SOURCE: "Conversations and The Dial," in Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalism to Revolution, Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1978, pp. 139-62.

In the following excerpt, Blanchard discusses the series of "Conversations," paid seminars combining elements of entertainment, instruction, and intellectual development for women which Fuller conducted in Boston beginning in 1838. Blanchard also examines Fuller's development and editorship of the Transcendentalist journal the Dial.

[Margaret Fuller's] conversation, Emerson said simply, was the most entertaining in America. And it may very well have been during one of the bookstore discussions that someone suggested that the most entertaining conversation in America might be worth paying for. In an era earnestly bent on self-culture, when almost anyone who wanted to give a speech on free will, cold baths, or the bumps on the human head could fill a lecture hall, the idea was not farfetched. In fact, [Bronson] Alcott had already begun to augment his...