Author
Richard Monckton Milnes is documented in Fuller’s letters and published essays (1839–1847). 19 distinct works are named, most often in English Writers Little Known Here., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 Richard Monckton Milnes’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 been reading Milnes; he is rich in fine thoughts, but not in fine poetry”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 24th Novr 1839
"I have been reading Milnes" is an explicit, dated reading statement.
“ODE TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH Let him go down,—the gallant Sun! His work is nobly done: Well may He now absorb Within his solid orb The rays so beautiful and strong, The rays that have been out so long Embracing this delighted land as with a mystic song.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“Two of Milnes's Shadows are the gracefullest things I have seen! Thank you!”
Fuller names Milnes's "Shadows" explicitly, calling two of them "the gracefullest things I have seen" in thanks to Emerson for sharing them; as Hudspeth identified as published in Poems of Many Years (1838).
“I have been reading Milnes; he is rich in fine thoughts, but not in fine poetry, and his Christianity is often forced in till it becomes what Mr Alcott calls noxious.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“Let me introduce a new friend to you, Milnes, in whose poems I have of late been interested. If you read, write me what you think of them.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller names Milnes without specifying a particular volume, calling him "a new friend" and recommending his poems to Newcomb as something she has been reading recently.
“To the persons of this class may be recommended first—Richard Monckton Milnes who has published volumes entitled POEMS OF MANY YEARS”
“MEMORIALS OF MANY SCENES, POEMS, LEGENDARY AND HISTORICAL, PALM LEAVES, all of which may be obtained from England”
“Thus, opening to the introduction to Memorials of Many Scenes, we find a favorite theme, the marriage of Pieto della Valle, thus gracefully touched upon”
“Hast thou not read the wild but all-true story Of the brave Pilgrim and his Georgian bride, Pietro and Maani, who in glory And countless joy went wandering side by side?”
“The Lay of the Humble” is best known among Milnes’s poems, and it deserves to be so”
“The two poems of Myrrha may also be mentioned for their delicate yet strong stamp of individuality”
“We regret not having before us the ‘Poems, Historical and Legendary,’ as we wished to quote one of the Northern legends”
“Palm Leaves’ is his latest publication. It is the record of his travels in the levant and in Egypt in the winter of 1842-43”
“As specimens we insert THE MOSQUE. A SIMPLE unpartitioned room,— Surmounted by an ample dome, Or, in some lands that favored lie, With centre open to the sky”
“The following legend is in Milnes’s best manner: THE INFANCY OF MOHAMMED ————— THIS legend does not seem to me to be orthodox, but rather to a later invention”
“The two that follow are also excellent, both in perception and style. Here is the first: MOHAMMED AND THE BLIND ABDALLAH”
“The following should be read by all who believe that Heaven leaves any land or nation without a witness: THE SAYINGS OF RABIA”
“The Kiosk is one of the best poems in the book. We quote the description of it; and two of the stories told there are, as descriptive of the best and worst in Moslem life”
“THE PERSIAN’S STORY. “Wakedi, and the Heshemite, and I, Called each the other friend, and what was meant By all the meaning of that common word”
“THE SYRIAN’S STORY * * * * * To an Egyptian soldier, scarred and bronzed, The duty of narration came the next”
“THE EGYPTIAN’S STORY. Once, when in Syria he had let war loose, And, was reducing, under one strong sway, Druses, and Christians, and Mohammedans”
“The tent too is full of the spirit of these scenes. It rises in the open air. THE TENT. WHY should a man raise stone and wood Between him and the sky?”
“A few copies of Palm Leaves may be obtained in New-York. We have devoted so much space to abstracts from Milnes that we must postpone sketches of the other gentlemen and scholars”
“shade, And oft their casual home forsook The morrow it was made; Diverging many separate roads, They wandered, fancy-driven, Nor thought of other fixed abodes Than Paradise or Heaven.”
Fuller, Margaret. "English Writers Little Known Here." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 March 1845.
“ODE TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH Let him go down,—the gallant Sun!”
Fuller, Margaret. "Writers Little Known Among Us." New-York Daily Tribune, 28 March 1845. · 28 March 1845
“I have not the notice of Milnes and Landor and one or two other little pieces that ought to go into this volume.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Inferred Fuller mentions Milnes in the context of her own Tribune review essay on literary figures. Hudspeth's notes confirm she wrote a two-part essay on Monckton Milnes, Julius Hare, and Walter Savage Landor for the Tribune in March 1845.
Hudspeth's notes confirm she wrote a two-part essay on Monckton Milnes, Julius Hare, and Walter Savage Landor for the Tribune in March 1845.
“as also a beautiful miniature of Keats from which an engraving is being made for his “Life” by Milnes, soon to appear.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . VIII." New-York Daily Tribune, 2 February 1847. · 2 February 1847
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“I do not remember the transition to modern poetry and Milnes; but she read (very badly indeed) the Legendary Tale.”
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 from Margaret Fuller's Fine Arts conversations engages with Richard Monckton Milnes's poetic works, specifically referencing a "Legendary Tale" that Fuller read aloud. The archival editors infer this refers to one of Milnes's volumes of poetry, such as Poems of Many Years (1838) or Poetry for the People and Other Poems (1840), published prior to the date of the conversation.