Widely regarded as the founding text of the women's rights movement in the United States, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, (1845) influenced many movement leaders, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This Norton Critical Edition of Margaret Fuller's groundbreaking work is based on the first edition. The text is accompanied by annotations essential for fully appreciating this richly allusive work.

Editor's Preface

The Text of Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Note on the Text

Backgrounds

Margaret Fuller·[Autobiographical Romance]

         ·[Mariana]

         ·Leila

         ·From Letter to Sophia Ripley,

        August 27, 1839

         ·From Boston Conversations:

        The 1839-1840 Series

         ·[From 1842 Journal]

         ·From Letter to Ralph Waldo

        Emerson (October 16, 1842)

Ralph Waldo Emerson·Margaret

Margaret Fuller·[From 1844 Journal]

         ·Letter to Elizabeth Hoar (October 1844)

         ·Letter to the Women Inmates at

        Sing Sing (early November[?] 1844)

         ·From Letter to William H. Channing

        (November 17, 1844)

Caroline Sturgis·From Letter to Margaret Fuller

        (March 4, 1845)

Margaret Fuller·From Letter to Caroline Sturgis

        (March 13, 1845)

EARLY REVIEWS

Orestes A. Brownson·Miss Fuller and Reformers

A. G. M. [Anonymous]·The Condition of Woman

Lydia Maria Child·Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Frederic Dan Huntington·[Noble and Stirring

  Eloquence]

Edgar A. Poe·The Literati of New York City-- No. IV:

  Sarah Margaret Fuller

C[harles]. L[ane].·[A Chaste and Honorable Book]

Anonymous·Stray Leaves from a Seamstress's

  Journal--No. 5

George Eliot·Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft

RECENT ESSAYS

Margaret Vanderhaar Allen·[A Classic of Feminist

  Literature]

David M. Robinson·Margaret Fuller and the

  Transcendental Ethos: Woman in the Nineteenth

  Century

Bell Gale Chevigny·To the Edges of Ideology:

  Margaret Fuller's Centrifugal Evolution

Julie Ellison·"A Crowd of Books to Sigh Over":

  Fuller's Method

Christina Zwarg·Fuller's Scene before the Women:

  Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Jeffrey Steele·Margaret Fuller's Rhetoric of

  Transformation

Margaret Fuller: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography