Author
George Gordon, Lord Byron is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1821–1849). 14 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to James F. Clarke, 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 →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had George Gordon, Lord Byron’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“To the Countess of B. Written at Genoa. 1833. 'You have asked for a verse, the request / In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny...”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · Written at Genoa. 1833 [sic, poem actually composed 1823]
Substantial multi-line quoted passage from Byron's poem.
“My whole being is Byronized at this moment c'est a dire my whole mind is possessed with one desire—to comprehend Byron once for all.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge 30th March [1830]
Contemporaneous first-person statement of being absorbed in comprehending Byron, in the same reading episode as idx 1127-1128.
“Among the passages which redeem the painful elaborations of Marino Faliero, I think the first are the soliloquy of Lione and Angiolina's reply to Steno at the trial. … Angiolina says 'Be what you should be' / And he answers_ 'I will be what you should be or be nothing / But never more — oh never, never more, / Oer the few days and hours which yet await / The blighted old age of Faliero, shall / Sweet Quiet shed her sunset! Never more …”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I feel that Byron described the crises of Cain truly / "Wilt thou then reproach the friend / Who gave so much, because he gave not all”
Fuller, Margaret. "I Die Daily." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 91.
Fuller explicitly names Byron and quotes two lines she attributes to his dramatic poem 'Cain: A Mystery' (1821).
“In such society — / With much to excite, there's little to exalt; / Nothing that speaks to all men and all times … The Blues, that tender tribe, who sigh on sonnets / And with the pages of the last Review / Line the interior of their heads or bonnets … That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith, / Who at sixteen translated "Hercules Furens”
All attributed to Byron and consolidated here.
“Among the passages which redeem the painful elaborations of Marino Faliero, I think the first are the soliloquy of Lione and Angiolina's reply to Steno at the trial.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“I met with a parallel the other day between Byron and Rousseau, and had a mind to send it to you, it was so excellent.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller read a comparative critical essay examining a parallel between Byron and Rousseau.
“I am glad you think about Aurora Raby. Do Mr Norton and the Men of Edinburgh say he knew nothing, saw nothing in the female character but childish vanity or infatuate tenderness?”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Hudspeth identified Aurora Raby is a character in Byron's Don Juan (Cantos XV–XVI).
“Your "young affections have run to waste and watered a desert" whence sprung "weeds of dark luxuriance tares of haste”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller quotes two phrases—"young affections have run to waste and watered a desert" and "weeds of dark luxuriance tares of haste"—that appear to form a continuous passage from Byron's The Giaour, though the first phrase's exact source is uncertain.
“My whole being is Byronized at this moment c'est a dire my whole mind is possessed with one desire—to comprehend Byron once for all.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller expresses her desire to "comprehend Byron once for all," engaging in a reading project focused on Byron through Moore's biography, which includes Byron's letters and journals, though no specific work by Byron is named.
“I am as bad at remembering du and de as Milord Byron but dont tell; you know all my reputation is for learning”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller invokes Byron colloquially as "Milord Byron" in a witty personal comparison about forgetting French grammatical genders, presenting him as a familiar cultural figure known to Clarke; the ease of the invocation suggests she knows Byron's works well.
“that 't was his influence which had, in reality, given all his better individuality to Byron”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Byron is named as the poet who received his "better individuality" from Wordsworth's poetic influence, reflecting Fuller's own deep interest in Byron, whom she had been reading separately.
“Experience only gives me "Byron headache.”
Fuller, Margaret. "To Almira P. Barlow, 6 October 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 209–210. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Hudspeth identified the specific allusion to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 1, stanza 8, where Byron describes the restless malaise that became associated with his name.
“Herein Mad. J. differs from Byron”
Fuller, Margaret. "Fragmentary Reading Notes and Autobiographical Reflections." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred No fingerprint (no quotation, character, or allusion) points to a specific title. PROBABLE: Fuller clearly engages with Byron as a literary figure (reading his poetry), but no specific work can be inferred.
“I dislike the comparison, as I always do illustrating so-called inanimate nature by man or any shape of animal life.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller quotes Byron's comparative imagery and explicitly attributes it to "Byron." Hudspeth identified the first allusion as Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 92, where the phrase "light of a dark eye in woman" appears; the footnote notes that a second comparison Fuller mentions—"the cataract to a tiger's leap"—remains unidentified in Byron's published works.
“Poets do not grow on every bush. But Byron and Wordsworth are poets. I was grieved when Byron died.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal December 1836." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 3.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“O, Rome, my country, city of the soul!”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Margaret Fuller references Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage when invoking "O, Rome, my country, city of the soul!" as "the cry of the poet." This line, drawn from Canto IV of Byron's narrative poem, signals Fuller's engagement with the Romantic concept of a spiritual homeland and the powerful allure of historical sites.
“The effect produced on the mind is nowise that described by Byron: — " Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away," &c.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“I met with a parallel the other day between Byi'on and Rousseau, and had a mind to send it to you, it was so excellent.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred In May 1826, Margaret Fuller encountered a critical comparison between Lord Byron and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, deeming it "so excellent" that she considered sharing it.