“I dare say you laugh sometimes, as I am inclined to do myself, at the prevailing mania for autographs.”

Gently mocking the nineteenth-century appetite for literary celebrity · Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 June 1827

• Art
• Fame
• Joy

“The more I can throw my mind into any undertaking which interests my friends, the more I make to myself a place of refuge from personal suffering.”

Finding relief from private sorrow through purposeful work for friends · Letter fragment, familiar correspondence

• Art
• Friendship
• Hope

“There are some writers whose works we cannot read without feeling as if we really had looked with them upon the scenes they bring before us.”

Describing the imaginative intimacy created by vivid writing · Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 June 1827

• Art
• Poetry