Rewriting Margaret Fuller: Literary Legacy and Material Memory in the Author Archive

Abstract

Since her death in 1850, American author Margaret Fuller has been continuously reimagined by scholars, biographers, and writers as a cultural figure, as everything from a forgotten icon of feminism to a promiscuous woman. These various narratives of Fuller as a literary figure often challenge her own sense of self as a female author, which she developed throughout her personal correspondence as well as her published work. Recently, efforts have been made by scholars to place Fuller more solidly within the literary canon and much research has been done on Fuller’s literary afterlife through her lesser-known works, biography, and her papers at Harvard’s Houghton Library. However, comparatively less attention has been given to how Fuller was simultaneously isolated from and elevated by her contemporaries, and to her archival collection at the Boston Public Library and its mediated origins. Using literary critical and archival methodologies, I analyze the ways these instances of isolation and elevation often unconsciously define or distort Fuller’s identity as a female author. I track these moments over time in Fuller’s foundational 1845 book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, biographer Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s portion of Fuller’s Boston Public Library collection, and Allison Pataki’s 2024 historical fiction novel Finding Margaret Fuller. Ultimately, I argue that Margaret Fuller’s legacy functions as a contested site where archival and authorial forces attempt to commemorate her literary contributions, often in ways that isolate Fuller from her contemporaries and distort the identity she sought to construct as a female author in the nineteenth century.