WorkWilliam Gardiner

The Music of Nature; or, An Attempt to Prove that What is Passionate and Pleasing in the Art of Singing, Speaking, and Performing upon Musical Instruments is Derived from the Sounds of the Animated World

The Music of Nature; or, An Attempt to Prove that What is Passionate and Pleasing in the Art of Singing, Speaking, and Performing upon Musical Instruments is Derived from the Sounds of the Animated World (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1832; Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1838)

William Gardiner (1770–1853) · London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1832; Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1838

AnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1838

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 →

AttestedConfirmed reading1837–1838Evidence ↓

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
  • 1837The Music of NatureAttested

    “Christmas day I was ill and, as it was holy day) lay on the sofa and read the Music of Nature— Ah!—then I was happy indeed. I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Providence 3d Jany 1838; "Christmas day"

    "I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night" is a vivid explicit, dated reading statement.

  • 1838The Music of NatureAttested

    “I have not read any books except what every body reads, Gardiner on Music (thank you for that; it was a great deal to me.)”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Providence 1st March 1838

    "I have... read... Gardiner on Music" is an explicit reading statement.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist2records
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850
1838—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p322
analyzed · read
“lay on the sofa and read the Music of Nature— Ah!—then I was happy indeed. I read it completely through from ten in the morng to twelve at night, reading leisurely and calmly too...”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

1838—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p328
analyzed · read
“I have not read any books except what every body reads, Gardiner on Music (thank you for that; it was a great deal to me.)”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Fuller names "Gardiner on Music"—William Gardiner's Music of Nature—and thanks Emerson for recommending it, as Hudspeth identified, Emerson had been taken with the work.