Margaret Fuller: A New American Life―A Pulitzer Prize Winner

Books on Margaret Fuller, arguably the most important woman in the nineteenth century, come in clusters. Memories of her fade, then resurge periodically, and at this moment the tide is high. Megan Marshall’s book is an excellent addition to the literature on Fuller and provides a fresh perspective. This biography is not a merely a chronology of events in Fuller’s life, nor is it hagiography, nor is it an attempt to psychoanalyze her. And it is not a revisionist history that reveals all the warts and flaws of a heroine.Marshall’s sensitive and erudite account of Fuller shows clearly why she was so renowned and popular in her time, why she stirred controversy, and why she was so far ahead of those times and even in many ways ahead of ours.The public accomplishments, well-documented by Marshall and others, are widely known: editor of the Dial, the Transcendentalist journal and perhaps the most important journal in the first half of the nineteenth century, a published author, the first woman foreign correspondent for an American newspaper, the friend of many famous Europeans (including George Sand, Mazzini), and the personal acquaintance of others (Wordsworth, Carlisle). Her contribution as hospital director in Rome during the Revolution in 1849, comforting the wounded even as shots and shells rained on the city, and her tragic death along with those of her young husband and two-year old son off Fire Island in New York are also common knowledge.Megan Marshall’s distinctive and remarkable contribution to our knowledge lies in way she tells the story in Fuller’s own words—from her published writings, private journals, and letter to friends—and the words of those who knew her, again through their letters and journals. Marshall gives the reader such an intimate view of Fuller that one feels as if one where there, listening as Fuller teaches, holds her famous “Conversations,” writes to her friends and reads their letters, and travels with her to the Great Lakes region and to New York and Europe. One worries with her about her husband, on the battle lines in Rome, and about her child, even as she nurses the injured. The reader is also immersed in the social and cultural milieu of elite Boston, Indian villages, the newly-minted farming communities of the Mid-West, and New York with its vibrant life and painful squalor. As she sails home from Europe, one wonders if she cannot but find the America where she grew up and lived most of her life somewhat provincial. There never was any doubt that she found it suffocatingly conventional and often narrow-minded.Marshall shows us what can be known of Fuller’s inner life as she expressed it in her journals and letters—private and intimate thoughts, including her self-doubts, sometimes shaken confidence, insistent independence, and sometimes fears. Marshall makes clear that Fuller was a genius too often restrained by her times, yet undaunted in her attempts to break out of those bonds. Her views of women and what they could—and should—be anticipated the feminist movement by a century. And yet Fuller understood that woman, in achieving her potential, would also allow man to achieve his. For her, masculine and feminine were a spectrum, so that men have varying degrees of the feminine in them and women varying degrees of the masculine. She did not reject marriage at all, but she flatly renounced marriage as the institution it was in her day. And she saw the absolute equality of the sexes, if they demanded through thought and action the birthright of self-expression and freedom of choice. Almost paradoxically, Marshall reveals the intensity and delicacy of Fuller’s thought and feeling. Like Fuller herself, Marshall is nuanced in her writing, which is both clear and compelling.Margaret Fuller deserves a book like this, at once scholarly and readable. The reader will be both informed and deeply moved by this life, thanks to Marshall’s deft handling of the material we have.

The book details the life of an impressive gifted woman who lived way before her time. She suffered anti-female discrimination characteristic of the mid-19th century and hasn't gotten the recognition she deserves. It was a worthy and well written book, but there was way too much detail. Every letter, acquaintance, thought, interaction, and romantic affair was presented in agonizing detail. If you can suffer through that aspect, there's valuable information here.

Today Margaret Fuller is more often recognized for her unconventional lifestyle that amounted to only the last four years of her life when she moved to Italy or her tragic passing. This is all the more unfortunate because during her extremely productive life she distinguished herself as a writer, editor, jounalist,Transcendentalist, feminist, nurse, intellectual,champion of the downtrodden of society and advocate for the American Indian. She redefined the role of women in a male dominated society in which women were either wives and mothers, spinsters, or prostitutes.Born into what 19th century America would have described as genteel poverty, she was raised by her father to excel. She counted among her close personal friends Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Greeley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. With Emerson she would share a bond which was intimate but at times also contentious.Often described as unattractive, Fuller was also born with a spinal disorder which made one shoulder higher than the other. Because of her physical appearance she often was seen as someone who men wanted to be friends with but whom men did not view romantically. When she went to Italy in an attempt to join in the efforts to reunify the country, she broke with traditionalism, took a lover, and nine months later had a son. Speculation varies as to whether the couple ever legally married, but one fact is known. On Fuller's return to America with her little family, their ship sank within sight of the Long Island shore. Only her child's body was recovered.Fuller's biographer Megan Marshall has accessed a wealth of information regarding Fuller through Fuller's own writings and correspondence and those of her friends and contemporaries and has produced a chronological record of Fuller's life that is about as thorough and comprehensive as I have ever read. It takes an in depth view of a woman who had no limits and lived life on her own terms with honesty and integrity.This bio appealed to me because it defined Fuller and expanded on her legacy in great detail which made her seem almost larger than life. She never lived to see 50, but compressed many lives into her own brief one. The Margaret Fuller introduced in this book is quick witted and could more than hold her own against any man.

Marshall's well researched biography of a truly remarkable woman way ahead of her time was just "so so" for me. I found the book way too long and too academic to actually enjoy reading. My book group had also read the "Peabody Sisters" when it was first published and we all loved that book and found it much more compelling.

Just an amazing book filled with many unknown details about this incredible woman! So well written!

This extremely well-written biography describes a woman who was way ahead of her time in her thoughts and desires but held down by the conventions of society -- until she went to Italy. Many of the Transcendentalists were her friends. Ralph Waldo Emerson turned out to be rather disappointing. The tragedy at the end of Margaret's life still sends shivers down one's spine.

An American who wandered outside the mainstream of "The American Renaissance" of 19th century New England to see with naked eyes and mind, and heart, the Rest of The World as it was beyond the quiet contemplation of Walden Pond and Emerson's searchings. She throws an original, truthful, light upon the isolated cell of American thought of the time. The story, as her life, ended short in a sea tragedy. Only fragments remain of what might have carried Americanism beyond its 19th century limits.

Margaret Fuller: Ikone der transzendentalistischen Bewegung und Redakteurin der Zeitschrift "The Dial", Buchautorin, Henry David Thoreaus erste Editorin, enge Freundin Ralph Waldo Emersons, erste transatlantische Auslandskorrespondentin für "New York Tribune", Sozialreformerin, Frauenrechtlerin, Freiheitskämpferin. Fuller hat begeistert und polarisiert und ist - viel zu früh - 1850 vierzigjährig bei einer Schiffskatastrophe ums Leben gekommen. Megan Marshall zeichnet das Leben der tragischen Heldin auf sehr weibliche Art in ihrem sozialen Beziehungsgeflecht - darum gerade auch für Männer ausgesprochen lesenswert. Aus psychologischer Sicht fasziniert die psychosexuelle Entwicklung Fullers und die Komplexität ihrer intensiv-emotionalen Beziehung zu Emerson. Ebenso begeisternd als zeitgeschichtliches und soziokulturelles Dokument zu lesen und - nicht zuletzt - als überwältigendes und leidenschaftliches menschliches Drama. Die Margaret Fuller-Biografie von Megan Marshall ist ganz großes Kino!