“Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois.”
The same sentence also names Letters from Illinois. Counted as one engagement.
Author
Morris Birkbeck(1764–1825)
Morris Birkbeck is documented in Fuller’s books and journals (1843). 3 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
Harvard College Library loan
- 1843 Nov 24·Letters from Illinois (Birkbeck)shelf 1276
Charged out of Gore Hall on the card of Richard Frederick Fuller, Margaret's brother and then a Harvard senior; women could not borrow in their own name. The loan falls after the western journey, while Summer on the Lakes was being written. Household access, not proof of her reading — not counted toward engagements. The full ledger →
- Engagement
- AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
- Present in
- Books · Journals
- Documented
- 1843
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 →
Confirmed reading
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Morris Birkbeck’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
- undatedNotes on a Journey in America / Letters from IllinoisAttested
“Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois.”
Summer on the Lakes · Since my return, I have read
Explicit first-person 'Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois' statement.
In Fuller’s words
“Birkbeck's Illinois. / His plan seems to have been suffici- / ciently well-laid & carried out / with skill, too. It would have / succeeded probably but for the / baseness of his son & defection / of chifs Andrews”
When Fuller engaged with Morris Birkbeck
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Birkbeck in Fuller’s reading world
Documentary evidence
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
1843—
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“Mr. Birkbeck was bred a farmer, but these were nurslings of the court and city”
Inferred Birkbeck' as an example of a man 'bred a farmer' who could successfully adapt to frontier life ? implicitly contrasting him with the refined European couple she is describing. This is Morris Birkbeck (1764–1825), English Quaker farmer who emigrated to Illinois in 1817 and published Notes on a Journey in America (1817) and Letters from Illinois (1818), both widely read guides to western settlement.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
n.d.—
Journal 1837–1843
pp. 49–51“Berkbeck's Notes of a journey to / Illinois / The just principles, candor, and / mild discriminating tone of this / book are charming.”
“Birkbeck's Illinois. / His plan seems to have been suffici- / ciently well-laid & carried out / with skill, too.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1837–1843." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086; Box 5.