Home Life of Great Authors

We cannot think that she met the solemn, swift release with dread. She looked too deeply into life to make of it a mere thing of daily bread, of common homely joys and trifling...

In private conversation he enlivened his more serious thoughts often with vivid surprises of expression; and he had a mild way of making a severe remark, which reminded Charlott...

Mary soon grew better, and he exerted himself to have her released from confinement. He succeeded in doing so by entering into a solemn agreement to make her his charge for life...

The morn hath not the glory that it wore, Nor doth the day so beautifully die, Since I can call thee to my side no more, To gaze upon the sky.

There was little in the life of the people of New England in the early part of the present century upon which to feed the imagination of a precocious and romantic child like Mar...

For the rest, this correspondence exhibits Emerson in the light of a true and very useful friend to Carlyle,--taking infinite trouble in the early days to introduce Carlyle's bo...

Mr. Lowell was married in 1844 to Miss Maria White, of Watertown near Cambridge, the lady to whom some of his first poems were addressed, and who was herself a writer of very sw...

He returned to New York in 1806, and was much sought after in society from that time on. It was a very convivial company, that of old New York in the early part of the century,...

"Alfred has grown, he says, much fonder of you since your last visit here. He says he feels now he is beginning to know you and not to feel afraid of you; and that he is beginni...

Although he loved to wander in the Highlands, he made his home among the lakes at Elleray. This home was a rambling, mossy-roofed cottage, of very picturesque appearance, overhu...

George Sand was born in 1804, and descended from Marshal Saxe, the natural son of the King of Poland. This Marshal Saxe was one of the bravest but most licentious men of his tim...

He says that "every Scotchman has a pedigree." It is a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle, he being connected, t...

"I am named and known by that hour's feat, There took my station and degree. So grew my own small life complete As Nature obtained her best of me-- One born to love you, sweet!

"Poe's passion for strong drink was as marked and peculiar as that for cards. It was not the _taste_ of the beverage that influenced him. Without a sip or smack of the mouth he...

Will little Nell's friend, the old schoolmaster, ever cease to draw tears from our eyes? Shall we ever weary of gentle Tom Pinch? Shall we not always touch our hats to Joe Garge...

Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his domestic life? Could he have married the woman he loved in this manner, he would doubtless have been one of the tenderest a...

After this, the General, who is described by his son as being of a very powerful, self-willed nature, wholly uncultivated by literature, but with that ability for action which t...

He was exceedingly precocious, and was thus sent to Eton at an age much younger than other boys. He was perhaps a little proud of his birth and breeding; but it was probably mor...

"A day of true and quiet enjoyment, travelling from Thun to Entelbuch on our way to Lucerne. The time glided too swiftly away. We read the 'Genevieve' of Coleridge, and the 'Chr...

His American visits afforded him much pleasure--and profit too; and he always spoke kindly of us after his return. His light way of expressing his feeling towards us was extreme...

The consequences of the intimacy between the poet and Jane Armour were soon such as could not be concealed, and the farm having been a disastrous speculation in the hands of Bur...

"I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. When she appeared in the school-room her dress was changed, bu...

The Rev. Abiel Holmes, the father of our hero, was one of the typical New England ministers of that day; the mother, Sarah Wendell, was from a Dutch family, who came to Boston f...

His poems are so thoroughly imbued with this religious spirit that they seem to us almost like the sacred writings of the different times and nations of the world. They come to...

Almost solitary as were the lives of the children under Madame Hugo's watchful eyes, the one visitor who was admitted to their companionship was welcomed with more than the accu...

In all literary history there is scarcely a man about whose life and character hang so peculiar an interest and fascination as about De Quincey. He has himself given a most vivi...

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the great-grandfather of the famous Lord Macaulay, the author of the glowing and impassioned History of England, was minister of Tiree...

At this day the two latter facts will not necessarily be supposed to have any logical connection; but there was a time when the violence of the opponents of Wordsworth's claim t...

"For the best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. Angry words, hurry, and disorder I never knew in...

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It was about this time that he first made the acquaintance of Christine Vulpius, who afterwards became his wife. She was the daughter of one of those men whose drunkenness slowl...