Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Thomas Taylor(1758–1835)

Thomas Taylor is documented in Fuller’s letters (1844). One work is named, all in Letter to Richard F. Fuller, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “read”.

Engagement
ReadMentioned
Present in
Letters
Documented
1844

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 Thomas Taylor’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
  • 1844Work not namedAttested

    “studied much in evenings, Taylor's translations of the old Greek writers, the Confucious, the Desater, and Alkuna, a Scandinavian mythology, have been my best books.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 23d Novr 1844

    Explicit 'studied much in evenings' naming specific translated works as her regular reading.

In Fuller’s words

“studied much in evenings, Taylor's translations of the old Greek writers, the Confucious, the Desater, and Alkuna, a Scandinavian mythology, have been my best books.”
Classical Tracts / Hymns of Orpheus · Letter to Richard F. Fuller · 1844

When Fuller engaged with Thomas Taylor

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York1record
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)1record
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Taylor in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1844—

Letter to Richard F. Fuller

p247
read
“studied much in evenings, Taylor's translations of the old Greek writers, the Confucious, the Desater, and Alkuna, a Scandinavian mythology, have been my best books.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Inferred Fuller names "Taylor's translations of the old Greek writers" among her "best books" during her seven weeks at Fishkill Landing, and Hudspeth identified Classical Tracts (London, 1831) or The Mystical Initiations; or, Hymns of Orpheus (1787) as likely candidates, with the former being more probable.

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

p137
read
“Margaret was reading, in these weeks, the Four Books of Confucius, the Desatir, some of Taylor's translations from the Greek, a work on Scandinavian Mythology, Moehler's Symbolism, Fourier's Noveau Monde Industriel, and Landor's Pentameron”

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

Inferred Among Margaret Fuller’s diverse readings, she engaged with selections from Thomas Taylor’s translations of Greek philosophical texts. While Fuller does not specify a title, the editors infer she was reading Taylor’s influential Neoplatonist works, such as those of Plato and Plotinus, given her parallel explorations of Pythagorean legend and discussions of classical antiquity.