Margaret Fuller

Sarah Margaret Fuller ( * May 23, 1810 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, † June 19, 1850 against Iceland Fire, New York) was an American writer and journalist from the inner circle of the transcendentalists and one of the leading intellectuals of New England. With their main factory women in the 19th century it made ​​its name as an early feminist.

Youth

Margaret Fuller was the eldest daughter of a lawyer and politician Timothy Fuller, who belonged to the U.S. Congress from 1817 to 1825. Soon it became evident to her exceptional talent, which promoted the father. His instruction in reading and writing, he started before she was four years old. Soon followed Latin. Your first regular school from 1819 was the Port School in Cambridge. After that she attended in Boston and Groton to 1826 different girls schools. Following this, Fuller made ​​familiar with the world literature and the German classics and began to learn together with James Freeman Clarke German what they Conversations with Goethe enabled in future years for the translation of Goethe's Torquato Tasso and Eckermann. In addition, they translated the correspondence between Bettina von Arnim and Karoline von Günderrode.

To prepare for her career as a journalist and translator, she was planning a trip to Europe. This plan, however, she had to give up when his father died in 1835. Margaret Fuller took over the responsibility for younger siblings. The 13 - year-old brother Arthur Buckminster Fuller was preparing for the college visit and study theology. Later, he was the editor of the posthumous writings of his sister.

Business and Career

Fuller became a teacher at Temple School of Amos Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody also attended taught. By both they came in contact with the new movement of transcendentalism. 1837 was a year in Providence, Rhode Iceland, at the Greene Street School. Upon her return she started in the House of Peabody with their discussion groups for young ladies. Her extensive education established a broad range of topics: greek mythology, history, literature and fine arts. With these courses, they came against the discrimination of women in school and study. Their experiences were reflected in numerous essays, which they called champion of women's rights made ​​widely known.

After Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson had already met in 1835, she followed his 1840 invitation transzendentalistische journal The Dial ( Magazine for Literature, Philosophy and Religion ) surrendered, which she did until 1842. On the following several months of travel to the Great Lakes along with James Freeman Clarke also won impressions on the unsolved problem of the disadvantaged Native Americans. Result of the trip was her report Summer on the Lakes.

Her successor at The Dial George Ripley had become the founder of the social- utopian Brook Farm settlement. Fuller did not occur in the community while, but sympathized with her and visited her often. Her friends had erected there in her own cottage. In 1845 she went to New York, where she was an employee of the New York Tribune, Horace Greely had a few years earlier. The newspaper sent in 1846 as a foreign correspondent in Europe. She reported on the literary scene and interviewed prominent writers, including George Sand and Thomas Carlyle.

In Europe

In Europe, they fell into the pre-revolutionary unrest of the time. Back in England she met the freedom fighter Giuseppe Mazzini, who lived in exile there. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Risorgimento (restoration, resurrection ). The aim was to overcome the domination of both the Habsburgs and the Bourbons and the unification of Italy. Through him she learned later in Italy next to the Polish revolutionary Adam Mickiewicz also the followers of Mazzini, Giovanni Angelo Marchese d' Ossoli, with whom she came in a close relationship. Their son came in September 1848 to the world. The proclamation of the Roman Republic in February 1849 led to military intervention by France, which eliminated the Republic after a five-month siege of Rome and the papal reign reestablished. During the time of the fighting Fuller supported the cause of the republic through its work in the hospital Fate bene Fratelli. After the defeat of Margaret Fuller left with her husband and son Italy. The ship that was to take the three in 1850 to America, sank off Iceland Fire and tore them into death. A memorial stone stands on the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Trivia

• My birthplace is now the living Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, which serves the education and the promotion of social competence.

• The architect and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) is her great-nephew, as well as the journalist and writer John Phillips Marquand (1893-1960), of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel was The late Mr. Apley 1938.

• Margaret Fuller is a role model for Zenobia, a main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852 ).

Works (selection)

• Summer on the Lakes, in 1843
• Literature and Art in New York in 1852 ( digitized )
• Women in the Nineteenth Century, London 1855 ( digitized ); later edition New York 1869 ( digitized, e- text )
• Memoirs, Boston 1857 ( digitized: Part 1, Part 2, E - Texts: Part 1, Part 2)
• At Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe, in 1856, edited by her brother Arthur Buckminster Fuller, later Editions: Boston 1874 ( Teildigitalisat ); New York 1869 ( digitized, e- text )
• Art, Literature, and the Drama, New York 1869 ( digitized ), containing Papers on Literature and Art and Fuller's translation of Goethe's Torquato Tasso
• Life Without and Life Within. Or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems, 1858, edited by her brother Arthur Buckminster Fuller, later edition: New York, 1869 ( digitized )