Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, is widely regarded as the first major work of American feminism. Fuller was a writer and conversationalist whose friends described her talk as brilliant, and she wanted the book to capture that spoken energy. It began as an 1843 essay in The Dial titled The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men; Woman versus Women. Her argument was that women needed room to grow as natures, intellects and souls, not only as wives and homemakers. She also imagined a higher form of marriage in which partners helped each other carry their burdens. Contemporaries praised and criticised her: Lydia Maria Child admired its courage, while Orestes Brownson argued that women's proper sphere was divinely assigned. George Eliot found its style hard to follow, but praised the courage of the argument.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.