Margaret Fuller packed more than a lifetime into her 40 short years

 What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.

Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.

Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845

 

Margaret Fuller, born in 1810, has these "firsts" to her credit

• first full-time book reviewer in American journalism
• first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College
• first female foreign correspondent for a major newspaper in the U.S.

 

But that is just the beginning to understanding and appreciating this remarkable woman who thought far ahead of her time.

Margaret Fuller was as smart as any man around her. In an age when the educational and professional opportunities were limited, Fuller elbowed her way into the top intellectual circles of her day with a depth of knowledge and understanding could not match. Her personality could be grating. She was assertive in an age when women were supposed to be demure. She talked when most women would have stayed silent. She showed up in public places when most women would have stayed home.

She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, into a family that valued education and had an extensive library. She had some periods of formal education at various schools, but in the main, her education was directed by her father and conducted by herself. By the time she was in her late 20s, her family had moved to Groton, Mass., her father had died, and her financial troubles -- which would plague her for the rest of her life -- had begun.

But she had begun an intellectual journey that would take her a long way in a very short time.

She had met Ralph Waldo Emerson and those who would become known as the Transcendentalists, America's first literary movement. In fact, she was so involved with them that they asked her to edit their publication, The Dial, and she did so, contributing a number of articles of her own. To sustain herself financially, she began teaching, and in 1839, she began a series of Conversations, seminars in which women were invited to discuss the status of females in modern society. During all of this time, she wrote extensively -- articles, essays, reviews, and books.

Fuller knew most of the major literary figures of the day including Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allen Poe, who called her a "busy-body" when she intervened with him for a friend.

Her writing caught the attention of Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who invited in 1846 her to move to New York and become a columnist and reviewer. Before doing that, however, Greeley encouraged her to expand her writings on gender inequality into a book. She did so, and the book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, became a founding document of modern feminism. Her subsequent work at the Tribune as a reviewer and columnist greatly expanded her audience for her radical views on gender equality.

Those radical views included abolitionism (the freeing of slaves) and suffrage (the right of women to vote).

In August 1846, she sailed for Europe. She had been hired to tutor the son of a wealthy Quaker family, but she continued to write for Greeley's Tribune. As such, she became American journalism first female foreign correspondent. Her travels took her to Italy where she met and fell in love with Giovanni Ossoli, an Italian nobleman of no particular wealth or intellectual virtue. He was involved in the Roman revolution of the period, however, and Fuller sent dispatches about that movement to the Tribune, thus becoming American journalism's first female war correspondent.

Fuller and Ossoli had a son, but there is no record that they were ever married. In 1850, they returned to America on board a merchant ship. As it approached Fire Island, New York, the ship was caught in a violent hurricane. Fuller, Ossoli, and their son were killed, and their bodies were never recovered. A cobbled-together anthology of her works after her death was a best-seller in the 1850s until it was replaced at the top of the charts by Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Here's another sample of her writing:

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.

Another first should be added to Margaret Fuller's list of credits at the beginning of this piece:

She was America's first female public intellectual. Her mind and her pen never stopped, and her life was too short.

***

Fuller's life has inspired several biographies, which are amply cited in a 2013 New Yorker article on Fuller's life by Judith Thurman: An Unfinished Woman | The New Yorker

Thanks to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Fuller#Woman_in_the_Nineteenth_Century_.281845.29 for the quotations in this piece.

John Pendleton Kennedy: Edgar Allan Poe's literary guardian angel

 John Pendleton Kennedy is a man who lived in the 1830s in Baltimore, and chances are, you have never heard of him. That's okay, but without Kennedy, who acted as a lifeline -- a literary guardian angel, if you will -- you might never have heard of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe lived a scant 40 years (1809-1849), and for most of that time he was unwell, usually physically and sometimes mentally. He was also poverty-stricken, constantly asking friends and family for support and constantly unable to lift himself out of his penurious state. And he constantly complained about it.

His life, in other words, was not a happy one; it was, rather, a series of low points.

One of those low points was in 1834 when Poe found himself in Baltimore but, as usual, without money or means. Poe was trying to make a living with his writing and having little success. He had managed to win a prize from the Baltimore Saturday Visiter for his story "MS. Found in a Bottle." One of the editors of the publication was John P. Kennedy, who took an interest in the young writer and invited him to dinner.

Poe declined -- for the very good reason that he had nothing to wear. He had one dark suit that he wore for all occasions, and that was the extent of his wardrobe. When Kennedy found this out, he sent him clothing and expanded his invitation. Poe could come to his house and dine at any time. Kennedy, a man of means,  even lent Poe a horse so he could get around an exercise.

Kennedy took his kindness to another important level. He wrote Poe a letter of introduction to Thomas Willis White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia, and recommended that he accept Poe's articles. Poe sent White a story, which he promptly accepted. Thereupon, White and Poe entered a correspondence that so impressed White that he offered Poe a job as assistant editor of the journal in June 1835. Poe accepted and moved to Richmond.

Poe's time in Richmond was not altogether a happy period for him, but his job did give him the stability and support to continue his writing. He later credited Kennedy with saving his life.

Kennedy got involved in politics and carved out a distinguished career for himself. He served as both a representative and Senator in the U.S. Congress and as Secretary of the Navy under President Millard Filmore. He led the effort to end slavery in Maryland and was instrumental in founding some of Maryland's most important and longstanding institutions, such as St. Mary's College of Maryland, the Peabody Library and Conservatory of Music (now part of Johns Hopkins University).

While in Congress in the 1840s, Kennedy was a strong advocate for the U.S. government investing in the telegraph and his efforts led to a $30,00 grant for its development.

In addition to his political and public service pursuits, Kennedy was also a novelist. His most famous work is Horse-Shoe Robinson, published in 1835, which delighted Washington Irving so much that he read parts of it aloud to his friends. Kennedy had a wide circle of literary friends that included Irving, Poe, William Makepeace Thackeray, and James Fennimore Cooper.

This remarkable man has been largely forgotten, but a new biography by Andrew Black (John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, and Ardent Nationalist) has been published by the LSU Press. Let's hope this gives him the attention he deserves.