As the world’s first woman foreign war correspondent, Margaret Fuller was in the crossfire. Early on, she was Bronson Alcott’s deputy, running his progressive school when it was attacked because Alcott supported the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women. Then she became Ralph Waldo Emerson’s co-editor of the Dial Literary Magazine – the first woman allowed to use the Harvard College library. She knew Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne – the leading writers of her time. Her best-selling book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was the first book on feminism.

The story of 1848: Margaret left her success as a book writer and editor in Boston and sailed for Rome to be the world’s first woman foreign war correspondent, covering the Revolution of 1848 in Rome for the New York Herald Tribune. She reported on the burning of the cardinals’ carriages.

In Rome, in the Café Greco where revolutionaries gathered to plot their next steps, Margaret met the love of her life – Giovanni, who had given up his title as a nobleman to fight for the Revolution.

Together during Carnivale, she and Giovanni attended the Masquerade Ball where Margaret met with revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini and warned him that the French army was marching toward Rome.

He refused to believe her. Margaret knew guerilla fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Redshirts (top image), and Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, Italy’s Joan of Arc, whose statue was unveiled in Milan in 2021 – the first woman honored amongst 120 men.

In Rome Margaret used her skill as a writer to secure a petition to Pope Pius IX with 700 American signatures, including then US President James Polk.

The screenwriter learned about Margaret Fuller, great aunt of Buckminster Fuller, while working for him as a graduate student at Harvard. She believes that telling Margaret Fuller’s heroic story can inspire us all.
 
 
PRIVATE PORTAL