“I have just been reading "Le Père Goriot" his most celebrated work. A remarkable production to which Paris alone would at the present day have given birth.”
Author
Honoré de Balzac(1799–1850)
Honoré de Balzac is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, and manuscripts (1839–1845). 7 distinct works are named, most often in Review., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
- Engagement
- AnalyzedReadMentioned
- Present in
- Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Manuscripts
- Documented
- 1839–1845
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 Honoré de Balzac’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
- 1840Eugenie GrandetAttested
“I have been reading a fine romance of Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet" I wish I could send it you”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Jamaica plain. 12th July 1840.
Explicit 'I have been reading a fine romance of Balzac's Eugenie Grandet'.
- 1845Le Pere GoriotPossiblePosthumous testimony
“Margaret speaks at some length of Balzac's novel Le Pere Goriot, which she had just read”
Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe · essay on French novelists, in Life Without and Life Within
Explicit statement that she 'had just read' Balzac's Le Pere Goriot, tied to a specific essay.
In Fuller’s words
“Balzac / French character What it was in the time of Henry IV and Francis Ist I brave as their swords gay as galliards, / Present tendencies / what means / Satanic school how passée / Meaning of all this plunge into the depths / Balzac great talent, sparks of genius. / Cesar Birotteau. / Le Pere Goriot / La Recherche d'Absolu / Seraphitus the I give all his phases. / Injured by his physiology and taste for accuracy in detail, / Ephemeral character / Want of [Repose?],”
When Fuller engaged with Honoré de Balzac
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Balzac in Fuller’s reading world
Documentary evidence
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
1839—
Notes on Balzac, George Sand, De Vigny, and Béranger
p1–p8“In his other works which I have read I have admired his skill in giving the minute traits of passion, and his intrepidity, not inferior to that of Le Sage and Cervantes in facing the dark side of human nature.”
Inferred This row covers the unnamed earlier works she alludes to in bulk.
“those with which the conjugal relation is depicted in "Jane la Pale”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Balzac, George Sand, De Vigny, and Béranger." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
1840—
Letter to Caroline Sturgis
p174analyzed · read
“I have been reading a fine romance of Balzac's 'Eugenie Grandet' I wish I could send it you, but it belongs to Mr Mottely.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
1840—
Journal 1840
p103–p104analyzed · readManuscript page
“Balzac / French character What it was in the time of Henry IV and Francis Ist I brave as their swords gay as galliards, / Present tendencies / what means / Satanic school how passée / Meaning of all this plunge into the depths / Balzac great talent, sparks of genius.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
1845—
New-York Daily Tribune
“French Novelists of the Day” · January?February 1845analyzed · read
“We have just been reading "Le Pere Goriot," Balzac's most celebrated work; a remarkable production, to which Paris alone, at the present day, could have given birth.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p159
1845—
Items of Foreign Gossip.
“Items of Foreign Gossip.”mentioned2 selected passages
“Balzac, for a bet, writes and publishes a novel of two volumes in nineteen days. Balzac writes worse and worse, and his last novel is said to be very poor”
“Victor Hugo is in Spain; de Balzac gone again to Germany where he will finish his miserable romance of “Les Paysans”
Fuller, Margaret. "Items of Foreign Gossip." New-York Daily Tribune, 24 September 1845.
1845—
Evelyn; or a Heart Unmasked . . .
“Evelyn; or a Heart Unmasked . . .”mentioned
“Not to mention works of the highest genius; in those of Godwin and Balzac—the most singular facts do not surprise us”
Fuller, Margaret. "Evelyn; or a Heart Unmasked . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 7 July 1845. · 7 July 1845
1845—
Review.
“Review.”analyzed · read4 selected passages
“But writers who far surpass him here, as we think Balzac does, wanting this heart of faith, have no influence, except merely on the tastes of their readers.”
“BALZAC has been a very fruitful writer, and as he is fond of juggler’s tricks of every description, and holds nothing earnest or sacred, he is vain of the wonderful celerity with which some of his works”
“we know no modern tragedies more powerful than Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," "Sweet Pea," "Search after the Absolute," "Father Goriot.”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems; Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems; Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
“Seraphitus" is merely a specimen of his great powers of intellectual transposition.”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 February 1845.
Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
1835—
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
p308analyzed · read
“she found something of true portraiture in a disagreeable novel of Balzac's, 'Le Livre Mystique' in which an equivocal figure exerts alternately a masculine and a feminine influence on the characters of the plot.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Margaret Fuller identified "true portraiture" within Honoré de Balzac's Le Livre Mystique, a collection published in 1835. This identification points to the novella Séraphîta, which features an androgynous protagonist embodying a shifting masculine and feminine influence on other characters.