WorkCapel Lofft, the younger

Self-Formation: Or, the History of an Individual Mind

AnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1843

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 reading1842Evidence ↓

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
1842Self-FormationAttested
“In an English book I read last year, by Capel Lofft, which, under the somewhat oldmaidish title of Self-Formation, contains free and accurate descriptions of mental life”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · letter dated Cambridge 6th Novr 1843; "In an English book I read last year"
Explicit 'In an English book I read last year, by Capel Lofft'.

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

1843—

Letter to Albert H. Tracy

p155

analyzed · read

“In an English book I read last year, by Capel Lofft, which, under the somewhat oldmaidish title of Self-Formation, contains free and accurate descriptions of mental life, are indicated with a good deal of skill those sharp turns of fate or character when, after preparation of unknown length beneath the soil, an unexpected plant springs up and shadows all the remaining scene.”

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