WorkHenry David Thoreau

“The Service”

"The Service" (essay manuscript, written 1840; not published until 1902)

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) · essay manuscript, written 1840; not published until 1902

AnalyzedReadMentioned

Documented 1840

Letters

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 →

AttestedConfirmed reading1840Evidence ↓

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
1840The ServiceAttested
“my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a suitable hour to reread it as I wished till last night. This second reading only confirms my impression from the first.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 1st Deer. [184o]
"I have not found a suitable hour to reread it...This second reading only confirms my impression" is an explicit statement of active re-reading.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1840—

Letter to Henry D. Thoreau

p186

analyzed · read

“I am to blame for so long detaining your manuscript. But my thoughts have been so engaged that I have not found a suitable hour to reread it as I wished till last night.”

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

Hudspeth identified the manuscript as Thoreau's essay 'The Service': 'With this letter Fuller returned Thoreau's essay "The Service," which was not published until 1902.' Fuller describes reading it twice and gives a detailed critical assessment — it is 'rich in thoughts' but the 'thoughts seem to me so out of their natural order.'