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Margaret Fuller's Connection to
New York
● Margaret Fuller
became a world celebrity while living and working in New York,
1846-47.
● Fuller wrote her
major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the first in
America to speak out on women's equality, in Fishkill, NY and Horace
Greeley, editor of The New York Daily Tribune, published it
in New York City. It was sold out within a week - thereby becoming a
best-seller - that caused discussion and thought to women's issues.
This work was acclaimed in Europe and Fuller's fame spread, so that
she was welcomed into the social and literati circles in New York
and Europe. While she was in Italy in 1848, the organizers of the
first women’s rights conference at Seneca Falls, New York, were
anxiously awaiting her return to
the United States to join the
leadership in the cause. Thus, with this book, Margaret Fuller laid
the groundwork for the women's rights movement in the United States.
● Margaret
Fuller was the first woman to be hired by Horace Greeley. While on
the Tribune she became the first woman foreign correspondent,
traveling throughout Europe and reporting on conditions. Greeley
printed her articles on the front pages, thus, her articles were a
major means of our country's communication between America and
Europe.
 ● All
Americans who kept up on current events read Fuller's articles that
appeared regularly on the front pages of the Tribune, a big city
daily that had a readership across America. It was here that she
established her status as one of America's leading literary critics,
with Edgar Allen Poe, her only rival, and it was in Boston and New
York that she worked out standards for literary criticism. Her
penetrating and original reviews dealt with the work of Carlyle,
Browning, Landor, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shelley, Crabbe,
Tennyson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Lowell and others.
She translated and introduced the work of Goethe to Americans and
extended the influence of many great minds of Germany and Italy.
Since it was doubtful that America had an original literature of its
own at this time, she surveyed the scene and called for fresh new
thought and work.
● After
beginning work on the Tribune, Fuller made a survey of all
New York City public institutions, including the prisons, hospitals,
orphanages, insane asylums, etc., and reported her findings in the
newspaper. She hoped to spur action and her exposes caused
discussion and controversy. In articles she called for funds for a
halfway house where women prisoners and outcasts could live while
being rehabilitated for the outside world.
● Margaret
Fuller became the first woman war correspondent and, furthermore,
served under combat conditions. She settled in Italy in a room with
a window facing the streets where fighting occurred during the
Italian Revolution of 1848-9. Her accounts of the war were the only
news that Americans had of that war and were some of the most vivid
and sensitively written of any war. She asked that Americans become
involved in the Italian struggle for freedom and unification and
asked our government to send an American ambassador to help resolve
the situation.
● Margaret
Fuller died as she was returning to America from Italy in a tragic
shipwreck off the shores of Oak Island (now Point o' Woods), Fire
Island, New York. She, her husband, and her two-year-old son were
drowned when The Elizabeth was struck with gale winds in a
hurricane-like storm on the night of July 19, 1850. Upon hearing the
news, Ralph Waldo Emerson sent Henry David Thoreau to investigate;
the poet who was her brother-in-law, William Ellery Channing, also
hurried to the scene. The word spread quickly throughout America and
the world, for Fuller was a writer of celebrity.
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