WorkWalter Savage Landor

Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen

Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824), Inferred

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) · 1824

ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1826–1845

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Letters • Books • Notebooks

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 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.

undated(book, likely Imaginary Conversations - Shakespeare & Spenser)Attested
“I am disgusted as a whole with this book of Landor The Shakspeare and Spencer, which I have been Reading this morning”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers)
'which I have been Reading this morning' is an explicit, time-specific first-person reading statement.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence1record

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist2records

V. New York1record

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1826—

Reading Notebook 1825–1827

pp. 118–119

excerpted · quoted · readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)

“Ah my friends, there is a greater difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year than in the conditions of men … Poets are nearly all prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty has imparted a fuller joy … than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian … / W.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Attributed 'W.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p86–p92

excerpted · analyzed · readManuscript page

“From Landor. Imaginary conversations, / I know three things wine, poetry and the world / says Joseph Scaliger, / Montaigne. You know one too many Then.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).

1842—

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

p92

analyzed · read

“A conversation in Landor between Sir Philip Sidney and Lord Brooke is in the same style.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Inferred Hudspeth identified this as Walter Savage Landor's "Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney" from Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, featuring Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, and Sir Philip Sidney, two Renaissance poets and courtiers.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

source lines 1239–1241

quoted · read

“Landor says that he cannot have a great deal of mind who cannot afford to let the larger part of it lie fallow, and what is true of genius is not less so of virtue.”

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

Inferred Fuller attributes explicitly to 'Landor' (Walter Savage Landor, 1775–1864) the saying that a person 'cannot have a great deal of mind who cannot afford to let the larger part of it lie fallow.' The most likely source is Landor's Imaginary Conversations which Fuller knew well.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1824—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p252

quoted · read

“these words of Landor:—'There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water”

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 Fuller engages with Landor's prose, quoting his observation, "There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water." This line is identified by the editors as belonging to the Pericles and Aspasia dialogue within Landor's collection.