Author
Charles Dickens is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, and published essays (1843–1849). 4 distinct works are named, most often in New-York Daily Tribune, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “read”.
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 →
“to Sam Weller's Valentine, is indeed a broad step, but one which we can take without material change of mood. [...] her condescending graces, her rounded compliments, her girlish, yet "highly intellectual" vivacity, expressed no less in her head-dress than her manner, were just that touch above the common with which the illustrator of Dickens has thought fit to heighten the charms of Mrs. Leo Hunter.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“of a country such as Dickens has described”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller names Dickens explicitly in the context of a critical/satirical description of America. American Notes (October 1842) is the primary candidate: Dickens's harshly critical travelogue of his January?June 1842 American tour, which provoked enormous American controversy.
“to Sam Weller's Valentine, is indeed a broad step, but one which we can take without material change of mood.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
Inferred Fuller alludes to Sam Weller's valentine in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. The specific work is not mentioned by Fuller; the identification is inferred from the character's name.
The specific work is not mentioned by Fuller; the identification is inferred from the character's name.
“rests also the sympathy which Charles Dickens, by such books as Nicholas Nickleby, which Eugene Sue’s else so formless and confused works have found in Germany.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Correspondence of the Schnellpost." New-York Daily Tribune, 27 January 1845. · 27 January 1845
“Dickens has fallen and Sue is falling, for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Thomas Hood." New-York Daily Tribune, 18 July 1845. · 18 July 1845
“with which the illustrator of Dickens has thought fit to highten the charms of Mrs. Leo Hunter.”
Fuller, Margaret. "St. Valentine’s Day—Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane." New-York Daily Tribune, 22 February 1845. · 22 February 1845
“How often is it that the rich man thinks even of that proposed by Dickens as the noblest employment of the season, making the poor happy in the way he likes "best for himself, by distribution of turkey and plum-pudding!”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "1st January, 1846." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 January 1846. · 1 January 1846
“but they give us, in coarser form, far more of the spirit than we get from the same facts reflected in the intellect of a Dickens, for instance”
Fuller, Margaret. "Ellen; Or Forgive and Forget . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1846. · 10 January 1846
“We did not see Mr. Dickens’s Tower and Goblin; it was too late in the day”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XIII." New-York Daily Tribune, 29 May 1847. · 29 May 1847
“I often think of Dicken's marchioness playing whist in the kitchen.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. V. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller explicitly names Dickens and alludes to a specific episode from The Old Curiosity Shop, chapter 57, where Dick Swiveller promotes his "small servant" to a "marchioness" and teaches her to play cards.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“they have the vulgar familiarity of Mrs. Trollope -without her vivacity, the cockneyism of Dickens without his graphic power and love of the odd corners of human nature.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XIV." New-York Daily Tribune, .
“I must confess that, elsewhere, I have shared the feelings of Dickens toward St. Francis and St. Sebastian, as the “Mounseer Tonsons” of Catholic art.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XV." New-York Daily Tribune, .