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. |
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... person would take a hammer , to strike " off a splinter from such a marble , secure that the waters would take the trouble to wear it into propor- tion.— But now - these two people are mere studies , mere objects of taste and you let ...
... persons of energetic passions , and varied characters who have not noble views or for whom the love of some noble person is not " building the stair to heaven , " must be so . Let not the sweet Jean " think that it is " any recent ...
... persons when you see " them in life , fail to be interested in this picture of so beautiful person . I do not look at Shelley's journals & c for me , but for him He inspires tenderness . I do not care whether I knew the thought before ...