1820—
Letter to Amelia Greenwood
read
“Have you finished Delphine?”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
WorkGermaine de Staël
Delphine
Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) · 1802
AnalyzedReadMentioned
Documented 1820–1831
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
- 1826Corinne / Delphine / De l'AllemagneAttested
“I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, 14 May 1826
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re41 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-01 l.2186-2188, letter dated May 14 1826; tier A; same passage); re39 (Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney, p.199; tier C; same passage) — counted once here. Explicit first-person statement 'I am studying Madame de Stael...with great delight'.
When Fuller engaged with this work
1831—
Letter to James F. Clarke
p182analyzed · read
“I should not like Delphine now-”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Fuller states "I should not like Delphine now," implying she has previously read the novel but would not enjoy it given her current critical response to passionate self-abandonment; Hudspeth identified the work as Madame de Staël's Delphine and confirm the novel was published in 1802.
Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
1852—
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
p142read
“I should not like Delphine now.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred This entry identifies Germaine de Staël's 1802 epistolary novel Delphine, a work Margaret Fuller likely encountered earlier in her life.
The context, which contrasts fictional ardor with the real-life passionate letters of Mme de Lespinasse, strongly supports the attribution to de Staël’s influential novel.