Literary notes about Coach (AI summary)
The term coach functions as a vehicle for both literal and symbolic journeys in literature. It frequently denotes a means of transportation that carries characters through significant physical and narrative transitions—from the detailed itineraries and everyday commutes found in the diaries of Pepys ([1], [2], [3]) to the grand processional or dramatic departures in works by Brontë, Dickens, and Austen ([4], [5], [6]). Moreover, coach often stands as a metonym for society’s movement and status, marking shifts in setting or mood as characters move between social milieus or tumultuous events ([7], [8], [9]). Its varied use, whether in a hackney-coach hastily summoned to retrieve someone from a crisis ([10], [11]) or in a stage-coach symbolically ushering in new beginnings ([12], [13]), underscores its enduring role in evoking the dynamics of travel, time, and transformation in narrative art.
- I with my Lord Bruncker by coach as far as the Temple, in the way he telling me that my Lady Denham is at last dead.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys - I went by coach to the play-house at the Theatre, our coach in King Street breaking, and so took another.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys - It being done, we got a coach and got well home about 12 at night.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys - “In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,” thought I: “I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - ‘A coach, father!’ cried little Wackford.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - His father was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach standing hard by in Southampton Row.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - the Glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - “Perhaps he is no longer in the coach,” he thought, as he rebuttoned the waistcoat of his undress uniform.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Daily watching for the Heavenly Coach to come.
— from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems - His principal object must be to discover the number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - We waited some time, but in vain; for no hackney-coach could be procured.
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney - Containing many surprizing adventures which Joseph Andrews met with on the road, scarce credible to those who have never travelled in a stage-coach.
— from Joseph Andrews, Vol. 1 by Henry Fielding - I am going to try another air on Thursday.' On Thursday, June 3, the Oxford post-coach took us up in the morning at Bolt-court.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell