Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Jean Paul Richter (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter)(1763–1825)

Jean Paul is Fuller’s most distinctive personal enthusiasm — an author almost unknown to her American contemporaries, encountered through the German circle and approached as a private discovery. She worked through Titan alone in 1833, in the afternoons and evenings of three weeks, finding it difficult and dissolving in equal measure: “Too rambling and melting — I found it necessary to balance and harden myself with some good onward books, all plan and method, else I should have been dissolved by it.” She was still recommending Titan to friends years later, with the same combination of caution and ardor.

Jean Paul appears across every source type in the corpus. The breadth, rather than the frequency, is the evidence that the enthusiasm was real and lasting.

Engagement
AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Manuscripts
Documented
1831–1847

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 Jean Paul Richter (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter)’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
  • 1832Work not namedPossiblePosthumous testimony

    “with the writings of Tieck, Korner, Bichter, and Novalis”

    Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney · She began the study of German in 1832 ... within the year

    Same dated 1832-1833 claim regarding Jean Paul Richter.

  • 1833Work not namedAttested

    “I brought your beloved Jean Paul with me too. I cannot yet judge well, but think we shall not be intimate.”

    Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · May, 1833

    Explicit statement of bringing and beginning to judge Jean Paul's work, implying active reading.

  • 1836TitanAttested

    “nearly the whole first volume of Richter's Titan.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. Summer 1837]

    Continuing the same explicit reading list, 'nearly the whole first volume of Richter's Titan.'

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.

  • 21? April 1840Jean Paul RichterCircle context · not counted

    Emerson: “as much manner as in Richter”

    Stylistic comparator · Rusk 2:287

    Emerson invokes Richter as a comparator of style.

Phases of engagement

  1. 1831–1837

    German immersion and intensive reading — Titan read alone over three weeks in 1833; Jean Paul pressed on friends through the early letter years.

  2. 1840–1847

    Sustained recommendation — still recommended in letters; the enthusiasm outlasts the intensive reading period.

In Fuller’s words

“Too rambling and melting — I found it necessary to balance and harden myself with some good onward books, all plan and method, else I should have been dissolved by it.”
Letter · 1833 — Titan
“I send you a book of mine, one of Richter’s finest works. I think its fancy, humor, and sweet humanity will delight you. You can keep it till April; you will find it quite a study.”
Letter · 1840 — Titan
“I should be very unwilling to read it with a person of narrow or impure mind.”
Letter, undated — Titan

When Fuller engaged with Jean Paul Richter (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter)

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence1record
III. Self-Directed4records
IV. Transcendentalist2records
V. New York3records
VI. Europe5records
✦. Memoirs (1852)2records
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

Richter in Fuller’s reading world

Analyzed

  • Titan: Eine Komödie, 4 vols. — the overwhelming focus of her reading

Further works

  • Other novels, inferred

Further works documented in the catalogue

Documentary evidence

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

1831—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p182
read
“Is your quotation from Richter or whom?”

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

Inferred Fuller asks Clarke "Is your quotation from Richter or whom?" regarding a prose passage Clarke quoted ("Nobody is so lonely in the world as an atheist"); her easy familiarity with Jean Paul Richter suggests she has read him, though no specific work is named and the attribution remains unconfirmed.

1833—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p217
read
“There are many trans. in the N York Mirror from Lessing Herder and Richter”

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

Inferred Hudspeth identified the Mirror published 'Scraps from the German of Jean Paul' during this period.

1833—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p187
analyzed · read
“Voici Titan! I have not been able to get into Richter's stream— I read here and there before E, whom I may call my external sensibility arrived— But she and Jean Paul to-gether were de trop.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1833—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p189
analyzed · read
“I brought your beloved Jean Paul with me, but have been obliged to send him back before I was half through Titan.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1834—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p213
read
“I have your Uhland and three vols. of Richter which shall be faithfully returned as any other books you have the kindness to lend me.”

Fuller, Margaret. "To Frederic H. Hedge, 30 November 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 212–215. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller has borrowed three volumes of Jean Paul Richter from Hedge and notes she has had no quiet time for reading; no specific title is named.

1837—

Letter to Unknown

p278
analyzed · read
“and nearly the whole first volume of Richter's Titan.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1840—

Letter to Sarah Helen Whitman

p118
analyzed · read
“I send you a book of mine, one of Richter's finest works. I think its fancy, humor, and sweet humanity will delight you.”

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

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

source lines 2479–2481
analyzed · read
“Even with Richter, one foremost thought about a wife was that she would cook him something good.”

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

She attributes to him the sentiment that a wife should 'cook him something good.' Fuller treats Richter as an example of even a literary man holding limited views of women.

1845—

Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces . . .

“Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces . . .”
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“This is a well-executed translation of one of the best-known works of ‘Jean Paul, the Only One,’ as his countrymen style him.”
“Some parts of the book will be skipped by those who weary as we do of the Only One’s often tasteless aberrations and spider-fine fancies.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 12 March 1845.

1846—

Walt and Vult; Or, The Twins . . .

“Walt and Vult; Or, The Twins . . .”
analyzed · quoted · read9 selected passages
“We greet with great pleasure, this translation of one of Richter’s most celebrated works.”
“Translated from the Flegeljahre of JEAN PAUK.”
“We cannot doubt that the unexpected earnestness of welcome with which his biography by the same refined and feeling writer was received will be extended to this book also.”
“His main thought is so oppressed by collateral thoughts that it is often difficult to seize it.”
“It probably throws more light on the personal character of the author than any other of his works.”
“His most authentic biographer tells us that Richter, ‘in the combined characters of his Twins meant to embody the characteristics of the true poet.”
“preeminently to Jean Paul himself.”
“For ourselves, what we think of Richter, here as elsewhere, was expressed long since in the following lines”
“Some murmur at the ‘want of system’ in Richter’s writings.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Walt and Vult; Or, The Twins . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 3 March 1846.

1846—

Modern British Poets

“Modern British Poets”
mentioned
“Wordsworth scrutinizes man and nature with the exact and searching eye of a Cervantes, a Fielding, or a Richter, but without any love for that humorous wit which cannot obtain its needful food unaided by such scrutiny; while dissection merely for curiosity's sake is his horror.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p100

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p100; page given is to the 1869 reprint.

1847—

Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI.

“Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI.”
mentioned
“The “ Titan ” of Richter, the “ Wanderjahre ” of Goёthe, the Elena of Taylor, the pictures of Turner, had not prepared me for the visions of beauty”

Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XVI." New-York Daily Tribune, 25 December 1847. · 25 December 1847

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

p147
analyzed · quoted · read7 selected passages
“How thoroughly am I converted to the love of Jean Paul, and wonder at the indolence or shallowness which could resist so long... In every page I am forced to pencil.”

Inferred In every page I am forced to pencil.'" This sentiment, coupled with a quotation attributed to "Richter," strongly suggests Fuller's deep immersion in his writings, even though a specific title is not identified.

“Richter says, the childish heart vies in the height of its surges with the manly, only is not furnished with lead for sounding them.”

Inferred In this passage, Margaret Fuller engages with an aphorism attributed to Jean Paul Richter, noting that "the childish heart vies in the height of its surges with the manly, only is not furnished with lead for sounding them." While Fuller does not specify which of Richter's voluminous works she is referencing, her subsequent enthusiastic analysis confirms her active engagement with his writings.

“I brought your beloved Jean Paul with me too. I cannot yet judge well, but think we shall not be intimate.”

Inferred While she does not identify a specific title, her commentary suggests a tentative, critical assessment of his work, noting her initial inability to form a strong connection: "I cannot yet judge well, but think we shall not be intimate." The editors infer this refers to Richter's broader literary output, as his novel Titan is cataloged separately in her library.

“Tell that I read 'Titan' by myself, in the afternoons and evenings of about three weeks.”
“nearly the whole first volume of Richter's Titan”
“she had read German books, and for the three years before I knew her, almost exclusively, — Lessing, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Novalis, and, above all, Goethe.”

Inferred In a retrospective note, Margaret Fuller's acquaintance Ralph Waldo Emerson observed the profound influence of German literature on her intellectual development, citing her exclusive immersion in works by Lessing, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Novalis, and particularly Goethe for the three years preceding his direct acquaintance with her.

“There is no exaggeration in the enthusiastic feeling with which artists and poets have viewed these Italian lakes.”

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

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