Author
Thomas Gray is documented in Fuller’s letters and books (1830–1846). 4 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “quoted”.
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 →
“your wit would never lend its patronage to the ugly blinking owls who are now hooting from their snug tenements, overgown rather with nettles than with ivy, at this star of purest ray serene”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“There are two beautiful works which I would recommend to your perusal during convalescence "The Vestal" "A Tale by Dr Gray”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“your wit would never lend its patronage to the ugly blinking owls who are now hooting from their snug tenements, overgown rather with nettles than with ivy, at this star of purest ray serene”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Hudspeth identified Fuller's allusions to stanzas 3 and 14 of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": the first references Gray's "ivy-mantled tow'r" and "mopeing owl," while the second echoes his "gem of purest ray serene." Fuller modifies these images—contrasting the "ivy-mantled tower" with nettles and comparing Alcott to a "star of purest ray" rather than a gem—to counter hostile critics and praise Alcott's luminous worth.
“no more thinks of playing the flute than one of the "settled down" members of our society would of choosing the "purple light of love" as dye-stuff for a surtout.”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller quotes the phrase 'purple light of love' (in quotation marks, signaling a borrowed phrase) from Thomas Gray's Pindaric ode The Progress of Poesy (1757), stanza I.1: 'O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move / The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.'
“Study the simple annals of the poor, and you find there, only restricted and stifled by accident, Milton, Calderon, or Michel Angelo.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p221
Inferred Fuller does not name the poem; her phrase “the simple annals of the poor”, followed by “Milton”, echoes Gray’s ““Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”” (“The short and simple annals of the poor”; “Some mute inglorious Milton”).
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p221; page given is to the 1869 reprint.