Summer On The Lakes, In 1843 is not simply Fuller's portfolio of sketches, poems, stories, anecdotes, dialogues, and reflections on her Great Lakes journey, but also a record of her internal journey of self-exploration. Specialists in women's studies will be drawn to her impressions of 'women of the west, ' which in some ways foreshadow her will-known feminist study Women in the Nineteenth Century. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 was Margaret Fuller's first original book-length work, the product of her journey through what was then considered the far western frontier in mid-nineteenth-century America. The book has always defied easy classification; at once it is travelogue, autobiography, social criticism, sketchbook, and journal.