Author
Charles Brockden Brown is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, and reading notebooks (1826–1846). 3 distinct works are named, most often in New-York Daily Tribune, 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 →
“His letters supplied topics of reflection. These were / models of that energy of style which results from simplic- / -ity of structure, from picturesque epithets … His narratives were unequalled for / rapidity and comprehensiveness. Every sentence was / a treasury to moralists and painters." … "Helena was endowed with every feminine and / fascinating quality … She could not commune in their native dialect with / the sages of Rome and Athens … / C. B. Brown — Ormond.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“His letters supplied topics of reflection.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Attributed 'C. B.
“Amelia is reading Brown's novels.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Charles Brockden Brown, the first major American novelist known for Gothic fiction, is mentioned when Fuller reports that Amelia Greenwood is reading his novels; no specific title is identified.
“* Ormond, or the Secret Witness; Wieland, or the Transformation; by Charles Brockden Brown.”
Fuller's explicit mention of Constantia by name ("sit down with thy Constantia to the meal and water on which she sustained her full and thoughtful existence") suggests a direct engagement with Maria Edgeworth's novel Ormond, one of two novels named in the footnote as the subject of the review.
“Constantia, Clara Wieland, have loving hearts, graceful and plastic natures, but they have also noble, thinking minds, full of resource, constancy, courage.”
Fuller's discussion of Wieland focuses on its ventriloquism plot and characters such as Clara Wieland and Carwin, who is identified as the villain.
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
“WIELAND; or, The Transformation. By Charles Brockden Brown. Library of Standard Romance. W. Taylor & Co., 2 Astor House.”
“we see that Ormond is being republished at this moment.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“We have not spoken of Brown, as a novelist by far our first in point of genius and instruction as to the soul of things.”
“But we see that Ormond is being republished at this moment.”
Fuller, Margaret. "American Literature." New-York Daily Tribune, 23 September 1846.
“We have not spoken of Brown, as a novelist by far our first in point of genius and instruction as to the soul of things. Yet his works have fallen almost out of print.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p319
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p319; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“You did not like my sombre and powerful Or- mond, — though this is superior to Ormond in every respect”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.