Date: 1778, 1779

"Let me, therefore, prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the s...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Young, animated, entirely off your guard, and thoughtless of consequences, imagination took the reins, and reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"I was myself almost equally disturbed, by the croud of confused ideas that occured to me."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"Here tranquility once more made its abode the heart of Cecilia; that heart so long torn with anguish, suspense and horrour!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1788

"Such a crowd of thoughts all at once rushed into Mary's mind, that she in vain attempted to express the sentiments which were most predominant."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Her heart longed to receive a new guest; there was a void in it: accustomed to have some one to love, she was alone, and comfortless, if not engrossed by a particular affection."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Oh! reason, thou boasted guide, why desert me, like the world, when I most need thy assistance!"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"she hoped that absence and reflection, together with the conviction of it's being hopeless, would conquer this infant passion before it could gather strength wholly to ruin his repose."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1790

"It was not in the rapid intricacies of execution, that she excelled so much as in that delicacy of taste, and in those enchanting powers of expression, which seem to breathe a soul through the sound, and which take captive the heart of the hearer."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1790

"Deadly ideas crowded upon their imaginations, and inspired a terror which scarcely allowed them to breathe."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)