Author
Sophocles is documented in Fuller’s books, published essays, journals, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1840–1846). 5 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 →
“No musician of genius to / express the profound of / affliction like Beethoven. / How would he have / expressed the groans and / anguish of Philoctetes in / the lonely island.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“in a few words as in Philoctetus, Read extract from [illegible] ration about shaking Jupiter eagle divine also, and making prose the only tru portraits from your own mind.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
“Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer.”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller invokes Sophocles and uses him, alongside Plotinus, as an emblem of immortal classical greatness untouchable by petty modern criticism.
“or the Greek Electra, as an old maid”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Inferred Named as 'the Greek Electra'; Electra is the heroine of Sophocles' play of that name. Named as 'the Greek Electra' — the heroine of Sophocles' Electra. Named in a list of women who aged nobly (Michelangelo's Sibyl, Saint Teresa, Tasso's Leonora, and Electra).
“The play, too, though in an ordinary translation, and so inadequately recited, except by Vandenhoff himself, seemed much nearer to us, and more impressive than a modern play”
Fuller, Margaret. "Palmo’s—The Antigone." New-York Daily Tribune, 16 April 1845. · 16 April 1845
“our grief wants the true tragic element which hallows it in the Antigone, the Lear, and even Schiller's "Mary Stuart," or "Wallenstein.”
Also reprinted in New-York Daily Tribune. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“The man rushes forth and is baffled, but returning home a blinded Oedipus, he finds in his breast the jewels of insight the callow birds of genius.”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Her Inner Nature and Genius." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 100.
Inferred The specific character and the detail of blindness as a path to inner vision are definitively Sophoclean. Both author and title inferred from the character name and its narrative context.
“No musician of genius to / express the profound of / affliction like Beethoven. / How would he have / expressed the groans and / anguish of Philoctetes in / the lonely island.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Artists." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (94); Box 6.
Inferred Fuller does not name the play; the reference to 'Philoctetes in the lonely island' and his 'groans and anguish' uniquely identifies Sophocles' tragedy.
“jEdipus, Macbeth, Wallenstein, chain us for the hour, lead us through the age.”
Fuller, Margaret. Art, Literature, and the Drama. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. New York: The Tribune Association, 1869. · p111
Inferred Fuller names the dramatic figure “Œdipus” beside Macbeth and Wallenstein, not a play; the identification with Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex rests on the character’s name.