Record Number: 18506

---

Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'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

Date:

unknown

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

---

Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Susan Ferrier

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

n/a

Socio-Economic Group:

Gentry

Occupation:

n/a

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

n/a

Country of Experience:

n/a

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

correspondent of Charlotte Bury

---

Text Being Read:

Author:

Jane Austen

Title:

Emma

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

---

Source Information:

Record ID:

18506

Source:

Print

Author:

Charlotte Bury

Editor:

A. Francis Steuart

Title:

Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting, The

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1908

Vol:

II

Page:

261

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Charlotte Bury, A. Francis Steuart (ed.), Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting, The, (London, 1908), II, p. 261, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=18506, accessed: 22 November 2024

---

Additional Comments:

Date of letter unclear but probably 1820 or 1821. Emma was published 1815.