Date: 1788

"Emmeline would then have taken him; but she said no; and sitting down on the ground, held him in her lap, till Barret who had seen her from a window, came out and took him from her; to which, as to a thing usual, she consented, and then walked calmly home with Emmeline, who, extremely discompose...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1794

"When we are suddenly awaked by any violent stimulus, the surprise totally disunites the trains of our sleeping ideas from these of our waking ones; but if we gradually awake, this does not happen; and we readily unravel the preceding trains of imagination."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1797

"Thus on the golden thread that Fancy weaves / Buoyant, as Hope's illusive flattery breathes, / The young and visionary Poet leaves / Life's dull realities, while sevenfold wreaths / Of rainbow light around his head revolve."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1799

"I reflected with amazement on the slightness of that thread by which human passions are led from their true direction."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"A few incoherent motions and screams, that rent the soul, were followed by a deep swoon."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1817, 1818

"Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien / The likeness of a shape for which was braided / The brightest woof of genius, still was seen."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1831

"The sublimest poet that ever sung, was peradventure, while a stripling, unconscious of the treasures which formed a part of the fabric of his mind, and unsuspicious of the high destiny that in the sequel awaited him."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)