Kornfeld, Margaret Fuller - A Brief Biography With Documents

Abstract

Margaret Fuller was well known in early nineteenth-century America as a writer, philosopher, feminist, and activist. She was part of the Transcendentalist movement, a friend and colleague (and often a critic) of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first editor of the Transcendentalists' journal, the Dial, and the first American woman journalist to serve as a foreign correspondent. Yet she remains virtually unknown to Americans today. In this brief biography, Eve Kornfeld, professor of history at San Diego State University, attempts to convey the essential elements of Fuller's life and her struggle to create a personal identity that would enable her to live a "fully human life" without what she considered to be artificial constraints based on gender, class, or race.