Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834) was an English poet. The daughter of a Surrey squire, she wrote clever occasional verse. Her best-known production is the famous Riddle on the Letter H, beginning "'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell" often attributed to Lord Byron. Her wonderful "Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth" appears in the recent Oxford Book of Parodies (ed John Gross).
Famous quotes containing the words maria fanshawe, catherine and/or maria:
“It were a blessed sight to see
That child become a willow tree,
His brother trees among.
He’d be four times as tall as me,
And live three times as long.”
—Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834)
“Russian Communism is the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great.”
—Clement Attlee (1883–1967)
“He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there’s another dog.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)