Sublime

"Charlotte Backson, who first was called Comtesse de la Fere, and afterwards Milady de Winter, Baroness of Sheffield."

Arthur Conan Doyle had given the world precisely three facts about Sherlock Holmes’ background. First, that he had an older brother named Mycroft, who was something high and enigmatic in the British government (read: a spymaster). Next, that the Holmes family were English “country squires” (that is, not quite aristocracy). Finally, that his

‘She was the wife of John Bell, who owned Lowlands until his death in 1889, and we’ve never known anything more about her: it’s as if she’s been cut out of time. We have records of their marriage, but not of her death; we have no portraits of her anywhere, and when the house and contents were sold none of her possessions were listed in the

Allenwood was in some respects the female equivalent of Groton: a pioneering school that offered the daughters of England’s elite a liberal education emphasizing social responsibility and personal independence.

There you have the start of Herland! One family, all descended from one mother! She lived to a hundred years old; lived to see her hundred and twenty-five great-granddaughters born; lived as Queen-Priestess-Mother of them all; and died with a nobler pride and a fuller joy than perhaps any human soul has ever known—she alone had founded a new race!

“You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite exceptional woman.”