The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Mr. Harvey Weinstein
The Weinstein Company
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014

　
Dear Mr. Weinstein,

Congratulations on your recent Best Picture Oscar for The Artist. This makes the second year in a row that The Weinstein Company has won Best Picture! Not to mention sweeping the Best Actor and Actress awards as well. Along with Oscar nominations for Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh, this has been a banner year for The Weinstein Company. Why waste time making sequels to Shakespeare in Love, and Bridget Jones’ Diary not to mention Scream 5? It’s time The Weinstein Company add another classy production to hopefully add more Oscar Gold. I’m talking about making a biopic about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.

The 19^th Century is totally hot right now, not to mention poets. John Cusack’s starring as Edgar Allen Poe in The Raven soon and did you see Bright Star? I’m telling you that The Barretts of Wimpole Street is even better than Bright Star because nobody dies! The love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning has all the hallmarks of a Weinstein production, British accents, gorgeous costumes, a tyrannical father, handsome young leading man, an invalid heroine, a secondary love story between Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta and her suitor, a dramatic elopement, and finally a happily ever after ending in Italy. There’s even an adorable cocker spaniel. But most important is the poetry. Robert fell in love with Elizabeth before he even met her because of her poetry.

The story has been filmed twice before, once in 1934 with Norma Shearer as Elizabeth and Frederic March as Robert (the film was nominated for Best Picture), and then in 1957 by the same director with Jennifer Jones, Bill Travers and Sir Ralph Richardson as Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, Elizabeth’s father (there was also a TV version made in Britain in the 1970's) but don‘t let that deter you! I’m sure that in the hands of a strong director and writer, this story can inspire modern audiences as well.

Screenplay:
A great film needs a great script. I suggest that you get Emma Thompson to write the screenplay. Remember she won an Academy Award for another 19^th century adaptation, Sense and Sensibility. If she’s not available, then let Julian Fellowes have a shot at it but he‘s kind of hit and miss. I love Downton Abbey, Gosford Park and Vanity Fair but his 4 hour production of The Titanic made me long for James Cameron’s version and I hated that movie.

Director:
It would be awesome if Ang Lee could direct the film. He did such a great job with Sense and Sensibility. Sam Mendes would also be a good choice, it’s time he tried the 19^th century on for size. Or how about Mira Nair? I really liked her direction of Vanity Fair. Another good choice would be Tom Hooper, Roger Michell (who directed Persuasion), or Stephen Daldry. Under no circumstances hire Joe Wright because he’ll completely cock-it-up, I can just see a donkey or a raccoon running through the parlor in the Barretts home or Robert showing up at all hours of the day and night.

Now here comes the important bit, casting the leads. Who plays Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning can make or break your film. I’ve given this a lot of thought.

Our Heroine: Elizabeth Barrett was 39 at the time she met Robert Browning in 1845. She’d been an invalid for at least 15 years, suffering from a variety of ailments for which she’d been taking laudanum and later morphine. According to Wikipedia, At about age 15 Barrett Browning began to battle with a lifelong illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. All three sisters came down with the syndrome although it lasted only with Elizabeth. She had intense head and spinal pain with loss of mobility. She is described as having "a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam".

The role requires an actress who blossoms once she meets Robert, defying her father in order to marry the man she loves, even though she knows that not only will she be disinherited, but that she may never see her father again. My top choice for the role would be Sally Hawkins who was so fabulous in Mike Leigh’s Made in Dagenham, as well as Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Other good choices would be Emily Watson, Ann-Marie Duff (who has played both John Lennon’s mother, Margot Fonteyn and Elizabeth I), Helena Bonham Carter, Samantha Morton, Jennifer Ehle, or Kate Beckinsale (when was the last time she had a really great role and I‘m not talking Underworld or Underworld 3).

Emily Watson

Sally Hawkins

Ann-Marie Duff

Please don’t, whatever you do, cast Keira Knightly. I know she’s become the automatic go-to-girl for period films, whether she’s right for the role or not, but just say no! Other actresses to avoid Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Hilary Swank, or Charlize Theron.

Robert Browning in his later years

Our Hero: Robert Browning, 33, was the son of a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England making £150 pounds a year. He was mainly educated at home, and left University after one year. He refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations, dedicating himself to poetry. He stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems. Browning traveled widely, joining a British diplomatic mission to Russia in 1834, later journeying to Italy 1838 and 1844. By the time Robert meets Elizabeth, he’s not only a published poet but also a man of theatre, having had several plays produced on the English stage.

I see Tom Hiddleston in the role of Robert Browning. He’s proved with his work in War Horse and The Deep Blue Sea, that he can handle both period pieces as well as serious dramatic roles. He also went to Eton has a double-first from Cambridge, so he definitely can handle the poetry. If Hiddleston is not available or interested, than another good choice might be James McAvoy (McAvoy is married to Ann-Marie Duff so if you cast them, you have the added publicity bonus of them playing two of the greatest poets of the 19th century who are also married).

The villain: Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, 50’s. Every story, particularly has to have a villain (think of Billy Zane in Titanic) or a third person in the love triangle. In this film, it is Elizabeth’s father who vowed to disinherit his children if they married. I leave it up to the screenwriter to fill-in the psychological reasons for wanting to keep his children single forever. The original film suggested that Barrett liked Elizabeth a little too much. I don’t know about that but the Victorians were a strange bunch. My top choices for this role would be Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons.

Jeremy Irons

Alan Rickman

Of course, I'm only a non-fiction author, what do I know about film? I do know what I like, and I think that if the Weinstein Company produces a film about Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, they will have a surefire Oscar contender!

Who do you think would be good casting for The Barretts of Wimpole Street?



The Dragon Empress – The Life of Cixi, Dowager Empress of China (1835-1908)

The Dragon Empress – The Life of Cixi, Dowager Empress of China (1835-1908)

"I have often then that I am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me...I have 400 million people dependent on my judgement." - Empress Cixi
Once upon a time in a distant province of China, an ordinary girl named Yehenara was born. She would one day grow up to be one of the most feared women in the Eastern world, known as the Dragon Empress. Only five feet tall, this daughter of a minor Manchu official, believed herself to be the cleverest woman alive. Historians and filmmakers have long portrayed her ‘The Dragon Empress,’ a despot and villain, murdering anyone who got in her way including her daughter-in-law and the Dowager Empress Niuhuru. For almost fifty years, this powerful and charismatic woman ruled China with iron fist inside a velvet glove, but her feudal outlook, her belief that China was the center of the universe, and that all foreigners were barbarians were contributing factors to the end of the Ch’ing dynasty after three hundred years.

Yehenara’s father was nobody; just one of a thousand, nameless and faceless officials who populated Peking at that time. The eldest child, Yehenara had an unhappy childhood, feeling neglected and unloved. She once said, 'Ever since I was a young girl, I had a very hard life. I was not happy with my parents, as I was not a favorite. My sisters had everything they wanted, while I was, to a great extent, ignored altogether.' There was no money to educate the children beyond the basics. Somehow Yehenara managed to learn to read and write, making her a rarity since most Chinese women were illiterate. Her father died when she was fourteen, leaving the family in dire straits. So, at the age of 16, Yehenara and her sister were brought to the Forbidden City to join the Emperor’s harem, a step up back then for Chinese women. The Dowager Consort Kangci personally selected the girls. She was one of 60 girls who were eligible for the honor, and only 28 were picked to be Preparative Concubines. Yehenara and her sister were amongst the lucky ones.

Yehenara spent two years in training, hoping that the Emperor would notice her. From the beginning, she used her time wisely, cozying up to another one of the concubines Ci’an, who had been chosen to be Empress. She also kept her eyes open, sizing up who had the real power in the Imperial palace, the Eunuchs. While she waited, Yehenara occupied herself reading her way through the palace libraries. Her luck changed when, as the story goes; the Emperor heard her singing one day and asked to meet her. Impressed with her beauty as well as her talent, Xianfeng picked her name from his nightly list of choices to grace his bed. A tablet carved from jade was turned over to reveal her name. Etiquette demanded that she be deposited, naked, at the foot of his bed.

Soon she bore the Emperor a son which gained her a promotion to Consort of the fourth rank (after his 1st birthday, she was promoted again to Noble Consort Yi, placing her second in rank to the Empress). She was given the title Tzu Hsi (Cixi), meaning “kindly and virtuous.” The Emperor died in 1861. Since there was no tradition of primogeniture in China, Cixi went to the Emperor’s death bed and demanded that he recognize her son as his heir. Since Cixi’s son was only five, she took advantage of the naiveté and the good nature of the Dowager Empress Niuhuru, suggesting that they become co-reigning Empress Dowagers. However, during the three months between the Emperor’s death and his burial, a rival faction attempted to seize power. Soon Cixi, alongside 8other regents, including Empress Niuhuru, came out on top. Prince I and Prince Cheng were found guilty of treason, and allowed to commit suicide. The others weren’t so lucky, they were beheaded and their estates confiscated and divided between Cixi and Niuhuru. Cixi was now a very rich woman in her own right.

Civil war raged through five provinces and twenty million people died during the early years of Cixi’s reign. Cixi initially relied on the advice of Prince Kung, who indulged her, underestimating her intelligence, believing that she would be easy to manipulate. But he soon found out how wrong he was when Cixi decided to clean up the corrupt national bureaucracy. She personally met with all officials above the level of provincial governor, who now had to report to her. Instead of favoring the Manchu elite who had held power for centuries, Cixi began to cultivate the Han Chinese, appointing officials as governors of all the southern provinces. Soon Cixi was ready to rule on her own. Her first step was to get rid of Prince Kung, who had become a little too familiar for Cixi’s liking. One day, during an audience, Cixi claimed that he had tried to attack her. He was seized by eunuchs, and stripped of all honors and duties. She later forgave him, needing his help to rule the country, but she had made her point. She had brought down the most powerful man in the kingdom and bent him to her will.

Cixi now became the poster girl for the saying “Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.” She quickly got rid of those who opposed her, not willing to share power with anyone. She raised taxes on an already overburdened populace, selling positions of influence and pocketing the money for herself. There were sumptuous banquets with a hundred courses where Cixi ate with gold chopsticks and drank out of a jade cup. Incredibly vain, she applied white make-up with a trowel, and wore sumptuous gowns decorated with precious gems. At the end of her life, her personal jewelry vault contained 3,000 ebony boxes of jewels. She used naval funds to rebuild the summer palace that had been destroyed during the 2nd Opium War. As she grew older, she became a tyrant, punishing her household with beatings for even minor infractions. She apparently enjoyed having two of her maids repeatedly slap each other. When she turned 60, every courtier was obliged to donate 25% of their salary to her and to buy lavish gifts to celebrate the birthday girl. By the end of her reign, she has amassed a personal fortune of 8.5 million pounds.

Unfortunately Cixi’s son, Tongzhi, had inherited none of her intelligence and ambition. He was spoiled and indulged by everyone, but he led a lonely life, with no playmates of his own age. By his teens, he was alcoholic, preferring to hang out in brothels. At the age of 16, a wife was chosen for him from amongst the daughters of the Manchu officials. Cixi took an instant dislike to Alute, fearing her influence over her son. Despite being officially crowned Emperor, Tongzhi preferred to leave matters in his mother’s capable hands, while he drank and shagged anything that had a pulse. Two years after he was crowned, Tongzhi was dead from a combination of venereal disease and smallpox. He was only 19. His wife, Alute, soon committed suicide by swallowing opium but gossip had it that Cixi had her murdered.

Not leaving anything to chance, Cixi called a meeting of the Grand Council to discuss the succession. The lucky winner was her nephew Guangxu who was only three. Her choice violated the laws of ancestor-worship but Cixi didn’t care. Despite opposition from more conservative members of the council, Cixi got her way. On February 25th, 1875 Guangxu was proclaimed Emperor. Cixi’s second regency was a disaster for China. Immediately, Cixi locked horns with the French, Japanese and English, all of whom wanting to trade more in the East; had struck deals with China’s neighbors. When Cixi wanted to declare war on Vietnam, who had been forced into a treaty with the French, and her council didn’t back her up, she had them sacked. She replaced them with a group of “yes” men, and proceeded to go to war. China lost, and France ruled Vietnam for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile Japan seized the chance to go after Korea. In order to pay for the costly wars, taxes were raised. Ironically what made Cixi so popular was her stance against foreigners, but it also brought China to her knees.

Finally when the Emperor turned 19, Cixi agreed to retire but it was in name only. She spent her time spreading rumors that the Emperor was childlike and incompetent. Guangxu was the exact opposite of his rigid, conservative aunt. He believed that China needed to learn from the West in order to survive. He initiated what came to be known as “Hundred Days of Reform,” issuing decrees ordering railroads to be built, modernizing the military, reforming the legal system, dismissing thousands of Manchu officials who opposed his reforms. Cixi was livid. When she got word that the Emperor’s advisors suggested that she be placed under house arrest, she stormed the Forbidden City, with members of the army that had remained loyal. She forced the Emperor to rescind his reforms, imprisoning him in a palace in the middle of an island. He was totally isolated from the court, his servants either put to death or banished. His only companions were four guards and his wife.

Cixi was back in charge. However, her policies were ruinous to China. She made the mistake of aligning herself with the Boxers, encouraging their efforts to rid China of all foreigners, missionaries, and Christian converts. No one was safe, buildings were burnt. The foreign governments weren’t about to take the murder of their citizens lying down. Over 20,000 foreign troops (including American) marched towards Peking. Cixi, along with the rest of the Imperial family, fled the palace dressed ironically as peasants. When the Emperor’s favorite concubine begged Cixi not to abandon Peking, she was allegedly thrown down a well. For the first time, Cixi came face to face with the reality of the lives of the ordinary citizens of China, the grinding poverty and the famine. The Empress, who was nothing if not practical, decided to stop the war (against the advice of her advisors) with the Allied Powers, once she was assured of her continued reign after the war. China agreed to pay almost $333 million in war reparations. Finally, Cixi saw the light and was willing to build the railroads, and schools that Guangxu has been pushing for. Ironically, she began implementing a reform program that was more radical than one that had been proposed before. She began inviting the wives of foreign diplomats for tea. To rehabilitate her image, Cixi allowed a young photographer to take elaborately staged shots of her and her court.

In 1907, Cixi suffered a stroke. While she recovered, the Emperor fell ill and died of what is now known to be acute arsenic poisoning. Historians now speculate that Cixi knowing she was dying wanted to make sure that the Emperor would not continue his reforms after her death. Cixi died a day later, but not before installing her grandnephew Pu Yi as the new and last Emperor of China. Her tomb, which she had ordered destroyed and reconstructed in 1895, was destroyed again 1928 by the Kuomintang general Sun Dianying and his army.  They stipped the tomb of its jewels, and dumped Cixi's corpse in the mud. The tomb was restored in 1949 by the People's Republic of China.

Recent biographers have taken a different view of Cixi than the more traditional view of a devious despot. They claim that Cixi was just a convenient scapegoat for problems that were beyond her control, a leader no more ruthless than other male rulers, and an effective but reluctant reformer in her last years. Many of the more sensational stories written about her by people who never met the Empress and concocted stories to feed to the Western Press who had their own reasons for wanting to blacken her name. Katherine Carl, who painted Cixi in her later years, wrote a sympathetic memoir describing the Empress as kind and considerate. In her later years, Cixi apparently had many regrets about the past and how she had dealt with the many crises of her reign.

Sources:

Margaret Nicholas - The World’s Wickedest Women, Octopus Books Limited, 1984
Sean Price - Cixi: Evil Empress of China? (Wicked History), Scholastic Books, 2009
Shelley Klein - The Most Evil Women in History, Metro Books, 2003
Sterling Seagrave - Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China, Vintage 1993

Exhibition: The Empress Dowager, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Men, Women and Margaret Fuller

“Humanity is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller,” – Edgar Allan Poe

“The greatest woman of ancient or modern times,” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday was the 201st birthday of Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). If you’ve never heard of Margaret Fuller, you are not alone. Although she hung out with the likes of Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fuller seems to have slipped through the cracks compared to 19th century feminists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Victoria Woodhull. Yet in her forty years on the planet, Fuller managed to accomplish a lot.

Just take a gander at just a few of her firsts (from the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Site):

• First American to write a book about equality for women, Woman in the 19th century (1845).

• First woman foreign correspondent and first woman war correspondent to serve under combat conditions, covering the revolutions of 1849.

• First woman journalist for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, and first woman literary editor of a major American newspaper

• First editor of the Dial, the Transcendentalist journal, making her the first woman in America to edit an intellectual publication (She was supposed to be paid $200 a year but was never paid.)

• First woman literary critic who also set literary standards for American writers

• First woman to enter the Harvard College library to pursue research

• First translated Goethe in English, championing the author as more than just a depraved European.

You could also make a case that Margaret was America’s first truly liberated female. What Mary Wollstonecraft was to the 18th century, Margaret was to the 19th. There are so many parallels between the two women, it’s uncanny. They were both schoolteachers, journalists; both fell in love with inappropriate men, and both died way too young. They even had their reputations damaged by well-meaning friends who wrote books about them. In Mary’s case, it was her husband William Godwin. In Margaret’s case it was her good friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson who decided while editing her memoirs to turn her into precisely what she was not. Instead of the warm, vibrant personality, he turned her into a snobbish, egotistical, dried up spinster.

Sarah Margaret Fuller, the eldest of eight children was born on May 23, 1810 to Timothy Fuller, a lawyer whose family had deep roots in New England soil, coming over in 1638, and Margaret Crane. Margaret’s father was hoping his eldest child would be a boy. Instead, he decided to educate Margaret like one. He assigned her a curriculum that would have made first year students at Harvard go white with fear. By the age of four, Margaret could read, by six she was reading Latin. She’d added German, French, Italian and a little Greek to the list by the time she was a teenager. By the time she was 30, she was considered the best-read person, male or female, in New England.

Although Margaret loved learning, she paid a high price. Her education set her apart from girls her own age, and scared off the boys. She began walking in her sleep, suffered from migraines, and had nightmares. The doors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton were closed to her and there were no women’s colleges for Margaret to continue her education. She managed to put her education to good use after her father died. Margaret assumed responsibility for her family, going to work as a teacher, first for Bronson Alcott and then for a progressive school in Providence, RI. She soon gave up teaching to lecture, or what she called ‘Conversations.” Margaret intended these meetings to compensate for the lack of education for women. She talked about everything from Greek mythology to the Bible to history, fine arts and literature. Soon she was widely known, not just among women, but also amongst the intelligentsia of New England. Fuller was not only a brilliant talker, but opinionated, witty and erudite. She was declared to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.” She certainly didn’t lack for self-esteem!

In 1835, Margaret met the great Ralph Waldo Emerson who was already famous as a lecturer, essayist and poet. For the next several years, she and Emerson indulged in a passionate flirtation which stopped just short of the bedroom. Fuller, although she was in awe of him, never treated him like the ‘great thinker.’ She chastised him for not writing more, sparred with him, but she never fawned over him, there was no sitting at the feet of the great man. In two years, Margaret became his confidante, his debating partner, second only to Thoreau but Emerson would never admit his true feelings for her. He kept her at a distance, blowing hot and cold, during their friendship.  Soon, however, Margaret was mingling with the literary crowd, and lecturing at Brook Farm.

Hawthorne, on the other hand, couldn’t stand her, but then he had a problem with strong women. He thought she was too aggressive, overly clever, and improperly frank when it came to sex. Also she was more famous than he was. She wasn’t delicately pretty and wan, the feminine ideal at that time. Margaret wasn’t interested in fashion, she wore her hair severely pulled back in a bun, her nose was too long, her mouth too wide, her chin too firm for real beauty. But looking at the lone photograph of her, she was striking; no doubt the force of her personality overcame whatever defects were thought of about her looks. Still she inspired Hawthorne to immortalize her as Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance. She also managed to tick off not Henry Wadsworth Longfellow but also James Lowell and Emerson when she later reviewed their work in The New York Tribune.

Despite her many friends, Fuller longed for romance, whether it was with a man or a woman didn’t matter. In her journal, she wrote, “It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman and a man with a man.” That’s a pretty amazing realization, given the times. She had many passionate friendships over the years, but none of them led to marriage, at least not to her. Two of her inamoratas, Samuel Ward and Anna Barker fell in love and were married. She fell madly in love with a German Jewish banker, James Nathan, who she’d met in New York but he fled back to his native country to escape her. She was, too put it bluntly, too passionate, too intense for most people. She seemed not to have an off button, exciting yes, but a tad tiring. Still, she was always magnanimous when a relationship ended.

Her 1845 book Woman in the 19th century didn’t help matters. The book was an expanded version of an article that she had written called “The Great Lawsuit – Man versus Men: Woman versus Women.” Among some of her theories, “There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.” “What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded.” “Men think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a man as originality of thought or character.” “There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” Although the book was met with jeers and derision, the first edition sold out in a week. The book not only established her as a household name but led to her being hired by Horace Greeley to be the first female member of the working press. Even though New York was seen as a cultural wasteland compared to Boston, Margaret packed up her bags and moved to the Big Apple. She was soon off and running, interviewing prostitutes in Sing Sing prison.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Margaret headed off to Europe in 1846, fulfilling a long cherished dream. In Europe, she met many of the literary celebrities of the day, including George Sand, Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. But it was Italy, in the midst of a revolution, that Margaret finally found her soul-mate. He was not an intellectual like Emerson, although he was well educated, but an impoverished Italian nobleman eleven years her junior named Count Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. Ossoli loved her, adored her, and wanted to marry her. Although she tried to resist him, Margaret soon gave into her feelings, moving in with him in Florence. Before long she was pregnant, giving birth to a son they named Angelo in 1848. While Ossoli fought in the revolution, Margaret volunteered at a nearby hospital. .Despite her pregnancy, she refused to marry him for many reasons, their different religions, the age difference. The news of their liaison shocked everyone in New England literary circles, and caused Greeley to drop her contract with The New YorkTribune. Although Emerson claimed they were married in 1847, no one knows for sure if they were ever any formal ceremony.

Penniless, the little family decided to leave Italy and return to the United States. Unfortunately Margaret’s life was cut short in July of 1850. The ship she was traveling on with her family, The Elizabeth, ran aground near Fire Island off the coast of Long Island. Margaret, her husband, and son were all lost along with her new book on the Italian revolutions. When Margaret had the chance to save herself, she refused to leave her husband and son.  Incredibly, people showed up on the beach with carts hoping to find any cargo that washed ashore, but they made no effort to help the passengers or the crew of the ship. Henry David Thoreau traveled to New York, to search for the bodies but neither Fuller's body nor Ossoli's was ever recovered; only their little son Angelino was washed ashore.  Nothing was discovered apart from a trunk containing Margaret and Ossoli's love letters.



A memorial to Fuller was erected on the beach at Fire Island in 1901 through the efforts of Julia Ward Howe. A cenotaph to Fuller and Ossoli, under which their little son is buried, is in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The inscription reads, in part:


By birth a child of New England
By adoption a citizen of Rome
By genius belonging to the world

Despite admirers such as Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Emerson and later Henry James, by the end of the 19th century, Margaret Fuller had been all but forgotten. Even the paper she worked for, The Tribune, said in its obituary that her works had few great sentiments. It would take the dawning of the 20th century, and feminist writers discovering her legacy to bring her name back into consciousness. While several biographies have been written about Margaret, most of them have tended to be weighty academic tomes, dealing more with her literary output than her life. Only Susan Cheever’s American Bloomsbury really gives a sense of Margaret’s life during those heady days in Concord when she edited The Dial for Emerson, and gave her famous ‘Conversations.’