Author
Victor Hugo is documented in Fuller’s letters, published essays, and manuscripts (1834–1845). 3 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Frederic H. Hedge, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 Victor Hugo’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Have you read Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame? I am much fascinated by it”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 26th Decr 1834
Explicit 'Have you read... I am much fascinated by it' confirms her own direct reading.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame by V. Hugo. This brilliant work has impressed my imagination strongly. Hugo is only eight years older than I. O that I might hope to produce a similar one in the course of eight years. It is not perfect as a work of art but abounding in Eloquence, accurate and various knowledge and above all showing That by many sufferings the writer has been initiated into those mysteries introduced to those penetration of the human soul of which so many elegant Esotericks never dreamt.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“Have you read Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame?”
Fuller, Margaret. "To Frederic H. Hedge, 26 December 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 215–217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame by V. Hugo. This brilliant work has impressed my imagination strongly. Hugo is only eight years older than I.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Burdon, Hugo, Child, and Jewsbury." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“The last steamer brings us the news of the disgrace of Victor Hugo, one of the most celebrated of the literary men of France, and but lately created one of her Peers.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Courrier des Etats-Unis—“Our Protegee,” Queen Victoria." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 August 1845. · 4 August 1845
“In the yard of the hospital, we saw a little Dutch girl, a dwarf, who would have suggested a thousand poetical images and fictions to the mind of Victor Hugo or Sir Walter Scott.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Our City Charities." New-York Daily Tribune, 19 March 1845. · 19 March 1845
“These volumes exhibit in full light the few striking beauties and many defects of this celebrated writer.”
Fuller, Margaret. "The Rhine by Victor Hugo . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 26 November 1845. · 26 November 1845