'Princess Charlotte wrote of reading as a "great passion"; in a poignant attempt to construct bourgeois domestic intimacy in the dysfunctional household of the divorced Prince Regent she discussed and exchanged books with her friend Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, including memoirs and recent history, Byron's poems, and novels including Gothic fiction and works by Anne Plumptre and Jane Austen. (The perceptive Charlotte especially enjoyed "Sense and Sensibility" because she discerned in herself"the same imprudence" as Marianne's).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Charlotte Print: Book
'[Philip Inman] loved everything by Charlotte Bronte, partly for what she had to say about the class system: "Characters like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe were humble individuals in the eyes of the world, with only their dogged determination and lack of 'frills' as weapons against the dash and arrogance of those haughty and wealthy rivals among whom their lot was cast". Yet he admired Jane Austen for an equal but opposite reason: "The world of which she wrote, in which elegant gentlemen of fortune courted gentle, punctilliously correct ladies in refined drawing rooms, was a remote fairy-tale country to me. Some day, I thought, perhaps I would get to know a world in which voices were always soft and modulated and in which lively and witty conversation was more important than 'brass'."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
'I do not wonder at your wanting to read [italics for title] first impressions again, so seldom as you have gone through it, & that so long ago.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Austen Manuscript: Book in Manuscript
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
'As a summer relaxation in 1920, Thomas Hardy and his wife - he 80 years old, she half his age -- moved on to "Emma", after reading together "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas and Florence Hardy Print: Book
'As a summer relaxation in 1920, Thomas Hardy and his wife - he 80 years old, she half his age -- moved on to "Emma", after reading together "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas and Florence Hardy Print: Book
'As a summer relaxation in 1920, Thomas Hardy and his wife - he 80 years old, she half his age -- moved on to "Emma", after reading together "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas and Florence Hardy Print: Book
E. M. Forster, "Jane Austen," in Abinger Harvest (1924): 'She is my favourite author! I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
'The novel can't just leave the war out [...] What has been - stands - but Jane Austen could not write Northanger Abbey now - or if she did I'd have none of her'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
' "They were neither of them quite enough in love to imagine that ?350 a year would supply them with all the comforts of life" (Jane Austen's "Elinor and Edward"). My God! say I'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848: 'What induced you to say that you would rather have written "Pride & Prejudice" or "Tom Jones" than any of the Waverley novels?
I had not seen "Pride & Prejudice" till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a common-place face ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 12 April 1850: 'The perusal of Southey's "Life" has lately afforded me much pleasure ... I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works "Emma" -- read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible or suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm ... is utterly out of place in commending these works ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
" ... Macaulay ... did not annotate his copies of Jane Austen except to record the dates of reading and to correct a very small number of typographical errors."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'Every time I re-read "Emma" I see more clearly that we must be somehow related to the Knightleys of Donwell Abbey; both dear Mr Knightley and Mr John Knightley seem so familiar and cousinly. Surely no-one, who had not Darwin or Wedgwood blood in their veins, could be as cross as Mr John Knightley... it is obvious, too, that there is some strain of the Woodhouses of Hartfield in us...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
'Reading Burke's "Reflections on French Revolution" and "Mansfield Park" in the evenings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'read "Emma" in the evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
'The title is, The Neighbours ? just a title for Miss Austen you see! ? And for Miss Austen, you shall praise her as much as you please. She is delightful exquisite in her degree! ? only I wdnt have one of your dear hands "cut off" that you shd "write one page like her?s with the other", - because, really & earnestly, your Village and Belford Regis are more charming to me than her pages in congregation. She wants (admit it honestly, because you know she wants it) she wants a little touch of poetry. Her "neighbours" walk about & gossip, all unconscious of the sunshine & the trees & the running waters ? to say nothing of the God of nature & providence. "Persuasion" (ah! You are cunning to bring "Persuasion" to me!) is the highest & most touching of her works ? and I agree with you gladly that it is perfect in its kind, & with touches of a higher impulse in it than we look generally to receive from her genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'It is a long argument ? but I have been reading quite lately & for your sake & for the third time, her two best works ? Persuasion & Mansfield Park: & really my impressions do grow stronger & stronger in their old places. She is perfect after her kind ? true to the nature she SAW - & with a sufficient sense of the Beautiful, for grace. Like Mrs Hemans, she is too obviously a lady. I have put it in the shape of blame - & many might remark the same thing for praise: I mean however, that her ladyhood is always stronger in her than her humanity. Not that she is defective in strength as Mrs Hemans sometimes is ? she can "always do the thing she would" better than anybody else. Surely, surely I am not a niggard in my praise of Jane Austen! To call her a great writer & learned in the secrets, heights & depths of our nature, or a poet in anywise, is all that I refuse to call her ? and indeed I have not breath & articulation for such an opinion: & it astonishes me that you shd be so exorbitant my dearest Miss Mitford, in your claim for her!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'It is a long argument ? but I have been reading quite lately & for your sake & for the third time, her two best works ? Persuasion & Mansfield Park: & really my impressions do grow stronger & stronger in their old places. She is perfect after her kind ? true to the nature she SAW - & with a sufficient sense of the Beautiful, for grace. Like Mrs Hemans, she is too obviously a lady. I have put it in the shape of blame - & many might remark the same thing for praise: I mean however, that her ladyhood is always stronger in her than her humanity. Not that she is defective in strength as Mrs Hemans sometimes is ? she can "always do the thing she would" better than anybody else. Surely, surely I am not a niggard in my praise of Jane Austen! To call her a great writer & learned in the secrets, heights & depths of our nature, or a poet in anywise, is all that I refuse to call her ? and indeed I have not breath & articulation for such an opinion: & it astonishes me that you shd be so exorbitant my dearest Miss Mitford, in your claim for her!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Yes, I think that Pride & Prejudice is one of the very best of the Austen novels ? and yet I do not quite rank it with Mansfield Park, it seems to take the line just below. Sense & Sensibility is inferior, by my impression, to every one of them?& I am inclined to call that weak and commonplace occasionally.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Yes, I think that Pride & Prejudice is one of the very best of the Austen novels ? and yet I do not quite rank it with Mansfield Park, it seems to take the line just below. Sense & Sensibility is inferior, by my impression, to every one of them?& I am inclined to call that weak and commonplace occasionally.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I cannot help the oozing forth of my Io triumphe?although it is by no means my dearest friend, my turn for writing. Mr Kenyon came yesterday - & he had just been reading, he said, "Pride & Prejudice", ?driven into making an acquaintance with Miss Austen in despite of his anti-novelism, by the buzz of admiration which beset him from Mr Harness, and others. Mind, he was quite unaware of your & my ever quarrelling on the subject: he spoke to me of his impressions therefore quite innocently & freely, not knowing but that I might be wearing out the knees of my soul before her statue.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Kenyon Print: Book
'We certainly do not think it as a [italics] whole [end italics], equal to P. & P. - but it has many & great beauties. Fanny is a delightful Chracter! and Aunt Norris is a great favourite of mine. The Characters are natural & well supported, & many of the Dialogues excellent. - You need not fear the publication being considered as discreditable to it's [sic] author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis William Austen Print: Book
'Not so clever as P.&P. - but pleased with it altogether. Liked the character of Fanny. Admired the Portsmouth Scene.' - Mr K.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Austen Knight Print: Book
'Edward & George. - Not liked it near so well as P.& P. - Edward admired Fanny - George disliked her. - George interested by nobody but Mary Crawford. - Edward pleased with Henry C. - Edmund objected to, as cold & formal. - Henry C.'s going off with Mrs R. - at such a time, when so much in love with Fanny, thought unnatural by Edward.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Knight Print: Book
'Edward & George. - Not liked it near so well as P.& P. - Edward admired Fanny - George disliked her. - George interested by nobody but Mary Crawford. - Edward pleased with Henry C. - Edmund objected to, as cold & formal. - Henry C.'s going off with Mrs R. - at such a time, when so much in love with Fanny, thought unnatural by Edward.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Knight Print: Book
'Fanny Knight. - Liked it, in many parts, very much indeed, delighted with Fanny; - but not satisfied with the end - wanting more Love between her & Edmund - & could not think it natural that Edmd. shd. be so much attached to a woman without Principle like Mary C. - or promote Fanny's marrying Henry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Knight Print: Book
'Anna liked it better than P.& P. - but not so well as S.&S. - could not bear Fanny. - Delighted with Mrs Norris, the scene at Portsmouth, & all the humourous [sic] parts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Lefroy Print: Book
'Mrs James Austen, very much pleased. Enjoyed Mrs Norris particularly, & the scene at Portsmouth. Thought Henry Crawford's going off with Mrs Rushworth, very natural.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Austen Print: Book
'Miss Clewes's objections [to Mansfield Park] much the same as Fanny's [Fanny Knight]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Clewes Print: Book
'Miss Lloyd preferred it altogether to either of the others [Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility]. - Delighted with Fanny. - Hated Mrs Norris'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Lloyd Print: Book
'My Mother - not liked it so well as P. & P. - Thought Fanny insipid. Enjoyed Mrs. Norris.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Leigh Austen Print: Book
'Cassandra - thought it quite as clever, tho' not so brilliant as P. & P. - Fond of Fanny. - Delighted much in Mr Rushworth's stupidity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Elizabeth Austen Print: Book
'My Eldest Brother - a warm admirer of it in general. - Delighted with the Portsmouth scene.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Austen Print: Book
'Edward - Much like his Father. - Objected to Mrs Rushworth's Elopement as unnatural'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Edward Austen-Leigh Print: Book
'Mr B.L. - Highly pleased with Fanny Price - & a warm admirer of the Portsmouth Scene. - Angry with Edmund for not being in love with her, & hating Mrs Norris for teazing her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Lefroy Print: Book
'Miss Burdett - Did not like it so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Burdett Print: Book
'Mrs James Tilson - Liked it [Mansfield Park] better than P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs James] Tilson Print: Book
'Fanny Cage - did not much like it - not to be compared to P. & P. - nothing interesting in the Characters - Language poor. - Characters natural & well supported - Improved as it went on.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Cage Print: Book
'Mr & Mrs Cooke - very much pleased with it - particularly with the Manner in which the Clergy are treated. - Mr Cooke called it "the most sensible Novel he had ever read." - Mrs Cooke wished for a good Matronly character.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Cooke Print: Book
'Mr & Mrs Cooke - very much pleased with it - particularly with the Manner in which the Clergy are treated. - Mr Cooke called it "the most sensible Novel he had ever read." - Mrs Cooke wished for a good Matronly character.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Cooke Print: Book
'Mary Cooke - quite as much pleased with it, as her Father & Mother; seemed to enter into Lady B.'s character, & enjoyed Mr Rushworth's folly. Admired Fanny in general, but thought she ought to have been more determined on overcoming her own feelings, when she saw Edmund's attachment to Miss Crawford.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Cooke Print: Book
'Miss Burrel - admired it very much - particularly Mrs Norris & Dr Grant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Burrel Print: Book
'Mrs Bramstone - much pleased with it; particularly with the character of Fanny, as being so very natural. Thought Lady Bertram like herself. Preferred it to either of the others [Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility] - but imagined that might be her want of Taste - as she does not understand Wit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Bramstone Print: Book
'Mrs Augusta Bramstone - owned that she thought S & S. - and P. & P. downright nonsense, but expected to like M.P. better, & having finished the 1st vol. - flattered herself that she had got through the worst.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Bramstone Print: Book
'The families at Deane - all pleased with it. Mrs Anna Harwood delighted with Mrs Norris & the green curtain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Harwood Print: Book
'The Kintbury Family - very much pleased with it; - preferred it to either of the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fowle Print: Book
'Mr Egerton the Publisher - praised it for it's [sic] Morality, & for being so equal a Composition. - No weak parts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Egerton Print: Book
'Lady Rob: Kerr wrote - "You may be assured I read every line with the greatest interest & am more delighted with it than my humble pen can express. The excellent delineation of Character, sound sense, Elegant Language & the pure morality with which it abounds, makes it a most desirable as well as useful work, & reflects the highest honour &c. &c. Universally admired in Edinburgh, by all the [italics] wise ones [end italics]. - Indeed, I have not heard a single fault given to it."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Robert Kerr Print: Book
'Miss Sharpe - "I think it is excellent - & of it's [sic] good sense & moral Tendency there can be no doubt. - Your Characters are drawn to the Life - so [italics] very very [end italics] natural & just - but as you beg me to be perfectly honest, I must confess I prefer P. & P."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Sharpe Print: Book
'Mrs Carrick. - "All who think deeply and feel much will give the Preference to Mansfield Park."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Carrick Print: Book
'Mr J. Plumptre. - "I never read a novel which interested me so very much throughout, the characters are all so remarkably well kept up & so well drawn, & the plot is so well contrived that I had not an idea till the end which of the two wd marry Fanny, H.C. or Edmd. Mrs Norris amused me particularly, & Sir Thos. is very clever, & his conduct proves admirably the defects of the modern system of Education." Mr J.P. made two objections, but only one of them was remembered, the want of some character more striking & interesting to the generality of Readers, than Fanny was likely to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Plumptre Print: Book
'Sir James Langham & Mr Sanford, having been told that it was much inferior to P.& P. - began it expecting to dislike it, but were very soon extremely pleased with it - & I beleive [sic], did not think it at all inferior.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir James Langham Print: Book
'Sir James Langham & Mr Sanford, having been told that it was much inferior to P.& P. - began it expecting to dislike it, but were very soon extremely pleased with it - & I beleive [sic], did not think it at all inferior.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Sanford Print: Book
'Alethea Bigg. - "I have read M.P. & heard it very much talked of, very much praised. I like it myself & think it very good indeed, but as I never say what I do not think, I will add that although it is superior in a great many points in my opinion to the other two Works [Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice], I think it has not the Spirit of P & P., except perhaps the Price family at Portsmouth, & they are delightful in their way.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alethea Bigg Print: Book
'Charles - did not like it near so well as P. & P. - thought it wanted Incident.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Austen Print: Book
'Mrs Dickson. - "I have bought M.P. - but it is not equal to P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Dickson Print: Book
'Mrs Lefroy - liked it, but thought it a mere Novel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Lefroy Print: Book
'Mrs Portal - admired it very much - objected cheifly [sic] to Edmund's not being brought more forward'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Portal Print: Book
'Lady Gordon wrote "In most novels you are amused for the time with a set of Ideal People whom you never think of afterwards or whom you in the least expect to meet in common life, whereas in Miss A-s works, & especially in M.P. you actually [italics] live [end italics] with them, you fancy yourself one of the family; & the scenes are so exactly descriptive, so perfectly natural, that there is scarcely an Incident or conversation, or a person that you are not inclined to imagine you have at one time or other in your Life been a witness to, born a part in, & been acquainted with."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Gordon Print: Book
'Mrs Pole wrote, "There is a particular satisfaction in reading all Miss A-s works - they are so evidently written by a Gentlewoman - most Novellists [sic] fail & betray themselves in attempting to describe familiar scenes in high Life, some little vulgarism escapes & shews that they are not experimentally acquainted with what they describe, but here it is quite different. Everything is natural, & the situations & incidents are told in a manner which clearly evinces the Writer to [italics] belong [end italics] to the Society whose Manners she so ably delineates." Mrs Pole also said that no Books had ever occasioned so much canvassing & doubt, & that everybody was desirous to attribute them to some of their own friends, or to some person of whom they thought highly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Pole Print: Book
'Adml Foote - surprised that I had the power of drawing the Portsmouth-Scenes so well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Admiral] Foote Print: Book
'Mrs Creed - preferred S & S. and P & P. - to Mansfield Park.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Creed Print: Book
'Captain Austen. - liked it extremely, observing that though there might be more Wit in P & P - & an higher Morality in M P - yet altogether, on account of it's [sic] peculiar air of Nature throughout, he preferred it to either.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Captain Frank Austen Print: Book
'Mrs F.A. - liked & admired it very much indeed, but must still prefer P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs Francis] Austen Print: Book
'Mrs J. Bridges - preferred it to all the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs J.] Bridges Print: Book
'Miss Sharp - better than M.P. - but not so well as P. & P. - pleased with the Heroine for her Originality, delighted with Mr K - & called Mrs Elton beyond praise. - dissatisfied with Jane Fairfax.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Sharp Print: Book
'Cassandra - better than P. & P. - but not so well as M.P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Elizabeth Austen Print: Book
'Fanny K. - not so well as either P & P or M P. - could not bear Emma herself. Mr Knightley delightful. Should like J.F. - if she knew more of her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Knight Print: Book
'Mr & Mrs J. A. - did not like it so well as either of the 3 others. Language different from the others; not so easily read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Austen Print: Book
'Mr & Mrs J. A. - did not like it so well as either of the 3 others. Language different from the others; not so easily read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs James] Austen Print: Book
'Edward - preferred it to M.P. - only. - Mr. K liked by every body.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Edward Austen-Leigh Print: Book
'Miss Bigg - not equal to either P & P. - or M.P. - objected to the sameness of the subject (Match-making) all through. - Too much of Mr Elton & H. Smith. Language superior to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Bigg Print: Book
'My Mother - thought it more entertaining than M.P. - but not so interesting as P.& P. - No characters in it equal to Ly Catherine & Mr Collins.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Leigh Austen Print: Book
'Miss Lloyd - thought it as [italics] clever [end italics] as either of the others, but did not receive so much pleasure from it as from P. & P - & MP.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Lloyd Print: Book
'Mrs & Miss Craven - liked it very much, but not so much as the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Craven Print: Book
'Mrs & Miss Craven - liked it very much, but not so much as the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Craven Print: Book
'Fanny Cage - liked it very much indeed & classed it between P & P & M.P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Cage Print: Book
'Mr Sherer - did not think it equal to either M P - (which he liked the best of all) or P & P. - Displeased with my pictures of Clergymen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Sherer Print: Book
'Miss Bigg - on reading it a second time, liked Miss Bates much better than at first, & expressed herself as liking all the people of Highbury in general, except Harriet Smith - but could not help still thinking [italics] her [close italics] too silly in her Loves.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Bigg Print: Book
'The family at Upton Gray - all very amused with it. - Miss Bates a great favourite with Mrs Beaufoy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Beaufoy Print: Book
'Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot - saw many beauties in it, but could not think it equal to P & P. - Darcy & Elizabeth had spoilt them for anything else. - Mr. K. however, an excellent character; Emma better luck than a Matchmaker often has. - Pitied Jane Fairfax - thought Frank Churchill better treated than he deserved.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Leigh-Perrot Print: Book
'Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot - saw many beauties in it, but could not think it equal to P & P. - Darcy & Elizabeth had spoilt them for anything else. - Mr. K. however, an excellent character; Emma better luck than a Matchmaker often has. - Pitied Jane Fairfax - thought Frank Churchill better treated than he deserved.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Leigh-Perrot Print: Book
'Countess Craven - admired it very much, but did not think it equal to P & P. - which she ranked as the very first of it's [sic] sort.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Countess] Craven Print: Book
'Mrs Guiton - thought it too natural to be interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Guiton Print: Book
'Mrs Digweed - did not like it so well as the others, in fact if she had not known the Author, could hardly have got through it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Digweed Print: Book
'Miss Terry - admired it very much, particularly Mrs Elton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Terry Print: Book
'Henry Sanford - very much pleased with it - delighted with Miss Bates, but thought Mrs Elton the best-drawn Character in the Book. - Mansfield Park however, still his favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Sanford Print: Book
'Mr Haden - [italics] quite [end italics] delighted with it. Admired the Character of Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Haden Print: Book
'Miss Isabella Herries - did not like it - objected to my exposing the sex in the character of the Heroine - convinced I had meant Mrs & Miss Bates for some acquaintance of theirs - People whom I never heard of before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isabella Herries Print: Book
'Miss Harriet Moore - admired it very much, but M.P. still her favourite of all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Moore Print: Book
'Countess Morley - delighted with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Countess] Morley Print: Book
'Mr Cockerelle - liked it so little, that Fanny would not send me his opinion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Cockerelle Print: Book
'Mrs Dickson - did not much like it - thought it [italics] very [end italics] inferior to P & P. - Liked it the less, from there being a Mr & Mrs Dixon in it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Dickson Print: Book
'Mrs Brandreth - thought the 3d vol: superior to anything I had ever written - quite beautiful!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Brandreth Print: Book
'Mr B. Lefroy - thought that if there had been more Incident, it would be equal to any of the others. -The Characters quite as well drawn & supported as in any, & from being more everyday ones, the more entertaining. - Did not like the Heroine so well as any of the others. Miss Bates excellent, but rather too much of her. Mr & Mrs Elton admirable & John Knightley a sensible Man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Lefroy Print: Book
'Mrs Lefroy - preferred it to M.P. - but like[?]d M.P. the least of all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Lefroy Print: Book
'Mr Fowle - read only the first & last Chapters, because he had heard it was not interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Fowle Print: Book
'Mrs Lutley Sclater - liked it very much, better than MP - & thought I had "brought it all about very cleverly in the last volume."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Lutley Sclater Print: Book
'Mrs C. Cage wrote thus to Fanny - "A great many thanks for the loan of "Emma," which I am delighted with. I like it better than any. Every character is thoroughly kept up. I must enjoy reading it again with Charles. Miss Bates is incomparable, but I was nearly killed with those precious treasures! They are Unique, & really more fun than I can express. I am at Highbury all day, & I can't help feeling I have just got into a new set of acquaintance. No one writes such good sense. & so very comfortable."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs C.] Cage Print: Book
'Mrs Wroughton - did not like it so well as P & P. - Thought the Authoress wrong, in such times as these, to draw such Clergymen as Mr Collins & Mr Elton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Wroughton Print: Book
'Sir J. Langham - thought it much inferior to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir J. Langham Print: Book
'Mr Jeffery (of the Edinburgh Review) was kept up by it three nights.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
'Miss Murden - certainly inferior to all the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Murden Print: Book
'Capt C. Austen wrote - "Emma arrived in time to a moment. I am delighted with her, more so I think than even with my favourite Pride & Prejudice, & have read it three times in the Passage."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Austen Print: Book
'Mrs D. Dundas - thought it very clever, but did not like it so well as either of the
others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Whitley-Deans-Dundas Print: Book
'I sat up till two, as I did last night, to finish "Pride and Prejudice". This novel I consider as one of the most excellent of the works of our female novelists. Its merits lie in the characters, and in the perfectly colloquial style of the dialogue. Mrs. Bennet, the foolish mother, who cannot conceal her projects to get rid of her daughters, is capitally drawn. There is a thick-headed servile parson, also a masterly sketch. His stupid letters and her ridiculous speeches are as delightful as wit. The two daughters are well contrasted - the gentle and candid Jane and the lively but prejudiced Elizabeth, are both portraits, and the development of the passion between Elizabeth and the proud Darcy, who at first hate each other, is executed with skill and effect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'In the evening read the last volume of "Emma", a novel evincing great good sense, and an acute observation of human life, but it is not interesting. One cares little for Harriet, the kind-hearted girl who falls in love with three men in a year, and yet hers is the best conceived character after all. Emma, the heroine, is little more than a clever woman who does foolish things - makes mistakes for others, and is at last caught unawares herself. We hear rather too much about fools: the kind-hearted but weak father, the silly chattering Miss Bates, who gabbles in the style of polite conversation, and the vulgar impertinence of the Eltons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'I was reading yesterday and to-day "Sense and Sensibility", which I resumed at the second volume. The last volume greatly improves on the first, but I still think it one of the poorest of Miss Austen's novels - that is inferior to "Mansfield Park" and "Pride and Prejudice", which is all I have read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'I went on with "Persuasion", finished it, began "Northanger Abbey", which I have now finished. These two novels have sadly reduced my estimation of Miss Austen. They are little more than galleries of disagreeables and the would-be heroes and heroines are scarcely out of the class of insignificants. Yet I ought to be suspicious perhaps of my own declining judgement.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'I went on with "Persuasion", finished it, began "Northanger Abbey", which I have now finished. These two novels have sadly reduced my estimation of Miss Austen. They are little more than galleries of disagreeables and the would-be heroes and heroines are scarcely out of the class of insignificants. Yet I ought to be suspicious perhaps of my own declining judgement.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'By the way did you know Miss Austen Authoress of some novels which have a great deal of nature in them - nature in ordinary and middle life to be sure but valuable from its strong resemblance and correct drawing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Scott Print: Book
'Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen's very finely written novel of "Pride and Prejudice". That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Scott Print: Book
'There is no book which that word ["vulgaire"] would suit so little... Every village could furnish matter for a novel to Jane Austen. She did not need the common materials for a novel - strong passion, or strong incident.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir James Mackintosh Print: Book
'You mention Miss Austen; her novels are more true to nature, and have (for my sympathies) passages of finer feeling than any others of this age.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'You surprise me greatly by what you say of "Emma" and the other books. They enjoy the highest reputation, and I own, for my part, I was delighted with them. I fear they must have been badly read aloud to you. At all events, they are generally much admired, and I was quite serious in my praise of them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Bulwer Lytton Print: Book
'...Jane Austen, who, if not the greatest, is surely the most faultless of female novelists. My uncle Southey and my father had an equally high opinion of her merits, but Mr. Wordsworth used to say that though he admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading light of imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'...Jane Austen, who, if not the greatest, is surely the most faultless of female novelists. My uncle Southey and my father had an equally high opinion of her merits, but Mr. Wordsworth used to say that though he admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading light of imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'I have been reading "Emma". Everything Miss Austen writes is clever, but I desiderate something. There is a want of [italics] body [close italics] to the story. The action is frittered away in over-little things. There are some beautiful things in it. Emma herself is the most interesting to me of all her heroines. I feel kind to her whenever I think of her. But Miss Austen has no romance - none at all. What vile creatures her parsons are! she has not a dream of the high Catholic ethos. That other woman, Fairfax is a dolt - but I like Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Henry Newman Print: Book
'I am amusing myself with Miss Austin's [sic] novels. She has great power and discrimination in delineating common-place people; and her writings are a capital picture of real life, with all the little wheels and machinery laid bare like a patent clock. But she explains and fills out too much. Those who have not power to fill up gaps and bridge over chasms as they read, must therefore take particular delight in such minuteness of detail. It is a kind of Bowditch's Laplace in the romantic astronomy. But readers of lively imagination naturally prefer the original with its unexplained steps, which they so readily supply.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Print: Book
'Finished Miss Austen's "Emma", which amused me very much, impressing me with a high opinion of her powers of drawing and sustaining character, though not satisfying me always with the end and aim of her labours. She is successful in painting the ridiculous to the life, and while she makes demands on our patience for the almost intolerable absurdities and tediousness of her well-meaning gossips, she does not recompense us for what we suffer from her conceited and arrogant nuisances by making their vices their punishments. We are not much better, but perhaps a little more prudent for her writing. She does not probe the vices, but lays bare the weaknesses of character; the blemish on the skin, and not the corruption at the heart, is what she examines. Mrs. Brunton's books have a far higher aim; they try to make us better, and it is an addition to previous faults if they do not. The necessity, the comfort, and the elevating influence of piety is continually inculcated throughout her works - which never appear in Miss Austen's.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Print: Book
'After dinner read a part of "Northanger Abbey", which I do not much like. Heavy, and too long a strain of irony on one topic.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Print: Book
'Lay down on the sofa, reading Miss Austen's "Mansfield Park"... The novel, I think, has the prevailing fault of the pleasant authoress's books; it deals too much in descriptions of the various states of mind, into which her characters are thrown, and amplifies into a page a search for motives which a stroke of the pen might give with greater power and interest. Is Richardson her model? She is an excellent portrait painter, she catches a man near to the life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Print: Book
'Finished "Mansfield Park", which hurried with a very inartificial [sic] and disagreeable rapidity to its conclusion, leaving some opportunities for most interesting and beautiful scenes particularly the detailed expression of the "how and the when" Edward's love was turned from Miss Crawford to Fanny Price. The great merit of Miss Austen is in the finishing of her characters; the action and conduct of her stories I think frequently defective.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Print: Book
'Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written "Pride and Prejudice" or "Tom Jones", than any of the Waverley Novels? I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice" till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.' [Bronte goes on to compare Austen and George Sand]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works "Emma" - read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable - anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant... she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'I haven't any right to criticise books and I don't often do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read "Pride and Prejudice" I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Langhorne Clemens Print: Book
'We certainly do not think it ["Mansfield Park"] as a whole equal to P & P - but it has many & great beauties...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis William Austen Print: Book
["Mansfield Park" is] 'Not so clever as P & P - but pleased with it altogether' - Mr K.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Austen Knight Print: Book
'Edward & George. - Not liked it ["Mansfield Park"] near so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Knight Print: Book
'Edward & George. - Not liked it ["Mansfield Park"] near so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Knight Print: Book
'Anna liked it ["Mansfield Park"] better than P & P - but not so well as S & S - could not bear Fanny.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Austen Print: Book
'Anna liked it ["Mansfield Park"] better than P & P - but not so well as S & S - could not bear Fanny'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Austen Print: Book
'Miss Lloyd preferred it ["Mansfield Park"] altogether to either of the others'. ["Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility"]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Lloyd Print: Book
'Miss Lloyd preferred it ["Mansfield Park"] altogether to either of the others'. ["Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility"]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Lloyd Print: Book
'My Mother - not liked it "[Mansfield Park"] so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Leigh Austen Print: Book
'Cassandra - thought it quite as clever, tho' not so brilliant as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Elizabeth Austen Print: Book
'Miss Burdett - Did not like it ["Mansfield Park"] so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Burdett Print: Book
'Mrs James Tilson - Liked it ["Mansfield Park"] better than P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs James] Tilson Print: Book
'Fanny Cage - did not much like it ["Mansfield Park"] - not to be compared with P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Cage Print: Book
'Mrs Augusta Bramstone - owned that she thought S & S. - and P. & P. downright nonsense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Augusta Bramstone Print: Book
'Mrs Augusta Bramstone - owned that she thought S & S. - and P. & P. downright nonsense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Augusta Bramstone Print: Book
'The Kintbury Family - very much pleased with it ["Mansfield Park"]; preferred it to either of the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fowle Print: Book
'The Kintbury Family - very much pleased with it ["Mansfield Park"]; preferred it to either of the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fowle Print: Book
'Miss Sharpe - "I think it "Mansfield Park"] excellent... but since you beg me to be perfectly honest, I must confess I prefer P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Sharpe Print: Book
'I have read M P["Mansfield Park"]... I will add that although it is superior in a great many points in my opinions to the other two Works, I think it has not the Spirit of P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alethea Bigg Print: Book
'I have read M P ["Mansfield Park"]... I will add that although it is superior in a great many points in my opinions to the other two Works, I think it has not the Spirit of P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alethea Bigg Print: Book
'Charles - did not like it ["Mansfield Park"] near so well as P. & P. - thought it wanted Incident.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Austen Print: Book
'Mrs Dickson. - "I have bought M P. - but it is not equal to P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Dickson Print: Book
'Mrs Creed - preferred S & S and P & P. - to Mansfield Park.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Creed Print: Book
'Mr Sherer - did not think it ["Emma"] equal to either M P - which he liked the best of all - or P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Sherer Print: Book
'Mr Sherer - did not think it ["Emma"] equal to either M P - which he liked the best of all - or P & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Sherer Print: Book
'Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot - saw many beauties in it ["Emma"], but could not think it equal to P. & P. - Darcy & Elizabeth had spoilt them for anything else.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Leigh Perrot Print: Book
'Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot - saw many beauties in it ["Emma"], but could not think it equal to P. & P. - Darcy & Elizabeth had spoilt them for anything else.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Leigh Perrot Print: Book
'Countess Craven - admired it ["Emma"] very much, but did not think it equal to P & P. - which she rqanked as the very first of it's [sic] sort.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Countess] Craven Print: Book
'Mrs Digweed - did not like it ["Emma"] so well as the others...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Digweed Print: Book
'Mrs Digweed - did not like it ["Emma"] so well as the others...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Digweed Print: Book
'Mrs Digweed - did not like it ["Emma"] so well as the others...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Digweed Print: Book
'Miss Harriet Moore - admired it ["Emma"] very much, but M.P. still her favourite of all'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Moore Print: Book
'Mrs Brandreth - thought the 3d vol: [of "Mansfield Park"] superior to anything I had ever written - quite beautiful!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Brandreth Print: Book
'Mrs Brandreth - thought the 3d vol: [of "Mansfield Park"] superior to anything I had ever written - quite beautiful!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Brandreth Print: Book
'Mrs Brandreth - thought the 3d vol: [of "Mansfield Park"] superior to anything I had ever written - quite beautiful!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Brandreth Print: Book
'Mrs Lefroy - preferred it ["Emma"] to M.P - but like[d] M.P. least of all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Lefroy Print: Book
'Mrs Lutley Sclater - liked it ["Emma"] very much, better than M.P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Lutley Sclater Print: Book
'Mrs Wroughton - did not like it so well as P. & P.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Wroughton Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'She read a great deal, among her books being one called "Pride and Prejudice", "Which is at present the fashionable novel. It is written by a sister of Charlotte Smith's and contains more strength of character than other productions of this kind".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'Annabella could read the new novels, "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion" (recommended by Augusta, and contrast that kind of real life with the kind she had learned to know better)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'Annabella could read the new novels, "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion" (recommended by Augusta, and contrast that kind of real life with the kind she had learned to know better)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
The elderly Harriet Martineau reflects upon her altered reading capacity: 'I could not now read "Lalla Rookh" through before breakfast, as I did when it appeared. I cannot read new novels [...] while I can read with more pleasure than ever the old favourites, -- Miss Austen's and Scott's. My pleasure in Voyages and Travels is almost an insanity'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 9 January 1838: 'Read "Pride and Prejudice" again last night. I think it as clever as before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 9 January 1838: 'Finished Judges, in Pictorial Bible, which is a great treat to me. Finished "Pride and Prejudice." It is wonderfully clever, and Miss Austen seems much afraid of pathos.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 11 January 1838: 'Read "Northanger Abbey." Capital: found two touches of pathos.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 18 January 1838: 'Read much of "Emma" this evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'I would not let Martha [Lloyd] read First Impressions [later published as "Pride and Prejudice"] again upon any account, & am very glad that I did not leave it in your power. - She is very cunning, but I see through her design; she means to publish it from Memory, & one more perusal must enable her to do it."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Lloyd Manuscript: Sheet, MS of novel
'I am gratified by her [Fanny Knight] having pleasure in what I write - but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning Criticism, may not hurt my stile [sic], by inducing too great a solicitude...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Knight Manuscript: novel in MS
'There was a novel about young women, which I think now must have been "Sense and Sensibility": I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
'Miss Benn dined with us on the very day of the Books [copies of "Pride and Prejudice"] coming, & in the eveng we set fairly at it & read half the 1st vol. to her - prefacing that having intelligence from Henry that such a work wd soon appear we had desired him to send it whenever it came out - & I beleive [sic] it passed with her unsuspected. She was amused, poor soul! [italics] that [end italics] she cd not help you know, with two such people to lead the way; but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Our 2d evening's reading to Miss Benn had not pleased me so well, but I beleive [sic] something must be attributed to my Mother's too rapid way of getting on - & tho' she perfectly understands the Characters herself, she cannot speak as they ought. - Upon the whole however I am quite vain enough & well satisfied enough...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Leigh Austen Print: Book
'I am exceedingly pleased that you can say what you do, having gone thro' the whole work ["Pride and Prejudice"] - & Fanny's praise is very gratifying; - my hopes were tolerably strong of [italics] her [end italics], but nothing like a certainty. Her liking Darcy & Elizth is enough. She might hate all the others if she would. I have her opinion under her own hand this morning, but your Transcript of it which I read first, was not & is not the less acceptable. - To [italics] me [end italics] it is of course all praise - but the more exact truth which she sends [italics] you [end italics] is good enough.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cassandra Austen Print: Book
'I am exceedingly pleased that you can say what you do, having gone thro' the whole work ["Pride and Prejudice"] - & Fanny's praise is very gratifying; - my hopes were tolerably strong of [italics] her [end italics], but nothing like a certainty. Her liking Darcy & Elizth is enough. She might hate all the others if she would. I have her opinion under her own hand this morning, but your Transcript of it which I read first, was not & is not the less acceptable. - To [italics] me [end italics] it is of course all praise - but the more exact truth which she sends [italics] you [end italics] is good enough.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Knight Print: Book
'Lady Robert is delighted with P & P - and really [italics] was [end italics] so as I understand before she knew who wrote it - for, of course, she knows now.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Robert Kerr Print: Book
'And Mr Hastings - I am quite delighted with what such a Man writes about it ["Pride and Prejudice"]. - Henry sent him the Books after his return from Daylesford.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Warren Hastings Print: Book
'We did not begin reading [the proof-sheets of "Mansfield Park"] till Bentley Green. Henry's approbation hitherto is even equal to my wishes; he says it is very different from the other two, ["Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility"] but does not seem to think it at all inferior...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Austen Manuscript: Sheet, proof sheets
'Henry is going on with Mansfield Park; he admires H. Crawford - I mean properly - as a clever, pleasant Man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Austen Manuscript: Sheet, proof sheets
'Henry has this moment said that he likes my M[ansfield] P[ark] better & better; - he is in the 3d vol. - I beleive [sic] now he has changed his mind as to foreseeing the end; - he said yesterday at least, that he defied anybody to say whether H.C. would be reformed, or would forget Fanny in a fortnight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Austen Manuscript: Sheet, proof sheets
'Henry has finished Mansfield Park, & his approbation has not lessened. He found the last half of the last volume [italics] extremely interesting [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Austen Manuscript: Sheet, proof sheets
'In addition to their [Mr and Mrs Cooke's] standing claims on me, they admire Mansfield Park exceedingly. Mr Cooke says "It is the most sensible Novel he ever read" - and the manner in which I treat the Clergy delights them very much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr and Mrs Cooke Print: Book
'We have called upon Miss Dusautoy and Miss Papillon & been very pretty. - Miss D. has a great idea of being Fanny Price [the heroine of JA's novel, "Mansfield Park"], she & her younest sister together, who is named Fanny.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Dusautoy Print: Book
'Your official opinion of the Merits of "Emma", is very valuable & satisfactory.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Sheet, MS of novel
'Your late Works, Madam, and in particular Mansfield Park reflect the highest honour on your Genius & your Principles; in every new work your mind seems to increase its energy and powers of discrimination. The Regent has read & admired all your publications'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Prince Regent Print: Book
'Your late Works, Madam, and in particular Mansfield Park reflect the highest honour on your Genius & your Principles; in every new work your mind seems to increase its energy and powers of discrimination. The Regent has read & admired all your publications'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Prince Regent Print: Book
'Your late Works, Madam, and in particular Mansfield Park reflect the highest honour on your Genius & your Principles; in every new work your mind seems to increase its energy and powers of discrimination. The Regent has read & admired all your publications'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Prince Regent Print: Book
'Accept my sincere thanks for the pleasure your Volumes have given me: in the perusal of them I felt a great inclination to write & say so.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Stanier Clarke Print: Book
'You were very good to send me Emma - which I have in no respect deserved. It is gone to the Prince Regent. I have read only a few Pages which I very much admired - there is so much nature - and excellent description of Character in every thing you describe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Stanier Clarke Print: Book
'I have been most anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, & am infinitely obliged to you for your kind recollection of me, which will procure me the pleasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I shd otherwise have had it. - I am already become intimate in the Woodhouse family, & feel that they will not amuse & interest me less than the Bennetts, Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable predecessors - I [italics] can [end italics] give them no higher praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess of Morley Print: Book
'I have been most anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, & am infinitely obliged to you for your kind recollection of me, which will procure me the pleasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I shd otherwise have had it. - I am already become intimate in the Woodhouse family, & feel that they will not amuse & interest me less than the Bennetts, Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable predecessors - I [italics] can [end italics] give them no higher praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess of Morley Print: Book
'I have been most anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, & am infinitely obliged to you for your kind recollection of me, which will procure me the pleasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I shd otherwise have had it. - I am already become intimate in the Woodhouse family, & feel that they will not amuse & interest me less than the Bennetts, Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable predecessors - I [italics]can [end italics] give them no higher praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess of Morley Print: Book
'I have been most anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, & am infinitely obliged to you for your kind recollection of me, which will procure me the pleasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I shd otherwise have had it. - I am already become intimate in the Woodhouse family, & feel that they will not amuse & interest me less than the Bennetts, Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable predecessors - I [italics] can [end italics] give them no higher praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess of Morley Print: Book
'January 2...What I chiefly admire in Jane Austen is that what she promises, she performs, i.e. if Sir T. is to arrive, we have his arrival at length, and it's excellent and exceeds our expectations. This is rare; it is also my very weakest point. Easy to see why...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'January 5... J. and I read "Mansfield Park" with great enjoyment. I wonder if J. [Middleton Murry] is as content as he appears? It seems too good to be true.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'I can no longer settle to fiction to anything like the extent I did before the war. Could read nothing but Jane Austen's Emma when war broke out. I read about the same amount of non-fiction, but far more biographies and autobiographies.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 July 1843:
'Mr Kenyon came yesterday -- & he had just been reading, he said, "Pride & Prejudice", ..
driven into making an acquaintance with Miss Austen in despite of his anti-novelism, by the
buzz of admiration which beset him from Mr Harness, and others [goes on to report Kenyon's
enthusiastic praises of novel, as well as his reservations concerning its 'want of elevation', in
what she confesses are not necessarily 'verbatim' terms]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Kenyon Print: Book
'Yes I [underlined] have [end underlining] read the book you speak of, "Pride & Prejudice", and I could quite rave about it! How well you define one of its characterestics [sic] when you say of it, that it breaths [sic] a spirit of "careless originiality". - It is charming. - Nothing was ever better conducted than the fable; nothing can be more [underlined] piquant [end underlining] than its dialogues; more distinct than its characters. Do, I entreat, tell me by whom it is written; and tell me, if your health will allow you, [underlined] soon [end underlining]. I die to know. Some say it is by Mrs Dorset, who wrote that clever little [underlined] bijou [end underlining], "the Peacock at Home". is it so? Pray, pray tell me. I have the three vols now in the house, and know not how to part with them. I have only just finished, and could begin them all over again with pleasure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Many thanks for the loan of "Emma", which, even amidst languor and depression, forced from me a smile, & afforded me much amusement'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am [underlined] so [end underlining] glad you like what you have read of "Emma", and the dear old man's "Gentle selfishness". - Was there ever a happier expression? - I have read no story book with such glee, since the days of "Waverley" and "Mannering", and, by the same author as "Emma", my prime favourite of all modern Novels "Pride and Prejudice"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am [underlined] so [end underlining] glad you like what you have read of "Emma", and the dear old man's "Gentle selfishness". - Was there ever a happier expression? - I have read no story book with such glee, since the days of "Waverley" and "Mannering", and, by the same author as "Emma", my prime favourite of all modern Novels "Pride and Prejudice"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Barrett Print: Book
'works of imagination are really becoming too reasonable to be very entertaining. Formerly, in [italics] my time [end italics], a heroine was merely a piece of beautiful matter, with long fair hair and soft blue eyes, who was buffeted up and down the world like a shuttlecock, and visited with all sorts of possible and impossible miseries. Now they are black-haired, sensible women, who do plain work, pay morning visits, and make presents of legs of pork; - vide "Emma", which, notwithstanding, I do think a very capital performance: there is no story whatever, nor the slightest pretensions to a moral, but the characters are all so true to life, and the style is so dry and piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aides of mystery and adventure. "Rhoda" is of a higher standard of morals and very good and interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
Thursday 24 June 1937: 'A letter from Ott. [...] She has been [italics]very[end italics] ill [following stroke] [...] but is recovering at Tunbridge Wells. Pipsy reads Emma to her, & she reads H. James to herself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Sunday 31 March 1940: 'S[ense]. & S[ensibility]. all scenes. very sharp. Surprises. masterly [...] Very dramatic. Plot from the 18th Century. Mistressly in her winding up. No flagging [...] And the love so intense, so poignant [makes few further comments, in same note form] Elinor I suppose Cassandra: Marianne Jane, edited.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Finished reading Mansfield Park, which more than ever convinces me that Jane Austen is trivial, facetious and commonplace.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lees-Milne Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 3 March 1898:
'I will tell how I spent my prize money. I got Browning's Poems in two volumes, two volumes of Jebb's Sophocles, Kugler's History of Italian Painting in two volumes, and last but not least Jane Austen in 10 volumes. It is such a lovely edition, in green cloth with beautiful print and paper, and each volume is very light to hold [...] Each novel goes into two volumes, except Persuasion & Northanger Abbey, who only take one. I am reading the latter again, & I am more delighted with it than ever.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Alice Clara Forster, 2 July 1905:
'In the evening I read Elizabeth [employer] "Emma". Liebeth [employer's daughter and Forster's pupil] has just drawn me doing it on the black board.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Arthur Cole, 7 July 1905, following satirical account of English travellers met the previous day:
'These then are my thoughts [...] My books are equally stimulating: Wilhelm Tell -- which is thought mighty fine -- and Northanger Abbey, which I read aloud to Elizabeth [employer] in the evenings. Also Thais, but that I am only beginning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I read "Mansfield Park" [Jane Austen]. Proust applied to la petite noblesse de campagne. I also read Aristotle's Ethics, feeling that it was really high time, before I got to Rome, to know what was meant by "good".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
'Did you ever read "Emma", a novel of Miss Austen's? I have seen three or four [italics] Harriet Smiths [end italics] taken up and let down again, and you not being a [italics] Harriet Smith [end italics], your [italics] good genius [end italics] would rather you were not of the number. The present inmate is, I acknowledge, rather of the [italics] Miss Jane Fairfax [end italics] class, and the first I have known so favoured... Oh! how I wish (and have long wished) for the [italics] Mr Knightly [sic, end italics] to come and take the government on his own shoulders, then everything would go on as it ought... which proves me to be something like a romantic old fool.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
'I had a letter from Ly. -- on Tuesday that gave me great content, for I, like you, felt a little afraid that the Lady Augusta might give offence. However, her withers are altogether unwrung, and she speaks of "Trevelyan" just as I could wish, enumerating all her bothers and businesses, but saying she cannot resist taking it up at odd times, "it is so very, very interesting!!" She has not yet come to the end; however, this has quite dispelled my fears. For that matter, when we all read "Emma" together at poor Bothwell - the duchess one - we could not help laughing a little more at the devotion of father and daughter to their respective apothecaries, and all the coddling that ensued from it, but we did not find that it struck the devotees in existence. People are so used to themselves! One of Foote's most comical farces represented to the life a certain Mr. Ap. Rees, whom, as old people told me, it did not in the least exaggerate. They swore to having heard him utter the very things the farce put in his mouth. But he himself never found it out. He was intimate with Foote, read the play, told him it was d- stupid and would not suceed, wondered it did, yet went to it and laughed for company, till some good-natured friend informed him he was the person ridiculed; then he went in a rage to the Lord Chamberlain and desired it might be suppressed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
'I have read both Emma and [torn and illegible]. In the first there is so little to remember, and in the last so much that one wishes to forget, that I am not inclined to write about them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Do not oblige him to read any more. - Have mercy on him and tell him the truth [about the authorship of Austen's novels] & make him an apology...he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my Works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wildman Print: Book
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal" [...] The friends exchanged thoughts on the political state of the world [...] Miss Austen's novels were read and compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion, and Hallam wrote, "Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal" [...] The friends exchanged thoughts on the political state of the world [...] Miss Austen's novels were read and compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion, and Hallam wrote, "Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal" [...] The friends exchanged thoughts on the political state of the world [...] Miss Austen's novels were read and compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion, and Hallam wrote, "Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'A paper was then read by Mrs Goadby on Jane Austen followed by readings from her novels by Mrs Ridges, C.E. Stansfield, S.A. Reynolds & a duologue by Mrs Edminson & Mr Goadby'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges Print: Book
'A paper was then read by Mrs Goadby on Jane Austen followed by readings from her novels by Mrs Ridges, C.E. Stansfield, S.A. Reynolds & a duologue by Mrs Edminson & Mr Goadby'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'A paper was then read by Mrs Goadby on Jane Austen followed by readings from her novels by Mrs Ridges, C.E. Stansfield, S.A. Reynolds & a duologue by Mrs Edminson & Mr Goadby'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book
'A paper was then read by Mrs Goadby on Jane Austen followed by readings from her novels by Mrs Ridges, C.E. Stansfield, S.A. Reynolds & a duologue by Mrs Edminson & Mr Goadby'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson and Allan Goadby Print: Book
'A paper was then read by Mrs Goadby on Jane Austen followed by readings from her novels by Mrs Ridges, C.E. Stansfield, S.A. Reynolds & a duologue by Mrs Edminson & Mr Goadby'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lilian Goadby Print: Book
'[Anne Isabella Milbanke] read a great deal [during season of 1813], among her books being one called Pride and Prejudice, "which is at present the fashionable novel. It is written by a sister of Charlotte Smith's and contains more strength of character than other productions of this kind."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'[From New Year, 1818] Annabella could read the new novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (recommended by Augusta [Leigh]), and contrast that kind of real life with the kind she had learnt to know better [as Byron's estranged wife].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'[From New Year, 1818] Annabella could read the new novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (recommended by Augusta [Leigh]), and contrast that kind of real life with the kind she had learnt to know better [as Byron's estranged wife].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
Tuesday, 14 March 1826:
'I have amused myself occasionally very pleasantly during the few last days by reading over
Lady Morgan's novel of O'Donnel which has some striking and beautiful passages of situation
and description and in the comic part is very rich and entertaining. I do not remember being
so much pleased with it at first -- there is a want of story always fatal to a book the first
reading and it is well if it gets the chance of a second [...]
'Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride
and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and
characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with [...] What a pity
such a gifted creature died so early.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'[J. G.] Lockhart says that [Scott] used to read aloud from Emma and Northanger Abbey to the
family circle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'[J. G.] Lockhart says that [Scott] used to read aloud from Emma and Northanger Abbey to the
family circle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Tuesday, 18 September 1827:
'Whiled away the evening over one of Miss Austen's Novels; there is a truth of painting in her writings which always delights me. They do not it is true get above the middle classes of Society. But there she is inimitable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
William Gifford to John Murray (1815):
'I have for the first time looked into "Pride and Prejudice;" and it is really a very pretty thing. No
dark passages; no secret chambers; no wind-howlings in long galleries; no drops of blood upon
a rusty dagger -- things that should now be left to ladies' maids and sentimental washerwomen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wiliam Gifford Print: Book
William Gifford to John Murray, 29 September 1815:
'I have read "Pride and Prejudice [italics]again[end italics] -- 'tis very good -- wretchedly
printed, and so pointed as to be almost un-intelligible. make no apology for sending me anything
to read or revise. I am always happy to do either, in the thought that I may be useful to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wiliam Gifford Print: Book
William Gifford to John Murray, 29 September 1815:
'I have read "Pride and Prejudice [italics]again[end italics] -- 'tis very good -- wretchedly
printed, and so pointed as to be almost un-intelligible. Make no apology for sending me
anything to read or revise. I am always happy to do either, in the thought that I may be useful
to you [...]
'Of "Emma," I have nothing but good to say. I was sure of the writer before you mentioned
her. The MS., thought plainly written, has yet some, indeed many little omissions; and an
expression may now and then be amended in passing through the press. I will readily
undertake the revision.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wiliam Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
The Marchioness of Abercorn to John Murray (1817-18):
'Pray send us Miss Austen's novels the moment you can. Lord Abercorn thinks them next to W. Scott's (if they [i.e. "W. Scott's" novels] are by W. Scott); it is a great pity that we shall have no more of hers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Abercorn Print: Book
'When not in the curiosity shops, or examining and washing her [ceramic] purchases in the hotel, Lady Charlotte read a great deal. After revelling "in that pleasant life of Macaulay" she started on Pride and Prejudice.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
1 July 1876, from Brussels:
'I have been studiously reading four of Miss Austen's novels, incited thereto by Macaulay's praise, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park. I like the first least of all; I think I like the last the best, but I cannot quite make up my mind to whether I am alive to their very great merit. For the epoch at which they appeared, some sixty years ago, they are very remarkable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
1 July 1876, from Brussels:
'I have been studiously reading four of Miss Austen's novels, incited thereto by Macaulay's praise, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park. I like the first least of all; I think I like the last the best, but I cannot quite make up my mind to whether I am alive to their very great merit. For the epoch at which they appeared, some sixty years ago, they are very remarkable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
1 July 1876, from Brussels:
'I have been studiously reading four of Miss Austen's novels, incited thereto by Macaulay's praise, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park. I like the first least of all; I think I like the last the best, but I cannot quite make up my mind to whether I am alive to their very great merit. For the epoch at which they appeared, some sixty years ago, they are very remarkable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
1 July 1876, from Brussels:
'I have been studiously reading four of Miss Austen's novels, incited thereto by Macaulay's praise, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park. I like the first least of all; I think I like the last the best, but I cannot quite make up my mind to whether I am alive to their very great merit. For the epoch at which they appeared, some sixty years ago, they are very remarkable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'[Jane Austen] talked freely of her works among her friends, listened to criticism with patient
docility, and read her tales aloud with great effect, "and they were never heard to so much
advantage as from her own mouth," says Sir Egerton Brydges, who knew her.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Quoted from Mrs Maxwell Scott:
'My cousin, Baroness von Appell (grand-daughter of Sir Walter [Scott]'s brother Thomas) will be one of those most interested in these letters. Her mother was the Eliza mentioned by my great-aunt Anne in one letter, and was a most clever and delightful lady, whose reading aloud of Emma is one of the remembrances of my girlhood.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Scott Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to George Henry Lewes, 12 January 1848:
'Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to
say that you would have rather written "Pride and Prejudice" or "Tom Jones," than any of the
Waverley Novels?
'I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice" till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book.
And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully
fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a
bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should
hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These
observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.
'Now I can understand admiration of George Sand; for though I never saw any of her works
which I admired throughout (even "Consuelo," which is the best, or the best that I have read,
appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence), yet she has a grasp
of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and
profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 12 April 1850:
'I have [...] read one of Miss Austen's works "Emma" — read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable — anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her [...] Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet; what sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study, but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through [...] this Miss Austen ignores; she no more, with her mind's eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with bodily vision sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete, and rather insensible (not senseless) woman, if this is heresy — I cannot help it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Print: Book
'Read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'She [Emma Darwin] was especially devoted to Jane Austen's novels and almost knew them by heart... Scott was also a perennial favourite, especially ''The Antiquary''. Mrs Gaskell's novels she read over and over again; Dickens and Thackeray she cared for less.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Print: Book
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth T. Alexander Print: Book
'The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone — reading between the lines — has become the secret friend of the author'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'For the first time we seem to hear the echo of the voice, and to see the picture of the unknown friend who has charmed us so long... So we gladly welcome one more glimpse of an old friend come back with a last greeting'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue. 20. 8. 40
A. B. Dilks in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
2. The Treasurer presented his Report. This differed somewhat from the Report
made by the retiring Treasurer at our last meeting, & either for this reason, or
perhaps because she was told she had not yet paid her Subscription, Janet
Rawlings proposed that in future a receipt should be given by the Treasurer for all
money paid to him. The proposal was seconded by Edith Smith & passed
unanimously by the meeting.
3. A letter was read from Ethel Stevens regretting that owing to the present
difficulty of attending meetings, she must resign from the club. The Secretary was
instructed to write to her, regretfully accepting her resignation.
[...]
6. Mary S. W. Pollard started the Literary General Knowledge Test by questioning
us in poetry and the poets. Questions which we found singularly difficult to
answer.
7. Margaret Dilks proceeded to test our knowledge of prose by reading three short
character sketches from novels. Most people had no difficulty in identifying these
as Mr. Pickwick, Mr. & Mrs. Bennett and Soames Forsyte.
8. After coffee we were faced with the Herculean task of answering a General
Knowledge paper consisting of 9 sections, each of about 10 questions. This paper
was set by Howard Smith and A. B. Dilkes and we are very grateful to them for
the time & trouble they took in compiling it. [...] “Time” was called at 10 o’clock
and the chairman then read out the answers. The integrity of the Club was not
questioned so we each corrected our own papers. [It was a matter for regret that
the two sections calling for original composition should have been left out by so
many members ...]
[signed by] Howard R. Smith
13/9/1940'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue. 20. 8. 40
A. B. Dilks in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
2. The Treasurer presented his Report. This differed somewhat from the Report
made by the retiring Treasurer at our last meeting, & either for this reason, or
perhaps because she was told she had not yet paid her Subscription, Janet
Rawlings proposed that in future a receipt should be given by the Treasurer for all
money paid to him. The proposal was seconded by Edith Smith & passed
unanimously by the meeting.
3. A letter was read from Ethel Stevens regretting that owing to the present
difficulty of attending meetings, she must resign from the club. The Secretary was
instructed to write to her, regretfully accepting her resignation.
[...]
6. Mary S. W. Pollard started the Literary General Knowledge Test by questioning
us in poetry and the poets. Questions which we found singularly difficult to
answer.
7. Margaret Dilks proceeded to test our knowledge of prose by reading three short
character sketches from novels. Most people had no difficulty in identifying these
as Mr. Pickwick, Mr. & Mrs. Bennett and Soames Forsyte.
8. After coffee we were faced with the Herculean task of answering a General
Knowledge paper consisting of 9 sections, each of about 10 questions. This paper
was set by Howard Smith and A. B. Dilkes and we are very grateful to them for
the time & trouble they took in compiling it. [...] “Time” was called at 10 o’clock
and the chairman then read out the answers. The integrity of the Club was not
questioned so we each corrected our own papers. [it was a matter for regret that
the two sections calling for original composition should have been left out by so
many members. [...]
[signed by] Howard R. Smith
13/9/1940'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'I am now engaged in reading "Sense & Sensibility'. It is, undoubtedly, one of her best. Do you
remember the Palmer family?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I am rather surprised at your remark about "Persuasion", as it seemed to me very good —
though not quite in her usual manner. I mean it is more romantic and less humorous than the
others, while the inevitable love interest, instead of being perfunctory as in "Emma" and
"Mansfield Park" is the real point of the story. Of course I admit that's not quite the style we
have learned to expect from Jane Austen, but still don't you think it is rather interesting to
see an author trying his — or her — hand at something outside their own "line of business"?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'In the mornings in bed I am going over "Sense and Sensibility" again — which I had nearly
forgotten. Do you remember Mrs Jennings and Marianne Dashwood and the rest?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I enjoy this peaceful interval of sickness and read
the works of Jane Austen, released from a fear of
death which, ever present in this land of unknown
diseases, seemed for a day or two to be creeping
near.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I meanwhile have been doing nothing except read
Jane Austen. I have stopped seeing people for a
week, as it hurts the voice to talk much, but had
one visit from the Ba Surra of Do'an, very
affectionate and inviting me for ten days or a
fortnight.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
I have read the whole of Jane Austen and think of
beginning over again. What a perfect woman - not
only a writer - and what a sham she makes all this
female emancipation seem! Nothing that is not
genuine can stand this primitive severity. But
Jane would have been quite at home and talked tea-
table gossip with the ladies of Huraidha.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'Read Betrand Russell all morning, wrote, ate
apples—applied more work NCCL [National Council
for Civil Liberties]. 2 o'clock met John
[Rodker]. Walked to Dorking. Told each other
classic stories. Tea & Home in evening, told
our confessions with as few lies as possible
... Supper together, went over to Trevelyans
... Emma & peace. Then a policeman to
see registration cards, especially John's. Mrs
Trevelyan saved us all, engaging him in light
conversation. Card given back without comment.
More Emma to sooth our nerves. Tried to
appear "calm and well-bred." Doubtful success.
Walked home with him along the cypress road.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Franeis Butts Print: Book
