Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Nathaniel Parker Willis(1806–1867)

Nathaniel Parker Willis is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, and manuscripts (1829–1846). 7 distinct works are named, most often in Books for the Holidays., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Manuscripts
Documented
1829–1846
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 Nathaniel Parker Willis’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
  • 1829two pieces in the American Monthly (unsigned)Attested

    “I stopped to read Willis's two pieces in his last number which came home tonight; he has half a dozen ideas”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Friday eveg. Deer 19th 182g

    "I stopped to read Willis's two pieces in his last number which came home tonight" is an explicit, dated reading statement.

In Fuller’s words

“The new, full, original, radiant American Life may receive them as an heir-loom from this transitive state we are in now, and future generations may stare at the mongrel products of Saratoga, and maidens still laugh till they cry at the “Letter of Ione S. to her Spirit Bridegroom.”
Letter of Ione S. to her Spirit Bridegroom · Story Books for the Hot Weather. · 1845

When Fuller engaged with Nathaniel Parker Willis

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence2records
III. Self-Directed2records
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York7records
VI. Europe2records
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

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

Willis in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1829—

Letter to George T. Davis

p155
analyzed · read
“I stopped to read Willis's two pieces in his last number which came home tonight; he has half a dozen ideas”

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

Inferred Fuller refers to "Willis's two pieces in his last number," and Hudspeth identified the American Monthly Magazine, which Nathaniel Parker Willis edited from April 1829 to mid-1831.

The specific article titles remain unidentified, though Fuller criticizes Willis for having "half a dozen ideas" and says she will admire him "notwithstanding his cloak, patronizing airs." This is a periodical reference per active reading practice.

1830—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p179
read
“the moonlight troubles me as much as even it did Lord N's skating hero.”

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

Inferred Fuller alludes to a "skating hero" in an unidentified work by N.

P. Willis, described as troubled by moonlight and melancholy; the specific piece remains unidentified.

1835—

Poems, Others

p2
excerpted · read2 selected passagesManuscript page
“Thou were monarch born! Tradition's pages / Tell not the planting of thy parent tree; / But that the forest tribes have bent for ages, / To thee and to thy sires, the subject knee.”

Inferred Poem signed 'CASSIUS,' a known pen name of N. Willis for secular verse; poem depicts Red Jacket, the Seneca chief, in the same manner as Willis's published poetry on Native American subjects; no individual author line is printed. The poem is printed and glued into the notebook on page 2, in three columns alongside two other pieces.

“She's beautiful! Her raven curls / Have broken hearts in envious girls— / And then they sleep in contrast so, / Like raven feathers upon snow ...”

Inferred Poem signed 'CASSIUS,' the same pen name as M-014-R01 on the same printed page; same printing medium (cut and glued). Poem headed 'A PORTRAIT,' signed 'CASSIUS' at the foot, printed and glued into page 2 alongside the 'Red Jacket' poem and the 'Argentile and Curan' excerpt.

Fuller, Margaret. "Poems, Others." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.

1845—

The Child of the Islands . . .

“The Child of the Islands . . .”
mentioned
“Willis has described them well in one of the most touching of his poems, as being a tale — "of feelings which in me are cold, But ah! with what a passionate sweetness told!”

Also reprinted in Papers on Literature and Art. Counted once, at its first appearance.

Fuller, Margaret. "The Child of the Islands . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 26 July 1845. · 26 July 1845

1845—

Books for the Holidays.

“Books for the Holidays.”
analyzed · read3 selected passages
“When we first looked upon this large, handsome book, fruit of twenty sunny years of Mr. Willis’s life, we thought—Surely no one will buy it.”
“Looking over the book, however, we change our opinion. These Ephemera still amuse, read for the third time.”
“In looking over the Ephemera, (Shadows from the Mirror,) we are struck by the spirit with which the character of “the Brigadier” is kept up.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Books for the Holidays." New-York Daily Tribune, 22 December 1845.

1845—

Story Books for the Hot Weather.

“Story Books for the Hot Weather.”
analyzed · read3 selected passages
“Henrietta Temple,’ Mr. Willis with his usual justness of perception, has praised as containing a collection of the best love-letters ever written”
“Dashes at Life,' by N. P. Willis. The life of Mr. Willis is too European for him to have a general or permanent fame in America.”

Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.

“The new, full, original, radiant American Life may receive them as an heir-loom from this transitive state we are in now, and future generations may stare at the mongrel products of Saratoga, and maidens still laugh till they cry at the “Letter of Ione S.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Story Books for the Hot Weather." New-York Daily Tribune, 20 June 1845.

1846—

American Literature.

“American Literature.”
mentioned
“Hallock and Willis are poets of society. Though the former has written so little, yet that little is full of fire—elegant, witty, delicate in sentiment.”

Fuller, Margaret. "American Literature." New-York Daily Tribune, 23 September 1846. · 23 September 1846

1846—

American Literature

“American Literature”
analyzed
“Willis has not the same terseness or condensed electricity. But he has grace, spirit, at times a winning pensiveness, and a lively, though almost wholly sensuous, delight in the beautiful.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p308

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p308; page given is to the 1869 reprint.