Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Thomas Carlyle(1795–1881)

Fuller was among the earliest and most critical American readers of Carlyle. She encountered him through the German connection — he was the English interpreter of a literature she already knew — read The French Revolution the year it appeared and found it unlike anything else: “I know not when before I had read a book which I could strictly term fascinating.” She translated pieces, wrote about his work, and pressed him on her circle. Emerson arranged the first American publication of Sartor Resartus (1836) and was Carlyle’s primary American champion; Fuller’s relationship with him is that of an engaged and independent reader — admiring, arguing, returning. By 1850 she was quoting the Latter-Day Pamphlets back at him with a rueful edge.

Emerson, not Fuller, was Carlyle’s American publisher and champion. Fuller’s place is that of an early independent critical reader.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented
1832–1850

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 Carlyle’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

    “moved thereunto by Thomas Carlyle's brilliant exposition of the merits of leading German authors”

    Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe · began in 1832

    Biographer dates her turn to German study to 1832, explicitly crediting Carlyle's influence.

  • 1832articles on Richter, Schiller, and GoethePossiblePosthumous testimony

    “Both she and I were attracted towards this literature...by the wild bugle-call of Thomas Carlyle, in his romantic articles on Richter, Schiller, and Goethe”

    Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · Margaret began to study German early in 1832

    Specific dated (early 1832) memoir account of Fuller being drawn into German study via Carlyle's articles.

  • 1834Count Cagliostro: In Two FlightsAttested

    “Also Memoirs of Count Cagliostro in two Flights which pleased me mightily”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 3oth Novr 1834

    Continuation of the same reading report ('Also Memoirs of Count Cagliostro... which pleased me mightily').

Phases of engagement

  1. 1832–1839

    Discovery and enthusiasm — first encounters through the German connection; The French Revolution read in 1837 and found “fascinating.”

  2. 1840–1850

    Sustained but critical — Carlyle present across the Dial years, the Tribune years, and the final Roman letters; admiration and resistance in balance, with the Latter-Day Pamphlets quoted back at him in 1850.

In Fuller’s words

“I know not when before I had read a book which I could strictly term fascinating, certainly not since the two first years of my acquaintance with the Germans; but this was so indeed.”
Letter · 1837 — The French Revolution: A History
“His book, as it happened, you gave me as a birthday gift... I would have gone through with it, if only for the sketch of Samson, and two or three bits of fun which happen to please me.”
Letter · 1843 — Past and Present
“Yes I shall like to go back and see our “eighteen millions of bores,” with their rail-roads, electric telegraphs, mass movements and ridiculous dilettant phobias.”
Letter · 1850 — Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. 1

When Fuller engaged with Thomas Carlyle

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed8records
IV. Transcendentalist22records
V. New York8records
VI. Europe12records
✦. Memoirs (1852)4records
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

Carlyle in Fuller’s reading world

Analyzed in depth

  • The French Revolution: A History·
  • Sartor Resartus·
  • Past and Present·
  • Chartism·
  • Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches·
  • The Life of Friedrich Schiller·
  • “Memoirs of Mirabeau,” London and Westminster Review”·
  • Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. 1: “The Present Time”

Further works

  • Heroes and Hero-Worship·
  • Frederick the Great

Further works documented in the catalogue

Documentary evidence

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

1832—

Letter to James F. Clarke

read
“The good Navalis" you call him after Mr Carlisle”

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

Inferred after Mr Carlisle," a phrase deriving from Carlyle's 1829 essay “Novalis” in The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany, as Hudspeth identified; though Clarke mediates the reference, Fuller's deep knowledge of Novalis suggests she has likely read the Carlyle essay herself.

1832—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p178
read
“the good Novalis,' as you call him after Mr. Carlyle.”

Fuller, Margaret. Letter 78 (7 August 1832). In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817-1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller attributes the phrase 'the good Novalis' to Carlyle, which James Clarke had apparently used in a prior letter. Hudspeth identified the source as Carlyle's essay 'Novalis' in The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany (July 1829), Carlyle's first major critical evaluation of Novalis in English,

1833—

Letter to James F. Clarke

analyzed · read2 selected passages
“Mr Carlyle is a man of genius therefore" his style is not simple &c Goethe himself is the highest instance how consistent are the utmost delicacy of definition and individuality of expression with perfect simplicity of style.”

Inferred Fuller critiques a claim in Clarke's article about Carlyle's style, quoting Clarke's phrasing and contrasting Carlyle unfavorably with Goethe's simplicity, demonstrating that she has read enough Carlyle to evaluate his style though no specific work is named.

“The Knickerbocker contains some quite good trans. from Faustus with copious quotations from and warm praises of our friend Mr Carlisle's 'abominations' as Mr Norton calls them”

Inferred Hudspeth identified the source as Carlyle's essay 'Goethe's Works' in the Foreign Quarterly Review (August 1832), which the Knickerbocker excerpted.

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

1834—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p213
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“I got a volume of Frazer's Mag and read all the Sartors I could find”
“Also Memoirs of Count Cagliostro in two Flights which pleased me mightily”

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.

1834—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p215
read
“begin to understand the meaning of certain critiques in your article on Schiller”

Fuller, Margaret. "To Frederic H. Hedge, 26 December 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 215–217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Carlyle's Life of Friedrich Schiller is the subject of Hedge's review article, which Fuller engages with through the critical discourse rather than through direct reading of Carlyle's work itself.

1835—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p222
analyzed · quoted · read
“I often try to solace my self by repeating when alone Carlyle's beautiful rhapsodies on the almost miraculous benefits of silence”

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

Fuller names Carlyle and paraphrases his "beautiful rhapsodies on the almost miraculous benefits of silence," which Hudspeth identified as drawn from Carlyle's essay “Characteristics” in the Edinburgh Review.

1836—

Letter to Unknown

p242
read
“Sartor Resartus once”

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

Fuller names Sartor Resartus explicitly; Hudspeth notes she had read it serialized in Fraser's Magazine (1833–34) and may have reread it in the Boston edition sponsored by Emerson and published by James Munroe in 1836.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p79–p84
excerpted · readManuscript page
“From Carlyle.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).

Inferred Fuller does not name a specific Carlyle work; she copies excerpts labeled 'From Carlyle.' that include passages on Rousseau, Diderot/Seneca, and aphorisms consistent with Carlyle's critical essays of the early 1830s.

Cataloged as Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (the collected form of his periodical essays).

1837—

Letter to Frederic H. Hedge

p266
quoted · read
“for Mr Carlyle says 'it is wicked to be sick.' — When you write tell me how you like his Mirabeau.”

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

Fuller quotes Carlyle's remark "it is wicked to be sick" and asks Hedge's opinion of "his Mirabeau." Hudspeth identified the Mirabeau essay as "Memoirs of Mirabeau" from the London and Westminster Review (January 1837), and trace the sick quotation to Carlyle's letter to Emerson of 5 November 1836.

1837—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p268
analyzed · read5 selected passages
“I was able to read it through yesty afternoon and so return it with many thanks. It is good—but not, to my mind, half as good as the Mirabeau.”

Hudspeth identified "it" as Carlyle's essay "The Diamond Necklace" from Fraser's Magazine (January–February 1837), which Emerson sent Fuller bound together with the Mirabeau essay.

“It is good—but not, to my mind, half as good as the Mirabeau.”
“I think it is somewhat ungracious in you to resume your gift of the proof sheet which I was about to lay in lavender by the side of that first most appropriate token of your regard”

Inferred Emerson sent Fuller a proof sheet of Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History, then awaiting publication in May 1837.

“I wish to ask, that, if Carlyle's Miscellanies are to be published by subscription, as, I believe, the Sartor was, you will put down my name for two copies.”

Hudspeth identified James Munroe published the volumes in 1838–39.

“if Carlyle's Miscellanies are to be published by subscription, as, I believe, the Sartor was”

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

1837—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p297
read3 selected passages
“Such books as Carlyle's life of Schiller, or Mrs Jameson's Visits and Sketches you know of course.”
“Carlyle's French Revolution I hope to have for you then.”
“I had not anticipated any further obstacles, but had made up my mind to read to you Bancrofts History and Carlyle, and take care of you in all peace and quietness”

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

1837—

Letter to Unknown Recipient

p298
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“While at Concord I read the first vol of Carlyle's French Revolution which he sent to Mr Emerson.”
“It is written in the same style as the Mirabeau; the same clear and wide view, the same pictorial power and sparkling wit, and is animated by the same energy of faith—”

Inferred Fuller refers to "the Mirabeau" as a known stylistic comparator for The French Revolution,

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

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.

1836—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p219
read
“Sartor Resartus once”

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

1837—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p186
analyzed · read
“The most amusing part is always when he comes back to some refrain, as in the French Revolution of the sea-green.”

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

1839—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p41
analyzed · read
“He ends as he began; as he did in Chartism.”

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

In this passage, Fuller directly references Thomas Carlyle's Chartism (1839), drawing a comparison that underscores her familiarity with his preceding work and informs the editors' identification of this title.

1843—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p40
analyzed · read
“Carlyle's book I have, in some sense, read. It is witty, full of pictures, as usual... No doubt it may be of use to rouse the unthinking to a sense of those great dangers and sorrows.”

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

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p146
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“she and I were attracted towards this literature, at the same time, by the wild bugle-call of Thomas Carlyle, in his romantic articles on Richter, Schiller, and Goethe, which appeared in the old Foreign Review, the Edinburgh Review, and afterwards in the Foreign Quarterly.”

These articles, which highlighted figures like Richter, Schiller, and Goethe, are identified as the "wild bugle-call" that drew both Fuller and her correspondent to this new intellectual terrain.

“the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it [...] his works are true, to blame and praise him, — the Siegfried of England, — great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil, than legislate for good.”

Inferred Examining Thomas Carlyle's writings, Fuller recognizes a "charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it." She analyzes his works as "true, to blame and praise him," characterizing him as "the Siegfried of England, — great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil, than legislate for good." The editors infer Fuller's engagement with Carlyle's oeuvre, acknowledging her long-standing familiarity with his prose and her critical perspective, formed prior to her London meeting with him in 1846.

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

Read alongside