“I feel that I am not in the least improved since the days when I used to run wild about the mountains.”

Fondly recognising the persistence of her childhood love of freedom and landscape · Letter fragment, familiar correspondence

• Childhood
• Memory
• Nature

“Do not you think one's first interview with the sunshine, after a long separation, is, like the meetings from which one has expected much, rather oppressive than delightful?”

Comparing renewed sunlight with the emotional intensity of a long-awaited reunion · Letter fragment, familiar correspondence

• Hope
• Memory
• Nature

“I am sure there is a moon, for she looks in at my window every night, and keeps me awake with her cold bright eyes, which, I scarcely know why, always seem to speak of the past.”

Turning moonlight into an evocative presence associated with memory · Letter fragment, familiar correspondence

• Beauty
• Memory
• Nature

“This time of the year makes one so long for the far away — do not you think so?”

Connecting the changing season with longing for distant places and people · Letter fragment, familiar correspondence

• Memory
• Nature
• Solitude

“O this waveless horizon — how it wearies the eye accustomed to the sweeping outline of mountain scenery!”

Revealing how deeply the Welsh mountains had shaped her sense of landscape · Letter to Mary Howitt, 11 December 1828

• Beauty
• Memory
• Nature

“The last winter deprived me of my truest and tenderest friend — the mother by whose unwearied spirit of love and hope I was encouraged to bear on through all the obstacles which beset my onward path.”

Remembering her mother as the sustaining presence behind her perseverance · Letter to Joanna Baillie, Rhyllon

• Love
• Memory
• Mortality

“The spring, with all its joy and beauty, is generally a time of thoughtfulness rather than mirth.”

Finding reflection rather than simple cheerfulness in seasonal beauty · Letter, Bronwylfa, 14 May 1823

• Beauty
• Memory
• Nature