Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.

About the book

Arthur B. Fuller assembled this collection of Margaret Fuller's writing after her death, bringing together forms that invite different kinds of attention. Reviews of Goethe, Frederick Douglass, and Emerson sit beside narratives and poems exploring feeling and judgment. The title's distinction between life without and life within provides an editorial frame, but the pieces repeatedly suggest that the two are connected rather than sealed apart. This is a collection, not a continuous autobiography or a single finished treatise. Readers can enter through individual items and gradually recognize recurring interests in self-cultivation, art, moral independence, and the relation between a person and society. The editor's preface and notes remain separate voices within the volume's presentation of Fuller's work.

• Inner and outward life
• Criticism
• Intellectual independence

Why read it

For a varied collection that lets readers encounter Fuller's thought across several literary forms.

English collection · edited by Arthur B. Fuller