Date: March 1843

"It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1850

"The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1854

"By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)