Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

James Boswell(1740–1795)

James Boswell is documented in Fuller’s books (1845–1846). One work is named, most often in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “quoted”.

Engagement
QuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Books
Documented
1845–1846
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 →

In Fuller’s words

“In vain the healthy reactions of nature have so boldly in our own day challenged the love of greatness, and bid us turn from Boswellism to read the record of the village clerk.”
Lives of the Great Composers · 1846

When Fuller engaged with James Boswell

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York1record
VI. Europe1record
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Boswell in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Life of Johnson II, 454–455
quoted · read
“Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door — "Clear your mind of cant.”

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

Fuller quotes Samuel Johnson's famous saying in a footnote: 'Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door — "Clear your mind of cant."' Johnson spoke these words to Boswell on 15 May 1783; recorded in Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791), Vol. II, p. 454. The full Johnsonian text: 'My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.' The same footnote goes on to mention Byron's appropriation of the advice and then Sterling's emendation.

1846—

Lives of the Great Composers

“Lives of the Great Composers”
mentioned
“In vain the healthy reactions of nature have so boldly in our own day challenged the love of greatness, and bid us turn from Boswellism to read the record of the village clerk.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p221

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p221; page given is to the 1869 reprint.