Steele is an American educator and critic who here applies to Fuller's poetry biographical interpretations that he considers crucial to an understanding of her emotional and intellectual development. He divides Fuller's poetry into three chronological periods: an early period (1835-38) consisting primarily of occasional pieces and poems to a close friend; a middle period (1839-1843) that charts a spiritual crisis in Fuller's life; and a mature period in 1844, during which Fuller wrote ...

In the following essay, Adams proposes that when assessed by Romantic literary aesthetics, Fuller's seemingly aimless travel narrative possesses an identifiable structure.

In the following introduction to her edition of a collection of Fuller's writings, Dickenson surveys Fuller's life, thought, and works.

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.

The first impression a reader may get from a hasty perusal of Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century is one of effusiveness and formlessness. Containing a display of erudition that is impressive, it is prolix, as was the work of many transcendentalists and other writers of the past century. In the April 1845 issue of his Quarterly Review, Orestes Brownson observed that Woman has "neither beginning, middle, nor end, and may be read backwards as well as forwards." In his satir...

An American clergyman, editor, and essayist, Brownson was a prolific writer whose work was centrally concerned with the quest for religious truth and belief in justice and political liberty. In the following review, he charges that Woman in the Nineteenth Century possesses neither style nor structure, and rejects on religious grounds Fuller's call for women's equality.

James was an American novelist and short story writer valued for his psychological acuity and complex sense of artistic form. He also wrote literary criticism in which he developed his artistic ideals and applied them to the works of others. In the following excerpt, taken from a reminiscence of the period during which Fuller was living in Rome, James muses on Fuller's place in literary and intellectual history and in the personal histories of those who knew her.

In the following review, the critic asserts that Woman in the Nineteenth Century lacks formal structure and rigorous analysis of a clearly stated thesis, but commends the intelligence and eloquence found throughout the book.

In the following excerpt, Chevigny comments on the quality of Fuller's writing.