Like many, I grew up recognizing names like Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne—towering figures of American thought and the transcendentalist circle. But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered Margaret Fuller, a woman who not only moved among them but challenged and inspired them. Why didn’t I know her name? I suspect the answer lies in a pattern all too familiar: she was a woman who lived with intellectual force and personal freedom, and history often forgets women like that.
Fuller was more than a peer to these men—she was a catalyst. She contributed and edited The Dial, the journal that helped define transcendentalist thought. Emerson admired her brilliance; Thoreau respected her clarity; Hawthorne, both intrigued and unsettled by her presence, drew inspiration from her boldness. She debated, taught, traveled, and wrote with fierce vision, including Woman in the Nineteenth Century, one of America’s earliest feminist texts. Later, she married an Italian revolutionary, had a son, and worked as a foreign correspondent during the Roman revolution. Her life, already remarkable, ended in tragedy—lost at sea with her husband and daughter when their ship wrecked just off the coast of Fire Island, New York, in 1850.
I keep thinking about that shoreline. In 2019, I painted Hitting the Shore during an artist residency on Fire Island, long before I knew Fuller’s story. Learning of her life—and her death—gives new resonance to that place for me. Allison Pataki’s Finding Margaret Fuller brings this forgotten force vividly back into view. If you've ever wondered who else was shaping American thought alongside those famous names, this book offers an answer you won’t soon forget.
