Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her mother, Jane Sewell (nee Edwards; married 1802): 'She must have been naturally very clever; for, although she had received little or no education, her knowledge of books, and her memory for poetry and apt quotations, were quite remarkable. She often talked to us of her studies as a girl; how she used not only to devour novels, and read Sir Charles Grandison every winter, but how she also taught herself a little French, learned by heart long passages from the great poets, sometimes read history, and especially delighted in Bayley's Dictionary, with its long meanings and rules for pronunciation.'