Chapter VII: Part 7

Charlotte Brontë’s experience of life was strictly limited: she had little interest about the trivialities of the tea-table. But she observed keenly, had a tenacious memory, and felt with intensity. Without hardness or conceit, she was entirely self-centred: there is no aloofness about her work: it centres passionately around the heroine, reflecting her own emotional outlook. She took life seriously, like her heroines: acutely sensitive to words and looks; caring nothing for what did not personally affect her. No doubt there is something Irish, something too of the grim moorlands, in that mysterious instinct which fired Charlotte, and her sisters, to their perpetual questionings of Providence, their burning protests against the harshness and hypocrisy of the world. Circumstances stifle them and they must speak. Speaking, they must strike.

Charlotte Brontë, indeed, lived almost as much aside from the world as Jane Austen. But Haworth was not Stevenage: the Rev. Patrick was certainly not a “handsome proctor,” and Bramwell could never have risen in “the Service.” It was in nature, however, that the contrast is most marked. The author of _Jane Eyre_, however shy and unsociable, was not content to stand aloof and look on. With little enough experience of actualities, she was for ever _making life_ for herself, sending that plain, visionary, eager, and sensitive ego of hers out into the world; and uttering with fiery eloquence her comments on what she imagined herself to have done and seen. Until recently, indeed, we have supposed that even the heart of her work, that passionate devotion which she was the first of women to reveal, was entirely imaginative, an _invention_ created without guidance from personal experience. Now evidence has been published which scarcely permits doubt; that whereas, obviously, her pupil-teacherdom at Brussels widened her social outlook, it also awoke her heart. Charlotte Brontë, evidently, fell in love with the “Professor” at the Pensionnat Heger; and thus gained the memory of passion. But it may be reasonably questioned, after all, whether the experience did much for her art. Since Monsieur Heger, no less certainly, did not return her love, and seldom even answered her letters, he could not have taught her the mysteries; and as, like her heroines, she was fatally addicted to exaggeration--in love or hate--it is not probable that her heroes--or ideal men--bear any very real likeness to him in character. After all, she practically “invented” him, as independent witnesses have established; and the accident of her idealisations centring about a living man is not particularly significant. Her attitude, and that of her heroines, towards mankind in general, and towards “the man” in particular, is really woven out of a strong imagination: and the essence of her being remains a dreamer’s. _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ are, transparently, the work of one who created her own world for herself only; and we need not modify this impression from any letters of hers ever printed or written. Emotionally she was nourished on her own thoughts; and, in her case, we may read them fearlessly in her work. It was not her nature to suppress, or conceal, anything. _She has put herself on record._ Here lies the essential difference between her work and Miss Burney’s or Jane Austen’s. While they reflected, with almost unruffled enjoyment, the surface of life, she tore off the wrappings and revealed a Soul. That, too, was of her very self. She had missed everything that mattered. It was at once her consolation and her revenge to project herself into the heart of life, and tell the tale.

The character and experience of George Eliot is far more complex, like her achievement, than that of those who preceded her. Like them, bred in retirement, though among more strenuous surroundings, her youth gave her also much insight into what life means to “small” people. But there was a strong religious atmosphere around her, accident gave her the early control of affairs, and her education--of a later date--was more thorough. Then came the stirring of doubt, from associations with sceptics; the professional training from practical journalism; and the “problem” evoked by her friendship with George Henry Lewes. Life was training her for modern work.

The intense seriousness, the active conscience of primitive faith, remained always with her, influencing characterisation. But it was the wider teachings of philosophy, the later experiences, and the conscious desire after advance that made her didactic. Her letters reveal an unexpected sentimentalism and an intense craving for personal affection; her teachings are all interpreted by what she has read, or inspired by men she has met; but they are in touch with real life and directed by real thought. It was her personal experience and character which enabled George Eliot to combine the “manners” comedy of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen with Miss Brontë’s moral campaign; to weld the message of woman into modernity.

She was, however, before all things, a professional student of humanity. Though she actually commenced novelist at a comparatively advanced age, the previous years, and every item of character, had been a training for this work. She observed with accuracy, remembered without effort, and studiously cultivated her natural literary powers. Emotionally and intellectually she got the most out of life; never, perhaps, quite letting herself go, but keenly alive to every impression, on the alert for experience and information. It was not in her ever to let things alone.

Such a temperament, of course, does not produce either spontaneous fun, sleepless humour, or unbridled self-torment; but it acquires the power of responding to all human difficulties, understanding the “problem” of life, and sympathising in its beauty and joy. George Eliot was always pondering about truth, considering the remedies for evil, looking forward towards progress. Her own experience was utilised freely, with an instinct for dramatic effect, but it is not the whole body of her work. That was a deliberately composed art, put out as an instrument for a given purpose, studied and ornamented. But while thus nurtured and apart, it is also the expression of herself, the sum of her being. Therein, like an actress, she plays many parts, putting on the mood of each new story and living in it.

She is, in fact, a typical woman of letters, as we now understand the term, with all the excellences and all the limitations of even the greatest among us.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Her stepmother.

CONCLUSION

We find, in the main, that women developed--and perfected--the domestic novel. They made circulating libraries respectable, establishing the right, and the power, of women to write fiction.

They carried on the traditions of Richardson and Fielding by choosing the middle-class for subject, at first confining themselves to Society and the County, but extending--with George Eliot--to all “Professions,” and to a study of the poor. They made novels a reflection, and a criticism, of life.

It seems curious that, with the possible exception of Charlotte Brontë, women were all stern realists: while even her imaginativeness can scarcely be called romantic. The fact is, probably, that the heroes and heroines of romance were mainly conceived for young ladies, and popularly supposed to represent their ideal. Wherefore, when women began to express themselves, they--more or less consciously--set out to expose this fallacy: to prove that they could enjoy and face real life. No school of writers, indeed, has more fearlessly or more persistently created their characters from flesh and blood than the school represented by Jane Austen and George Eliot. None has dwelt more persistently on the trivial details of everyday life, the conquests of observation. Whether concerned, like Miss Burney, with the Comedy of Manners; or, like George Eliot, with the Analysis of Soul; they have one and all found their inspiration in human nature. And, in reality, this was the main progress achieved in fiction between Richardson and the nineteenth century--the growth on which the true modern novel was built up. Critics, indeed, have treated the “romance” and the “novel” as independent entities; and if we limit the term romance to work preceding _Pamela_, we may accept their dictum. There is an essential difference between “making up” characters from a pseudo-ideal of the possibilities in human nature, and reflecting life. The old system, no doubt, was unhealthy in two ways: The ideals not well-chosen, being composed by high-flown exaggeration; and they were so mingled with actuality as to deceive the young person. For that matter the complaint is still living that girls and boys continually fancy real life will prove “just like a novel.” It does not, of course, differ greatly from those of Jane Austen or George Eliot. The former, in fact, was accused--in her own day--of setting too high a price on “prudence” in matrimony; and the latter of encouraging a gloomy outlook.

Obviously realism, as here applied, has no connection with that Continental variety of the art which has more recently usurped the name. Women-writers, of this era, had not developed the cult of Ugliness, they did not confound painting with photography, they did not busy themselves with the morbid or the abnormal. Their works are not documents, but revelations. They dwell on manners, without ignoring their spiritual significance. To-day we have some use for the new realism, while dreading its predominance. They had none.

In enumerating the classes, or types, of humanity with whom the women-writers were mainly concerned, we were witnessing, of course, the allied progress of history. It was during the second half of the eighteenth, and the first of the nineteenth, centuries that the great English middle-class steadily grew in power and importance, boldly educating itself for influence,--before labour was heard in the land.

Fanny Burney has given us the “classes” at play; we fancy that Jane Austen, betraying their empty-mindedness, must have longed for, if she did not actually anticipate, better things; Charlotte Brontë utters the first protest, indicating a struggle for existence; George Eliot finds them busy about the meaning of life and its possibilities. Thus, finally, we read of real workers--men and women with the world at their feet, building an Empire, facing problems, questioning the gods.

And, in their own particular sphere,--the revelation of Woman,--we have seen already the same advance. Each of them gives us, for her own generation, a “new woman”; creating, by the revelation of possibilities, an actual type. By teaching us what was “going on” _in women_, they taught women to be themselves. They opened the doors of Liberty towards Progress.

Minor achievements, on the other hand, were mostly directed towards the extension of subject matter, and the provision of new channels for fiction. Mrs. Radcliffe--who stood aside from the line of advance--established the School of Terror, applying romance methods to melodrama, with more power than we can find elsewhere in English. Maria Edgeworth introduced the story for children, which was not a tract, but the literary answer to “Tell me a story,” the exploitation of nursery tales told by mothers from time immemorial. This was developed by Harriet Martineau and Charlotte Yonge, bearing fruit later in libraries of most varied achievement. As we all know, there have been several works of genius written expressly for children (as were not the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _Gulliver’s Travels_); innumerable delightful stories of a similar nature, and much inferior work.

The earlier women-writers set an excellent example in this field, if they retained overmuch moralising. They gave us a few nursery classics which show practical insight into the child’s mind, and the gift of holding his interest by healthy wonder. We need only compare _Sandford and Merton_ with _Frank_ to recognise their peculiar fitness for such work.

The invention (by Mrs. Craik) of the “novel for the young person” is an allied achievement. It was developed by Charlotte Yonge, and has been always a legitimate province for women. Its dangers are over-sentimentalism (kin to Romance proper) and the idealism of the Woman’s Man. Mrs. Craik gave us one type in _John Halifax, Gentleman_; there are two in Miss Yonge’s _Heir of Redclyffe_.

It must be noted further that Harriet Martineau exploited philanthropy, and introduced the didactic element developed by George Eliot. Most women are born preachers--even Jane Austen occasionally points a moral--and this characteristic became prevalent early in their work. It was employed sometimes in the defence, or the exposure, of particular religious tenets; at others, on questions of pure ethics. There is a sense, of course, in which every story of life must carry its own moral; but George Eliot and most of the minor novelists obtrude this matter. In many cases the lesson is the motive, which is false art. However, the “novel with a purpose” clearly has come to stay. It outlived the period with which we are concerned, and is still vital. Speaking generally, the earlier women novelists contented themselves with raising the standard of domestic morality, upholding the family, and hinting at _one_ ideal for the _two_ sexes. George Eliot, indeed, went into individual cases with much detail; but we note in all that their pet abomination is hypocrisy and cant.

Finally, and most important of all in outside influence, Maria Edgeworth invented the “national” novel--developed by Susan Ferrier and Mrs. Oliphant. We have noted already that in banishing the stage Irishman Miss Edgeworth inspired _Waverley_; and the list of more recent examples (sprung from India, the “kailyard,” the moorlands, and a hundred localities) would prove too formidable for passing enumeration. Her instinctive patriotism has sprung a mine that is practically inexhaustible and has given us much of our best work. The “Hardy” country and all “local colour” are similarly inspired. It is not too much to say that in this matter Miss Edgeworth introduced an entirely new element, only second in importance to the revelation of femininity, which is woman’s chief contribution to the progress of Fiction.

While women were thus developing English fiction, with no rival of genius except Scott in his magnificent isolation, men had in some way advanced from Richardson to Thackeray and Dickens. It is worth noticing how far the two Victorian novelists showed the influence of feminine work, in what respects they reverted to the eighteenth century, and what new elements they introduced.

Both are still middle-class and, in one sense, domestic realists. Thackeray satirises Society (like Miss Burney and Jane Austen); Dickens works on manners, expounds causes, and takes up the poor. Both caught an enthusiasm for history from Scott, in which women did nothing of the first importance. Thackeray capped Lady Susan with Barry Lyndon, and Dickens produced a few overwrought washes of childhood--which women, curiously enough, never treated in their regular novels.

A certain resemblance in scope and arrangement has been noted already between _Vanity Fair_ and _Evelina_; but, speaking generally, it is obvious that Thackeray writes of Society more as a man of the world, and with broader insight, than either Miss Burney or Miss Austen. He not only observes, but criticises. One might say that, like all moderns, he feels morally responsible for the world. The “manners” which constitute the humour of Dickens are more varied and, on the other hand, more caricatured than those of the women-writers. His fury against social evils is more public-spirited and less specialised; his knowledge of the poor more intimate and genuinely sympathetic.

They have learnt, it would seem, from women to elaborate details in observation, to depend on truthful pictures of everyday life, avoiding romance-characterisation or the aid of adventure in the composition of their plots. In fact, the development from Richardson’s revolution is consecutive, taken up by the Victorians where the women left it. New side-issues are introduced; the novel becomes more complex with the increased activities of civilisation, and grows with the growth of the middle classes. It is now the mouthpiece of what Commerce and Education began to feel and express. But the _direction_ of progress is not changed.

So far it may fairly be said that Thackeray and Dickens have followed the women’s lead, and bear witness to their influence.

Yet Thackeray reverts, particularly in _Pendennis_, to the “wild-oats” plot of Fielding; Dickens is quite innocent of artistic construction, as perfected in Jane Austen; and neither of them seems to have benefited at all from the extraordinary revelation of womanhood which we have traced from its earliest source.

Thackeray’s heroines are, one and all, obviously made by a man for men. Amelia is a hearth-rug, with a pattern of pretty flowers. Beatrice and Blanche are variants of the eternal flirt--as man reads her. Lady Castlewood, Helen and Laura Pendennis are of the women who spend their lives waiting for the right man. Ethel Newcome is a man’s dream; and we venture to fancy that if ever a woman be born with genius to draw Becky Sharpe, she would find _something_ to add to the picture.

The case of Dickens is even more desperate. His “pretty housemaids,” indeed, are “done to a turn”; and Nancy is of the immortals. He could illustrate with melodramatic intensity certain feminine characteristics, good or evil, tragic or comic. But all his heroines belong to a few obvious waxwork types--the idiotic “pet” or the fireside “angel”; the “comfort” or the prig, composed of curls, blushes, and giggles; looks of reproach and tender advice. Possibly Dora is rather more aggravating than Dolly Varden, Agnes is wiser than Kate Nickleby, but they all work by machinery, with visible springs.

It was reserved for George Meredith to understand women.

APPENDIX

LIST OF MINOR WRITERS

(Their dates will indicate their place in our history of development: where they are not alluded to.)

MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (1624-1673), in her _CCXI Sociable Letters_ (1664), tells an imaginary narrative by correspondence, which she describes as “rather scenes than letters, for I have endeavoured under cover of letters to express the humours of mankind.” Also author of _Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancie’s pencil_ (1656).

FRANCES SHERIDAN.--Her _Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, extracted from her own Journal_ (1761), made a name by its supreme melancholy. The heroine suffers from obeying her mother, and receives no reward. Dr. Johnson “did not know whether she had a right, on moral principles, to make her readers suffer so much.”

MISS CLARA REEVE (1725-1803) began to write novels at fifty-one, and attempted in _The Old English Baron_ (1777) to compromise with the School of Terror, by limiting herself to “the utmost _verge_ of probability.” Her “groan” is not interesting, and Scott complains of “a certain creeping and low line of narrative and sentiment”; adding, however, that perhaps “to be somewhat _prosy_ is a secret mode of securing a certain necessary degree of credulity from the hearers of a ghost-story.”

ANNA SEWARD (1747-1809), a florid and picturesque poetess, whose verse-novel _Louisa_ was valued in her day. She has a place in Scott’s _Lives of the Novelists_.

CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749-1806).--Her _The Old Manor House_ reveals independent, and novel, appreciation of scenery, illustrated by an unobtrusive familiarity with natural history. Her plots “bear the appearance of having been hastily run up,” but her characterisation is vigorous. There is a “tone of melancholy” throughout.

HARRIET (1766-1851) and SOPHIA (1750-1824) LEE wrote some of the earliest historical novels--_The Recess; or, A Tale of other Times_ (1783), introducing Queen Elizabeth and the “coarse virulence that marks her manners,” and the _Canterbury Tales_, from which Byron borrowed.

MRS. BENNET, whose _Anna; or, The Memoirs of a Welsh Heiress_ (1785) is a bad imitation of Miss Burney, “with a catchpenny interspersion.”

REGINA MARIA ROCHE, author of the once popular _The Children of the Abbey_ (1798). Richardson, diluted with Mackenzie--in “elegant” language.

MRS. OPIE (1769-1853).--One of her best stories, _Adeline Mowbray; or, The Mother and Daughter_ (1804), is partially founded on the life of Godwin, and shows the influence of his theories.

JANE PORTER (1776-1850), author of _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ and _The Scottish Chiefs_, who claimed unjustly to have “invented” the historical romance, _copied_ by Scott. Very famous in her day.

Also ANNA MARIA PORTER (1780-1832), author of _Don Sebastian_.

MRS. BRUNTON (1778-1818), author of the excellent _Self-Control_ (1811) and _Discipline_ (1814), which were overshadowed by Susan Ferrier. Lacking humour, her morality becomes tiresome, but she could draw living characters. The Highland experiences of her heroine, who, after marrying a minister, retained “a little of her coquettish sauciness,” are significant for their date.

LADY MORGAN (1783-1859), as Miss Sydney Owenson, published _Wild Irish Girl_ (1806), which is a fairly spirited réchauffé of all things Celtic. Thackeray found here the name Glorvina, meaning “sweet voice.”

HENRIETTA MOSSE (otherwise Rouvière), whose _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807) and other novels have been described as “blocks of spiritless and commonplace historic narrative.”

ANNA ELIZABETH BRAY (1789-1883), author of _The Protestant_, various competent historical romances, and “local novels.”

MRS. SHERWOOD, an evangelical propagandist, who naïvely enforced her views in _The Fairchild Family_ (1818) and _Little Henry and his Bearer_.

ELIZABETH SEWELL set the style of High-Church propaganda, developed by Miss Yonge. Her chief tales, _Gertrude_ and _Amy Herbert_ (1844), are rigidly confined to everyday life. The characters, if living, are uninteresting; and her morals are obtrusive.

CATHERINE GORE (1799-1861), author of over seventy tales; and, in her own day, “the leader in the novel of fashion.”

LADY G. FULLERTON (1812-1885), author of _Emma Middleton_, who shares with Miss Sewell the beginnings of High Church propaganda in fiction.

ANNE CALDWELL (MRS. MARSH), one of the best writers of the “revival” in domesticity. Her _Emilia Wyndham_ (1846) was unfairly described as the “book where the woman breaks her desk open with her head.” Though contemporary with _Pendennis_, has no ease in style.

MRS. ARCHER CLIVE (1801-1873), author of an early and well-told story of crime, entitled _Paul Ferroll_ (1855).

MRS. HENRY WOOD (1814-1887).--A good plot-maker, whose _East Lynne_--both as book and play--has been phenomenally popular for many years; though _The Channings_, and others, are better literature.

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES

_Abbess, The_, 146.

_Absentee, The_, 63.

_Adam Bede_, 191, 204, 205, 220, 235.

_Agnes Grey_, 184, 275.

_Atherton_, 142.

Austen, Jane, 17, 52, 55, 66-116, 117-30, 140, 152, 155, 156, 164,
166, 170, 172, 189, 207, 209, 211, 213, 219, 227-9, 231-3, 235, 237,
238-42, 244, 248, 250-2, 255, 268-75, 276, 280, 283, 284, 285, 289.

_Barry Lyndon_, 108, 289.

Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 2-5.

_Beleaguered City, The_, 191.

_Belford Regis_, 142.

_Belinda_, 62, 130.

Brontë, Anne, 184-6.

-- Charlotte, 164-78, 180, 183, 185, 188, 190, 209, 210, 213, 229,
230, 233-4, 236, 237, 252-5, 257, 275-8, 280, 282, 285.

-- Emily, 179-84, 185.

Burney, Fanny (Madame D’Arblay), 2, 7-53, 59, 62, 67, 68, 70, 91,
117-30, 131, 137, 152, 155, 164, 170, 209, 211, 213, 226-7, 230-1,
235, 237, 238, 243, 246-250, 253, 255, 263-8, 280, 283, 289.

-- Dr., 11, 68.

Byron, Lord, 58.

_Cameos of English History_, 199.

_Camilla_, 35-53, 127, 128, 133, 226, 267.

_Castle of Otranto_, 56.

_Castle Rackrent_, 63.

_Cecilia_, 13, 15, 48, 85, 118-23, 127, 128, 130, 140, 237, 238, 263,
266.

_Chronicles of Carlingford, The_, 191-9.

_Clarissa_, 14, 67, 245.

_Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_, 64.

Crabbe, 74, 141.

Craik, Mrs., 186-8, 189, 199, 258-62, 286, 287.

_Cranford_, 152-62.

_Curate-in-Charge_, 189.

_Daisy Chain, The_, 200-3.

_Daniel Deronda_, 2, 217, 230.

_David Simple_, 5.

Day, Thomas, 60.

_Deerbrook_, 150.

Defoe, Daniel, 1, 7, 108.

_Destiny_, 135, 139.

Dickens, Charles, 289-92.

_Domestic Manners of the Americans_, 146.

Edgeworth, Maria, 32, 60-3, 81, 131, 187, 286, 288.

Eliot, George, 167, 190, 191, 199, 204-25, 229-30, 233, 235-6, 237,
242, 243, 244, 255-57, 278-81, 282-284, 285, 287.

_Émile_, 61.

_Emma_, 80, 94-6, 121, 123, 242.

_Essay on Irish Bulls_, 62.

_Evelina_, 2, 11, 15, 18 _seq._, 66, 71, 85, 121, 123, 124, 125-6,
129, 140, 237, 250, 263, 265.

_Felix Holt_, 218, 230.

_Female Quixote_, 5.

_Female Spectator_, 5.

Ferrier, Susan, 131-40.

Fielding, Henry, 5, 10, 13, 26, 30, 55, 282, 290.

-- Sarah, 5.

_Frank_, 61, 286.

_Frankenstein_, 143-5.

Galt, John, 189.

Gaskell, Mrs., 152-63, 165.

Godwin, William, 143.

Goldsmith, Oliver, 10, 14.

_Gulliver’s Travels_, 286.

Hardy, Thomas, 288.

Hazlitt, 32.

_Heir of Redclyffe_, 257, 258.

Heywood, Mrs., 5.

_Hour and the Man, The_, 150.

Inchbald, Mrs., 59, 60.

_Inheritance_, 135, 139.

_Jane Eyre_, 2, 165, 170, 172-6, 182, 234, 275, 276, 278.

_John Halifax, Gentleman_, 187, 188, 190, 203, 258-62.

Johnson, Dr., 11, 12, 13, 30, 52, 53, 267.

Jonson, Ben, 30.

_Lady Susan_, 105-16, 128, 289.

Lamb, Charles, 140.

_Lances of Lynwood, The_, 199.

Lennox, Charlotte, 5.

_Letters to Literary Ladies_, 61.

_Little Duke, The_, 199.

Lockhart, John Gibson, 172-175, 182.

Macaulay, 6, 27, 241, 266.

Mackenzie, Henry, 60.

_Man of Feeling_, 59.

Manley, Mrs., 5.

_Mansfield Park_, 72, 96-100, 122, 124, 139, 233, 269.

Marivaux, 67.

_Marriage_, 135, 136, 139.

Martineau, Harriet, 148-52, 187, 233, 286, 287.

_Mary Barton_, 163.

Meredith, George, 292.

_Mill on the Floss, The_, 243, 256.

_Miss Marjoribanks_, 192-5.

Mitford, Mary Russell, 140-3, 207.

_Moral Tales_, 61.

More, Hannah, 63-5, 187.

_Mysteries of Udolpho_, 21-23, 54-9, 134, 239, 250.

_Nature and Art_, 60.

_New Atlantis, The_, 5.

_Noctes Ambrosianæ_, 131, 142.

North, Christopher (Prof. Wilson), 131, 142.

_North and South_, 162.

_Northanger Abbey_, 56, 80, 91-3, 118, 121, 125-7, 250.

Oliphant, Laurence, 191.

-- Mrs., 188-99.

_Oroonoko_, 3-5.

_Our Village_, 140-3.

_Pamela_, 5, 7, 14, 67, 283.

_Parent’s Assistant_, 61.

_Peasant and Prince_, 150.

_Pendennis_, 290.

_Peregrine Pickle_, 72, 76.

_Persuasion_, 80, 100-4, 121, 122, 252, 273.

_Pilgrim’s Progress_, 286.

_Playfellow Series_, 149, 150.

Ploughman Poet, see The “Shepherd.”

Pope, Alexander, 9, 264.

_Practical Education_, 61.

_Pride and Prejudice_, 85-9, 118-20, 124, 125, 127, 139, 238, 242,
272.

_Pursuit of Literature, The_, 55.

Radcliffe, Mrs., 21-23, 32, 50, 54-9, 81, 91, 118, 167, 285.

Richardson, Samuel, 1, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 50, 55, 67, 72, 229, 245,
248, 253, 282, 290.

_Robinson Crusoe_, 286.

_Romola_, 217, 230, 235.

Rousseau, 3, 61.

_Salem Chapel_, 195-9.

_Sandford and Merton_, 60, 286.

Scott, Sir Walter, 59, 72, 81, 131, 132, 288.

_Sense and Sensibility_, 2, 89-91, 122, 126, 139, 227, 238.

Shaw, Bernard, 26.

Shelley, Mary, 143-5.

“Shepherd,” The (that is, James Hogg), 7, 131, 142.

_Shirley_, 169, 170, 176-8, 234.

_Simple Story_, 60.

_Sir Charles Grandison_, 24, 246-9.

_Sketch Book, The_, 140.

Smith, Sydney, 64.

Smollett, Tobias, 10, 13.

Sterne, Laurence, 10, 13.

_Tales of Fashionable Life_, 62.

Thackeray, W. M., 108, 112, 289-91.

_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, 184.

_Tom Jones_, 72, 76.

Trollope, Mrs., 145-8.

_Vanity Fair_, 227, 289.

_Vicar of Wrexhill, The_, 146.

_Villette_, 165, 168, 169, 170, 176, 234, 278.

Walpole, Horace, 56, 57.

_Wanderer, The_, 127.

_Waverley_, 72.

Whately, Archbishop, 80, 81.

_Wives and Daughters_, 162.

_Wuthering Heights_, 179-84, 275.

Yonge, Charlotte M., 199-203, 257, 258, 286, 287.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH

Transcriber’s Notes

Errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 14: “That mar-marvellous” changed to “That marvellous”

Page 139: “Aunts in _Marrriage_” changed to “Aunts in _Marriage_”

Page 274: “Mrs. Goodard’s” changed to “Mrs. Goddard’s” and “when young ladies” changed to “where young ladies”