“No one ever left my company with the odd impression they’d enjoyed themselves.”
— Miranda Prattle (1728–1811)
Miranda Prattle was widely regarded as the most reliably uninteresting conversationalist in 18th-century Devonshire. Her diaries, stretching across 84 volumes, contained detailed weather updates and extensive footnotes on turnip varieties.
It’s said that she once spoke uninterrupted for four hours at a dinner party, during which three guests fainted from conversational fatigue and one fled into the rhubarb.
Her quote is a masterclass in self-awareness. While many seek to dazzle, Miranda preferred to gently numb. A pioneer of deliberate dullness, her works are still referenced by those hoping to cure insomnia without medication.
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