Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

WorkCornelius Mathews

Witchcraft; or, The Martyrs of Salem

Cornelius Mathews (1817–1889)

ExcerptedAnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1846–1847

Letters • Books

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.

  • undated(poem on the journalist's vocation)Demonstrated

    “A worthy account of the vocation and duties of the journalist, is given by Cornelius Mathews... As shakes the canvass of a thousand ships”

    Papers on Literature and Art

    Substantial ~41-line verbatim quotation of a Mathews poem on the journalist's vocation.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe2records
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850
1846—

Papers on Literature and Art

p177-p184
excerpted · analyzed · read
“As the tragedy of Witchcraft has not been published, nor is likely to be, while the dramatic interests of the country are unprotected by any copyright law, it may not be amiss to afford the reader a further opportunity of passing his judgment on this production by a few extracts, and the publication of a contemporary comment on the play, with a letter in the Evening Post, giving an account of its first performance.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.

1847—

Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck

excerpted · analyzed · read
“I have just seen in the 'Literary World' a notice of Mr Griswold's attack on my judgment of 'Witchcraft.' [...] My essay was translated for 'La Revue Independante' but without any of the quotations in verse, as the translators did not feel able to render them adequately.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.