Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

William Wordsworth(1770–1850)

Wordsworth is Fuller’s most consistently quoted poet — more quotations in the catalogue than any other English-language writer except Shakespeare. Present from 1826 through 1848, he is absorbed rather than studied: his lines appear in her letters and essays without announcement, the way a deeply known text does. The engagement deepens rather than fades across her career, with the Tribune years bringing the most concentrated Wordsworth period. She reads him less as a nature poet than as a moral poet — a poet of duty, loss, and the persistence of feeling in the face of change. The sonnet “Why art thou silent” she found linked to her own experience; “A Complaint” she discovered at a particular moment and felt it “link into meaning many sounds that were vibrating round me.”

A moral poet, not a nature poet

Fuller’s Wordsworth is the poet of duty, loss, and endurance rather than of landscape — the critical framing that governs every quotation she takes from him.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented
1826–1848

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 William Wordsworth’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
  • 1835Work not namedDemonstrated

    “Wordsworth, "Why art Thou silent! Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre...”

    Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 1835 Nov-

    Manuscript notebook entry copying a multi-line stanza from Wordsworth.

  • 1836Work not namedAttested

    “I think, in reading, I shall place him next to Wordsworth.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 1836

    Explicit 'in reading, I shall place him next to Wordsworth' situates this within her active reading.

  • 1836Character of the Happy WarriorAttested

    “By the way, do you know his "Happy Warrior"? I find my insight of this sublime poet perpetually deepening.”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 1836

    Continues the reading discussion, explicit ongoing engagement with Wordsworth's poem.

Phases of engagement

  1. 1826–1834

    Early presence — Wordsworth absorbed in the early reading years, before the Groton and Providence period.

  2. 1835–1844

    Teaching and Dial years — regular quotation in letters and manuscripts; Wordsworth as touchstone in critical discussions of poetry and nature.

  3. 1845–1848

    Tribune concentration — Wordsworth at his most present, in the Tribune criticism and the late letters.

In Fuller’s words

“Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant / Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air / Of absence withers what was once so fair?”
Papers on Literature and Art · 1846 — “Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant”
“I found this poem in Wordsworth, which seemed to link into meaning many sounds that were vibrating round me. There is a change, and I am poor / Your Love hath been, nor long ago, / A Fountain at my fond Heart’s door.”
Papers on Literature and Art · 1846 — “A Complaint”
“Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour. / Return to us again, / And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. / Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart.”
Papers on Literature and Art · 1846 — “London, 1802”

When Fuller engaged with William Wordsworth

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence3records
III. Self-Directed3records
IV. Transcendentalist15records
V. New York20records
VI. Europe41records
✦. Memoirs (1852)3records
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

Wordsworth in Fuller’s reading world

Analyzed and quoted

  • Character of the Happy Warrior·
  • “Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant” (sonnet)·
  • “A Complaint”·
  • “London, 1802” (sonnet), in Poems, in Two Volumes”·
  • Poems, in Two Volumes·
  • “On the Power of Sound”·
  • Peter Bell·
  • “My Heart Leaps Up” [“The Rainbow”]”

Further works

  • The Prelude (inferred)·
  • Tintern Abbey (inferred)

Further works documented in the catalogue

Manuscripts on digitalfuller.org

Transcribed from originals at Houghton Library, Harvard, and the Boston Public Library. The manuscripts are not supplementary — they are the evidence.

Documentary evidence

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

1826—

Reading Notebook 1825–1827

p. 75
excerpted · quoted · read2 selected passagesSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)
“She was a Phantom of Delight / When first she gleamed upon my sight.”

Inferred The poem is copied without attribution on p. 75, but the lines are the first two stanzas of Wordsworth's 'She Was a Phantom of Delight' (first published in Poems in Two Volumes, London: Longman, 1807). The characteristic diction and imagery are unmistakable.

The poem is copied without attribution on p. 75, but the lines are the first two stanzas of Wordsworth's 'She Was a Phantom of Delight' (first published in Poems in Two Volumes, London: Longman, 1807).

“I have seen / A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract / Of inland ground, applying to his ear / The consolations of a smooth lipped shell, / To which, in silence hushed, his very soul / Listened intensely … Even such a shell the universe itself_ / Is to the ear of faith … Devout above the meaning of your will." / Wordsworth._”

Inferred Attributed 'Wordsworth._' at end. The passage is from Book IV ('Despondency Corrected') of The Excursion (1814), beginning at line 1132. Separate entry from 'She Was a Phantom of Delight' as it is a different work.

Attributed 'Wordsworth._' at end.

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

1831—

Letter to Unknown

p173
analyzed
“Mr. G[reenwood] ...”

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

Inferred Greenwood, Wordsworth is named as having "guided, or, rather, completely vivified the poetry of this age" and having "given all his better individuality to Byron." Fuller listens and silently disagrees but acknowledges her strong familiarity with Wordsworth: "I knew so well what I thought."

1833—

Letter to James F. Clarke

analyzed · read
“You do not mention Wordsworth as one of the moral popular poets He may be styled popular in the best sense as he has exercised so much sway over the leading English minds- but is indeed not so with the young and ardent who are the Poet's natural audience.”

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

Inferred Fuller observes that Wordsworth, though lacking appeal to "the young and ardent," may be called "popular in the best sense" for his influence on "the leading English minds," displaying nuanced understanding of his audience though no specific work is named.

1833—

Journal 1833–1834

p23
quoted · read
“The clouds were touched / and in their silent faces he did reach / Unutterable love. / Wordsworth”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1833–1834." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (4); Box 5 (83).

Inferred Phrase ‘The clouds were touched / and in their silent faces he did reach / Unutterable love’ attributed to ‘Wordsworth’ by Fuller in her manuscript; identified as The Excursion, Book First (The Wanderer), lines 203–205. Fuller attributes the passage explicitly to Wordsworth and sets it as a verse epigraph on p. 23 alongside the Körner quotation. The title is marked Inferred because Fuller names only the author, not the poem.

Phrase ‘The clouds were touched / and in their silent faces he did reach / Unutterable love’ attributed to ‘Wordsworth’ by Fuller in her manuscript; identified as The Excursion, Book First (The Wanderer), lines 203–205. Fuller attributes the passage explicitly to Wordsworth and sets it as a verse epigraph on p. 23 alongside the Körner quotation.

1835—

Poems, Others

p7
excerpted · quoted · readManuscript page
“Wordsworth, / "Why art Thou silent! Is thy love a plant / Of such weak fibre, that the treacherous air / Of absence withers what was once so fair? ...”

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

1836—

Letter to Unknown

p242
analyzed · read
“By the way, do you know his "Happy Warrior"? I find my insight of this sublime poet perpetually deepening.”

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

1836—

Journal December 1836

p12–13
mentionedManuscript page
“But Byron and Wordsworth are poets.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal December 1836." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 3.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p183
excerpted · read2 selected passagesManuscript page
“To the Sky Lark,_ Wordsworth. / Etherial Minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky! / Dost thou despise the Earth where cares abound? [...] True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.”
“Character of the happy Warrior, Wordsworth / Who is the happy Warrior? — Who is he / That every Man in arms should wish to be?”

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

1839—

Journal April 1839

p39
excerpted · read2 selected passagesManuscript page
“The Sonnet - Wordsworth.”

Inferred The text matches Wordsworth's 'Scorn not the Sonnet' almost verbatim (small variants: 'honors' for 'honours'; 'Fairy-land' consistent). The poem alludes to Shakespeare, Petrarch, Tasso, Camões, Dante, Spenser, and Milton — those names appear in the text but are not separate reading references; they are mentioned within the poem Fuller is excerpting.

“Ode to Duty_ Wordsworth_ / Stern Daughter of the voice of God, / Oh Duty!”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal April 1839." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (Box A); Box 5 (99).

1840—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p168
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“At times I read the Bible at times Wordsworth I dwelt in the thoughtful solitudes of his Excursion”
“I wandered like his white doe.”

Fuller describes identifying with the solitary white doe who watches over Emily Norton's grave after all else is lost — a deeply felt identification with the poem's consoling figure.

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

1840—

Journal 1840

p31
analyzedManuscript page
“In England, England there seems absolutely no poetic truth to be said. Wordsworth was the last that had somewhat.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).

Inferred Fuller invokes Wordsworth in a critical survey of the state of English literature, judging him the last English poet with genuine 'poetic truth.' No specific work named, so title is inferred.

1841—

Letter to William H. Channing

p223
quoted · read
“Surely the "kindred points of Heaven and Home" were known in his breast, whatever guise they might assume.”

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

Inferred Fuller quotes exactly from the poem and attributes the sentiment to the fisherman father on the rock — he embodies the values Wordsworth's skylark represents.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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

1836—

Recollections of Richard F. Fuller

p66
analyzed · read
“Wordsworth, made precious by her marks of emphatic approbation. These books I now have.”

Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.

Inferred Richard Fuller names Wordsworth as one of the books Margaret placed in his hands 'as tenant-in-common,' describing it as 'made precious by her marks of emphatic approbation.' T

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p219
analyzed · quoted · read5 selected passages
“do you know his 'Happy Warrior'? I find my insight of this sublime poet perpetually deepening.”
“drank a great deal from Wordsworth”

Inferred Margaret Fuller's extensive engagement with William Wordsworth is evident in her assertion that she "drank a great deal from Wordsworth," whom she ranks as a preeminent poet. This admiration, noted in relation to her general reading of Wordsworth alongside Southey in 1836, underscores his significant influence on her literary sensibility.

“She acknowledged that Wordsworth had done more to make all men poetical, than perhaps any other; that he was the poet of reflection; that where he failed to poetise his subject, his simple faith intimated to the reader a poetry that he did not find in the book.”

Inferred In her critical reflections, Margaret Fuller engages with the poetry of William Wordsworth, whom she identifies as "the poet of reflection" and credits with having "done more to make all men poetical, than perhaps any other." While Fuller does not cite a specific work, her commentary suggests a deep engagement with Wordsworth's capacity to imbue subjects with poetic meaning, even when his own verse might not fully realize it.

“not too bright and good for human nature's daily "food.”

Inferred This deliberate allusion confirms the editors' identification of Wordsworth's poem.

“To speak with open heart and "tongue affectionate and true," — to enjoy real repose and the consciousness of a thorough mutual understanding in the presence of friends when we do meet, is what is needed.”

Inferred In her journal, Margaret Fuller engages with William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (1800), specifically the poem "The Fountain." Fuller draws upon the poem's expression of intimate friendship and open communication, quoting the line, "tongue affectionate and true," to articulate her own thoughts on genuine connection and understanding among friends.

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

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