“When you were here, you seemed to think I might perhaps have done something on the Vita Nuova; and the next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do it...”
WorkDante Alighieri
La Vita Nuova [The New Life]
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) · c. 1294
TranslatedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1842–1846
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Essays • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
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 work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Confirmed reading
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
- Dated
- 1833Vita NuovaDemonstrated
“At twenty-three she was so familiar with Dante that Emerson proposed her translating the "Vita Nuova.”
Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney · At twenty-three she was so familiar with Dante
Engagement_type 'Translated' automatically qualifies per the rubric, tied to her documented familiarity with Dante at twenty-three.
- 1842Divine Comedy / Inferno / Vita NuovaDemonstrated
“An edition of Cary's translation... studious youths and maidens have been reading the Inferno. Margaret had very early found her way to Dante”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · December, 1842
Engagement_type Translated automatically qualifies; describes Cary's Dante translation and her early acquaintance with Dante.
- 1842Vita NuovaDemonstrated
“you seemed to think I might perhaps have done something on the Vita Nuova... I intended to translate the poems, with which it is interspersed, into plain prose”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · December, 1842
Engagement_type Translated automatically qualifies (her intended prose translation of the Vita Nuova poems).
When Fuller engaged with this work
1842—
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
p102analyzed · read2 selected passages
“Milnes and Longfellow have tried each their power at doing it in verse, and have done better, probably, than I could, yet not well.”
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
p144analyzed
“How could I fail in answering your last to speak of the translations of Dante and their paraphrase. I am impatient to see these leaves.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller names "Dante" explicitly and refers to translations; Hudspeth identified she is discussing the Vita Nuova in a joint translation by Emerson and Ellery Channing.
1845—
New-York Daily Tribune
“Italy. ? Cary's Dante” · July?August 1845analyzed · read
“The Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love, the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p105
1845—
Letter to James Nathan
p158analyzed · read
“There came, too, a book from Mr Delf. It was translations from the Nova Vita and Convito of Dante with a fine head of him on the first leaf.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Hudspeth's notes identify the edition as Charles Lyell's translation of The Lyrical Poems of Dante Alighieri (London, 1845), which Fuller reviewed in the Tribune on 18 November 1845, calling it 'the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love.'
1845—
Italy.
“Italy.”mentioned
“The Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love, the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did.”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Italy." New-York Daily Tribune, 18 November 1845. · 18 November 1845
1845—
Letter to James Nathan
p159analyzed · read
“It was translations from the Vita Nuova and Convito of Dante with a fine head of him on the first leaf. The Vita Nuova has been one of the most cherished companions of my life.”
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
1845—
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . .
“The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . .”mentioned
“The present poem, like the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances”
Fuller, Margaret. "The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 27 December 1845. · 27 December 1845
1846—
Leigh Hunt’s Italian Poets.
“Leigh Hunt’s Italian Poets.”quoted · read
“the Vita Nuova is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever might be its mistake as to its object”
Fuller, Margaret. "Leigh Hunt’s Italian Poets." New-York Daily Tribune, 18 February 1846. · 18 February 1846
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
n.d.—
Extracts Only
p32analyzed · readManuscript page
“Beatrice approaches Dante / and there moves a hidden / virtue from her / [Clt?] whose touch / The power of ancient love was strong / within him.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Extracts Only." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (88); Box 6 (88).
Inferred Fuller writes a prose note ‘Beatrice approaches Dante and there moves a hidden virtue from her’ followed by ‘The power of ancient love was strong within him.’ This is an allusion to the meeting of Beatrice and Dante, a scene central to the Vita Nuova and to Purgatorio Canto XXX. The phrase ‘hidden virtue’ recalls the Vita Nuova’s description of the effect of Beatrice’s presence on the poet.
Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
1852—
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
p10analyzed · read
“December, 1842. — When you were here, you seemed to think I might perhaps have done something on the Vita Nuova; and the next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do it.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.