Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

WorkJames Walker

“The Exclusive System”

"The Exclusive System" (discourse/sermon, 1826; published Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1827)

James Walker (1794–1874) · discourse/sermon, 1826; published Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1827

ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1835

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 →

DemonstratedConfirmed reading1835Evidence ↓

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
  • 1835On the Exclusive SystemDemonstrated

    “Nobody denies that Christianity, considered is a system of religious instruction, has its essential and fundamental doctrines..." Walker on the exclusive system.”

    Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · 1835 Nov-

    Manuscript notebook entry copying a substantial multi-clause passage from Walker's essay.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed1record
IV. Transcendentalist
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850
1835—

Poems, Others

pp27–28
excerpted · analyzed · quoted · readManuscript page
“Nobody denies that Christianity, considered is a system of religious instruction, has its essential and fundamental doctrines ...”

Fuller, Margaret. "Poems, Others." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.

Fuller copies a substantial passage and attributes it explicitly: 'Walker on the exclusive system.' The passage discusses competing Christian denominations — Catholics (Council of Trent), Lutherans (Confession of Augsburg), Calvinists (Synod of Dort, Westminster Assembly), and the Church of England (Thirty-Nine Articles) — each claiming exclusive authority to define essential doctrines.