Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 November 1842: 'Keep my secret -- but I have been reading a good deal lately of the new French literature [...] I was curious beyond the patience of my Eve-ship, & besides grew so interested in France & the French through my long apprentice ship to the old Memoirs that I felt pricked to the heart to know all about the posterity of my heroes & heroines. And besides I live out of the world altogether, & am lonely enough & old enough & sad enough & experienced enough in every sort of good & bad reading, not to be hurt personally by a French superfluity of bad [...] [George Sand] is eloquent as a fallen angel [...] Then there is Eugene Sue, & Frederic Soulie, & De Queile .. why the whole literature looks like a conflagration -- & my whole being aches with the sight of it [...] Full indeed of power & caprice & extravagance is this new French literature [...] The want is, of fixed principle [...] Now tell me, what you think? That it is very naughty of me to read naughty books -- or that you have done the same?'