Author
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, and published essays (1845–1848). 21 distinct works are named, most often in Miss Barrett’s Poems., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
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 Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“One book she gave me was Elizabeth Barrett's poems, which were very dear to her... She particularly spoke at that time of the poem called "The Swan's Nest.”
Mem-1 Recollections of Richard F. Fuller · During Richard's last two years in college (Margaret rented house on Ellery street during his last two years, i.e. c. 1843-1844)
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re140 (Recollections of Richard F. Fuller, Chapters Four-Six, Mem-1-05.txt line 3483-3491; tier C; same passage) — counted once here. Specific dated (c.1843) memoir anecdote of Margaret giving Richard Barrett Browning's poems and discussing a specific poem.
“The beautiful are never desolate For some one always loves them, God or man, If man forsakes — God himself takes them,”
Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller · Sunday evening, 27th April.
A full quatrain from Barrett Browning's 'A Vision of Poets' is quoted, meeting the full-stanza bar.
“If it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than unusually uncertain, my favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a deposite, ambitious of approaching to the nature of a security for a future offering of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better, and I feel as if I might do better: I aspire to do better. In any case, my poems, while full of faults, as I go forward to my critics and confess, have my life and heart in them.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“TO GEORGE SAND. A DESIRE. / Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, / Self-called George Sand! [...] TO THE SAME. A RECOGNITION.”
Inferred Two sonnets 'To George Sand: A Desire' and 'To the Same: A Recognition' quoted in full from a footnote; attributed to 'Elizabeth Barrett'.
Attributed explicitly to 'Elizabeth Barrett' in footnote.
“Miss Martineau and Miss Barrett, from their sick rooms.”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“PERPLEXED MUSIC.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“It is a source of pride and happiness to read this address from the heart of Elizabeth Barrett: TO GEORGE SAND. A DESIRE.”
“TO THE SAME. A RECOGNITION. True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity?”
Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 February 1845.
“We have read these volumes with feelings of delight far warmer than the writer, in her sincerely modest preface, would seem to expect from any reader”
“MISS BARHETT'S POEMS. A DRAMA OF EXILE: AND OTHER POEMS. By Elizabeth B. Barrett, author of The Seraphim and other Poems. New-York: Henry G. Langley, No. 8 Astor House, 1845”
Also reprinted in Papers on Literature and Art. Counted once, at its first appearance.
“EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand: Whence harmonies we cannot understand Of God’s will in his worlds the strain unfolds”
“because she was also capable of writing ‘The Lost Bower,’ ‘The Romaunt of the Page,’ ‘Loved Once,’ ‘Bertha in the Lane,’ and ‘A Lay of the Early Rose.”
“In the ‘Drama of Exile’ and the ‘Vision of Poets,’ where she aims at a Miltonic flight or Dantesque grasp—not in any spirit of rivalry or imitation”
“Of the “Drama of Exile” and other poems of the same character, we may say that we shall never read them again”
“Our favorite, above anything we have read of hers, is the “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” equally admirable in thought and execution, in poetic meaning and romantic grace.”
“It is these, we suppose, that have made “The Brown Rosarie” so popular. It has long been handed about in manuscript”
“LITTLE ELLIE sits alone ‘Mid the beeches of a meadow By a stream-side, on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves, in shadow, On her shining hair and face.”
“Low she dropt her head and lower, till her hair coiled on the floor. Toll slowly And tear after tear you heard, fall distinct as any word Which you might be listening for.”
“Her foot upon the new-mown grass—bareheaded—with the flowing Of the virginal white vesture, gathered closely to her throat; With the golden ringlets in her neck, just quickened by her going”
“Do you hear the children weeping, oh my brothers: Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears.”
“If it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favorite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a deposit”
Fuller, Margaret. "Miss Barrett’s Poems." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 January 1845.
“As to Mr. Barrett’s discourse, the basis of Swedenborgianism had seemed to us broader than such a corner-stone would lead us to suppose.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Swedenborgianism." New-York Daily Tribune, 25 June 1845. · 25 June 1845
“PERPLEXED MUSIC.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p200; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“because she was also capable of writing ' The Lost Bower/ ' The Romaunt of the Page,' < Loved Once,' ' Bertha in the Lane,' and f A Lay of the Early Rose.' These we select as the finest of the tender poems.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p201; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“In the ' Drama of Exile' and the ' Vision of Poets,' where she aims at a Miltonic flight or Dantesque grasp — not in any spirit of rivalry or imitation, but because she is really possessed of a similar mental scope — her success is far below what we find in the poems of feeling and experience; for she has the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion of his plastic power.”
“Our favorite, above anything we have read of hers, is the " Rhyme of the Duchess May," equally admirable in thought and execution, in poetic meaning and romantic grace.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p202; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“It is these, we suppose, that have made " The Brown Rosarie" so popular.”
“THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST.* How sweetly natural ! and how distinct is the picture of the little girl, as she sits by the brook.”
“Here are descriptions as fine of another sort of person from LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p203; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“We must copy yet one other poem to give some idea of the range of Miss Barrett's power. THE CRY OP THE CHILDREN.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p205; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“If it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than unusually uncertain, my favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a deposite, ambitious of approaching to the nature of a security for a future offering of more value and acceptability.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“Not Burger's Leonora? Not Miss Barrett's?”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. V. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred The reference is to Elizabeth Barrett's ballad 'The Lay of the Brown Rosary,' first published in Findens' Tableaux (1840) and collected in Poems (2 vols., London: Edward Moxon, 1844). In its original version, the heroine was named Lenora — a deliberate allusion to Bürger's ballad — before Barrett revised the name to Onora in the collected edition.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“One book she gave me was Elizabeth Barrett's poems, which were very dear to her. She accompanied the gift by saying she was glad she could believe me worthy of the book.”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
“If all the gentlest-hearted friends I knew Concentred in one heart their gentleness, That still grew gentler till its pulse was less For life than pity, — I should yet be slow To bring my own heart nakedly below The palm of such a friend, that he should press My false, ideal joy and fickle woe Out to full light and knowledge." Elizabeth Barrett.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred The archival editors inferred this title based on Fuller's contemplative meditation on a passage concerning the tension between privacy and the desire for connection.