Alain-René Lesage

Her devotion to John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress remained unchanged during this period. She also read heavyweight works of theology, Hannah More 's letters, and a life of William Wilberforce . By late 1838, however...

HW 's story of her education is one of tyranny and resistance. Her worst beating from her father was incurred for obstinacy. Her elder sister Jane (called Diana in her memoirs) was supposed to teach...

The title-page quotes Le Sage , in French, avowing that he intended to depict people as they are, but not real individuals (a quotation that might work in reverse, encouraging readers to expect recognisable portraits)...

Indeed, this novel is again a clef. The preface says the story and its characters are culled from life: not HW 's own, but that of her French waiting-woman. She believes it is better than...

Many early extant letters of GE 's date from her unhappy, adolescent, Evangelical period, and have a tone of self-righteousness and censoriousness of others and of herself which is not pleasant to modern readers. In...

The diary records some of her literary tastes: she copied there a letter expressing her dislike of tragedies (which, no matter how moral, she felt to be harmful to the mind because of the violent...