Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Johann Peter Eckermann(1792–1854)

Johann Peter Eckermann is documented in Fuller’s letters, journals, and manuscripts (1835–1839). One work is named, most often in Letter to Frederic H. Hedge, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “quoted”.

Engagement
QuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Journals · Manuscripts
Documented
1835–1839

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 Johann Peter Eckermann’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
  • 1837Conversations with GoetheAttested

    “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

    Same explicit statement covering Eckermann.

  • 1837Gesprache mit GoetheDemonstrated

    “Unless he himself proposed my making an arrangement to translate it for some other publishers than his, I can do nothing.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Boston. 11th April 1837.

    Translated engagement type qualifies automatically for the Demonstrated tier.

  • 1839Conversations with GoetheDemonstrated

    “In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of Eckermann since published in London by Mr. Oxenford”

    Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann

    Translated engagement type qualifies automatically for the Demonstrated tier.

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.

  • 7 June 1839Fuller's Eckermann translation, given to EmersonEnrichment · not counted

    Emerson: “The Preface is a brilliant statement”

    Provenance · Myerson, letter of 7 June 1839 (page locator provisional)

    Corroborates the existing Eckermann record (re331).

In Fuller’s words

“or by saying Goethe remarked aye even he "We all talk constantly a great deal too much[;] talking is the very worst way of expressing thought, best mature it into action by a silent process as the tree puts forth its fruit”
Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens [Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life] · Letter to Frederic H. Hedge · 1835

When Fuller engaged with Johann Peter Eckermann

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed1record
IV. Transcendentalist2records
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.

Eckermann in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1835—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p222
quoted · read
“or by saying Goethe remarked aye even he "We all talk constantly a great deal too much[;] talking is the very worst way of expressing thought, best mature it into action by a silent process as the tree puts forth its fruit”

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

Fuller attributes a saying about silence and expression to Goethe, introduced with "Goethe remarked aye even he,"

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.

1839—

Letter to Hiram Fuller

p68
read
“I do not know that this book will be very interesting to you for its own sake, but, as being of the same date with my labours in Greene St, I thought it seemed to belong to your library there”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

She presents the gift as thematically suited to his library, implying she has now completed this translation work—as Hudspeth identified identifying the newly published Boston edition of 1839.

Undated

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

n.d.—

Journal 1837–1843

p. 27
readManuscript page
“1795. Uses that the Horen / was to Goethe. (To Eckermann / he lamented over it as / Having been of disadvantage / to him!”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1837–1843." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086; Box 5.

n.d.—

Notes toward The Life of Goethe

p5
readManuscript page
“p5: 'For Goethe's true feeling towards Wieland see his tribute to him after his death - see D 9 and Wt & most of all conversation with Falk.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notes toward The Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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

1836—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p14
read
“In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of Eckermann since published in London, by Mr. Oxenford.”

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