Sunday, July 19, 2020 will be the 170^th anniversary of the death of a famous woman, perhaps the best-known  woman of her time. She was  both glorified and laughed at for her revolutionary views on how women should live their lives. Her name was Margaret Fuller,  a name known today mostly to students and historians. But I think of her often. She has been a favorite hero of mine ever since I first heard about her many years ago in a college classroom. In the years since then I have not only written a biography of Margaret but paid tribute to her through her cameo appearances in each of my four mystery novels.

During the 1840s, Margaret Fuller became an important figure in the intellectual life of New England. She edited one of America’s first important journals, The Dial, she wrote the first book calling for equality for American women, Women in the Nineteenth Century, and served as a foreign correspondent covering the 1848 Italian revolution for Horace Greeley’s newspaper the New York Tribune. Although she died in a shipwreck at the age of 40, she left an enduring legacy. And many of her ideas are still important to us today.

Margaret famously declared that  women should play an active role in the world. “But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply—any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains if you will.” That line caused a lot of scornful laughter in Boston and New York, but it aroused many women to think about their lives and ignited the flame of the women’s suffrage movement that changed the world.

It wasn’t only women’s causes that Margaret worked for. She was one of the few Americans in early 19^th century who recognized the wrongs inflicted on Native Americans by relentless European invasions. “Our people and our government alike have sinned against the first-born of the soil” she wrote. The injustices she called out are still blots on American history.

Because I admired Margaret Fuller, I wanted others to know about her. Several years ago, I wrote a short biography, Margaret Fuller: An Uncommon Woman,  to introduce others to this unforgettable woman. The Kindle version of the book is now on sale at Smashwords.com for $1.50 during the month of July. Both the Kindle and print versions are available on Amazon.com.

Even after I had written the biography, Margaret continued to fascinate me. When I wrote my quartet of historical mysteries—the Charlotte Edgerton Mysteries—I followed Margaret’s footsteps, setting each book in one of the places Margaret visited during her lifetime.

A Death in Utopia is set in Massachusetts

Death Visits a Bawdy House in New York City

Death Calls at the Palace in London, England

Death Enters the Convent in Florence, Italy

You can find these books in print and Kindle versions on Amazon.com.