Author

Walter Savage Landor(1775–1864)

Walter Savage Landor is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1826–1846). 8 distinct works are named, most often in Writers Little Known Among Us., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement: ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented: 1826–1846

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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 Walter Savage Landor’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
1838Pericles and AspasiaDemonstrated
“of Landor "There is a gloom in deep love as in deep water; there is a silence in it which surrounds the foot...”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · From a journal kept during a short visit to Groton, August 1838
Manuscript journal entry copying a substantial multi-clause passage from Landor's Pericles and Aspasia.
1844PentameronAttested
“I have also read with great delight Landor's Pentameron, rejoicing to find a book of his that is new to me.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 23d Novr 1844
'I have also read with great delight Landor's Pentameron' is an explicit first-person reading statement.
1844Pericles and AspasiaAttested
“H[ow]ever I have him much by heart and own the Pericles and Aspasia.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 23d Novr 1844
'I have him much by heart and own the Pericles and Aspasia' is an explicit personal statement of sustained engagement with the book.

In Fuller’s words

“the other the Amor Greco, may be fitly described in these words of Landor / "There is a gloom in deep love as in deep water; / there is a silence in it which surrounds the foot, and the / folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects. No word shakes its surface; the Muses themselves / approach it with a tardy, and a timid step, with a low / and tremulous and melancholy song?”

Pericles and Aspasia · Journal Entry August 1838 · 1838

When Fuller engaged with Walter Savage Landor

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence1record

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist9records

V. New York10records

VI. Europe1record

✦. Memoirs (1852)3records

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

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

Landor in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1826—

Reading Notebook 1825–1827

pp. 118–119

excerpted · quoted · readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)

“Ah my friends, there is a greater difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year than in the conditions of men … Poets are nearly all prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty has imparted a fuller joy … than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian … / W.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Attributed 'W.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p86–p92

excerpted · analyzed · readManuscript page

“From Landor. Imaginary conversations, / I know three things wine, poetry and the world / says Joseph Scaliger, / Montaigne. You know one too many Then.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).

1838—

Journal Entry August 1838

quoted · readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)

“the other the Amor Greco, may be fitly described in these words of Landor / "There is a gloom in deep love as in deep water; / there is a silence in it which surrounds the foot, and the / folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Entry August 1838." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 5.

Fuller explicitly attributes the passage to Landor ('in these words of Landor').

1840—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p129

analyzed · read2 selected passages

“what would Mr Landor say who thinks those who love religion most speak of her least”

Inferred Fuller paraphrases a specific sentiment she attributes to Landor: 'those who love religion most speak of her least.' Hudspeth identified the source as Landor's 'Washington and Franklin' in his Imaginary Conversations (The Works of Walter Savage Landor, London, 1927–36, 7:28–29).

“What he says of Landor is good, I think.”

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

1840—

Journal 1840

p27–p28

analyzed · quoted · read2 selected passagesManuscript page

“Landor / How better even rancorous or rabid he is_how how needlessly he uses this phrase 'A noisome mass of incredulity' / I am disgusted as a whole with this book of Landor / The Shakspeare and Spencer, which I have been Reading this morning_Mostly it is worthless or it is vulgar yet here & here is a passage struck out which reminds of the bland glories of Pericles & Aspasia.”

Fuller refers explicitly to 'The Shakspeare and Spencer' — this is Landor's Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby and Silas Gough … to which is added A Conference of Master Edmund Spenser … (1834, Saunders and Otley). The full title includes both Shakespeare and Spenser, matching Fuller's shorthand 'Shakspeare and Spencer.' She quotes a phrase 'A noisome mass of incredulity' from the text, and says she is 'Reading this morning,'

“Also_Landor text Percles and Aspasia / In Pericles and Aspasia nothing strikes one than the beauty with which the relations are kept up.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).

1841—

Reading Notes, 1841

p37

excerpted · analyzed · quoted · read2 selected passages

“From Landor — Scalager on the house of Montaigne. Sc. This, I perceive, is the antichamber to your library, here are your every day books. … This is an excellent dialogue.”

“The dialogue between Tiberius and Vipsania has the same melancholy beauty as the last letter of Alcibiades in Pericles and Aspasia.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notes, 1841." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1221 (Caroline Sturgis Tappan papers, 1838–1921).

1842—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p92

analyzed · read

“A conversation in Landor between Sir Philip Sidney and Lord Brooke is in the same style.”

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

Inferred Hudspeth identified this as Walter Savage Landor's "Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney" from Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, featuring Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, and Sir Philip Sidney, two Renaissance poets and courtiers.

1844—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p193

analyzed · quoted · read

“Just now, looking in Pericles and Aspasia for something else (which I could not find) I came upon the poem, "You build your nest Aspasia" &c I had forgotten how beautiful it is; look and see if it be not the right kind of nest.”

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

1844—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

read

“Your Pentameron I wish I could send now, but am not sure I can be ready. It has been a great pleasure to us to have it”

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

1844—

Letter to Richard F. Fuller

p247

analyzed · read2 selected passages

“I have also read with great delight Landor's Pentameron, rejoicing to find a book of his that is new to me.”

“I do own most other book[s] of my contemporaries that I prize. H[ow]ever I have him much by heart and own the Pericles and Aspasia.”

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

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

source lines 1239–1241

analyzed · quoted · read2 selected passages

“Landor says that he cannot have a great deal of mind who cannot afford to let the larger part of it lie fallow, and what is true of genius is not less so of virtue.”

Inferred Fuller attributes explicitly to 'Landor' (Walter Savage Landor, 1775–1864) the saying that a person 'cannot have a great deal of mind who cannot afford to let the larger part of it lie fallow.' The most likely source is Landor's Imaginary Conversations which Fuller knew well.

“I wish to see men and women capable of such relations as are depicted by Landor in his Pericles and Aspasia, where grace is the natural garb of strength, and the affections are calm, because deep.”

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

1845—

Review.

“Review.”

mentioned

“It is easy and animated, and, though contrast of character, and sustained mental pictures of the speakers, to the extent that we find in Landor’s Pentameron, for instance, would add to our enjoyment, yet we are content in its use, merely as a free and various mode of expressing the writer’s own views.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 21 January 1845. · 21 January 1845

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.

1824—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p252

quoted · read

“these words of Landor:—'There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water”

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 Fuller engages with Landor's prose, quoting his observation, "There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water." This line is identified by the editors as belonging to the Pericles and Aspasia dialogue within Landor's collection.

1837—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p137

excerpted · analyzed · read

“I have employed some hours of the day, with great satisfaction, in copying the Poet's Dreams from the Pentameron of Landor. I do not often have time for such slow, pleasing labor.”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p34

quoted · read

“as Landor says, 'He who has any thoughts of any worth can, and probably will, afford to let the greater part lie fallow.”

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 While Fuller attributes the sentiment to Landor, no specific work is named, leading the editors to identify the source through established literary connections between the two authors.