Date: 1797

"May the soft rays of dawning hope impart / Reviving Patience to my fainting heart."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"This place, perhaps, infests my mind with congenial gloom, for I find that, at this moment, there is scarcely a superstition too dark for my credulity."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1797

"In the eagerness of conversation, and, yielding to the satisfaction which the mind receives from exercising ideas that have long slept in dusky indolence, and to the pleasure of admitting new ones, the Abbot and a few of the brothers sat with Vivaldi to a late hour."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1797

"Mortified, exasperated by her conduct, I begun to suspect that some other emotion than resentment occasioned this disdain; and last of all jealousy--jealousy came to crown my misery--to light up all my passions into madness!"

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1797

"Though a lawless passion had first suggested to the dark mind of Schedoni the atrocious act, which should destroy a brother, many circumstances and considerations had conspired to urge him towards its accomplishment."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1799

"Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume / Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray / Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom / With all the fires of intellectual Day!"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1799

"Oh thou, our Father above, who surveyest the whole world with one glance, diffuse thy light into our hearts!"

— Plumptre, Anne (1760-1818); Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1803

The muse "beams a visionary day: / Bright as the magic torch she early gave / To light thy ven'trous way, through fancy's secret cave."

— Hunter [née Home], Anne (1742-1821)

Date: 1806

"In ev'ry eye, / The living ray of waken'd intellect / Marks reason's lamp divine!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1806

"Thy pure flame / Would light the sense opake, and warm the spring / Of boundless ecstacy; while nature's laws / So violated, plead, immortal-tongu'd, / For her dark-fated children; lead them forth / From bondage infamous!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)