– Customer review on 27/01/2012

Not enough people read Margaret Fuller anymore. She was the first great female American intellectual. She lived a fascinating life and died a tragic death. She also wrote a classic of early feminist thinking, Woman in the Nineteenth Century -- required reading for anyone who cares about the history of women's rights. However, this is a book that you absolutely should NOT try to read in a Dover thrift edition. Fuller's references to her own reading and her historical moment are legion, and they are guaranteed to confuse the heck out of anyone who lacks deep background in the study of pre-Civil War American culture. The great virtue of Dover editions is that they are cheap. Their great disadvantage is that they offer no critical apparatus to help with comprehension. And Oh! does Fuller require critical apparatus. Without a hefty array of footnotes to guide you through, you are very likely to find this book opaque and frustrating. You may very well end up hating a book that greatly deserves to be loved. Go for the Norton Critical Edition instead -- it's well worth the extra investment!!