Edward Gibbon

Taught by governesses until she was thirteen, Margaret Haig Thomas learned to read at about five. She was taught German and French, and she also learned Welsh as a child but did not retain it...

As a young adult CC took on her own education. With varying degrees of success she studied grammar, elocution, French, and the violin. She also discovered the public library. Colleagues at work got her to...

After Elinor Sutherland (later EG ) turned fourteen she no longer had a governess. Eager for intellectual stimulation, she took it upon herself to read everything in her stepfather 's book collection, which had recently...

Here she got through lots of reading, beginning with Gibbon 's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and proved inventive in breaking rules. She discovered the theatre through acting coach Lawrence Campbell ...

The idea had been that Jack and Suzan Robbins should select a boarding school for Sibylle and have her to stay for the holidays. Instead, with the money provided by her family and trustees, they...

Her mother, Louise (Destler) , was the wife of a student when she bore her eldest daughter, and herself read Gibbon 's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while nursing. She then had...

As a widow, Lady Elizabeth received a proposal of marriage from Edward Gibbon ; she turned him down.

DC 's stepmother, born Lucy Elstob , was a distant relation of the scholar Elizabeth Elstob .Edward Gibbon reported that she had intellectual ability but was a talkative, positive, passionate, conceited creature, and that...

DC 's birth family had accustomed her to moving in literary, political, and theatrical circles, and her friends included Mary Lady Hervey , David Hume , David Garrick , and Edward Gibbon . Her father...

Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke in Bristol the previous September...

Gibbon visited DC again in May and June 1764 in Genoa (where he was staying after finding Venice impossibly expensive). Again she received him with a friendliness beyond mere politeness and introduced him to some...

Agrippina the elder, grand-daughter of Augustus had defied the tyrannical rule of Tiberius . She was admired at this period as much as her namesake and daughter, Nero's mother, was abhorred. For Hamilton her story...

This novel's central episode of a chance encounter between strangers became one of BH 's favourite themes. She relates this story in a simple style, almost like one designed for children. Her protagonist, orphan Bernardine...

Rachel leaves home on her voyage hoping to broaden her experience and come to understand herself and the world, but finds herself in a physical space and a society that are constricting. Although it seemed...

Pearl Richards (later JOH ) read widely as a child and adolescent, and her parents' liberal views (and considerable fortune) meant that she could pursue her tastes in both the lending libraries and the less...