"Epistolary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on his own showing, was to pester me by writing to inquire if I knew anything about it. What the deuce should I know about it? Why alarm me as well as himself? I wrote back to that effect. It was one of my keenest letters. I have produced nothing with a sharper epistolary edge to it since I tendered his dismissal in writing to that extremely troublesome ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... time to see it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, 'the burning marle' of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... two Southern companies that issued insulting defiances, but, after a little expenditure of epistolary valor, prudently, though ingloriously, stayed afar,—as is usual in New Gascony. With these exceptions, the heart of the nation went warmly out to these young men. Their endurance, their discipline, their alertness, their elan, surprised the sleepy drill-masters out of their propriety, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... she knew of the march of events during those tranquil years in the convent came to her in letters from her sister, who was a vivacious letter-writer, and prided herself upon her epistolary talent—as indeed upon her general superiority, from a literary standpoint, to the women of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... speak of the absurd affectation displayed in the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style; he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of his muse, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... in a previous chapter of these reminiscences given a letter from Mrs. Browning in which she speaks of Theodosia's "multiform faculty." And the phrase, which so occurring, might in the case of almost any other writer be taken as a mere epistolary civility, is in the case of one whose absolute accuracy of veracity never swerved a hair's-breadth, equivalent to a formal certificate of the fact to the best of her knowledge. And she knew my wife well both before and after the marriage of either of them. Her faculty ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... M.—What is the meaning of the abbreviation B. L. M. in Italian epistolary correspondence? I have reason to believe that it is used {586} where some degree of acquaintance exists, but not in addressing an entire stranger. In a correspondence now before me, one of the writers, an Italian gentleman, uses it in the subscription ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... to his unexpected guest about the soldier, exchanging news with her. Dona Luisa repeated almost word for word the paragraphs of his letters so frequently read. Argensola modestly refrained from displaying his; the two friends were accustomed to an epistolary style which would have made the good ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... artistic development at which they had arrived. The clay tablets and stone monuments that have been recovered reveal the family life of the people, their commercial undertakings, their system of legislation and land tenure, their epistolary correspondence, and the administration under which they lived, while the royal inscriptions and foundation-memorials throw light on the religious and historical events of the period in which they were inscribed. Information on all these points has been acquired as the result of excavation, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... wrongly viewed can look darker; and none rightly viewed can look clearer. The word FOREORDAIN means to ordain beforehand: and the word ELECT means to choose. Some that I have met with, in speaking on these subjects, particularly as they are given in the epistolary writings of the New Testament, remind me of fish in a net; they flounder about in the net, while every effort they make fastens them only the more tightly in its meshes. They read: "Whom God foreknew, he also FOREORDAINED ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... good friend—safe and sound at last; comfortably situated in a boarding house, of which the mistress is an agreeable Englishwoman and the master an intelligent Swiss. I have sauntered, gazed, and wondered—and exchanged a thousand gracious civilities! I have delivered my epistolary credentials: have shaken hands with Monsieur Van Praet; have paced the suite of rooms in which the renowned BIBLIOTHEQUE DU ROI is deposited: have traversed the Thuileries and the Louvre; repeatedly reconnoitred the Boulevards; viewed the gilt dome of the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... not so hopeless of attainment as it has since become. Professor Brewer, his earliest editor in the Rolls Series, is struck by the same characteristic. "Geography, history, ethics, divinity, canon law, biography, natural history, epistolary correspondence, and poetry employed his pen by turns, and in all these departments of literature he has left memorials of his ability." Without being Ciceronian, his Latin was far better than that of his contemporaries. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously.—And first, for news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... returned into Europe. Though thus doomed to perpetual exile in a strange and barbarous land, Covilham was well used. He married, and obtained ample possessions, enjoying the favour of several successive kings of Abyssinia, and was preferred to some considerable offices in the government. Frequent epistolary intercourse took place between him and the king of Portugal, who spared no expence to keep open the interesting correspondence. In his dispatches, Covilham described the several ports which he had visited in India; explained the policy and disposition of the several princes; and pointed out the situation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... sap or roots. All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the epistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, because of "the difficulty of understanding it; there was," he said, "but one person at Jidda, who was capable of understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole life ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... letters, from their first separation till the traveller's own silence had caused their correspondence to drop. Charming letters they were, such as people wrote before the penny-post had spoilt the epistolary art—long, minute, and overflowing with brilliant happiness. Several of them were urgent invitations to Stoneborough, and one of these was finished in that other hand—the delicate, well-rounded writing that would not be inherited—entreating Dr. Spencer to give a few ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... helplessly in love with Miss Langley, whom he sees in one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... vicarious manner of love-making and when in the full maturity of fifty years, certain London publishers requested him to write for them a narrative which might stand as a model letter writer from which country readers should know the right tone, his early practice stood him in good stead. Using the epistolary form into which he was to throw all his fiction, he produced "Pamela," the first novel of analysis, in contrast with the tale of adventure, of the English tongue. It is worth remarking that Richardson wrote this story at an ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... as ever, and will probably keep on writing till the last fire burns up his pen and cracks to pieces his ink bottle. Anonymous letters sometimes have a mission of kindness and gratitude and good cheer. Genuine modesty may sometimes hide the name of an epistolary author or authoress. It may be a "God bless you" from some one who thinks herself hardly in a position to address you. It may be the discovery of a plot for your damage, in which the revelator does not care to take the responsibility of a witness. It may be any one of a thousand ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... have left to be suggested to your Piety verbally by the bearers of this letter, that on the one hand this epistolary speech of ours may not become too prolix, and on the other that nothing may be omitted which would tend to ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... surrendered in exchange for certain family documents, which had fallen into the hands of a bookseller. Had it depended on her relatives, the name of Lady Mary had only reached us in the satires of Pope. The greater part of her epistolary correspondence was destroyed by her mother; and what that good and Gothic lady spared, was suppressed by the hereditary austerity of rank, of which her family was too susceptible. The entire correspondence ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... touched by SAUNDERS'S expressions of esteem, which they set down to hero-worship, and a fervent study of Mr. CARLYLE'S works. Only one of the persons addressed, unluckily, could be elected; but SAUNDERS added their responses to his pile of testimonials, and frequently gave them good epistolary reason to remember his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... demoralized that its feast of facts, its feast of documents it must have, come what will. But even supposing that the public had any rights whatsoever in regard to a man of genius, which we deny, what are letters as indications of a man’s character? Of all modes of expression is not the epistolary mode that in which man’s instinct for using language “to disguise his thought” is most likely to exercise itself? There is likely to be far more deep sincerity in a sonnet than in a letter. It is no exaggeration to say that the common courtesies of life demand a certain amount ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... seconds in the duel at Boulogne in Denis Duval; and in the missive in barbarous French of the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood[70]—a letter which only requires the sprawling, childish script to make it an exact facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of The Virginians, which is perfect, even to the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the popularity of satire takes place towards the commencement of the third last decade of the eighteenth century, when, using the vehicle of the epistolary mode, an anonymous writer, whose identity is still in dispute, attacked the monarch, the government, and the judicature of the country, in a series of letters in which scathing invective, merciless ridicule, and lofty scorn were united to ...
— English Satires • Various
... 'ud scorn to deteriorate upon the superiminence of my own execution at inditin' wid a pen in my hand; but would you feel a delectability in my supersoriptionizin' the epistolary correspondency, ma'am, that ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... year the great O'Rourke himself did condescend to write one letter. As this letter has never been printed, and as it is the only specimen extant of Mr. O'Rourke's epistolary manner, we lay it before the ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dated Venice, September 15, 1537, from that rogue of genius, Pietro Aretino. It opens in the strain of hyperbolical compliment and florid rhetoric which Aretino affected when he chose to flatter. The man, however, was an admirable stylist, the inventor of a new epistolary manner. Like a volcano, his mind blazed with wit, and buried sound sense beneath the scoriae and ashes it belched forth. Gifted with a natural feeling for rhetorical contrast, he knew the effect of some simple and impressive sentence, placed like a gem of value in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... I do desire, and insist, that whenever, from any indisposition, you are not able to write to me upon the fixed days, that Christian shall; and give me a TRUE account how you are. I do not expect from him the Ciceronian epistolary style; but I will content myself with ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... elucidate, embellish, embryonic, emendation, emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning this was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to Sordello, written thirty years after its first publication, he said: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study." This interest in "the development of a soul" is the keynote of nearly all his work. To it are directly traceable many of ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... crusade took a form which was plainly an outgrowth of a countrywide circulation of literature emanating from German publicity organizations devoted to presenting the Teutonic cause in the most favorable light to the American people. Opinions being free, epistolary zeal of this kind violated no laws, and words broke no bones. In the fact that the crusade failed perceptibly to swing national sentiment regarding the European war to a recognition of the German view of American neutrality obviously lay a stimulus and incitement for resorting ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... been lavish indeed in all her gifts to the latter, giving her a precision and solidity allied to an inexhaustible playfulness and sparkling vivacity. Art, in her, wedded to genius, resulted in that incomparable epistolary style which left Balzac and Voiture far away behind her, and which Voltaire ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... imagine that Olly's love was all of the lip-and-epistolary cheap style. Even as faith without works is dead, being alone, so professions of affection without exemplification would be simply worth "Jocko," and that worthless creature, according to the mariner, was good for "nix." No; the captain had presented his darling with diamonds—a cross, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... operating under the divine guidance of the word and spirit, as far as can be seen through the gross darkness and infidelity that is becoming more and more manifest; through all of their instrumentalities, such as prayer, exhortation, visiting, comforting, writing, especially epistolary correspondence, and all other proper means to ascertain the whereabouts, and the number of the scattered sheep of the house of Israel: even the most ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... have to be very fine and tender and soothing, free from all harshness, free from any gladness—yet it would be hard not to let a little of his vast relief peep out. Always hitherto, except for one or two such passionate lapses as that which had precipitated the situation at Santa Margherita, his epistolary manner had been formal, his matter intellectual and philanthropic, for he had always known that no letter was absolutely safe from Sir Isaac's insatiable research. Should he still be formal, still write ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... was only one thing she could say plainly: "I want to go." If she repeated this, Wilfrid was ready with citations from her letters, wherein she had said 'this,' and 'that,' and many other phrases. His epistolary power and skill in arguing his own case were creditable to him. Affected as Emilia was by other sensations, she could not combat the idea strenuously suggested by him, that he had reason to complain of her behaviour. He admitted his special faults, but, by distinctly tracing them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but when or where, that must be left to the chapter of accidents. Emily has left off writing to me; he wrote to me twice pour faire votre eloge, ce qui ne fut fort peu necessaire, and there was an end of his epistolary correspondence. Pray goad that Dean(162) who slumbers in his stall, and make ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... letters, especially the brief confidential notes, have the tantalising interest of a conversation where one of the speakers is inaudible. It is the letters to Atticus that place Cicero at the head of all epistolary stylists. We should hardly guess from the more formal and finished writings what the real man was, with his excitable Italian temperament, his swift power of phrase, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... travelling carriage, which obliged me to use six horses on my journey to St. Petersburg. I was sorry to leave Betty, and I kept up an epistolary correspondence with her mother throughout the whole of my stay ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... their easy, familiar, talkative style. The letters of Cicero and Pliny, of ancient, and Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Madame de Svign, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, of modern times, are generally received as some of the best specimens extant of epistolary composition. The letters of Charles Lamb are a series of brilliances, though of kaleidoscope variety; they have wit without buffoonery, and seriousness without melancholy. He closes one of them by subscribing himself his ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... letter she held in her hand. The daylight would have been more than sufficient for any bystander to discern that the capitals in that letter were of the peculiar semi-gothic type affected at the time by Somerset and other young architects of his school in their epistolary correspondence. She was very possibly thinking of him, even when not reading his letter, for the expression of softness with which she perused the page was more or less with her when she appeared to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... travelled, have thought that it might be profitable to present a few of these resolutions and epochs of thought. They propose to represent these and certain excesses of the inquiring reason in the form of two young men, of unequal character, engaged in epistolary correspondence. The following letters are the beginning ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... countenance remarkably expressive of intellect and feeling, and a commanding air and deportment that reminded the beholder rather of a military officer, than of the character he assumes in the close of his epistolary addresses (he used to sign himself the Hermit). The deplorable infirmity, however, of his early years, had left a perceptible lameness, which attended him through life, and induced a necessity of adventitious ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... at Lakeside Farm for a visit which lengthened out far beyond its original limits. The days spent upon the farm were full of bliss to her, the only drawback to the perfect happiness of the little girl being the separation from her beloved fidus Achates, with whom she maintained an epistolary activity extraordinarily intimate and vivid. Upon this correspondence the Wakeham family came chiefly to depend for enlightenment as to the young lady's activities and state of health, and it came to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... critical assessments of the novel by Philip Skelton and Joseph Spence; and a number of observations—some merely jottings—by Richardson himself on the structure of the novel and the virtues of the epistolary style. The statements of Skelton and Spence are unusual amongst contemporary discussions of Clarissa for their brevity, lucidity, and sustained critical relevance. Richardson's own comments, though disorganized ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... literature is now, and will be for years to come, under lock and key among the municipal archives at Cologne—allowed me to copy two letters by Chopin, one of them written conjointly with Liszt. Franchomme, too, granted me the privilege of copying his friend's epistolary communications. Besides a number of letters that have here and there been published, I include, further, a translation of Chopin's letters to Fontana, which in Karasowski's book (i.e., the Polish edition) lose much of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... give an extended notice of them in a book which has nothing whatever to do with the achievements of its heroines in art and letters in that vast almost-forgotten period, Before the War. Suffice it to say that they are among the most delightful epistolary contributions to modern literature, the more so perhaps as they were written without a thought of future publication. But being a born woman of letters, every line she writes has the elusive qualities of style and charm; and she has besides the selective ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... The epistolary imperfect, representing the time of the action when the words would be read by the ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... Though these epistolary visits in the love of God were very comfortable and confirming to me, and my heart was thankful to the Lord for them, yet I longed after personal conversation with Friends, and it was hard, I thought, that there should be so many faithful servants of God ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... stroking his leg, and assuring himself "he should retire from the University and read the authors." In Goethe's Romance, Makaria, the central figure for wisdom and influence, pleases herself with withdrawing into solitude to astronomy and epistolary correspondence. Goethe himself carried this completion of studies to the highest point. Many of his works hung on the easel from youth to age, and received a stroke in every month or year of his life. A literary astrologer, he never applied himself to any task but at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... outlived my usefulness. Life seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable. Betty's weekly letters were all that lent it any savor. They were spicy and piquant enough. Betty was discovered to have unsuspected talents in the epistolary line. At first she was dolefully homesick, and begged me to let her come home. When I refused—it was amazingly hard to refuse—she sulked through three letters, then cheered up and began to enjoy herself. But it was nearly the end of the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, however, repeated—for those who knew how to interpret her language—the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what stuff this ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the library of Nineveh, of which Assur-bani-pal was such a munificent patron, has preserved copies of some of the earlier epistolary literature of the country. Thus we have from it a fragment of a letter written by a King of Babylonia to two kings of Assyria, at a time when Assyria still acknowledged the supremacy of Babylon. But such documents are very rare, and apart from the Tel-el-Amarna ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... so often meet with in public libraries under various names, are the canons which mainly constitute the Canon Law. Strictly speaking they are the papal epistolary decrees (decreta), said to have existed from very early times. In the ninth century a collection of them was formed, or manufactured, in the name of the celebrated Isidore of Seville. But with the donation of Constantine to Pope Sylvester and many others in the later compilation ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... other effect than to bring what is now Turkish territory at a somewhat later period under Russian dominion" (Briefwechsel, p. 317). The reader may think that the insanity to which Frederick William succumbed was already mastering him; but the above is no rare specimen of his epistolary style. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gratify the two great passions of asking and answering that epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds. First, there are those which are not letters at all—as letters-patent, letters dismissory, letters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... parted, each going his way. Their letters had become more scarce, more brief, and at last had ceased altogether. It would really seem that the fact of having interests in common is the one thing sufficiently powerful to prolong and keep up the life of epistolary relations. A man may feel great affection for an absent friend, and yet not find time to write him ten lines, while he will willingly expend daily many hours on a stranger from whom he expects something. None the less he may be a true and honest friend. Man ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... epistolary discourse, proving, from the Scriptures ... that the soul is a principle naturally mortal; but immortalized actually by the pleasure of God. London, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own color who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under the name to be genuine, and to have received ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... books of a division are separated into two groups by a dash, those above the dash are historical, those beneath the dash are biographical, or poetical, or legal, or prophetical, or epistolary. ...
— A Bird's-Eye View of the Bible - Second Edition • Frank Nelson Palmer
... picture post card; postal [U.S.], card; despatch; dispatch; bulletin, these presents; rescript, rescription^; post &c (messenger) 534. V. correspond with; write to, send a letter to; keep up a correspondence. Adj. epistolary. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... writer of this epistolary essay had a firm and detailed opinion as to the exact fate to be allotted to wicked and persistent unbelievers, his allusions to that opinion are too few and vague for us to determine precisely what it was. We will briefly quote the substance ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... neglected to give you a letter which arrived yesterday, and of course I need expect no pardon when you ascertain that it is from 'India's coral strand.' If 'Brother Douglass' is as indefatigable in the discharge of his missionary as his epistolary labours, he deserves a crown of numerous converts. This letter was enclosed in one addressed to me, and I prefer that you should postpone your reply until my return. I intended to mention the matter this morning, but was absorbed in court proceedings, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... dazzle of blue and green from the diamond rings on her small, withered hands. Then she read it aloud to her companion in an even and chilly voice. She had read it before, in the same way, at the same hour, several times. The letter, couched in an epistolary style largely dependent upon underlining, appeared to contain, nevertheless, some matter of moment. It was dated from Eaton Square, in London, some weeks before, and signed Maria Spalding. ("Her mother was a Gallup," Mrs. de Tracy would say, if any one asked who Maria Spalding was; and ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... taking lessons of a painting and drawing master, with only an intermission long enough to swallow a little dinner which was sent to me in the school-room. You may easily believe that after spending the day in this manner, I did not feel in a very epistolary humor in the evening, and if I had been, I could not have written, for when I did not go immediately to bed I was obliged to get ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... persons distinguished in the world of letters sought his correspondence and friendship. With Dr Gleig, afterwards titular Bishop of Brechin, Dr Doig of Stirling, and John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, he maintained an epistolary intercourse for several years. Dr Gleig, who edited the Encyclopaedia Britannica, consulted Mr Skinner respecting various important articles contributed to that valuable publication. His correspondence with Doig and Ramsay was chiefly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... new friend in the person of Laube, who at that time, although I had not set his Kosziusko to music, was at the zenith of his fame. The first portion of his novel, Young Europe, the form of which was epistolary, had appeared, and had a most stimulating effect on me, more particularly in conjunction with all the youthful hopefulness which at that time pulsated in my veins. Though his teaching was essentially only a repetition of that in Heinse's Ardinghello, the forces that ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... himself. Enormous public interest was excited, and Croft—baronet, parson, and literary adventurer—got hold of copies which Hackman had kept of some letters he had sent to the charming Miss Reay. These he published as a sensational topical novel in epistolary form, calling it Love and Madness. This is quite worth reading for its own sake, but much more so for its 49th letter, which purports to have been written by Hackman to satisfy Miss Reay's curiosity about Chatterton. As a matter of fact Croft, who ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... Irenaeus is the first extant writer in whom, from the nature of his work, we have a right to expect explicit information on the subject of the Canon. Earlier writings, which have been preserved entire, are either epistolary, like the letters of the Apostolic Fathers, where any references to the Canonical books must necessarily be precarious and incidental (to say nothing of the continuance of the oral tradition at this early date as a ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... influence on the formation of the Neo-Hebraic style must be ascribed to two other works by the same author, Kiriai Sefer, [1] an epistolary manual containing specimens of personal, commercial, and other forms of correspondence (Vilna, 1835, and many later editions), and Debir, [2] a miscellaneous collection of essays, consisting for the most part of translations and compilations ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... won't know when he's coming," objected Shelley. "You don't need to," said Leon. "You can take it for granted from that epistolary effusion that he won't let the grass grow under his feet while coming here. That's a bully message! It sounds as if you weren't crazy over him, and it's a big compliment to mother. Looks as if she didn't have to know when people are coming—like ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... use this form in telling it will offend your literary taste—you who have made your name both as critic and creative writer—for you said once, I remember, that to tell a story in epistolary form is a subterfuge, an attempt to evade the difficult matters of construction and delineation of character. My story, however, is so slight, so subtle, so delicately intimate too, that a letter to some one in closest ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... Lung himself appreciated and was flattered by these efforts. His poetry, notably his odes on "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... comprising several hundred letters have already appeared under the title, Assyrian Letters of the K. Collection (London, 1896). For a good summary of the character of the Assyrian epistolary literature, see Johnston's article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, xviii. 1, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... epistle, favor, missive, note; encyclic, encyclical, decretal (letter of the Pope). Associated Words: correspond, epistolical, epistolary, epistolean, epistolize, epistler, epistolar, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... friend and fairest countess, I will end my lengthened epistle by praying God to have you ever in His holy care and keeping." The receipt of this letter afforded me the liveliest pleasure, and I wrote to the king regularly every night and morning. I might here introduce a specimen of my own epistolary style, but I will not; for altho' the whimsical and extravagant things my pen gave utterance to were exactly to the king's taste, they might surprise you; but my royal correspondent loved the wild and bizarre turn of my expressions, and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of Greek prose fiction the possibilities of the epistolary form were first developed by the Athenian teacher of rhetoric, Alciphron, of whose life and personality nothing is known except that he lived in the second century A.D.,—a contemporary of the great satirical genius Lucian. Of his writings we now possess only a collection of imaginary ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... comparisons between the political and intellectual liberty enjoyed by Englishmen with the bondage of his own countrymen. The "Philosophic Letters" purported to be addressed to the author's friend Theriot; but they would seem to be essays in an epistolary form rather than actual correspondence. Of England and its people, Voltaire was both an observant and an appreciative critic; hosts and guest alike had reason to be pleased with his long ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... needs before any public utterance is possible upon it. All of which methods of dealing with the matter display much wisdom of the world and a very human desire to avoid controversy and other uncomfortable mental and epistolary disturbance, but none of the spirit that led Archbishop Temple when he was Bishop of Exeter to stand unflinching on a temperance platform while the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... demise of a scholar so profound, a gentleman so accomplished, and a man so widely admired and beloved. SANDERSON was a delightful companion; and as we record this hasty tribute to his memory, we cannot help recalling the many pleasant passages, personal and epistolary, that we have had together. A correspondent of the Philadelphia Gazette, who knew him well, furnishes the following notice of the deceased, in the justice of which all who knew him ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Accompanying this epistolary masterpiece was a brief note from the writer's mother, explaining that the "picture" of Captain Hamilton, of whose possession her infant boasted, had been cut from an illustrated newspaper and pasted on stiff card-board in gratification ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... ratherish-scholarly gentlemen of our country-towns, the British Islands were the nearest terrestrial correspondences to the Islands of the Blest. About the massive Past Colonel Prowley never ceased to thrust his epistolary tendrils. Was not Great Britain a genealogical hunting-ground where game of rarest plumage might be started? Was not a family-connection with Sir Walter Raleigh (whose name should be written Praleigh, a common corruption ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... abilities, and furnished by us with a body of assistants scarcely inferior to himself,—has forwarded a series of letters, which, for faithfulness of description, power of language, fervour of thought, happiness of expression, and importance of subject-matter, have no equal in the epistolary literature of any age or country. We give this gentleman's correspondence entire, and in the order in which it ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and I, my dear, should love to write, is no wonder. We have always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary correspondencies. Our employments are domestic and sedentary; and we can scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them because they are innocent; though were they to be seen, they might not much profit or please others. But that such a gay, lively ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... steadily accumulating. Every day brought fresh supplies of letters; and the humble cottage was in danger of being swamped by an epistolary inundation, which was the despair of "Cobbler" Horn, and a growing vexation ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... general invitation to his table; so that she and I were seldom asunder. My parents were well pleased with our intimacy, as her piety was not inferior to her learning. Her turn was chiefly to philosophical or divine subjects; yet could her heavenly muse descend from its sublime height to the easy epistolary stile, and suit itself to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... published the Epodes and the majority of the Odes. "Epistles" his editors have agreed to entitle them; but not all of them are genuine Letters. Some are rather dedicated than written to the persons whose names they bear; some are thrown for literary purposes into epistolary form; some again are definitely and personally addressed to friends. "Sermons" he calls them himself as he called the Satires, and their motive is mostly the same; like those, they are Conversations, only with absent correspondents ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... For years he had practiced writing, and had often been employed by sentimental young women who came to him for model love letters. Hence the extraordinary knowledge of feminine feelings which Richardson displayed; hence also the epistolary form in which his novels were written. His aim in all his work was to teach morality and correct deportment. His strength was in his power to analyze and portray emotions. His weakness lay in his vanity, which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... books which the author picked up in his travels, or saw in libraries. It was republished, with valuable additions, by Sancassani, at Venice, in 1734, 4to. See Cat. de Lomenie, No. 2563. Works of this sort form the ANA of bibliography! CONRINGIUS compiled a charming bibliographical work, in an epistolary form, under the title of Bibliotheca Augusta; which was published at Helmstadt, in 1661, 4to.—being an account of the library of the Duke of Brunswick, in the castle of Wolfenbuttle. Two thousand manuscripts, and one hundred and sixteen thousand printed volumes, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... examples of the epistolary art being one of the principal occupations of my life, I secured a copy of the document, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... information, I have exerted myself to obtain it from all quarters. To collect this budget has been no easy task; to compress it would have been still more difficult, and, alas! to have transmitted it, in an epistolary form, would have been totally out of my power, but for the assistance of two very ingenious artists, who have not a little contributed to lighten my labour. Introducing themselves to me, very shortly after my arrival, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. - has never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did. For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all his fastidiousness of composition was wasted. He acquired in the workshop of verse the style that stood him in such good stead in the field of familiar prose. It is because of this hard-won ease of style that readers of English will never grow weary of that epistolary autobiography in which he recounts his maniacal fear that his food has been poisoned; his open-eyed wonder at balloons; the story of his mouse; the cure of the distention of his stomach by Lady Hesketh's gingerbread; the pulling out of a tooth at the dinner-table ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... some from the Bey of Corinth, written to me by Notaras, the Cogia Bachi, and others by the dragoman of the Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: "Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team of lightblue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue," and says ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have bought and read Father Coleridge's delightful book. A hundred? Ten? Five? I doubt it. Or how many have so much as borrowed from the circulating library Mrs. Cunninghame Graham's first-rate book? Of Teresa's Letters, that greatest living authority on Teresa says—'That long series of epistolary correspondence, so enchanting in the original. It is in her letters that Teresa is at her best. They reveal all her shrewdness about business and money matters; her talent for administration; her intense interest in ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... only complete edition ever published of the incomparable letters of this "prince of epistolary writers," as he has been designated by an eminent critic, the present work possesses the further advantage of exhibiting the letters themselves in chronological order. Thus the whole series forms a lively and most interesting commentary ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Christophe and Cerfbeer, and of others.[151] Here he is, for us, Honore de Balzac, author of the Juvenilia (saved from, as it is understood, a larger bulk still) in ten volumes; of the mighty "Comedy" itself, and, more incidentally, of the considerable epistolary and miscellaneous production referred to above. The manner in which this enormous output was put out has perhaps too much to do with its actual character to be passed over in total silence. It represents thirty years' working time almost ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not write to me as often as you ought. In your next you must assign some reason for this neglect. Possibly I have not received all of your letters. Nothing will improve you in epistolary writing as practice. Take great pains with your letters. Avoid vulgar phrases. Study to have your ideas pertinent and correct, and clothe them in easy and grammatical dress. Pay attention to your spelling, pointing, the use of capitals, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... blankets and poncho made up into a sleeping bag. It is wonderful what the Y. M. C. A. does for us, giving to all who come every kind of information, cashing our checks, supplying pen and ink and paper to the epistolary, and giving minor helps constantly. It is to them a very burdensome expense, which they have no fund to meet. I shall leave something behind to ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Germany, often, and especially at first, with playful reminder of Yorick's use of the term.[81] Yorick's mock-scientific division of travelers seems to have met with especial approval, and evidently became a part of conversational, and epistolary commonplace allusion. Goethe in a letter to Marianne Willemer, November 9, 1830,[82] with direct reference to Sterne proposes for his son, then traveling in Italy, the additional designation of the "bold" or "complete" traveler. Carl August in a letter to Knebel,[83] ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... that the more such misty clouds offuscate the clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to the dimming of their hidden malice." &c. It must be confessed that this erudite princess had not perfectly succeeded in transplanting into her own language the epistolary graces of her favorite Cicero;—but to how many much superior classical scholars might a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... she thought of my correspondence? What estimate did she form of Dr. John Bretton's epistolary powers? In what light did the often very pithy thoughts, the generally sound, and sometimes original opinions, set, without pretension, in an easily-flowing, spirited style, appear to her? How did she like that genial, half humorous vein, which to me gave such delight? What did she think ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... on the note and opened it, thinking it might be from Mrs. Olney. But the opening lines smacked of other modes of speech than hers; and though Julia had no experience of Mr. Thomasson's epistolary style, she felt no surprise when she found the initials F.T. appended to ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... yet remain in private hands; which he is the more desirous of collecting, as all the letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson's epistolary correspondence will ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... granddaughter of a vague and somewhat simple clergyman who existed, with an aunt, solely for Golly's epistolary purposes. There was, of course, intermediate ancestry,—notably a dead mother who was French, and therefore responsible for any later naughtiness in Golly,—but they have no purpose here. They lived in the Isle of ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... sing "Days of Absence," "I'm A Merry Swiss Boy," and many other delightful melodies, the which, even now, Miss Cornelia will sometimes hum softly to herself. Besides acquiring these and sundry other accomplishments, Miss Amelia found time to carry on a secret epistolary correspondence with a good-looking young law-student, (of whom more extended mention will presently be made,) and also to contrive many meetings and walks with him, of which nobody was cognizant but her sister and some five or six other bosom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... another place he says, such is their infatuation for their productions, that they prefer giving to the public their panegyrics of persons whom afterwards they satirized, rather than suppress the verses which contain those panegyrics. We have many examples of this in the poems, and even in the epistolary correspondence of modern writers. It is customary with most authors, when they quarrel with a person after the first edition of their work, to cancel his eulogies in the next. But poets and letter-writers frequently do not do this; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... while they were passing through the post, Jerrold sarcastically dedicated to the heckled baronet. He did this on the ground that Sir James, having the whole run of the Post Office and the fingering of all the letters, must therefore possess "a most refined, most exquisite taste for the graces of epistolary composition," and could thoroughly appreciate them. This was another version ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... write a graceful note is always spoken of with phrases of commendation. The epistolary art is said to be especially feminine, and the novelists and essayists are full of compliments to the sex, which is alternately praised and objurgated, as man feels well or ill. Bulwer says: "A woman is the genius of epistolary communication. Even men write better to a woman ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country, where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... life of Gerbert reveal practically nothing to show that he came within the Moorish sphere of influence during his sojourn in Spain. These sources {115} are his letters and the history written by Richer. Gerbert was a master of the epistolary art, and his exalted position led to the preservation of his letters to a degree that would not have been vouchsafed even by their classic excellence.[453] Richer was a monk at St. Remi de Rheims, and was doubtless a pupil of Gerbert. The latter, when ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... a number of letters apologising for absence, one of which was, of course, from Lord Southbluff, who specialises in this epistolary form, proceeded to pour scorn on the Board of Trade's decision. How can the Board of Trade, he asked pointedly, know its business as well as we do? If it hopes, by curtailing the supplies of ink that come to England, to make room for the more important necessaries of life, it is mistaken. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... sex, she was trying to keep up by the active stimulus of opposition an interest that she had begun to think if left to itself might wane. She was conscious that her cousin Julia, although impertinent and illogical, was right in considering her first epistolary advances to Corbin as a youthful convert's religious zeal. But now that her girlish enthusiasm was spent, and the revival itself had proved as fleeting an excitement as the old "Tournament of Love and Beauty," which it had supplanted, she preferred to believe that she enjoyed the fascinating ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... constructions, some highly elegant, others a little forced and bordering upon experiments on language. [57] The poetry of his language consists not so much in its being imaginative, as in its employing the fittest words in the fittest places. Its general level is that of the best epistolary or oratorical compositions, according to the elevation of the subject. He loves not to soar into the empyrean, but often checks Pegasus by a strong curb, or by a touch of irony or an incongruous allusion prevents himself or his reader ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... have been written under the spur of imminent necessity. Perhaps there was no time to enter fully upon the subject; perhaps also it was one that could not be discussed through an epistolary correspondence." ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth |
