The Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1839-41Cornell University Press, 1983 - 278 pages This second volume publishes all of Margaret Fuller's letters written from 1839 to 1841--the years in which she first began to achieve fame as a writer and an editor. Addressed to such eminent figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William H. Channing, Elizabeth Peabody, and Frederic H. hedge as well as to Fuller's family and intimate friends, these letters record the years of her involvement in the Transcendentalist Club--a group of liberal clergymen and writers who gathered to discuss theology, literature, and philosophy. In 1839 the Club decided to found a magazine, The Dial; Fuller became the editor, and at last she had a forum for her innovative views of literature and of literary criticism. These are also the years of her famous "conversations" for women--weekly discussions of mythology which were attended by twenty-five of the most prominent women in the area. The letters chronicle the most emotionally turbulent period in her life. In the course of little more than a year she was rejected by the man she loved, Samuel G. Ward, who then married her close friend Anna Barker; she was rebuffed by Emerson as well; and she underwent a profound religious experience that she felt changed her life. |
From inside the book
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... noble scheme , every poetic manifestation , prophesies to man his eventual destiny . And were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify , he would remain torpid , or be sunk in sen- suality . It is on this ground that ...
... noble and full Yea , to match their shrill and bold Nay , and are hurled down again — 3 Mr Emerson knows best what he wants but he has already said it in various ways . Yet I deem the experiment is well worth trying ; hearts beat so ...
... noble but not enough for our man- ifold nature . Our friends should be our incentives to Right , but not only our guiding but our prophetic stars . To love by sight is much , to love by faith is more ; both are the entire love without ...