Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Aesop(c. 620 BCE–c. 564 BCE)Inferred

Aesop is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, and published essays (1845–1846). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to James Nathan, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “read”.

Engagement
ReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays
Documented
1845–1846
Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

In Fuller’s words

“I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn — and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for a while.”
Fable of Androcles and the Lion · Letter to James Nathan · 1845

When Fuller engaged with Aesop

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe2records
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Aesop in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p107
read
“I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for awhile”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Inferred Fuller alludes to the Aesopic fable of Androcles and the Lion—a runaway slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw and is later spared by the same lion in the arena—inverting the usual dynamic by positioning herself as the one who might remove Nathan's thorn of grief.

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p92
read
“I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn — and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for a while.”

Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.

Inferred This is an allusion to the fable of Androcles and the lion, in which a runaway slave removes a thorn from a lion's paw and is later spared by the same lion in the arena. CE), which cites Apion's lost Aegyptiaca. It is a common tale in the Aesopic tradition (Roper Aarne-Thompson type 156) and was standardly included in 19th-century Aesop collections.

1846—

New-York Daily Tribune

“The Rich Man”
read
“the JEsopian fable of the donkey that tried to imitate the gambols of the little dog”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p293

Inferred Fuller explicitly names "the Aesopian fable of the donkey that tried to imitate the gambols of the little dog." This is Aesop's fable "The Ass and the Lapdog," in which an ass tries to ingratiate himself with his master by mimicking the lapdog's frisking, and is beaten for his trouble.

1846—

The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch.

“The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch.”
mentioned
“Will none of their “governors” tell our citizens the Æsopean fable of the donkey that tried to imitate the gambols of the little dog?”

Fuller, Margaret. "The Rich Man—An Ideal Sketch." New-York Daily Tribune, 6 February 1846. · 6 February 1846