Author
Joseph de Maistre is documented in Fuller’s letters, published essays, journals, and manuscripts (1821–1846). One work is named, most often in Letter to William H. Channing, 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 Joseph de Maistre’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“All Mrs .F. said of this girl was in perfect harmony with what De Maistre says of the saint of St Petersburg who, almost devoured by cancer, when asked, "Quelle est Ia premiere grace...”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 13th Deer. [1840]
A substantial multi-clause excerpt including a direct quoted French passage from De Maistre implies the text was consulted directly.
“My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg. I do not find the praises bestowed on it all exaggerated. Yet De Maistre is too logical for me.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [8? December 1840]
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re445 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-07b, line 17453, letter Dec 8 1840; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. "My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg" with follow-on evaluative commentary is an explicit reading statement.
“All Mrs F. said of this girl was in perfect harmony with what De Maistre says of the saint of St Petersburg who, almost devoured by cancer, when asked, 'Quelle est la premiere grace que vous demanderez a Dieu, ma chere enfant, lorsque vous serez devant lui?' she replied 'Je lui demanderai pour mes bien faiteurs la grace de l'aimer autant que je l'aime' / When they were lamenting for her 'je ne suis pas, dit elle, aussi malheureuse que vous le croyez; Dieu me fait la grace de ne penser qu'a lui.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“A few words from de Maistre, De M. of himself.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Extracts from De Maistre." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Fuller has transcribed extensive extracts from De Maistre's magnum opus, Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (first published posthumously, 1821), a theodicy in the form of a Platonic dialogue among three characters (the Count, the Chevalier, and the Senator) set in Saint Petersburg.
“The first story of Melissa will remind you of a beautiful passage in De Maistre's Soirees de St Petersbourg if you have ever read them.”
“My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg. I do not find the praises bestowed on it all exaggerated. Yet De Maistre is too logical for me.”
Fuller explicitly names 'the Evenings of St. Petersburg' as her 'book of amusement' and identifies the author as 'De Maistre.' This is Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, ou Entretiens sur le gouvernement temporel de la Providence (1821), published posthumously in 2 vols. by Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), the Savoyard philosopher.
“All Mrs F.”
Inferred Fuller directly quotes from De Maistre's Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg in French, citing the 'Troisième entretien' (Third Evening). Hudspeth provided a translation and identified the source.
Hudspeth provided a translation and identified the source.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“It let me somewhat into the feeling of those ultra Catholics by sentiment, as de Maistre is by reason.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Fragments, 1842." Margaret Fuller Family Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“De Masitre relates some similar passages as to a sick girl in St. Petersburg, though his mind dwelt more on the spiritual beauty, evinced in her remarks”
Fuller, Margaret. "Caroline." New-York Daily Tribune, 9 April 1846. · 9 April 1846
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Very beautiful in this way was the influence of the invalid of St. Petersburg, as described by De Maistre.”
Also reprinted in Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Woman-Her Sphere and Education." New-York Daily Tribune, .
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg. I do not find the praises bestowed on it at all exaggerated. Yet De Maistre is too logical 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.