Author
Johann Gottfried Herder is documented in Fuller’s letters, published essays, and manuscripts (1833). No work is named in the surviving passages, most often in Letter to James F. Clarke, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
Harvard College Library loan
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. Household access, not proof of her reading — not counted toward engagements. The full ledger →
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 Johann Gottfried Herder’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“reading to him mostly from De Wette and Herder”
Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe · winter of teaching, 1836-37
Engagement type is Translated, automatically qualifying for the Demonstrated tier.
“p5: 'Wieland also was filled / by the inordinate vanity / and asperity of Herder'; p21: 'Herder introduces G. to / Hamann. Influences of his / writings worth close study.'; p58: 'that with Herder was the grand / turning point of his life and / deserves the minutest study. / Herder was the first rock / worthy to stem the impetuous / waves. His first living teacher”
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 many trans. in the N York Mirror from Lessing Herder and Richter”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Hudspeth identified the Mirror published 'Fables from the German of Herder' during this period.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“I am now very desirous of reading his works.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Books, Children, and Faith." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller explicitly states she is 'very desirous of reading his works' but does not name a specific Herder work. Fuller discusses Herder extensively via Ripley's Christian Examiner essays, commenting on his character, his relation to Kant, his time with the Count of Schaumberg Lippe, and his 'lofty Spinozism of heart.' She explicitly states 'I am now very desirous of reading his works' — indicating she has not yet read Herder directly at this point.
“p5: 'Wieland also was filled / by the inordinate vanity / and asperity of Herder'; p21: 'Herder introduces G. to / Hamann.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes toward The Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“real sovereigns of Weimar, Herder, Wieland, and the others?”
Fuller, Margaret. "Goethe." New-York Daily Tribune, .
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“their chief reading being in De Wette and Herder”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Although a specific title is not named, Fuller's engagement suggests a deep familiarity with Herder's theological thought or perhaps his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.