doubt the sacraments. He travelled to Europe and met Carlyle
, Coleridge
, and Wordsworth
. Upon his return to America...
Publishing
George Eliot
The Leader carried GE
's important short article Margaret Fuller
and Mary Wollstonecraft, another trenchant examination of women's position in society.
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton.
143
Timeline
22 March 1832: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar...
Chisholm, Hugh, editor. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.
8 September 1836: The Transcendental Club (also known as the...
Writing climate item
8 September 1836
The Transcendental Club
(also known as the Hedge Club
and the Symposium
) was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it brought together various thinkers who were at the forefront of Transcendentalism.
21 March 1853: The thirty-year-old Matthew Arnold addressed...
Writing climate item
21 March 1853
The thirty-year-old Matthew Arnold
addressed to Arthur Hugh Clough
a classically misogynist letterabout women writers, their works and their looks.
Texts
Howe, Julia Ward, and Margaret Fuller. “Introduction”. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1845-1846, D. Appleton, 1903, p. v - xii.
Rosenthal, Bernard, and Margaret Fuller. “Introduction”. Woman in the Nineteenth Century, W. W. Norton, 1971, p. v - ix.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. C. C. Little and James Brown; C. S. Francis, 1844.
Fuller, Margaret. The Essential Margaret Fuller. Editor Steele, Jeffrey, Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Clarke, 1845.
Fuller, Margaret, and Bernard Rosenthal. Woman in the Nineteeth Century. W. W. Norton, 1971.
