My dear Miss Smith, Many thanks for your kind answer, I think these ladies’ biographies will be very nice work to do together, and I believe that to look into real life minutely is the best school for one’s own mind or for fiction. If I write nothing but fiction for some time, I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets - then history is ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

I have all but finished Mrs Grant and most interesting she is. Many many thanks for her. I am not sure whether she is not a little too long, to be in thorough proportion with the others, and if I find it so, perhaps I may have to take out a few of the letters that relate less directly to her personal history, but certainly not the American ones. What an old ... continue reading

My dear Mr Freeman,

Your letter followed me, on an expedition to Salisbury, where I have been seeing ‘the moot’. They had a moot there with the speakers at the summer house, and the people on the terraces, before one of the Elections, and the voices were perfectly heard. The art of hearing has been lost or rather that of making places to be heard in.

I have changed all the peas into pease. I ... continue reading

My dear Mary

Katharine must be glad of the reprieve of her husband’s start, but I hope it is not bad for his appointment. How glad I am you have begun so happily at Yealmpton, but the attendance will not be easy to keep up in the dark cold days-. I have had a very pleasant time between Barrow Court – Martin Gibbs’s place, and Somerleaze. Wrington Hannah More’s parish lies between the two, ... continue reading