Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Julie de Lespinasse(1732–1776)

Julie de Lespinasse is documented in Fuller’s letters and manuscripts (1831). One work is named, most often in Letter to James F. Clarke, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Manuscripts
Documented
1831

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 Julie de Lespinasse’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
  • 1831Lettres de Mademoiselle de LespinasseAttested

    “I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste the letters of Mile Lespinasse”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Tuesday eveg[11 October 1831]

    "I am swallowing by gasps...the letters of Mlle Lespinasse" is a vivid explicit statement of active reading.

In Fuller’s words

“Vous avez deviné a merveille, / ce matin: je voulois votre reponse / et point mon livre. Plut à dieu / qu’en renonant à tous ceux qui / ont été faits et qui le seront, je / pusse m’aparer une lettre de vous / tous les jours! C’est la ce que je / voudrais lire, c’est vous que je voudrais / voir et entendre sans cesse — Mon / ami, je vous aime...”
Lettres de mademoiselle de Lespinasse [Letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse] · Extracts Only

When Fuller engaged with Julie de Lespinasse

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence1record
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)1record
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Lespinasse in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1831—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p182
analyzed · read
“I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste the letters of Mile Lespinasse It is good for me- How odious is the abandonment of passion such as this unshaded by pride or delicacy, unhallowed by religion- A selfish crabing, only every sound of enjoyment stifled to cherish this burning thirst.”

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

Fuller names "Mlle Lespinasse" and describes actively reading her letters—"swallowing by gasps" indicates current engagement; she delivers extended critical commentary, stating "How odious is the abandonment of passion such as this unshaded by pride or delicacy." Hudspeth identified the letters as Lettres de Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, written from 1773 to 1776.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

Extracts Only

p37–48
excerpted · quoted · readManuscript page
“Vous avez deviné a merveille, / ce matin: je voulois votre reponse / et point mon livre.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Extracts Only." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (88); Box 6 (88).

From pp. 37–48, Fuller copied an extensive sequence of French extracts attributed to ‘L’Espinasse’ (abbreviated variously as L.Es—, L.Espinasse, L.Co., etc.) and ‘Guibert’ in her annotations. The passages attributed ‘L’Espinasse’ are cataloged as a single reference since all are from the same work.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p141
analyzed · read
“I am swallowing by gasps that cauldron-y, beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters of M'lle D'Espinasse. It is good for me.”

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