The texts used in this electronic edition allow the reader to compare, in a parallel-text format, Margaret Fuller's 1844 edition of Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 and the revised edition brought forth by her brother Arthur B. Fuller after Margaret's death. Arthur published At Home and Abroad in 1856; the book contained an edited version of Summer on the Lakes as well other works by Margaret.

Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 is an account of her excursion to Niagara Falls, the Great Lakes, Chicago, and the Wisconsin Territory. Published in 1844 by Charles C. Little and James Brown Co. of Boston, the publication of the book was supported by two prominent literary figures of the time. Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged Margaret Fuller to write the book and arranged for the publication; Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, positively reviewed Fuller's book and subsequently offered her a position as a columnist with the paper. Summer on the Lakes was published in the United States and in England, going through three printings during Fuller's lifetime. The book was a only modest success, selling 700 copies by 1845 (Smith xii), but assured the continuation of Fuller's literary career and established her place in American intellectual life of the mid-19th century.

The source text for this site's electronic edition of Margaret Fuller's original 1844 edition of Summer on the Lakes is part of the Library of Congress's American Memory site which contains the collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest, Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910, of which Summer on the Lakes is a part. The electronic text on the Library of Congress site was transcribed from the original 1844 edition published by Charles C. Little and James Brown, Boston and Charles S. Francis Company, New York, a book held by the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress site offers a transcribed text as well as a digital image text of the original pages. Page breaks from the printed text have been maintained.

In checking the Library of Congress transcribed text against the photofacsimile digital image text, occasional transcription errors, assumably arising from the OCR scanning process, were found. Such transmission problems, though relatively minor, point to the particular mutability of texts in the electronic medium and should serve as a caution to readers and scholars relying on electronic texts. Uncorrected transmission errors seem more likely to occur in archival sites which digitally transcribe large numbers of texts than in sites devoted to a single text where editorial attention to the individual text may benefit from closer scrutiny than is possible in an archival site. The Library of Congress text was checked against the digital images of the 1844 edition and every effort was made to correct all such errors.

The source text for this site's electronic version of Arthur's edition was a copy of Arthur's 1856 edition, At Home and Abroad held by the Suzzalo Library of the University of Washington. The electronic version was produced by adopting the Library of Congress's electronic transcript, then editing, line by line, against the book. The page breaks from At Home and Abroad have been maintained for ease of reference between the paper and electronic versions. All emendations made by Arthur to Margaret's text appear in purple, all deletions made by Arthur appear in [red].

We have chosen to present both the 1844 and 1856 editions as evidence of the "life of the text" as it existed in its primary manifestations in the 19th century. Arthur's changes, by means of contrast, highlight Margaret's narrative structure and punctuation. Arthur's emendations and deletions also demonstrate the re-formulation of Margaret Fuller's literary work shortly after her death. Further, Arthur's edition went through 13 printings between 1856 and 1895 (several of which contained title pages stating the text was a "New and Complete Edition"), establishing his edition as the primary means by which 19th century readers knew Margaret Fuller's work.

Arthur's edition has been negatively assessed by recent critics. Fuller editor Jeffrey Steele notes that "After her death, some texts were published in corrupt versions edited by her brother, Arthur Fuller" (lviii). Similarly Susan Belasco Smith criticized Arthur's edition as inadequately representing or even misrepresenting Fuller's intention for an episodic, or "sketch-book," narrative structure:

The internal journey of self-exploration occurs largely in what Arthur B. Fuller had thought of as the digressions of his sister's book. When he prepared Summer on the Lakes and her European dispatches for his collection At Home and Abroad (1856), he heavily edited the text, omitting many of what he considered to be digressive passages and consequently revising the book to suit his own tastes. (Smith xiii)

Arthur's deletion of the Mariana episode in Chapter Four—the largest he made to the text—demonstrates his drive to establish a text that was primarily a travel account rather than one which also explored and served as an exemplum of women's issues.

Arthur also added brief sections to his edition which he culled from Margaret's manuscript for her edition. These sections were not included—by Margaret's direction or by her editor—in her 1844 edition. These appear at the bottom of this site's electronic pages, in the same format in which he presented them in his edition.

The parallel text form allows the reader to experience the dynamic and fluid nature of texts over time. While printed texts can accurately represent a particular state of a work, the hypertext medium—with its distinctive features of parallel, scrollable frames and color fonts—is particularly suited to exploring this dynamic quality of a literary work. The parallel text allows readers to participate in a discovery process which raises interesting questions about narrative structure, the form of the sketch-book genre, punctuation, the discourse of images, and, in the end, the meaning—or meanings—of the work.

For a better understanding of the editorial decisions that governed the creation of this electronic edition, readers may refer to the site's meta-edition, a transcription of the many e-mail messages that flowed between the site authors. The meta-edition provides a transcription detailing our technical and theoretical discussions in shaping this electronic, parallel-text version of Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. For a more structured description of the technical aspects of the site's production, please see the section Site Production and Technical Information on our About This Site page.

Sarah Ann Clarke and her brother, James Freeman Clarke, accompanied Margaret Fuller on the journey to the "far west" and the Great Lakes. Sarah Clarke, a practicing artist, made etchings from scenes of the trip. The etchings which appear on this site are digital reproductions of the seven etchings.

The etchings were not ready for the first printing, but appeared with Fuller's text in its second and third printings. They were not reproduced in the 1856 edition edited by Arthur B. Fuller; however, links have been included in our hypertext version for the viewers enjoyment. The links are enclosed by red brackets to denote that they were deleted from Arthur's edition.

In his descriptive bibliography of Fuller's work, Joel Myerson states that Fuller's correspondence shows that the 1844 edition with the plates "was placed on sale somewhat later than the unillustrated one because the plates did not arrive until a number of copies had been bound" (11). Other letters revealed that "[c]opies with the etchings were more expensive than those of the first issue" and that "[n]early 700 copies had been sold by the following year" (1845) (11).

The etchings offered readers in the Eastern states a view of country considered the "far west" during that period. For readers today, they are wonderful illustrations for scenes of country that has been altered dramatically since Fuller's and Clarke's journey. The Geographic Highlights section of our Related Sites page provides links to locations, maps, and photographs — from the past and present — for many locations that Fuller describes in Summer on the Lakes and offers viewers a way to contextualize the many geographic references Fuller makes.