When a lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) 1819-1880.

To--

Oh author of my being!-far more dear

To me than light, than nourishment, or rest,

Hygieia's blessings, Rapture's burning tear,

Or the life blood that mantles in my breast!

If in my heart the love of Virtue glows,

'T was planted there by an unerring rule;

From thy example the pure flame arose,

Thy life, my precept-thy good works, my school.

Could my weak pow'rs thy numerous virtues trace,

By filial love each fear should repress'd;

The blush of Incapacity I'd chance,

And stand, recorder of thy wealth, confess'd:

But since my niggard stars that gift refuse,

Concealment is the only boon I claim;

Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse,

Who cannot raise, but would not sink, thy fame.

Oh! of my life at once the source and joy!

If e'er thy eyes these feeble lines survey,

Let their folly their intent destroy;

Accept the tribute-but forget the lay.

Fanny Burney, Evelina, 1778.

The poem was dedicated, but dedication hidden, to Fanny Burney's father, who was kept in ignorance of the writing and following publication of her first book. This poem forms the first page of the book, which was at first only published accredited to 'A lady Author'. The book is in fact not her first but the sequel to an earlier destroyed piece.

Folly

A name given to any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder,

- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

But it's much, much more than that. The folly, particularly in Britain, is an attitude, a statement, a style, a fashion, a passion, a different world. . .

Follies may be found all over the world, but the British were first to recognise their worth and importance. . .

Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp have spent over thirty years reasearching 'rogue architecture'. They are co-founders of the Folly Fellowship.

Above text taken from the blurb on the back cover of Follies Grottoes and Garden Buildings by Headley and Meulenkamp, Aurem Press, 1999

One man's folly is another man's wife.

Helen Rowland

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the oppertunity.

Helen Rowland, A Guide to Men, 1922.

Rowland was an American Journalist who lived from 1876 - 1950.

She also famously said: When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they 'don't understand' one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

It is folly to linger in this manner. I will not torment myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is impossible for me now to enjoy.

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen.

Of Folly buildings

“What was chosen for what site in what style, depended on taste, place, money, materials and fashion; success was as capricious as fashion”
Page 33 F & G

“Influence is a sufficiently difficult word to use of professionals, who, one can be reasonably certain, do see another’s work. But with follies, everything is so unsure; Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Kent built some of the very earliest follies, and then the amateurs largely took over, and who knows what they saw and worked for, with whose aid and how; it is easy to oversimplify, and follies are by no means simple but the result of many fuddled ‘influences’.”

“With good luck, the builder might be a man of great taste and imagination, and become a specialist, with bad luck, the thing fell down”

Follies fragility.
Page 2 F & G.

Follies were built with the directness and complexity of a doodle on the blotting pad!

Page 36, Follies and Grottoes, Barbara Jones.

“They are cut off from worldly contacts and loose all humanity, becoming more mineral than artefact, resolving into stones again.”

Of buildings named follies

Page 3, Follies & Grottoes, Barbara Jones.

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen includes a dog called Folly.