Author
George Sand is the most important woman author in the catalogue. Fuller read her suddenly and intensively in 1839 — five novels in a single year, worked through in her manuscript notebooks with admiration and resistance in equal measure. Sand fascinated and troubled her: the freedom was real, the costs were also real, and Fuller was unwilling to admire without seeing both. Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre she loved without reservation; the Lettres d’un Voyageur disappointed her. The personal identification — Fuller as an American Sand — was something she was aware of and kept at a careful distance.
Five novels in a year, and a meeting eight years later
In 1839 Fuller read Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre, Lettres d’un Voyageur, Leone Leoni, André, and others in a single burst of notebook work. When the two women finally met in Paris in April 1847, she wrote that Sand would have inspired her admiration “if I had read no word of hers.”
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 George Sand (Aurore Dudevant)’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Still in "André" and "Jacques" I traced the same high morality”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 1839 (date supplied by merged witness re221, Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections))
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re221 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-05, line 10644; tier A; date taken from this witness; same passage) — counted once here. First-person reflection tracing themes 'I traced' implying direct reading of André and Jacques.
“Still in "André" and "Jacques" I traced the same high morality”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 1839 (date supplied by merged witness re222, Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections))
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re222 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-05, line 10644; tier A; date taken from this witness; same passage) — counted once here. First-person reflection tracing themes implying direct reading of Jacques (same passage as André).
“When I read in Leone Lioni an account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 1839 (date supplied by merged witness re224, Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections))
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re224 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-05, line 10664; tier A; date taken from this witness; same passage) — counted once here. First-person statement 'When I read in Leone Lioni an account of...' explicitly describing reading.
1839
Intensive first reading — five novels in one year, worked through in the manuscript notebooks.
1840–1844
Quieter presence — Sand less active in the Dial years; the encounter absorbed but not yet written up publicly.
1845–1850
Tribune criticism and the Paris meeting — coverage of French literature, and the April 1847 meeting reported in a letter.
“In Les Sept cordes de la Lyre I saw the knowledge of the passions and of social institutions with the celestial choice which rose above them; I loved Hélène who could so well hear the terrene voices, yet keep her eye fixed on the stars.”
“But here (in the Lettres d’un Voyageur) what do I see? An unfortunate [woman] wailing her loneliness, wailing her mistakes, writing for money?”
“Mme Sand personally inspired me with warm admiration and esteem; she would have done so, if I had read no word of hers.”
Analyzed in depth
Further works documented in the catalogue
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I seem to receive a great deal though I cannot call it by name, nor could I, at present utter it forth again unless I had the gift of doing so by "lyrical glances.”
Inferred Fuller borrows the phrase "lyrical glances" from George Sand, who wrote of an artist's "les élans lyriques de son âme" (the lyrical bursts of his soul); Emerson's journal notes identify Sand as the source, though the specific work remains unidentified, as Hudspeth identified.
“I am sorry you read the wrong Sands first though in Andre there is a vein of the best in the two others is seen her worst.”
as Hudspeth identified that Emerson had read André, Leone Leoni, and Indiana, and had shared his reactions with Fuller.
“in Andre there is a vein of the best in the two others is seen her worst”
The same sentence also names Indiana. Counted as one engagement.
“Mauprat is at the shop now; it is worth your reading, but not your buying and they let them out by the week.”
“I shall get for you Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre, if ever it is in my power”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“But in Les Sept cordes de la Lyre which I read first, I saw the knowledge of the passions and of social institutions with the celestial choice which rose above them, I loved Helene who could so well hear the terrene voices, yet keep her eye fixed on the stars.”
“Still in "André" and "Jacques" I traced the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law, to know that licence is the foe of freedom.”
The same sentence also names Jacques. Counted as one engagement.
“But here (in the Lettres d'un Voyageur) what do I see? An unfortunate [woman] wailing her loneliness, wailing her mistakes, writing for money? [...] G.”
“When I read in Leone Lioni an account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother prospect in dress and learning to be looked at when dressed avec un front impossible, it reminded me exceedingly of [illegible] and her mother.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Balzac, George Sand, De Vigny, and Béranger." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“Perhaps this Sand will amuse you this eveg.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“will you send me Andre by Cary”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“I am glad he is translating Consuelo; it will be a gift to the world!”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Mary Wolstonecraft, like Madame Dudevant, (commonly known as George Sand,) in our day, was a woman whose existence better proved the need of some new interpretation of woman's rights...”
Inferred Named explicitly; 'La Roche Mauprat' named; 'Simon and Indiana' named in footnote. George Sand named explicitly with 'La Roche Mauprat' (i.e., Mauprat, 1837).
Named explicitly; 'La Roche Mauprat' named; 'Simon and Indiana' named in footnote. Footnote also mentions 'Simon and Indiana' (Indiana 1832, Simon 1836).
“Even George Sand, who would trample on every graceful decorum, and every human law for the sake of a sincere life, does not see that she violates it by making her heroines able to tell falsehoods in a good cause.”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“Madame Sand is absent, philosophizing with Leroux, studying music with Chapin”
Fuller, Margaret. "Items of Foreign Gossip." New-York Daily Tribune, 24 September 1845. · 24 September 1845
“An entirely opposite character, in every leading trait, yet bearing traces of the same influences, is the celebrated GEORGE SAND.”
“We are not acquainted with all her works, but among those we know, mention “La Roche Mauprat,” “André,” “Jacques,” “Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre,” and “Les Maitres Mosaistes” as representing her higher inspirations”
“which those readers who chance at first on such of her books as “Leone Leoni,” may fail to find, or even such as “Simon” and “Spiridion,” though into the imperfect web of these are woven threads of pure gold.”
“The work she is now publishing, “Consuelo,” with its sequel “Baroness de Rudolstadt,” exhibit her genius poised on a firmer pedestal, breathing a serener air.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 February 1845.
“many may have seen, last Winter, in the foreign papers an account of her entrance into Stockholm after an absence of some length.”
“What God knows I dare avow to man,” seems to be her motto. It is impossible not to see in her, not only the distress and doubts of the intellect”
“An upward tendency and growing light are observable in all her works for several years past, till now, in the present, she has expressed such conclusions”
“The sequel, therefore, of this history is given under the title of “COUNTESS OF RUDOLSTADT.” Consuelo is still on the stage: she is at the Prussian Court.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Jenny Lind . . . The Consuelo of George Sand." New-York Daily Tribune, 19 September 1845.
“praising the chaste ‘creations’ of that most chaste and ‘spiritual’ creature, George Sand.”
Fuller, Margaret. "‘Darkness Visible.’." New-York Daily Tribune, 10 March 1846. · 10 March 1846
“Since I came, I have read two charming stories recently written by her.”
The same sentence also names La Mare au Diable [The Devil's Pool]. Counted as one engagement.
as Hudspeth identified as Teverino (published in Paris 1846) and La Mare au diable (published in Courrier français, February 1846, and in collected form).
“Another longer one she has just sold to La Presse for fifteen thousand francs.”
Inferred Fuller mentions a longer new Sand novel sold to La Presse for 15,000 francs but does not name it; Hudspeth identified this as Le Piccinino, which La Presse serialized from May to July 1847.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Especially as to the memoir of George Sand I have learned and thought so much about her position while in France and find the subject to involve so much and so difficult to be treated exactly to my mind [...] Mme Sand personally inspired me with warm admiration and esteem; she would have done so, if I had read no word of hers.”
“in connexion with these translations of Miss Hays”
Fuller mentions "translations of Miss Hays" in the context of Howitt's request for a biographical sketch of Sand; Hudspeth identified this as Matilda Hays's translation of Sand's The Last Aldini, which was favorably reviewed in People's Journal.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“Still, in Andre and in Jacques, I traced the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“Still, in Andre and in Jacques, I traced the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law”
“When I read in Leone Lioni the account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother, passed in dress and in learning to be looked at when dressed”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“But here (in the Lettres d'un Voyageur) what do I see? An unfortunate bewailing her loneliness, bewailing her mistakes, writing for money!”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
In George Sand's Lettres d'un Voyageur, Margaret Fuller identifies an author "bewailing her loneliness, bewailing her mistakes, writing for money!" This observation suggests Fuller's critical engagement with the work, which she found to be "brought close to her person," indicating an active and personal reading experience.
“I have read Spiridion twice. I could have wished to go through it the second time more at leisure... The development of the religious sentiment being the same as in Helene...”
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 development of the religious sentiment being the same as in Helene, I at first missed the lyric effusion of that work”
Inferred In her engagement with George Sand's Helene, or The Seven Strings of the Lyre (1840), Margaret Fuller notes a parallel between the religious development of Spiridion and that of Sand's character, Helene.
“S—— and others who admire her, are anxious to make a fancy picture of her, and represent her as a Helena (in the Seven Chords of the Lyre); all whose mistakes are the fault of the present state of society.”
Fuller refutes the tendency to portray Sand as Hélène, a figure whose purported errors are readily attributed to societal flaws.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“Teverino" and the "Mare au Diable," which she has lately published, are as original, as masterly in truth, and as free in invention, as anything she has done.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.