WorkPhilip James Bailey
Festus: A Poem (1839; expanded American edition reviewed here: Boston, first American edition, c. 1845)
Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) · 1839; expanded 2nd ed. 1845
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Documented 1839–1846
Letters • Books • Essays • Journals • Notebooks • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
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 →
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.
“The beautiful are never desolate; For some one alway loves them, God or Man. If man forsakes God himself takes them.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Sunday evening 27th April [1845]; footnote: 'Slightly misquoted from Festus, p. 48'
Multi-line, multi-sentence verbatim quotation from Festus is substantial enough to imply the book was open in front of her.
“This is one of the grand feelings in Festus; looking on God at last, he saw but "dazzling darkness.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Entry, February 1841." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 95.
“Dialogue upon Festus Dial / with an extract. / from a critique on / the same in the Tribune”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes, 1st Issue of the Dial." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086.
“Dialogue upon Festus } Dial / with an extract. / from a critique on / the same in the Tribune”
Fuller, Margaret. "Outline for a Collected Volume." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“] "Fest[us]”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“In the next issue of the Dial, Fuller published two long essays, "Lives of the Great Composers" and a review of Philip Bailey's poem Festus. [Hudspeth footnote 5]”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“My article on Festus lies half-finished. I hope to finish it, and if so, could do without your aid this time.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“You gave me this book, and Festus/ if ever you find a book as good, or (possible?) better, be sure and give me that too.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
“The beautiful are never desolate / For some one always loves them, God or man, / If man forsakes — God himself takes them," / and I am surely one of the beautiful, so far that the soul is full of beauty.”
The work is explicitly named later in this letter, which confirms the identification.
“My friend, I send you a book with which, more than any, except Wilhelm Meister, I have sympathized. These two books express something of the peculiar life of this age of which we are part...”
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
“The beautiful are never desolate; / For some one alway loves them, God or Man. / If man forsakes God himself takes them.”
Fuller quotes three lines from Bailey's Festus, changing "But" to "For" in the first line, omitting a dash, and changing "abandons" to "forsakes" in the third line; Hudspeth identified the source and note these are slight misquotations from page 48 of the canonical text.
“Now I will not send you "Festus"; there is no time for books, and no poem like the poem we can make for ourselves.”
“There is no silence; it is music ceased.”
Hudspeth identified this is from Bailey's Festus, page 48; Fuller's version ("There is no silence; it is music ceased") varies slightly from Bailey's canonical text ("There was no discord-it was music ceased"), representing a misquotation from memory consistent
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Keep Festus as long as you wish and Tell me of some way by which I can send you books, if any come that you would like.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Read this, world. He who writes is dead to thee, / But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired; / Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired, / Like blood to his heart.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
A footnote (line 6078) identifies the specific edition as the "First American edition, Boston." Fuller extensively quotes the poem's proem (lines 6134-6143).
“DESCRIPTION OF ANGELA, FROM "FESTUS." "I loved her for that she was beautiful, / And that to me she seemed to be all nature / And all varieties of things in one...”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Explicitly attributed 'FROM "FESTUS"' — Philip James Bailey's Festus (1839). Bailey's Festus was also quoted in the main essay's letters (B-1 context) and previously cataloged in the love letters extraction.