Books: Bluestocking

THE LIFE OF MARGARET FULLER—Madeleine B. Stern—Dutton ($3.75).

Margaret Fuller Ossoli was the Original American Bluestocking. She tried to model herself on Goethe; she taught Emerson the necessity of joining action with thought and the correct pronunciation of German (he remembered the latter); she edited The Dial, the house organ of Transcendentalism; she was outtalked at last by fuliginous Thomas Carlyle; she embodied at its most intense the Transatlantic cultural hunger of the Eastern Seaboard. This is a full-length portrait of her, recording every detail from the carbuncle ring she wore as her symbol of masculinity to almost every severe headache she...