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Eighteenth century novels

I have finished The History of Emily Montague, and find myself at a loss as to what I should read next. It will be hard to top that work, which despite holding every device and convention intolerable to modern critics, held my interest throughout.

I had The Nocturnal Minstrel in mind but feel I should try a new author. I have some great gothic fiction resources I hope to consult this weekend. For now, I am still reading Mrs. Shelley, P.B.S.'s letters, and of course, his poems.

I love the eighteenth century for its attention to reason, self-awareness and a growing Romanticism which blossoms in the Shelleys. I am not willing to advance to the nineteenth century just yet. I want to study the gothic and epistolary novels as I continue to work on The Soul of the Rose.

There were some things I read in E.M. that I want to quote, but eReader doesn't allow text selection, so I will have to find time to do it later.

Also much with me have been my beloved Helen and Anne, two idealists: one real, one not, whose ideals follow me so consistently throughout my life that it is very hard to believe I do not know them, or even that I am not one of them. I feel I have read their stories so recently it isn't time for a revisit, yet I want to keep close to their stories all my life, reading them many times over.

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