1843—
On Beethoven
p4, p5excerpted · analyzed · readManuscript page
“Extract made by Taylor from Plutarch's Isis and Osiris with regard to the Sistrum.”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Beethoven." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
WorkPlutarch
De Iside et Osiride [On Isis and Osiris], in Moralia
De Iside et Osiride [On Isis and Osiris], in Moralia (c. 100 CE)
Plutarch (c. 46 CE–after 119 CE) · c. 100 CE
ExcerptedAnalyzedReadMentioned
Documented 1843–1847
Letters • Manuscripts
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 →
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
- 1837MoralsPossible
“I have now of yours two vols of Milton, one of Jonson, one of Plutarch's Morals, two of Degerando, with the 7th and 8th of Goethe's nachgelassene Werke”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 30 May 1837
Possible: one volume of Plutarch's Morals kept for the summer; possession, not a reading statement. First Plutarch entry in the graded reading events. Fuller to Ralph Waldo Emerson; provenance per Harvey's extraction: letter to Emerson, printed in Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884).
When Fuller engaged with this work
1845—
Letter to James Nathan
p159read
“By the way, I wish much I had told you the story of Isis and Osiris; it is like your religion. But a time may come.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Inferred Fuller expresses regret that she had not told Nathan 'the story of Isis and Osiris' and suggests it resembles his religion, invoking the Egyptian mythological narrative that she had previously discussed in her earlier correspondence.
1847—
Letter to William James Linton
p297read
“The Isis of a fair regenerate earth”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Inferred Within Fuller's own poem "To a Daughter of Italy" (published in People's Journal alongside this letter), she invokes "The Isis of a fair regenerate earth," showing engagement with the Egyptian myth of Isis as a symbol of regenerative female power.