Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

WorkSir Walter Scott

Rob Roy

Rob Roy (1818) Inferred

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) · 1818

InferredFuller alludes to Helen MacGregor, the fierce wife of Rob Roy in Scott's novel Rob Roy (published Edinburgh, 1818). Hudspeth identified: 'Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife in Scott's novel (Edinburgh, 1818), is a fierce woman who threatens destruction to any who oppose her or her husband. 32.' Fuller names Helen MacGregor explicitly, identifying herself with this literary character to describe her editorial role.

ReadMentioned

Documented 1840

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 →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist2records
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850
1840—

Letter to William H. Channing

p136
read
“act Helen Mac Gregor to those who love compromise, by doing my little best to sink them in the waters of Oblivion!”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller alludes to Helen MacGregor, the fierce wife of Rob Roy in Scott's novel Rob Roy (published Edinburgh, 1818). Hudspeth identified: 'Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife in Scott's novel (Edinburgh, 1818), is a fierce woman who threatens destruction to any who oppose her or her husband. 32.' Fuller names Helen MacGregor explicitly, identifying herself with this literary character to describe her editorial role.

Hudspeth identified: 'Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife in Scott's novel (Edinburgh, 1818), is a fierce woman who threatens destruction to any who oppose her or her husband.

1840—

Letter to Rev. W.H. Channing

p2
readManuscript page
“and act Helen McGregor to those who love compromise, by doing my little best to sink them in the waters of Oblivion!!”

Fuller, Margaret. "Letter to Rev. W.H. Channing." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 1, Folder: 38.

Inferred Fuller invokes 'Helen McGregor' as a figure of fierce, uncompromising action — the character is Rob Roy's wife in Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy (1817), famous for her ferocity in defending her clan and her refusal to suffer compromise.