From: The Woman and The Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life & Writings (1994)
Author: Bell Gale Chevigny, Margaret Fuller
Published: Northeastern University Press 1976; 1994 Boston
TEXTUAL NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The main objective and still unique claim of this text is to introduce readers to the extraordinary range of Margaret Fuller—of her life, her private and public writings, and her reception by her contemporaries. Using this collection, readers can identify a wide variety of texts they wish to pursue more fully and, much more readily than in 1976, can find full reliable editions of many of the texts here excerpted. While I have corrected minor errors in my own commentary in the first edition, I have not (however tempted) altered my judgments, on the grounds that they reflect the historical moment in which they were written.
Since publication of the first edition in 1976, many of Fuller’s manuscripts have been discovered by others, and I have learned that some of the published texts I used were not reliable. As one imperative to preparing the book in the first place was to make Fuller’s own words available, my first priority has been to avail myself of manuscript versions where I earlier depended on copies. In cases where I found that Robert Hudspeth’s transcription of original manuscripts differed with mine, I have reviewed the originals and altered my text where I found Hudspeth’s version more likely than mine. In some cases, Hudspeth has been able to date letters more precisely than I could; to help readers use our texts in conjunction, my dating of letters now conforms to his. In reprinting Fuller’s published works, I have replaced texts used in 1976 with more reliable versions. In transcribing original manuscripts, I have retained the idiosyncratic punctuation of Fuller and her friends. I have also retained variant spellings (e.g., of the name Bettina Brentano) and errors (especially in Italian proper nouns and grammar) and made sparing use of the intrusive “sic.” In the interests of simplicity and readability, I have not copied errors canceled by the writers themselves (with the interesting exception of VI:7) and have without remark included the authors’ own insertions or additions. Editorial insertions are placed in square brackets, and editorial surmises about half-legible or incomplete words in the manuscript are placed within angle brackets, thus: < >. When a manuscript of Fuller’s is transcribed in another hand, it is called a “copy.” In using printed materials I have also retained idiosyncratic diction and punctuation and errors in spelling, though I have eliminated quotation marks around long quotations in the Memoirs. Asterisks, used to indicate ellipses in the Memoirs, are here retained to distinguish those ellipses from my own.
The anthology entries are numbered for convenient parenthetical reference in my text. Whenever possible, the date the piece was written is offered in a short title. When the date is presented in brackets, it means either that the piece was published at that time or, with an unpublished text, that internal evidence suggests it was written at that time. Whenever possible, dispatches from Europe are dated by time of writing, not publication. In the headnotes themselves, a simple form of annotation is used parenthetically (author, title, page) whenever a source exists in a single edition. In the citations following anthologized pieces, Fuller papers at the Houghton Library are designated as “Houghton MS,” at the Fruitlands Museums as “Fruitlands MS,” and at the Boston Public Library as “BPL MS.” Published materials that are frequently used are abbreviated as follows:
All Sub-Works of The Woman and The Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life & Writings (1994):
PDF Sub-Works open in a new tab. Close the tab when done viewing to return here.
