“I was much interested by the Gipsey book, but dont incline to write about it”
Hudspeth identified the reference as George Borrow's The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, which Emerson had sent to Fuller.
Author
George Borrow(1803–1881)
George Borrow is documented in Fuller’s letters and journals (1842). One work is named, most often in Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
- Engagement
- AnalyzedReadMentioned
- Present in
- Letters · Journals
- Documented
- 1842
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 George Borrow’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
- Dated
- 1842The ZincaliInferredPossible
Inferred · An April 1842 "Borrow" is more likely The Zincali (1841) than The Bible in Spain, which was not published until December 1842; The Bible in Spain is not asserted without evidence.
“S. Clarke to make up for you of Borrow, Longfellow, some more shreds of Dial”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 18 April 1842
Possible: Fuller sends Borrow to Emerson in a parcel. The author is certain from her letter; the work is inferred. Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson; provenance per Harvey's extraction: letter to Emerson, printed in Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884).
In Fuller’s words
“That Human nature is like the bottomless pit I feel in looking down through such a book as Borrow’s Gipsies. What glittering span! what dragons and bears and slimy things also, what clear wells; Wherever are strikes on a ledge of nature. there is refuse however rough & [illegible] it be.”
When Fuller engaged with George Borrow
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Borrow in Fuller’s reading world
Documentary evidence
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
1842—
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
p57analyzed · read2 selected passages
“S. Clarke to make up for you of Borrow, Longfellow, some more shreds of Dial, including the wearifu' Napoleon, and the Prayer Book, if Dorothea Dix could be induced to grant the same.”
Inferred Inferred: an April 1842 "Borrow" is more likely The Zincali (1841) than The Bible in Spain, which was not published until December 1842; The Bible in Spain is not asserted without evidence. The author identification (Borrow) is certain from the letter.
The author identification (Borrow) is certain from the letter.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
n.d.—
Journal Fragments
p. 32analyzed · readManuscript page
“That Human nature is like the bottomless pit I feel in looking down through such a book as Borrow’s Gipsies. What glittering span!”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Fragments." Houghton Library, Harvard University.