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In 1843 Margaret Fuller became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard, then an all-male university. By then she had translated Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, led five winters of discussion classes for women in Boston and edited the Transcendentalist quarterly The Dial with Emerson. A year later Horace Greeley hired her at the New-York Tribune as a full-time literary critic, and in 1846 she sailed for Europe as the paper’s correspondent, reporting from Rome through the revolution of 1848–49. She drowned off Fire Island, New York, on 19 July 1850, aged forty, with her husband and son; her manuscript history of the Roman Republic was lost with her. Only three of her own books appeared in her lifetime. The rest are collections of her journalism and papers. This guide covers her eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1839–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Margaret Fuller published three books of her own: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) and Papers on Literature and Art (1846), plus a translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe (1839). Her dispatches from Europe were collected in At Home and Abroad (1856) and, in a modern edition, “These Sad But Glorious Days” (1991). Start with Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the book that put the case for women’s equality before American readers three years before the Seneca Falls convention.
Where to Start with Margaret Fuller
If you want her defining book
→ Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) — the argument that women may take up any calling.
If you want her travel writing
→ Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844) — a summer journey to Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan.
If you want her reporting from revolutionary Rome
→ “These Sad But Glorious Days” (1991) — the Tribune dispatches in a modern scholarly edition.
If you want everything in one volume
→ Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings (2025) — the 2025 Library of America edition.
8 Margaret Fuller Books, in Order
Conversations with Goethe
Her first book: an English translation of the first two parts of Johann Peter Eckermann’s record of his talks with Goethe, published in Boston in 1839. Goethe was the writer Fuller studied most closely; she began a biography of him but abandoned it when she had to teach to support her family after her father’s death in 1835.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843
An account of a journey in the summer of 1843 from New England to Niagara Falls, Chicago, the Illinois prairies, Wisconsin and Michigan, published in Boston by Little and Brown in 1844. It mixes travel narrative with social commentary, poems and stories, and writes with sympathy about immigrants and the Native Americans she met, while taking westward settlement for granted. Researching it is how she came to use the Harvard library.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
An expansion of “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women”, the lead article in The Dial of July 1843, published by Greeley and McElrath in New York in 1845. Fuller argues that women need the same freedom as men to develop their minds and choose their work, and draws her examples from myth, history and literature. It was read widely in the United States and pirated in Britain, and is often called the first major feminist book by an American.
Papers on Literature and Art
Two volumes of essays and reviews, published in New York and London by Wiley and Putnam in 1846, the year she left for Europe. They draw on her work for The Dial and the Tribune, where she wrote more than 250 pieces in four years, and include her essay “American Literature”, alongside writing on European poets and on music. It was reissued after her death as Art, Literature, and the Drama.
At Home and Abroad
Edited by her brother Arthur B. Fuller and published in Boston by Crosby, Nichols in 1856. It reprints Summer on the Lakes together with her Tribune letters from Britain, France and Italy, letters to friends, and accounts of the voyage home and the wreck. The Rome letters describe the 1848 revolution, the short-lived Roman Republic and the French siege of 1849.
Life Without and Life Within
A posthumous gathering of essays, reviews and poems, again edited by Arthur B. Fuller, most of them not previously collected in a book. It was one of four volumes of her works that her family issued in the 1850s, with an introduction to the series by Horace Greeley.
“These Sad But Glorious Days”
The complete Tribune dispatches from Europe, edited by Larry J. Reynolds and Susan Belasco Smith and published by Yale University Press in 1991. It restores the reporting that made her the first American woman to work as a foreign correspondent, from London and Paris to the siege of Rome.
Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings
Library of America volume 388, published in February 2025 and edited by Brigitte Bailey, Noelle A. Baker and Megan Marshall. Its 850 pages hold Summer on the Lakes, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, essays, Tribune reviews and columns, the 1849 war correspondence from Rome, and journals and letters, many newly transcribed from manuscript.
In What Order to Read Margaret Fuller
Fuller wrote no series, so there is no required order. Her own books are short and few: read Woman in the Nineteenth Century first, then Summer on the Lakes, which shows the same mind at work on landscape and on the people of the frontier.
Her later life is told in her journalism rather than in books. For the European years, go to the Tribune dispatches, either in At Home and Abroad or in the more complete modern edition. Be cautious with the 1852 Memoirs: her friends edited and rewrote her letters and journals.
A reading path
1. Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
2. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
3. Papers on Literature and Art (1846)
4. “These Sad But Glorious Days” (1991)
Everything Else Margaret Fuller Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Translation and essay
2
2 books · 1842–1843
- 1842Günderodea translation of letters between Bettina von Arnim and Karoline von Günderode
- 1843The Great Lawsuither Dial essay, expanded into Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Posthumous editions
3
3 books · 1852–1860
- 1852Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossolitwo volumes assembled by Emerson, W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke, who cut and rewrote her papers
- 1855Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Kindred Papersedited by Arthur B. Fuller
- 1860Art, Literature, and the Dramaa reissue of Papers on Literature and Art with her translation of Goethe’s Tasso
Letters
1
1 book · 1983
- 1983The Letters of Margaret Fullersix volumes, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth (Cornell, 1983–94)
The years · 1810–1850
Quick facts about Margaret Fuller
- Known for
- She was the American critic and journalist whose Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) made the first major case for women’s equality in the United States, and the country’s first woman foreign correspondent.
- 1810
- Born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts
- 1850
- Dies in a shipwreck off Fire Island
- Born
- 23 May 1810, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts
- Education
- Taught at home by her father, Timothy Fuller; the Groton school for young ladies from 1824
- Editor
- The Dial, 1840–1842
- Journalist
- Literary critic at the New-York Tribune from 1844; its correspondent in Europe, 1846–1850
- Family
- Partner, later husband, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli; son Angelo, born 5 September 1848
- Died
- 19 July 1850, wreck of the Elizabeth off Fire Island, New York
The red mark is 1845: Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the book she is remembered for.
How Margaret Fuller Writes: Learning, Argument and Reporting
Fuller wrote from wide reading. Her father taught her Latin as a small child, she learned German to read Goethe, and her arguments move through Greek myth, the Bible, European history and contemporary poets. In Woman in the Nineteenth Century that learning is the evidence: she lines up examples of women from every age to show what women have done when allowed, and then asks for the same freedom for all of them.
She did not keep to one form. Summer on the Lakes switches between travel diary, social criticism, poems and short tales; her Tribune columns run from book reviews to pieces on prisons, asylums and the poor of New York. From Rome she wrote dispatches for a mass readership, describing barricades, the siege and the wounded in plain reported detail and taking the side of the republicans.
Her style can be dense, with long sentences and many allusions, and readers in her own day found her hard going as well as brilliant. The core claims are stated plainly, though, and it is those sentences — that a woman may be anything, even a sea captain — that are still quoted. For writers who share her concerns, from Mary Wollstonecraft to the Transcendentalists, see Authors like Margaret Fuller.
Frequently asked questions about Margaret Fuller’s books
How many books has Margaret Fuller written?
Three books of her own appeared in her lifetime — Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) and Papers on Literature and Art (1846) — along with two translations from German. Everything else was collected after her death. This page lists eight key books, from Conversations with Goethe (1839) to the Library of America Collected Writings (2025).
What are Margaret Fuller’s books in order?
Conversations with Goethe (1839, translation), Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Papers on Literature and Art (1846), At Home and Abroad (1856), Life Without and Life Within (1859), “These Sad But Glorious Days” (1991) and Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings (2025).
Where should I start with Margaret Fuller?
With Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). It is her central argument and the reason she is still read. If you prefer reporting to argument, start with her dispatches from Rome in “These Sad But Glorious Days”.
What is Margaret Fuller’s most famous book?
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), an expansion of her 1843 Dial essay “The Great Lawsuit”. It argues that women should be free to develop their minds and to take up any work, “sea-captains, if you will”.
Who was Margaret Fuller?
An American critic, editor, teacher and journalist (1810–1850) in the Transcendentalist circle around Ralph Waldo Emerson. She edited The Dial from 1840 to 1842, became the New-York Tribune’s literary critic in 1844, and from 1846 was its correspondent in Europe, the first American woman in that role.
How did Margaret Fuller die?
She drowned on 19 July 1850, aged forty, when the merchant ship Elizabeth, bringing her home from Italy, ran aground on a sandbar off Fire Island, New York, in a storm. Her husband Giovanni Angelo Ossoli and their son Angelo died with her; the boy’s body washed ashore, but Fuller’s and Ossoli’s were never found. Emerson sent Henry David Thoreau to the beach to look for her papers. Her manuscript history of the Roman Republic was lost.
Was Margaret Fuller married?
She lived with Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a Roman who served in the Civic Guard during the revolution, and called him her husband. Their son Angelo was born on 5 September 1848. When, or whether, they formally married is uncertain; Britannica says they married secretly, “apparently in 1849”.
Why did Margaret Fuller’s reputation fall after her death?
Partly because of a public attack. In 1884 Julian Hawthorne published, in Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, his father’s 1858 notebook entry describing Fuller as having a “defective and evil nature”, and wrote in the press that she had taken her place among “dismal frauds”. Her child born outside a proven marriage was used against her, and her books went largely out of print: Woman in the Nineteenth Century had no new edition in the twentieth century until 1969.
Are the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli reliable?
Not entirely. The two-volume Memoirs (1852) were put together by Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing, who cut up her journals, removed passages they thought too radical or “unwomanly”, and rewrote her letters to suit Victorian taste. Scholars now rely on her original letters, journals and published writing, as in the 2025 Library of America edition.
Why was Margaret Fuller important to Transcendentalism?
She edited the movement’s journal, The Dial, for its first eight issues (1840–1842), working with Emerson, and wrote much of its content; her “Great Lawsuit” appeared there. Her Boston “Conversations” for women (1839–1844) brought Transcendentalist ideas about self-development to women who were shut out of universities.
Did Margaret Fuller influence the women’s rights movement?
Yes. Woman in the Nineteenth Century appeared three years before the Seneca Falls convention of July 1848, which began the organised campaign for women’s suffrage, and Susan B. Anthony acknowledged Fuller as a precursor of the movement.
Is there a good biography of Margaret Fuller?
Megan Marshall’s Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013) won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Marshall is also one of the editors of the Library of America Collected Writings (2025).
Footnotes
- Margaret Fuller — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Margaret Fuller — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Margaret Fuller’s individual publications — The Walden Woods Project
- “An Uncompromising Revolution”: the death and afterlife of Margaret Fuller — Library of America
- A Literary Hit Job: Julian Hawthorne Takes Down Margaret Fuller — JSTOR Daily
- Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings (LOA #388) — Penguin Random House
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“… let them be sea-captains, if you will.”
— Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
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