Author
Charles Fourier is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, and journals (1840–1848). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, 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 →
“I see the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in Europe; the tide of things does not wash through them as violently as with us, and they have time to run in the tread-mill of system. Still, they serve this great future which I shall not live to see.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“Fourier thinks the universe a bee-hive & the bee should be a symbol of perpetual life (as the beetle among the ancients was of the early stages in nature,”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
“since Fourier has found out that the moon is dead, and "no better than carrion;”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller names Fourier explicitly and quotes his cosmological claim about the moon being 'no better than carrion.' Charles Fourier's bizarre cosmological theories — including his idea that the moon was a dead, inert, unhealthy body ? appear in his Théorie des Quatre Mouvements (1808) and related manuscripts.
“Mr Brisbane offered to lend me a volume of Fourier now in your hands. Will you, when you have done with it, have the kindness to leave it with Miss Peabody directed to me?”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Hudspeth identified indicate she read Fourier's Nouveau Monde industriel et societaire in September 1844, suggesting this may be the circulating volume, though Albert Brisbane's Association: or a Concise Exposition of the Practical Part of Fourier's Social Science was also in circulation at the time.
“As apostle of the new order... Charles Fourier comes next, expressing, in an outward order, many facts of which Swedenborg saw the secret springs.”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“I see the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Fourier himself might have taken pleasure in them.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . IX." New-York Daily Tribune, 19 February 1847. · 19 February 1847
“The doctrines of Fourier are making considerable progress, and whenever they spread the necessity of some practical application of the precepts of Christ, in lieu of the mummeries of a worn-out ritual, cannot fail to be felt.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XII." New-York Daily Tribune, 12 May 1847. · 12 May 1847
“I am as great an Associationist as W.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. V. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Channing himself" and articulates Fourierist doctrine ("voluntary association in small communities").
“Suffice it to say, I allude to that of which the cry of Communism, the systems of Fourier, &c. are but forerunners.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XXIV." New-York Daily Tribune, 15 June 1848. · 15 June 1848
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Write letter to Brisbane / on Fourier's views of music / How Fourier's views of / the omnivorousness of man / coincide with his views of / music being the only / developed science / Write acct of the Fourier / convention & compare its / eloquence with that of the / English parliamentary / history.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1837–1843." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086; Box 5.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“Margaret was reading, in these weeks, the Four Books of Confucius, the Desatir, some of Taylor's translations from the Greek, a work on Scandinavian Mythology, Moehler's Symbolism, Fourier's Noveau Monde Industriel, and Landor's Pentameron”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“The doctrines of Fourier are making progress [...] Educated in an age of gross materialism, Fourier is tainted by its faults; in attempts to reorganize society, he commits the error of making soul the result of health of body, instead of body the clothing of soul; but his heart was that of a genuine lover of his kind, of a philanthropist in the sense of Jesus; his views are large and noble; his life was one of devout study on these subjects.”
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 Margaret Fuller engages with the social theories of Charles Fourier, whom she praises for his philanthropic spirit and "large and noble" views, despite critiquing his materialism.