Date: 1773
"Zounds! Sir, can you give any relief to a soul that is haunted by Furies?"
preview | full record— Graves, Richard (1715-1804)
Date: 1777
"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1778, 1779
"Let me, therefore, prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the s...
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1785
"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1785
"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1788
"Our mind's unhelm'd, our attributes decay--"
preview | full record— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)
Date: 1790
"Her conscience whispered her that the dislike was mutual; and she now rejoiced in the opportunity which seemed to offer itself, of lowering the proud integrity of Madame's character."
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)
Date: w. 1794, 1797
"'Tis only those of purer clay / 'From sensual dross refined, / 'In whom the passions pleas'd obey / 'The God within the mind, / 'Who share my delegated aid, / 'Through Wisdom's golden mean convey'd / 'From the first source of sov'reign good."
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)