Margaret Fuller, the transcendentalist, critic and feminist who’s life is creatively re-imagined in Kathleen Cahill’s “Charm” (which runs April 14 through May 9 at the Salt Lake Acting Company – tickets are available online), had a life seemingly designed to inspire art. Unfortunately, not many people know about it.
“Margaret was treated unfairly in her life,” said playwright Cahill. “The fact that I was able to write the play and that you’re putting it on and that it’s getting a strong response – I like to feel that somebody’s guiding it – so that Margaret can have her due and for people to know about her. Sort of cosmic justice.”
Fuller, who was born in 1810, studied the classics and trained herself in several modern languages before going to work as a teacher. During this time she also began to work as a journalist, publishing literary criticisms and other pieces in a variety of publications. In 1839 Ralph Waldo Emerson asked her to be the editor for his transcendental journal “The Dial,” referring to her as “My vivacious friend.” The two had become friends in 1835, when Emerson admitted that she had “made me laugh more than I liked.” Fuller agreed to take on the role, holding the job (without payment) until 1842. One of her most important works, “The Great Lawsuit,” was originally published in serial form in “The Dial.” Later, it was expanded and published independently as “Women in the Nineteenth Century” in 1845.
Later, she moved on to the New York Tribune, becoming the publication’s first female editor. Her work here intersected with several well-known literary figures of the time, including George Sand, Thomas Carlyle, and fellow literary critic Edgar Allan Poe. During her travels in Europe she fell in love with an Italian revolutionary, Marchese Giovanni Angelo d'Ossoli, who was much younger than she was. The two had a child, Angelo, and after the revolution failed the two decided to sail to America in 1850. The ship went down, and though Emerson sent Thoreau to seek any sign of Fuller or her work none was ever found.
After her death, “The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli” was published in 1852, Much of her work, however, was censored or reworded by editors Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing.
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