Date: 1782
"The life I led at the cottage was the life of a savage; no intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up, every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my power but from sleep and from food."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1782
"A plan by which so great a revolution was to be wrought in her mind, was not to be effected by any sudden effort of magnanimity, but by a regular and even tenour of courage mingled with prudence."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1782
"She hastily obeyed the summons; the constant image of her own mind, Delvile, being already present to her, and a thousand wild conjectures upon what had brought him back, rapidly occurring to her."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1782
"I was bewitched, I was infatuated! common sense was estranged by the seduction of a chimera; my understanding was in a ferment from the ebullition of my imagination!"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1783
"To work, my hearts of oak, to work; here the sun is half an hour high, and not a stroke struck yet."
preview | full record— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)
Date: 1784
"I love to weep, love the soft feast of grief, / Court mournful thoughts, nor ever wish relief;-- / Sadness I woo, yet still the phantom flies, / And joy seduces, whilst I ask for sighs."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1784
"Had I the dread necessity explained, / That with resistless force my freedom chained; / Tore the sweet bands, by virtuous passion tied, / And stampt our constancy with parricide."
preview | full record— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Date: 1784
"Ah! season of delight!--could aught be found / To soothe awhile the tortur'd bosom's pain, / Of Sorrow's rankling shaft to cure the wound, / And bring life's first delusions once again, / 'Twere surely met in thee!."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1785
"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)