Author

Charlotte Brontë(1816–1855)Inferred

Charlotte Brontë is documented in Fuller’s letters (1850). One work is named, all in Letter to Emelyn Story, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “mentioned”.

Engagement: Mentioned
Present in: Letters
Documented: 1850

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 Charlotte Brontë’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
1850ShirleyAttested
“next read I the novel by the Author of Jane Eyre, now known as Miss Bronte.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Florence, 15th March 1850 (letter dateline)
Explicit statement: 'next read I the novel by the Author of Jane Eyre'.

When Fuller engaged with Charlotte Brontë

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York

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.

Brontë in Fuller’s reading world

Shirley: A TaleInferred1850

Documentary evidence

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

1850—

Letter to Emelyn Story

p61

mentioned2 selected passages

“Have you seen another novel by author of Jane Eyre, and is it good?”

The same sentence also names Jane Eyre. Counted as one engagement.

Inferred Fuller asks about "another novel by author of Jane Eyre," identifying the author through her previous work rather than by name. Hudspeth identified this as Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (published 26 October 1849 under the pseudonym Currer Bell).

Hudspeth identified this as Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (published 26 October 1849 under the pseudonym Currer Bell).

“next read I the novel by the Author of Jane Eyre, now known as Miss Bronte.”

Inferred Fuller identifies "the novel by the Author of Jane Eyre, now known as Miss Bronte," confirming she knows that Currer Bell is Charlotte Brontë and referring to her second novel published in October 1849. Though Fuller does not write the title "Shirley," this was Brontë's only novel published since "Jane Eyre" (1847) and is unambiguously identifiable as her recent work.

Fuller identifies "the novel by the Author of Jane Eyre, now known as Miss Bronte," confirming she knows that Currer Bell is Charlotte Brontë and referring to her second novel published in October 1849.

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.