THE FOLLOWING essay is a reproduction, modified and expanded, of an article published in The Dial, Boston, July 1843,under the title of The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men: Woman versus Women.

This article excited a good deal of sympathy, and still more interest. It is in compliance with wishes expressed from many quarters, that it is prepared for publication in its present form.

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A woman of many gifts, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) is most aptly remembered as Ameriea’s first tree feminist. In her brief yet fruitful life, she was variously author, editor, literary and social critic, journalist, poet, and revolutionary. She was also one of the few female members of the prestigious Transeendentalist movement, whose ranks included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many other prominent New England intellectuals of the day. As co-edi-tor of the transcendentalist journal, The Dial, Fuller was able to give voice to her groundbreaking social eritique on woman’s plaee in society, the genesis of the book that was later to become Worran in the Nineteenth Century. Published in 1843, this essay was entitled The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women.

First published in book form in 1845, Woman in the Nineteenth Century was correctly perceived as the controversial document that it was: receiving aeelaim and achieving popular success in some quarters (the first printing sold out within a week), at the same time that it inspired vicious attaeks from opponents of the embryonic women’s movement. In this book, whose style is characterized by the trademark textual diversity of the transcendentalists, Fuller articulates values arising from her passionate belief in justice and equality for all humankind, with a particular focus on women. Although her notion of basic rights certainly includes those of an educational, economic, and legal nature, it is intellectual expansion and ehanges in the prevailing atti tudes towards women (by men and women) that Fuller cherishes far above the superficial manifestations of liberation. A classic of feminist thought that helped bring about the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention three years after its publication, Worlkan in the Nineteenth Century inspired her contempo raries Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to speak of Fuller as possessing more influence upon the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.

Note

Preface to the 1845 edition

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Author’s Appendix

Index