Author
Epictetus is documented in Fuller’s letters (1826). One work is named, all in Letter to Susan Prescott, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “read”.
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 Epictetus’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, 14 May 1826
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re152 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-01 l.2186-2188; tier A; same passage); re153 (Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe, p.21; tier C; same passage); re150 (Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney, p.199; tier C; same passage) — counted once here. Same explicit studying statement names Epictetus.
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 am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller studied Epictetus in 1826, though she did not specify whether she read the Discourses (recorded by Arrian) or the Enchiridion, his two surviving philosophical works available in English translation at that time.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian baUads, with great delight.”
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 May 1826, Margaret Fuller immersed herself in the study of classical philosophy, noting her engagement with Epictetus alongside other influential writers. While she does not specify a particular work by the Stoic philosopher, the breadth of her intellectual curiosity at this time is evident through her inclusion of Epictetus on a list that also featured Madame de Staël and Milton.