Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie Selected and Arranged from her Letters, Diaries, and other Manuscripts — Edition Insights

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Authors: Opie, Amelia, 1769-1853, Brightwell, C. L. (Cecilia Lucy), 1811-1875 [Editor] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Opie, Amelia, 1769-1853; Opie, Amelia, 1769-1853 -- Correspondence Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 142,741

Reading time 621 min

Text sections 18

Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie Selected and Arranged from her Letters, Diaries, and other Manuscripts — Edition Insights can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 142,741 words, 10 hr 21 min estimated reading time, and 18 detected text sections.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #47595

C. L. Brightwell's compilation of Amelia Opie's letters, diaries, and papers reveals a writer navigating literary fame, Quaker faith, and personal loss. The volume captures Opie's social energy, her grief after her husband's death, and the tension between public engagement and private solitude.

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Birth and Parentage; her Father; her Mother’s Family; her Mother; Sonnet to her Mother’s Memory; Early Reminiscences; Early Terrors and their Cure; the Black Man; Crazy Women; Bedlam; Visits to the Inmates; Early Training; the Female Sailor; Abrupt Conclusion 1

First Sorrow; the Assizes; Sir Henry Gould; the Usury Cause; “Christian;” Mr. Bruckner; Girlish Days; her Friendship with Mrs. Taylor; Mrs. T.’s Memoir of her 22

Norfolk and Norwich, and their Inhabitants; Young Love; the Drama; Song writing and Cromer; Politics; Visit to London; Letters from thence; the Old Bailey Trials 34

French Emigrants; Letter to Mrs. Taylor; Letter of the Duke d’Aiguillon; Visit to London and Letter from thence; London again; Letter from Mrs. Wollstonecroft; First introduction to Mr. Opie; Mr. Opie’s early history; Return to Norwich; Preparations for Marriage 51

Marriage; Early Ménage; Authorship; Lay on portrait of Mrs. Twiss; Letter to Mrs. Taylor; Visit to Norwich; Letter from Mr. Opie; Mrs. Opie to Mrs. Taylor; Mr. Opie’s Mother 68

“The Father and Daughter;” Critique in the Edinburgh; three Letters to Mrs. Taylor; volume of “Poems;” “Go, youth beloved;” Letter from Sir J. Mackintosh; S. Smith’s Lecture 79

The Trials of Genius; Domestic Troubles; Letters to Mrs. Taylor; Journey to France; Arrival at Paris; the Louvre; the First Consul; Charles James Fox; The Soirée; Kosciusko 91

The Review and Buonaparte; “Fesch;” General Massena; Return to England; Letter to Mrs. Colombine Visit to Norwich; “Adeline Mowbray;” Letter to Mrs. Taylor; Mr. Erskine 108

Prosperity; “Simple Tales;” Visit to Southill; Lady Roslyn; Mr. Opie’s “Lectures;” his Illness; his Death 125

Return to Norwich; “Poems;” Memoir of her Husband; Letter from Lady Charleville; from Mrs. Inchbald; Visit to London; Party at Lady E. Whitbread’s; Visit to Cromer; “Temper;” “Tales of Real Life;” Soirée at Madame de Staël’s 135

Letters of Mrs. Opie to Dr. Alderson, written during her visit in London in the year 1814 146

Friendship with the Gurney family; two Letters from Mr. J. J. Gurney; Death of his Brother; Mrs. Opie’s Return from London; Early Religious Opinions; Mrs. Roberts; Recollections of Sir W. Scott; Visit to Edinburgh; “Valentine’s Eve;” Visit to Mr. Hayley; “Tales of the Heart;” Letter to Mr. Hayley; Letter from Mrs. Inchbald; her death 167

Illness of Dr. Alderson; His Daughter’s anxiety; Priscilla Gurney; Bible and Anti-Slavery Meetings; “Madeline;” Letter from Southey; “Lying;” Letters to Mrs. Fry; Mrs. Opie joins the Society of Friends; Dr. Alderson’s Decline and Death 183

Consolation in Sorrow; Letter to a Friend; Journal for the year 1827 197

Yearly Meetings; Letter from London; Letters from Ladies Cork and Charleville; “Detraction Displayed;” Letter from Archdeacon Wrangham; Cromer; Diary for 1829 212

Visit to Paris; Journal during her Stay there; Letter from thence; Return to England; Letter from Lafayette; Sonnet “on seeing the Tricolor;” Southey's “Colloquies;” Letter from Mrs. Fry; “Nursing Sisters” 229

Revolution of “the Three Days;” Mrs. Opie goes to Paris again; her Journal there 245

Letter on the Distribution of Prizes at the Catholic Schools; Continuation of Journal; Letter giving an Account of her Visit to the French Court 264

Influence of Christian Fellowship; Mrs. Opie Returns to England; gives up Housekeeping; Journey into Cornwall; Letters and Journal during her Residence there 284

Return to Norwich; Extracts from her Diary; Dr. Chalmers and Mrs. Opie at Earlham; Lines addressed by Mrs. Opie to Dr. Chalmers; “Lays for the Dead;” Visit to London; Journey to Scotland; her Journal there; The Highlands; her Visit to Abbotsford 302

Journey to Belgium; Visit to Ghent; Journal of her Travels; Letter from the Rhine Falls; Homeward Journey; Arrival at Calais 317

Mrs. Opie’s Removal to Lady’s Lane; Letters, Visitors, and Writing; Spring Assizes of 1838; Memoirs of Sir W. Scott; Visits to London and Northrepps; Death of Friends; Anti-Slavery Convention; Winter and Spring of 1840-41; Visits to Town and Letters from thence in 1842-43; Illness; Close of 1843; Letter of Reminiscences of Thomas Hogg 333

Death of Mr. Briggs; Summer Assizes, 1844; “Reminiscences of Judges Courts;” “Reminiscences of George Canning” 353

The Seventy-fifth year; Notes and Incidents in the years 1845-46; Deaths of Mr. J. J. Gurney and of Dr. Chalmers; Letter from Cromer; Death of Mrs. E. Alderson; Mrs. Opie’s Visit to London in the Spring of 1848; Letter from thence 366

The Castle Meadow house; Indisposition; Increase of Crime; Rush’s Trial; Summer Assizes of 1849; Death of Bishop Stanley; Summer and Autumn of 1850; Farewell Visit to London; the Great Exhibition; Summer of 1852; Rheumatic Gout; Notes; last Visit to Cromer; the Spring and Summer of 1853; Sudden Illness, October 23rd; Patience and Cheerfulness; Increasing Sickness; Leave Taking; Death 382

MEMORIALS OF THE LIFE OF AMELIA OPIE.

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Amelia Opie's own voice emerges most vividly in the letters and journal entries that form the backbone of this memorial volume. The editor, Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, explains in the preface that Opie left no autobiography, only a mass of papers, and that the task of selection fell to her executor. The resulting work is neither a continuous narrative nor a simple collection; it is a mosaic in which Opie's direct words—often addressed to a single friend—alternate with Brightwell's bridging commentary. The reader encounters Opie as a woman who, in 1827, could write that 'solitude, prolonged solitude, preyed upon her spirits' even as she attended the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends and dined with the Duke of Gloucester. That juxtaposition of social delight and private ache runs through the entire volume.

A Life in Letters and Diaries

The materials from which these memoirs are compiled are, as Brightwell states, 'principally Papers, Letters, and Diaries, of Mrs. Opie's own writing.' The editor notes that a very large number of letters received by Opie were found among her papers, but she and her father chose not to make free use of them, hoping to avoid violations of private and confidential communications. This editorial restraint shapes the volume: Opie's own words dominate, but the reader sees her largely through her own self-presentation. The result is a portrait that feels intimate yet incomplete, as Brightwell herself acknowledges that Opie 'seems to have made some efforts at commencing' an autobiography but left it unfinished. The letters, however, give a sense of immediate presence—Opie describing a bazaar for schools in St. Giles', or recalling that a friend remembered far more of her story 'Odd-tempered Man' than she did herself.

The Social World and Its Costs

Opie's letters from London in 1827 show her moving through a dense network of acquaintances: she attends the African Meeting at Freemason's Tavern, hears Lord Roden expound Scripture, and calls on Lady Cork. She notes that the Duke of Gloucester 'talked some time, retaining my hand in his' and adds a parenthetical hope that 'friends behind were not scandalized.' Yet this social energy is shadowed by loss. In the same letter, she confesses that 'my life, during the last three weeks in London, has realized my loss to me more than ever'—a reference to her husband's death. The pattern recurs: Opie's 'essentially social nature' thrives in company, but solitude 'preyed upon her spirits.' The volume repeatedly returns to this tension, as when Brightwell observes that Opie bore up against 'painful regrets and memories of the past' and that 'the effort was beneficial.'

Faith, Reform, and Literary Echoes

Opie's Quaker commitments appear throughout the excerpts. She attends the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, and her journal entries note meetings of the Bible, British and Foreign School, and Anti-Slavery Societies. Brightwell remarks on the 'cordial interest' Opie always evinced on these occasions, and how 'her eye kindled as she recalled the eloquent address of some friend of the wronged and helpless.' Yet literary fame is never far away. An American lady introduces herself, mentioning that Sir Walter Scott's niece is staying with her, and tells Opie that her story 'Odd-tempered Man' had reformed a dear friend. Opie's own reaction—'sweet food for vanity, and I hope also for some better feeling'—captures the blend of self-awareness and moral seriousness that marks her letters. The volume thus presents a woman who is at once a celebrated author, a devout Friend, and a widow navigating memory and public life.

Readers approaching this volume should expect a work that is part biography, part archive. Brightwell's editorial hand is light but purposeful: she arranges Opie's papers to highlight the arc of a life without forcing a single narrative. The result rewards those who enjoy tracing a personality through fragmentary evidence—a phrase in a letter, a diary entry about a meeting, a remembered gesture. Opie herself, in her farewell address, expressed confidence that her executors would 'do everything for the best.' This memorial is the result of that trust, and it invites the reader to share in the work of piecing together a life from its own remains.

There’s something tender about how Amelia Opie’s letters hold both the crowded rooms and the quiet afterward—the same hush I felt reading Random Shots from a Rifleman — Edition Insights. These old collections feel like borrowing someone’s handwriting for an afternoon, and I’m always a little sad when the last page turns.