Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life.
Fuller, Margaret, translator. Conversations With Goethe in the Last Years of His Life. Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Company, 1839.
8vo.; preliminaries foxed; other pages fresh and bright; dark green pebbled cloth; label; slightly used, but overall a fine copy of this fragile volume.
First edition of Margaret Fuller’s first separate, credited publication in book form, preceded only by a privately printed flyer announcing Fuller’s availability as a foreign language tutor (Myerson A1) and by a poetry anthology containing two uncredited translations (BAL 6489): Myerson A2.1a, BAL 6490. It is doubtful that Hilliard printed more than 500 copies; it is extremely uncommon in superior condition, as is our copy.
Fuller—billed as S. M. to disguise her gender—translated the entire text and wrote the 20-page “Translator’s Preface.” Conversations with Goethe, the fourth in Hilliard’s “Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature” series, marks Fuller’s first important appearance in print; it predates both The Dial and Woman in the 19th Century, Fuller’s most famous early publications, by two and six years respectively.
Fuller’s appreciation of, and talent for, foreign languages has often been noted and puzzled over by literary scholars. Emerson’s early biographer Gay Wilson Allen offers a typical, albeit condescending, account:
Margaret’s father had been disappointed that his firstborn was not a boy and had compensated by educating her himself, teaching her Latin at the age of six and Greek soon after. She had a quick and retentive memory and had learned languages and mathematics easily. Before meeting Emerson she had taught herself Italian and German...(Waldo Emerson: A Biography, NY: Viking, 1981, p. 283)
By her early twenties, Fuller was earning her keep as a tutor and translator; according to one scholar she was the most fluent member of the Transcendental Club, someone to whom “Emerson turned when he needed help with his German” (Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter, by John McAleer, Boston: Little Brown, 1984, p. 161). Although financial motives no doubt spurred Fuller’s contributions to this volume, she was primarily inspired by intellectual concerns. As her preface amply demonstrates, she was the most emphatic champion of German Idealism of all of her circle. Philip A. Shelley, in his assessment of First Books by American Authors 1765-1964 notes: “[In] her important Preface to the Conversations…at a time of denigration of Goethe at home and abroad this remarkable American woman took accurate measure of his true stature and placed [him] in proper perspective...” (NY: Seven Gables, 1965, p. 41).
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