WorkRalph Waldo Emerson

“The Sphinx”

The Sphinx (1841) Inferred

InferredThough dated October 1840, the entry includes a direct quotation of lines from the work—'Have I a lover / Who is noble and free, / I would he were nobler / Than to love me'—suggesting either prior manuscript circulation among their circle or a later editorial arrangement of the journal.

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

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 →

DemonstratedConfirmed readingEvidence ↓

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.

undatedThe SphinxDemonstrated
“Have I a lover / Who is noble and free / I would he were nobler / Than to love me.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth
A substantial four-line quoted stanza from Emerson's "The Sphinx" implies the source text was consulted directly.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1841—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p43

quoted · read

“Have I a lover Who is noble and free, I would he were nobler Than to love me,”

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 Though dated October 1840, the entry includes a direct quotation of lines from the work—'Have I a lover / Who is noble and free, / I would he were nobler / Than to love me'—suggesting either prior manuscript circulation among their circle or a later editorial arrangement of the journal.