Author

William Henry Furness(1802–1896)

William Henry Furness is documented in Fuller’s letters and published essays (1835–1845). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Almira P. Barlow, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement: AnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Essays
Documented: 1835–1845

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 William Henry Furness’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
1835Spirit of Jesus: A Sermon Preached at the Installation of Rev. D. H. BarlowAttested
“I was much pleased with Mr Furness' preachment; his doctrine came to me with a fresher flavor”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton, January 5, 1835
Specific dated personal reaction 'I was much pleased with Mr Furness' preachment' to a named printed sermon.

In Fuller’s words

“I was much pleased with Mr Furness' preachment; his doctrine came to me with a fresher flavor, that I had just closed a Materialist work, whose Author, too, corrected it for the press, on his death-bed.”

Spirit of Jesus: A Sermon Preached at the Installation of Rev. D. H. Barlow, in Brooklyn · Letter to Almira P. Barlow · 1835

When Fuller engaged with William Henry Furness

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed1record

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York1record

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Furness in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1835—

Letter to Almira P. Barlow

p217

analyzed · read

“I was much pleased with Mr Furness' preachment; his doctrine came to me with a fresher flavor, that I had just closed a Materialist work, whose Author, too, corrected it for the press, on his death-bed.”

Fuller, Margaret. "To Almira P. Barlow, 5 January 1835." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Fuller explicitly names Furness and his sermon; Hudspeth identified it as likely William Henry Furness's Spirit of Jesus from September 1834. She read it after finishing an unidentified materialist work and found Furness's doctrine fresher by contrast.

1845—

A Letter to the Boston . . .

“A Letter to the Boston . . .”

analyzed · read

“Mr. Furness takes up this subject with wisdom and a vision unclouded by fear.”

Fuller, Margaret. "A Letter to the Boston . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 29 March 1845. · 29 March 1845