"My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain."
— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
John Murray
Date
1818
Metaphor
"My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain."
Metaphor in Context
"My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain. The confusion there is scandalous. Miss Morland has been talking of nothing more dreadful than a new publication which is shortly to come out, in three duodecimo volumes, two hundred and seventy-six pages in each, with a frontispiece to the first, of two tombstones and a lantern--do you understand?-- And you, Miss Morland--my stupid sister has mistaken all your clearest expressions. You talked of expected horrors in London--and instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling in St. George's Fields; the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the 12th Light Dragoons, (the hopes of the nation,) called up from Northampton to quell the insurgents, and the gallant Capt. Frederick Tilney, in the moment of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window. Forgive her stupidity.
(I, pp. 267-268; p. 78 in Norton ed.)
(I, pp. 267-268; p. 78 in Norton ed.)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
See Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion. But the Author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield-Park," &c. With a Biographical Notice of the Author. 4 vols. (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1818).
Reading Northanger Abbey, ed. Susan Fraiman (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004).
Reading Northanger Abbey, ed. Susan Fraiman (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004).
Date of Entry
09/02/2014
