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Bright Circle tells a little-known story of five women who contributed to the literary and philosophical movement known as transcendentalism and, in the process, inaugurated what became the feminist movement. The book relies on little-known letters, journals, and writings of women who have largely remained unknown to the broader public.
List of contents
- Introduction: Bright Circle
- 1: Mary Moody Emerson Among the Stars
- 2: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody at 13 West Street
- 3: Sophia Peabody in Cuba
- 4: Lydia Emerson's Marriage of Heaven and Hell
- 5: The Tempests of Margaret Fuller
- Epilogue: Circles
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
About the author
Randall Fuller is the Herman Melville Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. His books include
Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (OUP 2007);
From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature (OUP, 2011); and a
New York Times "notable book,"
The Book that Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation (Viking 2017). He is the recipient of the Christian Gauss Award for best literary criticism, two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Summary
Bright Circle tells a little-known story of five women who contributed to the literary and philosophical movement known as transcendentalism and, in the process, inaugurated what became the feminist movement. The book relies on little-known letters, journals, and writings of women who have largely remained unknown to the broader public.
Additional text
Randall Fuller offers fresh portraits of five women whose lives intersected at the heart of the transcendentalist movement, and he defines that heart as Boston rather than Concord, a place of collaboration rather than solitude. Expanding on recent recovery work, he interprets the rich legacy from the rich legacy of these women's letters and diaries as well as the surviving record of Margaret Fuller's Conversations at Elizabeth Peabody's bookshop. The result is wonderfully readable, as well as an advance in our understanding of both transcendentalist thought and pre-feminist questioning.
