One of the most influential American women writers of the 19th century, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) played a vital role in the shaping of New England Transcendentalism and the birth of the women's movement. Her Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) was the first thorough discussion of feminism by an American. As a feminist manifesto, her treatise examined the economic, political, and cultural roles of women in society. As the editor of The Dial,...