Records of a Girlhood

A few years ago I received from a friend to whom they had been addressed a collection of my own letters, written during a period of forty years, and amounting to thousands--a hi...

Two young men, officers of a militia regiment, became admirers of the two young country actresses: how long an acquaintance existed before the fact became evident that they were...

A quite unpremeditated inspiration which occurred to me upon being again offended--to run away--probably alarmed my parents more than my sororicidal projects, and I think determ...

Great was the general surprise of the dancing class when this large, tall, handsome English girl, of about eighteen, entered the room in a rose-colored silk dress, with very low...

I have said that we all more or less joined in my mother's fishing mania at Weybridge; but my sister, then a girl of about eleven years, never had any liking for it, which she a...

The immense success of "Der Freyschütz," and the important assistance it brought to the funds of the theater, induced my father to propose to Weber to compose an opera expressly...

The success of the English theater in Paris was quite satisfactory; and all the most eminent members of the profession--Kean, Young, Macready, and my father--went over in turn t...

Late in middle life Mrs. Jameson formed an intimate acquaintance, which at one time assumed the character of a close friendship, with Lady Byron, under the influence of whose re...

I was coming home one day from a tramp toward Cramond Beach, and was just on the brow of a wooded height looking towards Edinburgh and not two miles from it, when a heavy thunde...

I can not remember any event, or series of events, the influence of which could, during my first stay in Edinburgh, have made a distinctly serious or religious impression on my...

Alfred Tennyson had only just gathered his earliest laurels. My brother John gave me the first copy of his poems I ever possessed, with a prophecy of his future fame and excelle...

It was years after these events that Lawrence, meeting my father accidentally in the street one day, stopped him and spoke with great feeling of his sympathy for us all in my ap...

Among the persons whom I used to see behind the scenes were two who, for different reasons, attracted my attention: one was the Earl of W----, and the other the Rev. A.F. C----....

I received your kind letter the other night (that is, morning) on my return from a ball, and read your reflections on dissipation with an attention heightened by the appropriate...

I received your third kind letter yesterday morning, and have no more time to-day than will serve to inclose my answer to your second, which reached me and was replied to at Gla...

I should have answered your letter sooner had I before been able to give you any certain intelligence of our theatrical proceedings next week, but I was so afraid of some change...

I have risen very early, for what with excitement, and the wakefulness always attendant with me upon a new bed, I have slept but little, and I snatch this first hour of the day,...

My aunt Dall brought me home word that you wished me to send a letter which should meet you on your arrival at Ardgillan; and I would have done so, but that I had previously pro...

I found your lecture waiting for me on my return from Brighton; I call it thus because if your two last were less than letters your yesterday's one is more; but I shall not atte...

I am going to be very busy signing my name; my benefit is fixed for the 21st; I do not yet know what the play is to be. Our young, unsuccessful playwright, Mr. Wade, whom I like...

It is very curious that their experience tells so little among theatrical people in their calculation of the probable success of a new piece; perhaps it may be said that they ca...

when once she was Mrs. Romeo Montague.... I wrote to Lady Francis about "Katharine of Cleves," (Lord Francis's translation of "Henri Trois"), who is once more beginning to lift...

heavy-going, jolting, shambling, hard-pulling horse, I have grown so fat that I really cannot perceive that there is any shape in particular about me. Grotesque things sometimes...