Author

Henry David Thoreau(1817–1862)

Henry David Thoreau is documented in Fuller’s letters (1840–1843). 4 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement: AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters
Documented: 1840–1843

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 Henry David Thoreau’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
1840The ServiceAttested
“my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a suitable hour to reread it as I wished till last night. This second reading only confirms my impression from the first.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 1st Deer. [184o]
"I have not found a suitable hour to reread it...This second reading only confirms my impression" is an explicit statement of active re-reading.

In Emerson’s letters to Fuller (L-3)

Books Emerson sent or offered, his secondhand reports, and his own references — never counted in Fuller’s totals.

29 August 1847Thoreau, book then under contractCircle context · not counted
Publication news · Myerson, letter of 29 August 1847 (page locator provisional)
Emerson's own context; not evidence of Fuller's reading.

In Fuller’s words

“I am to blame for so long detaining your manuscript. But my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a suitable hour to reread it as I wished till last night. This second reading only confirms my impression from the first. The essay is rich in thoughts, and I should be pained not to meet it again. But then the thoughts seem to me so out of their natural order, that I cannot read it through without pain.”

"The Service" · Letter to Henry D. Thoreau · 1840

When Fuller engaged with Henry David Thoreau

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist4records

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

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

Thoreau in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1840—

Letter to Henry D. Thoreau

p186

analyzed · read

“I am to blame for so long detaining your manuscript. But my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a suitable hour to reread it as I wished till last night.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Hudspeth identified the manuscript as Thoreau's essay 'The Service': 'With this letter Fuller returned Thoreau's essay "The Service," which was not published until 1902.' Fuller describes reading it twice and gives a detailed critical assessment — it is 'rich in thoughts' but the 'thoughts seem to me so out of their natural order.'

1841—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p231

read

“Henry T's verses.- I have kept "The fisher boy"; that copy was for myself; was it not?”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Fuller calls it 'The fisher boy'; Hudspeth identified it as 'The Fisher's Son,' a poem Thoreau wrote c. late 1839 or early 1840; not published in the Dial] | Fuller explicitly names 'The fisher boy' as a poem by 'Henry T.' (Henry Thoreau) and says she kept a copy 'for myself'

1842—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p97

analyzed · quoted · read

“meseems he has spoiled his 'Rumors' &c by substituting / And simple truth on every tongue / for / All the poems are unsung, / or some such line which was the one that gave most character to the original and yet I admire the / tread of high souled men.”

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

1843—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p160

analyzed · read

“So I did not regard your contempt for the long prosa on Transcendentalism, Progress &c any more than Parker's disgust at Henry Thoreau's pieces.”

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

Inferred Fuller mentions "Henry Thoreau's pieces" in the Dial without specifying titles, and Hudspeth identified Parker's 1840 journal entry expressing disgust at Thoreau's essay on "Aulus Persius Flaccus" in the Dial.