Summer on the Lakes in 1843.
Inscribed to Eliza Fletcher
Fuller, S[arah]. M[argaret]. Summer on the Lakes in 1843. Boston and New York: Charles C. Little and James Brown; and Charles D. Francis and Company, 1844.
8vo.; occasional light foxing; remnants of tape on front endpapers; top edge darkened; black cloth stamped in blind; spine stamped in gilt and blind. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition; the later of two issues, with seven etchings by Fuller’s close friend Sarah Clarke specially created to accompany the text. Fuller had traveled with Clarke and her husband, James, in the summer of 1843 on their seasonal tour of the Great Lakes; a journey that resulted in this book. At some point during composition, it was decided that Clarke would contribute several complementary illustrations. However, as the book was advertised with no mention of the etchings, without which the first copies of the book were bound, this was likely a late inspiration; it resulted in this second, more expensive issue, with Clarke’s designs. Myerson A4.1.a.
A presentation copy, inscribed in ink on the second blank: Mrs. Fletcher with affectionate respect from S.M.F. On the half-title, in pencil, in an unknown hand is written “Mrs. Fletcher/care of W. Wordsworth.” Fuller presentations are rarely seen in commerce. There is a significant amount of marginalia throughout the book, in pencil, possibly in Fletcher’s hand.
Fuller was introduced to Eliza Dawson Fletcher (1770-1858) in the autumn of 1846, while she was traveling in Edinburgh. Fletcher – like Fuller with her “Conversations” in Boston – was active in social and political reforms taking place in Edinburgh; while the two women were of different age, social position, and nationality, their ideologies and love of conversation were a determining factor in their friendship. As Fletcher observes in her autobiography, “In the autumn of 1846 we had several agreeable visitors; one American lady, Margaret Fuller, and two friends with her,…She struck us as very original, with great powers of expression and genuine enthusiasm for what is good and beautiful, which always attracts me so much. She is neither English, Scotch, nor Irish but it is pleasant to be able to communicate in our own tongue so freely as one can do with an agreeable American woman of genius” (Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, p. 261).
Fuller arrived in Europe in the summer of 1846, traveling through several countries with friends of hers, the Springs. Besides Edinburgh, she visited Paris, London and Rome – where she would eventually settle – meeting contemporary literary and political luminaries like Wordsworth, De Quincey, Carlyle, George Sand and Giuseppe Mazzini. On meeting Fletcher, she writes, “We also met a fine specimen of the noble, intelligent Scotchwoman, such as Walter Scott and Burns knew how to prize. Seventy-six years have passed over her head, only to prove in her the truth of my theory that we need never grow old. She was ‘brought up’ in the animated and intellectual circle of Edinburgh, in her youth an apt disciple, in her prime a bright ornament in that society.” Fuller continues to praise Fletcher’s sympathy for political struggles in America as well as her “candor” and “justice” (Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, p. 338).
Albrecht describes Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, as “part travel narrative…interwoven with an eclectic variety of texts—poems, stories, sketches, staged dialogues, a lengthy discussion of the biography of a German mystic ‘seeress,’ and a review of the existing literature on native Americans.” Her writing is driven by underlying Transcendentalist beliefs concerning man’s relationship to nature and God. Kathleen Healey explains, “Fuller's ideal landscape is one in which humankind and nature almost merge, where there is a sense of communion between them. If the landscape is also a metaphor for the nation, then Fuller reveals that it is through communion and harmony with the natural
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