Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

William Cullen Bryant(1794–1878)

William Cullen Bryant is documented in Fuller’s books and published essays (1843–1846). One work is named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement
AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Books · Essays
Documented
1843–1846
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 →

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had William Cullen Bryant’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

  • undatedThe PrairiesDemonstrated

    “Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath / The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; / Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase / The sunny ridges,”

    Summer on the Lakes

    Four-line verse passage from Bryant's 'The Prairies' quoted verbatim.

In Fuller’s words

“At their head Mr. Bryant stands aline. His range is not great, nor his genius fertile. But his poetry is purely the language of his inmost nature, and the simple lovely garb in which his thoughts are arranged, a direct gift from the Muse. He has written nothing that is not excellent, and the atmosphere of his verse refreshes and composes the mind, like leaving the highway to enter some green, lovely, fragrant wood.”
American Literature · 1846

When Fuller engaged with William Cullen Bryant

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York2records
VI. Europe3records
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Bryant in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

quoted · read
“Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges,”

Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.

Inferred Fuller quotes four lines from Bryant's poem '“The Prairies”' (1833) 'The clouds / Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, / The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; / Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase / The sunny ridges.'

1845—

Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . .

“Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . .”
mentioned
“placing his poems beside such as these of Bryant in the same light as that of the prettiest made shell, beside those whose every line and hue tells a history”

Fuller, Margaret. "Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 10 December 1845. · 10 December 1845

1846—

Papers on Literature and Art

p158
analyzed · read
“placing his poems beside such as those of Bryant in the same volume”

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

1846—

American Literature.

“American Literature.”
mentioned
“But to return to the poets. At their head Mr. Bryant stands alone. His range is not great, nor his genius fertile.”

Fuller, Margaret. "American Literature." New-York Daily Tribune, 23 September 1846. · 23 September 1846

1846—

American Literature

“American Literature”
analyzed
“At their head Mr. Bryant stands aline. His range is not great, nor his genius fertile.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p308

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p308; page given is to the 1869 reprint.