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.
Irish Leaders and Martyrs, an interesting study in intellectual leadership, touches on the power of writing such as ballads, but does not discuss any women. American Women is an insightful study of historical and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Camilla Crosland
In the preface she declares that she sought to simply set before the young women of the present day examples of wives and mothers who have done their duty under difficulties and temptations; and if...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Josepha Hale
In keeping with her dedication, SJH
represents women writers as inhabiting very much a man's world. Her entry on Margaret Fuller
, for instance, goes into detail on Fuller's father but does not mention her...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Edith Sitwell
This book depends on poking fun at its subjects, and invites its readers to join in Sitwell's superior amusement. Some of her subjects deserve better, like Margaret Fuller
, who (despite the adjective in the...
Textual Production
Julia Ward Howe
Having already published a biography of Margaret Fuller
in 1883, JWH
followed it with an introduction to Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1845-1846, which appeared in print this year.
Howe, Julia Ward. Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli). Roberts Bros.
Prefatory note
Howe, Julia Ward, and Margaret Fuller. “Introduction”. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1845-1846, D. Appleton, p. v - xii.
v-xii
Textual Features
Mary Ann Kelty
The tone is attractively ruminative: at the outset MAK
considers her motives and methods. Unquestionably, there is an abundance of vanity at the root of this desire to publish our lonely effusions; but we must...
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
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...
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...
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...
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)...
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...
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.
