1824—
Letter to Timothy Fuller
p139read
“I wish you would have the goodness to send me my Milton's Paradise lost”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Author
John Milton(1608–1674)
Milton matters to Fuller in two registers: as a poet — Paradise Lost above all — and as a model of the writer’s vocation. The sentence she quotes most from his prose, “He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem,” is less a literary reference than a standard she held herself to. She also quotes his letters, his treatise on education, and Comus. The Paradise Lost passages she returns to most are Eve’s two epithets, which she uses in Woman in the Nineteenth Century to argue for full intellectual equality in marriage — reading Milton against the grain of how he is usually read.
Eve’s two epithets (Paradise Lost, Book IV)
“Daughter of God and man, accomplished Eve” — the intercourse of every day; “Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve” — a moment of stronger feeling. Fuller deploys both in Woman in the Nineteenth Century as an argument for intellectual equality in marriage.
The writer’s vocation (An Apology for Smectymnuus)
“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things.” Fuller quotes this as a standard she held herself to.
- Engagement
- AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
- Present in
- Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Manuscripts
- Documented
- 1824–1850
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 John Milton’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
- 1825Work not namedPossiblePosthumous testimony
“at the age of fifteen or sixteen ... Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads are mentioned as read by her with delight”
Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney · at the age of fifteen or sixteen
Same specific age-fifteen-or-sixteen claim regarding Milton.
- 1826Work not namedAttested
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, 14 May 1826
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re426 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-01 l.2186-2188; tier A; same passage); re427 (Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe, p.21; tier C; same passage) — counted once here. Same explicit studying statement names Milton.
- 1837Work not namedPossible
“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: a two-volume Milton loan from Emerson 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).
Phases of engagement
1824–1833
Early reading — Milton enters the reading life young, establishing Paradise Lost as a foundational text.
1840–1844
Transcendentalist deployment — the Eve epithets carried into Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Milton as an argument for women’s intellectual equality.
1845–1850
Tribune criticism — her most concentrated Milton period: the prose as a model of the writer’s vocation, with Of Education and the Familiar Letters quoted in the Papers on Literature and Art essays.
In Fuller’s words
“I find the whole of what I want in this relation, in the two epithets by which Milton makes Adam address his wife... “Daughter of God and man, accomplished Eve.” In a moment of stronger feeling, “Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve.””
“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things.”
“Even Milton makes Eve think Adam, at first, less beautiful than herself. / Daughter of God & Man / [accomplished] Eve.”
When Fuller engaged with John Milton
Milton in Fuller’s reading world
Analyzed in depth
- Paradise Lost·
- An Apology against a Pamphlet Call’d A Modest Confutation [An Apology for Smectymnuus]·
- Of Education·
- Epistolarum Familiarium [Familiar Letters]·
- Comus: A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle·
- Doctrina Christiana / Treatises on Divorce
Further works
- Samson Agonistes·
- “Lycidas”·
- The sonnets
Further works documented in the catalogue
Documentary evidence
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
1826—
Letter to Susan Prescott
p154read
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names Milton as one of her current studies in May 1826, though she does not specify which work.
1830—
Letter to James F. Clarke
p173quoted · read2 selected passages
“Blackness and ashes", Miltons apples; on such unsavory aliment we live to Knowledge”
“the love of Fame as an end”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
1833—
Letter to James F. Clarke
p205analyzed · read
“a Shelley stirs my mind more than a Milton and I'd rather be excited to think than have my tastes gratified”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller names Milton explicitly only in comparison to Shelley, associating Milton with gratification of taste rather than intellectual stimulation and implying she has read both authors and made a considered judgment about their respective effects.
1837—
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
p276read
“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 two volumes of Milton from Emerson, most likely the Poetical Works (Boston, 1834), based on Hudspeth's identification of Emerson's Milton holdings.
1840—
Letter to William H. Channing(?)
p179read
“I saw the spot where we should meet to discuss the high mysteries that Milton speaks of.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred The phrase most likely alludes to Comus (1637) or Il Penseroso (1645), both of which invoke contemplative mysteries in woodland/solitary settings matching Fuller's context.
1840—
Journal 1840
p58–p59analyzed · quoted · readManuscript page
“Even Milton makes Eve think Adam, at first, less beautiful than herself.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
1841—
Letter to Caroline Sturgis
p200quoted · read
“To stand and wait, I cannot.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller deliberately inverts the acceptance of Milton's closing line ('They also serve who only stand and wait') to assert she cannot passively wait. Milton's Sonnet 19 ('When I consider how my light is spent') was written c. 1652-55 during his blindness and first published in Poems &c. upon Several Occasions (London: Tho.
1841—
Letter to Margarett C. Fuller
p225quoted · read
“Mother and sister must now "stand and wait" rather than counsel or cherish.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller uses the quoted phrase 'stand and wait' as a conscious literary allusion to the closing line of Milton's Sonnet 19 ('On His Blindness'): 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' The phrase was among the most commonly cited Miltonic tags in the 19th century and Fuller uses it prescriptively—she and her mother must now 'stand and wait' rather than intervene in the lives of the younger Fullers
1841—
Genesis of the Greek Gods
p4quoted · readManuscript page
“Turn a silver lining to the night.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Genesis of the Greek Gods." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.
1841—
The Dial
“Goethe” · Vol. 2, No. 1, July 1841read
“Its Ithuriel temper pierces shams, creeds, covenants, and chases the phantoms which others embrace, till the lovers of the false Florimels hurl the true knight to the ground.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p28
Inferred Fuller's phrase "Ithuriel temper" alludes to the angel Ithuriel in Milton's Paradise Lost IV.788–810, who reveals Satan by touching him with a spear.
1842—
Letter to Elizabeth Hoar
p47quoted · read2 selected passages
“Some natural tears I shed" to be sure at the first prospect of all this”
Inferred Fuller adapts a line from the final book of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Adam and Eve leave Eden shedding "natural tears." Hudspeth's notes identify the allusion; Fuller substitutes "I shed" for Milton's "they dropped," applying the image to her own emotional state.
“Your letter was a little golden ket to a whole volume of thoughts and feelings”
Inferred Fuller paraphrases Milton's image of the "Golden Key" from Comus (lines 12–14), which opens "the Palace of Eternity," and applies it metaphorically to Elizabeth Hoar's letter. Hudspeth's notes identify the source. Fuller uses the image without naming the source work.
Hudspeth's notes identify the source.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
1852—
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
p67analyzed · read4 selected passages
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian baUads, with great delight.”
Inferred Although she does not name a specific text, Milton's monumental epic, Paradise Lost, is presumed to be the focus of her studies.
“She uttered her old heresies about Milton, however, unmodified.”
Inferred In notes from the Winter 1840-41 Fine Arts conversations, Margaret Fuller revisits her critical perspectives on John Milton, described as "old heresies." While no specific work is named, Fuller's commentary indicates a sustained engagement with Milton's poetic reputation and her own distinctive interpretations of his achievements, suggesting a critical re-examination of his oeuvre.
“I saw the spot where we should discuss the high mysteries that Milton speaks of Also.”
Inferred This entry pertains to John Milton's works, specifically referencing 'the high mysteries' that the poet discusses, a theme prominent in epics like Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained where celestial beings engage with profound cosmic truths. Margaret Fuller's text indicates a location suitable for exploring these complex theological and philosophical concepts presented in Milton's writings.
“Milton, it is said, made for himself a list of a hundred subjects for dramas, and the recorder of the fact seems to think this many.”
Inferred This passage considers John Milton's prolific imagination, referencing an anecdote about his list of one hundred drama subjects. Margaret Fuller, however, finds this number "very few," asserting that "life is filled with innumerable themes," thereby recasting Milton's prodigious output as a starting point for her own reflections on the boundless nature of creative inspiration.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.