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“... and other scientists, who maintained that if a phenomenon was inexplicable it did not exist, and drew on experience and intuition. Her author, one Horace Smith, had based his novel partly on his own encounters with mesmerism, and probably also on the famous case of the writer Harriet Martineau. Even his modest invalid knew enough to know that she was living ...”

“... in the whole of England and Wales. At least as important, she formed a life-long friendship with Elizabeth Macadam, a strong, independent Scot who was to share her houses and be her main emotional support through life. Pedersen deals sensitively and well with this relationship as far as she is able – for both women went to extraordinary lengths to destroy ...”

“... into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May’. Their letters circle round and round the idea of Elizabeth’s relationship with the world outside her window, of which Robert is the representative: ‘I seem turning round to the outward world again,’ she tells him in her very first letter as though at the start of a long journey. It is certainly difficult ...”

“... down any local extravagance of speech she overheard. (She also carried a sketchbook in which she drew, very efficiently, Irish huntsmen: the inelegant in pursuit of the inedible.) Edith Somerville was born in 1858 – the first of eight children – and grew up at Drishane House, Castletownshend, in County Cork. Her mother and Martin’s were first ...”

“... It was a much beloved pet until one day, without warning, it ‘ran roaring upon him’. Wyatt ‘drew forth his rapier, and ran it into the rebel’s heart’. This sudden change in attitudes towards his person was to recur throughout Wyatt’s life. For lion, read Henry VIII. Wyatt’s early career was marked by the good fortune that comes from restless ...”

“... of South Bend, Indiana, who is green as a corn husk. Nor does the former Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who, like Sanders, is far to the left of American mainstream voters and almost certainly toast after doing surprisingly badly in New Hampshire. And good old Joe Six-Pack? I actually like Biden. He’s an Irish-American pol of an earlier vintage ...”

“... Orientalist novel of the 18th century, Montesquieu’s bestselling Lettres persanes (1721), drew a melodramatic comparison between Christian and Muslim marriage, contrasting Muslim polygamists who made sex slaves of their wives with Christian monogamists who allowed their womenfolk to rove and socialise freely (possibly too freely). Montesquieu had not ...”

“... Browning (re)constructed a classical epic in 12 books, a ‘novel-poem’ to rival his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a historical romance to challenge Scott, an urban realist fiction to emulate Dickens or Balzac, a religio-philosophical-aesthetic treatise in the modern vein of the Higher Criticism. From the 1830s he had been a ...”

“... body every Sunday at Mass, so what was the problem?Both spoken prayers and written charms drew on the same logic of divine efficacy, teasing at the correspondences between holy words and worldly ailments. The charm for a stitch instructed the sufferer to draw the sign of the cross and sing incantations about Longinus, the soldier said to have speared ...”

“... his blow to the door, knocking St Paul off the hammer and striking ‘his fingers so hard that it drew blood and gave his Holiness a little pain’: an act of ill omen, the locals superstitiously murmured. Sidney’s letters are seldom so free, seldom so relaxed as the letters of these friends. He had learned the arts not just of epistolary elegance but also ...”

“... Whig worthies, including George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, to whom ‘Summer’ was dedicated. Elizabeth Rowe brought Thomson’s poetic achievements to the attention of the Countess of Hertford, Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales. Thomson was to enjoy visits to Marlborough Castle with the Earl and Countess of Hertford, and at Dodington’s ...”

“... But in order to do so he not only played the reckless, irresponsible aristocrat but also drew on the serious ideas of political and religious radicals during the revolutionary decades, and of the hardly less disreputable Hobbes. Rochester started translating Lucretius, though – typically – he does not seem to have got beyond the first fifty ...”

“... from London was then particularly distorting. On the issue of votes for women, the two countries drew together, but there were still differences. The power of the Church was much greater in Scotland, and at various levels the Scottish Church gave support to the movement. The most unexpected feature of the Scottish story was the organisation of male ...”

“... Six Articles, made by King Henry the Eighth against the Protestants, fled his Countrey, and with-drew himself into Kent. After the death of King Henry he got a place among the sea-men in the King’s Navy, to reade Prayers to them: and soon after he was ordained Deacon, and made Vicar of the Church of Upnore upon the River Medway (the Road where the Fleet ...”

“... of the most interesting things about Anne was her religion. It was also one of the things that drew her and Henry together: we know that they talked about it over dinner, and shared evangelical texts. As queen, she was active in her patronage of clerics who shared her views. Classifying those views is not straightforward, however. Guy and Fox evade the ...”