Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846

by Margaret Fuller, Julia Ward Howe (Introduction)

In very good condition. Pages are clean and unmarked and binding is tight. No dust jacket. We ship immediately!

Genres: Nonfiction

228 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, more commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female 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 an area of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller. She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing what she called "conversations": discussions among women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education. She became the first editor of the transcendental publication The Dial in 1840 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 revolution in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She also met Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, traveling back 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. 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, cite 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 her fame would be short-lived, were not concerned about accuracy and censored or altered much of her words before publication.

Reviews

[Maggie]

"I feel a growing persuasion that we shall now meet most sweetly, and that our minds will be tuned in the same key and tuned with nature."
"I must begin by 'babbling of green fields.' ...soft trance, the still rapture...I live in their live and am nourished by it, ...linger with me here and listen while the grass grows ... the soft warm life close to the earth..."
"The tulips are out now and the crimson ones seem to me like you. They fill gloriously with the sunlight, and the petals glow like gems, while the black stamens in the cup of the flower look so rich and mystical. I have gathered two and put them in my vase, but the perfume is almost overpowering; there are two golden ones, that have rooted themselves on the edge of a grassy bank. I do not know how they could get there; it was a strange elopement from the regular flower-bed, but the effect is beautiful flowers so vornehm willing to be wild."
"I have had my hammock slung on the piazza; I lie and swing there with the baby in the daytime, in the evening alone; while the breezes whisper and the moon glimmers through the stately trees, and am very sorry it was not so while you were here that I might have heard you sing there some happy evening; it is just like being in a cradle."
"There is no god who stands both for free nature and agriculture, and those nymphs represent the aspect of a cultivated country interspersed with woods."
"These are the loveliest days of the American year; the breezes are melody and balm, the sunlight pours in floods through the foliage, itself transparent gold. The water is so very blue and animated, the sail-boats bound along, as if they felt like me."
“The first impressions made by Margaret, even on those who soon learned to admire her most, were not favorable; and it was decidedly so in my case.”