Gentle Reader

Where I first and most often heard the term Gentle Reader:

“GENTLE READER:
You, sir, are an anarchist, and Miss Manners is frightened to have anything to do with you. It is true that questioning the table manners of others is rude. But to overthrow the accepted conventions of society, on the flimsy grounds that you have found them silly, inefficient and discomforting, is a dangerous step toward destroying civilization.”

― Judith Martin ( as Miss Manners)

“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

ETA: Touchstones

“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.”

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

ETA: Touchstones

"I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of style. (2.1.16)" Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

"Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?"

E. T. A. Hoffmann

"To you, gentle reader, I use the old fashioned term to address you, because I like it, and because I know only the more gentle kind of person is likely to care much for my stories."

--Ruskin Bond

"This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line"

W E B Du Bois

Ha! I somehow missed this thread. I too love gentle reader asides. I'll try to keep myself aware and post some here.

There is a 1903 book titled The Gentle Reader, and the author starts off:

What has become of the Gentle Reader? One does not like to think that he
has passed away with the stagecoach and the weekly news-letter; and that
henceforth we are to be confronted only by the stony glare of the
Intelligent Reading Public. Once upon a time, that is to say a
generation or two ago, he was very highly esteemed. To him books were
dedicated, with long rambling prefaces and with episodes which were
their own excuse for being. In the very middle of the story the writer
would stop with a word of apology or explanation addressed to the Gentle
Reader, or at the very least with a nod or a wink. No matter if the fate
of the hero be in suspense or the plot be inextricably involved.

"Hang the plot!" says the author. "I must have a chat with the Gentle
Reader, and find out what he thinks about it."

And so confidences were interchanged, and there was gossip about the
Universe and suggestions in regard to the queerness of human nature,
until, at last, the author would jump up with, "Enough of this, Gentle
Reader; perhaps it's time to go back to the story."

-Samuel McChord Crothers