Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel

Finding Margaret Fuller (2024) is a fictionalized biography of American feminist Margaret Fuller by New York Times best-selling author Allison Pataki. Pataki has written multiple books in the historical fiction genre, many of which have become bestsellers. Notable titles include The Traitor’s Wife (2014), The Accidental Empress (2015), Sisi (2016), The Queen’s Fortune (2020), and The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post (2022). Pataki has also written a nonfiction memoir and two children’s books. The author shares some characteristics with the central character in Finding Margaret Fuller since both have been residents of New York City and have worked as journalists. The novel is classified under the category of historical biographical fiction.

This study guide and all its page citations are based on the Ballantine Books 2024 e-book edition.

Plot Summary

The novel takes place in multiple locations in the US and Europe but is principally set in Massachusetts, New York City, and Rome between 1836 and 1850. It follows Margaret Fuller’s life from her first meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson until her death. Structurally, Finding Margaret Fuller has five parts, framed by a Prologue and Epilogue. The Prologue and Epilogue use a limited third-person perspective, while the rest of the five central parts unfold from Margaret’s first-person perspective. The book’s five parts correspond to major turning points in Fuller’s life and career. In depicting Fuller’s struggles to create a meaningful life for herself in the face of cultural prejudice against independent women, the novel examines themes relating to resisting convention, finding home, and asserting agency.

The Prologue is set in 1850, when Fuller’s friends in Concord, Massachusetts, first hear the news of her death. She, her husband, and her infant son have all drowned in a shipwreck only 100 yards from the shores of New York. Margaret’s friend, the famous transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, vows to make her story known. The tale then skips back to their first meeting in 1836. Margaret has already achieved fame as the most well-read person in the US, and this has attracted Emerson’s attention. He invites her to visit his home as a companion for his second wife, Lidian, who is expecting their first child.

Margaret and Waldo immediately recognize that they’re kindred spirits, but their easy camaraderie seems to threaten Lidian. This is especially true after Margaret also becomes a favorite of other transcendental luminaries like Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Margaret is attracted to both Waldo and Nathaniel but realizes that neither would ever choose her as a spouse. Her intellectual brilliance might outshine the men she cares about.

Although Margaret enjoys her summer in Concord with her new friends, she must find steady employment. Her father recently died, and she’s responsible for supporting her mother and seven siblings. Bronson plans to open an experimental school in Boston that will teach both male and female students. He recruits Margaret to teach at the Temple School, and she’s excited at the prospect of inspiring young girls to create lives for themselves beyond the role of wife and mother. However, Bronson’s grand experiment turns into a disaster. Although many influential families in Boston enroll their children, he publishes an inflammatory book that offends their Puritan sensibilities. Bronson is forced to flee the US with his family, leaving Margaret behind. He never pays her for the months she worked for him.

To make amends, Waldo brings Margaret to Concord for a rest before arranging another teaching post in Rhode Island. This time, she’s compensated. The following summer at Concord, Margaret feels inspired to write her first book. It’s a translation of Goethe’s Conversations and is well-received by the public. Margaret continues to make frequent visits to Concord, garnering the admiration of Waldo and Nathaniel, much to the annoyance of their wives. She continues to long for love and a family of her own but doesn’t believe this is possible for her.

By the fall of 1839, Margaret launches a Conversations series for the upper-class ladies of Boston to discuss the great issues of life. The series succeeds and sparks independent thought among many who attend. Shortly afterward, Margaret agrees to edit the transcendental periodical called The Dial. Although Waldo says he’ll pay her, he fails to do so. Emotional conflicts in Concord finally convince Margaret to strike out on her own, and she accepts a job as a literary editor for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. During this time, she writes her most well-known book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which launches the feminist movement in the US. Greeley then appoints Margaret as America’s first full-time foreign correspondent and sends her off to Europe. Although she enjoys the atmosphere of England and France, she finds herself swept up in the Italian unification movement. In Rome, Margaret falls in love with a dashing nobleman. They marry and have a son together against the backdrop of a city at war. Rome’s agitation for freedom from papal rule is violently suppressed, and Margaret and her family must flee for their lives.

They board a cargo ship for the US, hoping to start a new life there, but the vessel runs aground on a sandbar right off the coast of New York. Margaret, her husband, and her child all drown. The novel’s Epilogue is told from the standpoint of author Louisa May Alcott, who notes that Margaret lit a flame that will inspire generations of women to come: “Now it falls to her, Louisa May Alcott, and the countless others who grew stronger in the radiant glow of her brilliance, to keep the march moving forward” (380). The novel portrays Margaret’s journey as she evolves from an educated but uncertain young woman distracted by infatuation with male friends to become the woman of the world who boldly pursues the cause of freedom, both personal and global, beyond the rural serenity of Concord.