"Epistolary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... newspaper. He soon quarrelled, and purposely, with his Lansmere constituents; nor had he ever revisited that borough,—perhaps because it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the speeches that produced such indignation at Lansmere had delighted one of the greatest of our commercial ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be—are every whit as capricious and startling in their variations from the received standard of orthography. If it is impossible quite to agree with his staunch eulogist, Drummond of Bahaldy, that Claverhouse was "much master in the epistolary way of writing," at least his letters are plain and to the purpose; and the letters of a soldier have need to ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... to its owner; toilette-articles tied up in a handkerchief, a few necessary garments, and much paper,—for Amanda was inspired with poetic fire at unexpected moments, also had five hundred bosom friends, in answering whose epistolary gushings much stationery was consumed. A pistol, a massive crust of bread, and an oval box containing all the dainty appliances for the culture, preservation, and ornamentation of the finger-nails, made ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... my companion, a hundred and fifty years later, was worthily holding. 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 wrath he would have disputed the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... and other such subterfuges did Gladys keep her epistolary hand in, until the time came when she really had something of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... mother and sisters were not ignorant of her whereabouts—he never mentioned her name to them—but as to this he was not sure if the source of their information had been the Morning Post or a casual letter received by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew Biddy had some epistolary commerce with Julia; he had an impression Grace occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. Biddy, however, who, as he was also well aware, was always studying what he would like, forbore to talk to him about the absent mistress of Harsh beyond once dropping the remark that ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... letters were 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
... the testimony of Irenaeus suggests itself before closing. 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 disturbing ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... we will drive him away and kill him; but if he write well, I will adopt him as my son, for I never saw so intelligent and well-mannered an ape; and would God my son had his sense and good breeding!" So I took the pen and dipping it in the inkhorn, wrote in an epistolary hand the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... stratagem 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 things ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... slightest mention is to be found. So I am inclined to believe that he never existed, and that Major Frye chose to imitate President de Brosses and others who thus recorded their travelling experiences in epistolary form. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... in a placid, statuesque style." It is not worth transcribing the writer's farther speculations. If a silent, but ultra-fervent benediction can at all profit the person for whom it is intended, very few people have been so well paid for epistolary labor, as was, then, Mr. Fullarton's correspondent. The reason why has already ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... performance of the "Messiah," you have already been only too kind to us, it really would not do for me to return to the charge, unless you were to authorize me to do so quite directly and positively, by writing me an epistolary masterpiece somewhat ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... to whom? there are Sam and Tom, and brother Dick, and sister Sue: they all have epistolary claims upon me still unsatisfied. Twenty letters that I ought to answer. Come, let me briskly set ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... informed me that he should set out to-morrow morning for his future residence, and soon put on the sacred bands. He solicited an epistolary correspondence, at the same time, as an alleviation of the care which that weighty charge would bring on his mind. I consented, telling him that he must not expect any thing more than general subjects ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... variety, both of character and incident; and if it has less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter delineations; ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, 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 ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 he carefully looked over my labors as ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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 salt water, if ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... should the Apostle be gratuitously assumed to have simultaneously adopted one method with the Churches of Colosse and Laodicea,—another with the Churches of Ephesus and Laodicea,—in respect of his epistolary communications? ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... 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," ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 handwriting. After a little practice ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... accompany my patient, stand like a couple of sentinels on each side of her, and no word or gesture escapes their attentive ears and watchful gaze. He must have more than a conjuror's hand who can perform any epistolary feat and escape their ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... catholicity—not to say the self-contradictoriness—of the constant correspondent. The creature will enter with zest into any discussion; there is no topic too small for it, and certainly none too great. The following letters, carefully culled from the annual contributions of a lady whose epistolary career I have followed with interest, will indicate the delicious inconsequence that has made them for me ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... even to himself, no great penman, and his epistolary style tended, perhaps, more to the forcible ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... they are going South to teach yours,' was the quick reply. And I think one of those long-eared animals has strayed down your way, and your ma might have sent you to his school— I think, however, but a few weeks, or your epistolary correspondence with Mrs. Haviland would ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... writers in our language'? Easier and more natural, we are of opinion; and he might have written fewer. Those in the Complete Letter-Writer style we could easily have spared. His teacher, Mr. Murdoch, furnishes some excellent examples of the stilted epistolary style ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Walpole's chief excellence is in his letters. His sportive spleen, his polished sarcasm, and his keen insight into the ways of men, place him at the head of all epistolary authorship. He has had but two competitors for this fame,—it is remarkable that they were both women,—De Sevigne in France, and Lady Wortley Montague in England; yet, how utterly inferior are De Sevigne's feeble sketches of court life, and vapid panegyrics on the "adorable Grignan;" or the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... 'My state 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, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 particularly clever ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of epistolary belligerence, interrupted by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... What is her name? Who is she? Who's her father? Where's her mother? Who's her lover? You cannot imagine how this will occupy me. The more trifling, the better. My imprisonment has weakened me intellectually to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts quite considerable. I am passing into my second childhood. In a week or two I shall take to India rubber rings and prongs of coral. A silver cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a delicate attention on your part. ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of epistolary correspondence were assuming the like proportions to the recruited secretary that they had worn to Mrs. Chump. Steadily watching his countenance; she jogged him thus: "As if ye couldn't help ut, ye know, ye begin. Jest like wakin' in the mornin' after dancin' all night. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these are all the points required in simple epistolary composition, we will confine our explanations to the rules which should govern ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... manner or turn of composition which prevails in this piece, little can be said with propriety by the author. He had two models; that ancient and simple one of the first Grecian poets, as it is refined by Virgil in the Georgics, and the familiar epistolary way of Horace. This latter has several advantages. It admits of a greater variety of style; it more readily engages the generality of readers, as partaking more of the air of conversation; and, especially with the assistance ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... "began at the beginning" of her story, and told everything—her betrothal to Traverse Rocke; the sudden death of her father; the decision of the Orphans' Court; the departure of Traverse for the far West; her arrival at the Hidden House; the interruption of all her epistolary correspondence with her betrothed and his mother; the awful and mysterious occurrences of that dreadful night when she suspected some heinous crime had been committed; and finally of the long, unwelcome suit of ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... title one must know that Realidad, the novela dialogada, is only another version of the epistolary novel, La incgnita, written the year previous. The earlier work gave, as Galds says (La incgnita, pp. 291-93), the external appearance of a certain sequence of events; Realidad shows its inner reality. Browning employed a somewhat similar procedure ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... the Roman Catholic body, hierarchy, and press, was provocative of popular anger, and calculated to create an illiberal feeling towards Roman Catholics. Various pretensions were asserted in a highhanded manner by the Roman Catholic bishops in their epistolary communications; and their literary organs spared the Protestants of England no bitterness of invective, to which the most exasperating polemics ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Continuation of the RELIQUI GALEAN; containing the Epistolary Correspondence of the GALES with their learned Contemporaries. Price 5s. sewed.—To the Third Part, which will contain a Continuation of their Correspondence, will be prefixed an Account of the ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... dear 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 I fulfilled his wishes; perhaps it was not the only instance ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram rather shone in the epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas's being in Parliament, got into the way of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for herself a very creditable, common-place, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... marvellous even for an age when to be a "universal scholar" was 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. He was steeped in the ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... objects, &c. all became in succession the subjects of his pen; and if lively description, blended with irresistible humour and sarcastic wit, possessed any power of seduction, these certainly belonged to Bob's honourable friend and relative, as an epistolary correspondent. The following Stanzas were often recited by him with ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the tints of flowers without their 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 is taxed for the least thing well done. It ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Castilian poetry, extended to other departments of elegant literature. Epistolary and historical composition were cultivated with considerable success. The latter, especially, might admit of advantageous comparison with that of any other country in Europe at the same period; [35] and it is remarkable, that, after such early promise, the modern Spaniards have ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... 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 August ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... most valuable kinds of composition is letter-writing, or epistolary correspondence. This, above all, should be in the style of ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... letter just received from Mr. James, which he had been fingering, to show that his informal, epistolary style was identical with that of his recent autobiographical writings, which we had been discussing. "Bennett, of course you should see Arnold Bennett." Great friend of Walpole's. "And Mrs. Belloc Lowndes," said Mr. Walpole, "you really must know her; knows ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... the ordinary reader prefers to dip at random, looking for old friends or new faces, and has his reward. But if he is resolute to read letters in chronological order, he will also, we hope, find in our selection some trace of the development of the Epistolary art, as, rising through earlier naiveties and formalities to the grace and bel air of the great Augustans, it slides into the freer, if less dignified, utterance of an age which, startled by cries of 'Equality' at its birth, has concerned ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... when all was looking dark, Schiller received a packet containing an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and four portrait sketches. The letter was anonymous, but he presently discovered that it came from Gottfried Koerner, a young privat-docent in Leipzig, who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to a Suabian poet whom ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... sisters, for they were much attached to each other; but they determined to compensate it by maintaining a close and regular correspondence; and huge was the budget that each soon accumulated of the other's epistolary performances. Out of these budgets we will select a couple, which will give the reader a hint of some things of which, we daresay, he little dreamed. The first is from Martha to her sister, and is ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... was famous for his epistolary style. Here is a passage which, though written in Persia in the tenth century, might have aptness in English country houses at this moment: When water has long remained at rest, its noxious qualities appear; and when its surface has ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... not without their bright side; and it is wonderful to see how Keats's elastic nature would rebound the instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed. He is at times almost gay. The singing of a thrush prompts him to talk in his natural epistolary voice: 'There's the Thrush again—I can't afford it—he'll run me up a pretty Bill for Music—besides he ought to know I deal at Clementi's.' And in the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Brawne from Naples is a touch of the old bantering Keats when he says ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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 ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 envelopes and wafers, the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... great favorite in society, and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never heard of his visit until the spring had come again. Parted friends did not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom. Spoken words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his half-conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... and romantic entanglements which were then held to be absolutely indispensable. "In the Sabine Mountains" (1871), the scene of which is laid in Genazzano during the struggle for Italian independence, is a trifle too prolix; and its effect is lessened by the old-fashioned epistolary form. Signor Carnevale, the revolutionary apothecary, is, however, a very amusing figure, and would be still better if he were not caricatured. The tendency to screw the characters up above the normal—to tune them up to concert pitch as it were—interferes ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his 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
... of common remark that the epistolary art has been killed by the penny post, not to speak ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... of May. We were truly gratified with this intelligence, and should be very happy to be present on that occasion; but as that is among the impossibilities, we deem it a great privilege to represent the Richwood Ladies' Union League through epistolary correspondence. The cause is glorious, and is calculated to elevate woman to a higher sphere. Louder voices and holier motives urge us to duty as never before. At the time our Ladies' Union League was organized, we knew not that there was another in the world, or that there ever ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... middle stature, had a 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 aid, towards procuring ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... my attempt to echo her vivacity was discomfiting, and I was allowed to perceive that epistolary jocularity was not thought to be my line. It was Miss Elizabeth who gave me this instruction three days later, on the way to Quesnay for "second breakfast." Exercising fairly shame-faced diplomacy, I had avoided dining at the chateau again, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... what it's to be, and in short all about it—that I may give it the better welcome. I don't know how it is, but I am celebrated either for writing no letters at all or for the briefest specimens of epistolary correspondence in existence, and here I am—in writing to you—on the sixth side! I won't make it a seventh anyway; so with love to all your home circle, and from all mine, I ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... which owed their vitality to the Jews, were paralyzed. The very Protestants wavered in their Christianity. Amsterdam, under the infection of Jewish enthusiasm, effervesced with joy. At Hamburg, despite the epistolary ironies of Jacob Sasportas, the rare Kofrim, or Anti-Sabbatians, were forced, by order of Bendito de Castro, to say Amen to the Messianic prayer. At Livorne commerce dried up. At Venice there were riots, and the Kofrim were ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 on the events ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... years, during which had been 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 instead of with present ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... letters where the name was "Gertrude;" 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 were among the first to be burned; yet how Mr. Denner had loved them, even ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... vainly sought an opportunity to convey to you the expression of my sentiments, I now avail myself of the privilege of epistolary communication to acquaint you with the fact that the Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are those which should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather than to simple Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to approach you with a Proposal, the acceptance ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... should not, go out. His own letter from Luke Roy had been in substance the same as that which Luke had written to his father. It was neither more explanatory, nor less so. Luke Roy was not a first-hand at epistolary correspondence. John had been attacked and killed for the sake of his gold, and the attackers and the gold had been taken hold of by the law; so far it said, and no further. That the notion should ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... In his 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 ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.—Franklin. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... proceeding, 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 person, Mr. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. My body I desire to be buried in the church of Beaconsfield, near to the bodies of my dearest brother, and my dearest son, in all humility praying, that as we have lived in perfect unity together, we may together have part in the resurrection of the just." (In the "Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke and Dr. French Laurence" (Rivingtons, London, 1827), are several touching allusions to that master?grief which threw a mournful shadow over the closing period of Burke's life. In one letter the anxious father says, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... 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
... 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 examine ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... information as to the 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 archbishop of Rheims, asked Richer ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... 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 to "Dear Lady Harman," or suddenly break ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... was of this advantage to me that it brought me first into epistolary communication, and later into personal contact with one of the greatest men ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... young 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
... and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and certainly what we hide from ourselves, we do not show to our friends. There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... entreat you not to infer from my tardiness or neglect, that I am forgetful of my dear friend in Philadelphia. For some time past I have done injustice to many of my friends, in not paying my debts in epistolary correspondence. Some of my dearest friends have cause to censure me. But you must pardon me. I have two letters of yours on hand, unanswered. One of them I read to the Sewing Circle; and part of the other. For them I most heartily thank ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... city-zens, yourself among the rest, have country-cousins. Think of the countless multitudes that turn their longing eyes in the direction of a metropolis like this, yearning for a visit, and sending off by frequent Opportunities, never by mail, those remarkable epistolary compounds of hopes and wants which no other race of beings can compose in perfection: 'Hope JOHN is well, and BETSEY will come and see us next summer; and want'—LAWSON and STEWART! what do they not want? Every thing; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... was the only 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 Man. Golly knew a good deal of Man, for even at the age of twelve ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... effrontery, effulgence, effusion, egregious, eleemosynary, elicit, elite, 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, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... epistolary propensities were stronger than they are. All your letters to me since I left America might be squeezed into one.... I send Ticknor a big cheese, which I long ago promised him, and my advice is, that he keep it in the shop, and daily, between eleven and one o'clock, distribute ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... better known to Ethel than to Tom—and a series of their 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. Spencer to give a few days to Stoneborough, 'it would ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a New 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 are added ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... for three or four mortal hours by moonlight with Mrs. Lepel, meeting never a creature of quality but his Majesty King George I., giving audience to his Vice Chamberlain "all alone under the garden wall." Another epistolary idyl to Martha Blount, of which there are at least four replicas, relates the sentimental death by lightning of the two haymakers at Stanton Harcourt. Did Pope write this letter? or did Gay? Or did they write it both ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... beyond all conception! Perfect epistolary Boa Constrictors. I speak with feeling, for I have myself suffered ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... write; and is speaking and writing to an orang-utan of Borneo. Even a Lamarckian will allow this to be within the range of possibility. Were it possible to get Gay or Cowper to write a new set of fables, animals, in the days of postoffices and letters, would become, like the age, epistolary. But a ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to 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
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon) |
