WorkNathaniel Hawthorne

“The Gentle Boy”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) · in The Token, 1832

AnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1834

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 →

AttestedConfirmed reading1834Evidence ↓

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
1834The Gentle BoyAttested
“I took a two or three year old "Token," and chanced on a story, called the "Gentle Boy," which I remembered to have heard was written by somebody in Salem.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. 1834?]
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re516 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-03 l.6959-6966; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. First-person narrative describing chancing on and reading the specific story 'The Gentle Boy.'

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed1record

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1834—

Letter to Unknown

p167

analyzed · read

“I took a two or three year old "Token," and chanced on a story, called the "Gentle Boy," which I remembered to have heard was written by somebody in Salem.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Fuller names 'Gentle Boy' from a 'Token'—the Boston literary annual of 1832—and has just read it, praising its 'grace and delicacy of feeling.' Hudspeth identified the author as the young Nathaniel Hawthorne, though Fuller believed it was written by a woman and did not know his identity.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1832—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p220

analyzed · read

“a story, called the 'Gentle Boy,' which I remembered to have heard was written by somebody in Salem”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.