The Queen of Riseholme

"[The] new wing ... was, if anything, a shade more inexorably Elizabethan than the stem onto which it was grafted, for here was situated the famous smoking-parlour, with rushes on the floor, and a dresser ranged with pewter tankards, and leaded lattice-windows of glass so antique that it was practically impossible to see out of them.  It had a huge open fireplace framed in oak-beams with a seat on each side of the iron-backed hearth within the chimney, and a genuine spit hung over the middle of the fire.  Here, though in the rest of the house she had for the sake of convenience allowed the installation of electric light, there was no such concession made, and sconces on the walls held dim iron lamps, so that only those of the most acute vision were able to read.  Even then reading was difficult, for the book-stand on the table contained nothing but a few crabbed black-letter  volumes dating from not later than the early seventeenth century, and you had to be in a frantically Elizabethan frame of mind to be at ease there.  But Mrs Lucas often spent some of her rare leisure moments in the smoking-parlour, playing on the virginal that stood in the window, or kippering herself in the fumes of the wood-fire as with streaming eyes she deciphered an Elzevier Horace, rather late for inclusion under the rule, but an un-doubted bargain."

Queen Lucia  E. F. Benson

At the Rue Fossette

"The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day being devoted entirely to his college. ..….if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black fluid in that ink-glass.  With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with a weary hand I turned up its contents.

One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers, were taken out and put back hopeless; they had no charm; they could not comfort.  Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I have not seen it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day -- this very afternoon; the tract must have been introduced within the last hour, while we were at dinner.

I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?"

Villette   Charlotte Bronte

"The Mysteries of Udolpho"

" 'But you should not persuade me that I think so very much about Mr Tilney, for perhaps I may never see him again.'
'Not see him again! My dearest creature, do not talk of it.  I am sure you would be miserable if you thought so.'
'No, indeed, I should not.  I do not pretend to say that I was not very much pleased with him; but while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable. Oh! the dreadful black veil! My dear Isabella, I am sure there must be Laurentina's skeleton behind it.'
'It is so odd to me, that you should never have read Udolpho before: but I suppose Mrs Morland objects to novels.'
'No, she does not.  She very often reads Sir Charles Grandison herself; but new books do not fall in our way.'
'Sir Charles Grandison! That is an amazing horrid book, is it not?--I remember Miss Andrews could not get through the first volume.'
'It is not like Udolpho at all; but yet I think it is very entertaining.'
'Do you indeed! -- you surprise me; I thought it had not been readable.  But, my dearest Catherine, have you settled what to wear on your head tonight?  I am determined at all events to be dressed exactly like you.  The men take notice of that sometimes you know.' "

Northanger Abbey   Jane Austen