Margaret Fuller

This 1848 portrait of Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) by Thomas Hicks hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

"Drowned in a shipwreck, Margaret Fuller is the tragic heroine of the Transcendentalist movement -- an idealistic American literary and philosophical movement that stressed the unity of all creation -- and the first major woman intellectual in American history. Eccentric, beguiling, and at times maddeningly erratic, Fuller had an electric impact on her mostly male colleagues, not least because she was a talented editor and writer on contemporary culture. She edited the Transcendental journal The Dial with Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Ripley and became a critic for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. In 1839, she began a conversation group among Boston's women that led to the treatise "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" (1845). While traveling in Europe, where she assisted in the cause of Italian nationalism, she married an Italian marchese. She and her family died on their return voyage to the United States." -- National Portrait Gallery

This engraving of Hicks' painting by M. Heider appeared in The Century Magazine in 1893.

 Sarah Margaret Fuller, Marchioness Ossoli

This illustration appeared in  Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1884 by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

The National Portrait Gallery has this 1846 sixth-plate daguerreotype by John Plumbe. Showing Fuller in the same pose.

Widely acknowledged as America’s first major woman intellectual, Margaret Fuller was a talented editor and writer as well as an influential feminist. In 1839, Fuller accepted the editorship of The Dial, the principal journal of the Transcendentalist movement. She also launched her “Conversations,” a forum for women (and some men) to discuss topics such as women’s role in society. In 1844, Fuller became a columnist for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, and a year later, she published her feminist treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century. After Serving as a foreign correspondent in Europe (1846-50), Fuller perished in a shipwreck on the voyage home. -- NPG

The Ossoli Memorial in Auburn Cemetery in Cambridgeport was illustrated in A Handbook for Passengers over the Cambridge Railroad with a Description of Mount Auburn Cemetery 1858 by W. V. Spencer.

In Memory of

Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Born in Cambridge, Mass., May 23, 1810

By Birth a Child of New England

By Adoption A Citizen of Rome

By Genius Belonging to the World

In Youth

An Insatiate Student Seeking the Highest Culture

In Riper Years

Teacher, Writer, Critic of Literature And Art

In Mature Age

Companion and Helper of Many

Ernest Reformer in America and Europe

And of her Husband

Giovanni Angelo, Marquis Ossoli

He Gave up Rank, Station And Home

For the Roman Public

And For His Wife and Child

And of That Child

Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli

Born in Rieti, Italy Sept 5, 1848

Whose Dust Reposes at the Foot

of This Stone

They Passed From This Life Together

By Shipwreck July 19, 1850

“United in Life the Merciful

Father Took Them Together and in

Death They Were Not Divided”