Reviews for Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller

The average rating for Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-22 00:00:00 Alexis Bigley Another exhaustive account of Margaret Fuller. I think I get it now: Fuller wrote a lot: books, newspaper columns, reviews, bad poetry and letters, letters and letters. Others wrote to her: famous people like Mazzini and Emerson, Horace Greeley and Samuel Grey Ward and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all interesting people of their times. So, every biographer (except Matteson) gets caught up in the extensive web of parallel letters, cross thoughts and historical facts. This biography is no different, too much minutia and too little analysis. Here's an example: writing about Fuller and her friend Caroline Sturgis Tappan (on page 297/351): "Tappan was mourning the loss of her sister, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, who had died of tuberculosis the past November, leaving three children (one of whom, Clover, became the wife of Henry Adams)." A good editor would have chopped that to "Tappan was mourning the death of her sister." Certainly, this book is indispensable for a scholar of Fuller, for the rest of us, not so much.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-02-17 00:00:00 Jake Weaver One of the best pro - abolitionist books that I have ever read.