Years of Experience.
LIFE WITH FULLER, ON BROOK FARM
(Fuller, Margaret) Kirby, Georgina Bruce. Years of Experience: An Autobiographical Narrative. New York: Putnam’s, 1887.
8vo.; flowered endpapers; brown cloth, elaborately stamped in red and gilt; a fresh, bright copy; fine.
First and only edition of this riveting memoir by Georgiana Bruce Kirby, an Englishwoman who came to the U.S. and involved herself with some of the most important social causes and leaders of the time. Kirby, an educator and anti-slavery activist, was close to Margaret Fuller, whom she met at the Transcendental utopian community Brook Farm in the early 1840s, where Fuller was a frequent visitor.
Years of Experience contains a detailed reminiscence of Kirby’s first encounter with Fuller which is worth quoting in part:
...The day was less inclement when Miss Fuller made her first appearance. She was attired in a warm cloak which a friend had just given her, for she could not afford to buy one. She had been previously described to me as one in whom the woman, saint, and scholar were united...[as well as] one who was greatly in need of rest, [which] made me keep myself at a distance lest I might intrude on her. At a later day, however, I met her accidentally in the woods, and, at her request, permitted myself to engross a moment of her precious time. After this interview, brief as it was, when she was to favor us with a visit I claimed the privilege of giving up my room to her... (101).
Much of Kirby’s memoir is devoted to her personal and political relationship with Fuller, which survived many years after the Brook Farm days. After leaving that community Kirby, at Fuller’s urging, became involved in female prison reform, going so far as to spend one year as an Assistant Warden at Sing-Sing under the direction of Eliza Farnham. The chapter on prison reform in Kirby’s book (pages 190-226) includes lengthy quotes from letters Fuller sent her while at Sing-Sing, expressing sympathy for the women prisoners under Kirby’s guard as well as a great deal of curiosity about their daily lives.
Fuller paid a visit to Sing-Sing at Kirby’s behest in 1844, and lectured the female inmates there. Shortly thereafter Fuller sent an open letter to the women of the prison, which she had Kirby read aloud. Characteristically, Fuller’s communication stressed the importance of education and individual moral, intellectual, and spiritual development:
My friends–After my visit, which, though short, was sufficient to inspire a great interest in your welfare and hope for your improvement, I wrote to some of the ladies of Boston on your account, and they will send you books which may, I hope, encourage the taste for reading which it gave me great pleasure to hear that so many of you show. Should you acquire a habit of making good books your companions they will form your minds to a love of better pleasures than you have hitherto possessed. (excerpt from Fuller’s letter, quoted in full on 213)
A fine copy of a scarce volume, providing a unique view of Margaret Fuller by a fellow female radical. Unrecorded in Myerson’s exhaustive bibliography.
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