MARGARET FULLER

Fuller was a unique woman in the 19th century: a friend of Emerson and his circle, one of the first woman journalists in the US and its first ``female'' foreign correspondent; her tract, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, had a seminal influence on the early feminist movement. Balducci, however, doesn't adequately convey either the true power or the uniqueness of this extraordinary woman. Her apparently sound research and scholarship are diminished by an overly conversational style and by overemphasis on Fuller's romantic liaison with Giovanni Ossoli during the heady days of the Roman Republic. The book's few illustrations include two minute, virtually illegible historical maps, leaving the reader to seek other sources to help make the tangled history and borders of pre- unification Italy intelligible, while the b&w photos of formal portraits lend a static quality. Anna Quindlen's introduction linking Fuller's experience as a journalist to her own sets the stage. Chronology; notes; index. (Biography. 12+)