Joseph Addison

It is not known where or how AF acquired an education, but she certainly did so, to a far higher level than was normal for people of her class, regardless of their gender. She had...

Of her childhood, AG wrote that she developed early powers of imagination and memory, but received little attention: no one fondled or caressed me . . . I did not till the sixth year of...

Sarah Josepha Buell (later SJH ) was taught at home by her mother, with her father and her brother Horatio (then a law student) joining in for such higher branches of learning as writing, Latin...

Because of her mother's early death, MBE , she said later, was largely self-educated, her teachers being plenty of the best books. Apart from the family library, a half-guinea annual subscription to the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution

A son, John, born early in 1728 lived only a month. Then came Spencer, born just over a year later, who rose in the Church to become a bishop, and lived until 1813; Penelope, born...

Lady Mary claimed that at every stage of her life she picked a few intimate friends and cared little for the opinions of anyone else. She always retained the highest opinion of her father's and...

In her youth JB knew Thomas Beach, who grew up at Wrexham, in the same district as herself (and later joined in the same verse exchanges in the Gentleman's Magazine), and probably...

The diary's first volume opens with a preface which expresses conventional modesty bluntly, without the customary effort at elegance or grace: Books generally begin with a Preface which draws in the Reader to go on...

An introductory address To the Reviewers urges them (with the trembling deemed appropriate for a woman writer) not to read the book in the morning but in the period of good humour after dinner.

Along with works of art she describes, but more briefly, the way of life of places she passes through. She has, however, little sympathy with working people's needs. She remarks that actresses and dancers have...

These poems reflect social life and perhaps the company of lawyers in the London of about 1720. Their author glories in her liberty—in several senses, but including freedom from the meaningless literary rules which...

This was the first periodical for women to take advantage of the monthly format, which was still fairly new. Unlike other magazines, it used fiction as its staple, while also including advice on behaviour, relationships...

She learns to condemn her parents' treatment of her when she boards in a family who deliberately favour the ugly, deformed one of their young twins, to redress the balance. She feels a great relief...

Her widow is President of a club of widows which had featured in the recent number 561, by Addison . Montagu's heroine, sold into marriage at an early age, has resolved to exploit as the...

ALB 's niece wrote of her (with an echo of Pope on himself) that while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet. She herself, however, said it was Joseph Priestley