Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Ram Mohan Roy(1772–1833)

Ram Mohan Roy is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, and published essays (1828–1846). One work is named, most often in New-York Daily Tribune, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement
AnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays
Documented
1828–1846
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 Ram Mohan Roy’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
  • 1828Work not namedAttested

    “having been in bed from dinner till tea, reading Rammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud”

    Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · Cambridge, Jan. 3, 1828

    Explicit 'reading Rammohun Roy's book' with specific dated context.

  • 1828The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and HappinessAttested

    “reading Rammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every argument beneath the sun.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, 3 January 1828

    Explicit first-person statement 'reading Rammohun Roy's book'.

In Fuller’s words

“On this subject we would confidently leave the arbitration to a mind, could such an one be found, sufficiently disciplined to examine the subject, and new both to the New Testament and his essay, as that of Rammohun Roy might have been”
‘Darkness Visible.’ · 1846

When Fuller engaged with Ram Mohan Roy

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence1record
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
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.

Roy in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1828—

Letter to Susan Prescott

p155
analyzed · read
“I have passed a luxurious afternoon, having been in bed from dinner till tea, reading Rammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every argument beneath the sun.”

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

Inferred Fuller is actively reading Rammohun Roy's The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness (identified by Hudspeth) and is intensely engaged with it, noting the book has exercised her mind more than anything in months.

1846—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Capital Punishment” · March 4, 1846 · p. 1
mentioned
“we would confidently leave the arbitration to a mind ? could such a one be found ?”

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

Inferred Rammohun Roy (1772–1833) is invoked as an exemplary mind capable of judging the New Testament from a position of intellectual independence; Roy was a Hindu reformer who studied Christianity comparatively without having been raised in it. No specific text by Roy is named. It is unclear whether Fuller is citing Roy as a reader/thinker or simply as a recognized figure.

1846—

‘Darkness Visible.’

“‘Darkness Visible.’”
mentioned
“On this subject we would confidently leave the arbitration to a mind, could such an one be found, sufficiently disciplined to examine the subject, and new both to the New Testament and his essay, as that of Rammohun Roy might have been”

Fuller, Margaret. "‘Darkness Visible.’." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 March 1846. · 4 March 1846