The Life of Margaret Fuller, 2nd Edition

This biography of Margaret Fuller, first published nearly five decades ago, is now available in a new, expanded edition. Based on Fuller’s journals and other writings, it records the life and experiences of a literary critic, radical educator and outspoken feminist who was deeply involved in the political spiritual and cultural ferment that characterized mid 19th-century America. It also provides an update on recent scholarship and documentary materials that have come to light since the biography’s original publication. Madeleine Stern examines Fuller’s Massachusetts background, her friendship and literary collaboration with Ralph Waldo Emerson, her feminist writings and her role as an educator of women. Universal in her interests, Fuller also concerned herself with the new sciences of phrenology and animal magnetisim, the advancement of the arts in Boston, the last stand of the Indians of the West and the ill-fated Italian Republic. She became more widely known as the literary critic on Greeley’s New York Tribune and later as America’s first woman foreign correspondent. Stern includes a detailed chronology of Fuller’s life and a review of Fuller’s scholarship, including biographies, editions of Fuller’s works and documentary sources. Drawn entirely from facts and impressions recorded by Margaret Fuller herself, this work provides a portrait, as well as a resource for women’s social history and the social, spiritual and intellectual history of 19th- century America.