Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: w. 1788, 1810

"Thee, Bard morose, / Churlish amid thy fancy's golden stores, / Thee will I teach, censorious as thou art, / What is not Virtue."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1788

"When Rochely got home, he set about examining the state of his heart exactly as he would have examined the check book of one of his customers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1790

"Yet what infuses his mind unstain'd and pure? / Nurtur'd in venal, sycophantic schools-- / Eras'd each sterling virtue of the soul-- / Debas'd--new coin'd in flattery's servile mint, / He may become a pander to a prince."

— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Date: 1790

"The idle crowd in fashion's train, / Their trifling comment, pert reply, / Who talk so much, yet talk in vain, / How pleas'd for thee, Oh nymph, I fly! / For thine is all the wealth of mind, / Thine the unborrow'd gems of thought, / The flash of light, by souls refin'd, / From heav'n's empyreal ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1793

"I am not ashamed to acknowledge that I have perused the productions of some of our female pens, with the highest satisfaction; and am happy when I find any woman has so large a fund of amusement in her own mind."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: w. 1776, 1793

"His pocket and his skull are brothers, / They thrive by borrowing from others; / I thank my stars, with heart sincere, / I was not born to be a Peer."

— Burrell [née Raymond, later Clay], Sophia, Lady Burrell (1750-1802)

Date: 1796

"And Eugenia, to whose early reflecting mind every new character and new scene opened a fresh fund for thought, if not for knowledge, was charmed to take a nearer view of what promised such food for observation."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: April 20, 1796

"Oh, farewell! / I cannot coin in words my soul's soft meaning!"

— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)

Date: 1798

"Words without correspondent ideas are worse than useless, they are counterfeit coin, which imposes upon the ignorant and unwary; but words, which really represent ideas, are not only of current use, but of sterling value; they not only shew our present store, but they increase our wealth by keep...

— Edgeworth, Maria