Margaret Fuller: Transatlantic Crossings in a Revolutionary Age. Ed. by Charles Capper and Cristina Giorcelli. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. xviii, 281 pp. $60.00, ISBN 978-0-299-22340-3.)

Extract

This volume emerges from the surge in Margaret Fuller studies in the last two decades, which have seen major biographies, the recovery of Fuller's journalism and other out-of-print writings, the editing of her letters, reappraisals of her cultural significance, and book-length interpretations of her body of work. As antebellum studies have increasingly focused on issues of identity, nation, and transnationalism, Fuller's significance as a public intellectual who analyzed such cultural formations has become clearer; these essays are a strong contribution both to Fuller studies and to transatlantic studies. Given her transnational career—New England transcendentalist, journalist for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, advocate for the 1848–1849 Roman Revolution—it is fitting that this volume comes from an international conference on Fuller held in Rome. The collection is also a welcome addition to the sometimes-belated consideration of women writers within transatlantic studies and joins such volumes as Transatlantic Stowe (2006), edited by Denise Kohn, Sarah Meer, and Emily B. Todd, in mapping the travels, contacts, and political engagements of women in the nineteenthcentury transatlantic world.