The third volume of this major series opens with Fuller's decision in early 1842 to resign her post as editor of
The Dial
, after she realized she would never be paid for her work there. It closes with her in New York, having accepted Horace Greeley's invitation to work as a book reviewer for
The Daily Tribune
. Her position was nearly without precedent for a woman, and she wrote enthusiastically of her job that it provided "a more various view of life than any I ever before was in." She found herself in a larger world: the new tasks of daily journalism replaced the demands of
, and a mass audience replaced her coterie of intellectual readers.
These were prolific years for Fuller, during which she wrote on a wide variety of subjects, and the letters chronicle her progress on a number of projects, among them her travel book,
Summer on the Lakes
, in 1843, which grew out of a trip to the Midwest; her translation of Bettina von Arnim's
Die Günderode
; and her essays on contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama. She devoted the fall of 1844 to expanding "The Great Lawsuit," an essay she had written for
; the letters document how the piece grew to become her most important book—
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
, a provocative study of woman's role in American life.