"possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time." So wrote Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in their 1881 History of Woman Suffrage. Author, editor, and teacher, Fuller contributed significantly to the American Renaissance in literature and to mid-nineteenth century reform movements. A brilliant and highly educated member of the Transcendentalist group, she challenged Ralph Waldo Emerson both intellectually and emotionally. Women who attended her "conversations" and many prominent men of her time found Fuller's influence life-changing. Her major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, profoundly affected the women's rights movement which had its formal beginning at Seneca Falls, New York, three years later. http://www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/margaretfuller.html