"Grub Street" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to-morrow, I should just say, 'Will it?' I have not volition enough left to dot my i's, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorflelds, and they did not say when they'd come back again; my skull is a Grub Street attic to let—not so much as a joint stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... should receive honour here, but that it should render honour, too, remembering that if it has undoubtedly done good to Birmingham, Birmingham has undoubtedly done good to it. From the shame of the purchased dedication, from the scurrilous and dirty work of Grub Street, from the dependent seat on sufferance at my Lord Duke's table to-day, and from the sponging-house or Marshalsea to-morrow—from that venality which, by a fine moral retribution, has degraded statesmen even to a greater extent than authors, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Timoleon?' First Lord.—'Yes, I am.' C. Gent.—'What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in the papers?' F. L.—'Yes, dreadfully.' C. Gent.—'Why, I always understood that these people were a sort of shams—living in Grub Street—or where was it that Pope used to tell us they lived? Surely you're not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think he's a patriot?' F. L.—'No, not at all; but I am afraid because some people think he's a housebreaker!' In that character only could Timoleon become formidable to a ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... continues to lament his morbid inability. The business in which his thriving brothers were engaged was the importation and sale of hardware and cutlery, and that spring his services were required at the "store." "By all the martyrs of Grub Street [he exclaims], I 'd sooner live in a garret, and starve into the bargain, than follow so sordid, dusty, and soul-killing a way of life, though certain it would make me as rich as old Croesus, or John Jacob Astor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to be the centers of intellectual life. When Samuel Johnson and David Garrick came together to London, literature was temporarily in a bad way, and the hack writers of the time dwelt in Grub Street. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... due to public-spirited indignation have been generally exposed. Beside the overwhelming desire to spite Theobald for his presumption in publishing "Shakespeare Restored" the aggrieved poet was actuated by numerous petty grudges against the inhabitants of Grub Street, all of which he masked behind a pretence of righteous zeal. According to the official explanation "The Dunciad" was composed with the most laudable motive of damaging those writers of "abusive falsehoods and scurrilities" who "had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age; and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... and amaze the town. Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Of Curll's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post; Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines; Hence Journals, Medleys, Mercuries, Magazines, Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace, And New-year odes, and all the Grub Street race. In clouded majesty here Dulness shone. Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne: Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears; Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake Who hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake; Prudence, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... all languages has omitted the little brother; and yet he is one of the great trials of love—the immemorial burden of courtship. Tragedy should have found place for him, but he has been left to the haphazard vignettist of Grub Street. He is the grave and real menace of lovers; his head is sacred and terrible, his power illimitable. There is one way—only one—to deal with him; but Robert Williams, having a brother of Penrod's ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... pensive tenderness. Such was Jeffrey's appearance on the bench in his latter days. I should have little judged from it that he was the relentless critic, whoso withering sarcasm was felt from the garrets of Grub Street to the highest walk of science or university life. My intimacy with Ballantyne, who published the Edinburgh Review, often brought the different MSS. before me, and I could contrast the exquisite neatness of Wardlaw with the slanting school-boy hand of Jeffrey. The tone and style of review literature ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "The Optimist"; I should have gone shrewdly to work with magazines and newspapers and foreign publishers, and—all sorts of people. Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lived in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of to-day is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due homage to your imperial self. To-morrow's post may perhaps bring a letter from you, but you are the most ungrateful and ungracious of correspondents. But there is some excuse for you, with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... had come to London. But it has occurred to me that I can better serve Winwood's reputation by the spilling of ink with a quill than of blood with a sword or pistol. This consideration, which is far from a desire to compete with the young gentlemen who strive for farthings and fame, in Grub Street, is my apology for profaning with my unskilled hand the implement ennobled by the use of a Johnson and a Goldsmith, a Fielding ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of originality; and if the Battle of the Books were to be fought over again, I doubt whether Moses or Paul would think it worth while to make any other answer than that of Plato in that witty piece, to the Grub Street author, who boasted that he had not been in the slighest deuce indebted to the classics: Plato declared that, upon his honor, he believed him! Whether the successors of the Herberts and Tindals of a former day are not plagiarists from ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... proprietor of the 'Monthly Review'. He invited Dr. Milner's usher to try his hand at criticism; and finally, in April, 1757, Goldsmith was bound over for a year to that venerable lady whom George Primrose dubs 'the 'antiqua mater' of Grub Street'—in other words, he was engaged for bed, board, and a fixed salary to supply copy-of-all-work to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... feel their consciences clear when business compels them to rob the widow and the orphan. In reality, though Monte Carlo is bad enough in its way—do I not pay it unwilling tribute myself twice a year out of the narrow resources of The Garret, Grub Street?—it is but a skin-deep surface symptom of a profound disease which attacks the heart and core in London and Paris. Compared with Panama, Argentines, British South Africans, and Liberators, Monte Carlo is a ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... had he been aware that the Yiddish of the Russo-Polish Jews, despite its considerable Slavonic admixture, was purer German than that of his contemporaries in Germany, even as the English of our New England colonies was superior to the Grub Street style prevalent in Dr. Johnson's England, and the Spanish of our Mexican annexations to the Castilian spoken at the time of Coronado. But we are here concerned with their knowledge of foreign languages. We shall refer only to the Hebrew-German-Italian-Latin-French dictionary ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... figure I was to make in future ages, under pretence of raising money for the war,* have padlocked all those very pens that were to celebrate the actions of their heroes, by silencing at once the whole university of Grub Street. I am persuaded that nothing but the prospect of an approaching peace could have encouraged them to make so bold a step. But suffer me, in the name of the rest of the matriculates of that famous university, to ask them some ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... the verses written about Queen Caroline, verses often containing the foulest and filthiest libels, followed her into the sick-chamber, {103} the bed of death, the coffin, and the grave. One could easily understand all this if the libellers had been vulgar and venal Grub Street hacks who were paid to attack some enemy of their paymaster. But the vilest calumnies of the time were penned by men of genius, by men of the highest rank in literature; by men whose literary position made them the daily companions of great nobles and of princes and princesses. Political and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Robinson and Thomas Evans, each of whom became the founder of a very extensive business. George Conyers was at the Ring, Ludgate Hill, for some years during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and prior to his removal to Little Britain. Conyers dealt chiefly in Grub Street compilations, which included cheap and handy guides to everything on earth, and it is likely that his shop was a literary or book-collecting resort. The most famous bibliopole who had a shop in Ludgate is perhaps William ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the Quarterly, finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the servile slang that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote indecently, probably in the indulgence of ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... full of wind; And like a jockey for a race, His flesh brought down to flying case: Now his exalted spirit loathes Encumbrances of food and clothes; And up he rises like a vapor, Supported high on wings of paper. He singing flies, and flying sings, While from below all Grub street rings. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and the Times, all of which appeared in the interval between the opening years of the American War and the beginning of the war with the French Revolution, journalism took a new tone of responsibility and intelligence. The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of a high moral temper and literary excellence; and philosophers like Coleridge or statesmen like Canning turned to influence public opinion through the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green |
