Women Authors From England

"Nobody is such a fool as to moider away his time in the slip-slop conversation of a pack of women."

"I have nothing to fear… I am the sun, the stars, the pearl, the lion, the light from heaven."

"I shall not allow the pension… to be stopped by force: I shall resign it,"

"It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult?"

"I shall go on making sublime and philosophical discoveries, and employing myself in deep, abstract studies."

"A poor gentlewoman, doctor, is the worst thing in the world"

"I am beginning to rub my eyes at the prospect of peace. I think it will require more courage than anything that has gone before. ... One will have to look at long vistas again, instead of short ones, and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war."

"Oh why was I born for this time? Before one is thirty to know more dead than living people."

"I use the word smile for lack of a better word, but how to convey the beauty of the indefinable expression that transfigured that time-worn face? Tender triumph: gentle joy: rapturous reverence. What mystery did I witness? It was like iron frost yielding to sunshine — the thawing of grief in the dawn-radiance of some unsurmisable redemption."

"The most attractive time in is in spring when the bank sloping from the terrace is thick with s and ."

"Queen Elizabeth came twice to Oxford: once in 1566 and again in 1592."

"The oldest book dealing with the virtue of herbs is the , circa 900–950. This Leech Book was evidently the manual of a Saxon doctor and it is the oldest existing Leech Book written in the ."

"In midwinter, when few fresh herbs except , , , , and are available, dried herbs can be used, also or ..."

", of the most noted of the day, entered the service of the as an assistant gardener. In 1826 he was made head-gardener. His name at is chiefly associated with the remarkable he designed, which was begun in 1836 and finished in 1840."

"Even in only very wealthy men had separate gardens merely for pleasure, whilst all the small s and s throughout the country still retained the old . For over seven centuries before that time, all the gardens in England were herb gardens, and very beautiful they must have been, for s, , s, , , , , s, , s, and s were all used as herbs."

"Of s we knew nothing till we learnt about them from the s; and they were only introduced into England in . It was about the same time that s were first cultivated in this country, but s were unknown till . The is an indigenous plant in the , but of the we were ignorant till the Flemish immigrants in the early seventeenth century introduced them. To them also we owe our present garden , which has had a long journey to reach us, for it is said to have come from Asia through Spain. The was used by our ancestors from , and one of the Saxon names for March was "sprout-kale month"; but otherwise the whole ' tribe were unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

"The most famous of Elizabethan gardening authorities was , who came of a well-known family. When he left , Hugh Platt became a member of , and being given a generous allowance by his father he was able to devote many years to literary work. He became keenly interested in and agriculture and was in communication with all the authorities in this country. His own gardens at , , and were famous, and his (reprinted later under the title of The Garden of Eden) is full of information gleaned in all parts of England ..."

"For the gardens of the few who can give them warm walls in the most sheltered parts of Great Britain, two scented January-flowering treasures are ' and Freylinia cestroides. With its globe-shaped head of flowers, ranging from deep butter to cream-colour on the same head (the flowers turn cream-colour as they fade), its sweet scent and the length of time it remains in bloom, E. chrysantha is a most attractive plant, and the buff-coloured flowers of fill the air with fragrance in mid-winter."

"is a passion with people from all walks of life, all races, all ages, and the plots they cultivate range from large country gardens to allotments, to tiny urban patches, to es. For me, it is a very personal passion. In the 1970s my husband and I and our two young children spent a year touring western Europe in a caravan, studying vegetable growing and collecting old varieties. We "rediscovered" forgotten salad plants like and , as well as the then new and green Italian Lollo lettuces. On our return we introduced them to the UK, along with the productive cut-and-come-again technique for growing salad seedlings."

"We don't have the luxury of a long time to actually even out the effects on job loss with this revolution, because it's happening so quickly."

"AI's running fast, and we need to run as fast with governance mechanisms."

"The benefits of shelter cannot be exaggerated. Research has shown that sheltering s from even light winds can increase their yields by up to 30 per cent — which is equivalent to the increase in returns from optimum irrigation or optimum fertilizer use. The bents of sheltering plants from severe winds are considerably higher. In coastal areas, s also give protection from wind-borne ."

"By the 1980s we had reorganized our kitchen garden and laid it out in parallel narrow beds — a practical, efficient, centuries-old system, enabling the to develop a high state of fertility in the beds. ... Not long afterwards I made my first Little Potager, an area nor more than 6½ by 4½ m/20 by 15 ft. It was later enclosed in an undulating woven willow fence. Then followed a Winter Potage, primarily for edible plants which retain leaf, stem or flower colour in winter; these include s, hardy s, purple-flowering , hardy , , s, , 'Parcel' celery and winter pansies. Partially edged with low, stopover apples, the Winter Potager is surrounded on three sides by a of vines, and . With luck it remains colourful and decorative even in mid-winter. The full story is told in my book Creative Vegetable Gardening, but what is relevant here is the decorative potential of so many salad plants."

"It's really important" that we make sure that we're "not encoding own prejudices and taking them forward with us, because if do that, we will actually stultify the development of the world."

"On the other hand, such toys raise a host of issues that policymakers are only starting to get a handle on. The privacy implications alone of potentially having a toy — or a succession of them — collect a child's every utterance from the time they can talk until adulthood are tremendous. That is an issue that we really have to solve."

"Personalized education using AI for kids is going to be a huge game changer."

"The technology promises improvements to everything from industrial processes to agriculture to transportation, Firth-Butterfield said. But it also could lead to a raft of challenges and dangers, including massive job losses in a relatively short period of time, the illegitimate denial of goods or services thanks to flawed or biased algorithms, and citizens' loss of control of what was previously personal data."

"Lady Dorothy Nevill is the most interesting of all known and recognized nonagenarians. The very title of her new book indicates the long backward reach of her memory. She was a little girl when died. She has lived to see the accession of She loves the old days, but she is no bigoted admirer of the old ways. She recognizes that, on the whole, the march of progress has uplifted classes and masses alike, though at some temporary loss, among the first, in charm and distinction of manner, and, among the second, in color and atmosphere."

"During my childhood at Islington the vicar of Puddletown was of the fox-hunting sort, quite different to the modern conception of a clergyman. He was popular enough with his parishioners, though I suspect he never saw half of them till they came up to be buried."

"Writing a grief-stricken epitaph to Lady Dorothy Nevill née Walpole in 1913, the English poet and then librarian of the , Edmund Gosse observed, ‘life was a spectacle for her and society a congress of little s.’ ... Gosse conjures up an image of Lady Dorothy as a master manipulator, pulling the strings of her many puppets over the years, thus suggesting the influential position this aristocratic woman held in society throughout her long life. Born into the historical dynasty of the Walpole family, Lady Dorothy (1826–1913) was the daughter of the . She grew up at reading the correspondence of , the one-time ambassador to , and stated proudly that ‘like my kinsman Horace Walpole I am fond of collecting’. ... Lady Dorothy gained acclaim as a botanist, a political hostess, one of the founding members of the , an art collector, and a supporter of writers, s, and artists, many of whom she patronized."

"It's really important that we know that there are all these different tensions, because without addressing them, we are really left with, I suspect, a failing trust in the technology," she said. "What I certainly don't want to see are all the benefits of AI somehow being lost because we haven't put in the ethical underpinnings to help the public know that we're doing something safe"

"It's going to enable us to feed more people"

"Not very far from is the quaint old town of , which, I believe, took its name from the de Pydeles, one of those Norman families which came into England with the Conqueror. The church is particularly interesting, being one of the very few unrestored ones in —a county which has suffered terribly at the hands of the . ... If only because Puddletown Church is the church of Mr. Hardy's ', it should be left untouched."

"... of all the Oriental vegetables, the , a group roughly defined as members of the cabbage family, should prove the most rewarding for Westerners to get to know and grow. An amazingly diverse group, it includes the sturdy, bud-like heads of (already well known in the West), the crisp white- and green-stemmed s, and with their delicious flowering shoots, the pretty fern-leaved s and the . Within the mustards there are exceptionally hardy varieties with beautiful purple-hued leaves, compact-headed mustards and forms with weirdly swollen but highly prized stems and roots."

"I remember a story that my great-grandmother, who never drove out but in a carriage and four with outriders, one day met with a mishap, her coach breaking down. In this terrible state of affairs no one knew what to do, my grandmother sitting, ruffled but dignified, in the carriage, the wheels of which seemed damaged beyond repair. Matters seemed at a complete standstill, till a servant of a daringly brilliant and inventive turn of mind ventured to suggest that her ladyship might possibly walk to her mansion, not far away; and, wonderful to relate, she actually managed to do it. As a matter of fact, the rendered exercise almost impossible for ladies."

"Among the political squibs in my scrap-book there is one directed against the over-taxation which in long-past days certainly did press heavily upon the people of England. Exceedingly well written, it is, I believe, an extract from an article by Sydney Smith, published in the ' about 1820."

"Amongst other pictures which I remember in was the famous now in the , as well as a fine portrait of and another of e—both presents from the Cardinal and the poet to ."

"There are charming avenues of s in the gardens of St. Mary's House ... A bedchamber above is named the " Room," because of its paneled walls constructed from wood taken from these enemy ships. In the centre of each panel is a clever inlaid representation of one of these Spanish warships; picturesque objects, all of them, with their fine sails blown by the wind as they combat the waves."

"... in quiet old-world ... dwelt that master craftsman of s, , whose emblem of minute golden garb or wheatsheaf is searched for amidst the design of any modern church window that we admire. For many years he here applied his craft, leaving as a heritage that well-planned semblance of an Elizabethan house, complete in all its details, comprising a wondrous , a raised Garden Mount, a Wilderness, A Garden House of Entertainment, all those striking features in short which are alluded to in Bacon's Essay "Of Gardens.""

"… the small village of ... was once the meeting-place of many s, for in the midst of somewhat modern surroundings we see these narrow gipsy-frequented grass-grown lanes at intervals before coming to an especially practical signboard that directs us to Homestall, the late 's old house."

"As I watch the young women gathering apples on this still autumn day, coming up the hill bearing on their arms wooden "trugs," all lined with soft to prevent their load of fruit being bruised, I am more than ever convinced that is most essentially suitable work for them. There is so much connected with it that requires the dainty touch of a woman, much that her inborn gentleness can help. Two long, low dark and cool apple-rooms have been excavated out of the chalk, and here on wooden shelves the apples are carefully laid, forming thus the richest treasure-houses of the garden."

"Like the , we should make a study of thrift, learning to prepare for all emergencies; and thus even the wild fruits of the rows, the , could be turned to useful account. Especially is this the case in a year when apples are so plentiful that there are barely accepted gratefully as a gift and cannot all find room on the shelves in the fruit house. There is nothing more delicious than blackberry-and-apple jam, and the advantage of this mixture is that the blackberries help to keep the jam, as apples if boiled alone and bottled would not last without the berries."

"My learned and accomplished friend, , has written a most interesting history, entitled One Generation of a Norfolk House. It is more or less the history of the in early times."

"My dear mother was a great friend of the poet Samuel Rogers, and we often went to his breakfasts, which were at that time celebrated, for there were usually one or two great people present. His house at 22, was filled with pictures and curiosities; on a sideboard in the dining-room was a cast of the head of Pope by , whilst between the the fireplace and window was the poet's writing-table; there was an ingenious mechanical contrivance by means of which the larger pictures in the house could be moved from their place so as to be viewed in different lights. The library and drawing-room were on the first floor, the book-cases being surmounted by s, whilst by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hung over one of the two mantelpieces — the other, beautifully carved by , was crowned, I think, by a study by ; altogether, there were six or seven Reynolds's in the house, which was a real haven of artistic rest and repose."

"Her book Grow your Own Vegetables is a masterpiece of good sense; I have read it more than once. And her Creative Vegetable Gardening is, as books go, my happy place, one I head back to whenever I feel uninspired by my own garden. So imagine how excited I was when I got an invitation to her retirement vegetable garden that sits on a windswept corner of . She and Don, her husband, converted it from a in just under 10 years. As a garden, it is everything I hoped for. Relaxed, a little messy perhaps to some (but not to the wildlife), joyous with colour and filled to the brim with food. I squished many s in return for some lemon verbena tea. If you want to read more about her garden, buy Just Vegetating. It is much more than simply a – it also takes in her travels in the pursuit of the best vegetables from Europe to China."

"It is not possible to make sweeping statements about what will or will not grow in clay soil, because there are so many different types of clay. Some are much stickier and more difficult to handle than others; clay that has been made easier to handle by the addition of will grow most plants. I don't believe there is any soil that will not grow something."

"believed in manuring with a very generous hand and woe betide any little plant of mine that grew nearby, as it would surely die of suffocation under the great gallops of manure that were plastered round every rose. All the manure we could get was devoted to the roses and s."

"holidays— and 1st of November—were our aim for the ceremonies of ."

"There are some roses that always flower late, not just in a freak year. I always enjoy November roses, whether it is 'Madame Abel Chatenay', that wreathes the dining-room window, or , who pops up from behind the barton wall at a time when I thought all good roses had gone to sleep."

"Evelyn ... wrote the first (and only) bestseller on : was published in 1664 and addressed and the shortage of . ... "We had better be without gold than without timber," Evelyn wrote, because without trees there would be no iron and glass industry, no fires to warm houses in winter, nor a navy to protect the shores of England. Timber was, as Maggie Campbell-Culver points out, the oil of the 17th century, and the shortage of it created similar anxieties about fuel, manufacturing and transport as threats to oil production do today. Sylva was a response to these fears, encouraging the reader to plant trees as an act of patriotic duty. ... A Passion for Trees is beautifully illustrated with paintings and sumptuous botanical drawings. But the use of explanatory extensive "text boxes" (some are four pages long) interrupts the narrative. As with her first book The Origin of Plants, Campbell-Culver is at her strongest and most convincing when she delves into the lives of the trees, although both Evelyn himself and the age in which he lived remain elusive throughout the book."