SOURCE: "Freeing the 'Prisoned Queen': The Development of Margaret Fuller's Poetry," in Studies in the American Renaissance, 1992, pp. 137-75.

Steele is an American educator and critic who here applies to Fuller's poetry biographical interpretations that he considers crucial to an understanding of her emotional and intellectual development. He divides Fuller's poetry into three chronological periods: an early period (1835-38) consisting primarily of occasional pieces and poems to a close friend; a middle period (1839-1843) that charts a spiritual crisis in Fuller's life; and a mature period in 1844, during which Fuller wrote nearly all of her notable poems. The following excerpt is taken from Steele's discussion of poems from this final period.

We will probably never know the exact causes of Fuller's annus mirabilis—1844. In the space of a little over eight months, she finished her two most important books—Summer on the Lakes and Woman in the Nineteenth...