Woman of the World

"Margaret Fuller, a woman of great talent and promise, had the misfortune to be born in Massachusetts in 1810, at a time and place in which the characteristics of what historians have termed 'true womanhood' were becoming ever more rigidly defined. Well brought-up women like herself were to be cultured, pious, submissive and genteel. Fuller, by contrast, was assertive and freethinking. She was also — and to some extent, still is — a difficult person to like. "

The Lives of Margaret Fuller by Pulitzer winner John Matteson (who visits on March 22nd) is reviewed by Mary Beth Norton in the New York Times.