Author
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1820–1850). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Letter to Timothy Fuller, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
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 →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“vires acquirit eundo / parva metu prima; mox sese attollit in auras, / et caput inter nubilia condit.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 6th March 1835
A substantial three-line Latin verse passage quoted verbatim from the Aeneid, beyond a mere short phrase.
“I was from childhood up in the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginning of the books or other divisions of a book by heart, as first of the five books of Moses, then of the Aeneid o& Metamorphoses.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I am half through the fifth book of Virgil In my last lesson I got the whole of the fourth book and Uncle Elisha said I got it extremely well”
Inferred Hudspeth identified Book 5 depicts Aeneas driven to Sicily, where he institutes funeral games for Anchises.
“I have got through Virgil and I shall go into Cicero as soon as I go to school.”
Inferred This culminates the Aeneid study documented in her previous letters, as Hudspeth identified.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“This fancy was attributed at the time to my incessant reading of Virgil.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Fragmentary Reading Notes and Autobiographical Reflections." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller mentions 'my incessant reading of Virgil' in her autobiographical childhood recollection; no specific work named. Fuller recalls in her autobiographical reflections that her childhood dreams of blood and violence were attributed to her 'incessant reading of Virgil'.
Fuller recalls in her autobiographical reflections that her childhood dreams of blood and violence were attributed to her 'incessant reading of Virgil'.
“their puzzles about Vergil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully-described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions”
Fuller, Margaret. "To [?], ca. February 1835." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 218–219. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller reflects that her pupils' engagement with Virgil's "notions of heaven and virtue" and his "gracefully-described gods and goddesses" has led her to reconsider whether classical education is as religiously neutral as she previously thought. No specific work is named, though the references suggest primarily the Aeneid.
“I have still a great partiality for the goddess who vires acquirit eundo parva metu prima; mox sese attollit in auras, et caput inter nubilia condit.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“without it you would not have had your Horace and Virgil stimulated by whose society you read the woods and fields to more advantage”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller explicitly names Virgil alongside Horace as texts Richard is reading in his preparatory studies, and her comment that Richard reads "the woods and fields to more advantage" through Virgil's influence specifically links his nature walks in Concord to the pastoral poetry of the Eclogues and Georgics.
“The Latin poet, though used to a court, has faintly described what I saw and heard often, in going the length of a street.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller alludes to "the Latin poet" in describing wild rumor and lamentation during the Dorr Rebellion in Providence. Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
“Whatever be called his function, he did the honors of the place so much in harmony with it, as to leave the guests free to imagine themselves in Elysium.”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller names Elysium as a classical figure of bliss without citing a textual source; standard mythological background knowledge.
“floating on the cloud a starry banner with the inscription "Afflatur Numine.”
Inferred Banner inscription 'Afflatur Numine' adapts Aeneid VI.50: 'adflata est numine quando iam propiore dei' (she was breathed upon by the divinity with the god now nearer). Fuller adapts 'adflata est numine' (Aeneid VI.50, describing the Cumaean Sibyl) into the active present form 'Afflatur Numine' ('is breathed upon by the divine').
“Its heavy folds of pearly gray satin slowly unfolding, gave to view the word Notitia, and Causarum would have followed, when a sudden breeze from the west caught it”
Inferred Banner inscription 'Notitia Causarum' echoes Georgics II.490: 'Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas' (Happy he who could know the causes of things). The Critic's banner reads 'Notitia Causarum' — 'knowledge of causes' — directly echoing Virgil's famous line in Georgics II.490.
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“Procul, O procul este profani.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p343
Inferred The Latin tag for this quoted passage, "Procul, O procul este profani" ("Far, O far be ye profane!"), is an ecphrastic quotation from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI, line 258.
“just as the banner was ready to unfold its young glories in the home of Horace, Virgil and Tacitus”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XIX." New-York Daily Tribune, 29 January 1848. · 29 January 1848
“yearned to embrace her also, and ached when the shade refused to fill his longing arms.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller's phrase "the shade refused to fill his longing arms" alludes to one of the most celebrated passages in Virgil's Aeneid: the three failed embraces of a shade.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“none had said 'Quantum mutatus ab illo!”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Sir Thomas Browne." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (87); Box 6 (87).
The line is quoted by Browne within a passage Fuller transcribed.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could not get out”
Inferred Margaret Fuller's writings evoke a dreamscape reminiscent of Virgil's Aeneid, specifically recalling the passage where Aeneas encounters the bloody myrtle trees of Polydorus in Book III.
“Dante was far greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven.”
Inferred In her reflections on Roman literature, Fuller invokes Virgil, whom she identifies as "the Mantuan," referencing his significance through Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
“their puzzles about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully-described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions”
Inferred Her reflections suggest that her classical education, likely encompassing the Aeneid and the Eclogues/Georgics, profoundly shaped her understanding of these philosophical and theological themes and contributed to her own early intellectual development.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“drowning in the deep places of Virgil”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
Inferred The specific work is not named, but the Aeneid is the standard schoolroom Virgil text of the period.