Author
Lucius Apuleius is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1841–1845). One work is named, most often in Letter to James Nathan, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.
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 →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Lucius Apuleius’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“I had in my mind the apparition of Isis, as described by Apuleius, Behold I saw in a dream a divine form emerging from the middle of the sea...”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · Jamaica, 20th July 1841; citation 'Taylor's trans. of Apuleius p 260.'
Substantial quoted/paraphrased passage from Apuleius with specific page citation (p.260) copied into the notebook.
“This fable of Cupid and Psyche is almost as fine as the Endymion. These little Cupids carrying the trophies are infinitely graceful and playful. … Of brides Psyche is most bridal, Love. O, I have seen that expression beautiful once in life. … Psyche giving a [illegible] to Cerberus is very fine.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I had in my mind the apparition of Isis, as described by Apuleius [...] 'Behold I saw in a dream a divine form emerging from the middle of the sea and raising a countenance venerable even to the Gods themselves [...] Queen Isis.' — Taylor's trans.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Genesis of the Greek Gods." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.
“I sometimes inly say Psyche was but a mortal woman, yet as the bride of Love, she became a daughter of the Gods too.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Inferred Fuller alludes to Psyche self-referentially, comparing her own initiation through Nathan to Psyche's transformation from mortal woman to immortal "daughter of the gods" after marrying Cupid and receiving Jupiter's ambrosia.
“You, in your turn, have patience with the Psyche, and draw the best music you can from the Lyre.”
Inferred The author and title are inferred because Fuller cites only the figure.
“I sometimes only say: Psyche was but a mortal woman, yet as the bride of Love, she became a daughter of the gods too.”
Inferred Fuller alludes to the Cupid and Psyche myth: Psyche, a mortal woman whose beauty rivaled Venus's, secretly weds Cupid (Eros, "Love"). The author and title are inferred, as Fuller cites only the character. Her gloss, "But had she learned in any other way this secret of herself, all had been lost," alludes to Psyche's transgressive lighting of the lamp to see her sleeping husband (Apuleius, Met.
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
“the Egyptian Isis, of divine wisdom never yet surpassed.”
“Apparition of the goddess Isis to her votary, from Apuleius. [...] Scarcely had I closed my eyes, when behold (I saw in a dream) a divine form emerging from the middle of the sea...”
Explicitly attributed to Apuleius.
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“the loves of / Cupid and Psyche, / suggested by the / golden ass of Apuleius / (which I will read) [...] Psyche in the / Farnesina.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Artists." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (94); Box 6.
“This fable of Cupid and Psyche is almost as fine as the Endymion. These little Cupids carrying the trophies are infinitely graceful and playful. … Of brides Psyche is most bridal, Love.”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Michelangelo and Raphael." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller discusses Raphael's fresco cycle of 'this fable of Cupid and Psyche' (p19 onward), analyzing the narrative scenes depicted. The classical literary source for the Cupid-and-Psyche story as Fuller would have encountered it is Apuleius's Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), Books IV.28–VI.24. The classical literary source is Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), Books IV–VI.