Author
Benjamin 'Ben' Jonson is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, and manuscripts (1837–1845). 7 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.
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 Benjamin 'Ben' Jonson’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“I have now of yours two vols of Milton, one of Jonson, one of Plutarch's Morals, two of Degerando, with the 7th and 8th of Goethe's nachgelassene Werke”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 30 May 1837
Possible: one volume of Jonson kept for the summer; possession, not a reading statement. Additional dated evidence on an existing author. Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson; provenance per Harvey's extraction: letter to Emerson, printed in Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884).
“little bits of Plato, Coleridge, Goethe and Ben Jonson”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 4th March 183g- [1839]
Continuation of the same explicit 'read' list sentence naming Ben Jonson.
“I have also read a play of Ben Jonson's and Mr Brownson's review containing Frank Tuckerman's lecture.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Jamaica plain. 12th July 1840.
Explicit 'I have also read a play of Ben Jonson's' with specific date.
“So in the noble passage of Ben Jonson / "I meant the day-star should not brighter ride, / Nor shed like influence from its lucent seat / I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, / Free from that solemn vice of greatness, pride; / I meant each softest virtue there should meet, / Fit in that softer bosom to abide, / Only a learned and a manly soul, / I purposed her, that should with even powers, / The rock, the spindle, and the shears control / Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I have now of yours two vols of Milton, one of Jonson, one of Plutarch's Morals, two of Degerando, with the 7th and 8th of Goethe's nachgelassene Werke.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller borrows one volume of Ben Jonson from Emerson, identified by Hudspeth as the 1717 London edition of his Works in six volumes.
“I have retained of your books a volume of Bacon, one of Plutarch, one of Ben Jonson with Underwoods, &c — you must ask me for them, if wanted, for I keep books forever.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller names "one of Ben Jonson with Underwoods," referring to Jonson's collection of lesser poems; as Hudspeth identified as “Works” (London, 1717).
“little bits of Plato, Coleridge, Goethe and Ben Jonson”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller names Ben Jonson as one of the authors she read in "little bits,", she mentions in another letter (written the same day to Emerson) that she retained "one of Ben Jonson with “Underwoods”" from Emerson's library, suggesting she was reading from this particular volume.
“I have also read a play of Ben Jonson's”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“I meant the day-star should not brighter rise, / Nor lend like influence from its lucent seat; / I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, / Free from that solemn vice of greatness, pride / I meant each softest virtue there should meet, / Fit in that softer bosom to reside / Only a (heavenward and instructed) soul / I purposed her, that should, with evea powers, / The rock, the spindle, and the shears control / Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.”
“So in the noble passage of Ben Jonson / "I meant the day-star should not brighter ride, / Nor shed like influence from its lucent seat / I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, / Free from that solemn vice of greatness, pride; / I meant each softest virtue there should meet, / Fit in that softer bosom to abide, / Only a learned and a manly soul, / I purposed her, that should with even powers, / The rock, the spindle, and the shears control / Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“If men get name, for some one virtue, then / What man art thou, that art so many men, / All virtuous Herbert?”
“Say then, lov'd Horace thy true brought of Virgil / Her.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Mostly Extracts." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (89); Box 5 (89).
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“I believe I had the pleasure of making her acquainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chapman, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with Bacon, and Sir Thomas Browne.”
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 This passage notes Margaret Fuller's introduction to the works of Ben Jonson, though no specific play or poem is named. The editor infers this encounter reflects a broad engagement with Jonson's significant literary contributions.