Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1798–1843)

One of the earliest Romantic poets Fuller encountered — the first reference is in her reading notebook of 1825, when she was fifteen. She copied out The Eolian Harp in full, which is how she read poets she wanted to keep: slowly, in her own hand. Coleridge remained through four decades, shifting from poet to critic in her reading — by the Tribune years she was quoting his Shakespeare lectures in the same essays as his verse. Christabel, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Dejection: An Ode all appear, alongside the Literary Remains, which she transcribed in 1836 with characteristic independence: “I have it all in Goethe and Schiller, but should like to keep it as expressed by Coleridge — but have not leisure to copy so much.”

The earliest reading notebook

The Eolian Harp, copied out in full at fifteen, is the earliest reading-notebook evidence in the entire project.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented
1825–1846

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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 Samuel Taylor Coleridge’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
  • 1835The Pang more sharp than allAttested

    “a piece new to me entitled "The Pang more sharp than all"—by which I was reminded of some lines of yours”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 1st Feb 1835

    Explicit 'a piece new to me' describes her direct, dated encounter with the specific poem.

  • 1836Literary RemainsAttested

    “Coleridge's Literary Remains, and drank a great deal from Wordsworth.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 1836

    MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re624 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-03 l.6923-6924; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Same explicit list sentence: 'I have read... Coleridge's Literary Remains.'

  • 1837Literary RemainsAttested

    “As to reading I have read only two books, Coleridge's Literary remains and Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, both very good!”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Boston 6th April 1837

    Explicit 'I have read only two books, Coleridge's Literary remains and Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe.'

In Emerson’s letters to Fuller (L-3)

Books Emerson sent or offered, his secondhand reports, and his own references — never counted in Fuller’s totals.

  • 9 November 1838Coleridge, a volume (unnamed; likely Shakespeare criticism), sentSuggested · not counted

    Emerson: “I send Coleridge and greet you well in your fine studies”

    Book sent to Fuller · Myerson, letter of 9 November 1838 (page locator provisional)

    Work unnamed. Cannot be distinguished from the Literary Remains volume Fuller had in May 1837 (re626) and may be the same copy recirculating; linked to re626 as a related event, not counted separately.

Phases of engagement

  1. 1825–1834

    First encounter and poetry — The Eolian Harp copied at fifteen; early Romantic reading alongside Shelley and others.

  2. 1835–1839

    Critical reading — the Literary Remains transcribed in 1836; Coleridge’s criticism engaged alongside the poetry.

  3. 1845–1846

    Tribune deployment — her most concentrated period: poet and critic both quoted in the Papers on Literature and Art essays, verse and Shakespeare lecture notes treated as a unified critical inheritance.

In Fuller’s words

“Oh! the one life within us and abroad / Which meets all Motion and becomes its soul, / A Light in Sound, a Sound-like power in Light — / Rhythm in all thought and Joyance every where.”
First reading notebook · 1825 — The Eolian Harp
“I have it all in Goethe and Schiller, but should like to keep it as expressed by Coleridge — but have not leisure to copy so much.”
Manuscript notebook · 1836 — Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man, / Down to a sunless sea.”
Papers on Literature and Art · 1846 — “Kubla Khan”

When Fuller engaged with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence3records
III. Self-Directed4records
IV. Transcendentalist15records
V. New York8records
VI. Europe16records
✦. Memoirs (1852)2records
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

Coleridge in Fuller’s reading world

Analyzed and quoted

  • The Eolian Harp·
  • Christabel·
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner·
  • “Dejection: An Ode”·
  • “Kubla Khan”·
  • Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 vols.·
  • Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets·
  • Wallenstein: A Drama in Two Parts [Coleridge’s translation of Schiller]

Further works

  • Remorse·
  • “A Soliloquy”·
  • Letters, Conversations and Recollections

Further works documented in the catalogue

Manuscripts on digitalfuller.org

Transcribed from originals at Houghton Library, Harvard, and the Boston Public Library. The manuscripts are not supplementary — they are the evidence.

Documentary evidence

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

1825—

Reading Notebook 1825–1827

p. 36
excerpted · analyzed · quoted · readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)
“Oh!”

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Inferred A later pencil annotation in the notebook reads: 'Coleridge seems to be fully impressed with the splendid effects of the universal analogy. But he is too frequently inadequate to the perfect expression of his beautiful conceptions.' Also annotated: 'A beautiful description of reverie.' The passage is from Coleridge's 'The Eolian Harp' (1796), published in Poems on Various Subjects (1796) and Sibylline Leaves (1817).

1830—

Letter to Almira P. Barlow

p172
read
“Have any new philosophical works supplanted Combe and Coleridge?”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller pairs Coleridge with Combe as philosophical reading, and Hudspeth identified Fuller "knew the prose of Samuel Taylor Coleridge better than his poetry," with Biographia Literaria (1817) and Aids to Reflection (1825) being the most relevant prose works available by 1830.

1831—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p181
read
“though decidedly inferior to Petrarch, quite equal to S. T. Coleridge's”

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

Inferred Coleridge explicitly as a benchmark for Clarke's sonnet, judging Clarke's work "quite equal to S. Coleridge's" in a sonic comparison; Coleridge was well known as a sonneteer, though no specific poem or collection is cited.

1832—

Letter to James F. Clarke

analyzed · read
“How I sympathize with Coleridge- vide ap. XIV. It is wonderful that he ever wrote a line”

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

XIV," referring explicitly to Aphorism XIV of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, as Hudspeth identified; she is sympathizing with Coleridge's statement about maintaining conviction through intellectual engagement.

1834—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p213
mentioned
“No! I have not seen Coleridge's Epitaph and I wish you would copy it for me if not too long!”

Fuller, Margaret. "To Frederic H. Hedge, 30 November 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 212–215. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1835—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p220
analyzed · read
“above all a piece new to me entitled "The Pang more sharp than all"—by which I was reminded of some lines of yours which I saw lately not where I should have seen them first! to wit in print”

Fuller, Margaret. "To James F. Clarke, 1 February 1835." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 219–222. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Hudspeth identified the article quotes this late Coleridge allegory, first published posthumously in 1834.

1835—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p225
quoted · read
“She was 'crown to his cap and garnish to his dish.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller quotes Coleridge's "The Improvisatore: or, John Anderson, My Jo, John" from memory with slight variation ("crown to his cap and garnish to his dish" rather than Coleridge's full lines), embedding the quotation in a prose description of a deceased young wife. Hudspeth identified the source from Literary Remains.

Hudspeth identified the source from Literary Remains.

1836—

Letter to Unknown

p242
read
“Coleridge's Literary Remains”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1836—

Journal December 1836

p28–32
excerpted · quoted · read2 selected passagesManuscript page
“From Coleridge's Friend / 'Many considerations should tend to moderate an anxiety for the guidance of a more experienced or superior mind…”
“From the 2d vol. of Coleridge's Literary remains _ I copy these passages here not being able to find any other blank book and not being willing to lose them.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal December 1836." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 3.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p41–p58, p71
excerpted · analyzed · read2 selected passagesManuscript page
“From Letters etc of S. T. Coleridge [...] I have taken all these extracts from the Ist vol and had marked at least as many more passages that I should like to keep in the second.”
“From Coleridge's Lit y remains.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).

1837—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p265
read
“As to reading I have read only two books, Coleridge's Literary remains and Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, both very good!”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1837—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p276
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“Some of your books I restore. The Literary remains I have ransacked pretty thoroughly”
“With the Friend I should never have done therefore must get it for mine own.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.

1817—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p165
quoted · read
“I had begun to 'take an account of stock,' as Coleridge calls it, and was forced to proceed.”

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 engages with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817) by citing his metaphor of "taking an account of stock" to describe her own process of self-reflection. Fuller paraphrases Coleridge's observation that such an honest appraisal of one's intellectual or spiritual "riches" often leads to a revision of self-perception.

1828—

Recollections of Richard F. Fuller

p66
analyzed · read
“Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats she also sought to interest me in.”

Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.

Inferred Richard Fuller states that Margaret 'sought to interest me in' Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats.

1836—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p219
read
“Coleridge's Literary Remains”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.

Read alongside