Margaret Tiger Ferguson

If anyone named James Clarke takes an interest in a person’s writing, does it necessarily follow that Clarke will make suggestions? An entertaining historical coincidence regarding two men, both named James Clarke, provides superficial evidence that the name bears a tendency toward unsolicited advice. Two different James Clarkes separately encouraged two brilliant women writers, Margaret Fuller and Jane Austen, to pen work the gentlemen wished to read.

First, in 1816 James Stanier Clarke suggests Jane Austen might write a “Historical Romance illustrative of the History of the august house of Cobourg” (Austen 325). On April Fool’s Day 1816, Jane Austen demurs because she could not write Romance to save her life: “I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life; & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter” (Austen 326). Faced with bleak prospects of Romance, Jane Austen wavers between humor— “laughing” at herself—or death in response.

In an 1832 letter, James Freeman Clarke echoes similar sentiments. He requests Margaret Fuller to portray Elizabeth Randall and himself. When James Freeman Clarke proclaims Margaret Fuller is “destined to be an author,” Margaret Fuller mocks the suggestion (Fuller 196). She does not know “whether to grieve that [he] too should think [her] fit for nothing but to write books or to feel flattered at the high opinion [he] seem[s] to entertain of [her] powers . . .” (Fuller 195). While a Romance novelist would not be Margaret’s first career choice, she acknowledges that her friend intended a compliment, even if he missed the mark.

Perhaps Margaret has Romance authors in mind when she writes “my bias toward the living and practical dates from my first consciousness and all I have known of women authors’ mental history has but deepened the impression” against writing novels (Fuller 195). Since Margaret Fuller once recommended Miss Austen to James Freeman Clarke, she may be excused from this generalization; like Austen, Fuller rejects a taste that contradicts her own nature.

As generous as unsolicited suggestions are, both Fuller and Austen mockingly decline the wishes of the respective James Clarkes. Both women writers prefer to maintain autonomy over their own writing and steer away from Romance, regardless of the James Clarkes’ advice.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane, and Deirdre Le Faye. Jane Austen’s Letters. 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2011.

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth. 6 vols. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983-1995.