Sublime

In Rosamond’s romance it was not necessary to imagine much about the inward life of the hero, or of his serious business in the world: of course, he had a profession and was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage a

They were both tall, and their eyes were on a level; but imagine Rosamond’s infantine blondness and wondrous crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a large embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all beholders would know the price of, her small hands du

‘Miss Vincy is a musician?’ said Lydgate, following her with his eyes. (Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

ruth

Lady Plackett took the binoculars. Her sight was less keen than her daughter’s but she too agreed that the girl was Ruth. She turned to Miss Somerville. ‘This is unfortunate,’ she said. ‘And quite irregular. The girl is a Jewish refugee who seems to think that she is entitled to every sort of privilege.’

Mrs Lemon’s school, the chief school in the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female – even to extras, such as the getting in and out of a carriage.

I discovered her. Charmante, a perfect Gretchen,4 and we’ve already become acquainted. The prettiest little thing, really!’

She was cast as the understudy to the star, Laura Bell Bundy, in the off-Broadway musical Ruthless!

Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796) are by Frances (or Fanny) Burney; Belinda (1801) is by Maria Edgeworth. Burney, the most acclaimed novelist of the late eighteenth century, was, along with Samuel Richardson, the most important influence on Jane Austen’s work. Burney’s novels consistently focus on the tribulations—romantic and otherwise—of a young