References and notes
- Emerson , Edward Waldo and Emerson , Waldo , eds. 1912 . Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. VIII , 116 Boston and New York Hereafter referred to as Journals.
- Kenyon , Frederic G , ed. 1897 . The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I , 460 New York
- Channing , W. H. , Clarke , J. F. and Emerson , R. W. 1852 . Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli 2 vols , Boston The standard biographies of Margaret Fuller, none of which are fully adequate, are as follows:
- Higginson , Thomas Wentworth . 1884 . Margaret Fuller Ossoli Boston (hereafter referred to as Memoirs);
- Howe , Julia Ward . 1883 . Margaret Fuller Boston
- Anthony , Katharine . 1920 . Margaret Fuller: A Psychological Biography New York
- Brown , Arthur M. 1967 . Margaret Fuller New York
- Chipperfield , Faith . 1957 . In Quest of Love: The Life and Death of Margaret Fuller New York
- Deiss , Joseph Jay . 1969 . The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller New York
- Stern , Madeleine . 1972 . Margaret Fuller New York
- Wade , Mason . 1940 . Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius New York Fuller's papers are in Houghton Library of Harvard University and Boston Public Library
- James , Henry . 1903 . William Wetmore Story and His Friends Vol. I , 127 Boston
- Dupee , F. W. 1956 . Henry James: His Life and Writings 97 New York
- Edel , Leon , ed. 1956 . “The future of the novel,” . In Henry James: The Future of the Novel New York James’ standard defenses of fiction are “The art of fiction” and
- James, in idealizing the mid nineteenth‐century Italy of Story and his friends, seems to have been vindicating his own courage in confronting a vastly changed and modernized Europe a half century later: expatriation, he implies, is no longer an evasion.
- Fuller , Margaret . 1963 . American Romantic: A Selection from Her Writings and Correspondence Edited by: Miller , Perry . xxv xxvi New York
- James . William Wetmore Story, Vol. I , 127 128
- Phelps , Almira H. Lincoln . 1833 . Lectures to Young Ladies 171 Boston Phclps notes that women “incline too much to live in the little world of our own thoughts.”
- Willis , Nathaniel Parker . 1855 . The Rag‐Bag: A Collection of Ephemera 262 New York
- Parker , Gail , ed. The Oven Birds: American Women on Womanhood 1820–1920 1 – 56 . Willis was a writer and editor of popular weeklies for feminine consumption. See also
- Wood , Ann Douglas . 1972 . “The literature of impoverishment: The women local colorists in America 1865–1914,” . Women's Studies , I : 3 – 45 .
- Papashvilly , Helen . 1956 . All the Happy Endings New York
- Smith , Elizabeth Oakes . 1855 . Bertha and Lily: or the Parsonage of Beach Glen New York Bertha and Lily appeared five years after Fuller's death, but for decades before women (and men) had been providing the feminine reading public with equally hyperbolic compliments. In 1830, a writer for Sarah Hale's Lady's Magazine, enthused over the well‐bred lady: “See she sits, she walks, she speaks, she looks—unutterable Things! Inspiration springs up in her very paths—it follows her footsteps. A halo of glory encircles her, and illuminates her whole orbit” (III, 83–84)
- Emerson , Ralph Waldo . 1878 . “Woman: a lecture read before the woman's rights convention, Boston, September 20, 1835,” . In Works, Edited by: Cabot , James Elliot . Vol. II , 343 Boston and New York
- Sklar , Kathryn Kish . 1973 . Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity New Haven and London For a biography which focuses in part on this aspect of American Victorian culture, see
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 234
- Thomas , John Wesley , ed. 1952 . The Letters of James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller, 78 79 Hamburg, , Germany
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 39
- Andrews , Wayne . 1963 . Germaine: A Portrait of Madame de Staël New York
- Maurois , André . 1953 . Lélia: A Life of George Sand, Edited by: Hopkins , Gerrod . New York
- James . William Wetmore Story, Vol. I , 189
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 229
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 167 – 168 . She left Italy for America in 1850, for example, because she could not earn the money she needed to support her family outside the United States. There were a number of young men with whom Fuller was in love as a young woman, most notably Samuel Ward who married Fuller's closest friend, Anna Barker. Faith Chipperfield stresses (indeed, over‐stresses) Fuller's love‐life in her sentimental biography. What strikes a modern reader of Fuller's letters and journals is the gallantry with which she handled her isolation. At times she felt her loneliness to be unbearable, that she had ‘'no real hold on life, no real permanent connection with any soul,” and recorded with horror: “This thought envelops me as a cold atmosphere. I do not see how I shall go through this destiny. I can, if it is mine; but I do not feel that I can” (
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 167 ). Yet she held herself to a high tone of magnanimity which she was scrupulous enough to distinguish rigorously from a spirit of martyrdom (
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 166 ). While it is clear that this high tone served a compensatory function— she would be admired if she could not be loved, she would predict destinies if she could not dictate affection—it is also clear that she demanded generosity of thought from herself as a basic precondition of is difficult. Repeatedly, she accepted the waste of her emotions as her self‐respect. She struggled ruthlessly to live in altitudes where breathing problem alone. She strove for “humility” () she prayed, “Would that love like knowledge could be its own reward” (Higginson, op. cit., 180)
- James . William Wetmore Story, Vol. I , 127 130 T. W. Higginson in her biography of Fuller had already noted that Fuller, influenced by her father had turned “from the weak side of American intellect, which then was literature, to the strong side, which was statesmanship” (op. cit., 132, 133)
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 31 – 32 .
- Chipperfield. op. cit., 82.
- Higginson, op. cit., 22.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 18
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 154.
- Fuller , Margaret . 1835 . Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers 41 Boston, Cleveland, New York . Hereafter referred to as Woman.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 65
- Wade, op. cit., 94.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 303
- Ibid., 83.
- Thompson , Eleanor Wolf . 1947 . Education for Ladies 1830–1860 New York For intelligent discussions of girls’ education in this period, see
- Woody , Thomas . 1929 . A History of Women's Education in the United States I New York and Lancaster, Pa.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 20
- Fuller . Woman 287
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 11
- Ibid., I, 297.
- Thomas Carlyle, to pick one example of many, praised her “chivalrous nobleness à toute éprouve” and thought her work “the undeniable utterances … of a truly heroic mind; altogether unique … among the writing women of this generation, rare enough … among the writing men” (Howe, op. cit., 186).
- Thomas , John Wesley . 1949 . James Freeman Clarke: Apostle of German Culture to America 28 Boston
- See the early correspondence in James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller.
- The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell 140 – 180 . London ). Lowell was mocking a real attitude of Fuller's. In 1839, she wrote a friend: “I was proud that I was to test myself in the sternest way, that I was always to return to myself, to be my own priest, pupil, parent, child, husband and wife”
- Memoirs Vol. I , 99 What Lowell failed to understand was that Fuller had no other option
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 231
- Wade, op. cit., 280–282.
- After the birth of her child Fuller drew much closer to her mother. She hoped to bring her family to live with Mrs. Fuller on her return to America in 1850.
- 1836 . The Young Lady's Friend By a Lady 327 323 Boston See Higginson, op. cit., 35 ff. for Fuller's relations with other older women
- Jones , Alexander E. 1954 . “Margaret Fuller's attempt to write fiction,” . Boston Public Library Quarterly , 6 : 67 – 73 .
- Kendrick , A. G. 1860 . The Life and Letters of Mrs. Emily C. Judson New York
- Chubbuck , Emily . 1846 . Alderbrook: A Collection of Fanny Forrester's Village Sketches, Poems, Etc. 2 vols. , Boston
- Fuller , S. Margaret . 1832 . Literature and Art Vol. II , 130 131 New York Hereafter referred to as Literature
- Fuller . Woman, 130 ff
- Dewey , Mary E. 1871 . Life and Letters of Catharine M. Sedgwick New York For Sedgwick's life, see
- Bell , Michael Davitt . 1970 . ‘'History and Romance convention in Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie” . American Quarterly , 22 : 213 – 221 .
- Bell . 1971 . Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England Princeton, N.J. to which my whole argument is indebted
- Sedgwick . 1835 . The Linwoods Vol. I , xii New York
- Ibid., 60.
- Lee , Eliza Buckminster . 1848 . Naomi; or Boston, Two Hundred Years Ago Boston For another interesting example of the feminine evasion of history, see. The novel ends with the heroine, a persecuted Quaker, fleeing with her lover from the settlements to the forest, out of the realm of history
- Ossoli , Margaret Fuller . 1836 . At Home and Abroad, or Things and Thoughts in America and Europe 171 172 Boston and London Hereafter referred to as Home and Abroad.
- Andrews, op. cit., 97.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 55
- Maurois, op. cit., 113.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 195
- Woman, 94.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 248 249
- Peabody , Elizabeth . 1974 . Record of Mr. Alcott's School Boston Alcott's school, which was an important influence on Fuller, is described in
- McCuskey , Dorothy . 1940 . Bronson Alcott, Teacher New York
- Rusk , Ralph , ed. 1939 . The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. II , 202 New York Hereafter referred to as Letters.
- Headley , Caroline W. 1895 . Margaret and Her Friends, or Ten Conversations with Margaret Fuller 139 140 Boston
- See ibid. 67 ff. where Fuller deliberately enjoys an anecdote of cruelty (Apollo's flaying of Marsyas) in most unfeminine fashion to the dismay of one of her own conservative students.
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 329
- Higginson, op. cit., 117.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 65
- Ibid., 160.
- See ibid., 311 ff.
- Howe, op. cit., 85.
- One might add that the stress on the first name revealed also the Romantic preoccupation with the tragic processes of history; it is the implied condensation of experience behind such names as ‘'Corinne” or “Margaret” which allows them to stand alone.
- Ossoli , Margaret Fuller , ed. 1960 . “The Magnolia,” . In Life Without and Life Within, or Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems 333 – 335 . Boston
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 238
- Chipperfield, op. cit., 197.
- de Staël , Madame . 1890 . Corrine; or Italy, Edited by: Baldwin , Emily and Driver , Paulina . London
- Matthiessen , F. O. 1941 . American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman 17 3 – 75 . London, Toronto, and New York
- Wint , William . 1970 . The Letters of the British Spy, Edited by: Davis , Richard Beale . 132 – 147 . Chapel Hill, N.C.
- 1848 . The Life of Patrick Henry Hartford, Conn.
- ‘Never read what she has written’ . Letters , I 59 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for example, remarked: “If I wished anyone to do her [Fuller] justice, I should say …
- Letters , IV 222
- Journals , VIII 250
- Memoirs, Vol. I , 295
- James . William Wetmore Story, Vol. I , 171
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 24
- Ibid., I, 294, and Wade, op. cit., 130. Edgar Poe was aware of Fuller's confusion between life and literature at this time. He wrote perceptively: “her personal character and her printed books are merely one and the same thing. Her acts are bookish, and her books are less thoughts than acts” (Wade, op. cit., 155).
- Healey, op. cit., 137.
- Strauch , Carl . 1968 . “Hatred's swift repulsions: Emerson, Margaret Fuller and others,” . Studies in Romanticism. , 7 : 63 – 103 . For two fine articles on the Fuller‐Emerson relationship to which I am indebted, see
- Warfel , Harry R. 1935 . “Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson,” . PMLA , 30 : 376 – 394 .
- Douglas , Ann . “Heaven our home: consolation literature in the Northern United States 1820–1870,” . American Quarterly , forthcoming in this article is a chapter from ‘'Sentimental sabotage,” a book in progress on problems of clerical and feminine identity in nineteenth‐century America
- Higginson, op. cit., 62.
- Cabot , James Elliot . 1887 . A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson Vol. I , 329 Boston and New York
- Letters , III 284
- Journals , VIII 115 – 119 . For Emerson's crucial entry on Fuller's death, see
- The most notable example was James Freeman Clarke, but Frederick Hedges and William Henry Channing, also radical Unitarians, to some extent fall into the same category.
- Warfel, op. cit., 382.
- Letters , I 32
- Ibid., II, 332, 228.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 98
- Letters , II 437
- Letters , II 330 342 “Days,” for example, clearly had its genesis in Emerson's friendship with Fuller. See
- Ibid., 351, 245, 239.
- This is the idea behind Emerson's poem “Days.”
- Letters , I 32
- Wood , Ann . 1972 . “Emerson's representative men,” . New Republic , Jan. 1–8 : 29
- Letters , II 322
- Higginson, op. cit., 166, 167.
- Literature , II 2 3
- Letters , III 19 20
- Ibid., 29,
- Brown , Frederick Augustus . 1910 . Margaret Fuller and Goethe New York Her fascination with Goethe had stemmed largely from the fact that this emphasis on the outward world was his central massage. See
- Letters , III 180
- I am indebted for this point and for much of my thinking on the Fuller‐Emerson relationship to Michael Davitt Bell of Williams College.
- Higginson, op. cit., 165.
- Miller , Perry . 1950 . The Transcendentalists, An Anthology 307 308 Cambridge, Mass.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 58
- Shepard , Odell . 1937 . Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott 155 356 Boston
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 29
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 151 ff
- Greeley , Horace . 1868 . Recollections of a Busy Life 169 – 191 . New York
- Scott , Frank W. 1918 . “Newspapers 1775–1860” . In The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II , 177 – 195 . New York For Greeley's career see
- Stoddard , Henry Luther . 1946 . Horace Greeley, Printer, Editor, Crusader New York
- Van Deusen , Glyndon Garlock . 1953 . Horace Greeley, Nineteenth Century Crusader Philadelphia, Pa.
- Woman, 103.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 156
- Woman, 119, 172.
- Wade, op. cit., 143.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 151
- Howe , Julia Ward . 1903 . Love Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845–1846 New York Wade, op. cit., 164, 166. Their love‐letters, which Nathan refused to return to Fuller, were published by
- Chipperfield, op. cit., 231.
- Emerson . Memoirs Vol. I , 279 280
- Journals , VIII 142 Her desperate pretentiousness can be viewed in many of the early letters and journals quoted in Memoirs, I, passim.
- Wade, op. cit. 143.
- Letters, Vol. III , 183
- Home and Abroad, 62.
- Ibid., 232.
- See James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller, 111.
- Home and Abroad, 214.
- Ibid., 243.
- The best account of the Fuller‐Ossoli relationship is in Deiss, op. cit. Anthony, op. cit., 154–170 is also useful.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 228
- Fuller was by no means proficient in Italian in 1837, and several of her early letters to Ossoli reveal that she feared she could not make herself clear. See Deiss, op. cit., 70, 151.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 311
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 233 She wrote a friend, “Our relation covers only a part of my life, but I do not perceive that it interferes with anything I ought to have or be” (Deiss, op. cit., 295). In a dark moment, she could refer to Ossoli's love as “all fondness, but no help” (). She had reservations about the institution of marriage (ibid., 278), and gave a great deal of thought to the freedom the much younger Ossoli might one day need (Deiss, op. cit., 295)
- Home and Abroad, 162.
- Ibid., 166.
- Baker , Paul P. 1964 . The Fortunate Pilgrims: Americans in Italy 1800–1860 Cambridge, Mass.
- Richardson , Edgar P. and Wittman , Otto . 1951 . Travellers in Arcadia: American Artists in Italy 1830–1895 Detroit, Ill.
- Wright , Natalie . 1965 . American Novelists in Italy Philadelphia, Pa.
- Baker, op. cit., 42.
- Salomone , A. William . 1968 . “The 19th century discovery of Italy: an essay in American cultural history,” . American Historical Review , 173 : 1360 – 1362 .
- Marraro , Howard R. 1932 . American Opinion on the Unification of Italy 1846–1861 New York
- Home and Abroad, 218.
- Ibid., 331, 334.
- Ibid., 367.
- Rossi , Joseph . 1954 . The Image of America in Mazzini's Writings 71 Madison, Wise Deiss, op. cit., 222. Fuller's estimate of the gap between reportage and fact was not exaggerated. The dramatically changing opinions of Louis Cass, the American attaché who arrived in Rome in the spring of 1849, testify to the same phenomenon. Pleading with his government to empower him fully to recognize the young republic, he summed up the issue at stake: this is “not, as the European press has so constantly insinuated, [a conflict] between anarchy and order, [but one] between constitutional, representative government and the most benumbing despotism” (
- Home and Abroad, 248.
- Ibid., 327.
- Ibid, 305, 306.
- Ibid, 420.
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 310
- Ibid, 209.
- See James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller, 102, where Clarke praises Mrs. Sigoumey.
- Clarke , James Freeman . 1891 . Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, Edited by: Hale , Edward Everett . 171 179 Boston and New York
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 235
- Ibid, 269, 270.
- Ibid, 242.
- Wellisz , Leopold . 1947 . The Friendship of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Adam Mickiewicz 34 New York
- Home and Abroad, 436.
- Wellisz, op. cit., 23.
- James . William Wetmore Story, Vol. I , 163
- Woman, 177.
- Rich , Adrienne . 1967 . Snapshots of a Daughter‐in‐Law 24 New York
- Memoirs, Vol. II , 38
- Rich , Adrienne . 1973 . Diving Into the Wreck 23 24 New York
- Anthony, op. cit., 82, 83.