 Margaret Fuller’s “Conversations” in Boston became famous among early American feminists. They commenced in 1839 and continued until April 1844. Each would last would last thirteen weeks in a pre-announced time and place (usually the parlor of her friend Elizabeth Peabody). The “conversants” paid to participate—usually ten dollars for the series, about what Emerson and other transcendentalists charged for a set of their lectures. Most of the Conversations were for women only and had about twenty-five participants. Fuller herself led off each two-hour weekly session with a talk, which the audience were then encouraged to discuss and question. The women who attended were generally well-read, usually Unitarian in practice or background, often wives or relatives of male transcendentalists. Fuller conceived of her Conversations as essential supplements to the educational opportunities then available to middle- and upper-class New England women. These might include literature, classics, and fine arts, simply decorative or recreational in purpose. Fuller would lead off with such subjects, but then use them to press her participants to address serious questions about women’s lives, roles, and purposes. She was applying a conversational method she had learned from Plato’s dialogues and seen exemplified by her fellow transcendentalist and Plato disciple Bronson Alcott. Her concern was not so much to teach as to provoke others to think more deeply than usual (see Capper 1987). 