Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Christopher Smart(1722–1771)

Christopher Smart is documented in Fuller’s letters (1849). One work is named, all in Letter to William Henry Channing, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters
Documented
1849
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 →

In Fuller’s words

“Father of light, conduct my feet Through life's dark, dangerous road; Let each advancing step still bring Me nearer to my God. These clumsy lines from some hymn, I learned in childhood are always recurring.”
"Father of light, conduct my feet" [Hymn XXXII, 'Divine Guidance'], in Hymns for the Amusement of Children · Letter to William Henry Channing · 1849

When Fuller engaged with Christopher Smart

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe1record
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Smart in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1849—

Letter to William Henry Channing

p205
excerpted · analyzed · read
“Father of light, conduct my feet Through life's dark, dangerous road; Let each advancing step still bring Me nearer to my God.”

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

Fuller quotes a childhood hymn beginning "Father of light, conduct my feet," identified as written by Christopher Smart and published in his Hymns for the Amusement of Children; she describes the lines as "always recurring" from her habitual religious education and qualifies her praise by calling them "clumsy."