WorkThomas Cooper
The Purgatory of Suicides: A Prison-Rhyme
Thomas Cooper (1805–1892)
AnalyzedReadMentioned
Documented 1846
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters
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 →
“the notice of Browning and of the Purgatory of Suicides, by the time they are wanted.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“At the house of W. J. Fox, I saw first himself, an eloquent man, of great practical ability, then Cooper, (of the "Purgatory of Suicides,") and others.”
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 this journal entry, Margaret Fuller encounters Thomas Cooper, identified as the author of "The Purgatory of Suicides." This epic Chartist poem, published in 1845, was written by Cooper during his imprisonment in Stafford Gaol.