Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Alexander Henry(1739–1824)

Alexander Henry is documented in Fuller’s books, published essays, and journals (1843–1847). One work is named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Read while writing Summer on the Lakes

Named among the books Fuller consulted for her western journey, and discussed in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. The Harvard College Library ledger dates the loan to the winter after the journey, while the book was being written.

Read alongside

Harvard College Library loan

  • 1843 Nov 6·Henry's Travels in Canada.shelf 1269

Charged out of Gore Hall on the card of Richard Frederick Fuller, Margaret's brother and then a Harvard senior; women could not borrow in their own name. The loan falls after the western journey, while Summer on the Lakes was being written. Household access, not proof of her reading — not counted toward engagements. The full ledger →

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Books · Essays · Journals
Documented
1843–1847
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 →

In Fuller’s words

“I wished to extract here Henry's account of this, for it was just the same sixty years ago as now, but have already occupied too much room with extracts... I should also like to insert Henry's descriptions of the method of catching trout and white fish, the delicacies of this region, for the same reason as I want his account of the Gens de Terre, the savages among savages, and his tales, dramatic, if not true, of cannibalism.”
Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, Between the Years 1760 and 1776 · Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 · 1843

When Fuller engaged with Alexander Henry

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York1record
VI. Europe1record
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Henry in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

excerpted · analyzed · quoted · read4 selected passages
“For Henry gives the details of peculiar worship paid to the Great Turtle, and the oracles received from this extraordinary Apollo of the Indian Delphos.”

Inferred Fuller names 'Henry' as the source for details of Great Turtle worship at Mackinaw. Alexander Henry the Elder's Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories (1809) is the canonical fur-trade memoir that covers Fort Michilimackinac (1760s) and includes accounts of Ojibway religious practices including the Great Turtle oracle.

“Like Murray and Henry, he has his great Indian chief, who represents what the people should be [...] Adair's Red Shoes, and Henry's Wawatam, should make us respect the first possessors of our country”

Inferred Fuller uses Wawatam as an exemplar of noble Indian character.

“Such a person was Alexander Henry, who left Quebec in 1760, for Mackinaw and the Sault St.”

Inferred Fuller names Henry explicitly and quotes and paraphrases at length: the Wawatam rescue scene, being lost in the chase, food scarcity, the 'despair was not made for man' expression, the journey to Prairie du Chien with hidden chocolate, the Weepers tribe, the Great Road chief.

“I wished to extract here Henry's account of this, for it was just the same sixty years ago as now, but have already occupied too much room with extracts...”

Inferred Alexander Henry the Elder (1739–1824), fur trader, whose Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, Between the Years 1760 and 1776 (New York: I. Riley, 1809) is the only work by an 'Alexander Henry' with accounts of Great Lakes sugar-making, trout and whitefish fishing, and the Gens de Terre.

Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.

1847—

Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI.

“Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI.”
mentioned
“At Riva di Trento (Lago di Garda) De Henry, called on me. He is an Irish gentleman, author of a Temperance tract which has been widely circulated in the United States.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI." New-York Daily Tribune, 25 December 1847. · 25 December 1847

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

Journal 1837–1843

p. 47
readManuscript page
“Well might the / Great Turtle visit him, as / described by Henry. Where / is his fort now in his mohawk / valley?”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1837–1843." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086; Box 5.