Author

Plutarch(c. 46 CE–after 119 CE)

Plutarch is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1832–1847). 5 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement: ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Books · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented: 1832–1847

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 Plutarch’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
1837MoralsPossible
“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 Plutarch's Morals kept for the summer; possession, not a reading statement. First Plutarch entry in the graded reading events. Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson; provenance per Harvey's extraction: letter to Emerson, printed in Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884).

In Emerson’s letters to Fuller (L-3)

Books Emerson sent or offered, his secondhand reports, and his own references — never counted in Fuller’s totals.

September 1841Goethe, Werther; Plutarch, CatoCircle context · not countedProvisional
Emerson: “nothing at the bookshops but Werter & Cato by Plutarch”
Bookshop report · Rusk page unrecovered
Shows shared literary currency. Exact day and Rusk page unrecovered.

In Fuller’s words

“Extract made by Taylor from Plutarch's Isis and Osiris with regard to the Sistrum. The sistrum indicates that it is necessary, that beings should be agitated and never cease [...] Note by Taylor on the above. 'Baxter in this translation makes the rods of the sistrum to be four...' See book iv of my translation of Proclus, on the Timaeus of Plato.”

De Iside et Osiride [On Isis and Osiris], in Moralia · On Beethoven · 1843

When Fuller engaged with Plutarch

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed2records

IV. Transcendentalist5records

V. New York4records

VI. Europe2records

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

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

Plutarch in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1832—

Letter to James F. Clarke

mentioned

“his feelings are as false as those of Alcibiades- and of his also vanity is the spring”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Inferred Fuller invokes Alcibiades as a type of false, vain feelings; Hudspeth identified him as the Athenian general who switched allegiance to Sparta and back, and her knowledge most plausibly derives from Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades or Thucydides' History,

1832—

Letter to Unknown

p175

analyzed · read

“His feelings are as false as those of Alcibiades.”

Fuller, Margaret. Letter 75 (January 1832). In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817-1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Hudspeth identified Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BCE) as an Athenian general, politician, and friend of Socrates, whose character and life are most likely known to Fuller through Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades in the Parallel Lives.

1837—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p276

read

“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.

Hudspeth identified the edition as London, 1718.

1839—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p40

analyzed · read

“For my part I shall never be happy, unless I could live like Pericles and Aspasia. I want the long arcade, the storied street, the lyre and garland.”

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

Inferred Fuller invokes Pericles and Aspasia as an ideal of Athenian intellectual and cultural life—Pericles the great statesman-orator, Aspasia his intellectual companion who conversed with Socrates and taught rhetoric—drawing on Plutarch's Life of Pericles in the Parallel Lives.

1839—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p54

read

“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.

Fuller names a volume of Plutarch she has retained from Emerson's library, though she specifies no particular work; as Hudspeth identified identifying the edition as Plutarch's Morals (London, 1718) in five volumes from Emerson's collection.

1840—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p169

analyzed · read

“How finely it harmonizes with all legends of Isis, Diana, &c!”

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

Inferred Fuller mentions 'Isis, Diana, &c' by name in connection with the yucca flower's moonlight beauty — these are named mythological figures. The principal literary sources for the form Fuller would have known are Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (for Isis) and classical sources on Diana/Selene.

1843—

On Beethoven

p4, p5

excerpted · analyzed · readManuscript page

“Extract made by Taylor from Plutarch's Isis and Osiris with regard to the Sistrum.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Beethoven." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

read2 selected passages

“a Phocion among the Pawnees”

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Phocion as a comparative type for nobility and dignified character ?

“what the people should be, as Pericles and Phocion what the Greek people should be.”

Inferred Fuller invokes Pericles and Phocion as the exemplary great men who represent what the Greek people should be at their best.

Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.

1844—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, Boston: Little and Brown; New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1844. Chapter IV, 1844

“Mariana”

quoted · read

“Mariana had the kind of spirit, which, in a better cause, had made the Roman matron truly say of her death wound, "It is not painful, Foetus.”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p262

Inferred Fuller alludes to "the Roman matron" who said of her death wound, "It is not painful, Foetus." This likely refers to Porcia, wife of Brutus, who wounded herself in the thigh to prove her courage (Plutarch, Life of Brutus; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act 2, scene 1).

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p159

read

“By the way, I wish much I had told you the story of Isis and Osiris; it is like your religion. But a time may come.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Inferred Fuller expresses regret that she had not told Nathan 'the story of Isis and Osiris' and suggests it resembles his religion, invoking the Egyptian mythological narrative that she had previously discussed in her earlier correspondence.

1846—

The Modern Drama

“The Modern Drama”

mentioned

“His confidence is not noble to us, it is not that of Brutus or Van Artevelde, who, knowing what is prescribed by the law of right within the breast, can take no other course but that, whatever the consequences; neither like the faith of Julius Caesar or Wallenstein in their star, which, though less pure, is not without religion; but it is the presumption of a strong character which, though its head towers above those of its companions when they are on the same level, yet has not taken a sufficiently high platform, to see what passes around or above it.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p153

Inferred Fuller names Brutus as an exemplar, not a book; the identification with Plutarch’s Lives rests on Plutarch’s life of Brutus as the standard classical account.

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p153; page given is to the 1869 reprint.

1847—

Letter to William James Linton

p297

read

“The Isis of a fair regenerate earth”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Inferred Within Fuller's own poem "To a Daughter of Italy" (published in People's Journal alongside this letter), she invokes "The Isis of a fair regenerate earth," showing engagement with the Egyptian myth of Isis as a symbol of regenerative female power.