FULLER, MARGARET, MARCHIONESS OSSOLI, (1810-1850), American writer, was born at Cambridge (Mass.), May 23, 181o. Unquestionably one of the most brilliant and scholarly of American women, Miss Fuller has been bitterly con demned and extravagantly praised. Of remarkable natural endow ments, she was put through such a rigorous training by her father as to make her a "youthful prodigy" and by night "a victim of spec tral illusions, nightmare and somnambulism." Soon, however, the great amount of study exacted of her ceased to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a passion. After her father's death in 1835 she went to Boston to teach languages in Alcott's school and in private classes, and in 1837 she was chosen principal teacher in the Green Street school, Providence (Rhode Island), where she remained till 1839. From this year until 1844 she stayed at dif ferent places in the immediate neighbourhood of Boston. In she published a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, which was followed in 1842 by a translation of the cor respondence between Karoline von Giinderode and Bettina von Arnim. Aided by R. W. Emerson and George Ripley, she in 1840 started the Dial, a poetical and philosophical magazine represent ing the opinions and aims of the New England Transcendentalists. This journal she continued to edit for two years, and while in Boston she also conducted with remarkable success conversation classes for ladies on philosophical and social subjects, designed "to systematize thought" and to show women how to make the best use of their means "for building up the life of thought upon the life of action." These classes were an important step in the modern movement on behalf of women's rights; still more impor tant was Miss Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844), an elaboration of an earlier essay in the Dial in which she pleaded with courageous frankness and historical fairness for greater equality between the sexes, particularly recognition of woman's intellectual needs and capacities. Her Summer on the Lakes in 1843 (1844) Horace Greeley characterized as "one of the clearest and most graphic delineations ever given of the Great Lakes, of the Prairies, and of the receding barbarism, and the rapidly advancing, but rude, repulsive semi-civilization which were con tending with most unequal forces for the possession of those rich lands." In general, however, her writing was inferior to her con versation, which, through its wit, profundity of thought, and breadth and richness of culture, early won her an admiring audi ence not only from the young collegians, her contemporaries, but from the most distinguished thinkers of her day.
In Dec. 1844 she removed to New York to write literary criti cism for the Tribune, and in 1846 she published a selection from her articles under the title Papers on Literature and Art. The same year she paid a visit to Europe, passing some time in Eng land and France and finally taking up her residence in Italy. There she was married to the Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a follower of Mazzini. During 1848-49 she was in Rome, and when the city was besieged she took charge of one of the two hospitals while her husband fought on the walls. In May 185o, along with her husband and infant son, she embarked at Leghorn for America ; but when they had all but reached their destination, the vessel was wrecked on Fire Island beach, June 16, and the Ossolis perished. The Marchioness Ossoli's manuscript on the struggle for Italian freedom, with which she had deepest sym pathy and which she had unrivalled opportunity to observe, was lost at the same time.
It is regrettable that her somewhat sad life should have been cut off so suddenly; perhaps it is unfortunate, too, in spite of her contributions to the cause of women's freedom, that she should have lived so far in advance of her time. Eccentricities that branded her in the 19th century would pass unnoticed in the aoth. She suffered as much from the adoration of her admirers as from the sneers of her enemies. She was called the high priestess of Transcendentalism, and yet her clear vision unerringly detected the flaws in the Brook Farm scheme. Her incisive intellect, her relentless truthfulness, her impulsive warm-heartedness, all doomed her to disappointments and to misinterpretations con tradicted by her journals and letters. Nevertheless, by her high standards and by her familiarity with European literature, she remains an important figure in the history of American culture.
After Margaret Fuller's death her brother, Arthur E. Fuller, re published her works—her Woman in the Nineteenth Century and kindred papers in 1855, with an introduction by Horace Greeley ; her Summer on the Lakes and her European letters, together with an account of her death and with numerous tributes to her, as At Home and Abroad (1856) ; her collected critical essays and "A Rhythmical Translation of Goethe's Tasso" as Art, Literature and the Drama (1859). He added Life Without and Life Within (1859), a collection of essays, poems, etc. The best biographies are Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke (1852 ; several times reprinted) and Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884) , by T.W. Higginson, which contains a bibliography and which is based largely on unedited material. See also Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli) by Julia Ward Howe (1883), her edition of the Love Letters of Margaret Fuller, (1903) and F. A. Braun's Margaret Fuller and Goethe (1910). Margaret Fuller (192o), by Katharine Anthony, is a rather unconvincing "psychological" biography.