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An Extraordinary Celebration for an Extraordinary Woman!

The Margaret Fuller Bicentennial has been an incredible opportunity to celebrate and learn about an extraordinary woman and continue her global vision of equality and human rights. The major events of the Bicentennial are now over, but the resources developed during the Bicentennial will remain available through this website at least through the end of 2011.

The goal of the Bicentennial has been to raise awareness of Margaret Fuller, so that her story may inspire people of all ages to follow her lead and think independently, express their thoughts clearly, defend their convictions with courage, learn through dialogue and the free exchange of opinions, believe in the equality of all people, and be open to change. Then her legacy will be assured.

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Author, editor, journalist, literary critic, educator, Transcendentalist, and women’s rights advocate....

Today we consider Margaret Fuller one of the guiding lights of the first-wave of feminism. She helped  educate the women of her day by leading a series of Conversations in which women were empowered to read, think and discuss important issues of the day. She empowered generations to follow through her ground-breaking writings, especially her landmark book Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

Among her accomplishments:

  • First American to write a book about equality for women
  • First editor of The Dial, foremost Transcendentalist journal, appointed by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • First woman to enter Harvard Library to pursue research
  • First woman journalist on Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune
  • First woman literary critic who also set literary standards
  • First woman foreign correspondent and war correspondent to serve under combat conditions

Many Thanks to the Bicentennial Committee

The Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee was a grassroots group of Unitarian Universalists , scholars, and representatives from historical sites, commissions, and organizations.  Together they planned tours, exhibits, trips, programs and performances intended to celebrate the life and legacy of Margaret Fuller during the bicentennial year of her birth, and beyond.

Funding was provided by the Fund for Unitarian Universalism, Mass Humanities, the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society, and individual donations. Unitarian Universalist Women & Religion served as the fiscal agent and is continuing to host the website. To learn more about this organization, please visit www.uuwr.org.

This Web site will be updated periodically as new events and resources are developed. If you are planning a Margaret Fuller related event, we would love to list it here. Please e-mail us the details and we'll post it on the events calendar. We also welcome the suggestion and submission of possible resources to be added to the site. Donations continue to be accepted to maintain the website and resources.

Questions about the site? Contact the Webweaver.

 
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I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state.
-- Letter (Spring 1850)

I am absurdly fearful about this voyage. Various little omens have combined to give me a dark feeling.... Perhaps we shall live to laugh at these. But in case of mishap I should perish with my husband and child, perhaps to be transferred to some happier state.
-- Letter to Marchioness Visconti Arconati (6 April 1850) as quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 274, the differences could be from differing translations or from omissions, as Emerson is said to have highly edited many of the letters as published in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.