Finding Margaret Fuller by Alison Pataki

Allison Pataki’s powerful novel brings the brilliant feminist Margaret Fuller to life. Delving into the historical record, Pataki celebrates this intellectual heroine who changed 19th century American thinking only to fade into the shadows of history.

Born in 1810, Fuller was a talented journalist, writer, translator and teacher who advocated for women’s equality. Her demanding father was determined to provide her with the same education as a boy. He tutored her himself. Fuller spoke multiple languages and read Shakespeare, Virgil, and Goethe while she was young. By all accounts, her genius stunned all those whom she encountered. Later, she taught school in Boston and Providence and, in 1839, became the first woman editor of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist journal called The Dial. Later that year, Fuller became the editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, where she wrote opinion pieces and literary criticism. 

She was a feminist before feminism entered the lexicon and forged a path for women’s suffrage before an organized movement emerged in the United States. Ignoring the restrictive roles dictated by men, she unapologetically advocated for women’s equality and became a model of an independent woman. She said, “We do a great disservice to all people, male and female when we relegate a lady’s talents only to the hearth and home.” In 1845, she published her groundbreaking book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a feminist critique that bemoaned the injustices inflicted upon American women.

Pataki’s novel starts slow, but gains momentum after the first few chapters. Though Fuller’s articles and books dominated the bestseller lists in the 1840s, it is curious that her legacy has not endured like her friends Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louise May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Barret Browning, and Edgar Allen Poe, all of whom are characters in this novel.

This fact makes Allison Pataki’s novel even more important.  Not only is it the first fictionalized account of Margaret Fuller’s life, but it is also an acknowledgement of her fierce advocacy for women’s equality, the end of slavery and prison reform.  As Susan B. Anthony said, “Fuller possessed more influence on the thoughts of American women than any woman previous to her time.” If you haven’t read about Margaret Fuller, I recommend this novel.

Thanks to my sister-in-law Mary for giving me this book. 4/5