1825—
Letter to Susan Prescott
p151read
“then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
WorkThomas Brown
“Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind”
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1820) Inferred
Thomas Brown (1778–1820) · Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1820
ReadMentioned
Documented 1825–1836
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters
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
- 1825Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human MindAttested
“Next I read French,—Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe,—till eight, then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, it July 1825
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re649 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-01 l.2091-2092; tier A; same passage); re650 (Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe, letter dated July 11, 1825; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Continuation of the same daily-schedule sentence ('then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy') describing active reading.
When Fuller engaged with this work
1836—
Letter to James F. Clarke
p244read
“dipping into Brown, Stewart, and that class of books.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names "Brown" as part of a cluster of common-sense Scottish philosophy books she is "dipping into."
Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
1820—
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
p63read
“then two or three lectures in Brown's ' Philosophy.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
In July 1825, Margaret Fuller integrated study of Thomas Brown's “Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind” into her daily routine, referring to it as "'Brown's Philosophy.'" This widely adopted text, published posthumously in 1820, was a standard fixture in American colleges during the 1820s, leading to the archive's confident identification of the work cited.