Author
Philip James Bailey is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1839–1846). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Festus: A Poem . . ., 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 Philip James Bailey’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“The beautiful are never desolate; For some one alway loves them, God or Man. If man forsakes God himself takes them.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Sunday evening 27th April [1845]; footnote: 'Slightly misquoted from Festus, p. 48'
Multi-line, multi-sentence verbatim quotation from Festus is substantial enough to imply the book was open in front of her.
“Read this, world. He who writes is dead to thee, / But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired; / Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired, / Like blood to his heart. The course of study he / Went through was of the soul-rack. The degree / He took was high; it was wise wretchedness. / He suffered perfectly, and gained no less / A prize than, in his own torn heart, to see / A few bright seeds; he sowed them, hoped them truth. / The autumn of that seed is in these pages.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“This is one of the grand feelings in Festus; looking on God at last, he saw but "dazzling darkness.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Entry, February 1841." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 95.
“Dialogue upon Festus Dial / with an extract. / from a critique on / the same in the Tribune”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes, 1st Issue of the Dial." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086.
“Dialogue upon Festus } Dial / with an extract. / from a critique on / the same in the Tribune”
Fuller, Margaret. "Outline for a Collected Volume." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“] "Fest[us]”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“In the next issue of the Dial, Fuller published two long essays, "Lives of the Great Composers" and a review of Philip Bailey's poem Festus. [Hudspeth footnote 5]”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“My article on Festus lies half-finished. I hope to finish it, and if so, could do without your aid this time.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“You gave me this book, and Festus/ if ever you find a book as good, or (possible?) better, be sure and give me that too.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
“The beautiful are never desolate / For some one always loves them, God or man, / If man forsakes — God himself takes them," / and I am surely one of the beautiful, so far that the soul is full of beauty.”
The work is explicitly named later in this letter, which confirms the identification.
“My friend, I send you a book with which, more than any, except Wilhelm Meister, I have sympathized. These two books express something of the peculiar life of this age of which we are part...”
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
“The beautiful are never desolate; / For some one alway loves them, God or Man. / If man forsakes God himself takes them.”
Fuller quotes three lines from Bailey's Festus, changing "But" to "For" in the first line, omitting a dash, and changing "abandons" to "forsakes" in the third line; Hudspeth identified the source and note these are slight misquotations from page 48 of the canonical text.
“Now I will not send you "Festus"; there is no time for books, and no poem like the poem we can make for ourselves.”
“There is no silence; it is music ceased.”
Hudspeth identified this is from Bailey's Festus, page 48; Fuller's version ("There is no silence; it is music ceased") varies slightly from Bailey's canonical text ("There was no discord-it was music ceased"), representing a misquotation from memory consistent
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Keep Festus as long as you wish and Tell me of some way by which I can send you books, if any come that you would like.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Read this, world. He who writes is dead to thee, / But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired; / Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired, / Like blood to his heart.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
A footnote (line 6078) identifies the specific edition as the "First American edition, Boston." Fuller extensively quotes the poem's proem (lines 6134-6143).
“DESCRIPTION OF ANGELA, FROM "FESTUS." "I loved her for that she was beautiful, / And that to me she seemed to be all nature / And all varieties of things in one...”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Explicitly attributed 'FROM "FESTUS"' — Philip James Bailey's Festus (1839). Bailey's Festus was also quoted in the main essay's letters (B-1 context) and previously cataloged in the love letters extraction.