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2nd out of 16 books
—
6 voters
Miss Fuller: A Novel
She was the most famous woman in America. And nobody knew who she was.
It is 1850. Margaret Fuller--feminist, journalist, orator, and "the most famous woman in America"--is returning from Europe where she covered the Italian revolution for The New York Tribune. She is bringing home with her an Italian husband, the Count Ossoli, and their two-year-old son. But this is not th...more
It is 1850. Margaret Fuller--feminist, journalist, orator, and "the most famous woman in America"--is returning from Europe where she covered the Italian revolution for The New York Tribune. She is bringing home with her an Italian husband, the Count Ossoli, and their two-year-old son. But this is not th...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
April 3rd 2012
by Steerforth
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Why do we not read about Margaret Fuller in our American History textbooks? I had never heard of her before, nor had several other women of different ages that I asked. She was one of the first women to be well educated and well read, and the first woman to gain access to Harvard's library. Miss Fuller lived in the early to mid 1800s and was friends with Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She was the first journalist to review books and wrote for The Dial and other early newspapers. She was outspo...more
An absolutely beautiful little book about a woman who scared people because she was completely alive. Two of my favorite quotes from this book:
“… it is astonishing how waiting for another to breathe, listening for the air of life, enforces a kind of love upon us. I loved every soldier I ever nursed in the siege—all but one, who snarled at me like a mad cane until his eyes went flat.”...more
“‘Madeira’ once meant a magical island where I would be fully understood, a place to sail to in my dreams, where l
Before Martha Gellhorn covered the Spanish Civil War with Ernest Hemingway, before Susan Sontag hunkered down during the siege of Sarajevo to direct a production of "Waiting for Godot," Margaret Fuller (1810-50), author of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" and intrepid reporter for the New York Tribune, drowned in a shipwreck with her husband and their child on her way home to deliver her masterpiece about the revolutions in Italy.
Recent biographers have plumbed Fuller's life, teeming with incid...more
Recent biographers have plumbed Fuller's life, teeming with incid...more
I happened upon Margaret Fuller's headstone in Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge years ago and my curiosity was aroused by the inscription (which I just looked up to quote verbatim):
By birth a child of New England
By adoption of citizen of Rome
By genius belonging to the world
Wow.
So when I saw this novel based on the imagined history of the latter years of Margaret Fuller's life and a possibility of what might have happened to her literary legacy, I had to read it. It reads well and the fictitiou...more
By birth a child of New England
By adoption of citizen of Rome
By genius belonging to the world
Wow.
So when I saw this novel based on the imagined history of the latter years of Margaret Fuller's life and a possibility of what might have happened to her literary legacy, I had to read it. It reads well and the fictitiou...more
I applaud Bernard's efforts to introduce Fuller to a popular audience through the vehicle of fiction. The book is well researched and the history - albeit fictionalized - of Fuller's life is rendered in brief. Furthermore, Bernard's attempt to understand Fuller's complexity as a multidimensional and living person is commendable. Yet, I couldn't help being largely disappointed with the overall effect. Unlike other readers, I did not mind the transitions in narrative voice between "Parts" of the n...more
This book is one of those that is disappointing only in that it ends - as Jane said, 'if a book is well written, I always find it too short.' But in reality it's beautifully shaped, not too short at all, with the thoughts of Thoreau's fictional sister framing Fuller's apologia. Both voices - Anne's conventional but perceptive, an interior monologue, and Margaret's rhetorically flourishing letter addressed to a friend/diary (so like Wollstonecraft's travel writing) - are done very well. There's a...more
An intriguing, imagined history of the life of Margaret Fuller and what might have happened to her literary legacy. I found the author's treatment and blending of facts and extrapolation thereof in presenting a possible and cohesive account of Fuller's last years to be very interesting - almost a kind of extension to literary historical detective work. it reminded me in some ways of Geraldine Brooks' approach in writing Caleb's Crossing, where her protagonist was based in fact but the rest was f...more
This was such an enchanting little novel, woven around historic figures - primarily the "transcendentalists". A broad categorization of poets, philosophers, thinkers, and writers in New England who were committed to social change and human rights, focusing on abolition, and to a lesser extent, women's rights. Miss Fuller is an independent, strong, intelligent modern woman of the mid-nineteenth century who becomes a journalist, witnessing and chronicling the European revolutions and struggles for...more
Margaret Fuller might be one of the most famous American women you've never heard of; I really learned of her when I read The Margaret-Ghost by Barbara Novak. Since then, I've been pretty hot for her, and so I was over-the-moon to learn about a new novel about her and her life.
April Bernard's novel didn't disappoint, and I don't think one needs to be familiar with Fuller to appreciate and enjoy this story. Set in 1850, the novel opens with Fuller's tragic death -- a shipwreck that claimed her a...more
April Bernard's novel didn't disappoint, and I don't think one needs to be familiar with Fuller to appreciate and enjoy this story. Set in 1850, the novel opens with Fuller's tragic death -- a shipwreck that claimed her a...more
The poignant last lines of the biographical novel of Margaret Fuller, the first American feminist who penned _Woman in the Nineteenth Century_, considered to be the first major feminist work in the United States, who tragically drowned along with her child and husband on their way back to America from Europe -
"A woman, hair streaming in the wind and water, her red dress half torn away and soaked nearly to black, clasping a book under one bare arm and a small child in the other - a woman, thus e...more
"A woman, hair streaming in the wind and water, her red dress half torn away and soaked nearly to black, clasping a book under one bare arm and a small child in the other - a woman, thus e...more
Brief little novel about Margaret Fuller, a real person who was a leading advocate for women's education. She was a self-made lecturer about women's issues who battled the misogyny of the times. (1840s) In the historical novel she is well-known to Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau, and it seems she lived in the midst of them for awhile. Her Wikipedia page is almost as interesting as this novel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...
I loved this book. It is spare yet rich, and it pulls you into another era--the swirl of intrigue and passion that surrounded the great feminist Margaret Fuller during her brief life. The tragedy of her demise and death is poetically told, but there is also something so uplifting about the legacy of this woman, then and now. Here is a quote from a letter she wrote to Sophie Hawthorne, wife of Nathanial Hawthorne: "What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a comple...more
I loved reading this book. It's a wonderful and multi-layered evocation of Margaret Fuller's life, both embodying her through first-person narration in the second section, and acknowledging her inaccessibility in the first and third sections, which are told from the perspectives of Anne and Henry Thoreau. The ending is so moving, and the novel as a whole is just beautifully written. My audio recording of the novel should be on sale soon at Audible!
I read Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century in college with interest and was excited to find this fictional account of her life written by a poet. Fuller hopes for life that is "beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind" and the account of her unconventional life is, I think, just that. With some terrific renderings of Henry David Thoreau and his sister, Anne, (and Emerson, Hawthorne).... Engaging!
I was very interested in the storyline for this book and looked forward to reading it. However, I found myself lost in keeping track of the characters. With that in mind, I did enjoy reading a bit of history that was previously unknown to me.
Interesting storyline. The second (and longest) part was a letter from Fuller that I really just did not care for. Would have been better if Bernard had written the whole book in her style instead of switching to Fuller's.
very well written book; had never heard of Margret Fuller before; she's a real person! I think she would have fit much better in 2013 then 1850. She made people very uncomfortable with her views and lifestyle. I liked this book.
Delightful really....I was not previously aware of Miss Fuller and her influence....Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Greely, Channing....what a cast of characters.....if you like this era, you must read this.
The author does a great job imagining the life of a woman, Elizabeth Fuller, with a great mind and born too early, constricted by her time. I also like that the author keeps the novel taut. The contrast between Henry Thoureau's sister and Elizabeth Fuller is well done.
As much about Miss Fuller's social circle (chiefly Thoreau and Emerson) as it is about Margaret herself. Appealed to the New England Fetishist in me. Short.
A small slightly frustrating book. Maybe it would have been better if I was more familiar with the real characters who appear or are referenced in the book, like Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne.
Based on the life and loves of Margaret Fuller, a genuine American blue-stocking.
I thought it was great!
Let's see if my review of MISS FULLER over at Necessary Fiction can get linked in here. Hope this works!
http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/M...
Let's see if my review of MISS FULLER over at Necessary Fiction can get linked in here. Hope this works!
http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/M...
An interesting, quick read. Would be a great book to read and discuss with my 13 year old niece. I think I will give that a try. I love her POV.
I tried I really did but I simply couldn't justify completing this book.
Margaret Fuller was of the Transcendentalist Circle, editing The Dial Magazine and living, for a short time, at Brooke Farm, their commune outside Boston. She was the first overseas correspondent--male or female--for any American newspaper. In this quiet little novel Fuller has just drowned in a hurricane off Long Island (shades of Sandy!) The narrator is sister of Henry David Thoreau, who has been delegated to recover Fuller's manuscript from the storm's wreckage.
This is just not my kind of book. I picked it up because I was intrigued by Margaret Fuller's biography and surprised I didn't know more about her. Unfortunately, reading historical fiction always just makes me think of elementary school social studies assignments. I kept feeling like the story was just text around the facts that I was supposed to feel clever for having picked out. I don't think that's the fault of the author, though--this book just wasn't for me.
May 09, 2013
Jane
marked it as triedtoread
I had a bunch of library books come in and this is the one being sacrificed. If I had more time, I'd probably keep going, but it's not engaging enough compared to the others.
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April Bernard is the author of three poetry collections and a novel. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Boston Review, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.
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Jun 08, 2012 08:30am