Author
William Gardiner is documented in Fuller’s letters (1838). One work is named, most often in Letter to Caroline Sturgis, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 William Gardiner’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Christmas day I was ill and, as it was holy day) lay on the sofa and read the Music of Nature— Ah!—then I was happy indeed. I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Providence 3d Jany 1838; "Christmas day"
"I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night" is a vivid explicit, dated reading statement.
“I have not read any books except what every body reads, Gardiner on Music (thank you for that; it was a great deal to me.)”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Providence 1st March 1838
"I have... read... Gardiner on Music" is an explicit reading statement.
“lay on the sofa and read the Music of Nature— Ah!—then I was happy indeed. I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night, reading leisurely and calmly too... It is a most fascinating book, has solved for me many doubts and confirmed many cherished opinions.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“lay on the sofa and read the Music of Nature— Ah!—then I was happy indeed. I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night, reading leisurely and calmly too...”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“I have not read any books except what every body reads, Gardiner on Music (thank you for that; it was a great deal to me.)”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Fuller names "Gardiner on Music"—William Gardiner's Music of Nature—and thanks Emerson for recommending it, as Hudspeth identified, Emerson had been taken with the work.