Engraving of writer and feminist Margaret Fuller. Created between 1840 and 1880. Library of Congress LC-USZ62-47039

A significant figure in both American journalism and literature, Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport , Massachusetts in 1810. With Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, she launched a transcendentalist newspaper, The Dial , in 1840 -- in which she published her groundbreaking essay on women's rights, “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women.”

This article attracted the attention of Horace Greeley, who invited Fuller to join his staff at the New York Tribune as its first literary critic, where she rose to national prominence. However, although she defied conventions and wrote on topics and ideas considered inappropriate for female journalists, Fuller continued to adhere to the social standards that barred women from press offices. While a full-time staff member of the New York Tribune , Fuller lived and worked in the Greeley household, remaining apart from the “unfeminine” environment of the press bullpen. Fuller contributed many significant works to the American literary canon, the most important of which, Women in the 19 th Century , was published in 1845.

When revolutions broke out in Europe in 1848, Fuller became the nation's first female foreign war correspondent. She became a committed radical in Italy , and even bore a child prior to marrying the father, Marchese d'Ossolio. The three died returning to the United States when their ship sank off the coast of New York 's Fire Island .