"Epistolary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... epistolary art was the slightest, but even to a mind unfamiliar with this branch of literature it was plain that Shaver's parents were involved in some difficulty that was attributable, not to any lessening of affection between them, but to a row of some sort between their respective fathers. ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... 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 similar remark ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... presence at Issoudun might save your brother, and rescue a fortune of forty, perhaps sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you, but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why: Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a rabbit. I ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the Japanese, have a most rigid epistolary etiquette, and set forms for letter writing. Letters must consist of six parts, and are so highly elaborate that the scribes who indite them are almost looked upon as litterateurs. There is an etiquette of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 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 ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... of epistolary accounts with you at present is extraordinary. The balance, as to number, is on your side. I am indebted to you for two letters; one dated the 16th of November, upon which very day I wrote to you, so that our letters were exactly exchanged, and one dated the 21st ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... The truest monument to his stay in Italy is the book of Italian travel that he wrote, and the best effect is that sort of peripatetic novel which he may be said to have invented in Humphrey Clinker, and which has survived the epistolary form into our own time. It is a very simple shaft that rises over his grave, with the brief record, "Memoriae Tobiae Smollett, qui Liburni animam efflavit, 16 Sept., 1773," but it is imaginable with what ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... letter from the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was a good omen, for rumor of a thousand tongues had already invested the returning Major with an important secret mission. His epistolary seed planted in Delhi had brought forth fruit as rapidly as the magic of the Indian conjuror's mango-tree trick. It was already rumored even in Allahabad that "Hawke had dropped upon a decidedly good ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... ABSENT TWO-SEVENTHS OF THE 'WE-ARE-ITS'—Greeting! Please don't imagine that I forced my way into this Round Robin affair. My masculine chirography probably looks out of place in this epistolary triumph—ahem!—but you can thank Kitty Clark for it. I don't know whether or not this is intended as a letter of condolence, but it surely ought to be,—anybody who has to miss this summer-session on the Blue Bonnet ranch deserves flowers ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... 'Adventures of a Strolling Player,' besides a number of minor papers. For Newbery, by a happy recollection of the 'Lettres Persanes' of Montesquieu, or some of his imitators, he struck almost at once into that charming epistolary series, brimful of fine observation, kindly satire, and various fancy, which was ultimately to become the English classic known as 'The Citizen of the World'. He continued to produce these letters periodically ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... seldom without a dash of playfulness or humour somewhere; a thing always fresh and spontaneous, unlike the calculated or laboured playfulness sometimes to be observed in the epistolary touch of literary folk. A capital example is a note to Matthew Arnold, at whose house he had left his umbrella. Arnold, it may be added, had recently been critically engaged upon ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... 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
... sat down, and, resorting to the best means she could think of for keeping her cousin at arm's length, produced her writing-materials and proceeded to discharge a few of her epistolary debts. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... with an average of one hundred and fifty words to the foot. Under the pressure of elation one takes pride in doing everything in record time. Despite my speed my letters were not incoherent. They were simply digressive, which was to be expected, as elation befogs one's "goal idea." Though these epistolary monstrosities were launched, few reached those to whom they were addressed; for my conservator had wisely ordered that my literary output be sent in bulk to him. His action was exasperating, but later ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... with the pangs of my jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me the pander of your epistolary intrigue? This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a subsequent short one or two of your own. If you do so again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may soar. I shall send you verse or arsenic, as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she "seized the half- hour just previous to post-time to assure" her friends of this or of that; ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... true that 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 ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... 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 enclosing bills, letters ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... correspondence. A little later he employed a young New Hampshire graduate of Harvard, Tobias Lear, who graduated in 1783, who served him as secretary until his death, and undoubtedly lightened the epistolary cares of the General. But Washington continued to carry on much of the letter-writing, especially the intimate, himself; and, like the Adamses and other statesmen of that period, he kept letter-books which contained the first drafts or copies of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... all the delicate tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess's bosom. Such was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of the Princess that all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be waived. She required that in their epistolary correspondence they should treat each other as equals, under the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill chose the latter, which would be, she said, the emblem of her "frank, open temper." Under these assumed ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Albinia's epistolary habits, Winifred exclaimed at the first glance, 'What can you mean? There is not one word of the little one! It ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... critic is irritated by the conversational and epistolary style which Richardson evolves in the process of "writing to the moment"; he is particularly vexed at the coined or adapted words which are sometimes italicized and dwelt on as characteristic of an individual. He cites only a few, such as Uncle Selby's scrupulosities, but he has others ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... prose essays, and always criticised these first. Verses he treated as a sorry addition: and, what was the worst of all, even my prose found little favor in his eyes; for, after my old fashion, I used always to lay, as the foundation, a little romance, which I loved to work out in the epistolary form. The subjects were impassioned, the style went beyond ordinary prose, and the contents probably did not display any very deep knowledge of mankind in the author; and so I stood in very little favor with our professor, although ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... incomprehensible distaste for your delightful presence, am I, your constant friend, to be blamed? I cannot alter the nature of these barbarians. But what has happened since I published an article which had, at any rate, the merit of truthful portraiture? Why, I have been overwhelmed with epistolary reproaches in every variety of feminine hand-writing. "A CAREFUL MOTHER" writes from Dorset—a locality hitherto associated in my mind with butter rather than with blame—to protest that she has been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... which would comfort him in his present (alas! she feared not undeserved) calamity. She added profuse references to particular Scriptural chapters which would do him good. If she might speak of things worldly, she said, at such a moment, she would hint to Mr. Warrington that his epistolary orthography was anything but correct. She would not fail for her part to comply with his express desire that his dear cousins should know nothing of this most painful circumstance, and with every wish for his welfare here and elsewhere, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and died Mr. Fleming, after he had served his day and generation. His works yet declare what for a man he was; for besides the forenamed treatise, the confirming work of religion, his epistolary discourse, and his well known book, the fulfilling of the scriptures; he left a writing behind him under this title, A short index of some of the great appearances of the Lord in the dispensations of his providence to his poor servant, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Spaniards seemed to be perpetually increasing the number of these gun-boats and armed launches, the British commander in chief thought it necessary to give them a timely check. So that, notwithstanding the occasional civilities of their epistolary correspondence, such are often the necessary deceptions of war, that hostilities were, perhaps, all the time, meditating by both parties. Certain it is, that on the night of the 3d of July, only three days after the date of the above letter, Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson received ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... twenty-five letters, amongst which 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 true ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... fiction retains its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his—constructive power and picturesqueness—she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpassed Richardson ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... hangs over the preface, and is strengthened by de Freval's letter, that the editor himself has worked up the story from the barest details of real life (which is, of course, what Richardson did). De Freval continues to speak of the work entirely as of creative writing. The epistolary style is aptly devised; the book will become a pattern for this kind of fiction; it is contrived for readers of all tastes. But, quite in contradiction, de Freval also implies that the editor has shown him the author's original work, together with certain editorial changes necessary ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... Europe. Keen 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 ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 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 ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... we 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 our ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... {105} little later they reach the point of sarcasm. Denonville taxes Dongan with selling rum to the Indians. Dongan retorts that at least English rum is less unwholesome than French brandy. Beneath these epistolary compliments there lies the broad fact that Dongan stood firm by his principle that the extension of French rule to the south of Lake Ontario should not be tolerated. He ridicules the basis of French pretensions, saying ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Pocket Manual of Composition and Letter-Writing, embracing Hints on Penmanship and choice of Writing Materials, Practical Rules for Literary Composition in general, and Epistolary and Newspaper Writing, Punctuation, and Proof Correcting in particular; Directions for Writing Letters of Business, Relationship, Friendship and Love, Illustrated with numerous Examples of Genuine Epistles from the pens of the Best Writers, to which ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... 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. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... orderly method of Bishop Latimer, in his sermons before King Edward the Sixth; but, on the contrary, shall adopt the easy, desultory style of one whom at present I shall not venture to name, but leave that to some future ingenious commentator on the epistolary correspondence of the Hon. Andrew ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... be read by a large circle, we expected to find them clever and spirited, but deficient in ease. We looked with vigilance for instances of stiffness in the language and awkwardness in the transitions. We have been agreeably disappointed; and we must confess that, if the epistolary style of Lord Byron was artificial, it was a rare and admirable instance of that highest art which cannot be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... imagine each mark on the coat, of which "Nompy" bootlessly complains, done in different colors, he will have some idea of the infinite pains Field bestowed on the details of his epistolary pranks. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... for a moment. Usually, the overburdened heart hits at once upon the exact word or phrase which best expresses its ecstatic feeling. And so with less impassioned matters. There is a well-recognised gradation in the methods of epistolary salutation. The stranger is addressed as 'Sir,' the person of whom something is known as 'Dear Sir.' 'My Dear Sir' accompanies a rather better acquaintance; 'Dear Mr. Brown' marks an approach to intimacy; while 'Dear Brown' signifies the acme of friendship and of camaraderie. Here, again, there ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... reposed in him and his honour, he despatched him to Miss Tishy with the following letter; which we here insert, not only as we take it to be extremely curious, but to be a much better pattern for that epistolary kind of writing which is generally called love-letters than any to be found in the academy of compliments, and which we challenge all the beaus of our time to excel either ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Way" owe much of their popularity to 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 ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... late Publications, you have seen, and doubtless have made your own Comments on the epistolary Correspondence between the British Commissioners & Congress. The short Resolution on their last Letter, has put an End to it. Last Week the Minister from France had an Audience in Congress. The Manner of conducting this Ceremony, together with a Letter from his ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... stands as a means of protection to him against those who would certainly present their respects in person, if he could be got at without trouble. But it may be seriously questioned whether in the aggregate Edison's visitors are less numerous or less time-consuming than his epistolary besiegers. It is the common experience of any visitor to the laboratory that there are usually several persons ahead of him, no matter what the hour of the day, and some whose business has been sufficiently vital to get them inside the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... essays, I will endeavour not to be tedious, and this endeavour may succeed the better perhaps by declining any over-strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy whereof I shall never lose sight, but this will be very consistent with a sort of epistolary licence. To digress and to ramble are different things, and he who knows the country through which he travels may venture out of the highroad, because he is sure of finding his way back to it again. Thus the several matters that may arise even accidentally before me will have some ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... only to the "Three Glorious Days" of Revolution, 27th to 29th July 1830, during which Charles X. lost, and Louis-Philippe gained, a throne. He returned to Norwich sometime during the autumn of 1830. {88b} In November he was entering upon his epistolary duel with the Army Pay Office in connection with John's half-pay as a lieutenant ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... always acknowledged the authority of the Jewish scriptures; and by the middle or close of the second century at the latest, it had come to acknowledge explicitly the co-ordinate authority of a body of Christian literature, historic, and epistolary.(201) Hence, when once the idea of a rule of faith had grown common, the investigation of the contents of the scriptures became necessary on the part of heathen opponents. The growingly critical character of Porphyry's ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... every incentive to pursue the course she had resolved upon, since she often suffered from fits of depression hard to combat. The hope of appearing like a new being to her relatives was another innocent motive for her long-prolonged effort. Circumstances had never developed epistolary tastes in the sisters, and they were content with brief missives containing general assurances that all was well. Mrs. Muir was one of those ladies who become engrossed with the actual and the present. Had Madge been in her old room she ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... According to the old Latin distich, the poetry of a water-drinker is said to be short-lived, and not fit to live: was this proverbial doom extended to what was not poetry, it might be checked by the prose of the Duke of Portland. Most of his common letters were among the models of epistolary correspondence. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was warmly received, and it became a permanent figure in 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 ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... epistolary communication, as in his dialogues and discourses on the great question to which it related, Mr Dorrit surrounded the subject with flourishes, as writing-masters embellish copy-books and ciphering-books: where the titles of the elementary rules of arithmetic diverge into ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Bedford, she removed to London, and requested her dismission to a church of which her son-in-law was pastor, which was refused. As the letter announcing this to her is a good example of Bunyan's epistolary correspondence, it is carefully extracted from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... their governments and manners, to which they are indebted for those blessings. Adieu, my dear friend; present me affectionately to your colleagues. If any of them think me worth writing to, they may be assured that in the epistolary account I will keep the debit side against ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... requiring their pupils to read each section many times over."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 169. "Politeness is a kind of forgetting one's self in order to be agreeable to others."—Ramsay's Cyrus. "Much, therefore, of the merit, and the agreeableness of epistolary writing, will depend on its introducing us into some acquaintance with the writer."—Blair's Rhet., p. 370; Mack's Dissertation in his Gram., p. 175. "Richard's restoration to respectability, depends on his paying his debts."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 176. "Their supplying ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the freedom; in this library she spent more time than anyone else, and more than anywhere else, until her marriage. As a consequence, it is no disparagement to any one else to say that during her residence there she was intellectually quite the most accomplished woman in Washington. Her epistolary talent was ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... it is of great importance that he should never so much as look at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office if he found himself unable to discharge it. Ill-health made another journey necessary, and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration wishes that, to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment; but it is by studying at home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement. His travels and his studies were now ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... fortnightly from La Guayra to France—informing Miss Elsie of our doings, the colonel himself adding the briefest of postscripts to his pequina nina, as he invariably termed her and always enclosing some remembrance for his little daughter, to show that his love exceeded any epistolary proof of the same, as well as a more substantial token of a handsome cheque for her maintenance and education, forwarded to the care of the mother superior of ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... 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 led him to shun masculine society and to foregather at ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... men, and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watching their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his cups and balls. We of this age, who have formed our notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of Gray's, the brilliancy of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's during her later life, and the mingled good sense and fine feeling of Cowper's, value only those letters of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value. And even with regard to these, we may say that there ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is mean to feel so, and I'll think about forgiving you both; but she may stop up the hole in the wall, for she won't get any more letters just yet; and you may devote your epistolary powers to A. Bopp in future. Well, what is it? free your mind, and have done with it; but don't make your nose red, or take the starch out of my collar with any more ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... who can 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 ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed under two heads: anecdote, and epistolary correspondence. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... more frank; and when she saw him looking over her select and severe library, taking therefrom the "Polite Letter-Writer" and the "Elegant Extracts," Mrs. Crane divined at once that Jasper Losely was meditating the effect of epistolary seduction upon the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had influence in the world of science, but Hadria could not produce anything scientific! She bethought her of trying to write light descriptive articles, of a kind depending not so much on literary skill as on subject and epistolary freshness of touch. These she sent to the Professor, not without reluctance, knowing how overburdened he already was with work and with applications for help and advice. He approved of her idea, and advised the articles being sent the round ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... this—and I think she does—her corresponding with her sister can do no harm. She wrote at great length the same day; cried profusely over her own epistolary composition; and was remarkably ill-tempered and snappish toward me, when we met in the evening. She wants experience, poor girl—she sadly wants experience of the world. How consoling to know that I am just the man to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rather than paints, that writes exquisite notes in the sweet seduction of a perfect epistolary style, notes written in a boudoir, notes of invitation, sometimes confessions of love, the whole feminine heart trembling as a hurt bird trembles in a man's hand. And here are yachts and blue water, the water full of the blueness of the sky; and the confusion of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Prussia. The young Princess wrote a letter to the Prussian King, which came to George's notice and inspired him, it is said, with the liveliest admiration for the lady who penned it. Whatever the actual reason, whether the report of Colonel Graeme or the {12} charms of her epistolary style, the certain thing is that George was married, first by proxy and afterwards in due form, to the young Princess in 1761. The young Princess was not remarkably beautiful. Even the courtiers of the day, anxious to say their strongest in her praise, could ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wrote to Molly Wood was, as has been stated, the first that he had ever addressed to her. I think, perhaps, he may have been a little shy as to his skill in the epistolary art, a little anxious lest any sustained production from his pen might contain blunders that would too staringly remind her of his scant learning. He could turn off a business communication about steers or stock cars, or any other of the subjects involved in his profession, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... 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 ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... 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
... arrest a youth's success. It sometimes interferes with friendly intercourse. I once had a friend whose writing was so illegible, and the cause of so much worry in mere decipherment, that I was constrained to give up epistolary correspondence with him altogether. There can be little doubt that many a would-be author fails of success because of the illegibility of his penmanship, for it is impossible that an editor or publisher can form a fair estimate ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... what 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... no doubt, that, in the year of grace of which I write, and in the regards of many 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 of "Prowley" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... father's 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. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... myself to such an opinion; but, knowing your wish to acquire every sort of 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, the one furnished me with ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... reader 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; ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... gentleman,[87] my friend, upon his translation of "The Critical History of the Old Testament," composed by the learned Father Simon: the verses, therefore, are addressed to the translator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ought to be, epistolary. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... there were but few of these, and, had Gifford looked, he would have seen that the last one, blistered with tears, said that her father had forbidden further correspondence, and bade him, with the old epistolary formality from which not even love could escape, "an eternal farewell." But the tear-stains told more than the words, at least of Mr. Denner's heart, if not of pretty sixteen-year-old Gertrude's. These ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... 31. These epistolary formulas mean no more than the similar official phrases in English, 'Your most obedient humble servant', and the like. The 'fortunate occurrence' of the Mutiny—for such it was, in spite of all the blood and suffering—cut out many plague-spots from the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... whose joint wiles and chicanery the young man's peace of mind had been destroyed, and he driven from the land. In the firm belief of this, he wrote to Mr. Williamson, adverting in the strongest terms to the injury he conceived himself to have sustained at his hands, couching his epistolary invective in no very polite or considerate language, and enclosing the young man's letter to his ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... habitation. Here the poor craven, beset on one side by threatening letters from Philip of Valois, and on the other by importunities from the French party at the papal court, remained in Avignon till July, 1339, after Petrarch had let loose upon him his epistolary eloquence. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the writings of its master critic, Boileau, we must glance at certain writers who belonged rather to the world of public life and of society than to the world of art, but who became each a master in literary craft, as it were, by an irresistible instinct. Memoirs, maxims, epistolary correspondence, the novel, in their hands took a distinguished place in the hierarchy of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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 indifferent pun of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... all the points required in simple epistolary composition, we will confine our explanations to the rules which should ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... half my pen ran easily enough, and then, for no reason whatever, my epistolary sense faltered, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... lowest ebb, and before many minutes had passed he was pouring forth his tribulations with much frankness and simplicity. Mr. Griffith Donne's principal trial was the existence of an elderly maiden aunt, who did not approve of him, and was in the habit of expressing her disapproval in lengthy epistolary correspondence, invariably tending to severe denunciation of his mode of life, and also invariably terminating with the announcement that unless he "desisted" (from what, or in what manner, not specified) she should consider it her bounden duty to disinherit ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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, to your ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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 ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... precautions of her uncle, the Abbe of Coulanges. Henceforward, her interests in life were centred in the education of her two children; to them she wrote letters which have brought her name down to posterity as, possibly, the greatest epistolary writer that the history of literature ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... down to write his sister. That was the problem: what should he say to her who would presently be receiving his unfortunate screed with some inflammatory introduction from Dick and would—he knew her!—scarcely have finished it before she took steps toward flooding him with epistolary advice and comment. He could see her now at her desk, assembling data of conduct, bodily well-being, and putting it all down in that masterful hand of hers. That settled it. He mustn't write her. He must telegraph and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... valid!" But his Majesty never would believe. So the bright old Eugene dictated,—or, we hope and guess, he only gave his clerks some key-word, and signed his name (in three languages, "Eugenio von Savoye") to these square miles of dull epistolary matter,—probably taking Spanish snuff when he had done. For he wears it in both waistcoat-pockets;—has (as his Portraits still tell us) given up breathing by the nose. The bright little soul, with a flash in him as of Heaven's own lightning; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... his fiftieth year, a commission to write a volume of model "familiar letters" as an aid to persons too illiterate to compose their own. The notion of connecting these letters by a story which had interested him suggested the plot of "Pamela" and determined its epistolary form—a form which was retained ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... frank and communicative Disposition, voluntarily took a considerable Part of my Trouble off my Hands; not only read over the whole Author for me, with the exactest Care; but enter'd into a long and laborious Epistolary Correspondence; to which I owe no small Part of my best Criticisms upon ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... lonely year. My occupation was gone and I began to fear that I had 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
... in our limits to convey an adequate impression of the beauty, value, or interest of the present volumes. They are full of matter. The letters are admirable specimens of epistolary composition, considered as the spontaneous expression of a grave, high and warm nature, to the friends of his heart and mind. They are exceedingly original of their kind, and while they bear no resemblance to those of Cowper, Burns, Byron, or Mackintosh, they are on that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... 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 gift of putting down ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... soberer 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 lead an audience from despondency ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... epistolary discourse, proving, from the Scriptures ... that the soul is a principle naturally mortal; but immortalized actually by the pleasure of God. ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... 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 midst of gimcrack ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... letters and kind little notes which Procter used to write me during the years I knew him best. His tricksy fancies peeped out in his correspondence, and several of his old friends in England thought no literary man of his time had a better epistolary style. His neat elegant chirography on the back of a letter was always a delightful foretaste of something good inside, and I never received one of his welcome missives that did not contain, no matter how brief it happened to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... anxious, fortune disclosed the means of securing themselves against the patriarch's malevolence. The republic everywhere exercised the very closest espionage over epistolary communication, in order to discover if any persons were plotting against the state. It happened that letters were intercepted at Monte Pulciano, which had been written by the patriarch to Niccolo without the pope's knowledge; and although they ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli |
