Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Herodotus(c. 484–c. 425 BCE)

Herodotus is documented in Fuller’s letters, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1835–1842). One work is named, most often in Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented
1835–1842
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 →

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Herodotus’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

  • Dated
  • 1842Work not namedAttested

    “I have been reading Herodotus. I find these Greeks, though I can only read them in translations the most healthful and satisfactory companions.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge 11th August, 1842.

    Explicit 'I have been reading Herodotus'.

In Fuller’s words

“From Herodotus. / There was a melody called Linus after the poet. Athenaeus says it was a very melancholy strain. / Some say that Homer was the author of the Cyprian verses, and gave them as a dowry to his daughter. / How romantic are the stories about Ramses and the sons of his architect vol 1 p. 254”
Historiae [The Histories] · On Xenophon, Cyrus, and Socrates

When Fuller engaged with Herodotus

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed1record
IV. Transcendentalist2records
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Herodotus in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1835—

Notebook January 1835

p. 19
mentionedManuscript page
“As Herodotus begs that his / readers will not consider him / responsible for all he relates / so other writers, who treat of / these periods, in silence assume / the same ground.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook January 1835." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (86); Box 6.

Inferred Fuller names 'Herodotus' in the context of Eichhorn's comparison of early historians who disclaim responsibility for all they record. The relevant work is the Histories (Ἱστορίαι), Herodotus's only extant work. Eichhorn invokes Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) as a parallel case for early historians who disclaim full responsibility for their accounts. Fuller records the comparison faithfully.

1841—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p250
read
“Tell Henry Thoreau to write to me when you send me Herodotus”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

1842—

Letter to Richard F. Fuller

p86
analyzed · read
“I have been reading Herodotus. I find these Greeks, though I can only read them in translations the most healthful and satisfactory companions. I keep one of them by me always now.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Undated

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

n.d.—

On Xenophon, Cyrus, and Socrates

p12, p13
excerpted · analyzed · quoted · readManuscript page
“From Herodotus. / There was a melody called Linus after the poet. Athenaeus says it was a very melancholy strain.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Xenophon, Cyrus, and Socrates." Houghton Library, Harvard University.