Some Eminent Women of Our Times: Short Biographical Sketches

In 1865 she was sent by the sisterhood to Walsall, to take part in the nursing in a small cottage hospital. Towards the end of the year she received orders from the sisterhood t...

After many years of patient and devoted work she was well known throughout the whole town and neighbourhood, and was no longer entirely dependent on her own slender earnings. He...

Severe self-mastery is perceived in every word of this letter. Lamb was evidently sensible that his own reason would totter if it were not controlled by a strong effort of will....

There is little doubt that Napoleon fully recognised that England was the main obstacle in the way of the fulfilment of his dream of universal dominion. His most darling project...

She speaks of herself as having, especially in her childhood, “a beggarly nervous system”; and her description of her utterly unreasonable terrors, which she bore in silence, be...

The bigotry and narrowness of religious criticism at that day may be measured by the fact, which Hannah mentions in one of her letters, that her book on _Practical Piety_ had be...

The development of Emily’s genius was different. Her love of the moors around Haworth was so intense that it was impossible for her to thrive when she was away from them. It bec...

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh, A melancholy slave; But an old age, serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lea...

A HUNDRED years ago England was particularly rich in great brothers and sisters. There were William and Caroline Herschel, Charles and Mary Lamb, and, perhaps, chief of all, Wil...

Early in 1801 the home at Steventon was broken up. Mr. Austen resigned his living in consequence of failing health, and the family removed to Bath. Mr. Austen died in 1805, and...

In the same year as that of the publication of this volume of Essays, 1774, Anne Letitia Aikin became the wife of the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, a descendant of a French Protestan...

When Honora was dying she had solemnly begged her husband and her sister Elizabeth to marry each other after her own death. Such marriages at that time were not illegal, and eig...

From time immemorial it has been universally recognised that the care of the sick is women’s work; but somehow, partly from the low standard of women’s education, partly from th...

With this one great exception of blindness, Elizabeth Gilbert’s childhood was peculiarly happy and fortunate. Her parents wisely determined to educate her, as much as possible,...

Mary Carpenter was born at Exeter in 1807, the eldest of five children, several of whom have left their mark on the intellectual and moral history of this century. There was all...

Afghanistan is a wild mountainous country beyond the north-west frontier of the British Empire in India. Its people consist of savage, desperate, lawless tribes, constantly at w...

“‘That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts...

There could not possibly be a greater contrast than that between Caroline’s life in Hanover and her life in England. From being a maid-of-all-work in a not very interesting fami...

She had paid a visit of a week to Kaiserswerth in 1853, but home duties, especially the care of a widowed sister, at that time and for some years prevented her from fulfilling h...

By this time the town of Canterbury had put itself into the greatest state of excitement about Miss Crandall’s project. She might have reasonably thought when she had converted...