A Quote by Mary Beard

I'm very interested in how people in the 19th century travelled to Greece. — © Mary Beard
I'm very interested in how people in the 19th century travelled to Greece.
I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.
We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.
Following its recognition as a state in 1832, Greece spent most of the remainder of the 19th century under the control of creditors. The pattern started with a default in 1832. In consequence, Greece's finances were put under French administration.
Although the stories are very present in my book, and very present in my mind, what I was most interested in was the question of why it had attracted such a following in the 18th Century. It's less mysterious that it attracted a following in the Romantic period, and in the 19th Century, but the early 18th Century when the Rationalists fell in love with it...that was mysterious. What I wanted to look at was the forms of enchantment.
People have asked me about the 19th century and how I knew so much about it. And the fact is I really grew up in the 19th century, because North Carolina in the 1950s, the early years of my childhood, was exactly synchronous with North Carolina in the 1850s. And I used every scrap of knowledge that I had.
The 19th century was a century of empires, the 20th century was a century of nation states. The 21st century will be a century of cities.
There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.
I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.
If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.
In the beginning of the 19th century, maybe forty percent of women and fifty percent of men could produce a signature, which meant that they'd had at least three years of education because it was in third grade that people started penmanship in the 19th century. And of course black people could get killed if they got caught teaching themselves to read in some parts of the country.
Its highest point was The Worst Journey in the World. Then you see this decline, and this harking back, using the 19th-century form when we're not in the 19th century. That way of writing a book about the world out there - you just can't do it anymore.
The 19th century was the century of empires, the 20th was the century of nation states, and the 21st is the century of cities and mayors.
People are now layering all kinds of different things together. Eighteenth century, 19th century, rustic, modern. Three dimensional printed pieces, very high end technological pieces, but mixed with local artisan stuff.
The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.
I think I'm very interested in people, in the way our minds work and how we navigate through the experience that is life. Very interested in people's struggles and their choices and their regrets and joys. I'm very interested in the human animal.
Typical horror movies of the 1930s were often given a period setting in what looked like a kind of stylized 19th century... the sense of 'elsewhen', of distance, lent to many of these movies by their settings. They exist, as it were, in a 19th century of the mind.
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