“I wish you would read his Essay "The defence of poetry" Mr Wheeler will lend it you. I have his copy now.”
WorkPercy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry
A Defence of Poetry (written 1821; first published in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
TranslatedAnalyzedReadMentioned
Documented 1840
Letters • Journals
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.
- undatedA Defence of PoetryAttested
“And now today, 23d April reading Shelley's Defence of Poetry, do I not see how he longed to write!”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 23d April
Explicit dated statement: '23d April reading Shelley's Defence of Poetry'.
When Fuller engaged with this work
1840—
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
p133analyzed · read2 selected passages
“even from your point of view the Defence of Poetry seems to me excellent It seems to me not "stiff" but dignified, and no otherwise "academical" than as showing a high degree of culture.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
n.d.—
Journal Fragments
p. 74analyzed · readManuscript page
“And now today, 23d April reading Shelley’s / Defence of Poetry, do I not see / how he longed to write!] / But how pleasant to see / that he took up the subject / in almost exactly the same / way as I have done this / winter at my conversations”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Fragments." Houghton Library, Harvard University.