Frances Burney, Mme d’Arblay (1752-1840) [ Art and Literature ]
… had successfully illuminated even the most rural areas, with the help of two basic sociable tools: conversation and the press. The tide of ignorance is turned; and not there alone, nor alone in any other small town, but in every village, … away, would soon be lost even to man’s joy at their extirpation, but for the retrospective and noble services of the press, through which their memory – if only to be blasted – must live forever ( Memoirs , I, 96-97). The necessary ‘mental cultivation’ had come about, she suggests here, with the help of the press, by which she understood all kinds of printed matter, though she did not dare name novels. Imagination, however, …
Fiction | Masquerade | Memoirs | Theatre | Women
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