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Mrs. Thorpe was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent mother. Her eldest daughter had great personal beauty, and the younger ones, by pretending to be as handsome as their sister, imitating her air, and dressing in the same style, did very well.
David M. Shapard • The Annotated Northanger Abbey
some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignifican
... See moreRosemary Ashton • Middlemarch
name was wrong: ‘Miss Fawnbrake’ belonged to a coltish,
Stacey Halls • The Familiars: The spellbinding Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club Pick
Woodston, it is implied, is where Henry is the incumbent local clergyman. The reason, confirmed later, he can still make Northanger half his home, and spend many weeks in Bath, is that he has a curate, a clergyman hired by the incumbent to perform some or all of the work in the parish. Many clergymen hired curates, in part because the abundance of
... See moreDavid M. Shapard • The Annotated Northanger Abbey
by the side of Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen of her gowns.
David M. Shapard • The Annotated Northanger Abbey
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.
Rosemary Ashton • Middlemarch
it so happened that ‘a gentleman of honourable parentage’ had a daughter with just the right qualifications, she being ‘of excellent parts for musicke, her needle, and good discourse, also very beautiful and personable’.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, – or from one of our elder poets, – in a paragraph of to-day’s newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addit
... See moreRosemary Ashton • Middlemarch
