Date: 1733

"[S]prightly Wit, that all admire," may be "an unlicens'd lawless Fire"

— Chandler, Mary (1687-1745)

Date: November 10, 1750

"Is it that a long commerce with the world does indeed corrupt the heart; and extinguish by degrees those sparks of light, those inclinations to good, which were implanted in our minds?"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1755

"After the many restless Nights I've spent, / In anxious Care, in raving Discontent, / Contending with a wild, a fierce Desire, / The Flame of Love, which set my Soul on Fire."

— Masters, Mary (1694-1771)

Date: 1773

"May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer!"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1777

"At present in my brain there floats / A thousand parti-colored motes; / From which, if time would but permit, / I might sift some sparks of wit."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: December 1790

"But it is not that enthusiastic flame which in Greece and Rome consumed every sordid passion: no, self is the focus; and the disparting rays rise not above our foggy atmosphere."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)