 1835 was a year when the most influential persons in Margaret Fuller’s life changed: her father Timothy died, and she made the acquaintance of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her friend and mentor. Fuller’s relationship with Emerson, like that with her father, was full of tensions. The two had very discordant personalities, as Judith Thurman has observed: “Waldo’s cool, cerebral, and ironic; Margaret’s noisy, histrionic, and sincere” (Thurman 2013: 79). Though their interactions were often tempestuous, Emerson converted Fuller to his own version of self-improvement: the quest for spiritual self-transcendence. Followers became known as transcendentalists because they sought to transcend the material world in communion with the divine. Fuller became a member of the Transcendental Club founded by Emerson and Frederick Henry Hedge, virtually all of whose members were Unitarians or former Unitarians. The transcendentalists (including Thoreau, Theodore Parker, and Elizabeth Peabody) are remembered today for their contributions to American literature, philosophy, and social reform, the first intellectual counter-culture in American history (see the entry on  transcendentalism).  At Emerson’s invitation, Fuller edited the transcendental periodical The Dial for two years (1840–42) and continued to write for it afterwards. 