Margaret Fuller

For other people named Margaret Fuller, see Margaret Fuller (disambiguation).

Margaret Fuller
Detail of the only known daguerreotype of Fuller (by John Plumbe, 1846)
Detail of the only known daguerreotype of Fuller (by John Plumbe, 1846)
BornSarah Margaret Fuller
(1810-05-23)May 23, 1810
Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedJuly 19, 1850(1850-07-19) (aged 40)
off Fire Island, New York, U.S.
Occupation
  • Teacher
  • journalist
  • critic
Literary movementTranscendentalism
Signature

Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Born Sarah Margaret Fuller in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller, a lawyer who died in 1835 due to cholera.[1] She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing her Conversations series: classes for women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education.[2] She became the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840, which was the year her writing career started to succeed,[3] before joining the staff of the New-York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. Her seminal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1845. A year later, she was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first female correspondent. She soon became involved with the revolutions in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She had a relationship with Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, as they were traveling to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered.

Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. Fuller, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wanted to stay free of what she called the "strong mental odor" of female teachers.[4] She also encouraged many other reforms in society, including prison reform and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cited Fuller as a source of inspiration. Many of her contemporaries, however, were not supportive, including her former friend Harriet Martineau, who said that Fuller was a talker rather than an activist. Shortly after Fuller's death, her importance faded. The editors who prepared her letters to be published, believing that her fame would be short-lived, censored or altered much of her work before publication.

  1. ^ Fuller, Margaret (2019). The Essential Margaret Fuller. Courier Dover Publications. p. 2.
  2. ^ Simmons, Nancy Craig (1994). "Margaret Fuller's Boston Conversations: The 1839-1840 Series". Studies in the American Renaissance: 195–226. JSTOR 30227655.
  3. ^ Capper, Charles (2010). Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life. Oxford University Press. p. x.
  4. ^ Capper, Charles (2010). Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life. Oxford University Press. p. xii.