WorkAlfred Tennyson
Poems (1842, 2 vols., Edward Moxon), Inferred
Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) · London: Edward Moxon, 1833
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1836–1845
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Journals • Notebooks
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
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 →
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.
“I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · August 1842
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re19 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-07b, line 17957, letter Aug 1842; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Explicit 'I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson'.
“The poet in a golden clime was born / With golden stars above; / Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, / The love of love.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).
“if possible, get from J. Dwight Tennyson's 2d vol and the Lives of Hayden and Mozart for me.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller asks Sturgis to obtain "Tennyson's 2d vol" from J. Dwight, referring to Poems (1833), the second volume of Tennyson's published work, which contained "The Lady of Shalott," "The Lotos-Eaters," and other important early poems.
“I thought to send Tennyson this time, but I cannot part with him, it must be for next pacquet.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller names Tennyson explicitly but no specific work, saying she "cannot part with him" and intends to send her copy to Emerson in the next packet—implying active reading of a volume in her possession.
“I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world with rosy light.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Hudspeth identified Fuller reviewed this edition in The Dial 3 (1842):273-76, and she provides extended critical commentary on his development from early ecstatic verse to calmer later work, confirming active reading in August 1842.
“Have you not liked much Tennyson's new poems?”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
“I am inclined to suspect H. T.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Hudspeth identified the error should read "infancy,"
“I was surprised to hear from James you had not read Tennyson.- Do read him at once. He has solved his own problems.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller urges her cousin George Davis to read Tennyson immediately, saying "He has solved his own problems," but names no specific work. The most likely referent is Tennyson's Poems (1842), the major collection then in print, as Fuller had written about Tennyson in the Dial.
“Poems. By ALFRED TENNYSON. Two Volumes. Boston: W. D. Ticknor. TENNYSON is more simply the songster than any poet of our time.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1833–1842." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (83); Box 5 (83).
“Tennyson knows some things about it, but none like this man.”
Also reprinted in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. IV: 1845-1847. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
“Howitt's ballad-dew, or Tennyson's god-vocal reverie”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
Inferred 'God-vocal reverie' is an appreciative poetic descriptor; no specific work can be identified from this phrase.
“The true text is: — "Mine own Telemachus He does his work — I mine.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses," published in his 1842 collection Poems, by quoting and adapting the lines, "Mine own Telemachus / He does his work — I mine." These words, a condensed recollection from the poem's description of Telemachus, are presented by Fuller as "the true text" to commend Ralph Waldo Emerson's distinct and independent method of work.