Author
Maria Edgeworth is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, and manuscripts (1818–1849). 4 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Timothy Fuller, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 →
“Many women have observed that the time drew nigh for a better care of the sex... Among these may be mentioned Miss Edgeworth, who, although restrained by the habits of her age and country, and belonging more to the eighteenth than the nineteenth century, has done excellently as far as she goes.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I have been like Basil in the "Tomorrow" and have determined to be so no longer.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller alludes to the character Basil from Maria Edgeworth's moral tale "To-morrow" (also "Tomorrow"), published in Popular Tales.
“that person is illiberal who condemns Scotts and Edgeworths novels”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller defends Edgeworth's novels alongside Scott's, arguing it is "illiberal" to condemn them, and bases her defense on her own reading experience.
“The house is kept in a Castle Rackrent style, but there is all affection for me and desire to make me at home”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Many women have observed that the time drew nigh for a better care of the sex...”
“The surprise was painful as that of a the little sentimentalist in the tale of "L'Amie Inconnue" when she found her correspondent, the poetess, the "adored Araminta," scolding her servants in Welsh; and eating toasted cheese and garlic.”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“Miss Edgeworth is an excellent writer for children. She is a child herself as she writes, nursed anew by her own genius.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 5 February 1845. · 5 February 1845
“then came Mrs Edgworth, Mrs Smith. I became a coward, a caretaker not only for the morrow, but impiously faithless twenty or thirty years ahead.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. V. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller invokes "Mrs Edgworth" as an emblematic figure of anxious, prudential motherhood—the type of cautious caretaker—without naming a specific work. Hudspeth suggests Maria Edgeworth's The Parent's Assistant (1800) as the likely work referenced through this evocation of Edgeworth's persona as an education writer.
Hudspeth suggests Maria Edgeworth's The Parent's Assistant (1800) as the likely work referenced through this evocation of Edgeworth's persona as an education writer.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Miss Edgeworth she does not tell much about it - O enviable woman, thou mayst die in peace that I - / Miss Edgeworth’s distinction of refinement, will one who knows / between delicacy of passion and delicacy of taste / need strong stimulants!_”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Fragments." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Fuller mentions ‘Miss Edgeworth’ in the context of Willard’s book and refers later (p. 52) to ‘Miss Edgeworth’s distinction of refinement between delicacy of passion and delicacy of taste.’ No specific work is named on p. 46, but on p. 52 the distinction is attributed to her. Page 52 attributes a specific intellectual ‘distinction’ about delicacy of passion vs.
“with one who knows Miss Edgeworth's distinction between delicacy of passion and delicacy of taste need strong stimulants?”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Caradori." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“Now tell me, had you rather be the brilliant De Stael or the useful Edgeworth? — though De Stael is useful too, but it is on the grand scale”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred In a rhetorical comparison, Margaret Fuller contrasts the "brilliant De Staël" with the "useful Edgeworth," suggesting familiarity with Maria Edgeworth's writings and the qualities they possess. This juxtaposition implies Fuller could distinguish between the authors' respective contributions and impacts, assessing Edgeworth's "usefulness" on a different scale than Staël's.