Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)(1809–1893)Inferred

Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny) is documented in Fuller’s letters (1835). One work is named, all in Letter to Almira P. Barlow, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement
AnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters
Documented
1835
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 Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)’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
  • 1835Francis the First (poem "Oh child! who to this evil world art come")Attested

    “I could hardly believe that she who could write the lines on a Sleeping Child... could have given rise to all the foolish talk I heard at Newport.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton, January 5, 1835

    Specific personal knowledge of the content of a named poem ('the lines on a Sleeping Child') implying direct reading, in a dated letter.

In Fuller’s words

“I could hardly believe that she who could write the lines on a Sleeping Child (not that I like them, but they bespeak a spirit deeply-stirred,) could have given rise to all the foolish talk I heard at Newport.”
"Lines on a Sleeping Child" ["Oh child! who to this evil world art come"], in Francis the First. A tragedy in five acts. With other poetical pieces · Letter to Almira P. Barlow · 1835

When Fuller engaged with Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed1record
IV. Transcendentalist
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.

Kemble in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1835—

Letter to Almira P. Barlow

p217
analyzed · read
“I could hardly believe that she who could write the lines on a Sleeping Child (not that I like them, but they bespeak a spirit deeply-stirred,) could have given rise to all the foolish talk I heard at Newport.”

Fuller, Margaret. "To Almira P. Barlow, 5 January 1835." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller refers to "the lines on a Sleeping Child" by Mrs Butler (Fanny Kemble); Hudspeth identified the opening "Oh child! Fuller offers critical evaluation of the poem and uses her knowledge of it to assess Kemble's character.

Fuller refers to "the lines on a Sleeping Child" by Mrs Butler (Fanny Kemble); Hudspeth identified the opening "Oh child!