A Book of Sibyls: Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen

It was with Mrs. Ruxton that a little boy, born just after the death of the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' was left on the occasion of the departure of the Edgeworth family fo...

It is difficult, reading the novels of succeeding generations, to determine how much each book reflects of the time in which it was written; how much of its character depends up...

Doctor Alderson died in October 1825, and Mrs. Opie was left alone. She was very forlorn when her father died. She had no close ties to carry her on peacefully from middle age t...

Thumbkin, of fairy celebrity, used to mark his way by flinging crumbs of bread and scattering stones as he went along; and in like manner authors trace the course of their life'...

There is a pretty reminiscence of her childhood from a beginning of the memoir which was never written:--'One of my earliest recollections is of gazing on the bright blue sky as...

Is not this picture complete? Scott himself she describes as 'full of genius without the slightest effort at expression, delightfully natural, more lame but not so unwieldy as s...

The advantage of the art of printing [says his friendly Minerva] is that the mistakes of individuals in reasoning and writing will be corrected in time by the public, so that th...

When the writer looks back upon her own childhood, it seems to her that she lived in company with a delightful host of little playmates, bright, busy, clever children, whose che...

Poor lady! The future held, indeed, many a sad and unsuspected hour for her, many a cruel pang, many a dark and heavy season, that must have seemed intolerably weary to one of h...

The Edgeworths did not come as strangers to Paris; they brought letters and introductions with them, and bygone associations and friendships which had only now to be resumed. Th...

Their affairs being once more prosperous, a long-hoped-for dream became a reality, and they started on an expedition to Paris, a solemn event in those days and not lightly to be...

Meanwhile Mr. Edgeworth had made no secret of his own feeling for Honora to Mr. Day, 'who with all the eloquence of virtue and of friendship' urged him to fly, to accompany him...

_My little record would not seem to me in any way complete without your name, dear Sibyl of our own, and as I write it here, I am grateful to know that to mine and me it is not...

All this time, while her fame is slowly growing, life passes in the same way as in the old cottage at Chawton. Aunt Jane, with her young face and her mob-cap, makes play-houses...