What do you think?
Rate this book
The Lives of Margaret Fuller
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer John Matteson, an account of the "Susan Sontag" of nineteenth-century America. A brilliant writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. Outspoken and quick-witted, idealistic and adventurous, she became the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley’s newspaper, and served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. While living in Europe she fell in love with an Italian nobleman, with whom she became pregnant out of wedlock. In 1848 she joined the fight for Italian independence and, the following year, reported on the struggle while nursing the wounded within range of enemy cannons. Amid all these strivings and achievements, she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century . Despite her brilliance, however, Fuller suffered from self-doubt and was plagued by ill health. John Matteson captures Fuller’s longing to become ever better, reflected by the changing lives she led. 28 black-and-white illustrations
510 pages, Hardcover
First published January 16, 2012
About the author
John Matteson
18 books61 followersJohn Matteson is a professor of English at John Jay College in New York City, where he lives. His book, Eden's Outcasts is the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. "
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
May 28, 2013
One can hardly praise Matteson's narrative sufficiently. The depth of his research is evident. Yet his selection of telling detail is economical, and his presentation, interleaved with pertinent analysis, apposite conclusions and summations, is seamless and well-paced, never interrupting his entirely engaging evocation of his subject - an altogether remarkable person.
I will say that Matteson's prose becomes a bit too purple in certain passages for my taste. One quote suffices to make the point. Regarding the night that Fuller lost her virginity - at about the age of 36 or 37 - Matteson writes: "Her life's struggle to become a self-perfecting being had always run counter to the inconvenient human wants of her body - to be free from loneliness, to know the shocks and enfoldings of passion, to be loved. One night in Rome, Giovanni Ossoli have her these long-awaited gifts, but they came at a price. Never again could Margaret Fuller hope to stand alone atop her immaculate mountain. The pure spirit submitted freely to its human chains." (p. 353) As we used to say in East Texas - that's enough to gag a maggot. But passages of this kind are few but notable.
I do object to one element of Matteson's biography: his notion of Margaret Fuller's many identities and lives. In certain passages he notes that "[h]is work uses the conceit of successive identities (p. 449 n. 6) - an image, a trope that he uses to organize his presentation. Yet he claims that these shifts in identify reveal Fuller's capacity to "reinvent herself at will," that her metamorphoses - all thirteen of them - were transformations, discontinuities, in fact, that she willed in order to bring her lives into accord with each set of ideas she adopted as central to her present perspective on man and the infinite. So I am left with the impression that the notion of successive named identities and the lives that accompanied them amounts to rather more than a conceit.
Perhaps my response to the notion of a sudden collapse of one identify and the equally sudden appearance of its successor is influenced by personal experience. I have been well acquainted with persons who suffer from severe major depression (with psychotic features) or from multiple personality disorder. I have witnessed psychotic breaks. I have seen very ill individuals set one identity aside and enter into another, and in the process become perfect strangers to me.
I am sure that Matteson did not intend for his "construct" to suggest a psychopathology, but that's the problem. I don't think Matteson knows what he means when he write of Fuller's succession of identities and lives. Does he mean to use a conceit, a trope, employ a language game, or does he mean to suggest an analytical framework? It isn't clear, but I think it more likely that he intends the latter. If that is true, then it seems to me that he must base his biography on a clinically sound theory of personality, of identity, of human development, which will allow him to specify the components of Fuller's identity, to determine when one component changes, when another doesn't, when the accumulation of change represents a shift of identity and when it doesn't, how specifically identity determines the features of a "life," whatever that may mean. He presents no material of this kind - and even if his biography were based on sound theory, I'm glad he didn't introduce it into his text. The theory-laden psycho-biography of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. Young Man Luther, is tedious at best. Yet theory can form a subtext that needn't obtrude.
Moreover, Matteson isn't consistent in the application of his "conceit" and "construct." I have noted several passages in the last few chapters of his book in which he emphasizes continuities, even as Fuller purportedly was shedding one identify, adopting yet another and entering into a new life. For example, of Fuller near the end of her life, once she had become the "revolutionary," Matteson writes: "... the narrative of her life that she had been telling herself since childhood - a story of ever upward motion and advancement toward personal perfection - had been all but shattered by the twin crises of unplanned motherhood and the collapse of the Roman revolution. If the upward trajectory had in fact been broken, however, her belief in it had not. She needed to believe that she would rise again. She needed to recover the inner force that had always driven her forward." (p. 412) Matteson doesn't explain how she could "reinvent herself at will" and yet retain certain features that had others had noted in her character since childhood, nor how continuity and discontinuity constitute a metamorphosis.
It's a pity that he resorted to such a half-baked, ill-formulated construct. He didn't really need it. I conjecture, however, that Matteson was seeking to differentiate his biography from other major biographies of Fuller. He didn't want to write yet another book, whose title read "Margaret Fuller [colon] [subtitle]. And so he chose to write about Fuller's identities and lives - rather than "An American Life." But I can only speculate.
And so I am beginning to think that biographers of thinkers or literary figures need to master at least one theory of personality, development or an analytical framework that makes some sort of sense - quite apart from their particular subject and work - in order to get at the capacities, the drives in them that prompted or compelled them to devote time and energy to projects and pursuits over the course of a life that is memorable, worth the writing. Superb narrative technique, musical language, profoundly thorough scholarship are necessary but not sufficient to produce a pitch-perfect biography - one that I find convincing at least.
All that being said, I am quite willing to ignore it all (in a second reading) for the sake of his altogether superb characterization of Fuller. Even though Matteson's book is the first biography of Fuller that I have read (Cappe, von Mehren, and Marshall are on order), I believe that his characterization of Fuller will remain my sense of the person. His descriptions of her responses to persons and events, her language, her commitments and passions, her decisions and actions, her reasoning are so full and clear that they evoke in me the sense of a living presence. Through his pages I became so fully engaged in her story, in her ideas, her perspective, her state of mind and feeling that I sometimes looked up expecting to see her there when I wanted to ask: "Is this really true?" I very rarely experience engagement in a book so intensely, but I find that experience highly gratifying.
I will say that Matteson's prose becomes a bit too purple in certain passages for my taste. One quote suffices to make the point. Regarding the night that Fuller lost her virginity - at about the age of 36 or 37 - Matteson writes: "Her life's struggle to become a self-perfecting being had always run counter to the inconvenient human wants of her body - to be free from loneliness, to know the shocks and enfoldings of passion, to be loved. One night in Rome, Giovanni Ossoli have her these long-awaited gifts, but they came at a price. Never again could Margaret Fuller hope to stand alone atop her immaculate mountain. The pure spirit submitted freely to its human chains." (p. 353) As we used to say in East Texas - that's enough to gag a maggot. But passages of this kind are few but notable.
I do object to one element of Matteson's biography: his notion of Margaret Fuller's many identities and lives. In certain passages he notes that "[h]is work uses the conceit of successive identities (p. 449 n. 6) - an image, a trope that he uses to organize his presentation. Yet he claims that these shifts in identify reveal Fuller's capacity to "reinvent herself at will," that her metamorphoses - all thirteen of them - were transformations, discontinuities, in fact, that she willed in order to bring her lives into accord with each set of ideas she adopted as central to her present perspective on man and the infinite. So I am left with the impression that the notion of successive named identities and the lives that accompanied them amounts to rather more than a conceit.
Perhaps my response to the notion of a sudden collapse of one identify and the equally sudden appearance of its successor is influenced by personal experience. I have been well acquainted with persons who suffer from severe major depression (with psychotic features) or from multiple personality disorder. I have witnessed psychotic breaks. I have seen very ill individuals set one identity aside and enter into another, and in the process become perfect strangers to me.
I am sure that Matteson did not intend for his "construct" to suggest a psychopathology, but that's the problem. I don't think Matteson knows what he means when he write of Fuller's succession of identities and lives. Does he mean to use a conceit, a trope, employ a language game, or does he mean to suggest an analytical framework? It isn't clear, but I think it more likely that he intends the latter. If that is true, then it seems to me that he must base his biography on a clinically sound theory of personality, of identity, of human development, which will allow him to specify the components of Fuller's identity, to determine when one component changes, when another doesn't, when the accumulation of change represents a shift of identity and when it doesn't, how specifically identity determines the features of a "life," whatever that may mean. He presents no material of this kind - and even if his biography were based on sound theory, I'm glad he didn't introduce it into his text. The theory-laden psycho-biography of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. Young Man Luther, is tedious at best. Yet theory can form a subtext that needn't obtrude.
Moreover, Matteson isn't consistent in the application of his "conceit" and "construct." I have noted several passages in the last few chapters of his book in which he emphasizes continuities, even as Fuller purportedly was shedding one identify, adopting yet another and entering into a new life. For example, of Fuller near the end of her life, once she had become the "revolutionary," Matteson writes: "... the narrative of her life that she had been telling herself since childhood - a story of ever upward motion and advancement toward personal perfection - had been all but shattered by the twin crises of unplanned motherhood and the collapse of the Roman revolution. If the upward trajectory had in fact been broken, however, her belief in it had not. She needed to believe that she would rise again. She needed to recover the inner force that had always driven her forward." (p. 412) Matteson doesn't explain how she could "reinvent herself at will" and yet retain certain features that had others had noted in her character since childhood, nor how continuity and discontinuity constitute a metamorphosis.
It's a pity that he resorted to such a half-baked, ill-formulated construct. He didn't really need it. I conjecture, however, that Matteson was seeking to differentiate his biography from other major biographies of Fuller. He didn't want to write yet another book, whose title read "Margaret Fuller [colon] [subtitle]. And so he chose to write about Fuller's identities and lives - rather than "An American Life." But I can only speculate.
And so I am beginning to think that biographers of thinkers or literary figures need to master at least one theory of personality, development or an analytical framework that makes some sort of sense - quite apart from their particular subject and work - in order to get at the capacities, the drives in them that prompted or compelled them to devote time and energy to projects and pursuits over the course of a life that is memorable, worth the writing. Superb narrative technique, musical language, profoundly thorough scholarship are necessary but not sufficient to produce a pitch-perfect biography - one that I find convincing at least.
All that being said, I am quite willing to ignore it all (in a second reading) for the sake of his altogether superb characterization of Fuller. Even though Matteson's book is the first biography of Fuller that I have read (Cappe, von Mehren, and Marshall are on order), I believe that his characterization of Fuller will remain my sense of the person. His descriptions of her responses to persons and events, her language, her commitments and passions, her decisions and actions, her reasoning are so full and clear that they evoke in me the sense of a living presence. Through his pages I became so fully engaged in her story, in her ideas, her perspective, her state of mind and feeling that I sometimes looked up expecting to see her there when I wanted to ask: "Is this really true?" I very rarely experience engagement in a book so intensely, but I find that experience highly gratifying.
April 7, 2012
I respected the scholarship behind this book, but it was a hard slog to get through it. I'm very familiar with Fuller, having done some serious research for a bio about her back when I was in the academic world in the late 1970s. I have also greatly enjoyed several recent books about Emerson and Thoreau. But somehow this book didn't connect with me at all.
The portrait it builds of Fuller is repellent. She was very emotional in a way that was common at the time but doesn't read well now, so quoting her can make her sound like a person you'd do what you could to avoid. But that wasn't how others saw her. So I wondered why the author hadn't given us a bit more perspective and brought her to life more sympathetically.
At times, I came away thinking the author had ended up loathing her. He certainly made me disgusted at her horrifyingly neglectful mothering.
But I'm not at all certain he got that story right at all. I don't buy into his claim that she and Ossoli really married. Her behavior makes much more sense if it was driven by shame and fear of discovery as seems likely. If they were really married there was no reason to behave like that. I've read enough other books that made good cases for that explanation not to have been impressed by this one.
But the main thing that was missing in this book, for me, was something that would have given a better understanding of what Fuller meant to the brilliant people who knew and loved her. Reading this book you come away thinking no one could have stood to be around her. But that wasn't the case, and my memory of what I read in Emerson's journals is that the relationship he had with Fuller was far more complex than what we read of here and that they were both drawn to each other in a way that was painful because of his marriage.
The portrait it builds of Fuller is repellent. She was very emotional in a way that was common at the time but doesn't read well now, so quoting her can make her sound like a person you'd do what you could to avoid. But that wasn't how others saw her. So I wondered why the author hadn't given us a bit more perspective and brought her to life more sympathetically.
At times, I came away thinking the author had ended up loathing her. He certainly made me disgusted at her horrifyingly neglectful mothering.
But I'm not at all certain he got that story right at all. I don't buy into his claim that she and Ossoli really married. Her behavior makes much more sense if it was driven by shame and fear of discovery as seems likely. If they were really married there was no reason to behave like that. I've read enough other books that made good cases for that explanation not to have been impressed by this one.
But the main thing that was missing in this book, for me, was something that would have given a better understanding of what Fuller meant to the brilliant people who knew and loved her. Reading this book you come away thinking no one could have stood to be around her. But that wasn't the case, and my memory of what I read in Emerson's journals is that the relationship he had with Fuller was far more complex than what we read of here and that they were both drawn to each other in a way that was painful because of his marriage.
April 30, 2012
I read very few biographies, partly because so many are poorly written. This one, however, was both well-researched and well-written, which is not too surprising since the biographer, Matteson, won the Pulitzer for his last book. The author displayed quite a lot of psychological insight in his treatment of his subject, the complex Margaret Fuller. A proto-feminist icon and one of the great intellects of her day, she was a friend to Emerson, Thoreau, the elder Henry James, and many other famous persons. She held all-female salons, whose audience included (later) founding feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Julia Ward Howe. Fuller edited The Dial, that famous transcendental journal, and wrote 3 books of nonfiction, including Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which was a bestseller in its day. She was even the first long-term foreign correspondent-- of either sex-- for an American newspaper, the New York Tribune, and became embroiled in Rome's 1848-9 rebellion against its Austrian rulers and even the papacy.
With all this, she was a flawed woman, and Matteson is able to put across her foibles as sympathetically as her triumphs. Wonderful!
With all this, she was a flawed woman, and Matteson is able to put across her foibles as sympathetically as her triumphs. Wonderful!
October 7, 2012
Margaret Fuller (1810-50) was the only woman to be included in the Concord circle of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The author of the groundbreaking "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" and a war correspondent for the New York Tribune, Fuller returned home from her adventures in Italy only to drown 250 yards from the shore of her native land. She is a natural choice for biographers wanting to latch onto both a serious and sensational subject -- and several biographers have done so in recent years.
But as John Matteson shows in "The Lives of Margaret Fuller," it was not always so. By the early 20th century, Fuller had been largely forgotten. Even academics -- who can keep a reputation alive by teaching writers into the literary canon -- ignored her because she was a one-book author, and because much of her impact derived from a charismatic personality so powerful that when she died Emerson said he had lost his audience.
Right after her death her fellow writers assembled a volume devoted to her memory that was a surprise bestseller, eclipsed only by the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852. But the kind of mostly pious, inspirational tributes that led to the proliferation of Margaret Fuller clubs in the decades after her death had played itself out by the 1920s, when scholars of all kinds were canonizing great writers, not great personalities.
Flash forward 50 years to the 1970s, with the revival of the women's movement and the desire in academia to revise the canon to give voice to the writings of women the male-dominated academy had discounted. Suddenly Fuller's writing and cultural influence became empowering -- to use a favorite academic word. And the culmination of this trend is surely Matteson's masterful biography, with chapter titles that emphasize the reasons his protean subject is likely to remain in the forefront of efforts to explore and dissect the American psyche: "Prodigy," "Misfit," "Apostle," "Conversationalist," "Ecstatic Editor," "Seeker of Utopia," "Advocate," "Lover and Critic," "Internationalist," "Inamorata," "Revolutionary," "Victim."
Pulitzer Prize winner Matteson expresses his significant debts to other biographers who have emphasized many of the "lives" that Fuller led as she was quite consciously breaking the mold her society wished to construct for women. His writing seems to derive palpable energy from Fuller's own dynamism. He does not downplay her arrogance and other faults, but in the end he discovers a Fuller that is startlingly modern in her contradictions and commitments.
But as John Matteson shows in "The Lives of Margaret Fuller," it was not always so. By the early 20th century, Fuller had been largely forgotten. Even academics -- who can keep a reputation alive by teaching writers into the literary canon -- ignored her because she was a one-book author, and because much of her impact derived from a charismatic personality so powerful that when she died Emerson said he had lost his audience.
Right after her death her fellow writers assembled a volume devoted to her memory that was a surprise bestseller, eclipsed only by the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852. But the kind of mostly pious, inspirational tributes that led to the proliferation of Margaret Fuller clubs in the decades after her death had played itself out by the 1920s, when scholars of all kinds were canonizing great writers, not great personalities.
Flash forward 50 years to the 1970s, with the revival of the women's movement and the desire in academia to revise the canon to give voice to the writings of women the male-dominated academy had discounted. Suddenly Fuller's writing and cultural influence became empowering -- to use a favorite academic word. And the culmination of this trend is surely Matteson's masterful biography, with chapter titles that emphasize the reasons his protean subject is likely to remain in the forefront of efforts to explore and dissect the American psyche: "Prodigy," "Misfit," "Apostle," "Conversationalist," "Ecstatic Editor," "Seeker of Utopia," "Advocate," "Lover and Critic," "Internationalist," "Inamorata," "Revolutionary," "Victim."
Pulitzer Prize winner Matteson expresses his significant debts to other biographers who have emphasized many of the "lives" that Fuller led as she was quite consciously breaking the mold her society wished to construct for women. His writing seems to derive palpable energy from Fuller's own dynamism. He does not downplay her arrogance and other faults, but in the end he discovers a Fuller that is startlingly modern in her contradictions and commitments.
October 25, 2013
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) was a leading writer of the nineteenth century. Her father Timothy Fuller was an attorney and politician. He demanded the best education of Margaret and her brother. It was unusual for women to be educated at the time. By her 30’s she was known as the best read person in New England. She went on to be the editor of the magazine “The Dial”. She was the only female in the Concord Circle along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry D. Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott (the father of Louisa May Alcott). She taught a year at Alcott’s Temple School in Boston. She was the first American female full time book reviewer in journalism. She wrote books, was an advocate of women’s rights, right to an education and right to employment. She went to Europe to write the biography of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. She became the first female foreign news correspondent and then the 1st American female war correspondent for the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley. She covered the revolution in Italy where she meet Giovanni Ossoli married and had a child. On her return to the United States with her family the ship wrecked on Fire Island in New York yards from the shore during a hurricane. She and her family perished along with the manuscripts of the books she had been writing. Besides being known as a brilliant woman she also was known to be arrogant and bad tempered, she did not suffer fools lightly. Her death at an early age and the loss of her newest manuscripts was a great loss to the literary world of the nineteen century. I read this as an audio book. Teresa DeBarry did a good job narrating the book. If you are interested in women’s literature and women’s history this book would be of great interest to you.
May 6, 2012
The end of Fuller's life (in Italy, on the shipwreck at Fire Island) was so fascinating and disturbing. Enjoyed the book, made my peace with Matteson's rare overblown descriptions, and enjoyed learning more about Fuller. But, Matteson's book on the Alcotts was by far the better read, perhaps because the Alcotts are simply more fascinating subjects? However, Matteson is trying to respond to decades of misinformed or biased biographies of Fuller--and that requires a level of detail that may not always be as exciting for the reader as it is for the writer.
May 3, 2013
What can you say about a woman who "refused to be ordinary"? Matteson"s story about Margaret Fuller is rich with reasons why this unique individual ought to be honored and respected for her "self-culture" which drove her to make important contributions to the progress of humanity.
September 24, 2012
In this title, John Matteson subtly states his thesis: Margaret Fuller, through her many experiences, grew and changed so fundamentally that it was as if she had different lives.
Her first life, under the tutelage of a "tiger father", left her over educated with limited social skills. As an awkward young woman, she faced not only social, but institutional bias. Libraries and formal education were closed to her, but she made her way. The intellectual skills she learned at her father's command propelled her, despite the many drawbacks, to meet the intellectuals of her day.
Mentored and hosted by Ralph Waldo Emerson she became an active member of the transcendentalist circle of Concord. She edited its magazine, participated in its discussions and bathed in the beauty of nature. She supported herself and tried to help her family through teaching, writing and leading conversations for the progressive and artistic women of Boston.
Matteson shows how, through her travels, she grew. The self-reliant ethos of the transcendental movement gave way to more global perspectives.
Fuller's experience in Italy is a highlight. Beyond describing her travels, her loneliness and her marriage, Matteson brings life into this period of history.
The Fuller story provokes thought on the influence of one's experiences on attitude, outlook and personality. What was it about her that saved her from bitterness and allowed her to grow and change?
There are a number of black and white pictures placed on the pages where their subjects are mentioned.
The last chapter tells not only Fuller's legacy, but relates what happened to the key people in her life. I would like to see more biographies include this kind of information.
The presentation here differs from Matteson's Pulitzer Prize winning Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. The Alcott book is accessible to readers of many backgrounds and levels of interest. This work leans to the academic, so its audience is those who already have an interest in Fuller or this period in history.
Her first life, under the tutelage of a "tiger father", left her over educated with limited social skills. As an awkward young woman, she faced not only social, but institutional bias. Libraries and formal education were closed to her, but she made her way. The intellectual skills she learned at her father's command propelled her, despite the many drawbacks, to meet the intellectuals of her day.
Mentored and hosted by Ralph Waldo Emerson she became an active member of the transcendentalist circle of Concord. She edited its magazine, participated in its discussions and bathed in the beauty of nature. She supported herself and tried to help her family through teaching, writing and leading conversations for the progressive and artistic women of Boston.
Matteson shows how, through her travels, she grew. The self-reliant ethos of the transcendental movement gave way to more global perspectives.
Fuller's experience in Italy is a highlight. Beyond describing her travels, her loneliness and her marriage, Matteson brings life into this period of history.
The Fuller story provokes thought on the influence of one's experiences on attitude, outlook and personality. What was it about her that saved her from bitterness and allowed her to grow and change?
There are a number of black and white pictures placed on the pages where their subjects are mentioned.
The last chapter tells not only Fuller's legacy, but relates what happened to the key people in her life. I would like to see more biographies include this kind of information.
The presentation here differs from Matteson's Pulitzer Prize winning Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. The Alcott book is accessible to readers of many backgrounds and levels of interest. This work leans to the academic, so its audience is those who already have an interest in Fuller or this period in history.
March 20, 2015
The core of Margaret's indictment -- that Emerson had failed to respond to her cry for a father -- confirms what others may already have assumed: that she had sought in the Sage of Concord an idealized substitute for the demanding but oddly beloved sire whom cholera had stolen from her five years earlier. But Fuller's hope for a second father explains only part of her anguish at not being received into Emerson's spiritual bosom. The great remaining cause behind her agitation is revealed in her complaint that Emerson had failed to recognize the stairway that was leading her to God.
Fuller was not the only one of Emerson's disciples to dedicate herself to an inner reality with such earnestness that the sensory world began to be of secondary significance. To one extent or another, Alcott, Thoreau, and the poet Jones Very all ventured down a traceless mystical path. There was something in the philosophical concoction Emerson served his friends that brought their mercurial idealism to the surface and opened their minds to indescribable epiphanies. Yet when his friends attested to these flights of spirit, Emerson never knew how to respond. The kinds of mental states to which expansive thinkers like Alcott and Fuller were inclined might be compared with the conversion experiences reported by the Puritans of an earlier century; they functioned as an inner confirmation that the soul bore the markings of divinity. The transcendentalist who suddenly felt an instinctive nearness to the ultimate Power was, like the Puritans, anxious to know whether her experience was the real thing. Fuller sought confirmation from the man who, in Nature, had literally written the book on transcendental self-discovery. She further hoped that two people who had apparently traveled to the same miraculous shore might embrace each other on a celestial plane that lay beyond the meeting ground of ordinary, earthbound friends. She found instead that, although Emerson offered abundant light, the heat she expected was strangely lacking.
Fuller was not the only one of Emerson's disciples to dedicate herself to an inner reality with such earnestness that the sensory world began to be of secondary significance. To one extent or another, Alcott, Thoreau, and the poet Jones Very all ventured down a traceless mystical path. There was something in the philosophical concoction Emerson served his friends that brought their mercurial idealism to the surface and opened their minds to indescribable epiphanies. Yet when his friends attested to these flights of spirit, Emerson never knew how to respond. The kinds of mental states to which expansive thinkers like Alcott and Fuller were inclined might be compared with the conversion experiences reported by the Puritans of an earlier century; they functioned as an inner confirmation that the soul bore the markings of divinity. The transcendentalist who suddenly felt an instinctive nearness to the ultimate Power was, like the Puritans, anxious to know whether her experience was the real thing. Fuller sought confirmation from the man who, in Nature, had literally written the book on transcendental self-discovery. She further hoped that two people who had apparently traveled to the same miraculous shore might embrace each other on a celestial plane that lay beyond the meeting ground of ordinary, earthbound friends. She found instead that, although Emerson offered abundant light, the heat she expected was strangely lacking.
May 11, 2015
I'm liking this introduction to one of the least known of transcendentalists. Why unknown? Because she was a woman.
Se was a wunderkind student, coached by her father. She was a misfit, unsurprisingly -- gauche and shunned by most of her contemporaries.
She did seem an intellectual powerhouse, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy reading her work now.. 'polite versifications' probably don't hold up well.
She took a trip to Chicago in 1840's, and went out to the prairie. She was quite taken with the wide expanse and felt ashamed at what earlier settlers had done to the landscape that native Americans had protected for so long.
I haven't got to her trio to Europe and her marriage yet.
Rounds out the picture of Emerson, Thoreau, Horace Greeley, Bronson Alcott and other dead denizens of my neighborhood.
Se was a wunderkind student, coached by her father. She was a misfit, unsurprisingly -- gauche and shunned by most of her contemporaries.
She did seem an intellectual powerhouse, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy reading her work now.. 'polite versifications' probably don't hold up well.
She took a trip to Chicago in 1840's, and went out to the prairie. She was quite taken with the wide expanse and felt ashamed at what earlier settlers had done to the landscape that native Americans had protected for so long.
I haven't got to her trio to Europe and her marriage yet.
Rounds out the picture of Emerson, Thoreau, Horace Greeley, Bronson Alcott and other dead denizens of my neighborhood.
March 12, 2012
Margaret Fuller was an early Feminist, long before that term came to be known. She was a wonderful intellectual and literate figure, who held her own - or bested - the finest minds of her era.
February 26, 2012
I cannot begin to describe how much this book has impacted me personally.
Shelved as 'maybe'
April 25, 2019*******************
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (4 stars) by Megan Marshall
March 1, 2015
Of late, and for too long, the Muse has left me and I have found little inspiration to write extensive reviews of the books I've been reading. But as I've given this one four stars, I'd be remiss if I entirely neglected to explain why.
I first became aware of Margaret Fuller's existence from a review in the New York Review of Books of one of the recent biographies that have come out and was intrigued (whether this one or Megan Marshall's, I forget). And when I came across this quote (which graces my e-mail address), I knew I had to know more: "I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own."
It turns out that my gut reaction was correct: Fuller is a person worth knowing. I've provided some examples of her thoughts and beliefs in my status updates so I will only quote here a sketch culled from Matteson's biography:
This does little justice to the person described in this work and Marshall's but, hopefully, it may inspire someone reading this to seek Fuller out.
I first became aware of Margaret Fuller's existence from a review in the New York Review of Books of one of the recent biographies that have come out and was intrigued (whether this one or Megan Marshall's, I forget). And when I came across this quote (which graces my e-mail address), I knew I had to know more: "I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own."
It turns out that my gut reaction was correct: Fuller is a person worth knowing. I've provided some examples of her thoughts and beliefs in my status updates so I will only quote here a sketch culled from Matteson's biography:
Margaret Fuller was, in her time, the best-read woman in America and the one most renowned for her intelligence. She was the leading female figure in the New England movement known as transcendentalism. She edited the first avant-garde intellectual magazine in America. She was the first regular foreign correspondent, male or female, for an American newspaper. As a literary critic, she was rivaled in her era only by Edgar Allan Poe. Three years before the convention that is usually regarded as the beginning of the women's rights movement in the United States, she wrote a groundbreaking book demanding legal equality for women....
Though always formidable as a thinker, she became great only as she came to sympathize with the hopelessness of imprisoned prostitutes, the hunger of exploited children, and the pain of wounded soldiers who had offered everything they had for freedom.... It is only when we discover her as a misfit, as an apostle, as a seeker of Utopia, and in all the other identities through which she passed that she ceases to be the Margaret-ghost and lives for us once more....
Fuller's dearest principles [were] a sincere antipathy to violence and cruelty; a belief in the power of art and literature to assist in social change; and, above all, a confidence that the best, most durable revolution begins with the liberal education of every human being. pp. xi, 444-5)
This does little justice to the person described in this work and Marshall's but, hopefully, it may inspire someone reading this to seek Fuller out.
April 27, 2021
The Lives of Margaret Fuller is an astounding achievement. Matteson writes eloquently; his sentences are deep and profound. His research is exhaustive. Matteson was not afraid to display Fuller’s flaws as well as her remarkable triumphs.
I am shocked that Margaret Fuller is not a household name. In some respects, Fuller should be more famous than her Transcendentalist peers. Fuller did not just contribute to Transcendentalism but to feminism, education, journalism, politics, medicine, and art criticism. A sample of her accomplishments includes editing the first avant-garde American publication, “The Dial,” to immersing herself in Italian revolutionary politics. She was also the first woman to access the Harvard library and the first American foreign war correspondent, either male or female.
Fuller’s books, while scholarly and dry, were popular, and her varied accomplishments made her a celebrity. Nothing hindered her drive, even chronic illness and pregnancy. Perhaps Fuller’s greatest strength was not just her intelligence but her relentless tenacity.
Fuller has inspired me to be courageous and bold. She never stopped pursuing her dreams and was constantly questioning and re-inventing herself. Matteson aptly calls the book the “Lives” not “Life” of Margaret Fuller. Her dramatic death at only forty, due to a shipwreck, is tragic. If Fuller did not get to live all of her “lives,” I hope she can expand ours.
The Lives of Margaret Fuller has strengthened my love of biography. I have never connected with broad-strokes history education. Discussions of battles and political documents bore me. I like to learn about the past through a personality, a sensibility. I feel privileged and humbled to read about such extraordinary sensibilities. They broaden my worldview and usher in new conclusions. I get to realize ideas I would have never independently.
Biography has also increased my compassion. When we immerse ourselves in someone else’s life, we cry when they cry, laugh when they laugh. We have to extend our sympathy, from our soul to theirs. We have to reckon with and accept flaws. This can make us better friends and family members. While all books teach us empathy, biography is an underrated genre in developing this skill.
Overall, I highly recommend The Lives of Margaret Fuller. I was riveted from cover to cover.
I am shocked that Margaret Fuller is not a household name. In some respects, Fuller should be more famous than her Transcendentalist peers. Fuller did not just contribute to Transcendentalism but to feminism, education, journalism, politics, medicine, and art criticism. A sample of her accomplishments includes editing the first avant-garde American publication, “The Dial,” to immersing herself in Italian revolutionary politics. She was also the first woman to access the Harvard library and the first American foreign war correspondent, either male or female.
Fuller’s books, while scholarly and dry, were popular, and her varied accomplishments made her a celebrity. Nothing hindered her drive, even chronic illness and pregnancy. Perhaps Fuller’s greatest strength was not just her intelligence but her relentless tenacity.
Fuller has inspired me to be courageous and bold. She never stopped pursuing her dreams and was constantly questioning and re-inventing herself. Matteson aptly calls the book the “Lives” not “Life” of Margaret Fuller. Her dramatic death at only forty, due to a shipwreck, is tragic. If Fuller did not get to live all of her “lives,” I hope she can expand ours.
The Lives of Margaret Fuller has strengthened my love of biography. I have never connected with broad-strokes history education. Discussions of battles and political documents bore me. I like to learn about the past through a personality, a sensibility. I feel privileged and humbled to read about such extraordinary sensibilities. They broaden my worldview and usher in new conclusions. I get to realize ideas I would have never independently.
Biography has also increased my compassion. When we immerse ourselves in someone else’s life, we cry when they cry, laugh when they laugh. We have to extend our sympathy, from our soul to theirs. We have to reckon with and accept flaws. This can make us better friends and family members. While all books teach us empathy, biography is an underrated genre in developing this skill.
Overall, I highly recommend The Lives of Margaret Fuller. I was riveted from cover to cover.
August 30, 2014
This thoroughly researched biography of Margaret Fuller is not for the faint hearted. While the biography tells of her life from a detailed description of the demanding academic schooling she received from her father to her mother's preference for her siblings to her social awkwardness when she went to school, it also details her intellectual and philosophical development that includes in depth analysis of the differences between the philosophies of Goethe, Coleridge and Kant among others. This juxtaposition of detail about her life events and the intellectual and philosophical debates of the time continues throughout the book
The biography of course includes her involvement with transcendentalism from early friendship with Emerson, her working with Bronson Alcott on his new school and her later teaching at a similar school, as well as her editorship of Dial magazine, her extended trips to the utopian Brook farm and her "conversations" in Boston. It also tells of her developing feminism which was far ahead of its time
But I found the book to come alive following her move to New York live with Horace Greely and his family while she worked at his newspaper and then eventually traveling to Europe as a foreign corrospondent . It was in Italy where she fell in love with an Italian "nobelman" who could not acknowledge his relationship with Fuller, resulting in her hidden pregnancy, secret marriage, and secreting of their baby while her husband fights for an united and republican Italy, a fight that Fuller writes about and works for. When the republican effort is crushed, Fuller and her family are forced to leave for the United States leading on the illfated voyage. The chapter on their deaths detailing the hours of the shipwreck just 200 yards from shore is as detailed as it is heartwrenching
Again, not a biography for the faint hearted, but in the end, well worth the read about a fascinating person
The biography of course includes her involvement with transcendentalism from early friendship with Emerson, her working with Bronson Alcott on his new school and her later teaching at a similar school, as well as her editorship of Dial magazine, her extended trips to the utopian Brook farm and her "conversations" in Boston. It also tells of her developing feminism which was far ahead of its time
But I found the book to come alive following her move to New York live with Horace Greely and his family while she worked at his newspaper and then eventually traveling to Europe as a foreign corrospondent . It was in Italy where she fell in love with an Italian "nobelman" who could not acknowledge his relationship with Fuller, resulting in her hidden pregnancy, secret marriage, and secreting of their baby while her husband fights for an united and republican Italy, a fight that Fuller writes about and works for. When the republican effort is crushed, Fuller and her family are forced to leave for the United States leading on the illfated voyage. The chapter on their deaths detailing the hours of the shipwreck just 200 yards from shore is as detailed as it is heartwrenching
Again, not a biography for the faint hearted, but in the end, well worth the read about a fascinating person
February 10, 2019
I've always enjoyed Margaret Fuller, and have written both a play and screenplay about this remarkable, unjustly neglected woman. Of the four biographies I've read, I think John Matteson's is the most complete and very informative. I agree with his seeing Margaret's life as being in several stages, and his prose and concise notes and style make this an enjoyable and needed tome on Margaret. He also has many good illustrations previously unseen, and while he admires his subject, is able to look at her dispassionately. He also has many good phrases, such as 'beating their wings against the cages of the physical world,' and 'she preferred being a liberal in the larger, rough and tumble society to being a reactionary in a smaller, sweeter one.' I also enjoyed his placing Margaret in the America of her time, and some of her views, such that in the end America and Russia would become rivals for the world, are remarkably prescient.
I also liked his quoting her poem of the Dahlia and Sun. I actually wrote a song using those lyrics many years ago. Margaret's unhappy but also fulfilling and active life has been very well recounted by Matteson, and it was a pleasure to read. it was a very happy time spent within the pages of his world and that of my favorite muse.
I also liked his quoting her poem of the Dahlia and Sun. I actually wrote a song using those lyrics many years ago. Margaret's unhappy but also fulfilling and active life has been very well recounted by Matteson, and it was a pleasure to read. it was a very happy time spent within the pages of his world and that of my favorite muse.
August 12, 2012
The amount of research that must have been done to write this wonderful biography is impressive. I got to know Margaret Fuller as a gifted child possessed with a prickly arrogance, and learned about the influences that evolved her into a complicated woman, a compassionate writer, a critic who championed social justice, especially for women. I knew of her tragic and untimely death at sea beforehand, but it was chilling to read details of the story as told by some of the survivors. She suffered terribly from migraines, which struck a personal chord with me. It was interesting to read about the "conversations" with women she presided over in her home, designed to stimulate the participants intellectually. Also to learn about her work as editor of The Dial, her association with Emerson and Thoreau, and her time spent in Italy as the first female foreign correspondent for the New-York Tribune. And I had no idea she was the grandaunt of R. Buckminster Fuller! The Lives of Margaret Fuller is an excellent book about a fascinating woman.
June 27, 2013
I picked this book because I absolutely loved Matteson's "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father."
This book is similarly well-researched and well-written...but I had to work to finish it. I think the problem was that I simply didn't like/wasn't terribly interested in Margaret Fuller, no matter how well read she was, how ahead of her time she was as a feminist intellectual, and how much she served as a muse to both Emerson and Alcott. I can clearly see how she was important to American letters and history, and in that sense the book was interesting--but as a biography, it was work.
That is no strike against either the scholarship or the writing...but this isn't a book that I suspect will appeal to a wide readership the way that "Eden's Outcasts" did.
This book is similarly well-researched and well-written...but I had to work to finish it. I think the problem was that I simply didn't like/wasn't terribly interested in Margaret Fuller, no matter how well read she was, how ahead of her time she was as a feminist intellectual, and how much she served as a muse to both Emerson and Alcott. I can clearly see how she was important to American letters and history, and in that sense the book was interesting--but as a biography, it was work.
That is no strike against either the scholarship or the writing...but this isn't a book that I suspect will appeal to a wide readership the way that "Eden's Outcasts" did.
April 19, 2016
This is a book best consumed in small bites -- one or two chapters at a time, only because the writing is rich with detail. I like that Matteson feels free to speculate about the unknown aspects of Fuller's life; he's justified in doing so because his reaches are balanced with extensive research. As I read this book I felt as though I was peering through a window of Fuller's house -- the intimacy of the writing is exquisite. Matteson's style also mimics the dense prose of the 19th century but it doesn't detract from the storytelling. I highly recommend this book to fans of transcendentalism -- especially those whose attention previously may have been focused on iconic figures such as Emerson and Thoreau. I'm eager to expand my reading into Fuller's work.
March 2, 2017
It would be hard to write fiction with quite the twists and turns of Margaret Fuller's life. She got access to the Harvard library when few if any women had. She sent dispatches back to the US from Europe. She spent time with Emerson, the Brownings, Alcott, Channings, and Greeley. She wrote books. She died in a shipwreck. Matteson is a great author, who tells the story with some memorable prose. You'll be entertained and learn a lot if you read this book.
September 3, 2013
I loved this book. Margaret Fuller was a brilliant woman raised to think independently and use her vast knowledge to further the status of women. She was good friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson among others. She was the first female foreign news correspondent. Her unfortunate death in New York harbor is a sad reflection on the locals who watched her die while waiting to rummage through the ship's cargo. This is a thorough and well-written biography of a truly exceptional woman.
June 23, 2017
The book was excellent. But as someone from Massachusetts with a love of history and a degree in English (who somehow was subjected to an outrageous amount of Transcendentalism despite not caring much for it beyond Emerson's eyeball line), I am enraged about the fact I had no idea who she was before reading this book. And despite the fact this isn't a YA fantasy fiction book, I still cried about it.
December 14, 2012
Pulitzer-winner Matteson makes Fuller, America's first female intellectual, interesting with his unique outline of her accomplishments and his sterling prose. Got me interested enough to read a current novel about Fuller's untimely drowning in a storm off Long Island and to revisit Hawthorne's unflattering characterization of her in The Blithesdale Romance.
April 10, 2013
Pulitzer prize winner - biography of Margaret Fuller. She was a friend of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, et al.; a transcendentalist, writer, literary critic, editor, teacher, journalist, feminist. Brilliant but difficult personality. On a trip to Europe, she met George Sand and Chopin, among others, in Paris.
Wonderful writing, thoroughly enjoyed the book, and found her to be fascinating.
Wonderful writing, thoroughly enjoyed the book, and found her to be fascinating.
September 14, 2013
Margaret Fuller was a remarkable figure in history, and someone we should all learn about right along with Emerson and Thoreau. Unfortunately, at times this book seemed to drag on like an endless encyclopedia entry. At other times, Matterson's account was gripping (the Italian revolution!). Worth a read, but don't be afraid to skim over some of the more dragging passages.
January 12, 2014
She really had quite a life. Transcendentalist, first American author of a book about women's rights, first American foreign correspondent, Fuller was brilliant, forceful, hardworking, arrogant, brilliant, conflicted, immature, ambitious, and quite a character. This book was "psychologically astute," as one blurb says.
April 17, 2012
I didn't know anything about Margaret Fuller before picking this up and learned a lot about what a remarkable woman she was. The writing was a bit too academic for a leisure read, but I tend to lean more towards fiction than non-fiction.
March 15, 2012
Well-written, engaging, thought-provoking, and emotionally satisfying. A wonderful, wonderful book.
September 14, 2012
Lively and engaging biography of the writer, critic, and Transcendentalist who struggled to find her place and perfect her self in the 19th century.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews