'"Forget Thee?" By the Rev John Moultrie [transcript of poem].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
[Spoto states that Hitchcock read Flaubert when he was around 15 or 16 and] 'He afterwards admitted that his favourite character in fiction was Emma Bovary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
Bought... sugar at Cossen's, 2 vols of Dr Clark's exposition of the 4 Evengellists (cost 10s), sermons by Dr Stanhope. Cost 5s. Mother paid half of that... Read Philip of Macedon after supper. Does not read as well as I expected.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'"My Sister would be very glad of your assistance in her Italian studies," W[ordsworth] wrote to [William] Mathews on 21 March 1796, " ... yesterday we began Ariosto."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
"[William and Dorothy Wordsworth] probably read [the Decameron] together as he tutored her in Italian [1796] ... " This "consistent" with W[ordsworth]'s remark in Nov. 1805 to Walter Scott (followed by reference to Fourth "Day" of the Decameron): "'It is many years since I saw Boccae ...' Later in the letter W[ordsworth] quotes Boccacio from memory, showing that he knew the Decameron well."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'While he read little but the Bible and religious periodicals, his son was working his way through the Rhymney Workmen's Institute Library and Cassell's National Library of 3d paperbacks. MacAulay's essays, Goldsmith's History of England, Far from the Madding Crowd, Self-Help, Josephus, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Pepys, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and The Sorrows of Young Werther were among the books Jones read, often on his employer's time. (He hid them under the ledger at the Rhymney Iron Works, where he worked a thirteen-hour day as a timekeeper for 9s. a week.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
'Milton established a habit of serious reading, which brought Bamford to Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, the great poets, classic histories and voyages, and ultimately William Cobbett's Political Register'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth and beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says,
Thus let me live unseen, unknown
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world and not a stone
Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
"My Brother has read Mr Price's Book on the picturesque ... "
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Henry Mayhew interviews a street author or street poet:
"I was very fond of reading poems in my youth, as soon as I could read and understand almost. Yes, very likely sir; perhaps it was that put it into my head to write them afterwards... I was very fond of Goldsmith's poetry always. I can repeat 'Edwin and Emma' now. No sir; I never read the 'Vicar of Wakefield'. I found 'Edwin and Emma' in a book called the 'Speaker'. I often thought of it in travelling through some parts of the country."
+ recites some of his own poetry to Mayhew
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
'Mary Moorman, "Wordsworth's Commonplace Book," Notes & Queries NS 4 (1957) 400-5, reports that the commonplace book used by Wordsworth after 1800 contains "four verses from a ballad ['The Cruel Mother'] in Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Poems (1776) ... "'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Viscount Lowther, 8 December 1818: 'I have seen Mr Fleming, and told him everything you wished ... I read him a considerable part of your last Letter ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter
'In a letter to W[ordsworth] dated 16 April 1815 Lamb remarks: "Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading way which does not come every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne which were quite new to me."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb
'[Mark L.] Reed judges that W[ordsworth] and D[orothy] W[ordsworth] copied extracts from the Life [of Lady Guion] into the Wordsworth Commonplace Book ... by 29 Sept 1800.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
Wordsworth to Walter Savage Landor, 20 April 1822: 'In your Simoneida, which I saw some years ago at Mr Southey's, I was pleased to find rather an out-of-the-way image, in which the present hour is compared to the shade on the dial.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'A joiner's son in an early-nineteenth century Scottish village recalled [reading] his first novel, David Moir's The Life of Mansie Wauch (1828): "I literally devoured it... A new world seemed to dawn upon me, and Mansie and the other characters in the book have always been historical characters with me, just as real as Caius Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte... So innocent, so unsophisticated - I may as well say, so green - was I, that I believed every word it contained".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: a Scottish joiner's son Print: Book
...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
The whole or nearly the whole of the eight months when I was not employed was not lost. I read many volumes in history, voyages, and travels, politics, law and Philosophy. Adam Smith and Locke and especially Humes Essays and Treatises, these latter I read two or three times over, this reading was of great service to me, it caused me to turn in upon myself and examine myself in a way which I should not otherwise have done. It was this which laid the solid foundation of my future prosperity, and completed the desire I had always had to acquire knowledge.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
When we were at the Grammar School, the English master's daughter, who was in the same class as Sheila, told us that her father had read 'The Blue Lagoon' and thought it very beautiful. We were greatly impressed. It seemed the height of sophistication to get beyond the excitement of reading a description of sexual intercourse -this we knew was the point of the ban, though Betty Martin informed us that it only said 'locked in each other's arms' -and to be able to use the calm Olympian word 'beautiful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Print: Book
When we were at the Grammar School, the English master's daughter, who was in the same class as Sheila, told us that her father had read 'The Blue Lagoon' and thought it very beautiful. We were greatly impressed. It seemed the height of sophistication to get beyond the excitement of reading a description of sexual intercourse -this we knew was the point of the ban, though Betty Martin informed us that it only said 'locked in each other's arms' -and to be able to use the calm Olympian word 'beautiful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Betty Martin Print: Book
Byron to Richard Belgrave Hoppner, 15 December 1817: 'I think your Elegy a remarkably good one ... I do not know whether you wished me to retain the copy, but I shall retain it till you tell me otherwise; and am very much obliged by the perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to John Murray, 20 February 1818, thanking him for parcel of books: 'The books I have read, or rather am reading -- pray who may be the Sexagenarian -- whose gossip is very amusing ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 3 June 1819, from Ferrara: 'In looking over the M.S. of Ariosto today -- I found at the bottom of the page after the last stanza of Canto 44, Orlando Furioso ending with the line
"Mi serbo a farsi udie ne l'altro Canto"
the follow[ing] autograph in pencil of Alfieri's
"Vittorio Alfieri vide e venero" / 8 Giugno 1783. --'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 3 June 1819, from Ferrara: 'In looking over the M.S. of Ariosto today -- I found at the bottom of the page after the last stanza of Canto 44, Orlando Furioso ending with the line
"Mi serbo a farsi udie ne l'altro Canto"
the follow[ing] autograph in pencil of Alfieri's
"Vittorio Alfieri vide e venero" / 8 Giugno 1783. --'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown, marginal note in MS of Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 3 June 1819, from Ferrara: "In looking over the M.S. of Ariosto today -- I found at the bottom of the page after the last stanza of Canto 44, Orlando Furioso ending with the line
"'Mi serbo a farsi udie ne l'altro Canto'
"the follow[ing] autograph in pencil of Alfieri's
'Vittorio Alfieri vide e venero' / 8 Giugno 1783. --'
'The Librarian told me that Alfieri wrote this marginal note by permission of the Superiors -- and that he himself had seen Alfieri crying for hours over the M.S.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Count Vittorio Alfieri Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Lady Byron, 20 July 1819: 'I tried to discover for Leigh Hunt some traces of Francesca [character in Dante's Inferno] -- but except her father Guido's tomb -- and the mere notice of the fact in the Latin commentary of Benvenuto da Imola in M.S. in the Library -- I could discover nothing for him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 19 January 1821: 'I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 2 February 1821, on tendency to attacks of thirst: 'I read in Edgeworth's Memoirs of something similar ... in the case of Sir F. B. Delaval ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Octavius Gilchrist, 5 September 1821, acknowledges receipt and reading of three pamphlets (by Gilchrist) relating to Bowles-Pope controversy.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
'[Rose Macaulay] relished such island shipwreck stories as Swiss Family Robinson'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 8 November 1802: 'I have read one canto of Ariosto today.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
The Grecian History has pleased me much you know Mr Trant made a present of the Roman History, what a brave people the Greeks in general were.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
I was rather unwell for about an hour, but not very bad when I could go on reading The Vicar of Wakefield
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
from 1 to 3, read the first 100pp. vol 3 Leontine de Blondheim...It is altogether a very interesting thing +have read it with a sort of melancholy feeling, the very germ of which I thought had died for ever. I cried a good deal over the second + more over the third this morning, + as soon as I was alone during supper.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
I shall turn for a while to Urquhart's comentaries on classical learning. O books! books! I owe you much. Ye are my spirits oil without which, its own friction against itself would wear out.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Came upstairs at 10 1/2 [...] musing melancholily over the fire till 11. From then till 3.10, read the whole of (M-sen t it to me Saturday 15 November) some passages in the life of Mr Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle-Wm Blackwood, Edinburgh + London, 1822.[...]It is a singularly interesting pathetic story, doubly so because told as truth + not improbable [...] I read and roared over this thing till my head ached [...]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Thomas Hardy to Violet Hunt, [?Mar 1908]: "'Why should you have wasted a nice copy of your new book upon me -- a recluse who does not read a novel a twelvemonth nowadays. I am reading yours, however ...'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
My father's large bookcase was stuffed with odd volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine and other miscellaneous matters. Anacharsis' 'travels in Greece', Robertson's 'America', Goldsmith's 'History of England', Adams' 'Rome', Wesley's sermons and Fletcher's controversial volumes. All these had been read by me, either for my own amusement, or aloud to my father, whose sight had been lost for years.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
On 8 September 1854 Christiana Thompson noted in her diary that her children Elizabeth and Alice (later Alice Meynell) were 'reading every day with their Pa Swiss Family Robinson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thompson Family Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'Dear Sir, Before saying any thing on the subject of my own prospects I wish to notice two trifling inaccuracies in the 'Handbook' in compliance with the invitation there given, for it is a sort of public duty to assist in rendering so useful and creditable a work as free as possible from even the slightest errors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gladstone Print: Book
Letter 8/2/1863 - "For, as far as I remember - my sayings to you have been very nearly limited to Goldsmith's model of a critical sentence on painter's work: "that it was very well - and would have been better if the painter had taken more pains."
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Letter 8/2/1863 - "I'm afraid to speak like the wicked girl in the fairy tale - who let - not pearls fall from her lips."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Constance Smedley on readings in American literature: 'Thoreau ... opened the door to a philosophy of life when I was about fifteen ... in his train came Emerson and Lowell ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Smedley Print: Unknown
"I took in Mr Holmes' humorous poems & Davidson (a very jolly little friend of mine) another light work & we sat together with Romer in the furthest corner enjoying literature mixed with 'light conversation' after your style."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
'Now about your literary questions, scoffer! Know that I read everything (except the politics, - I am a Radical, you know) which has the honour of appearing in "Maga" [Blackwood's Magazine]. And I like some of David Wingate's poems very much, other some I don't particularly care for; "My Little Wife" is delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
'There is a trifling scene in Virginia's book where a charming young creature in a bright fantastic attitude plays the flute: it positively frightens me - to realise this utter coldness and indifference'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'I have read - given way to reading - two books by Octave Mirbeau - and after them I see dreadfully and finally, (1) that the French are a filthy people, (2) that their corruption is so puante [stinking] - I'll never go near 'em again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'I have read - given way to reading - two books by Octave Mirbeau - and after them I see dreadfully and finally, (1) that the French are a filthy people, (2) that their corruption is so puante [stinking] - I'll never go near 'em again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'Even those who read widely about sex often learned very little. In the 1920s Jennie Lee won a psychology degree from the University of Edinburgh... She went beyond the syllabus to read Ellis and Freud. While her collier father could not bring himself to discuss the subject, he was progressive enough to leave a book by Marie Stopes where she was likely to find it. All the same, Jennie was still capable of chatting with a prostitute on Princes Street without realizing what was going on. Stopes on sex "was all a bit remote and unattractive", she found'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jennie Lee Print: Book
'Houseservant Margaret Powell was unusually daring: she left Marie Stopes, along with the Kama Sutra and Havelock Ellis, on the bedside table for her husband. (Eventually, she was forced to conclude that the books went unread, or at least unheeded).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Powell Print: Book
'An emancipated working woman like Elizabeth Ring was free to read the works of Freud, Havelock Ellis and Bertrand Russell in the late 1920s, but she was familiar with these books only because her schoolteachers had her exchange them at the Finsbury Public Library'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ring Print: Book
We have all read, by the way, The Poet at the breakfast table & sent him our sincere compliments on his performance."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery & background wh. would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able, I fairly confess, to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why it is absent from Fielding & Richardson. Yet surely Hugo's own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
"... but I do send by a carman two volumes of Alfieri's Life and Kirwan's Essay on Happiness, and the ... edition of Parent's Assistant, which with your leave, I present to your servant Richard."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 4 August 1839, about event following visit of David Pryce, a young Irish curate, to Haworth Parsonage: 'A few days after I got a letter the direction of which puzzled me it being in a hand I was not accustomed to see ... having opened & read it it proved to be a declaration of attachment -- & proposal of Matrimony -- expressed in the ardent language of the sapient young Irishman!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
But too much of one thing - as it is in the adage. Therefore I reserve the account of Hume's essays till another opportunity. At any rate the Second volume is not finished yet - and I do not like what I have read of any thing so well as I did the first.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Walter Citrine won, as a Sunday School prize, a volume of school stories from the Captain, including one by P.G. Wodehouse. "The lady who gave this prize awakened in me a thirst for good literature", eventually leading to the works of Karl Marx and his followers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Citrine Print: Book
'In 1768, Burney read in rapid succession Elizabeth and Richard Griffith's "A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances" (1757) ... Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766); and Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" (1759).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... :
"Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"Mary Brown ... wrote in her Memories that
"'I asked a Lancashire working woman what she thought of Story of an African Farm and a strange expression came over her face as she said 'I read parts of it over and over.' 'What parts?' I asked, and her reply was 'About yon poor lass (Lyndall) ... I think there is a hundred of women what feels like that but can't speak it, but she could speak what we feel'."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
' ... [The Viscountess Rhondda] recounts the difficulty she had in acquiring ... Havelock Ellis's Psychology of Sex: even her father was not able to go straight to a shop and buy the set of volumes for himself.'
"'One had to produce some kind of signed certificate from the doctor or lawer to the effect that one was a suitable person to read it. To his surprise he could not at first obtain it. I still remember his amused indignation that he was refused a book which his own daughter had already read.'
" ... the Viscountess had been able to obtain it from the Cavendish Bentinck Library, the membership of which was limited to women."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Viscountess Rhondda Print: Book
have been in the shop steadily this day (which has been cold and blowing), reading in Hume's History of England- the Norman Conquest.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Am in shop about steady this day doing little else but reading Humes' England
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
I read very seldom indeed having in the first place but very little time for it... and in the second place, Mr & Mrs A. having never offered to lend me any books except an Encyclopaedia, which is not an every day kind of reading. [Editor notes that she records reading 'the whole' of No I of vol II 'at various intervals'].
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
'It must be labour that makes things valuable Princes & Lords may flourish and may fade But a bold Peasantry, the Country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.' [this is the first of a number of references to Goldsmith's poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'I know that Historians are very subject to give us their own views, instead of Facts. Hume is very partial to Royalty, and at every opportunity is ready to sneer at Religion, for which I do not admire him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
3 pp of ms at the end of v.1 appear to be brief notes abstracted from details in the text. Each page is ruled and divided into 3 columns headed, 'Substance', 'Symptoms', 'Corrections' [ie remedy]. Example: 'Alkalies - Soda Ammonia Lime &-', 'Nearly the same [ie as the entry above for concentrated acids] -the ejected matter does not effervesse [?] with alkalies but with acids'. 'Vinegar or limejuice - a spoonful or two in a glass of water frequently - or simply warm [?] water'. There are 9 such entries.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Sibbald Print: Book
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
'Read Golownins captivity in Japan, well told but he was a silly man, suspicious yet not cautious. Read Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'One has no inclination at all to work or to read seriously ? so I?ve been dipping into an enormous range of stuff ? from Hans Anderson to Boris Godonof.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
'I am reading lots (Benvenuto Cellini?s autobiography) ? playing lots of music - & it makes life much easier.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'I also read again Silvio Pellico's "Prisons". I read it once at Granton- a lovely book (same edition) and "Adam Bede" and a French Novel and other new works. I like all Adam Bede immensely except the extremely inartistic plot. Geo. Eliot loves to draw self-righteious people with good instincts being led into crime or misery by circumstances.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman:. "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman: "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes 1818 letter from S. T. Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green in which, "having mentioned Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen, [Coleridge] says, '(Your short critique of which pencilled at the end of the IInd. Vol contains my full judgement & convictions thereon).'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Henry Green Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": "[Gabriel] Harvey and Thomas Smith, Jr., read through the third decade [of Livy's Romanae historiae principis, in Harvey's copy], the story of Hannibal, in one week in 1570-71 ... Harvey records that they read along with Livy the military authors Vegetius and Frontinus, and that they did so critically ..."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Smith, Jr. Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": "In 1576-77, just before Philip Sidney went on his mission to the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, he and [Gabriel] Harvey read books 1-3 of the first decade [of Livy's Romanae historiae], which embrace the early history of Rome and its passage from monarchy to republic."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Philip Sidney Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": "In 1584 ... in Cambridge, Harvey read Livy ... with Thomas Preston, master of Trinity Hall. They read Machiavelli's Discorsi at the same time ... They read several other up-to-date works on pragmatic politics as well, notably Jean Bodin's Methodus and Republic."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Preston Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, in "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," notes that in 1590 Gabriel Harvey read Livy's Romanae historiae with reference to passages on it in St Augustine's De Civitate Dei; "Harvey read the City of God not on its own but together with its almost equally vast Renaissance companion, the commentary by Juan Luis Vives ..."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": " ... when ... [Harvey] and [Philip] Sidney went through books 1-3 [of Livy's Romanae historiae], they compared them to Frontinus's Stratagems (first century A.D.) [notes copiousness of annotations in Harvey's copy of Frontinus at the Houghton Librrary, Havard]."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Philip Sidney Print: Book
'She was "surprised into tears" by "The Vicar of Wakefield", although she did not much like it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'During these twelve months [in prison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a freethinker if I had not been one before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
'During these twelve months [in prison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a free thinker if I had not been one before.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
'I have been reading Thompson's "History of the Late War in Britain"; Decrees Blockades.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
'With autodidact diligence [Leslie Paul] closed in on the avant-garde. He read "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", though not until the 1930s. He smuggled "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" past customs. In "John O'London's" and "The Nation", in William MacDougall's Home University Library volume on "Psychology" and F.A. Servante's "Psychology of the Boy", he read up on Freud. In a few years he knew enough to ghost-write BBC lectures on modern psychology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Paul Print: Book
"The journal [of Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] ends in 1619 when she wrote:
"'My Coz. Maria read Ovid's Metamorphosis to me.
"'The 14th December Wat. Conniston began to read the book of Josephus.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Print: Book
'In reading Josephus's "Jewish Antiques" I find his opinion was (or at least it was a prevailing notion in his time) that the earth was the centre of the planetary system.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Leon Edel, introducing vol 1 of Henry James's Letters: " ... [By the end of his life Henry James] had read Flaubert's general correspondence with the close attention of a craftsman seeking to discover how a fellow-artist lived and worked. He had read critically all of Stevenson's letters ..."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'I admire you for what you say of the fierce fighting "Iliad"... I am afraid this poem, noble as it truly is, has done infinite mischief for a series of ages; since to it, and its copy the "Eneid", is owing, in a great measure, the savage spirit that has actuated, from the earliest ages to this time, the fighting fellows that, worse than lions or tigers, have ravaged the earth, and made it a field of blood'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'In the even read part of Josephus's "Jewish Antiques".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the evening read part of the "Jewish Antiques".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'His plan was to make use of me as a talking dictionary and grammar, confining my teachings exclusively to the answering of such questions as he thought fit to put. Having made this arrangement he produced a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield", and, commencing at the title-page, read it after me, looking to me for translation as he went along. In this way we got through four or five pages in the course of the first hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
"'ne morning as we were sitting at breakfast, about 9 o'clock, ... in the garden, the postman, who had been knocking at the door, ... flung a paid letter on the path. Patty picked it up - it was directed to my father, and my mother opened it... My mother put a half-sheet into my hand from Dr D of Prospect Villa, ... "There", said she, "is something which I hope will prevent your going to Caudon - read it". The note was an acknowledgement...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Manby Smith Manuscript: Letter
'One morning as we were sitting at breakfast, about 9 o'clock, ... in the garden, the postman, who had been knocking at the door, ... flung a paid letter on the path. Patty picked it up - it was directed to my father, and my mother opened it... My mother put a half-sheet into my hand from Dr D of Prospect Villa, ... "There", said she, "is something which I hope will prevent your going to Caudon - read it". The note was an acknowledgement...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Smith Manuscript: Letter
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'I read Bailly's memoires d'un temoin de la revolution, with little comfort. The book is not ill-written: but it grieved me to see the august historian of astronomy, the intimate of Kepler, Gallileo & Newton- "thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd," at the approbation or the blame of Parisian tradesmen - not to speak of the "pouvres ouvriers" [poor workers], as he fondly names the dogs, du faubourg St Antoine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Did you never, madam, wish for Angelica's Invisible Ring, in Ariosto's "Orlando"? - I remember when I first read of it, I laboured under a real uneasiness for a whole week, from the strong desire I had to be master of such a one. I was a very sheepish boy, and thought I should make very happy use of it on a multitude of occasions.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'You did not tell me before, that you had read "the Hermit" and "Alfrida". There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words. of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'You did not tell me before, that you had read the Hermit and Alfrida. There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book
'Dr Young once told me, that Dr Hartley's Two Volumes on Man were the Most Original of any thing he had seen published of many years. He praised them; but owned, that one of them was abstruse'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr (Edward?) Young Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'1944 My Favourite:
Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele"
Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols
Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia
Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
?Two or three years my senior, Sam, like myself, was acquiring a taste for books. Our tastes were not wholly dissimilar. Both of us read and enjoyed poetry; but while Sam?s more solid reading was in science, especially in astronomy and geology, mine was in history, biography, logic, languages, oratory, and general literature. Sam?s favourite books at this time were Alison?s "History of Europe" and Humboldt?s "Cosmos".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bailey Print: Book
Henry James to Thomas Seregant Perry, 25 November 1883: "I shall thank you for the Senilia -- though I have been reading them all in German ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 21 October 1884: "I have just been reading your Euphorion, and I find it such a prodigious young performance ... that dedications should come to you not from you [Lee had dedicated her novel Miss Brown to James]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 10 May 1885: "I read Miss B[rown]. with eagerness ... as soon as I received the volumes, and have lately read a large part of them over again."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 10 May 1885: "I read Miss B[rown]. with eagerness ... as soon as I received the volumes, and have lately read a large part of them over again."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'In Dodsley's "Miscellanies" there are two or three pretty pieces of Mr Mason. Bacon's "Life" by Mr Mallet perhaps you have seen. He is not near so good a Man, I fear, as Mr Mason.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'I have read the Passage in Dr Hartley which you pointed out to me. He is a good Man. One Day I hope to read him thro', tho' without Hopes of understanding the abstruser Parts'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'I have read the Passage in Dr Hartley which you pointed out to me. He is a good Man. One Day I hope to read him thro', tho' without Hopes of understanding the abstruser Parts.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book
'I am employing myself at present, in looking over & sorting, & classing my Correspondencies and other Papers. This, when done, will amuse me by reading over again, a very ample Correspondence: & in comparing the Sentiments of my Correspondents, at the time, with their present; and improving from both'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Letter, letters and papers
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Runcimann Print: Book
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
'her main intellectual interests were always literary, and as a novelist she was predominantly engaged in the business of reading and writing, with a keen critical interest in the works of other writers. She read avidly, modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, Roy Fuller, Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and contemporary novelists, admiring in particular the work of Faulkner and Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton Burnett, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen. Jean Rhys's bleak, beautiful novel "Voyage in the Dark", published in the same month as [Lehmann's] "Invitation to the Waltz", had much impressed Rosamond, who invited its author to tea'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
'her main intellectual interests were always literary, and as a novelist she was predominantly engaged in the business of reading and writing, with a keen critical interest in the works of other writers. She read avidly, modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, Roy Fuller, Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and contemporary novelists, admiring in particular the work of Faulkner and Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton Burnett, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen. Jean Rhys's bleak, beautiful novel "Voyage in the Dark", published in the same month as [Lehmann's] "Invitation to the Waltz", had much impressed Rosamond, who invited its author to tea'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
In letter to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee) of 27 April 1890, Henry James thanks her for Hauntings, her book of ghost stories, which he has read and enjoyed: "I possess the eminently psychical stories as well as the material volume."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
[compiling the anthology "The Female Reader", Mary Wollstonecraft spent] 'long hours reading, for the extracts included came from widely scattered sources and might consist of only a few lines from a long work.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Unknown
'I also read again Silvio Pellico's "Prisons". I read it once at Granton- a lovely book (same edition) and "Adam Bede" and a French Novel and other new works. I like all Adam Bede immensely except the extremely inartistic plot. Geo. Eliot loves to draw self-righteious people with good instincts being led into crime or misery by circumstances.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Somewhere about this time I met with a volume to which I am much indebted. This was a copy of Simpson's "Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings" - concerning which I have heard it said that it ought rather to have been called "A Plea for Infidelity" because of its dwelling so much upon the corruptions of Christianity and the inconsistent deportment of some among its ministers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Nor must I omit to mention the obligations I owe to some essays written by the late Rev. Thomas Scott and which were given me by my master. I do not remember their exact titles, nor can I recollect much of more than one of them. This was, if I err not, a kind of exposition on the tenth commandment...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Unknown
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown, probably inbook publ. 1856
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Henry James to Mrs Everard Cotes, 26 January 1900, on (published) novel she has written and sent to him: 'Your book is extraordinarily keen and delicate and able [...] One or two things my acute critical intelligence murmured to me as I read. I think your drama lacks a little, [italics] line [end italics] [...] on which to string the pearls of detail.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'When at home I usually retired to my garret, where I employed myself in either reading or working... In reading I usually sat in the Oriental, or, to use a less pompous word, in the tailor's posture, and thus had no need of either chair or table... The books I read at this time related chiefly to North America. Among the chief of them were Ramsay's "History of the American Revolution", Smith's "Travels in Canada and the United States", and Parkinson's "Travels in North America".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Henry James to Viscount Garnet Wolseley, 7 December 1903: 'I feel I must absolutely not have passed these several last evenings in your so interesting and vivid society without thanking you almost as much as if you had personally given me the delightful hours or held me there with your voice. I have read your two volumes [The Story of a Soldier's Life] from covers to covers and parted from you with a positive pang.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'Long before I heard of Freud I was interested in reading accounts of first memories and impressions. My own experience had taught me that the roots of life were there but it was never certain, and that was the adventure, how they would emerge. It was partly because of this belief and partly because of a poem with that title by Robert Browning that I called my first book Development. The two volumes I now discovered were linked to this interest and not only gave me great pleasure but won me lasting friendships. They were A London Child of the Seventies (and its sequels) by Molly V. Hughes and Within the City Wall by Margaret Phillips.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryher
'If I enjoy a book I often write to its author. It seems to me a matter of politeness between one artist and another. Having read A London Child I wrote to Molly [Hughes] at once. I had been born thirty years later but the Victorians disliked change and our memories touched at many points.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryher Print: Book
'We belong to our time and the most we can achieve as a rule is to be a generation ahead of it; if we tear up our roots how many can exist merely on air? Yet if people want to know what life was like for a poor scholar in one of the most opulent centuries England has known, they cannot do better than to study Molly?s [Hughes, A London Child of the Seventies] books. They are a record of an almost hopeless fight against prejudice when there was little chance for a woman, however brilliant her intellect, to get even a reasonably paid job. Today people find the Victorian age picturesque and amusing without understanding its cruelty. If they want a true photograph of part of it, they should consider what Molly had recorded.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryher
[Marginalia]: an additional printed page, printed by the Buchan Portable Press, titled "Letter from Princess Mary to Lord Buchan" has been inserted after p.196 and has the ms annotation 'This message is the last (as is believed) that his Majesty was capable of dictating in his right mind' . This appears to be in the same hand as the ms note at the end of the preface 'To Edwards [? deleted] Constable Esq. as a mark of my regard, Buchan: Edr. October 25th 1816' as does the ms poem pasted in facing the Contents page. Part Latin, part English, it begins 'Quanti est ostimanda [?] Virtus ...'. Page 195 has the line 'On literary envy ..' marked * and the ms note '*In honour of the unfortunate ... George III'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: David Steuart Erskine, Lord Buchan Print: Book
'Before I forget again?have you looked into the "History of a Flirt"? [The History of a Flirt, related by Herself ? by the author of "The Manoeuvring Mother"] The name may alarm you ? but the writer "leans to Miss Austen?s side," ? as I remember dear Dr. Mitford and yourself do - & there is some power and much truth to nature.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
?The day after this being the last of the year, I managed to finish reading Blackstone?s Commentaries and Goldsmith?s History of England, both for the 2d time over & in the evening danced out the year at the Assembly.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'To amuse myself during this journey I brought the life of the eccentric Benvenuto Cellini to read in the chaise etc. as we travelled.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
James Burn, on his first contact with literature after years of having seen none: '"In the latter end of the year of 1826, a friend made me a present of an old edition of Chevalier Ramsay's "Life of Cyrus". This little volume opened up to my enquiring mind a rich field of useful knowledge. The apendix to the work contained the [italics]heathen mythology[end italics]: this part of the work completely fascinated me, and for a considerable time became my constant companion."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Dawson Burn Print: Book
'The Coventry ribbon weaver Joseph Gutteridge [...] had read and pondered Voltaire's "Dictionary of Philosophy" and Paine's "Age of Reason", but remained unconvinced [by radicalism and religious scepticism] until a prolonged period of family poverty and ill-health finally destroyed what was left of his faith'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Gutteridge Print: Book
'Looked into the "Marmi" of Doni... read Saccheti and Boccaccio's capital story of Fra Cipolla - one of his few good stories - and the Little Hunchback in the Arabian Nights, which is still better. Read Nardi in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Began again the Life of Savonarola by Villani. Read of "Ecstasy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Looked into the Archivo Storico and Read some "Ricordi", and "Lives" by Vespasiano'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Read Villari, making chronological notes. Then Muratori on Proper Names'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Went to the British Museum. Found some details in Ammirato's "Famiglie Nobili Fiorentini"... In the evening I read Muratori on the Confraternita'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
'[Around 1912-13, when she began her association with Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] Charlotte [Mew] [...] was reading Flaubert as always, Chekhov, Conrad and Verlaine'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Book
'Finished "La Mandragola", second time reading for the sake of Florentine expressions, and began "La Calandra"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Reading once again the "Processi" of Savonarola and Vol. III of Boccaccio'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
While her terminally ill sister Anne was staying at a nursing home in Priory Road, West Hampstead, Charlotte Mew 'came every day with novels to read aloud and amuse them both, starting with David Garnett's [italics]Go She Must[end italics].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Book
'I now thank you very much for your able inauguration essay on Architecture and live in expectation of its successors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'I have been keeping rather different hours--though the Priory is far from a late place [...] Wm. [Lady Caroline's husband William Lamb] & I get up about ten or 1/2 after or later [...] have our breakfasts, talk a little, read Newton on the Prophecies with the Bible--having finished Sherlock [...] he goes to eat & walk--I finish dressing & take a drive or little walk [...] then come up stairs where William meets me, & we read Hume with Shakespear till ye dressing bell, then hurry & hardly get dressed by dinner time'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'M reads the Sorcerer & Shelley writes his Romance.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
'I have been reading Fawcett's Economic condition of the Working Classes, Mill's Liberty, looking into Strauss's Second Life of Jesus, and reading Neale's History of the Puritans of which I have reached the fourth volume'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Finished my readings in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's "L'Homme qui rit". Also the Frau von Hillern's novel "Ein Arzt der Seele".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
'I am reading Renouard's "History of Medicine"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
'The fresh-sounding work of the War generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'like any bright young intellectual of his day, he was greatly influenced by Freud and writers on sex, such as Havelock Ellis and Norman Haire, who had taken their cue from Freud's liberating initiative'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'He [?my father?] also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar?s Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, McCrie?s Life of John Knox, and even Sewell?s and Rutty?s Histories of the Quakers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Read Ruy Blas aloud. Afterwards saw three acts'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I am going to begin Strauss, and see what I can make of him. - Have you seen the Opium-Eater's papers on the Lakers in Tait? They are very interesting , but, it seems to me, the most tremendous breach of confidence ever committed; - particularly the giving an account of the "most sublime passage" of Wordsworth's great posthumous work. I wonder what you think of Chorley's "Lion". I don't think it can live, but that there is good enough in it to make one hope he may do something that will'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Read the life of Alfieri.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'Finish the life of Alfieri'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'No doubt it is to you that I owe this pleasure, - of Buckle's 2d vol. Maria has been cutting and skimming, and she opines that I shall find it a very great treat indeed. My best thanks to you for it, dear friend. I am in the thick of a very different sort of book now, - "Elsie Venner", which I did not mean to read; but a look at the first page carried me on: How immensely clever some of these Americans are! and their style of tale so new! I dislike all the part connected with Elsie: but I enjoy the New England atmosphere of the thing, and the wonderful power of deep and incessant observation'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
?While in this state I read the "Letters" of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and some of Dr Beattie?s and Mr Hume?s ?Essays?, together with part of Dr Beattie?s ?Essay on Truth?.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1791: 'Florence. -- Went to see the Laurentian Medicean Library [...] The librarian, a very civil Canonico Bandini, showed us the Virgil of the fourth century, which they call the oldest existing; it is very fairly written, but less easy to read than the one in the Vatican. We saw, too, the Horace that belonged to Petrarch, with some notes in it by his own hand. It is in large quarto, and not a beautiful manuscript from the number of notes and scoliastes interrupting and confusing the text.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Uvedale Price to Mary Berry, 19 January 1813, accompanying his ode on the burning of Moscow by French forces: 'I sent an early copy to Fitzpatrick, and Rogers happening to come in [...] he could not resist showing it to him: I have since altered it a good deal, and as Rogers had seen the first sketch, I have sent him this new, and I hope improved, edition.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Rogers Manuscript: Unknown
'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Mary Berry to Anne Damer, from Rome, 3 April 1821: 'I have got a charming little [italics]savant[end italics], who reads with me two or three times a week [...] I have been excessively amused in reading Martial, Livy, Suetonius, &c. &c. with him on the spot where they were written, and comparing the descriptions with the actual state of the scenes described.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to Thomas Babington Macaulay, 15 October 1834: 'Have they sent you among your books "Victor Jaquemont's Letters?" they are perfectly original [...] I never knew before half so much of the life of our countrymen in India; and the author himself is so natural and unaffected a character, that I had well-night cried at his death, as if it had not been true.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
'There had been a time when [...] [Gabriel Harvey] had been a pure Ciceronian [...] He had then come across the "Ciceronianus" of Sambucus -- that had led him to the "Ciceronianus"of Ramus [...] He now read Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Pliny and Columella, and found merits in all.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'There had been a time when [...] [Gabriel Harvey] had been a pure Ciceronian [...] He had then come across the "Ciceronianus" of Sambucus -- that had led him to the "Ciceronianus"of Ramus [...] He now read Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Pliny and Columella, and found merits in all.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Gabriel] Harvey's Livy folio has marginalia from persusals in 1568, 1580, and 1590.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Gabriel] Harvey's Livy folio has marginalia from persusals in 1568, 1580, and 1590.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Gabriel] Harvey's Livy folio has marginalia from persusals in 1568, 1580, and 1590.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'Lodovico Domenichi's "Facetie, motti, et burle" (1571) [an Italian collection of short miscellaneous observations and anecdotes] [...] stimulated Harvey to jot down [in its wide margins] a variety of musings and random philosophical reflections.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595:
'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading:
'"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Harriet Martineau on school life: 'We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar [...] Cicero, Virgil, and a little Horace were our main reading then'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Mr Perry's school Print: Book
Harriet Martineau on philosophical studies in early adulthood: 'The edition of Hartley that I used was Dr. Priestley's [...] That book I studied with a fervour and perseverance which made it perhaps the most important book in the world to me, except the bible'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Still unwell ... had in the course of the day read a good deal of "Colton's Work" with which I was very well satisfied. Concluded it after I went to bed- very well satisfied.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Jenkinson Print: Book
'One thing, however, yet remains to us & dares to baffle all the wickedness of the Ministry, the tyranny of the Crown, & the various horrours of these ruinous times, ?Manuscript tragedies are yet Handed about to be read & Country Parsons are yet left to Write them. One of these we had last Night the happiness of hearing,? the Author is Tutor to a Nephew of Sir Philip Clerke, ?I shall not pretend either to praise or to censure his Piece, but content myself with giving You a specimen of his ingenuousness ? "If", says he, "any one asserts that my Play is barren of incident,?it is no more than I know already,?but I can?t help it,?for I could find none in The History from which I took it". It is called, from its Hero, Timoleon.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Manuscript: Sheet
'Laura's greatest find was a battered old copy of Belzoni's "Travels" propping open somebody's pantry window. When she asked for the loan of it, it was generously given to her, and she had the intense pleasure of exploring the burial chambers of the pyramids with her author.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'Laura was lucky enough to be given a bound volume of "Good Words" - or was it "Home Words"? - in which the Queen's own journal, "Leaves From Her Majesty's Life in the Highlands", ran as a serial. She galloped through all these instalements immediately to pick out the places mentioned by her dear Sir Walter Scott. Afterwards the journal was re-read many times, as everything was re-read in that home of few books.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Serial / periodical
'I have read Mr Jefferson's case to Edward [Austen], and he desires to have his name set down for a guinea and his wife's for another; but does not with for more than one copy of the work.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'Brought vol 2nd "Literary Memoirs of Living Authors of Great Britain" from the Surry Street Library [...] The author says Andrew Mackay [...] wrote the articles [...] in the Encyclopedia Britannica.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'"The Memoirs of Living Authors" appears to be quite a catch-penny job. The author gives a list of their works & sometimes his opinion on them. A book of this kind is very easily compiled from the Reviews. The account of Mr Sheridan appears to me the best drawn up.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Finished the "Memoirs of Living Authors".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Brought Vol 2nd "Literary Memoirs of Living Authors of Great Britain" from the Surry Street Library. It is a book on very great call.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Read in the vol of plays lent me by my father, the farce of "Catherine and Petruchio"; abridged from Shakespeare's play of "Taming of the Shrew".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'search Blackstone and Goldsmith's "History"; much struck with style of latter; deserving, I think, to be more talked of'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
'Up by nine. Read a little this morning in Lord Bolingbroke's "Study of History". What extreme foppery! Yet what can one point out as proofs?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
'My journey lay over the field of Thrasymenus, and as soon as the sun rose, I read Livy's description of the scene [...] I was exactly in the situation of the consul, Flaminus - completely hid in the morning fog...So that I can truly say that I have seen precisely what the Roman army saw on that day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'read some pages in Shakspear - turnd over a few leaves of Knoxes Essays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made lifeworth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Letter from Aikin to her brother Edmund, dated March 1818: 'It is curious to observe the native eloquence of Humboldt struggling with the encombrance of all the sciences. Did ever mortal man study so many ologies, or travel with so many ometers!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Letter from Lucy Aikinto Mrs.Taylor, dated October 1805: 'But within the last few days everything has given way to "Practical Education", which my mother and I have been studying with great diligence for the benefit of George's little boy, who was brought to us last Tuesday.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Letter from Lucy Aikin to Mrs.Taylor, dated October 1805: 'But within the last few days everything has given way to "Practical Education", which my mother and I have been studying with great diligence for the benefit of George's little boy, who was brought to us last Tuesday.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Aikin Print: Book
'I think of putting this letter in the post-office to night. My hour's since morning have been spent in reading Ariosto and "Six weeks at Longs." The latter end of this day will thus be better than the beginning.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle
'As a young man in America, he had been deeply impressed by "Salathiel", a pious prose romance of that then popular writer, the Rev. George Croly."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gosse Print: Book
24 Oct 1788:
'Smith's version of Longinus on the Sublime, a translation with notes and observations - is a credit to the author and reflects lustre on Longinus himself.
[Long quotation]: "to the unlearned also it may be of use ... an inclination to literature"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
13 Dec 1788
Another long quotation from Smith's translation:
'The Sublime is a certain force in discourse... from these three particulars joined together.'
Also listed Longinus's five sources of the sublime.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Long description of character of Sir Keneth (?) Digby.
'By his eager pursuit of knowledge seemed to be born only for contemplation, but he was thought to be so well qualified for action, that in 1628 he was appointed commander of a Squadron ... made repris also on the Algerians [?] and set at liberty a great number of English slaves... His book "bodies" and that of "The Nature of Man's Soul" are reckoned among the best of his works.
Abdiah Cole, a Physician of Note, flourished in this reign. There is a portrait of him in a Dr of Physic's Gown by / Crofts.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'but I was reading "Les Miserables", and consoled myself with the thought that I was too capable of loving noble things.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'Mr Wilson introduced us to another author - Victor Hugo... in 1925, "Les Miserables" gripped us even more than "Pickwick". Mr Wilson must have abridged it ruthlessly, but he made everything in nineteenth-century France sound as if it were happening in the England of our own day...The reading of "Les Miserables" bound us together in one common experience.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Wilson Print: Book
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
'Reading the "Les filles des platre" by M. Xavier de Montepin it is like the generality of French Novels, and does not give a very exalted notions of French morals; the more I read French books, the more I am struck at the immense difference there is between the two nations that are only seperated [sic] by a narrow channel, twenty miles across; Customs manners & morals are entirely different; there is no nation in the world so much in love with domestic happiness & domestic comfort as the English, and none less so, than the French; that which affords great pleasure to our neighbours, excites only disgust in an Englishman; this I gather not only from the Books I read, but also from what I saw myself during my stay in France, and the older I get, the more thankful I am that I was not born a Frenchman.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Reading H.V. Morton, "I James Blunt". I read it in half an hour. It is propaganda but first-class propaganda and interesting and very readable and horribly convincing. It should shake up the complacent. If invasion succeeded it would be like that here. The weak point was the suggestion that all the dominions had been overthrown too - at least New Zealand had.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'An author's name carries weight with me, but results are sometimes disappointing - e.g. I enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall", and so I bought "Vile Bodies" only to find it not so good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'An author's name carries weight with me, but results are sometimes disappointing - e.g. I enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall", and so I bought "Vile Bodies" only to find it not so good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'On reading the subjoined chapters on the Turkish Bath, in
Mr Urquhart's "Pillars of Hercules", I was electrified; and
resolved, if possible, to add that institution to my
Establishment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Richard Barter Print: Book
'Mr Jaegle makes us read an English book that is called "The Vicar of Wakefield" which is very pretty, interesting, well wrote and where there are some very good characters'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'Ten thousand thanks to you for Madame de Noyer's Letters; I wish Signor Roselli may be as diverting to you as [italics] she [italics]has been to me. The stories are very extraordinary, but I know not whether she has not added a few [italics] agremens [italics] of invention to them: however, there is some truth. I have been told, in particular, that the history of the fair unfortunate Madame de Barbesierre is so, by people who could not be suspected of romancing. Don't you think that the court of England would furnish stories as entertaining? Say nothing of my malice; but I cannot help wishing that Madame de Noyer would turn her thoughts a little that way. I fancy she would succeed better than the authoress of the "New Atalantis". I am sure I like her method much better, which has, I think, hit that difficult path between the gay and the severe, and is neither too loose, nor affected by pride.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'Friday, 5th March,
I worked late tonight which allowed me to get in a nice little talk with Pat on the value of the classic books of criticism, as apart from their literary value. It was my opinion that in nearly all cases, as the minds of readers has evolved with the changing times so the light in which the classic must be viewed has altered and therefore old criticism must, in nearly every case be superseded. At least, as regards the ?human? as distinct from the literary element in the book. I feel that we cannot ever completely reconstruct the life of a past age or enter into the minds of people who lived in other times. Pat remarked that he was constantly struck by the little progress made in thought and the things of the mind.
Read ? ?The Autocrat of the breakfast table? (O. W. Holmes).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Tuesday 12th July.
I do not like ?Lolly Willowes?. [...] I do not like these fantastic things which suggest that they have something to tell which one is too stupid to discover. I am not stupid, and if a writer deliberately sets out either to obscure or to deliberately draw red-herrings across the track of analysis, then it is the author?s fault if the reader?s ideas do not coincide with the writer?s intentions.
I do not know what ?Lolly Willowes? ?means?. If it is about witchcraft or the witch temperament or a peculiar eccentricity of outlook which may be termed the witch mind, well and good, But the fantastic flickering style of the prose, whilst delightful to read as poetic word sequences, annoys me when I desire to know how far the author desires to be taken simply and literally, and know the reader is expected to gather the point of the book or to exercise his own fancy on it. I can however understand the queer blurred effect of the world as seen by the reader through the heroine?s eyes. I have felt the world about me in similarly usual fashion, but what has this to do with witchcraft: Indigestion possibly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'We were told that a Bible and Testament were placed at the head of each bed; and we saw one convict reading "Recreations in Astronomy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Monday 13th December
?The Boost of the Golden Snail? ? (Macclure)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'29th March, Tuesday.
?La Gar?onne? V. Marguerite.
30th March, Wednesday.
These last few days I have been reading Marguerite?s ?La Gar?onne?. I am disappointed. Instead of an exciting chronicle of debauchery, full of hints on sex-relationship, I find it simply a rather vigorous, but incurably sentimental treatise on Malthusianism. One or two of its scenes are realistic in the strictest sense, but for the rest, his heroine is a most romantic young lad who finishes up by falling in love properly and setting up in matrimony. But then I have always found the French sentimental.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'6th October 1928 (Saturday).
So I finish my day, after an abundant dinner reading
?Taras Boulba? (Gogol) - translated by A. Potogky- Stchekotikhina. Scripta Manent Edition.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'15th March 1929
Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'(I am tempted, by the way, to say that 'On the Eve' is the finest novel I have ever read. I must lend it you. Its subtlety and restraint prevent it from ever being really popular.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell!
Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I have just read Turgenev?s Smoke. Man, we have more to learn in mere technique from Turgenev than from any other soul. He is simply unspeakable. I will ram this statement down your throat when I see you, with the book in front of us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
"'On the Eve' is more than a nice novel; it is a great novel. I think that if I could read it in Russian I should set it down as the greatest within my knowledge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Turgenev has forestalled you. & a bit to spare, in ?A Sportsman?s Sketches?, which you shall take home with you next time you come to London. These sketches are obviously records of things seen & heard by the author during his sporting tours, records devoid of literary artfulness, but chocked full of the art of observation, I know that you will be both delighted & edified by them, I read some of them a few years ago, & thought they were tame and lacked form. Now I know better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I am highly indebted to you for Hume. I like his essays better than any thing I have read these many days. He has prejudices, he does maintain errors - but he defends his positions, with so much ingenuity, that one would be almost sorry to see him dislodged. His Essays on "Superstition & Enthusiasm", on "the Dignity & meanness of Human Nature" and several others, are in my opinion admirable both in matter & manner: - particularly the first where his conclusions might be verified by instances, with which we are all acquainted. The manner, indeed, of all is excellent: - the highest & most difficult effect of art - the appearance of its absence - appears throughout. But many of his opinions are not to be adopted - How odd does it look for instance to refer all the modifications of "National character", to the influence of moral causes. Might it not be asserted with some plausibility, that even those which he denominates moral causes, originate from physical circumstances? Whence but from the perpetual contemplation of his dreary glaciers & rugged glens - from his dismal broodings in his long & almost solitary nights, has the Scandinavian conceived his ferocious Odin, & his horrid "spectres of the deep"? Compare this with the copper-castles and celestial gardens of the Arabian - and we must admit that physical causes have an influence on man. I read "the Epicurean," "the Stoic," "the Platonist" & "the Sceptic" under some disadvantage. They are perhaps rather clumsily executed - and the idea of David Hume declaiming, nay of David Hum[e] making love appears not less grotesque than would that of ad ? -oc [covered by seal: d]ancing a French cotillon. As a whole however [I am de]lig[hted w]ith the book, and if you can want it, I shall mo[reover] give it a second perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The best book I have read, since I wrote you, is Hume's "Essays, political and literary". It is indeed a most ingenious production - characterised by acuteness and originality, in all its parts. I have not room to tell you where I agree with its Author, and where I differ; nor how highly I admire his reasoning powers. What pity that he is a Deist! How much might his strong talents have accomplished in the cause of truth, when they did so much in that of error! It is indeed melancholy to behold so many men of talent, in our times all leaning to the same side - but I am much inclined to believe, that the reign of infidelity is past its height.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I took Bail]ly's "histoire d'Astronomie", out of the College library, last time I was over the firth. [He seems] to write with great eloquence & perspicuity; but I have read little of him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Three weeks ago, I finished M. Bailly's "histoire de l'Astronomie Modern[e.]" His acquaintance with the science seems to have been more extensive than profound; his stile is elegant - perhaps somewhat too florid, and interspersed with metaphors which an English critic might be tempted sometimes to call conceited - I wish I were an Astronomer - Is it not an interesting reflection to consider, that a little creature such as man-tho' his eye can see the heaven but as it were for a moment - is able to delineate the aspects which it presented long ages before he came into being - and to predict the aspects which it will present when ages shall have gone by. The past the present & the future are before him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Some time ago, I bought me a copy of La Rochefoucault. It has been said that the basis of his system is the supposition of selflove being the motive of all our actions. It rather seems, as if he had laid down no system at all. Regarding man as a wretched, mischievous thing, little better than a kind of vermin, he represents him as the sport of his passions, above all of vanity, and exposes the secret springs of his conduct always with some wit, and (?bating the usual sacrifices of accuracy to smartness), in general, with great truth & sagacity'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have been reading little except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro' which he passed - Hume you know to be distinct & impartial: but he has less sympathy than might be expected with the heroic patriots - the Hampdens & the Sidneys that glorify the pages of English history. I fear Smollett is going to be a confused creature. I have read but a volume of Gibbon - and I do not like him - his style is flowery - his sarcasms wicked - his notes oppressive, often beastly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'You should get hold of Havelock Ellis?s new book Affirmations. It is all good; and there is an essay on Huysmans that I have found very inspiring indeed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Read the 1st Part of Price's "Essay on the Picturesque"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'There is a great Peer in our neighbourhood, who gives me the run of his library while he is in town; and I am fetching up my arrears in books, which everybody (who reads at all) has read; among others, I stumbled upon the Life of Kotzebue, or rather his year of exile, and read it with the geatest interest. It is a rapid succession of very striking events, told with great force and simplicity. His display of sentiment seems very natural to the man, foolish as it sometimes is.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Looked into Marsh's "Michaelis"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
In letter to 'My Dear ----,' E. M. Sewell reproduces several passages (in English translation) from Giovanni Perrone, "Catechismi intorno al Protestanteismo ed alla Chiesa Cattolica" (1861), following remark:
'An Italian catechism, published some years ago, has lately been reprinted, in which the people are warned against the insidious heresies of Protestantism generally, and of the English in particular. The lies it contains send one into fits of laughter.' [Discussion of text continued after examples].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'You must get La Peyrouse's Voyage - and Vancouver's, and a book just come out on practical education by a Mr Edgeworth - [italics] Edgeworth on Practical Education [end italics] i vol. 4to I believe. It is written conjointly by Father and daughter, and is the result of 20 years reflection and Experiment. I have heard some extracts from it which delighted me very much'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'If you have not read "The Believing Bishop" by Havergall Bates (whoever he may be) [George Allen] let me recommend it to you as a fine disturbing book'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'read Ovid with Hogg (fin. 2nd fable). Shelley reads Gibbon and pastor fido with Clary - in the evening read Esprit des Nations (72). S. reads Pastor Fido (102) and Gibbon (vol 12 - 364) and the story of Myrrha in Ovid'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'[italics to denote Shelley's hand] Mary reads the 3rd fable of ovid. S & Clare read Pastor Fido. S. Reads Gibbon - (To recollect the life of Rienzi - Fortifiocca)[end italics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Shelley and Clara begin Orlando Furioso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'read a scene or two out of "As You Like It" - go upstairs to talk with Shelley - Read Ovid (54 lines only) Shelley finishes the 3d canto of Ariosto'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'After tea read Ovid 83 lines - Shelley two or three cantos of Ariosto with Clary and plays a game of chess with her Read Voltaire's Essay on the Spirit of Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'[italics to denote Shelley's hand] S. reads Ovid - Medea and the description of the Plague - After tea M. reads Ovid 90 lines - S & C. read Ariosto - 7th Canto. M. reads Voltaire p. 126.'[end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Jefferson reads Don Quixote - C. reads Gibbon - S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso - Read Voltaire's Essay on Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here]
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ewing June 10 1774 'Yet I should like none of these climates, where
?Winter lingering chills the lap of May? if I could help it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Collector MacVicar, June 20 1773 'In the mean time I hope the best, and endeavour to pursue Oliver Cromwell through all his crooked paths. I have gone but a short way, my attention having been completely engrossed by a book that has bewitched me for the time; ?tis the Vicar of Wakefield, which you must certainly read. Goldsmith puts one in mind of Shakespear [sic]; his narrative is improbable and absurd in many instances, yet all his characters do and say exactly what might be supposed of them ?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Mrs Brown March 9 1789 'As low as you rate your critical abilities, they have altogether captivated and dazzled my good man. He desires me to keep the letter for my girls, to moderate the poignant affliction they will feel, some time hence, in weeping over Werter. He considers this pathetic hero as a weak though amiable enthusiast, and looks upon Charlotte as first cousin to a coquette. Albert is his hero. ?.' [continues to refer to Werter for several pages]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry March 27 1791 'I am very fond of the lower class of people; they have sentiment, serious habits, and a kind of natural courtesy; in short, they are not mob, an animal which Smollet most emphatically says he detests in its head, midriff, and members; and, in this point, I do not greatly differ with him. You would wonder how many of the genteeler class live here. They are not rich to be sure; so much the better for us; For "Where no contiguous palace rears its head/To shame the meanness of the humble shed" people do very well, and keep each other in countenance."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'Write and read the memoirs of the princess of Bareith'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read the Memoirs aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read Curtius and work - Read the memoirs of the Prinsse of Bareith aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry Oct 14 1791 'This temporary triumph of irreligion and false philosophy will tear the mark off the monster ?What pains have been taken to promulgate that profound discovery, ?that bigotry and religious zeal have done more hurt in society, than scepticism and all the mere speculative, evils of philosophy?.? [it seems likely that this is a paraphrase of Hume's philosophical "Essay concerning human understanding"]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee Macvicar] Print: Book
'read the memoirs aloud and begin the life of Holcroft'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'S. reads Don Quixote - afterwards read mem. of the Prin/sse of Ba/th aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'One must know Hemingway if one is to understand post war writing. I read too ?The Open Secret?. Oliver Onions was a great favourite of mine once. He was a past master of the topical novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I have just completed Havelock Ellis? ?From Rousseau to Proust?, a kind of psychological survey of the ?subjective? writers of the period between the two named. It was excellent ? you know I am a classic ? so I naturally admire a critic who makes all the ?back to nature? people abnormals, and their genius merely Peter Parishness to the nth: I think you have heard me say that many times in one form or another. The best thing in the book however, was an appreciation of ?The Grand Meaulnes?. The essay appeared originally as an introduction to the English translation of the book, and really is a fine bit of work. I am going to try and find the book if possible. It is called ?The Wanderer?.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India. ...;[but includes] Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion"; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'read Comus. Knight of the swan - 1st Vol of Goldth citizen of the world'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ...; Ramsay's "Revolution of South Carolina " ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I read Tacitus - 3 of Hume's essays VIII IX X - some of the German theatre - write - walk - Shelleys [sic] reads Political Justice & 8 Cantos of his poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes Political Justice Read Tacitus & Hume - work in the evening read Mandeville.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have just read Mr. Nevile Foster?s first article on The Universal Machine, which is chiefly a criticism of some of my articles.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
'Transcribe Peacocks poem'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Unknown
'Finish the 1st part of Humes Essays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Hume'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Humes dissertation on the passions'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley reads Schlegel aloud [to] us - We sleep at Rheims.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley reads Schlegel aloud and we travel on in a pleasant country among nice people - We sleep at Dijon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley reads Manso's life of Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Aristodemo with S. Walk out in the evening on the mole. Read the Adelphi of Terence'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Adelphi of Terence - read Aristodemo'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 1st Canto of Ariosto & 1st act of Phormio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 2nd Canto of Oriosto [sic] & Mille et une nuits in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Electra and Ajax. Read the 8th Canto of Ariosto and the 4th Act of Phormio - Finish the Mille et une nuits. Read the Zaire and the Alzire of Voltaire'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 23 Canto of Ariosto & Gibbon - & the 3rd Ode of Horace - S. finishes the clouds - Reads Humes England aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 25 Canto of Ariosto - Gibbon & 6 & 7 odes of Horace - S. reads the Lysistratae of Aristophanes - finishes Gibbon - and reads Hume's England in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 25 Canto of Ariosto - Gibbon & 6 & 7 odes of Horace - S. reads the Lysistratae of Aristophanes - finishes Gibbon - and reads Hume's England in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'After dinner by coach as far as the Temple and there saw a new book in Folio of all that suffered for the King in the late times - which I will buy; it seems well writ.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
'Read 32 Canto of Ariosto - Livy - Horace - & Volpone - S reads Arist[o]phanes & Anarcharsis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 33rd Canto of Ariosto - Livy - Horace & The Magnetick lady - S reads Aristophanes & Anarcharsis - & Hume's England aloud in the evening after our walk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S - translates the Symposium and Reads the wife for a Month - We ride out in the morning & after tea S. reads Hume's England'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Orlando Furioso - read Anacharsis - S. corrects the Symposium and reads Herodotus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Monday Sept. 19th. Rise late [...] Read the Curse of Kehama & Emile [...] Read the [S]orcerer &
Political Justice. Admire the Sorcerer very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Sept. 19th. Rise late [...] Read the Curse of Kehama & Emile [...] Read the [S]orcerer &
Political Justice. Admire the Sorcerer very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Oct -- 17 [...] Read Memoires de Voltaire by Himself'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Oct 19th [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff again -- read also Political Justice [...] In
the Evening read Memoires of Voltaire by himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Oct 19th [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff again -- read also Political Justice [...] In
the Evening read Memoires of Voltaire by himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Oct -- 20th [...] After dinner read Political Justice [...] read Memoires of Voltaire -- &
the Life of Alfieri till late [...] I am much delighted with Alfieri -- He seems to have possessed
much genius & enthusiasm -- but certainly he was never very far from raving Mad -- the
anecdotes of his infancy are delightful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Oct -- 20th [...] After dinner read Political Justice [...] read Memoires of Voltaire -- &
the Life of Alfieri till late [...] I am much delighted with Alfieri -- He seems to have possessed
much genius & enthusiasm -- but certainly he was never very far from raving Mad -- the
anecdotes of his infancy are delightful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Oct. 24th. Rise at eight [...] M. reads aloud She stoops to [C]onquer -- She sets out to
see Shelley at eleven -- I stay at home & read Political Justice'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'Thursday Jany. 23rd. Do an Italian exercise & read some of Moore's Anacreon [...] Read
Anarcharsis [...] Begin Goldsmith's History of Greece p.40.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday Feb. 22. [...] Read Berrington's History of the Middle Ages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday June 10th. set out from Rome to Livorno [...] Arrive at Livorno Aquila Nera Thursday 17th. [June]. Stay there a week. [...] Remove to Villetta Valsovano near Monte nero Read Cobbett's Journal in America Birbeck's Notes on the Illinois Nightmare Abbey & the Heart of MidLothian by Walter Scott.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Feb. 19th. Read 1 Scene in the Cisma de Ingalaterra. Begin Davanzati's Tacitus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Feb. 21st. Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra. Also a little of Davanzati's Tacitus [...] Read Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Feb. 21st. Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra. Also a little of Davanzati's Tacitus [...] Read Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Davanzati's Tacitus' [entered in Claire Clairmont's 1820 Journal on 22, 24, 27 Feb and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19 March (reading begun 19 February); 'Read a little of Davanzati's Tacitus' entered on 18 March.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday March 13th. [...] Read Dramatic Biography [makes detailed notes from vol. I part i in
this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday March 14th. [...] Read Dramatic Biography'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday April 5th. [...] Read Memoires of Voltaire written by himself [notes anecdote from this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday May 6th. [...] Read a little of De la Virgen del Sagrario de Don Pedro Calderon de la
Barca [quotes three lines from Act I]
'Read Memoires of the last Revolution at Naples [notes points from this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday May 20th. Read History of the Revolution at Naples.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday June 5th. Read Saggio [...] storico sulla Rivoluzione di Napoli.'
[records of reading this text also appear in entries for 6 and 7 June 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday June 15th. [...] Go in a Calesse to Casa Ricci at Livorno. Read Vicar of Wakefield'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday June 28th. [...] Begin Nicholson's Natural Philosophy -- Read Saggio Istorico della
rivoluzione di Napoli [sic] [makes notes on this]'.
[records of further reading in latter text appear in entries for 29 June, and 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11
July 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday July 2nd. Do a latin Excercise [sic]. Read a little of the [...] Enead [quotes Book I
line 33].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday July 4th. [...] Read Virgil -- Lines 100. Read Aristippe by Wieland.
[...]
'Wednesday July 5th. [...] Read 40 lines of Virgil'.
[Report 'Read Virgil' also appears in entries for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 July 1820]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday July 24th. [...] Translate an exercise from Latin. Read Saggio Istorico.'
[readings from latter text also recorded in entries for 26, 27, 29 July 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - and the Tale of the Tub of B. Jon[s]on - Transcribe the Symposium - S. reads Herodotus - and Hume in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 7 Canto's of Dante - Begin to translate A.[lfieri] - Read Cajo Graccho of Monti & Measure for Measure'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 7 Canto's of Dante - Begin to translate A.[lfieri] - Read Cajo Graccho of Monti & Measure for Measure'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Thursday August 10th. Finish Caleb Williams -- Read Symposion [sic] [...] Translate
Demosthenes. Read Saggio Istorico.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday August 16th. [...] Read Christabel & the Saggio Storico.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday August 20th. [...] Read Swiss Family Robinson Crusoe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Sept. 27th. Do some Latin from Virgil [...] Finish Keats' Endymion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - Manfredi of Monti - Shelley writes - Read 8 Canto of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Filippo of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - & the Virginia of Alfieri - walk out in the evening - after tea S. reads L'Allegro and il penseroso to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'This is the Journal book of misfortunes - Read Livy - A great many of the plays of Alfieri - S writes - he reads Oedipus Tyrannos to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Saul - S. reads Malthus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - Alfieri's Agide - S. reads Malthus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'finish the trajedies of Alfieri - Walk out with S. He reads Malthus & Cymbeline aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Vita di Tasso - Read Timon of Athens - work - S finishes the Winter's Tale'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Sismondi - & Faublas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Monday June 25th. [...] Read Melincourt'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday July 11th. Read Edgeworth's Memoirs.
[...]
'Thursday July 12th. [...] Read Life of Edgeworth -- I think their system seems to aim at
making the mind satisfied with little.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday July 25th. [...] Read Sandford and Merton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'read Bocaccio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read the Decameroni'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Decamerone'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Mary's second reading list for 1818. Most volumes mentioned here are also mentioned in the journal so database entries are based on those references. An x denotes Percy Shelley having read the text too]
'M
Clarke's Travels
Hume's dissertation on the passions
Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey Letters & c
2 vols of Montaigne
Schlegel on the drama
Oeuvres de Moliere
Aristippes de Wieland
French trans. of Lucian
Mille et une nuits
Tragedies de Voltaire
Trajedies de Corneille
x Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
x Voyages du jeune Anacharsis
Ben Jonson's Comedies
Pope's Homer
Joseph Andrews - Gil Blas - x Corinne
Faublas
Italian
Pamela
x Aminta of Tasso
Monti's Tragedies
x Orlando Furioso
Giurusalemme [sic] Liberata
tragedies of Alfieri
x Inferno of Dante
Vita di Alfieri
Latin
x The Aenied [sic]
Terence's Comedies
2 books of Horace
10 books of Livy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Saturday October 1st. [...] Begin Voltaire's Life of Charles XII. [...] Read Tarlton to Johnny in
the Evening.
[...]
'Sunday [...] October 2nd. read the life of Charles the XII.
[...]
'Monday [...] October 3rd. [...] Finish reading Charles XII.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday [...] January 7th. [...] Begin reading Gothe's translation of Benvenuto Cellini's
Memoirs.'
[records another reading from this text, with Chretien-Hermann Gambs, in journal entry for 8
January 1826].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, November 1818:
'I have read "Douglas on the Modern Greeks." I think it a most amusing book ... I have not
yet finished "Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations." An admirable work
indeed ... I do not admire "Madame de Sevigne's letters," though the French is excellent [...]
yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so
entirely FRENCH, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure -- the
last Canto of "Childe Harold" (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more
than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that
I ever read [...] All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in those lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward Moulton-Barrett to his sister Elizabeth Barrett, 26 April 1823:
'Russel works us most properly now in Grammar, and Ovid which we are to be examined in'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Russell (master), Thomas Moulton-Barrett, and other boys at Charterhouse Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, Foxley [Price's home] October 1826:
'Mr Price's desire that I should have read these sheets [proofs of Price's Essay on the Modern Pronunciation of the Greek and Latin Languages] with the design of remarking on them I have obeyed with much deference to him [...] I have read them with deep interest & attention [goes on to discuss and dispute text in great depth and detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Uvedale Price to Elizabeth Barrett, 20 December 1826:
'When Luxmoore was with us, a little before he called at Hopend [sic; for Hope End, Barrett's family home], I shewed him what I had just been writing on the Charter-house mode of pronouncing [classical Greek], chiefly that of their passing over the vowel to the consonant in iambi & pyrrhics but continuing to accent them, as we do, on the first syllable: He read it with more interest than he is apt to do on such subjects, & wished me to go on with it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [probably] Charles Scott Luxmoore Manuscript: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, 30 December 1826, in response to his MS dissertation on Charterhouse pronunciation of classical Greek:
'my brother [a Charterhouse pupil] & I were much gratfified by reading your m.s. before we dispatched it [to John Russell]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett and Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
'Read Beaumont & Fletcher - Dante and Lucan - S. reads the Greek tragedians and Boccacio [sic] [...] He reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Bocaccio [sic] aloud - & Calderon with C.[harles] C.[lairmont]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'At this period [aged thirteen] I perused all modern authors who had any claim to superior merit
& poetic excellence. I was familiar with Shakespeare Milton Homer and Virgil Locke Hooker
Pope -- I read Homer in the original with delight inexpressible together with Virgil.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, c.15 April 1827:
'I have done reading your correspondence with Mr Commeline [...] I thought it odd that an
article of the Edinburgh Review should be referred to, on a philological subject; &, on looking
into the one which Mr Commeline calls the "Manual of his heresy", I was surprised to find us
accused there of ["]subverting the true metrical structure of Latin hexameters, even according
to the accentual system" by [italics]not[end italics] laying our accent on the [italics]long[end
italics] syllable, & by laying it on the short ones. The Reviewer seems confused in his
speculations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
James Commeline to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 December 1827:
'Together with Mr Price's book, allow me to return you my best thanks for the perusal of it. Though written [...] with great elegance & felicity of composition, it really strikes me as a
remarkable specimen of that order of architecture [...] of which all the parts are perfect in
their kind, except the foundation [goes on to criticise work in detail].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Rev. James Commeline Jr Print: Book
Uvedale Price to Elizabeth Barrett, 11 December 1827:
'It gave me great pleasure to hear that you think so favorably of my Essay now that you have read the whole of it, & that what you [italics]had[end italics] read in MS., has gained by being in print.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'S. reads the bible - and Muller's universal History'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Travels before the flood'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Travels before the flood'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 28-29 May 1828:
"If you have not read the Essay on the Picturesque, will you let me send it to you [...] It is one of the books which I read for the sake of its style, without feeling an interest in its subject'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Read Vicar of Wakefield'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 2 November 1832:
'I have read, since I spoke to you last about my Greek reading, the last line of the last ode of
Pindar, & have again gone thro' the Alcestis & the Troades; -- Besides this I have gone thro'
the whole of the Aeneid except two books which I was familiar with, and half the Hebrew
Bible. Forster's bible is in two quarto volumes, -- and one of them I have read regularly from
beginning to end'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning to Andre Victor Amedee de Ripert-Monclar, 5-7 December 1834:
'I heard of poor Drounieau's case in the Papers. I have read none of his verses, but was
rather pleased with some parts of a novel of his, called Resignee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836:
'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of
my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my
youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English
drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and
regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as
I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read
Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the
bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great.
And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by
going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of
mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836:
'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of
my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my
youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English
drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and
regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as
I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read
Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the
bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great.
And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by
going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of
mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'Muratori. Antichita d'Italia'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Muratori - Greek - Travels of Rolando - S. reads Robertson's America - begins Bocaccio [sic] aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Muratori - Greek - Travels of Rolando - S. reads Robertson's America - begins Bocaccio [sic] aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Villani - Travels of Rolando'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Sismondi - Ride to Pisa - Georgics - B.[occaccio]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Villani'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Write - Read Homer - Targione - Spanish - A rainy day. S. reads Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Villani'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'If you really want to have a [notion] of tropical countries, study Humboldt.? Skip th[e] scientific parts & commence after leaving Teneriffe.? My feelings amount to admiration the more I read him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'read Edgeworths life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Lindsays dramas & Telemaque'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Sunday 3 October. I am reading "A Room of One's Own". Most delightful and profound - if I had the time I would write an essay about life in the WRNS'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Pym Print: Book
'Gratifying letter from John Fossett: "Very many thanks for two instalments of diary. Joan and I derived hours of pleasure from reading it aloud to each other. How we laughted about the Mulberry Tree. We passed it over to the RAF and how they enjoyed it. It seemed like being at home again as we lived through your experiences.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Fossett Manuscript: Sheet
'I am reading Caspar Hauser - its being an invention takes from the interest - if it were true it wd be a deeply exciting work - It reminds me much of Calderon's La Vida es Sueno'
[letter to Maria Gisborne]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 November 1842:
''Have you observed what I have observed [...] that Charles Dickens has meditated deeply &
not without advantage upon Victor Hugo, -- and that some of his very finest things .. (all for
instance of the Jew's condemnation-hours in Oliver Twist) .. are taken from Victor Hugo, ..
"Les derniers jours d'un condamne" & passim? I admire Boz very absolutely & gratefully [...]
but my sense of his power & genius grew grey & weak [...] with reading Hugo.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Headmistress takes Evensong in school because the church could not be blacked out. Instead of a sermon she read from books with a religious theme, e.g. "The Other Wise Man", "Who Moved the Stone?" and "In the Steps of the Master", which we all enjoyed.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Headmistress of Casterton School Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 June 1843:
'My idea of [italics]V[ed italics] has always been .. a clever woman, whose vocation it is not,
to write poetry. Her "I watched the Heavens" is after Dante -- [italics]after[end italics] in all
sorts of ways. Of the "Nine Poems" I have seen extracts only.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'I can?t be more satisfactory [= about his travel plans]. I think I must be a relative of a man who advertises near here "[italics] D.V. Thomas [end italics], Purveyor of pure new milk?. Imagine anyone trusting to a man with so conditional a name for anything under heaven!'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844:
'Of [italics]Sandeau[end italics] I have read very little. His "Marianna" has power in its way
[...] but acclimatation is a necessary precaution -- for the passion of the book exceeds the
comprehension of an Englishman by leagues of extravagance. It's a melancholy, desecrating
book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I have read no more of Boccac[c]io than his description of the plague which is extremely powerful from the hesitation you seemed to have in allowing me to read him I felt inclined to return it immediately - but on reflection I thought it silly to deprive myself of the pleasure of reading a clever work because it contained some exceptionable passages which I might pass of[f] even if I found them disagreeable - so I shall go on - at least as long as I find it for my good- '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'Boccac[c]io I return! - I have read the introduction and three of the tales which I took by chance from different parts of the book - in the two first my choice was fortunate and I was inclined to think the work had been belied - the third was enough - I will never open the book again -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I have seen nothing new, & have been reading the Memoirs of Mde de Maintenon in French, which are exceedingly entertaining'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I have just begun Belzoni, & like his simple style very much. Miss Porter (Anna Maria) has published a new Novel, The Village of Mariendorpt, full of the most touching passages, but, as a whole, it drags. Her knowledge of military details appears to me marvellous; the period at which she makes her people act and talk, is during the Protestant War in Germany; she carries you to the dreadful siege of Magdebourg, & takes you into the camp and tent of Forstenson, Konigsmark, and I cannot tell you how many others, & seems to know more of warriors and warfare than, as a woman myself, I can at all account for'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'If you want light easy Italian reading, get Giraud's Commedie - They are excessively amusing - Some are farcical & some are grave, but all full of action, & with a great deal of character well delineated and well supported - Books are so cheap here, that I bought Nota's Comedies, which are in great repute & often acted, and are printed in eight duodecimo volumes for six Pauls!'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I read only Italian books - and have just finished Niccolini's Foscarini, which is a fine masculine, energetic performance, & gave me much pleasure, and makes me admire and respect the Author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I find I have no time for reading except times of fatigue when I wish merely to refresh myself. O − and I read over again for this purpose − Flaubert?s "Tentation de Saint Antoine":it struck me a good deal at first, but this second time it has fetched me immensely; I am but just done with it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to take with my present statement that it?s the finest thing I ever read! Of course, it isn?t that, it?s full of [italics] longueurs [end italics], and it is not quite ?red up?, as we say in Scotland, not quite articulate, but there are splendid things in it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[Virginia Stephen] was reading Walter Savage Landor's Pericles and Aspasia (1836), and writing,
as was her habit during this time [Spring 1906], a description of her surroundings (unpublished).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'In her role as literary mentor, Madge [Vaughan] had been reading some of Virginia's short
narratives, all apparently lost, unless one was "Phyllis and Rosamond", dated June 1906'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Madge Vaughan Manuscript: Unknown
'Clive Bell's Art had been published in February 1914. It propounded the concept of "Significant
form", but Virginia [Woolf], reading it in the midst of her [mental] illness, did not much
appreciate it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Gwen Raverat, 11 March 1925:
'I don't think you would believe how it moves me that you and Jacques should have been
reading Mrs Dalloway, and liking it. I'm awfully vain I know; and I was on pins and needles
about sending it to Jacques; and now I feel exquisitely relieved; not flattered: but one does
want that side of one to be acceptable'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Unknown, In proof copy
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 9 October 1927:
'I am reading Knole and The Sackvilles. Dear me; you know a lot: you have a rich dusky attic
of a mind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Hugh Walpole's The Apple Tree, a volume of reminiscences, was published for Christmas
1932. The first words of the book are: "There is a fearful passage in Virginia Woolf's beautiful
and mysterious book The Waves, which when I read it, gave me an acute shock of
unanticipated reminiscence." He then quotes a long passage in which he found his title: "The
apple-tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Stephen Spender, 10 July 1934:
'I'm so happy that you read the Lighthouse with pleasure, when there are so many other books
you might be reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stephen Spender Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938:
'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938:
'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have
read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Benedict Nicolson, 13 August 1940:
'[opens] Just as I began to read your letter, an air raid warning sounded. I'll put down the reflections that occurred to me, as honestly as I can, as you put down your reflection of reading my life of Roger Fry while giving air raid alarms at Chatham [goes on to describe
thoughts on reading letter, looking up at raiders overhead, etc].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benedict Nicolson Print: Book
'I like the story very very much - in fact, I began reading it after you left...went out for a walk, thinking of it all the time, and came back and finished it, being full of a particular kind of interest which I daresay has something to do with its being the sort of thing I should like to write myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
'I return your Italian volumes, my dear friend, with many thanks, owning honestly, that I have never looked into them; for the thread of my interest in Botta's History having been interrupted by my leaving Florence, I could not for the life of me connect it again; and I got hold of other books - read no Italian for ages - and, at last, pounced one fine day upon a good, clear edition of Ariosto, and have been and am reading him with even more delight than when he first fell into my hands. Here and there, he is a bad boy, and as the book is my own, & I do not like indecency, I cut out whole pages that annoy me, & burn them before the Author's face, which stands at the beginning of the first volume, and I hope feels properly ashamed. Next to Ariosto, by way of something new, I treat myself now and then with a play of one Wm Shakespear, and I am reading Robertson's Charles Vth which comes in well after that part of Botta's History at which I left off - viz: just about the time of the council of Trent. And, as I love modern reading, I was glad to find myself possessed of a very tidy edition of a Biographical work you may perhaps have heard tell of - Plutarch's Lives. If you should ever meet with it, I think I might venture to say you would not dislike it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Have you read Bourrienne's Memoirs? Sick as I thought myself of Buonaparte and all that related to his tremendous though short-lived success (I always consider him as a permitted scourge), Bourrienne's book caught fast hold of me, & I was really sorry when I had finished it. Yet, I could only get it in English: but the translation is not very bad'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
2 March 1918: '[On 19 February] we went to Asheham [...] I saw no-one; for 5 days I wasn't in a state for reading [due to influenza]; but I did finally read Morley & other books; but reading when done to kill time has a kind of drudgy look in it [...] One day I sat in the garden reading Shakespeare; I remember the ecstacy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I shall have, however, to give up reading your works at dinner, for they are too disturbing. I can't explain, I'll have to explain verbally some day. Unless you can guess. How well you write, though, confound you. When I read you, I feel no one has ever written English prose before, - Knocked it about, put it in its place, made it into a servant.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
'The whole book is full of nooks and corners which I enjoy exploring. Sometimes one wants a candle in one's hand though - That's my only criticism - you've left (I daresay in haste) one or two dangling dim places....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Sheet, Earlier in the letter Virginia Woolf describes the form of the text she read as 'the second batch of proofs'.
'Last night I went to bed very early and read Mrs Dalloway. It was a very curious sensation: I thought you were in the room - But there was only Pippin, trying to burrow under my quilt, and the night noises outside, which are so familiar in one's own room; and the house was all quiet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'then the old problem: what shall I read at dinner, propped open by a fork? decide finally on Virginia, grab the common reader, a pair of spectacles, a pencil, go in to dinner,'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'But everything is blurred to a haze by your book of which I have just read the last words, and that is the only thing which seems real. I can only say that I am dazzled and bewitched. How did you do it? how did you walk along that razor-edge without falling? why did you say anything so silly as that I 'shouldn't like it'?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'"I'm in the middle of the Lighthouse, ekeing it out so that it will last. Why doesn't she publish a book every day? and what fun to be in at the birth of books quite as important as Jane Austen. She is a genius and I would carry a thousand hair-shedding dogs to the gates of Hell for her did she wish it!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
'I can't tell you how much I like "The Sun and the Fish", (all the more because it is all about things we did together,) and I am ordering a copy of Time and Tide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Serial / periodical
6 March 1920: 'On Thursday, dine with the MacCarthys, & the first Memoir Club meeting [hosted by MacCarthys]. A highly interesting occasion. Seven people read -- & Lord knows what I didnt read into their reading. Sydney [Waterlow] [...] signified as much by reading us a dream [...] altogether a queer, self-conscious, self analytic performance [...] Clive purely objective; Nessa starting matter of fact: then overcome by the emotional depths to be traversed; & unable to read aloud what she had written. Duncan fantastic & tongue -- not tied -- tongue enchanted. Molly literary about tendencies & William Morris, carefully composed at first, & even formal: suddenly saying "Oh this is absurd -- I can't go on" shuffling all her sheets; beginning on the wrong page; firmly but waveringly, & carrying through to the end [...] Roger well composed; story of a coachman who stole geraniums & went to prison.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Bell Manuscript: Unknown
6 March 1920: 'On Thursday, dine with the MacCarthys, & the first Memoir Club meeting [hosted by MacCarthys]. A highly interesting occasion. Seven people read -- & Lord knows what I didnt read into their reading. Sydney [Waterlow] [...] signified as much by reading us a dream [...] altogether a queer, self-conscious, self analytic performance [...] Clive purely objective; Nessa starting matter of fact: then overcome by the emotional depths to be traversed; & unable to read aloud what she had written. Duncan fantastic & tongue -- not tied -- tongue enchanted. Molly literary about tendencies & William Morris, carefully composed at first, & even formal: suddenly saying "Oh this is absurd -- I can't go on" shuffling all her sheets; beginning on the wrong page; firmly but waveringly, & carrying through to the end [...] Roger well composed; story of a coachman who stole geraniums & went to prison.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell Manuscript: Unknown
Monday 6 February 1922: 'What a sprightly journalist Clive Bell is! I have just read him, & see how my sentences would have to be clipped to march in time with his.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Wednesday 15 February 1922:
'Of my reading I will now try to make some note.
'First Peacock; Nightmare Abbey, & Crotchet Castle. Both are so much better than I remember. Doubtless, Peacock is a taste acquired in maturity. When I was young, reading him in a railway carriage in Greece, sitting opposite Thoby [Woolf, reader's brother], I remember, who pleased me immensely by approving my remark that Meredith had got his women from Peacock [...] And now more than anything I want beautiful prose [...] And I enjoy satire more. I like the scepticism of his mind more [...] And then they're so short; & I read them in little yellowish perfectly appropriate first editions.
'The masterly Scott has me by the hair once more. Old Mortality. I'm in the middle; & have to put up with some dull sermons; but I doubt he can be dull, because everything is so much in keeping [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 15 February 1922:
'Of my reading I will now try to make some note.
'First Peacock; Nightmare Abbey, & Crotchet Castle. Both are so much better than I remember. Doubtless, Peacock is a taste acquired in maturity. When I was young, reading him in a railway carriage in Greece, sitting opposite Thoby [Woolf, reader's brother], I remember, who pleased me immensely by approving my remark that Meredith had got his women from Peacock [...] And now more than anything I want beautiful prose [...] And I enjoy satire more. I like the scepticism of his mind more [...] And then they're so short; & I read them in little yellowish perfectly appropriate first editions.
'The masterly Scott has me by the hair once more. Old Mortality. I'm in the middle; & have to put up with some dull sermons; but I doubt he can be dull, because everything is so much in keeping [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 15 February 1922:
'Of my reading I will now try to make some note.
'First Peacock; Nightmare Abbey, & Crotchet Castle. Both are so much better than I remember. Doubtless, Peacock is a taste acquired in maturity. When I was young, reading him in a railway carriage in Greece, sitting opposite Thoby [Woolf, reader's brother], I remember, who pleased me immensely by approving my remark that Meredith had got his women from Peacock [...] And now more than anything I want beautiful prose [...] And I enjoy satire more. I like the scepticism of his mind more [...] And then they're so short; & I read them in little yellowish perfectly appropriate first editions.
'The masterly Scott has me by the hair once more. Old Mortality. I'm in the middle; & have to put up with some dull sermons; but I doubt he can be dull, because everything is so much in keeping [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'Jack tells me you are reading Meister: this surprises me; if I did not recollect your love for me, I shoudl not be able to account for it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret A. Carlyle Print: Book
'This morning I received a copy of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Travels), a sort of sequel to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which is at present stealing into what notice it can attain among you. The Travels was written two years ago by Goethe, and promises so far as I can yet judge to be a very special work. I am not without some serious thoughts of putting it into an English dress to follow its elder brother.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'No skating scene in "Wilhelm Meister" whatsandever that [italics]I[end italics] can find, or hear of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I am much charmed with Wilhelm Meister, the book I had begun to read with much prejudice of mind & forebodings that I should not like it, as I had been told such would be the case- but on the contrary I have met with nothing for a long time that pleased me half so well, or that has suggested to me so many profitable trains of thought-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Kirkpatrick Strachey Print: Book
'I would have answered your letter sooner but for a long series of movements and countermovements I have had to execute. I also wished to read Goethe's book, before determining on your proposal with regard to it. This I have at length done: I find it will not answer. The work is incomplete, the first volume only having yet appeared; and it consists of a series of fragments, individually beautiful, but quite disjointed, and in their present state scarcely intelligible.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'It seems to me the loveliest, wisest, richest book that I have ever read, - excelling even your own Lighthouse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Manuscript: Codex
'He [a friend] took me to a bar which he said was quite respectable, but the proprietor showed me pornographic photographs, which are things I absolutely loathe and abhor. So I went away in a dudgeon and read a chapter of Orlando to cleanse my mind. That book is the cleanest thing I know, - like very clear and deep crystal.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson
'I came in just now, having been to Wertheim's to buy a pair of gloves for 4 marks, and meant to go on with my story of the bank clerk who loses his memory, but having stopped at the book shop on the way and bought Orlando in Tauchnitz I began to read, and so lost myself that the evening is already nearly gone. Do you know, I never read Orlando without tears pricking my eyes?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Wednesday 15 September 1920: 'Blessed with fine weather, I could look from my window, through the vine leaves, & see Lytton sitting in the deck chair reading Alfieri from a lovely vellum copy, dutifully looking out words. He wore a white felt hat, & the usual grey clothes; was long, & tapering as usual; looking so mild & so ironical, his beard just cut short [...] For my own encouragement, I may note that he praised the Voyage Out voluntarily; "[italics]extremely[end italics] good" it seemed to him on re-reading, especially the satire of the Dalloways.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Wednesday 15 September 1920: 'Blessed with fine weather, I could look from my window, through the vine leaves, & see Lytton sitting in the deck chair reading Alfieri from a lovely vellum copy, dutifully looking out words. He wore a white felt hat, & the usual grey clothes; was long, & tapering as usual; looking so mild & so ironical, his beard just cut short [...] For my own encouragement, I may note that he praised the Voyage Out voluntarily; "[italics]extremely[end italics] good" it seemed to him on re-reading, especially the satire of the Dalloways.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Monday 21 December 1925: 'I read her [Vita Sackville-West's] poem; which is more compact, better seen & felt than anything yet of hers.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
'On 22 December the Woolfs went to Charleston for Christmas [...] Clive and Vanessa Bell [sister to Virginia Woolf] and the three children were there [...] Vanessa reported to Duncan Grant [...] that they had spent a fascinating evening reading V[irginia]W[oolf]'s diary recalling early days at 46 Gordon Square, with the four Stephens' very full and "rather high society life" there' (source ed.'s note).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell and family Manuscript: Unknown
Saturday 27 February 1926: 'Mrs. Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. I read some of 1923 this morning, being headachy again'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
'And the book came. And I've read one or two of the new ones. And I liked them yes - I liked the one to Enid Bagnold; and I think I see how you may develop differently.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
'In the meantime, let me say that I read you with delight, even though I wanted to exclaim, "Oh, BUT,Virginia..." on 50% of your pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
'I've not read it (and I dont suppose you'd care a damn to know what I thought, if I thought about it considered as a work of art - or would you?) - but I dipped in and read about Saulieu and the fair and the green glass bottle....I shall keep it by my bed, and when I wake in the night - so, I shant use it as a soporific, but as a sedative: a dose of sanity and sheep dog in this scratching, clawing, and colding universe....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 12 February 1927: 'Vita's prose is too fluent. I've been reading it, & it makes my pen run. When I've read a classic, I am curbed & -- not castrated; no, the opposite; I cant think of the word at the moment.
'Had I been writing P[assenger] to T[eheran] I should have run off whole pools of this coloured water; & then (I think) found my own method of attack [...] Were I writing travels I should wait till some angle emerged: & go for that. The method of writing smooth narrative cant be right; things dont happen in one's mind like that. But she is very skilful & golden voiced.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 2 September 1929: 'I have just read a page or two out of Samuel Butler's notebooks to take the taste of Alice Meynell's life out of my mouth. One rather craves brilliance & cantankerousness. Yet I am interested; a little teased by the tight airless Meynell style; & then I think what they had that we had not -- some suavity & grace, certainly [comments further on Meynell's work, life and personality] [...] When one reads a life one often compares one's own life with it. And doing this I was aware of some sweetness & dignity in those lives compared with ours [...] Yet in fact their lives would be intolerable -- so insincere, so elaborate; so I think [goes on to comment further on Meynell family, and others' reminiscences of them]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 27 December 1930: 'We came down [to Rodmell] on Tuesday, & next day my cold was the usual influenza, & I am in bed with the usual temperature [...] I moon torpidly through book after book: Defoe's Tour; Rowan's auto[biograph]y; Benson's Memoirs; Jeans; in the familiar way. The parson -- Skinner -- who shot himself emerges like a bloody sun in a fog. a book worth perhaps looking at again in a clearer mood [goes on to remark further on this text] [...] Oh & I've read Q[ueen]. V[ictoria]'s letters [...] Q.V. entirely unaesthetic; a kind of Prussian competence, & belief in herself her only prominences [...] Knew her own mind. But the mind radically commonplace.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'How do you like Thalaba? There are always so many nothings to be done in London daily, that I have not read ten lines for the last ten weeks, till I came to Holland House, where I have galloped through two volumes of Madame Du Deffand's Letters, and with much amusement, though the anecdotes are in themselves of no great value; still, being written on the spot, and at the moment, they have a vivacity and interest which make one read letter after letter without weariness. The extracts from Lord Orford's letters contain frequently excellent things; and indeed, in Madame Du Deffand's own general observations, there is much good sense and plain truth; but that sense and truth, being generally grounded upon knowledge of the world, it unfortunately follows, of course, that the information which it conveys must be of a disagreeable and humiliating complexion. [Lewis then talks about Lord Orfor'd treatment of a blind woman] Have you read these letters? You know, of course, that they were edited by your friend, Miss Berry, who has also written the Preface, the Life, and the Notes, all of which are most outrageously abused by many persons, though, in my opinion, without any just grounds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Book
'Since I have been in London I have read nothing but Miss Seward's letters and Miss Owenson's Missionary. Of Miss Seward I am bound to speak well, as she doth so of me; and her monodies are beauiful; but the letters are naught; they abound in false sentiment, and a great many other false things. As to the Missionary, Ambrosio is his father, and Matilde his mother; but, wanting the indelicacy of papa, and the delicacy of mamma, he's a dull fellow. I could think of nothing else but poor Margaret Stewart of Blantyre, and her presbyterian minister, while I read this. Miss Luxina brought her hogs to a bad market, for Hilarion was little better than a beast. Walter Scott's last poem I have also seen, but so hastily that I can be no competent judge of its merits. Talking of words, allow me to recommend to you Ford's plays, lately re-published. Some of them are excellent; the first in the series (which hath an awkward name, I must confess) and the Broken Heart, are particularly admirable. I am sure that you will be struck with them; for Ford is almost as moving as Otway or Lee, - who is the mad poet I adore, yet I can persuade nobody to read him. The History of the Somerville Family, which I have seen in MS., is soon to be printed, and that of Sutherland is to be out shortly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Manuscript: MS book
'I read Celery through from cover to cover last night in bed. It really is good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
' "I have been reading Grey Wethers," said the Marquis- "a magnificent book. The descriptions of the downs are as fine as any in the language. Such power! Such power! Not a pleasant book of course! But what English!" '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Curzon Print: Book
'Vanessa [Bell] wrote [to her sister Virginia Woolf] from Charleston (n.d., Berg [Collection]): "I have been for the last 3 days completely submerged in The Waves -- & am left rather gasping, out of breath, choking, half drowned, as you might expect. I must read it again when I may hope to float more quietly -- but meanwhile I'm so overcome by the beauty ...'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell Print: Book
Extract of letter to Virginia Woolf from E. M. Forster, copied by Woolf in diary entry of 16 November 1931:
'"I expect I shall write to you again when I have re read The Waves. I have been looking in it & talking about it at Cambridge. Its difficult to express oneself about a work which one feels to be so very important but I've the sort of excitement over it which comes from believing that one's encountered a classic."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
Thursday 21 July 1932: 'Alice Ritchie ringing me up [...] said "One thing I want to say. Please dont go so far away in your next book". She had just re-read The Waves: magnificent: but loneliness almost unbearable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Ritchie Print: Book
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written:
'Reading this August:
Souvenirs de Tocqueville
Any number of biographies --
Coleridge -- one or two poems.
Lord Kilbracken memoirs.
Shaw Pen portraits.
Ainslie memoirs.
Vita's novel
[...]
Nothing much good --
except de T:
Coleridges letters; but failed
to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 7 July 1933: 'Being headachy [...] I have spent the whole morning reading old diaries, and am now (10 to 1) much refreshed. This is by way of justifying these many written books [...] The diary amuses me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Satirday 2 September 1933: 'I am reading with extreme greed a book by Vera Britain [sic], called The Testament of Youth. Not that I much like her. A stringy metallic mind, with I suppose, the sort of taste I should dislike in real life. But her story, told in detail, without reserve, of the war, & how she lost lover & brother, & dabbled her hands in entrails [as nurse] [...] runs rapidly, vividly across my eyes. A very good book of its sort. The new sort, the hard anguished sort, that I could never write [comments further] [...] I give her credit for having lit up a long passage to me at least. I read & read & read & neglect Turgenev & Miss [Ivy] C[ompton]. Burnett.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Adam Smith, Sir [-] informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet,
Say Stella, - feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well-spent?
Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "they do well", said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is". Beattie's Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", but preferred the "Pastor Fido", of which he spoke with rapture'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Smith Print: Book
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'He sat down on the floor beside me, and helped me to look up "droil". "What's this?" he said, taking up my proofs. I simpered. He took them out into the garden, spread a rug very carefully on the grass, and began to read. I fled upstairs and packed. After an hour I re-appeared. The Laureate was still reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Bridges Manuscript: Sheet, Proofs
'Darling, do you know what I did last night after writing to you? I meant to finish my lecture, but fell to reading the Georgics (mine, not Virgil's), and really I thought they were rather good.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
His reading this summer included much Browning, Turgenev's Smoke and Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age ('which surely is the most beautiful book published for many years').
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'I was glad to have the enjoyment of reading Schlegel's History of Literature. It is a fine work, built on a sure foundation; and though I do not always agree with his taste, his feelings and his principles are exactly what I believe it is right to square one's own by'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'At home all day. Read Goethe's Life, and Tweddell's remains. The latter is very invigorating, showing great animation of soul, joined to a high moral character. Goethe's Life does not make the reader love him - not as far as I have read at least'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'You seem so much interested with the translation of "Pastor Fido" that I shall take the liberty of sending it to you, that you may judge of its merits: not being skilled in the Italian tongue I cannot possibly give an opinion of it as a [italics] translation [end italics]. As anything else, I do not like it, nor ever liked pastorals or pastoral writing, even of the first order, further than as vehicles for fine poetry; and then the poetry would have pleased me better had it spoken for itself, than from the mouth of a creature to me so inconceivable as a shepherd or shepherdess, whose chief, or rather [italics] only [end italics] characteristics are innocence and simplicity. I am sorry to say they are but too apt to be insipid and uninteresting to those who merely read about them [she continues this critique at length, concluding] It may be owing to some defect in my mind that I really never yet knew an interesting pastoral character, or cared a straw about whether they hanged themselves upon the first willow, or drowned themselves in the neighbouring brook. I can enter into the delights of Homer's gods, and follow to their darkest recesses Milton's devils, and delight in the absurdities and extravagancies of Shakespeare's men and women, but I never could sympathise in the sufferings of even Virgil's shepherd swains'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'to return to "Pastor Fido", with whom I have not yet finished, - I must tell you, that though I (what a great authority!) do not take pleasure in this said translation of the "Pastor Fido" of Guarino, many of the wise folks here admire it beyond measure. Walter Scott and Wilson are of these and therefore there must be something worthy to excite the commendations of such men as they are, though I cannot discover its beauties. I suppose it is for the reason I already mentioned, that to me there is nothing so insupportable as a pastoral life. The shepherds and shepherdesses are always simpletons and viragoes, and that rule is faithfully adhered to in this instance, with the addition of an [italics] Arcadian [end italics] nymph in a [italics] wig [end italics]!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'[...] you remind me a little of Flaubert, whose "Madame Bovary" I have just reread with respectful admiration.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Sunday 17 December: 'I dined with Clive [Bell] to see Sickert the other night [15 December] [...] he [Sickert]'s chiselled, severe; has read: was reading Goldoni he said. & Flaubert's letters.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Sickert Print: Book
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of startling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 2 October 1934:
'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]:
Sh[akespea]re. Troilus.
Pericles.
Taming of Shrew.
Cymbeline.
Maupassant.
de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS]
St Simon.
Gide.
Library books: Powys
Wells
Lady Brooke.
Prose. Dobree.
Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 17 October 1934: 'I am so sleepy. Is this age? I cant shake it off. And so gloomy. Thats [writing] the end of the book [The Years]. I looked up past diaries -- a reason for keeping them -- & found the same misery after Waves.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Sunday 14 April 1935: 'Now for Alfieri & Nash & other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night [...] I read Annie S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from an Au[tobiograph]y: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she cant count, & has no illusions about, but she cant stop telling stories, are wash, pigs, hogs -- any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Belchamber (1904) by Howard ("Howdie") Overing Sturgis (1855-1920), a prosperous American expatriate, has for its principal character "Sainty" -- the Marquis and Earl of Belchamber. V[rginia] W[oolf] read the "World's Classics" edition of 1935, with an introduction by Gerard Hopkins which draws a portrait of the author.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 7 September 1935: 'A heavenly quiet morning reading Alfieri by the open window & not smoking [...] I've stopped 2 days now The Years [novel in progress]:& feel the power to settle, calmly & firmly on books coming back at once. John Bailey's life, come today, makes me doubt though -- what? Everything [...] I've only just glanced & got the smell of Lit. dinner. Lit. Sup, Lit this that & the other -- & the one remark to the effect that Virginia Woolf, of all people, has been given Cowper by Desmond [MacCarthy], & likes it! I, who read Cowper when I was 15 -- d----d nonsense.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
From Appendix ('Biographical Outlines of Persons Most Frequently Mentioned') to The Diary of Virginia Woolf vol.4: 'Reading V[irginia] W[oolf]'s A Room of One's Own fired [Ethel Smyth] with the desire to meet the author, which she did in 1930'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
'I don?t know whether the translation from the Russian, "The Golovleff Family", (published by Knopf out your way) is any good, but the book is great. I read it twice in French.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Saturday 15 March 1919: '[Mary Agnes Hamilton] told me a curious thing about the sensibilities of my family -- Adrian [Stephen] had asked her to tell me how much he'd liked The Voyage Out, which he has just read for the first time, & is too shy to write & tell me so himself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Adrian Stephen Print: Book
Sunday 20 April 1919: 'In the idleness which succeeds [writing] any long article [...] I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat. I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this hereafter that I can write very much better [...] And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash & vigour, & sometimes hits an unexpected bulls eye [goes on to discuss further reasons for, and artistic benefits of, keeping diary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Codex
Sunday 21 June 1936, during composition of The Years: 'A very strange, most remarkable summer [...] I am learning my craft in the most fierce conditions. Really reading Flaubert's letters I hear my own voice cry out Oh art! Patience. Find him consoling, admonishing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 2 April 1937: ''Maynard is reading The Years. & is enthusiastic.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Print: Book
'In the early thirties she had read a lot of French, starting with Stendhal: and a chunk of his "De l'amour", in the French, found its way into "To the North". In 1932 she was reading for the first time Flaubert's "L'education sentimentale", and told Lady Ottoline:
"What perfect writing, and what a clear powerful mind, and what a perfect picture of an enchantment he can produce. And what compass he has: this picture of colour and movement compared with the sad immobility of poor Bovary."
A few months later she began translating it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
'I hope you do not estimate my mind by Davie Laing's canting and insolent review or by your friend Goldie's lies [Hogg then complains at Boyd's unwillingness to publish "The Three Perils of Man"] I neither could have expected such an insolent nor such an ignorant review from D. Laing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I cannot think one thing and say another to a friend or indeed to any man and it was owing to a review written by you in the Edin. Quarterly of The Mountain Bard that hindered me to call as I was wont. I thought that article illiberal from a friend and wrong view taken of the Memoir but I am so used to these rubs that I have learned the virtue of forgiveness a good deal; and hereby promise and swear that now when I have told you what I felt that article shall never be mentioned nor thought of more between the writer and me, [italics] whoever he may be [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
Tuesday 24 May 1937: 'I'm pleased this morning because Lady Rhondda writes that she is "profoundly excited & moved by 3Gs." Theo Bosanquet who has a review copy read her extracts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Theodora Bosanquet Print: Book
Philippa Strachey to Virginia Woolf, 30 May 1938: 'I have read [Three Guineas] with rapture -- It is what we have panted for for years and years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philippa Strachey Print: Book
Thursday 9 February 1939: 'Looking at my old Greek diary I was led to speculate [...] I won't budge from the scheme there (1932) laid down for treating decline of fame. To accept; then ignore; & always venture further.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Thursday 7 March 1940: 'A fortnight -- well on Saturday it will be a fortnight -- with influenza [...] before getting into bed that bitter [previous Saturday] afternoon I read my epitaph -- Mrs W. died so soon, in the N.S. & was pleased to support that dismissal very tolerably [...] And read all Havelock Ellis, a cautious cumulative, teased & tired book; too pressed down with that very common woman, Edith [Lees, Ellis's wife]: so I judged her, but she was life to him [...] He's honest & clear but thick [illegible] & too like the slow graceful Kangaroo with its cautious soft leaps. But thats much due to influenza.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 15 November 1940: 'I had a gaping raw wound too reading my essay in N.W. Why did I? Why come to the top when I suffer so in that light?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'My copy of 'Margaret' is in such demand since the review in the Athenaeum; it is pledged 3 deep'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'She [Florence Nightingale] never reads any books now. she has not time for it, to begin with; and secondly she says life is so vivid that books seem poor. The latter volumes of Bunsen are the only books that she even looked into here'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
Tuesday 30 March 1937: 'Ethel rings up to say she has re-read Years, under Miss [Alice] Hudson [JP]'s direction, & finds it no longer unintelligible, but superb -- How can this be true of any mind?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
'I doubt if you ought to call France & Flaubert "dry". "L’Education Sentimentale" ought to be read with ease. Ditto "Thais", & "La Rotisserie". Personally, though, I think France over-rated. You ought to read "Bubu de Montparnasse" of Charles Louis Philippe. This is a great little novel, one of the finest modern French novels. I think "Coeur simple" is the best thing Flaubert ever wrote, except his correspondence, which is his best work, & ought to be read. I tell you that Lytton Strachey’s "Eminent Victorians" is a most juicy & devastating affair, I thoroughly enjoyed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I doubt if you ought to call France & Flaubert "dry". "L’Education Sentimentale" ought to be read with ease. Ditto "Thais", & "La Rotisserie". Personally, though, I think France over-rated. You ought to read "Bubu de Montparnasse" of Charles Louis Philippe. This is a great little novel, one of the finest modern French novels. I think "Coeur simple" is the best thing Flaubert ever wrote, except his correspondence, which is his best work, & ought to be read. I tell you that Lytton Strachey’s "Eminent Victorians" is a most juicy & devastating affair, I thoroughly enjoyed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I wanted to thank you for the volume you've sent me. The preface is jolly good let me tell you. It is wonderfully good--and true. Thanks to you both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'we have just been reading Elsie Venner & we were altogether [italics] very [end italics] American yesterday'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughter 'Meta' or Margaret Print: Book
'It was only a month before or perhaps it was only a week before, that I had read to him aloud from beginning to end, and to his perfect satisfaction, as he lay on the bed not being very well at the time, the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea". Such was[...] my first introduction to the sea in literature. [...] I am not likely to forget the process of being trained in the art of reading aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Codex, Sheet, Conrad's father's translation into Polish.
'Have you seen the last vol of Mrs Garnett's Turgeniev? There's a story there. "Three Portraits" really fine. Also "Enough" worth reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical
'Pardon my frankness. This is most distinctly an idea for a play. And you have put everything into it except the play. [The Sane Star]... Play returned herewith. A.B.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
'I was so sorry to see that Dr Wendell Holmes called England "The Lost Leader". - I went & read the poem to Meta, who did not know it; - & we did so grieve!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
'I've read " Petersburg Tales". Phew! That is something! [...] That work is genuine, undeniable, constructed and inhabited. It hath [sic] foundation and life.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'As to "Charlotte" the genuineness of its conception the honesty of its feeling make that work as welcome as a breath of fresh air to a breast oppressed by all the fumes and cheap perfumes of fiction that is [sic ]thrown on the altar of publicity in the hopes of propitiating the god of big sales. It is refreshing indeed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'It's wonderful how well sustained is the excellence of "Charlotte".I've just read the last instalment [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'The more I read the book, the more wonderful it seems to me. It is really a great book. Arthur says, and I more than agree with him, that the passage about Pyramus and Thisbe will, in the future, be regarded as one of the greatest passages in English literature. As I say, I agree, but the whole book in its entirety is to me like some wonderful and unspeakably moving music. It excites one, moves one, intoxicates one to an incredible degree. The worst is, it unfits one for daily life. To have to eat one's lunch in the middle of reading it is practically impossible. And I got, literally, no sleep after it, on Friday night. I couldn't sleep after it. This isn't talent - not even great talent- not even a great gift - it is genius. You know what my pride in you is. I am most terribly proud to be your sister.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 18 March 1845:
'I have the first volume of Victor Hugo's "Odes et Ballades," but they are slavishly loyal to those vile old Bourbons. What could he see in them? I suppose I shall like the second volume better.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15 January 1846:
'Papa used to say .. "Dont read Gibbon's history -- it's not a proper book -- Dont read "Tom Jones" -- & none of the books on [italics]this[end italics] side, mind -- So I was very obedient & never touched the books on [italics]that[end italics] side, & only read instead, Tom Paine's Age of Reason, & Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, & Hume's Essays, & Werther, & Rousseau, & Mary Woolstonecraft [sic] .. books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, & which were not "on [italics]that[end italics] side" certainly, but which did as well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15 January 1846:
'Papa used to say .. "Dont read Gibbon's history -- it's not a proper book -- Dont read "Tom Jones" -- & none of the books on [italics]this[end italics] side, mind -- So I was very obedient & never touched the books on [italics]that[end italics] side, & only read instead, Tom Paine's Age of Reason, & Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, & Hume's Essays, & Werther, & Rousseau, & Mary Woolstonecraft [sic] .. books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, & which were not "on [italics]that[end italics] side" certainly, but which did as well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
'I like the books which we purchased though the Physiological Botany is rather too minute & supposes the Reader a Learner indeed. The Travels are I think really good & good humoured. Faust was not so terrific as I apprehended from the seduction of a Philosopher by an evil Spirit. I verily think that Business is conducted better (than in far more ostentatious works) in the Arabian Tales, (not Nights) where a pious old Lady is wrought upon by her Vanity into Compliance with a Devil who takes the Character of a pious old Man:I want this second part of these strange Tales & to have done with the Subject of Books I treated myself with Warton's History of Poetry: I have long wished for it, but the Quarto edition was so dear £ 5 that I waited for a Octavo & it is just published: it has a great deal of dull Matter but with much Information & Amusement & moreover it is in the way of my Vocation. There is a good Print of the Author & John having seen that, I believe has no wish to look a page further.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair.
Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair.
Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903:
'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 5 March 1905:
'De Vigny has come. I haven't read him all, but I'm rather disappointed: isn't he rather metallic? I read a good deal in odd moments, & a curious mixture, I think. A book I have always meant to do, I finished last week & could hardly put down at all, The Life of Parnell [...] Also the Life of Russell by the same man [R. B. O'Brien] & [Disraeli's] Coningsby which is absolutely preposterous, & [Voltaire's] La Dictionnaire Philosophique.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 3 September 1905:
'Euphrosne arrived. It is a queer medley. There are only 3 things in it wh. I ever want to read again, the Cat [by Strachey], Ningamus & the thing about the song, I forget its name.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906:
'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'Read [italics] The Captain's Doll [end italics] [D.H. Lawrence] again (about the 8th time I think) and like it better than ever. Odd how again, though, the woman is more real than the man. The man is a mouthpiece for the right ideas but he doesn't quite [italics] exist [end italics]. Hannele exists yet the doll is oddly more alive than the Captain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'The clerk who cashes my cheques at the bank is quite a bright, intelligent-looking boy. To-day I had a copy of [italics] Bouvard et Pecuchet [end italics]. He looked at it with curiosity then said "I expect you think I'm rude, looking like that. But I used to read a lot of those sorts of books once" "What sort of books?" "Oh, yellow books like that. I picked up a lot in a booksellers. But mine were much bigger than that" "What were they?" "Oh I don't remember their names or what they were about" "Do you remember the authors?" "Can't say I do. I seem to remember one was some sort of a Japanese story" "And they were in French?" "Oh yes, in French of course".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'D.H. Lawrence draws so heavily on his own life - yet how often the best and freest part of his writing is his invention - like the wife in "The Captain's Doll".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'I was idly looking at [italics] Jacob's Room [end italics] tonight. It exasperated yet charmed me. Here was an attempt to relate day and night. She [Virginia Woolf] lays her little strands side by side instead of working them into a patern. But perhaps it is because there is no solid structure underneath that it leaves me with this curious empty and dissatisfied feeling. In the last book it is beaten out so thin that it is threadbare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 29 September 1907:
'I read Madame Bovary again as I went up to Hatton in the train last week to look after cattle disease. As I read it again, it seemed to me to be the saddest & most beautiful book I had ever read. Surely it is the beginning & end of realism [comments further].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Stephen, 29 April 1912:
'I've read two of your MSS from one of which at any rate one can see that you might write something astonishingly good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
'On the other hand, the most pleasurable thing, which has befallen me was receiving two packets, from England, in the same night: the one a letter of fifteen pages from Mr Baillie; the other a collection of autographs from his Opposite. What do you think? among these were a letter from Goethe, and a fragment of a letter from Byron!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Autographs
'And here give me Leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies who have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the Name of a [italics] Writer [end italics]; the first is Madam [italics] Dacier [end italics], whose Learning Mr [italics] Pope [end italiocs], while he is indebted to for all the notes on [italics] Homer [end italics], endeavours to depreciate; the second is Mrs. [italics] Catherine Philips [end italics], the matchless [italics] Orinda [end italics], celebrated by Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics], Lord [italics] Orrery [end italics], and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time.
I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of the [italics] English[end italics] Numbers; Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics]'s, though full of Wit, have somewhat harsh and uncouth in them, while her Sentiments are great, and virtuous; her Diction natural, easy, flowing, and harmonious.
Love she has wrote upon with Warmth, but then it was such as Angels might share in without injuring their oringinal purity. Her Elegy on her Husband's Daughter, is a Proof of the Excellency and Tenderness of her own Heart, rarely met with in a Stepmother; nor could I ever read it without tears, a Proof it was wrote from her Heart'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'(I read it through at a sitting - but that of course is not a good test...)
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
'I let Colonel Haworth read a bit of it. "By God!" he said, "this is the first book I've read on Persia which gives one the slightest idea what it's like." '
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Haworth
'Dearest - you don't know what "The Land" means to me! I read it incessantly - it has become a real wide undertone to my life.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson
'After dinner, (a delicious dinner), Virginia read us her memoir of Old Bloomsbury. She had read it to me already at Saulieu, but I loved hearing it again; I want you to hear it.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
'My own darling, I write to you in the middle of reading "Orlando", in such a turmoil of excitement and confusion that I scarcely know where (or who!) I am. It came this morning by the first post and I have been reading it ever since, and am now half-way through. Virginia sent it to me in a lovely leather binding - bless her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 July 1911:
'When you have a spare day [...] do send me some Indian papers -- the Pioneer, and if possible something Nationalist & semi-seditious. I have read Chiriol's book, and am anxious to taste the Journalism direct [...] I can't get hold of anything over here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Moreover, her train had arrived one-and-a-half hours before luncheon, so she had gone to the Paddington Hotel and sat in the lounge reading P.G.Wodehouse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
'I had time yesterday to read your poem. In fact I read it three times. Once in the train. Once after luncheon in the library. And once before I went to bed.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson
'Did you ever read Turgenev's "Letters of a Sportsman?" If you never did, do so at once: they are the finest things that were ever written.
I would rather have written "Bielshin Prairie" than have done anything else in the realm of human achievements'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have been too much bothered & depressed by the S.L. ['South Lodge', Ford's code for Violet Hunt] book to write [...] In the meantime Rebecca [West] naturally has sailed in & made matters excruciatingly more disagreeable. She has told several people that V.H. is an admirable and martyred saint & that every word in the book is true.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have been too much bothered & depressed by the S.L. ['South Lodge', Fiord's code for Violet Hunt] book to write [...] In the meantime Rebecca [West] naturally has sailed in & made matters excruciatingly more disagreeable. She has told several people that V.H. is an admirable and martyred saint & that every word in the book is true.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rebecca West Print: Book
'I took the Boni brothers out to lunch at a speak-easy & Albert said (A.) he had read SL's memoirs completely through & could find nothing in it but a most touching tribute to myself & that in it I stand out as a tremendous hero of romance!!!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Boni Print: Book
'I read about your earlier dinner quite by accident in "Books" - & by the way I have never had the copy with your Stephen Crane article. I liked [underlined] very [end underlining] much the article about Ezra -
I have read Hemingway's book - It seems pretty good. I like that hard clean sort of effect - but I think it gives also the effect of brittleness - or is that nonsense? It is also rather dazzling & tiring. He has touched me off rather nastily - rather on Jean's lines - So I feel very discouraged! Even you don't quite escape. Still its all of no consequence.
Jenny had Violet's book lying about yesterday, which really [underlined] did [end underlining] rather upset me - The Envoi appears to say, that with someone who has had so [underlined] many [end underlining] final grand Passions there will [underlined] never [end underlining] be [underlined] any [end underlining] means of knowing who was really "the" one!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
'Sutton and Larkin grew steadily closer as they moved up through the senior school. Tiring of their childish reading, they turned to weightier matters, Larkin discovering D.H. Lawrence and Sutton "retaliating with Cezanne".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
'This 'new direction' [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'Before the meeting, Larkin had no detailed knowledge of Watkins's work - what he had read, including the newly published "Ballad of the Mari Lwyd", seemed to him too full of symbols, too arty, too removed from the recognizably modern world described by Auden.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'In all seriousness he [Victor Gollancz] could flaunt a prophetic grandeur, or perhaps simply uncontrolled showmanship, which would have been comic in less traumatic contexts: for instance, in the title of his pamphlet on the Nazi brutality to Jews, apostrophising not only Hitler but all other rulers - "Let my People Go" - words befitting a Moses, not a Gollancz'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser
#Last night I set to work and Bob wrote to my dictation three or four pages of "V. Hugo's Romances" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'We were very much pleased with Mr Lovell Edgeworth's narrative which Mrs Marcet showed us, a very little addition from your pen would have made a very delightful fashionable tale'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
'Goldsmiths description of the Appennines is exact - "Woods over Woods in [italics] gay theatric pride [end italics]". Never was epithet more appropriate to the whole scenery'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
'Mr Schlegel's Essays are most certainly worth reading, altho' you will not entirely agree with him in many of his opinions'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'We have been much instructed by the readings on poetry and long for the Irish Tales'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Romilly Family Print: Book
'Reggie Smith, also a producer at the BBC, was married to the novelist Olivia Manning. She was to draw him with exquisite accuracy, and some bitterness, as Guy in her series of novels, The Balkan trilogy - schoolboy innocence, unthinking cruelty, shallow enthusiasms, superficially generous-spirited and outgoing but essentially egotistical, a mixture of coldness and an insatiable need for warmth'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with examples including Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes ('how silly the book becomes when the witchcraft starts, how worse than silly when it culminates').
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including: 'Bunny's books are so good because they [italics]don't[end italics] go off. A Man at the Zoo [sic] fails at the end because the author daren't put the lady into the cage as well as the man. But Fox and Sailor strengthen steadily.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including: 'Bunny's books are so good because they [italics]don't[end italics] go off. A Man at the Zoo [sic] fails at the end because the author daren't put the lady into the cage as well as the man. But Fox and Sailor strengthen steadily.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including: 'Bunny's books are so good because they [italics]don't[end italics] go off. A Man at the Zoo [sic] fails at the end because the author daren't put the lady into the cage as well as the man. But Fox and Sailor strengthen steadily.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including 'V. of W. gets out of his [depth] 1/2 way through -- after the painting of the family group with Mrs Primrose as Venus all the grace and wit vanishes [...] the happy ending to the tragedy makes all worse than ever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'On the 6th of March came out Lord Bolingbroke's works, published by Mr David Mallet. The wild and pernicious ravings, under the name of [italics] Philosophy [end italics], which were thus ushered into the world, gave great offence to all well-principled men.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Texts from which passages quoted in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book, 1931-32, include remarks on animal genitalia in Voltaire, Des Singularites de la Nature (incorporating comments such as 'Ce mecanisme est bien admirable; mais la sensation que la nature a jointe a ce mecanisme est plus admirable encore').
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I at this time kept up a very frequent correspondence with Sir David [Dalrymple]; and I read to Dr. Johnson to-night the following passage from the letter which I had last received from him:
"It gives me pleasure to think that you have obtained the friendship of Mr. Samnel Johnson. He is one of the best moral writers which England has produced. At the same time, I envy you the free and undisguised converse with such a man. May I beg you to present my respects to him, and to assure him of the veneration which I entertain for the author of the 'Rambler' and of 'Rasselas'? Let me recommend this work to you; with the 'Rambler' you certainly are acquainted. In 'Rasselas' you will see a tender-hearted operator, who probes the wound only to heal it. Swift, on the contrary, mangles human nature. He cuts and slashes, as if he took pleasure in the operation, like the tyrant who said, [italics] Ita feri ut se sentiat emori [end italics]." Johnson seemed to be much gratified by this just and well-turned compliment.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter
'The conversation now turned upon Mr. David Hume's style. Johnson. "Why, Sir, his style is not English; the structure of his sentences is French. Now the French structure and the English structure may, in the nature of things, be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is established, he is wrong. My name might originally have been Nicholson, as well as Johnson ; but were you to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. If I could have allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expence of truth, what fame might I have acquired Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited, that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so that there may be objections raised against any thing. There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum; yet one of them must certainly be true."
I mentioned Hume's argument against the belief of miracles, that it is more probable that the witnesses to the truth of them are mistaken, or speak falsely, than that the miracles should be true. [Johnson then argues against this]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. If I could have allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expence of truth, what fame might I have acquired Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited, that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so that there may be objections raised against any thing. There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum; yet one of them must certainly be true."
I mentioned Hume's argument against the belief of miracles, that it is more probable that the witnesses to the truth of them are mistaken, or speak falsely, than that the miracles should be true. [Johnson then argues against this]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'He said of Goldsmith's "Traveller," which had been published in my absence, "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'I meant to inform you, that besides those books already mentioned, I sent for Bishop Horne's Sermons, 4 vols. Carr's Sermons, Blairs Sermons, 5vols. Scott's Christian Life, 5vols. several leaned and sensible expositions of the Bible; Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, with the Fragments; Josephus' Works, Prideaux's Connections, 4vols. Mrs H. More's Works, and various other excellent Works. For some time one sermon was read on every Sunday, but soon Mrs L. began to like them, and then two or three were read in the course of the week; at last one at least was ready every day, and very often part of some other book in divinity, as Mrs. L said that she preferred such kind of reading far beyond the reading of novels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'When I talked of our [the Scots'] advancement in literature, "Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have written History, had not Voltaire written it before him. He is an echo of Voltaire." Boswell "But, Sir, we have Lord Kames." Johnson. "You [italics] have [italics] Lord Кames. Keep him; ha, ha, ha! We don't envy you him. Do you ever see Dr. Robertson?" Boswell. "Yes, Sir." Johnson. "Does the dog talk of me ?" Boswell. "Indeed, Sir, he does, and loves you." Thinking that I now had him in a corner, and being solicitous for the literary fame of my country, I pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robertson's "History of Scotland". But, to my surprise, he escaped.—" Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him powerfully ; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it: his love verses were college verses; and he repeated the song "Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains," &c. in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence of amorons ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by saying, "My dear Lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense."
Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry ; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in "Florizel and Perdita," and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:
"I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Thrale Print: Book
Passages transcribed at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1932) include extract from Voltaire, Charles XII Book 3 (on the execution of Jean Reginald Patkul, ambassador of the Czar), accompanied by comment:
'Each time I read the magnificent passage above -- at last transcribed -- I am struck by the economy of the [italics]irony[end italics] and even of the [italics]pathos[end italics]. Yet the whole passage vibrates with both. There is a sort of religious grandeur -- cruelty and cowardice are both noted without contempt.
'When will there be such writing again, or even the leisure to transcribe it? Voltaire and I do speak the same language, vast though be the difference in our vocabularies, we are both civilised [...] We belong to the cultured interlude which came between the fall of barbarism and the rise of universal "education" [...] We believe in reason, in pity, and in not always coming out right -- that is to say I hope to be logical and compassionate'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed at length into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1938) include 'Lenin-cum-Stalin on literature. Being a 2nd instalment of Les Grands Textes du Marxism.'
Forster's accompanying comments include: 'Leninism less cultured than Marxism -- i.e. less interested in the creation and enjoyment of works of art. But it does not openly denounce individualism or recommend corporate emotion, as the Nazis do. There seems no reason why Communism, if left in peace, should not become civilised.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
[under heading Voltaire's Zaide] 'The warmth of feeling between Z. and Orasmane, the easiness of the action (except in the frigid double-recognition scene) suprised me, and as I cannot appreciate the badness of the French as Lytton [?Strachey] could; I enjoyed the play and should like to see it acted.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'He [Dr Johnson] said, "Goldsmith's 'Life of Parnell' is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and sat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the "London Chronicle" Dr. Goldsmith's apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookseller, on account of a paragraph 5 in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. The apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson's manner that both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his; but when he came home, he soon undeceived us. When he said to Mrs. Williams, "Well, Dr. Goldsmith's manifesto has got into your paper;" I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though subscribed by Goldsmith. Johnson. "Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to write such a thing as that for him than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do any thing else that denoted his imbecility. I as much believe that he wrote it as if I had seen him do it".'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'That detestable father [italics]St Jerome[end italics], thus reacts to the Fall of Rome:--
'[...] When the refugees [...] began to reach Palestine: "I was long silent, knowing that it was the time for tears. Since to relieve them all was impossible, we joined our lamentations with theirs [...]" [...] Virgil's "Urbas antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos" quoted, which I myself was to read 1500 [sic] later, after seeing the Docks on fire from my roof in Chiswick.
'[Extracted from Hodgkin. Jerome has to leave Rome for the desert because he found the ladies too charming there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
[Following heading 'St Augustine'] 'Some questions raised rather than solved in Figges' [sic] "Political Aspects of the City of God" [goes on to transcribe extracts and add own notes and queries].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'The Ordeal of Mark Twain by a bothered and bothering American of the psychoanalysing 20s has succeeded in bothering me a bit [discusses text further, drawing comparisons between Twain's, and own, experiences of ageing and senses of failure].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'[Tennyson] was sent to the Grammar School [at Louth] [...] I still have the books which he used there, his Ovid, Delectus, Analecta Graeca Minora, and the old Eton Latin Grammar, originally put together by Erasmus, Lilly and Colet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
'Whewell, who was [Tennyson's] tutor, he called "the lion-like man" and had for him a great respect. It is reported that Whewell, recognising his genius, tolerated in him certain informalities which he would not have overlooked in other men. Thus, "Mr Tennyson, what's the compound interest of a penny put out at the Christian era up to the present time?" was Whewell's good-natured call to attention in the Lecture Room while my father was reading Virgil under the desk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged]
'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
Arthur Hallam to Alfred Tennyson from Forest House, Leyton, Essex, 4 October 1830:
'I am living here in a very pleasant place, an old country mansion, in the depths of the Forest [...] I have been studious too, partly after my fashion, and partly after my father [historian Henry Hallam]'s; i.e. I read six books of Herodotus with him, and I take occasional plunges into David Hartley, and Buhle's Philosophie Moderne for my own gratification.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple Manuscript: Unknown
'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] I have at last sent back Lord Hailes's sheets, I never think about returning them, because I alter nothing. You will see that I might as well have kept them. However, I am ashamed of my delay; and if I have the honour of receiving any more, promise punctually to return them by the next post'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'[Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Lord Hailes writes to me [...] "I am singularly obliged to Dr. Johnson for accurate and useful criticisms. Had he given some strictures on the general plan of the work, it would have added much to his favours". He is charmed with your verses on Inchkenneth, says they are very elegant, but bids me tell you he doubts whether " [italics] Legitimat faciunt pectora pura preces [end italics]" be according to the rubrick ; but that is your concern; for, you know, he is a Presbyterian.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes Manuscript: Unknown
'I have just made my will and am reading Aimard's novels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'To Olive Schreiner's "Woman and Labour" - that "Bible of the Woman's Movement" which sounded to the world of 1911 as insistent and inspiring as a trumpet-call summoning the faithful to a vital crusade - was due my final acceptance of feminism.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'During the next few weeks I spent a good many troubled, speculative, exciting hours with the little volume clasped in my hands.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson to 'Mr Malan', 14 November 1883:
'I can assure you I am innocent as far as I am aware of knowing one line of Statius; and of Ovid's "Epicedion" I never heard. I have searched for it in vain in a little three volume edition of Ovid which I have here, but that does not contain this poem'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
[Aubrey De Vere writes] 'In 1854 I went [...] to Farringford, where the poet [Tennyson] then made abode with his wife and two children [...] in the afternoon we sometimes read aloud in the open air, or rather we listened to the Poet's reading [...] On one occasion our book, which we agreed in greatly admiring, was Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House, then recent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and Aubrey De Vere Print: Book
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I purpose to return all the next week: that his respect for my little observations should keep his work in suspense makes one of the evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode of history which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Renault without his constraint.
Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your "Journal" that she almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'Oct. 25. Wednesday. I went with the Prior to St. Cloud, to see Dr. Hooke.—We walked round the palace, and had some talk.—I dined with our whole company at the Monastery.—In the library, "Beroald",—"Cymon",—"Titus", from Boccace.—"Oratio Proverbialis" to the Virgin, from Petrarch; Falkland to Sandys;—Dryden's Preface to the third vol. of Miscellanies.'
[Boswell's footnote: 'He means, I suppose, that he read those different pieces, while he remained in the library'.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Oct. 25. Wednesday. I went with the Prior to St. Cloud, to see Dr. Hooke.—We walked round the palace, and had some talk.—I dined with our whole company at the Monastery.—In the library, "Beroald",—"Cymon",—"Titus", from Boccace.—"Oratio Proverbialis" to the Virgin, from Petrarch; Falkland to Sandys;—Dryden's Preface to the third vol. of Miscellanies.'
[Boswell's footnote: 'He means, I suppose, that he read those different pieces, while he remained in the library'.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[Letter to Boswell] I Have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While I was in France, I looked very often into Henault; but Lord Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's uneasiness on account of a degree of ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's "History of Animated Nature", in which that celebrated mathematician is represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no reparation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Maclaurin Print: Book
' [Johnson said] Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" have not that painted form which is the taste of this age; but it is a book which will always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with certainty.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [letter from Boswell to Johnson] Without doubt you have read what is called "The Life of David Hume", written by himself, with the letter from Dr. Adam Smith subjoined to it. Is not this an age of daring effrontery?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Mallet's "Life of Bacon" has no inconsiderable merit as an acute and elegant dissertation relative to its subject; but Mallet's mind was not comprehensive enough to embrace the vast extent of Lord Verulam's genius and research. Dr. Warburton therefore observed, with witty justness, "that Mallet, in his "Life of Bacon", had forgotten that he was a philosopher; and if he should write the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, which he had undertaken to do, he would probably forget that he was a general".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Mallet's "Life of Bacon" has no inconsiderable merit as an acute and elegant dissertation relative to its subject; but Mallet's mind was not comprehensive enough to embrace the vast extent of Lord Verulam's genius and research. Dr. Warburton therefore observed, with witty justness, "that Mallet, in his "Life of Bacon", had forgotten that he was a philosopher; and if he should write the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, which he had undertaken to do, he would probably forget that he was a general".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Warburton Print: Book
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Bennet Langton Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Fox Print: Unknown
'I comforted myself last night when I couldn't sleep, by reading those truly wonderful passages about the shells and sea -nymphs in Sacred and Profane Love. What miraculous beauty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'I read […] Olivier Basselin […]
"On dit qu’il nuit aux yeux; mais
seront-ils les maistres?
Le vin est guarison
De mes maux; J’aime mieux perdre
les deux fenestres
Que toute la maison"
(That’s O. Basselin; [italics]c’est assez choite, n’est-ce pas?[end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'Since my books have come I have read every day ... 100 or thereby pp of Stewart's Highland Regiments.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Lord Dufferin to Alfred Tennyson [1858]:
'For the first 20 years of my life I not only did not care for poetry, but to the despair of my friends absolutely disliked it, at least so much of it as until that time had fallen in my way. In vain my mother read to me Dryden, Pope, Byron, Young, Cowper and all the standard classics of the day, each seemed to me as distasteful as I had from early infancy found Virgil, and I shall never forget her dismay when at a literary dinner I was cross-examined as to my tastes, and blushingly confessed before an Olympus of poets that I rather disliked poetry than otherwise.
'Soon afterwards I fell in with a volume of yours, and suddenly felt such a sensation of delight as I never experienced before. A new world seemed to open to me, and from that day, by a constant study of your works, I gradually worked my way to a gradual appreciation of what is good in all kinds of authors.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood Print: Book
'The note announced, a little defiantly, that the writer had read, "with the utmost pleasure," my novel "The Dark Tide", and asked me in return to accept "the enclosed" - which, it said, there was no necessity to acknowledge.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'[Johnson said] "I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield", which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: 'I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing'." BOSWELL. "That was a fine passage". JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: 'When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false'."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'shall insert as a literary curiosity. [The letter is given. It begins as follows]
"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,
In the year 1763, being at London, I was carried by Dr. John Blair, Prebendary of Westminster, to dine at old Lord Bathurst's; where we found the late Mr. Mallet, Sir James Porter, who had been Ambassadour at Constantinople, the late Dr. Macaulay, and two or three more. The conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us, that "The Essay on Man" was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own hand-writing; and remembered well, that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse..."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst Manuscript: Unknown
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 18 May 1867:
'He [Tennyson] read the new version of one of the "Window Songs," "Take my Love"; Heine's "Songs"; and some of the Reign of Law. The chapter on "Law in Politics" was especially interesting to us. The quotations from A. expressed some of the deepest truths [...] With the boys he was reading Flodden Field, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and the 1st Georgic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and sons (Hallam and Lionel) Print: Book
'BOSWELL. "Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book?" JOHNSON. "No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her 'Life', says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, 'Dunton's Life and Errours', we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'BOSWELL. "Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book?" JOHNSON. "No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her 'Life', says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, 'Dunton's Life and Errours', we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Lord Hailes had sent him a present of a curious little printed poem, on repairing the University of Aberdeen, by David [italics] Malloch [end italics], which he thought would please Johnson, as affording clear evidence that Mallet had appeared even as a literary character by the name of Malloch; his changing which to one of softer sound, had given Johnson occasion to introduce him into his "Dictionary", under the article [italics] Alias[end italics]. This piece was, I suppose, one of Mallet's first essays. It is preserved in his works, with several variations. Johnson having read aloud, from the beginning of it, where there were some common-place assertions as to the superiority of ancient times;--"How false (said he) is all this, to say that in ancient times learning was not a disgrace to a Peer as it is now. In ancient times a Peer was as ignorant as any one else. He would have been angry to have it thought he could write his name. Men in ancient times dared to stand forth with a degree of ignorance with which nobody would dare now to stand forth".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'In this letter [to Boswell from Mr Mickle] he relates his having, while engaged in translating the "Lusiad", had a dispute of considerable length with Johnson, who, as usual, declaimed upon the misery and corruption of a sea life, and used this expression:--"It had been happy for the world, Sir, if your hero Gama, Prince Henry of Portugal, and Columbus, had never been born, or that their schemes had never gone farther than their own imaginations".
"This sentiment, (says Mr. Mickle,) which is to be found in his "Introduction to the World displayed", I, in my Dissertation prefixed to the "Lusiad", have controverted; and though authours are said to be bad judges of their own works, I am not ashamed to own to a friend, that that dissertation is my favourite above all that I ever attempted in prose. Next year, when the "Lusiad" was published, I waited on Dr. Johnson, who addressed me with one of his good-humoured smiles:--'Well, you have remembered our dispute about Prince Henry, and have cited me too. You have done your part very well indeed: you have made the best of your argument; but I am not convinced yet'."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[william Mickle said] Dr. Johnson told me in 1772, that, about twenty years before that time, he himself had a design to translate the "Lusiad", of the merit of which he spoke highly, but had been prevented by a number of other engagements'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I felt low and naturally prone to be irritable, and from the deep feeling of the difficulties in doing my part towards my family, led me to pant for liberation from those responsibilities which at times lie very heavily upon me. In this state I opened a book with something for every day in the year and met with something applicable to my wants that I shall transcribe it -
"Golden Treasury for the Children of God" is the title of the book by C.H.V. Bogatsky:
"Lord preserve me calm in spirit, gentle in my commands and watchful that I speak not unadvisably with my lips; moderate in my purposes, yielding in my temper where the honour of my God is not immediately concerned and ever steadfast where needful.
"Lord grant me thy protection, and may thy blessing be upon me, that I may not bring an evil report upon that good Lord. I was permitted to spy out; but walk honourably through the wilderness and pass triumphantly over Jordan into Canaan. Amen."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Fry Print: Book
'A distinguished authour in "The Mirror", a periodical paper, published at Edinburgh, has imitated Johnson very closely. Thus, in No. 16,--
"The effects of the return of spring have been frequently remarked as well in relation to the human mind as to the animal and vegetable world. The reviving power of this season has been traced from the fields to the herds that inhabit them, and from the lower classes of beings up to man. Gladness and joy are described as prevailing through universal Nature, animating the low of the cattle, the carol of the birds, and the pipe of the shepherd."
The Reverend Dr. KNOX, master of Tunbridge school, appears to have the [italics]imitari aveo [end italics] of Johnson's style perpetually in his mind; and to his assiduous, though not servile, study of it, we may partly ascribe the extensive popularity of his writings.
In his "Essays, Moral and Literary", No. 3, we find the following passage:--
"The polish of external grace may indeed be deferred till the approach of manhood. When solidity is obtained by pursuing the modes prescribed by our fore-fathers, then may the file be used. The firm substance will bear attrition, and the lustre then acquired will be durable."
There is, however, one in No. 11, which is blown up into such tumidity, as to be truly ludicrous. The writer means to tell us, that Members of Parliament, who have run in debt by extravagance, will sell their votes to avoid an arrest, which he thus expresses:--
"They who build houses and collect costly pictures and furniture with the money of an honest artisan or mechanick, will be very glad of emancipation from the hands of a bailiff, by a sale of their senatorial suffrage".
But I think the most perfect imitation of Johnson is a professed one, entitled "A Criticism on Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-Yard", said to be written by Mr. Young, Professor of Greek, at Glasgow, and of which let him have the credit, unless a better title can be shewn. It has not only the peculiarities of Johnson's style, but that very species of literary discussion and illustration for which he was eminent. Having already quoted so much from others, I shall refer the curious to this performance, with an assurance of much entertainment'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Causley Print: Book
Copious MS notes and marginal marks, including some showing signs of irritation: v.5 p.96 "Oh do have done!"; v.4: "Oh do shut up". Several dates of reading noted including: "Read aloud Nov 7 1904. Charles Dalrymple came this evening"; "Read aloud June 28 1923".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1870:
'March 1st. Aldworth. Hallam read the 4th Aeneid with A.; they study Virgil together daily.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Hallam Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872:
'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Many MS notes, incl. some copied from Lord Macaulay's own copy of Livy: "I copied these marginal notes, and lines, from Macaulay's Bipontine edition in the winter of 1910 at Wallington. GOT." Sir George's dates of reading include 1914,1915,1917,1918, "read with C[aroline] Jan 14 1919"; 1927. At end of v.4: "I read this book in the same number of days as Macaulay. But he was likewise constructing the penal code, and establishing the Indian education system." Sir George's notes in Livy often comment on Macaulay's earlier observations, almost as if they are having a conversation, e.g. where in book XXVI ch 32 Macaulay writes: "The conduct of the Roman senate was on the whole honorable to them, the state of public opinion among the ancients considered", Trevelyan comments: "How differently the Reichstag is showing in the case of Belgium. On Jan 28 1915 he writes: " I have now, day for day kept up, through these five books, exactly the same pace as my uncle. Shall now ease off. My age is more than twice his; and he [underlined] was Macaulay. Would I could talk Livy over with him, and tell him about this [underlined] war! How he would have recognised the spirit and self-sacrifice of the country." 1918: "I have now finished my war-time reading of the whole of Livy." Sir George's notes draw parallels between Livy and current affairs: "very different from the actions of the Germans towards Pointcarre's property"; p.679: "I wish such a speech as this could be made in Russia today (Sep. 10 1917). P.2877: "Jan 17 1915. A beautiful winter Sunday. Colonel Charrington Smith and his party came to tea. They are going to take part in a greater war than Hannibal, Philip and Antiochus together." Throughout, he uses his book to comment on events in his own life, e.g. Feb 12 1915: "George [i.e. G.M. Trevelyan] returned from Serbia yesterday. God be thanked for it." At the end of the book: "I seldom have been more interested in any history. I read the account of the great battle of Antiochus in a translation of Livy when I was a little boy at Mr Seawell's and never since. Feb. 1 1915". Note on p.3034 gives the date of reading as July 30, 1928 i.e. 18 days before Sir George died.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'Symonds has gone off to Italy with your Bouvard et Pecuchet, a most loathsome work.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society:
'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...]
'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following:
'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter.
'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.)
'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison.
'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot.
'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison.
Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson.
Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick.
Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rev. F. D. Maurice
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]':
'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]"
'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'The Sonnet of Mr des Yveteaux the odd Man who shut himself up with a Wench, & played Shepherd & Shepherdess when he was past threescore; beginning
Avoir peu de parens, moins de Train que de rente &c.
resembles both in its Style & Measure our Ballad of the old Man's wish - without Gout or Stone in a gentle decay.
I wonder which was written first, or whether one of the Writers ever heard of the other - most probably not.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
'My second Daughter Susan has a surprising Turn for Letter-writing; her Compositions are really elegant, & She delights - odd enough - in reading Voiture and Sevigne.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Arabella Thrale Print: Book
'During my schooldays, which coincided with the dramatic climax of the suffrage movement, I had read Olive Schreiner and followed the militant campaigns with the excitement of a sympathetic spectator, but my growing consciousness that women suffered from remediable injustices was due less to the movement for the vote than to my early environment with its complacent acceptance of female subordination.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
'Povoleri the Italian who dedicated the Tragedy of Rosmunda to me some years ago, has translated Gray's Church Yard Elegy into Tuscan: tis enchantment to hear the Fellow read his own Language, he does it so divinely; & has indeed great Taste and Skill in ours'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Giovanni Povoleri Manuscript: Unknown
'Here's a pretty Sonnet of Povoleri's; I must translate it. [the verse is given in Italian and English] over the Page we shall see another Sonnet, written by the Abbate Buondelmonte: I live with the Italians till I run mad after their Literature, their Talents &c.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871):
'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871):
'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'At that time Winifred's Derbyshire contemporary, the poet and novelist Thomas Moult, was editing a series of "Modern Writers on Modern Writers". When he invited her to contribute a volume and choose her own author, she selected Virginia Woolf, whose novels she had always admired, as a deliberate exercise in intellectual discipline.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
'On the flyleaf of her novel she quoted from V. Sackville-West's pastoral poem, "The Land", a verse which testified to her abiding sense of the Yorkshire that made her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Unknown
'Played Bezique with Polly in the evening after I had read aloud three Acts of "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening took Polly out for a little walk after I had finished reading [aloud?] "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Began to-night to read again "The Vicar of Wakefield" & was delighted with its quaint easy style, read two or three chapters to Harry who was very attentive & in a sad state when I had to send him away to his lessons.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'I read a novel called the Guardian Angel to-day by the Author of "Elsie Vennor". It was quite up to the run of most novels & served to amuse me very well to-day. If it had not been for it & the papers I should have had dull times as I did'ent stir out at all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'[from a letter from Mary Ward to her father] I have been reading Joubert's "Pensees" and "Correspondance" lately, with a view to the Amiel introduction. You would be charmed with the letters and some of the [italics] pensees [end italics] are extraordinarily acute. Now I am deep in Senancour, and for miscellaneous reading I have been getting through Horace's Epistles and dawdling a good deal over Shakespeare. My feeling as to him gets stronger and stronger, that he was, strictly speaking, a great poet, but not a great dramatist! [she discusses this at length, concluding] I have always felt it most strongly in Othello, and of course in the last act of Hamlet, which, in spite of the magnificent poetry in it, is surely a piece of dramatic bungling'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ward Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 2 July 1792: '...& now in plain sober prose I am much obliged to you for your ode which I like very much. but why will you translate? It is a servile employment & not worthy of you. You want a metre you say for your next. You know Parnells Fairy tale? but I am the worst person to apply to as all my odes are irregular except Ignorance which you have. Gray's Spring & drownd cat are pretty I think — but I am not regular myself & detest regularity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 21 October 1792: 'Some poems have been lately printed here by the Revd. E Holder written between the age of 17 & 20. I only mention them as he happens to have translated two pieces one which you sent me & the other I think you have seen translated by your humble servant & an original by Bunbury & another of your own. Integer vitæ etc is the one. Gray on the grande Chartreuse the other. & seriously the printed ones are the worst of all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 December 1792: 'I have been reading Eheu fugaces & your translation this moment together. the three last stanzas are certainly best but altogether it is in my opinion very good — tho ‘th’unpardoning God’ I do not like the epithet is rather prosaic — (you see I will point out what appears to me as faulty) a better may easily be found. & now as I have picked your bone take mine to pick cum notis Sancti Basilii.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
'I have now one great satisfaction, which is reading Hume's "History". It entertains and instructs me. It elevates my mind and excites noble feelings of every kind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'David Hume and John Dryden are at present my companions'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I employed the day in reading Hume's "History", which enlarged my views, filled me with great ideas, and rendered me happy'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 16-21 January 1793: 'Of your ode a few words before I set to transcribing. Before I read the last half sheet I wished you to lengthen it for only three authors are mentioned & only Shakespear of the first rank — Nature had so little to do with Dryden that I wonder at your ranking him with the Swan of Avon — Milton Spenser — Pope — Akenside Collins — Churchill — Beaumont — Fletcher would each afford a fine scope for your fancy & will you refuse one stanza to deck the unnoted grave of Chatterton? When this fault is noticed I have noticed all. If however (as I hope) you mean to lengthen it I would not wish you to fetter yourself in the chains of precedent — regular lyrics are like despotic monarchies they look stately but lose all the energy of freedom.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856:
'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I
translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given
me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no
translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that
chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856:
'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I
translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given
me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no
translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that
chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
'after, I walked a while, and read of Babington, and then went to supper'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
'She had been reading much of Chateaubriand and Mme de Beaumont during the winter, and had felt her imagination kindled by the relationship between the two'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[letter from Mrs Ward to her husband describing an inept Cardinal's lack of knowledge about the crypt of St Peters, Rome] I said not a word - and came home and read Harnack!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 11-18 May 1794: 'Your Anacreon & Æschylus please me much — unluckily I have neither the one nor the other in the original — & let me add do not want them with such spirited translations. I will however read them as you desire. in your lines ‘Harder than the pointed spear’ the word harder strike me as inappropriate. does the Greek signify the same? something like resistless as the pointed spear, would be more consonant to the intended meaning — your ode Quique pii vates is with me but would be unfair to fill up my letter with transcribing your verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 21 August 1794: 'When your ode reachd me it reminded me of neglect & I blushed as I read.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
I have not read 'La Garçonne'. I got about half way through it and then I had to give up, not because of its indecency but because it its dullness, poorness, and badness. The indecency is only episodic, but I have never read such indecency in the work of a reputable author published by a reputable firm. . . . It has also to be remembered that M. Margueritte has written, whether alone or in collaboration with his late brother, several novels of genuine importance, such as 'Le Désastre'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849:
'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries.
'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
'I spent the after none in my Chamber and hard Mr Rhodes read a book that was mad, as it was saied, by my lord of Esex in defence of his owne Causes'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
'I hard this day, after I had praied, Mr Rhodes read the booke of my lord Esixe treason, and I wrought: and so like wise in the after none Iohn Corrow and he did read by Course vnto me tell a litle before I went to priuat praier and medetation'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'Your stanza on Hope may be made excellent. your translation I have not yet compared with the Greek — when I have you shall have my remarks. you should study Pope & Dryden more for your versification.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'If you print your Musæus print the Greek likewise. for my own part — I think the poem of too immoral a nature ever to advise its circulation — & this fault no excellence of diction or splendor of imagination can ever atone for...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 24 February - 2 March 1796 'Timothy Dwight an American publishd an heroic poem on the Conquest of Canaan in 1785. I had heard of it & long wishd to read it in vain — but now the American minister — (a good humourd man whose poetry is worse than any thing except his criticisms) has lent me the book. there certainly is some merit in the poem — but when Colonel Humphreys speaks of it he will not allow me to put in a word in defence of John Milton. if I had written upon this subject I should have been terribly tempted to take part with the Canaanites, for whom I cannot help feeling a kind of brotherly compassion.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23-27 April, 1796 'The Poetry of Spain & Portugal wants taste, & generally, feeling. I should have thought Camoens deficient in feelings if I had only read his Lusiad — but the Sonnets of Camoens are very beautiful. those given by Hayley in his notes to the Essay on Epic P. tho among the best are but a wretched specimen to the English reader. the translations are detestable — & the originals so printed as to be unintelligible. I bought some ballads in Spain in remembrance of Rio Verde — but they prove bad enough. but six months after my return I will tell you more.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23-27 April, 1796 'The Poetry of Spain & Portugal wants taste, & generally, feeling. I should have thought Camoens deficient in feelings if I had only read his Lusiad — but the Sonnets of Camoens are very beautiful. those given by Hayley in his notes to the Essay on Epic P. tho among the best are but a wretched specimen to the English reader. the translations are detestable — & the originals so printed as to be unintelligible. I bought some ballads in Spain in remembrance of Rio Verde — but they prove bad enough. but six months after my return I will tell you more.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'I have tasted, sipped, and consumed the delectable nectar prepared surely with the milk of human kindness and spiced with your wit. [...]; This is delightful [...].'
Hence follow 15 more lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'From the year 1812 up to the year 1815, the young banker's life revolved in a sufficiently prosaic circle; working steadily at the banking-house, partaking sparingly of amusements of a social character, and devoting the greater portion of his leisure to reading and meditating upon subjects of an instructive cast.
'Among these, political economy, history and metaphysics occupied the leading interest in his mind. To the first of these sciences he had been attracted by the writings of Mr. David Ricardo, with whom personally he afterwards became acquainted (in 1817)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
George Grote to George W. Norman (April 1817):
'I send you down the best "Lucretius" I have [...] Though the reasoning is generally indistinct, and in some places unintelligible, yet in those passages where he indulges his vein of poetry without reserve, the sublimity of his conceptions and the charm and elegance of his language are such as I have hardly ever seen equalled [...] I likewise send you the Tragedies attributed to Seneca, which I think I have heard you express an inclination to read. I have read one or two of them, and they appeared to me not above mediocrity. ****
'I am now studying Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." His reasonings on the subject of morals are wonderfully just and penetrating, and I feel anxious, as I read on, for a more intimate acquaintance with him. Hume's Essays, some of which I have likewise read lately, do not improve, in my view, on further knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Dined at 1/2 past 5; [Charles] Cameron with me [...] Between 7 and 8 I locked up [family banking house] and we drank tea. We then read some of Ricardo's "Political Economy" until 1/2 past 10'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote and Charles Cameron Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Dined at 1/2 past 5; [Charles] Cameron with me [...] Between 7 and 8 I locked up [family banking house] and we drank tea. We then read some of Ricardo's "Political Economy" until 1/2 past 10.
'Rose at 6. Read some of A. Smith on Wages, and also that part of Ricardo that we had read the night before over again'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819):
'January, 1819.
'Saturday -- Rose at 1/4 before 9. Breakfasted and worked at Ricardo until I was obliged to go into the office [...] Between 4 and 5 read some more of Ricardo, out of different parts of the book, to clear up my notions on Foreign Trade'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819):
'January, 1819.
'Sunday -- Rose about 9. After reading Ricardo for some little time, I set to and wrote down some stuff upon Foreign Trade [...] At 1 I mounted my horse and rode to the Park [...] Returned to dinner at 6, very tired; read some of Lessing's "Laocoon" [...] After tea set to at Ricardo again, but not finding my attention sufficiently alive, I dropt him, and looked over Melon's "Essai sur le Commerce," which I had had some curiosity to see. I found it the stupidest and most useless volume I ever opened.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 24 May, 1796: 'The reliance that I can place on my own application renders me little anxious for the future — & for the present I can live like a silkworm by spinning my own brains. have I published too hastily? — remember that Virgil in the spirit of poetical prophecy gives to Fames the epithet of malesuada.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'I have just read DH Lawrence's "Kangaroo". How I hated (in italics) it! Altho I think the Chapter about the War is well written, but it is so full of Spite, bitterness & nasty "cur" like ( in italics) snarly feeling. Odd again, for I never saw that side of him. have you read his "Letters"?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ottoline Morrell Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 1-7 January, 1797: '...the view is bounded by the accursed smoke of London. methinks like Camoens I could dub it Babylon & write lamentations for the “Sion” of my birth place, having like him no reason to regret the past [words scored out] except that it is not the present. it is the country I want. a field thistle is to me worth all the flowers of Covent Garden.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 29 January 1797: 'I have received Bedfords book this morning — he has much amended it since I saw the manuscript.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'Pearl's conversation was always full of references to the works of the French novelists of the period, so I proceeded to read books by Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Anatole France and Colette. I had to read the Italian poets in translation. All this was a great joy to me, and, as I have said, a wonderful education.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, c. 25 June, 1797: '“The Rhedycenian Barbers” is Grosvenor Bedfords — & a most incomparable parody it is.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 14 December 1797: 'Your parcel & its contents arrived safe. I found it on my return from a library belonging to the dissenters — in Redcross Street; from which, by permission of Dr Towers one of the Trustees, I brought back books of great importance for my Maid of Orleans. a hackney coach horse turned into a field of grass falls not more eagerly to a breakfast which lasts the whole day, than I attacked the old folios so respectably covered with dust. I begin to like dirty rotten binding, & whenever I get among books pass by the gilt coxcombs & yet disturb the spiders. — But you shall hear what I have got. a Latin poem in four long books upon Joan of Arc. very bad — but it gives me a quaint note or two — & Valerandus Valerius is a fine name for a quotation. a small quarto of the Life of the Maid, chiefly extracts from forgotten authors, printed at Paris. 1612. with a print of her on horseback, & another on foot in the same dress & attitude as the one I have. A sketch of her life, by Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis — bless the length of his erudite name! — this is short but the most valuable of all, inasmuch as I have his authority for her prediction of her death — & that he has given me matter for a noble speech in Book 3. (I write in the spirit of prophecy for its nobleness.) by saying that her first vision was in a ruined church, where the weather drove her to pass the night with her flock. there are more treasures in this library — & I go there again on Monday next.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
On your recommendation I have just bought 'The Dance of Life' and am reading it. It repayeth perusal, & I thank thee. (But I have been an admirer of Havelock for 30 years.)
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (January 1819):
'Rose at 9 [...] Mr. Bury brought me Ricardo's pamphlets this day. Between 4 and 5 I set to and read his Pamphlet on the depreciation of our paper currency. Dined at 1/2 past 5; played on the bass; read some more of Ricardo -- his reply to Mr. Bosanquet, which is most able [...] spent the evening in going on with my "thoughts," looking at some parts of Xenophon and Arsitotle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
'I finish reading "The Vicar of Wakefield". The world has changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 150'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819):
'Mr Bury brought me Ricardo's pamphlets this day. Between 4 and 5 I set to and read his
Pamphlet on the depreciation of our paper currency. Dined at 1/2 past 5; played on the bass;
read some more Ricardo -- his reply to Mr. Bosanquet, which is most able [...] spent the
evening in going on with my "thoughts,' looking at some parts of Xenophon and Aristotle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819):
'Mr Bury brought me Ricardo's pamphlets this day. Between 4 and 5 I set to and read his
Pamphlet on the depreciation of our paper currency. Dined at 1/2 past 5; played on the bass;
read some more Ricardo -- his reply to Mr. Bosanquet, which is most able [...] spent the
evening in going on with my "thoughts,' looking at some parts of Xenophon and Aristotle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
'Symonds has lent me Pontanus ... You can twig the argument; he is delicious.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin, Saturday 13 March 1819:
'Rose at 1/2 past 7, after a sleepless night. Read some of Hume's Essay on the Academical
Philosophy [...] Between 4 and 5 read some more of Kant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin, Saturday 27 March 1819:
'George Norman appeared [...] Had some very interesting conversation about Ireland. After his
departure I read a chapter in Ricardo's "Pol. Econ."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From George Grote's Journal, 4 December 1822:
'Rose at 6. Read Goguet on the different Arts until breakfast; after breakfast read some articles
in Voltaire's Dictionn. Philosoph.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From George Grote's Journal, 6 December 1822:
'Continued the perusal of Wolf's Prolegomena, which contains very much instruction as to the
literature and MSS. of antiquity.
'In the evening read some excellent articles in Volt. "Dict. Ph."; particularly articles
Consequent and Democratic. Perused Wolf until bed-time.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From George Grote's Journal, 9 December 1822:
'Rose at 6. Employed all my reading-time this day upon Diodor., and got through 80 pages,
taking notes. He seems a more sensible writer than I had expected. A few articles in the
"Dictionn. Philos." filled up odd moments. The article on Miracles is admirable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'St Paul at Philippi, from the Seatonian Prize Poems. - By the Revd. J.E. Hankinson M. A. - 1833.' A poem beginning 'Twas a lone spot, that shrine of prayer!/ Some river nymph's deserted haunt/ Whose sacred springlet diamond clear/ Welled bubbling from its rocky front...' is then transcribed.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon]
George Grote to Sir William Molesworth (c.1838-40):
'The other day at the Athenaeum I took up one of the volumes of the "Documens pour servir a
l'Histoire de France," which I found to be the production of Victor Cousin, and to relate to the
philosophy of the Middle Ages during the age of Abelard and Roscellinus. There are some clear
and instructive reflections in it on the controversy of that day between the Nominalists and
Realists.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
'Mrs Ridges read an interesting paper on The Solitary Summer fully descriptive of the charm of the book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges Print: Book
I want you to tell R.M. du Gard how highly I esteem 'Barois'. When I first bought it, ages ago, I was so impressed by it that I had it charmingly bound, and I often read in it again. . . . I am very pleased with 'Amants, heureux amants', especially that last story; Valery’s best work, I think.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I ought to have written to you before about 'Amants, heureux amants', which you were so kind as to send me. It is, in my opinion, a very fine book, highly distinguished, and certainly your best work. I enjoyed it immensely. Especially the last story, which throws light on many things—including yourself.
We have no new young novelists in England. D.H. Lawrence is the best, & he is very uneven; also he is growing older. Of course there is Joyce. Your study of him was very useful to me when I wrote a review of 'Ulysses' some time ago. I think that he also is too uneven ever to be quite first-rate. But his best chapters amount to genius.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I wrote yesterday to P[erceval] G[ibbon] about his "Afrikander Memories". I didn't quite tell him how good they are for fear he should think I was gushing. But really, in that short production, look at the poetic vision, the existence of simple language, the breadth and force of the effects.' Hence follow 15 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'In the afternoon I finished "Dialectical Materialism", by David Guest - a promising young philosopher killed in the Spanish War. I find that my own conception of the relationship between love and necessity has much in common with Marx's philosophy, and I hope to be able to resolve them both. As a contrast to Guest's book I read, in the latter part of the day, T.S. Eliot's essat "The Idea of Christian Society". Eliot has an aristocratic clarity of style, but dry in the mouth, and if it keeps the mind alert it rarely warms the heart; the quality is fine but lacks fullness; and we savour him in sips, never in a mouthful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'There are besides, Sir Adam Fergusson, Colin Mackenzie, James Hope, Dr. James Buchan, Claud Russell, and perhaps two or three more of and about the same time period. But
Rari apparent nantes in gurgite vasto.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgina Cavendish (November 1797):
'You can't imagine, G. how tourty [sic] we are of an afternoon, my aunt reads and tells us storys. The last thing she read us was Voltaire's "enfant prodige," it is beautiful. Only think how good my dear dear aunt was to me last night; I took some pills and she came and read me a very interesting story while I took them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Ponsonby Print: Book
'At one time I knew entire pages of "Madame Bovary" by heart. But if "Madame Bovary" is a masterpiece "Salammbô" is close to a miracle. I well remember that when I was writing "[The]N[igger]of [the] N[arcissus]", "Salammbô" was my morning book.While taking coffee I would read a page or two at random--and there is hardly a page that isn't marvellous.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'At one time I knew entire pages of "Madame Bovary" by heart. But if "Madame Bovary" is a masterpiece "Salammbô" is close to a miracle. I well remember that when I was writing "[The]N[igger]of [the] N[arcissus]", "Salammbô" was my morning book.While taking coffee I would read a page or two at random--and there is hardly a page that isn't marvellous.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Read a little Plato; wrote a long letter to Brown; wrote a chapter of book; walked; read some Italian, and got some valuable notes out of Waagen, and then a game at Chess.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read a little Italian. Finished first vol. Waagen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Got a good deal out of Waagen, but he is an intolerable fool - good authority only in matters of tradition.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'while in the "Artist and Amateur" I see a series of essays on beauty commenced, which seem as if they would anticipate me altogether.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
'Blackguardly letter in "Art Union", and interesting one in Rippingille's thing, to be answered; the last at great length.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
'find Rippingille all wrong in his "Essay on Beauty": shall have the field all open. All comfortable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
I have never thought very well of Bunin. I say this with the greatest respect for your opinion, and I admit that you are much more likely to be right than I am. 'A Gentleman from San Francisco' I thought very crude indeed, and I could not get on with 'The Village'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I have never thought very well of Bunin. I say this with the greatest respect for your opinion, and I admit that you are much more likely to be right than I am. 'A Gentleman from San Francisco' I thought very crude indeed, and I could not get on with 'The Village'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Stayed in all yesterday in crashing rain, and was busy at something all day till 1 at night, except reading "World" on run-away racehorse and pigeonshooting at lunch. French novel at tea, "La petite Comtesse", and Sir G. Baker on Gladstone, Baxter reading to me after dinner.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'"The flowing beauty of his oral translations in class, whether of Thucydides, Plato, or Virgil was," one of his peers recalled, "a thing not easily to be forgotten." He "startled everyone", too, "in the classical medal examination, by walking easily away from us all in the viva voce on [Aeschylus's] 'Agamemnon'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'On the way up I read Lady Chatterley's Lover, in the new full continental edition a friend got from Germany. I now retract what I said that DHL's letters are more important than his novel. Lady C. is a vastly important book. I understand it. I understand it as necessary. It is delicate and pure. One of the purest things I have ever read. It is far too long. But the strong necessary teaching is there. In parts its as direct and simple as the Bible. Its an amazing love-song; no not a love-song, a life-song. It has given me confidence and courage. It could purge the world.Nevertheless I feel its a thing, a teaching, I must take and pass. I could not stay just in that region. That was Lawrence. But I feel that my goal is quite different. I salute Lady Chatterley, & I will not say leave it behind, but leave it aside. As I said in my last, sex is to art what sleep is to waking life. Full spiritual wakefulness is without sex & is a new innocence, a new childishness if you like.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell Print: Book
'Mr Binns then read a paper on W.S. Landor which was followed by a reading by Mrs Edminson, a paper by William [?] Harris & other readings by other members'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
'Mr Binns then read a paper on W.S. Landor which was followed by a reading by Mrs Edminson, a paper by William [?] Harris & other readings by other members'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
'Your gift is none the less welcome because I read your book a few weeks ago. E[dward] Garnett, Duckworth's literary advisor sent it to me shortly after publication.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have an idea dear Jack that any comment on your work can be nothing by now but ( in the words of the Pole in "[A] Lear of the Steppes"), "perfectly superfluous chatter". '
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I [ac]cordingly wrote off to St. Andrews; and the next day, to all the four winds in quest of recommendations. To Goethe, to Irving, to Buller, to Brewster &c &c. These same recommendations are now beginning to come in upon me: I had one from Brewster two days ago (with the offer of farther help); and this morning, came a decent testificatory letter from Buller, and a most majestic certificate in three pages from Edward Irving.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter of recommendation
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of “Friendship” by the Revd Francis Murray.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Transcript of interview: 'I don’t think there was anything that I wasn’t allowed to read. It was only when I went to school to boarding school and all my friends were reading Gone with the Wind, and my mother decided she would rather I didn’t read Gone with the Wind because of a very racy chapter where Melanie gives birth to a baby and she didn’t think that was suitable for me. I was thirteen or fourteen and I didn’t read it but I did read Vicky Baum’s Hotel Berlin which had a much worse scene where a woman gave birth in a rowing boat… I can’t think of anything that was actually banned at all. I read lots and lots of my father’s books and this was a book that I loved - Palgrave’s Golden Treasury [shows book]. My mother gave me this [shows book]. This is the one I learned to read on. This is the Water Babies. I remember sitting up in bed reading Mrs Be Done By As You Did and shouting out “I can read, I can read”! I was six. I didn’t learn to read until quite late.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Transcript of interview: 'The school library had a reasonably wide selection – we could take out one fiction and one non-fiction a week but the English teacher would vet them to see what we were taking out. There was a book called Anthony Adverse that fell open at a specific page because it had what we thought was a scene of terrifically kinky sex – I think actually that it was probably really very mild – just the woman was on top and we were very intrigued by it. I’m sure the English teacher had never read that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Tuesday, 10 February 1829:
'I read over Henry's History of Henry VI and Edward IV. He is but a stupid historian after all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Friday, 20 February 1829:
'I glanced over some romances metrical publishd by Hartshorne several of which have not seen the light. They are considerably curious but I was surprized to see them mingled with "Blanchflour" and "Florice" and one or two others which might have been spared. There is no great display of notes or prolegomena and there is moreover no glossary. But the work is well edited.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John J. Cooper Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: K. Evans Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat.
Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table"
Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner"
R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication.
C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'While under the tuition of Mr. Smerdon, Gifford had translated the "Tenth Satire" of Juvenal for a holiday task.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
'Besides studying Greek and Latin, Gifford learnt French and Spanish while at Oxford. He went through Moliere's plays twice and Voltaire's works once.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
'Lord Byron, to whom Mr. Murray sent a copy of [Belzoni's] work, said: "Belzoni [italics]is[end italics] a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily broken."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'Violet Wallis read a paper on Carols'. [the paper's contents are summarised]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
'Violet Wallis read a paper on the Faust legends from the point of view of Medieval History. It was a most interesting introduction to the subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
'C.E. Stansfield dealt in detail with Goethe's Faust. he showed that Faust started by Goethe at the age of 20 & finished when over 80 yrs is an expression of his own life & the influences which played upon it during the period of 60 years a period beginning in storm & stress & ending in calmness. The paper brought out very well the story of the bargain, the fulfilling of the terms & the final rescue of Faust by a horde of angels.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts.
1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith
2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith
3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings
4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole
5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin
6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham
7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds
8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson
9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith
10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin
11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis
12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith
13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds
14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis
15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto]
16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson
17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith
18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith
19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin
20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Unknown
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Cole Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read
C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr
Miss Cole Love & Age
E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey
R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels
C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'It is dificult to express the joy I felt at the arrival of the "Complete Works of M. Barnabooth".[...].The first reading of the "Journal Intime" makes an unforgettable impression.' Hence follow 16 lines of unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'Infinite thanks for the honour [dedication] and for the book ["The House of Many Mirrors"]. The copy having reached me two days ago I delayed writing till I had read those pages you have been so good to dedicate to me.'
Hence follow ten lines of praise written in a mixture of French and English.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Amid several warmly appreciative judgements came a frank note from St. John Ervine, who wrote that my book had entirely changed his opinion of me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: St. John Ervine Print: Book
'Yet the previous December, after reading my first nine chapters, G. had written to me at Halifax:
"Your book, I think, is a very great, a very moving book...powerful, significant, important - for me it is oppressive also - to it I am an outsider, intruding, shamefaced, feeling very unworthy, painfully unworthy to the verge of tears."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Catlin Print: Book
From chapter entitled 'Madame d'Arblay':
'Whilst her mother read Pope's works and Pitt's AEneid with her eldest daughter Esther,
Fanny [Burney] sat by and listened, and learnt by heart the passages which her sister recited.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Burney and daughter (also Esther) Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 December 1751:
'I want to talk to you of Fontanelle's Plays, have you seen them? They are incomparable. Truth, virtue, simplicity, and good sense, are the characteristics of his heroines, and there is besides something agreeably odd and uncommon in the whole manner.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 19 August 1754:
'I was much pleased the other day in reading a system of moral philosophy, to find that the moral frame was not perfect without a due degree of fear, and of all sorts of passions. 'Tis a posthumous work of Mr Fordyce, and all together an excellent little book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Unknown
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with.
Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing.
Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo.
C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson
F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action.
Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son.
The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Unknown
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows:
A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry"
T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto"
Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis
R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds"
D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers"
C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy
G. Burrow poems by his brother
F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon
Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland"
C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke
A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 October 1763:
'Our after-supper book is Hume -- his English history however; but I hear it with infinite caution.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
'The truth of the matter is that it is you who have opened my eyes to the value and quality of Turgeniev. As a boy I remember reading "Smoke" in a Polish translation (a feuilleton of some newspaper) and the "Gentlefolks" in French.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: newspaper supplement/magazine ('feuilleton')
'The truth of the matter is that it is you who have opened my eyes to the value and quality of Turgeniev. As a boy I remember reading "Smoke" in a Polish translation (a feuilleton of some newspaper) and the "Gentlefolks" in French.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 6 August 1766:]
'Be so good as to tell Mrs Handcock that I do like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and likewise that I do not [...] Indeed it has admirable things in it, though mixt with provoking absurdities, at which one should not be provoked if the book in general had not great merit [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'I only secured lately not so much the leisure as the proper freedom of mind, to read through and get on terms with your novel.[...] The book is captivatng enough in all conscience as a piece of writng and of course as a story too.'
[Hence follow 9 lines of comment.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'She preferred to say - in words written ten years ago at the end of "The Waves" which might stand for her epitaph - "Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
'This morning [Reginald Perceval] Gibbon's correspondence [on the aftermath of the battle of Caporetto] in the "D[aily]C[hronicle]" was very reserved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755:]
'You have a very just opinion of St. John's works [...] As far as I have seen, and I read at Ember the last volume, which contains his essays, there is nothing in his objections but what has been published and answered over and over [...] I know not whether his system may be more properly called deistical, or atheistical; since, though in words he allows a God, he seems to make him such a one as Epicurus did; and to think that we are beneath his notice, or have very little to do with him. He laughs at all notions of revelation, or a particular providence, and reckons the present life the whole of man's existence. These essays, by the way, afford us abundant and irrefragable proof, that the plan of the Essay on Man was St.
John's, and not Pope's [...] You have here the whole scheme, the thoughts and in many places the very words of the poem; and a more consistent scheme it is here, than it appears there, after the poet and the parson had laid their heads together to disguise and make it pass for a christian system [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 6 January 1820:]
'Read Goldsmith's History of Rome.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
'A very fair measure of French and some skill in drawing appear to have been the most striking accomplishments which Charlotte carried back from Roe Head [school] to Haworth. There are some twenty drawings of about this date, and a translation into English verse of the first book of Voltaire's Henriade.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'Within the next few days I read a new Gollancz pamphlet, "What Buchenwald Really Means".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain
'In the "Left News" for July, 1944, Victor had also published a document from Underground France on the future of Germany.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
'In the "Left News" for July, 1944, Victor had also published a document from Underground France on the future of Germany.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
'You say [in Walpole's critical study "Joseph Conrad"(1916)] that I have been under the formative influence of "Madame Bovary". In fact I have read it only after finishing "A.[Almayer's] F.[Folly]" as I did all the other works of Flaubert; and anyway my Flaubert is the Flaubert of "St. Antoine" and "Ed[ucation] Sent[imentale]" and that only from the point of view of rendering of concrete things and visual impressions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 7 December 1848:
'I duly received Dr Curie's work on Homoeopathy, and ought to apologise for having forgotten to thank you for it. I will return it when I have given it a more attentive perusal than I have yet had leisure to do. My sister [Emily, then in terminal decline] has read it, but as yet remains unshaken in her former opinion: she will not admit there can be efficacy in such a system.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 7 December 1848:
'I duly received Dr Curie's work on Homoeopathy, and ought to apologise for having
forgotten to thank you for it. I will return it when I have given it a more attentive
perusal than I have yet had leisure to do. My sister [Emily, then in terminal decline]
has read it, but as yet remains unshaken in her former opinion: she will not admit
there can be efficacy in such a system.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Brontë Print: Book
'At present I am deep in Les Misérables, which is wonderful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Wilde Print: Book
'I was laid up directly on arriving here, and this is the explanation of the delay in thanking you for the precious copy of the book. Pray convey to your brother my great appreciation of his signature on the fly leaf.'
[Hence follow four lines of praise.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Many thanks for the charming copy of "The Brassbounder". It is as fresh and attractive as ever to read and I am still under the charm of this sincere and fascinating record of things that have now passed away for ever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Many thanks for D. [David]'s little tale ["Lady into Fox"]. Its the most successful thing of the kind I have ever seen.'
[Hence follow ten lines of praise.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thank you very much for your letter and the pamphlet in which I was very much interested.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'For weeks I've had a bad wrist or I would have thanked you before for the "[A] M[an] [in] the Z[oo]". D[avid] may be congratulated in pulling off this piece with great tact and subtlety.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'In the vol entitled "Lear of the Steppes" only the first story is really worth reading. The other two ["Acia" and "Faust"] Turg[enev] wrote in French I believe first and they are not good specimens of his art.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Infinite thanks for the honour and for the book. The copy having reached me two days ago I delayed writing until I had read those pages you have been so good as to dedicate to me.[...] Altogether a treat as mere reader [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have this moment received your very kind letter with the enclosure of verse for which I hasten to send you my warm thanks. The verse is very genuine and has appealed to me. My compliments to David Morton for having captured this musing mood so charmingly and with such a felicity of expression and images.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Ad[e]ler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The first words of Conrad's first book ["Almayer's Folly"] were pencilled on the fly-leaves and margins of "Madame Bovary".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What really brought us [Ford and Conrad] together was a devotion to Flaubert and Maupassant. We discovered we both had Félicité , "St.-Julien l'Hospitalier", immense passages of "Madame Bovary", "La Nuit", "Ce Cochon de Morin" and immense passages of "Une Vie" by heart. Or so nearly by heart that what the one faltered over the other could take up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What really brought us [Ford and Conrad] together was a devotion to Flaubert and Maupassant. We discovered we both had Félicité, "St.-Julien l'Hospitalier", immense passages of "Madame Bovary", "La Nuit", "Ce Cochon de Morin" and immense passages of "Une Vie" by heart. Or so nearly by heart that what the one faltered over the other could take up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,The late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'From that time for ten years Conrad followed the sea. The deep sea, reading all sorts of books. Once an officer with quarters of his own he resumed his reading of French along with the English popular works. He read with the greatest veneration Flaubert and Maupassant; with less, Daudet and Gautier; with much less, Pierre Loti. Tormented with the curiosity of words, even at sea, on the margins of the French books he made notes for the translation of phrases. The writer has seen several of these old books of Conrad, notably an annotated copy of "Pêcheur d'Islande" — and of course the copy of "Madame Bovary" upon the endpapers and margins of which "Almayer's Folly" was begun.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Sunday 17th. Am pretty sure I will get back to the Battalion soon. Went to St. Pol, had lunch, bought some books. Stopped a staff car, and got back to Aubigny for tea. Shifted into a fine comfortable hut with a fire. Finished "Mr Ingleside".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. Dorothy Brain Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: H. B. Lawson Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard
introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us
several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31
Charles E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...]
Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine.
Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31
Charles E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...]
Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine.
Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31
Charles E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...]
Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine.
Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31
Charles E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...]
Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine.
Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31
Charles E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...]
Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine.
Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park: 16. IX. 31.
Victor Alexander in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved.
[...]
4. John L. Hawkins then read us his paper on the Natural History of the neighbourhood
[...]
6. After the interval Henry Marriage Wallis gave a vivid account of two or three bird nesting
exploits undertaken with James Crosfield in Scotland.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 16. X. 31. Ethel C. Stevens in the chair.
1 Minutes of last were read[...].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Mark Ash, Shinfied Rd: 13. X1. 31. Edgar B. Castle in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
3. The book list prepared by Rosamund Wallis, H. R. Smith, R. H. Robson & the Secretary was
then considered, & two or three interesting additions were permitted.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Frensham, Northcourt Avenue 4th.XII.31. Howard R. Smith (Chair)
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
6. Charles Stansfield then gave us an interesting account of the Northern Coastline of
Cornwall. He had paid it many visits, and knew its character well, & this helped to make it
vivid hearing.
7. Victor Alexander read some extracts from S. Baring Gould's "Vicar of Morwenstow", a life of
the Rev. J. S. Hawkin.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd., 30. i. 32.
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
3. Howard Smith spoke to us of the social and literary sides of Sheridan's life.[...]
4. Reginald H. Robson followed with an account of Sheridan as Parliamentarian, telling us of
his thirty-two years in opposition to reactionary government, his aversion from bribery in a
corrupt age, and his conduct of the Hastings Impeachment. This last brought into remarkable
combination Sheridan's dramatic and rhetorical gifts; so that we quite fell beneath the spell,
accepting him as a heroic character, and were ready to condone, if not indeed even to
acclaim, his less creditable convivialities with the Prince Regent and Mrs.[or Mr.] Robson's
ancestors!
5. Francis E. Pollard then read a passage from Sheridan's speech on the devastation of
Oudh.[...]
6. We then listend to extracts from "The School for Scandal" starring Mrs. Robson as Lady
Teazle and C. E. Stansfield as Sir Peter. As is not unusual on such occasions the humours of
the play as devised by the author had to compete with other unrehearsed attractions — actors
borrowing books, adjusting their spectacles, turning two pages instead of one, and, perhaps
best of all, the pure milk of the expurgated editions looking a little sour at the strong wine of
the original text.
Be that as it may, ancestral portraits from the brush of Vandyke or Lely, Kneller or Rawlings
changed owners with the accustomed success: Mr. Robson* as Joseph Surface mad love to his
own wife as Lady Teazle[...].
* R.H.R. states that Gio. B. was Jos. Surface [Footnote is in MS]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 19.2.32
S. A. Reynolds in the Chair
1. On the minutes of last meeting read, R. H. Robson declared that he had not made love to his own
wife that was another "Joseph Surface".
[...]
4 Geo Burrow then gave a short sketch of Ibsen's life, his Father a merchant out of mixed Danish
Swedish blood & mother a German — his first play produced at Christiana in 1850, but was not
published. He was appointed Poet to theatre at Bergen, which meant being "General Utility" man, thus
gaining a general knowledge of the production of plays - for being refused a Poet's pension he left
Norway for Italy & afterwards moved to Munich. In 1891 he returned to Christiana.
5 A reading followed from "The League of Youth" a satire on politicians. the scene chosen being one in
which various attempts to get Bratsberg's support for one of his financial schemes & on being
rebuffed, threatens to [2 un-deciphered words] by disclosing his son's forgery of his name on a bill.
The cast were:—
Bratsberg F E Pollard
Monsen R H Robson
Ringdal G Burrow
Fjeldbo H. R Smith
Erik C. E. Stansfield
Salma [i.e. Selma] Mrs Robson
Thora Dorothy Brain
Lundestad A. Rawlings
Hejre E. B. Castle
[...]
7 Readings from Act I and Act IV of The Wild Duck were then given by:—
Werle F E Pollard
Gregers R H Robson
Hjalmar [Halmar] H R Smith
Gina Mrs Robson
Hedwig [Hedvig] Dorothy Brain
Riddell [sic] C. E. Stansfield
[...]
9 C E Stansfield added a note about Peer Gynt which was written in Italy during 1866/67 — a poem
written recklessly[?] describing his own youth — a genial philosophical pascal[.]
10. A general discussion followed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Broomfield: 22.3.1932
George Burrow in the chair
1. The minutes of last were read by Sylvanus Reynolds, who had kindly deputised for the Secretary in
his absence.'
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the Victorians and their literature.[...] When the paper was discussed
there proved to be a very general measure of consent.[...]
Howard Smith disturbed us a little by accusing the Victorians of complacency[...].
Finally Reginald Robson deplored the disappearance of the Victorian countryside. As it was foretold by
Malthus the Economist, so it had come to pass. Over population had done its work. There could be no
more rural simplicity or village Hampdens, no more nurture of man by nature any more. The Victorian
age can be guaranteed unique: the mould from which it was cast has been shattered.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
br/>[...]
4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its
fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis
Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Booklet
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Print: Book
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Rawlings Print: Book
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth T. Alexander Print: Book
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles
Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang
the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary
Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought
of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher,
poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long",
except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther,
especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually
commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it
on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet
Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the
political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to
acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of
Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe.
In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary
bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Print: Book
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue, 20.ix.'32.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy
anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical
interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the
Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and
slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of
another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, &
under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout
the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which
sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles
Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the
second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her
sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation
and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion
which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our
usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 30, Northcourt Avenue: 15.XI.32
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
5. The Secretary then performed the invidious task of putting the dozen books favoured by the
Selection Committee before the Meeting.
[...]
The other seeded books then underwent their ordeal and the subsidiary list was read a first
time.
[...]
Nevertheless twelve books emerged with no less than 11 votes apiece. They are:
They were defeated R. Macaulay 8/6 E. T. Alexander
The Cruel Victorians Forty Authors 8/6 H. R. Smith
Flowering Wilderness J. Galsworthy 7/6 C. E. Stansfield
The New Morality G. E. Newsom 6/- G. Burrow
Sir W. Scott[?] Buchan 9/6 G. Burrow
Strawberry Roan A. G. Street 7/6 E. D. Brain
Bonnie Prince Charlie Wickinson 12/6 R. H. Robson
Nansen Reynolds 10/6 E. D. Brain
As we are E. F. Benson 15/- E. C. Stevens
Northern Lights Chapman 18/- M. S. Stansfield
Youth looks at the World Fletcher 7/6 H. M. Wallis
Land and Labour in China Tawney 7/6 S. A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A statement of the Club's accounts was read.
[...]
6. After the interval we listened to a most enjoyable little play, "Lonesome Like" by Harold
Brighouse
The Lancashire dialect was more than usually well suggested & much added to our
appreciation.
The parts were taken as follows:—
Celia Burrow
Rosamund Wallis
George Burrow
Reginald Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at School House, L[eighton]. P[ark].: 18. i. 33.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
5. Reginald Robson then spoke to us on the England of 1580 - 1590, with special reference to
the development of the Elizabethan manor house. His attractive account of Ufton Court & the
alluring photographs he passed round led several of our members to express the disre that
our picnic next July might be held there. Reginald Robson may take it therefore that he is
notified that his services as showman will be in request, and owners of motor cars are advised
to have their vehicles in repair for the occasion.
6. In the absence of George Burrow, Edgar Castle read us some notes on the literature of 1580–1590 which George Burrow had gallantly prepared on his bed of sickness.
7. Victor Alexander then spoke of the situation in France during the period in question. Some
of the Castles on the Loire were duly admired. They seem a little distant for a Book Club
picnic[...].
8. Howard Smith had hoped to speak to us of the Faerie Queen, but as he was also in the grip
of influenza Frank Pollard good naturedly discussed at short notice the versification of Spenser
illustrating his remarks very pleasingly by quotations.
9. The company then dispersed homeward through the rigours of an arctic blizzard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at School House, L[eighton]. P[ark].: 18. i. 33.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
5. Reginald Robson then spoke to us on the England of 1580 - 1590, with special reference to
the development of the Elizabethan manor house. His attractive account of Ufton Court & the
alluring photographs he passed round led several of our members to express the disre that
our picnic next July might be held there. Reginald Robson may take it therefore that he is
notified that his services as showman will be in request, and owners of motor cars are advised
to have their vehicles in repair for the occasion.
6. In the absence of George Burrow, Edgar Castle read us some notes on the literature of 1580–1590 which George Burrow had gallantly prepared on his bed of sickness.
7. Victor Alexander then spoke of the situation in France during the period in question. Some
of the Castles on the Loire were duly admired. They seem a little distant for a Book Club
picnic[...].
8. Howard Smith had hoped to speak to us of the Faerie Queen, but as he was also in the grip
of influenza Frank Pollard good naturedly discussed at short notice the versification of Spenser
illustrating his remarks very pleasingly by quotations.
9. The company then dispersed homeward through the rigours of an arctic blizzard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at Reckitt House, L. P. : 17. ii. 33
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style
of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much
ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the
interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the
author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs.
Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious
combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the
Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage
Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century
Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either
the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there
was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every
appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that
three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings
needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences
by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a
most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest?
" by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as
committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from
Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time
& space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an
amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the
Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting
with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from
"Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of
England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as
committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from
Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time
& space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an
amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the
Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting
with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from
"Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of
England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham: 23.5.33
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the subject for the evening "The Jew in Literature", which was dealt
with by eight readings and some discussion of several of them. It proved to be rather a vast
subject, & there was considerable disagreement as to what really are the racial characteristics
of the Jews, and there is an even greater indefiniteness in the Secretary's mind as to what the
Club collectively thinks on all this. It must suffice then to give a list of the readers and their
readings.
Mary E. Robson an extract from Du Maurier's Trilby describing Svengali
Howard R. Smith from Heine, in the Temple
Shakespeare, on Shylock's love for Jessica
George H. S. Burrow two XIII Century ballads, Sir Hugh & The Jew's Daughter
Mary S. Stansfield from The Children of the Ghetto
Edgar B. Castle from F. W. H. Myers's St. Paul
Victor W. Alexander from Frazer's Folklore of the Old Testament
Sylvanus A. Reynolds, the Jew's Tale in Longfellow's Wayside Inn
Howard R. Smith from Hilaire Belloc's The Jews'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 7.X.33.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
10. After the interval we read "The Lady with a Lamp" by.[sic]
The parts were taken as follows:—
Mr. Nightingale Sylvanus Reynolds
Mrs. [Nightingale] Ethel C. Stevens
Florence [Nightingale] Elisabeth Alexander
Lord Palmerston Hy. Marriage Wallis
Mr. Sidney Herbert Francis E. Pollard
Mrs. [Sidney Herbert] Dorothy Brain
A Scottish Surgeon George Burrow
Tremayne Victor Alexander
A Nurse Mary Pollard
Another Nurse Edith B. Smith
Purveyor Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Broomfield, Cressingham Rd., 14.XI.33.
George H. S. Burrow in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
2. [...]At the close of the meeting three unhappy pedagogues crept into a corner of the
Broomfield drawing room
[...]
4. The Chairman & Secretary made a count of the votes cast by ballot to fill the vacant places in
our membership. A number of attrative names had been before the club and the voting brought
Margaret L. Lloyd and Mrs Goadby to the head of the poll. These ladies were duly invited and
both have gladly accepted their invitation and agreed to join the Club.
[...]
6. A statement of the accounts was read showing the Club to have £2.9.0 in hand.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd., 20.XII.33.
E. Dorothy Brain in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. Schoolmasters in Literature were portrayed by a series of readings from biography and
fiction. There were ten in all and they reflected the various estimation in which these beings
are held, and were held generations ago. In spite of the dullness, the jealousy and the morbid
introspection that characterize the assistant, the profession is in part redeemed by the haloes
that flicker around its heads - generally, it must be admitted, very much in retrospect.
After all, would other professions fare much better?
We are certainly indebted to the committee who prepared the readings, and regret that
Reginald Robson felt it necessary to omit the one he had allotted to himself.
The readings were given in this order.
1. From Roger Ascham V. W. Alexander
2. [From] Westward Ho H. R. Smith
3. [From] Essays of Elia Janet Rawlings
4. [From] T. E. Brown's Clifton Celia Burrow
6. [From] Stalky & Co G. H. S. Burrow
5. [From] Life of Frederick Andrews Mary Robson
7. [From] Vanity Fair S. A. Reynolds
8. [From] Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill Dorothy Brain
9. [From] Jeremy at Crale E. B. Castle
10. [From] Rugby Chapel F. E. Pollard
'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park, 16.I.34.
Francis E. Pollard in the chair
1. The Chairman offered the Club’s greetings to our new members, though only one of them
was able to be present.
2. We much regretted the absence of George and Celia Burrow on account of the former’s
illness, and of Mary Pollard who had gone to see Caroline in Birmingham where she had had
the bad luck to come in for a motoring accident.
3. Minutes of last were then read and approved.
[...]
7. The subject for the evening then claimed our attention, & Charles Stansfield read us a paper
on Lewis Carroll’s life. It contained much material that was new to most of us, and was so &
absorbingly retailed that the Secretary completely omitted to take notes on it
8. This was followed by extracts from his letters read to us by Dorothy Brain. She chose them
all, I think, from letters to little girls thus wisely focussing our interest upon the author &
making him very real behind his nom de plume.
9. After the interval Dorothy Brain’s players—Frank Pollard, Janet Rawlings, Reginald Robson &
Victor Alexander performed an unrehearsed tea party. Whether the performance was comic,
gruesome or grotesque I would not venture to suggest. To one actor, unseeing and unseen
beneath his mask it was a little like a cross between a modernist nightmare & old-fasioned
blind man’s buff.
10. Readings were then given by
Ethel C. Stevens : from Alice through the Looking Glass
Howard R. Smith : [from] Sylvie and Bruno
Francis E. Pollard : [from] the Hunting of the Snark
C. E. Stansfield : [from] Hiawatha’s Photographing
11. It was decided to have a subscription of 6/- for the current year.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 16.2.34
Alfred Rawlings in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with
themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good
hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going
on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical
associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the
observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised
writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the
progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our
number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same
trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately
named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow
closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure
whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up
reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist
for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and
amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of
seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares
in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his
friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from
restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose
romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find
happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his
extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson
telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature
in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of
this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised
the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris
would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was
wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in
united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: XII Book Club Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Reckitt House, L. P.: 19.ix.34.
1. We began our meeting by remembering George H. S. Burrow, until recently a member of
our club. [...]
2. The minutes of last meeting & an account of the Excursion were then read and approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Reckitt House, L. P.: 19.ix.34.
1. We began our meeting by remembering George H. S. Burrow, until recently a member of
our club. [...]
2. The minutes of last meeting & an account of the Excursion were then read and approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue 30. X. 34.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. There followed a fairly general escape of steam over the question of sending on books. Despite
the fact that every book carries on its brown paper cover the date on which each member of the
Club is in turn entitled to receive it [...], there had been once again considerable confusion.
[...]
To the satisfaction of all it was then resolved that if only the Secretary would write out twelve
nice little lists of all the books in the order of their rotation and paste them on the backs of the
brown paper covers all would in future go well. [...]
Amid the general enthusiasm for secretarial efficiency, one member came near to being
immortalized in these minutes by suggesting that it would be found helpful if the Secretary would
type and distribute reviews of books advertised in the Autumn lists of the various publishing
firms. This suggestion, though intended doubtless as a touching tribute to an obscure official, was
negatived by the intervention of a former Secretary.
The present holder of the office was then left alone, & allowed to go home and read and reflect
upon La Fontaine’s fable — “Les animaux malades de la peste”'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebok
Meeting held at 233 Shinfield Road, 29 XI. 1934
1. At Mrs Goadby’s request, C. E. Stansfield took the chair, and in the absence of the
Secretary, F. E. Pollard took his place.
2. Minutes of last approved as presenting the spirit of the meeting.
[...]
6. A statement of accounts was presented, showing (subject to some members realizing that
their subscriptions were still unpaid) a balance of £1. 18 0.
[...]
8. The committee appointed to bring in a list of books for the coming year presented some
thirty to choose from, & a recommended selection. The voting was somewhat confused, at
times bordering upon the riotous[...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine
Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme
of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s
life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the
poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works
including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander,
Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble
Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of
the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning
Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he
called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel V. Bracher Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Victoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine S. Evans
'Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue
19. II. 1935
Ethel Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read (by F. E. Pollard in the regretted absence of the Secretary), heard with
wonder and admiration, & approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book
Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with
enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary
insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings
to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the
acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the
apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round
of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital,
Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the
kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s
manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas
More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge,
and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'I ordered a Russian grammar from home. For some reason nearly all the translations of Russian writers in those days, at least in the Windlestone library [at Windlestone Hall, Durham, the Eden family's country seat], were into French. The single exception was Constance Garnett's brilliant translations of Turgenev. In my last visits to Windlestone and encouraged by my father, I had broken into the Russian novelists who soon proved a joyous revelation to me. It was then that I made up my mind to read them in their own language. Even an adjutant could find time heavy on his hands in winter in Flanders. My plan was to snatch at least an hour's study every day and in addition to learn by heart some grammar exercise every morning while shaving. I persevered for many weeks but then had to accept disappointment at my slow rate of progress.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Anthony Eden Print: Book
Meeting held at School House, L. P. : 13.9.35
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'"I think it was Victor Hugo's book Les Miserables that decided me to do what I could to alleviate the distress and suffering of the poor. That story gives you such a vivid picture of the under side of life, all the wretched & sordid details of the troubles of the poor -- troubles that could be lessened."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
'In the morning a little "Inferno". James's "Washington Square" (his first, American manner) and Turgeneff's [sic] "Fumée"; but Russian books are always a slight effort to me, I suppose by reason of the leakage of style in translation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd., 22.10.35
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and signed by the chairman. Though F. E. Pollard had entered a friendly
protest against being asked to serve on the Irish Literature committee.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at St. Swithin’s, Shepherd’s Lane : 22.XI.35
the Secretary in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
3. A statement of accounts was then read, showing the Club to be in a sound financial position.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Frensham, Northcourt Avenue: 4.2.36
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. We then read a large part of Richard of Bordeaux. R. H. Robson had apportioned the parts and
most members present had to read more than one. The play made good reading, and some
discussion of its merits took place at the close of the programme.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, 4 Glebe Road: 3.3.36
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Read Kipling's "Diversities", Steevans "India", Wells "War [of the Worlds]" "Dynamiter" and a little Graham Wallas and Metchnikhoff, but with fatigue and unease.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue: 25.3.36
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read + approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at School House, LP. 15.9.36
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read + approved
[...]
6. We then proceeded to read “Much Ado about Nothing”, a somewhat singular title for a
situation involving the honour and happiness of a virtuous young lady betrothed to a rather
attractive young noble. The parts were drawn by lot, or rather some of them were – such as had
not been forgotten by the committee, or had not slipped into the lining of the rather inferior
Handbag produced for the occasion. The principal male parts were taken by ladies — just the
reverse of what occurred in Shakespeare’s own day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Minutes
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 23.6.36
Francis E Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and, with the addition of No. 7, approved.
7. Frank Pollard then introduced the subject for the evening, Modern Authors. [...]
8. There followed a series of talks, in most cases acompanied by readings: these were in the
order named
Janet Rawlings, on E. H. Young’s “Miss Mole’
Dorothy Brain, on T. S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”
R. H Robson on some Poems of W. H. Auden
V. W. Alexander on René Bazin’s “La Terre qui meurt” and “Les Oberlé”, and finally
Charles Stansfield on Winifred Holtby’s “South Riding.”'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue: 17. 4. 36.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last were read.
Professor Hawkins pointed out that there was an inaccuracy, not of fact, but of theory in one of
them, which read that the Professor “was already preparing a paper for the British “Ass”
[British Association] which he would be very willing to try beforehand on the dog.” And this, he
felt, failed to convey both the honour in which he held the Club & the pleasure with which he
accepted its invitation.
[...]
6. After the Chairman had gracefully welcomed Professor Hawkins, we spent the rest of the
evening listening to and discussing the Fact of Evolution.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 15. 5. 36
H. M. Wallis in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
5. A General Knowledge then occupied us very happily for the rest of the evening. H. R. Smith
and C. E. Stansfield, the Examiners, proved too cunning for most of us. But the ladies claimed
with some show of reason that the absence of a female Examiner placed them at a
disadvantage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 23.6.36
Francis E Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and, with the addition of No. 7, approved.
7. Frank Pollard then introduced the subject for the evening, Modern Authors. [...]
8. There followed a series of talks, in most cases acompanied by readings: these were in the
order named
Janet Rawlings, on E. H. Young’s “Miss Mole’
Dorothy Brain, on T. S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”
R. H Robson on some Poems of W. H. Auden
V. W. Alexander on René Bazin’s “La Terre qui meurt” and “Les Oberlé”, and finally
Charles Stansfield on Winifred Holtby’s “South Riding.”'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 23.6.36
Francis E Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and, with the addition of No. 7, approved.
7. Frank Pollard then introduced the subject for the evening, Modern Authors. [...]
8. There followed a series of talks, in most cases acompanied by readings: these were in the
order named
Janet Rawlings, on E. H. Young’s “Miss Mole’
Dorothy Brain, on T. S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”
R. H Robson on some Poems of W. H. Auden
V. W. Alexander on René Bazin’s “La Terre qui meurt” and “Les Oberlé”, and finally
Charles Stansfield on Winifred Holtby’s “South Riding.”'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Reckitt House, LP. 21.10.36
E. B. Castle in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read + approved.
[...]
5. E. B. Castle gave us some biographical facts of G. K Chesterton’s career.
6. We then had a part of a paper written by Kenneth F. Nicholson on Chesterton. He gave us a
good picture of G.K.C. as a man, showing the essentials of the later Chesterton already there in
his earlier career. Kenneth Nicholson stressed the simplicity and genuineness of G.K.C.’s poetry,
and his great love of the English characteristics. K. F. Nicholson also read very tellingly several
extracts from his poetry
7. Elizabeth Alexander read a short paper on G.K.C. contributed by H. M. Wallis on the
corruscations[?] and back somersaults thrown by Chesterton in earlier years, and on his
association with Bernard Shaw. While anxious to credit any assertion of H.M.W.’s some
members of the Book Club, who knew of Chesterton only in the last 40 years of his life, found it
difficult to accept the suggestion that G.K.C. never carried much weight.
This paper was concluded by a reading of Chesterton’s “The Donkey.”
8. R. H. Robson then read two or three extracts from the Critical Essays, with particular
reference to Bernard Shaw and Dante.
9. V. W. Alexander read The Hammer of God, a short story from “The Innocence of Father
Brown[”].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Reckitt House, LP. 21.10.36
E. B. Castle in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read + approved.
[...]
5. E. B. Castle gave us some biographical facts of G. K Chesterton’s career.
6. We then had a part of a paper written by Kenneth F. Nicholson on Chesterton. He gave us a
good picture of G.K.C. as a man, showing the essentials of the later Chesterton already there in
his earlier career. Kenneth Nicholson stressed the simplicity and genuineness of G.K.C.’s poetry,
and his great love of the English characteristics. K. F. Nicholson also read very tellingly several
extracts from his poetry
7. Elizabeth Alexander read a short paper on G.K.C. contributed by H. M. Wallis on the
corruscations[?] and back somersaults thrown by Chesterton in earlier years, and on his
association with Bernard Shaw. While anxious to credit any assertion of H.M.W.’s some
members of the Book Club, who knew of Chesterton only in the last 40 years of his life, found it
difficult to accept the suggestion that G.K.C. never carried much weight.
This paper was concluded by a reading of Chesterton’s “The Donkey.”
8. R. H. Robson then read two or three extracts from the Critical Essays, with particular
reference to Bernard Shaw and Dante.
9. V. W. Alexander read The Hammer of God, a short story from “The Innocence of Father
Brown[”].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue:- 1.12.36
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
4. The Secretary presented a statement of accounts showing the Club to have a balance of £1-
18-0, with money from the auction still to come.
6. Readings were then given by the following people.
F. E. Pollard: from Lloyd George’s Memoirs.
Dorothea Taylor from Quennells
A Rawlings: the story of Hervé Riel
H. R. Smith: from Nevinson’s Between Two [sic] Wars.
V. W. Alexander: from W. F. Harvey’s "We were seven".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue:- 1.12.36
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
4. The Secretary presented a statement of accounts showing the Club to have a balance of £1-
18-0, with money from the auction still to come.
6. Readings were then given by the following people.
F. E. Pollard: from Lloyd George’s Memoirs.
Dorothea Taylor from Quennells
A Rawlings: the story of Hervé Riel
H. R. Smith: from Nevinson’s Between Two [sic] Wars.
V. W. Alexander: from W. F. Harvey’s "We were seven".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham:- 27.1.37
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
6. Members then read the play Green Pastures, with exception only of one big scene. Edgar
Castle took the part of “De Lord Jehovah” (unavoidably absent) and Frank Pollard (perhaps
with boyhood memories of the days when he was B. B. le Tall’s licensed jester) played the
Archangel Gabriel. Of the others it might be said that each man in his turn played many parts,
and Reginald Robson was a veritable Henry V at Agincourt, Pyrrhus at Troy, + Condé at Rocroi
rolled into one with here and there a touch of the angels at Mons.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene 22. II 1937
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read (by F.E.P. in regretted absence of the Secretary) & approved.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith introduced Browning with a biographical sketch.
5. F. E. Pollard read The Italian in England.
6. S. A. Reynolds read a paper by H. M. Wallis on ‘The Bishop orders his Tomb’; & Rosamund
Wallis read the poem.
7. F. E. Pollard commented on various aspects of Browning’s works, & at intervals the following
were read:-
‘The Patriot’ by E. B. Castle.
Parts of ‘By the fireside’ & ‘Holy Cross Day’ by R. H. Robson.
Part of ‘Rabbi ben Ezra’, by C. E. Stansfield.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 24. III 37
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
3. Disraeli: Dorothy Brain read extracts from letters to his sister.
4. S. A. Reynolds sketched Disraeli’s political life as far as the 60’s. with passages from
McCarthy’s History of our Own Times.
5. Celia Burrow read from [André] Maurois of D’s domestic and married life.
6. After a brief statement from F. E. Pollard of D’s Chief works, H. R. Smith read from Tancred.
7. F. E. P. read a paper kindly contributed by H. M. Wallis, dealing with D’s relations with
Gladstone, Salisbury & Queen Victoria, & telling of the contrasted Gartering of Disraeli &
Salisbury after their return from Berlin in 1878.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation
of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating
remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of
Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given
by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with
one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not
strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Hillsborough :- 14. 9. 37.
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
2. Charles Stansfield then introduced the momentous question of the evening. Was the Book
Club to end its existence? He had felt for some time that it was moribund. [...]
He referred to E. B. Castle who shared his concern and to a letter which he believed had been
written to the Secretary by E. B. Castle.
3. The Secretary then read this; it supported the opinions expressed by C. E. Stansfield.
4. The subject was then discussed informally.
[...]
9. We then turned to the work of Barrie. Howard Smith gave us a chat – he would not call it a
paper – on the plays he had seen.
[...]
A considerable part of “What every woman knows” was then read in which a number of people
took part.
Charles Stansfield appropriately gave a reading from My Lady Nicotine.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Do you read Blatchford in the Weekly Despatch? He is very good this week on "The Danger of the Submarine" and warns us again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry William Williamson Print: Newspaper
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the
programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow
as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and
review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of
resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the
programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow
as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and
review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of
resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the
programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow
as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and
review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of
resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the
programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow
as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and
review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of
resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to
write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of
resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s
happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to
write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of
resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s
happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Manuscript: Letter, Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to
write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of
resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s
happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Manuscript: Letter, Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to
write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of
resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s
happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mignon Castle Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to
write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of
resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s
happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Letter
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
[...]
6. The evening was completed by the reading of extracts from the works of various authors who
had recently been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. In the interests of truth it should
perhaps be mentioned that the reading from French and Russian authors were given from English
translations.
R. H. Robson read from Dodsworth by Sinclair S. Lewis
Mary S. W. Pollard [read from] The Village [by] Ivan Bunin
L. Dorothea Taylor [read from] All God’s Chillun Got Wings [by] Eugene E. O'Neill
H. R. Smith [read from] Les Thibault by Roger M. du Gard
S. A Reynolds [read from] White Monkey [by] J. Galsworthy
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at St. Margaret’s, Shinfield Road: 20. 1. 38.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
6. C. E. Stansfield opened the proceedings on Æ [A-E ligature, the name adopted by George
William Russell] by a detailed biographical sketch of some length, in the course of which we
gained some idea of the contradictions and complexities of A. E.’s character. [...] An interesting
personal touch was added to the sketch by F. E. Pollard who had been present at one of Æ’s
“salon” receptions.
7. Extracts from A. E’s prose were then read by Mary S. W. Pollard on “Gandhi,” and by F. E.
Pollard on “The one dimensional mind”.
8. Finally F. E. Pollard and V. W. Alexander read three of A.E.’s poems.
9. By this time most of us were more than ready for a little lighter matter, and we thoroughly
appreciated some delightful touches from The Tinker’s Wedding by Synge which Rosamund
Wallis gave with evident relish.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Cintra Avenue
22.IV.1938
1. minutes of last read & approved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Unidentified member of the XII Book club Manuscript: Notebook
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
1. Apologies for absence were received from Margaret and A. Bruce Dilks, Alice
and Arnold Joselin, Sylvanus A. Reynolds, Kenneth F. Nicholson, Francis H. Knight.
[...]
3. The subject chosen was letters, and during the evening we heard a most
interesting variety of letters, the matter varying from good & energetic advice to a
brother-in-law by Abraham Lincoln, to the butcher of our dreams; from Zola’s
account of the Dreyfus case to the amazing all-round ability to destroy of Leonardo
da Vinci. Charming letters to children were read, and various letters to the public;
and yet through all this variety, links were found connecting one set of letters with
the next.
In the first section of the meeting the following were read:- Letters by
Leonardo da Vinci read by K. Waschauer, by Abraham Lincoln read by F. E.
Pollard, and a humorous selection read by Edith B. and Howard R. Smith.
4. We adjourned for refreshments.
5. The minutes of the last meeting were then read and signed.
[...]
7. The business being completed, we had a further selection of letters
Zola’s letters on the Dreyus case [read by] Howard R. Smith[.]
Letters written to children [read by] Muriel Stevens[.]
Captain Scott’s last letters [read by] Elsie D. Harrod[.]
J. M. Barrie’s letter to Mrs. Scott [read by] Rosamund Wallis[.]
Letters of Gertrude Bell [read by] Mary Stansfield[.]
8. The meeting ended with general thankfulness that we had not to spend the
coming night as Gertrude Bell had done on the mountains.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: K. Waschauer Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue, 9th. July 1945
A. Bruce Dilks in the chair
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
4. A letter was read from our late Secretary Victor Alexander congratulating the
Club on reaching its 50th birthday and recalling some of its more distinguished
past members.
[...]
6. The rest of the evening took the form of a Brains Trust, with Bruce Dilks as
question master and all the members providing the brains. [...]
[...]
[signed as a true record by] Rosamund Wallis 24. 9. ’45. [at the club
meeting held at 64 Northcourt Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 41.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at 7 Marlborough Avenue 22/10/45
Arnold G. Joselin in the chair
1. The minutes of the previous meeting were read & signed.
[...]
3. Dr Taylor read from Kingdon Ward’s Modern Exploration giving us some idea of
the History of Exploration. Early man was immobile. Exploration has kept step
with Civilization. Exploration of the Earths surface is nearly finished, now we go
either up or down.
4. We adjourned for refreshment.
5. H. R. Smith read Smythe’s account of his singlehanded assault on the Everest
on the Everest summit.
6. Elsie Harrod from Gino Watkins by J M Scott first the description of suitable diet
for Greenland and second an account of travel over the Greenland Icecap. Very
Vivid.
7. Cyril Langford read from Hanno [half-emended, correctly, to ‘Hanno’] by J.
Leslie Mitchell on the ideas of what the earth is like deep beneath our feet. We got
a picture of a vast Hollow echoing caverns & great underground seas.
8. Thos Hopkins read extracts from Richard Bird [sic] in the Antarctic all alone
being slowly poisoned by Carbon Monoxide the fumes from his stove slowly
escaping a very introspective depressing story. Taking the evening as a whole it
was perhaps felt that there was rather a lot of physchology [sic] stirred into the
adventures.
[signed as a true record by] A. Austin Miller 28.XI.45 [at the club meeting held at
67 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 44.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hopkins Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 4th September 1943
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
[...]
6. Edith Smith opened the evening of miscellaneous readings by reading part of a
short story “The Man with No Face” by Dorothy Sayers. She left the murder
mystery tantalizingly unsolved, but gave us a clever and amusing picture of the
occupants rightful and encroaching of a 1st-class railway carriage.
7. Mary Stansfield read from a collection of letters written by Freya Stark entitled
“Letters from Syria”. These were written some years ago in an atmosphere of
peace & tranquility. A particularly beautiful description of the writer’s first sight of
the Greek Islands recalled to F. E. Pollard his voyage there with Charles
Stansfield, about which he gave us some interesting and amusing reminiscences.
8. Arnold Joselin Read Boswells account of his first meeting with Johnson and then
“My Streatham Visit” by Frances Burney in which she describes meeting Johnson at
Thrale Hall and records some of the conversation at the dinner table.
9. [...] we listened to F. E. Pollard reading about “The Functional Alternative” from
a pamphlet published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs entitled “A
Working Peace System” by David Mitrany. The author suggests that in Post-War
Europe we should pursue a line of action similar to that adopted by President
Roosevelt in America in 1932/33. This started a lively discussion during which it
became apparent that federal union does not function in the Pollard family.
10. Reverting to more tranquil times Howard Smith read from André Maurois’ “Life
of Disraeli”. This led to the suggestion that Parliamentary speeches of today might
be improved if they contained more personal venom & we were assured that
Eleanor Rathbone is doing her best to liven things up.
11. Muriel Stevens read from The Autobiography of a Chinese Girl” by Hsieh Ping-
Ying. This proved to be a suitably soothing and uncontroversial ending to a most
varied and interesting evening.
[signed as a true record by] Howard R. Smith
6/10/1943 [at the club meeting held at Frensham: see Minute Book, p. 161]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kenneth F. Nicholson
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown members of the XII Book Club
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown members of the XII Book Club
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
Meeting held at Gower Cottage. 2nd. Dec. 1943
Muriel Stevens in the chair.
1. Minutes of last meeting read & signed.
2. The treasurer reported on the club’s finances. No accounts were
presented for
inspection, indeed the only member near enough to the treasurer to get a
glimpse
of his A/C book protested that the figures read out in no way corresponded
to
those written down. Amid a good deal of flippant comment a balance in
hand of
6/3 was revealed. A vote of confidence in the treasurer was moved and his
report
accepted.
[...]
5. After a refreshing interval we proceeded to the ever more difficult task of
selecting books for this year’s reading. The Committee [Knox Taylor, Muriel
Stevens and Rosamund Wallis – see minutes of the meeting held 6 October,
XII
Book Club Minute Book, Vol. 4, p. 162] had gone to a good deal of trouble in
order
to put before us a list of books which it was possible to get. However,
these did
not meet with very general approval, so we proceeded to vote on the list of
much
more interesting books many of which the committee had ascertained were
already out of print & unobtainable. [...]
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin
15th Jan. 1944 [at the club meeting held at 7, Marlborough Avenue: see XII
Book
Club Minute Book, Vol. 5 (1944-1952), p. 0 – i.e. the page before the first
numbered page]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park. Jan 27th 1942
J. Knox Taylor in the Chair.
1. In the absence of the Secretary the minutes of the last meeting were read by
Alice Joselin.
2. With reference to Minute 6 of the last meeting, i.e. the selection of books for
reading this year, it was decided that as two of the selected books could not be
procured, Margaret Dilks and Mary S. W. Pollard should be asked to select two
alternatives from the last list. The minutes were then approved and signed.
4. After partaking of coffee, the excellence of which & the enjoyment thereof,
being in no way impaired by the introduction of powdered milk, (despite our host’s
perturbation at this war-time inclusion!) we settled down with eager expectations
and interest to the main business of the evening.
5. The subject was a provocative one “Modern Poetry” & we very gladly welcomed
Kenneth Nicholson into our midst, as he had kindly consented to come & talk to us
about modern poetry & to lead us into the strange regions of this somewhat
unknown world.
6. Gerard Manley Hopkins & W. B. Yeats were apparently the leaders in breaking
away from the old traditions of poetry-making, & of setting up a new form, even
expressing a new spirit. We then listened to poems of T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen &
W. Auden, & saw how this new way progressed & was elaborated.
We were bewildered, astounded & intrigued by turns! Through the intracacies [sic]
of “sprung rhythm”, down the “arterial roads” of poetical imagery of the early
1920’s to the more apparently intelligible sombreness of recent poetry, we were
led gently but inexorably, by our persuasive speaker, to see & realise that
however strangely we might regard this literature of our age, we must
acknowledge the urgency & sincerity of what the modern poet had to say.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [a member of the XII Book Club – one of Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, or F. E. Pollard] Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park. Jan 27th 1942
J. Knox Taylor in the Chair.
[...]
5. The subject was a provocative one “Modern Poetry” & we very gladly welcomed
Kenneth Nicholson into our midst, as he had kindly consented to come & talk to us
about modern poetry & to lead us into the strange regions of this somewhat
unknown world.
6. Gerard Manley Hopkins & W. B. Yeats were apparently the leaders in breaking
away from the old traditions of poetry-making, & of setting up a new form, even
expressing a new spirit. We then listened to poems of T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen &
W. Auden, & saw how this new way progressed & was elaborated.
We were bewildered, astounded & intrigued by turns! Through the intracacies [sic]
of “sprung rhythm”, down the “arterial roads” of poetical imagery of the early
1920’s to the more apparently intelligible sombreness of recent poetry, we were
led gently but inexorably, by our persuasive speaker, to see & realise that
however strangely we might regard this literature of our age, we must
acknowledge the urgency & sincerity of what the modern poet had to say.
7. Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, and F. E. Pollard all
contributed readings, some from the poets already mentioned, others from the
poetry of Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, McNeice & Dylan Thomas. Some pleased,
others perplexed; we capitulated before such a phrase as “As a madman shakes a
dead geranium”, but again were revived with what appeared to us as more lucid
poems. One which pleased us with its clarity, evoked the remark from F. E.
Pollard “that the only thing wrong with it was what was the
matter with that except that it was immediately intelligible”!
Such was our introduction to “Modern Poetry,” whether or not we appreciated its
“difference,” we were deeply grateful to K. Nicholson for inspiring us with the
desire to read more.
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin
23/2/42. [at the club meeting held at 72 Shinfield Road: see XII Book Club Minute
Book, p. 113]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [a member of the XII Book Club – one of Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, or F. E. Pollard] Print: Book
'Left at 12.30 and reached Munich at 9, but the journey didn't seem at all long. Read Morelli and "La Cousine Bette". Stopped at the Hotel Belle Vue, supper and so to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Fog in the early morning, sun came out after lunch. Quite chilly. Read Arabic and "Les Misérables".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Finished the "Misérables" and began "Simon Dale". [...].The little Morel boy and I made paper boats and sailed them in the bath this afternoon. We passed the Northern point of Sumatra about 1. All the ports were closed for it was rough and I came up and slept on deck for a bit.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'After lunch I went to the Borghese Villa. Aren't the gardens a dream! I had my Morelli with me and spent a long peaceful time looking at the pictures with the help of his essay on them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'This valley led us up onto a little Col from whence we looked down into the beautiful Wady Sir [Wadi es Sir] with Arak [Iraq] el Emir lying in the bottom of it and heights thinly covered with oak behind. Now this place is very interesting. It was a palace built by an enterprising gentleman called Hyrcanus about 200 years before Christ and Josephus describes it so accurately that one can to this day trace the lines of the moats and tanks and gardens.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'This valley led us up onto a little Col from whence we looked down into the beautiful Wady Sir [Wadi es Sir] with Arak [Iraq]el Emir lying in the bottom of it and heights thinly covered with oak behind. Now this place is very interesting. It was a palace built by an enterprising gentleman called Hyrcanus about 200 years before Christ and Josephus describes it so accurately that one can to this day trace the lines of the moats and tanks and gardens.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'We ran down the S coast of Asia Minor, beautiful hills with snow on them. Printed and toned photographs; after tea sat on deck and read Mr Browne's Bubi book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Finished the "Birth Stories" and began "La Mort des D....." which seems excellent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Jolted back to Nyaungu and got in soon after tea. Had tea, read and finished La Mort des Dieux and wrote to Uncle George.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Lovely hot day. Read Oppenheim and played Bridge after lunch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'I don't think, talking of Americans, that I've told you about an old couple called Williams Jackson who have "debouchés" here as the trimmings of an American commission sent out on Persian relief work. He's a learned Professor who wrote the "Life of Zoroaster" and other works (all of which I have by good fortune read) and she's a nice old thing [...] I've made bosom friends with both of them, especially with the Professor. They brim over with universal kindness and American sentimentality — a quality quite as truly American as hard-headedness.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'I've just read Lord Esher's book about Lord Kitchener which is a very interesting human document, isn't it. What a very big figure he just failed to be. Yet he did play a great part and if ever I meet his shade I should make it a curtsey. He was a greater man than I knew — it's a pity he didn't have a better biographer than Sir George Arthur.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The books you sent me lasted beautifully. I read the two Lucases (which I loved) and the Hutchinson (mediocre) in the train and am now deep in Ariel which is delightful. After that I can get books on board.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The book that influenced me most in this direction was Sylvanus Stall's, What a Young Man Ought to Know, which I accepted as the guiding testament of youth in all matters of sex knowledge.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'March 11 [1914]
Joined Hampstead Library £1..5.
Books read March [1914:] Mrs Sewell
His Grace of Osmond
Helen Keller Out of the Dark
A Lady of Quality.
The 3 Bronte's
The broken [sic] Halo.
Bridges Poems.
Life of Octavia Hill.
Life of Florence Nightingale Vol. 1
In the Guardianship of God
Rose o' the River. Wiggin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'[Books read] August [1914:] By waters of Germany.
Queenie's whim.
Timothy's quest.
Basil Lyndhurst.
Highway of Fate.
Lamp Lighter
Book on Birds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Books specially studied during furlough. 1917–1918.
The World & the Gospel. J. H. Oldham. S.V.M.U.
The Valley of Decision. Burroughs. Longmans.
Ordeal by Battle. F. S. Oliver. Macmillan.
Ecclesiastes. Devine. Macmillan
The Jesus of History. Glover.
In Christ. A. J. Gordon. Hodder & Stoughton.
The Manhood of the Master. Fosdick S.C.M.
The Meaning of Prayer. Fosdick. S.C.M.
The Creed of a Churchman. Various Longmans
The Problem of Pain. MacFadyen.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Alan taught himself to read in about thee weeks from a book called Reading without Tears.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alan Mathison Turing Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage 4th. May 1942.
M. Stevens in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read, pronounced rather more accurate
than usual, and signed.
[...]
4. First we had the telegram which was from the Alexanders, regretting that a
chicken pox epidemic among the children prevented their parents from
contributing to our evenings entertainment.
5. Next an essay entitled “An Autumn Ramble” was read by A. G. Joselin and the
author was later identified as S. A. Reynolds, who told us that it had been written
some 50 years ago.
[...]
7. Roger Moore read an essay entitled “Langdale, Easter 1942” and casting among
our members for a rock-climber we soon realized that the author was Knox
Taylor. [...]
8. Rosamund Wallis read “Samuel Butler at the Book Club” which was recognised
at once as being written by the secretary. She had rather let herself go in an
account of an imaginary meeting which explained the unusual brevity and accuracy
of this months minutes.
9. “Three Weeks in Kerry” was the title of a most interesting essay read by F. E.
Pollard. We had some difficulty in identifying this as being written by his wife –
perhaps because although we were told it had been written many years ago in the
author’s ‘comparative youth’ our imaginations failed to picture Mrs. Pollard on a
perilous journey in an Irish car, holding up an umbrella with one hand and and
peeling a hard-boiled egg with the other. [...]
10. A. B. Dilks read a dissertation in which the author wrote for some four or five
pages on the difficulty of deciding what to write about. Roger Fry, food, gardens
and cats were among the subjects he considered but for one reason or another,
laid aside. As members of the Book Club are so noted for beating around the bush
we had considerable difficulty in spotting this particular beater — but it proved to
be Roger Moore.
[...]
[Signature of] A. B. Dilks 6th June 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [Unnamed member of the XII Book Club] Print: Telegram
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage 4th. May 1942.
M. Stevens in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read, pronounced rather more accurate
than usual, and signed.
[...]
4. First we had the telegram which was from the Alexanders, regretting that a
chicken pox epidemic among the children prevented their parents from
contributing to our evenings entertainment.
5. Next an essay entitled “An Autumn Ramble” was read by A. G. Joselin and the
author was later identified as S. A. Reynolds, who told us that it had been written
some 50 years ago.
[...]
7. Roger Moore read an essay entitled “Langdale, Easter 1942” and casting among
our members for a rock-climber we soon realized that the author was Knox
Taylor. [...]
8. Rosamund Wallis read “Samuel Butler at the Book Club” which was recognised
at once as being written by the secretary. She had rather let herself go in an
account of an imaginary meeting which explained the unusual brevity and accuracy
of this months minutes.
9. “Three Weeks in Kerry” was the title of a most interesting essay read by F. E.
Pollard. We had some difficulty in identifying this as being written by his wife –
perhaps because although we were told it had been written many years ago in the
author’s ‘comparative youth’ our imaginations failed to picture Mrs. Pollard on a
perilous journey in an Irish car, holding up an umbrella with one hand and and
peeling a hard-boiled egg with the other. [...]
10. A. B. Dilks read a dissertation in which the author wrote for some four or five
pages on the difficulty of deciding what to write about. Roger Fry, food, gardens
and cats were among the subjects he considered but for one reason or another,
laid aside. As members of the Book Club are so noted for beating around the bush
we had considerable difficulty in spotting this particular beater — but it proved to
be Roger Moore.
[...]
[Signature of] A. B. Dilks 6th June 1942'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Joselin
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue, 10.2.41
A. B. Dilks in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. The subject for this evening was “Winter – in Poetry & Prose”. [...]
The programme was as follows:
Dickens – extract from “A Christmas Carol”
read by R. D. L. Moore
Hardy – “The Mellstock Carols” from ‘Under the Greeenwood Tree’
read by Mrs. H. R. [Edith] Smith
Shakespeare – “Blow, blow thou winter wind”
sung by F. E. Pollard
V. Sackville West – extract from a poem “The Land”
read by Margaret Dilks
H. M. Wallis – Account of the Blizzard of 1881
read by Howard Smith
Dickens – The Pickwick Club on the Ice
read by A. B. Dilks
Mendelssohn – The Hebrides overture
played by Beecham & the L.P.O. (on gramophone records)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 10.3.41
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
3. Violet Clough read an exceedingly interesting paper on “Children’s Literature”
showing the was it has developed from the “Moral Tales” of Maria Edgeworth
published at the beginning of the 19th. Century, to the delightful tales by Beatrix
Potter & A. A. Milne which are read today. The one retrogressive step she thought
was in the binding of the books, which today seem to come to pieces almost at
once. All the mothers present agreed with this, so it is no reflection on the Clough
children in particular although it may be on the modern child in general.
4. Readings from children’s literature were then given as follows:
Labour Lost from the Rollo Books. Selected by S. A. Reynolds & read by A. B.
Dilks.
“The Fairchild Family” by Mrs. Sherwood read by Mrs. Pollard – this was
particularly gruesome.
“Little Women” by Louisa Alcott read by Mary Stansfield.
Divers examples of children[’]s poetry read by Rosamund Wallis, which included
an impromptu recitation by Howard Smith of one of Hillair[e] Belloc’s Cautionary
Tales.
“Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carrol[l] read by F. E. Pollard.
“Samuel Whiskers” by Beatrix Potter read by Muriel Stevens.
“The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo” a Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling, read by
Howard Smith.
“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame read by Margaret Dilks.
“The House at Pooh Corner” by A. A. Milne, read by A. B. Dilks.
5. Bruce Dilks sang two of Fraser-Simsons settings of A. A. Milne’s Poems.
“Christopher Robin Alone in the Dark” and “Happiness”.
[Signed as a true record of the meeting by] S. A. Reynolds
April 7th / 41'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Clough Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 72 Shinfield Road. 5th May 1941
A. G Joselin in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved
2. Apologies of absence were read from Violet Clough & Mr. & Mrs. Knox
Taylor.
[...]
4. Our evening was devoted to a study of the work and writings of Matthew Arnold
and we are very grateful to the Committee who arranged the programme and in
particular to A. G. Joselin and F. E. Pollard for a most interesting and enlightening
evening.
First Mr. Joselin told us something of Matthew Arnold’s work as an Educationalist —
of his attempts to secure the improvement of education & particularly secondary
education in England. His views on Education are expressed in “Culture and
Anarchy” which was published in 1869, and Mr. Joselin read several extracts from
J. Dover Wilson’s editorial introduction to this book. [...] Other readings given to
illustrate Matthew Arnold the Educationalist and Prose Writer were “Dover Beach”
by Mrs. Joselin and further extracts form “Culture and Anarchy” read by R. D. L.
Moore.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 72 Shinfield Road. 5th May 1941
A. G Joselin in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved
2. Apologies of absence were read from Violet Clough & Mr. & Mrs. Knox
Taylor.
[...]
4. Our evening was devoted to a study of the work and writings of Matthew Arnold
and we are very grateful to the Committee who arranged the programme and in
particular to A. G. Joselin and F. E. Pollard for a most interesting and enlightening
evening.
First Mr. Joselin told us something of Matthew Arnold’s work as an Educationalist —
of his attempts to secure the improvement of education & particularly secondary
education in England. His views on Education are expressed in “Culture and
Anarchy” which was published in 1869, and Mr. Joselin read several extracts from
J. Dover Wilson’s editorial introduction to this book. [...] Other readings given to
illustrate Matthew Arnold the Educationalist and Prose Writer were “Dover Beach”
by Mrs. Joselin and further extracts form “Culture and Anarchy” read by R. D. L.
Moore.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Joselin Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at “Hillsborough”: 24 Jan 1940
R. H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
7. Two one act plays were then read. The first of these starred Margaret Dilks as
Becky Sharp, a part which she read so successfully as to make her nervous about
the effect on her own character afterwards. The Secretary has had the pleasure of
seeing Margaret Dilks two or three times since, and is glad to report no noticeable
deleterious effects.
Other parts in the play were taken by,
Muriel Stevens as Amelia, very demurely
C. E. Stansfield [as] George Osbourne
R. H. Robson [as] Joseph Sedley
A. B. Dilks [as] Rawdon Gawley
8. The second play was Five Birds in a Cage. And here too, a new planet entered
the firmament, to whom the other luminaries did obeissance [sic].
Rosamund Wallis was the Duchess of Wiltshire, giving us a delicate mixture of the
old time hauteur of Vere de Vere, and the kindly condescension of the great lady
who travels third class, and lectures on the appeal of socialism. She had, so to
speak, two beaux on her string, Victor Alexander as the prepossessing but
ineffective young peer, and Roger Moore as the young foreman plumber. Into this
dual situation Rosamund Wallis entered with such verve, as to become for the
time being what the late William Fryer Harvey would have called “one of the most
forward looking members of the aristocracy,” & on the strength of the inspiration
invited the two young men to the theatre the next day where she continued their
education.
Mary Robson read a very pleasing part as the shy but ambitious little London
midinette. We were sorry her part was not longer. R. H. Robson stepped into the
breach at the last moment to become the lift man, where however he had perforce
to remain stolid.
[Signed as a true record] Rosamund Wallis'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Hilliers, Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40.
Rosamund Walis in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
2. Minute 7 of 19th Dec. – relating to the accounts – was continued
[...]
5. The subject of letters was introduced by Roger Moore, and led to a desultory but
amusing discussion ranging from the Pastons to modern family letters and
scurrilous blackmailing letters.
[...]
7. Margaret Dilkes read from Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son.
8. Ethel Stevens read letters which she had cut out of the papers from time to
time, notably one from a child of thirteen to John Ruskin.
9. H. R. Smith read some four or five short letters from E. V. Lucas, “The Second
Post.”
10. Mary Pollard read Pliny’s account of the Eruption of Vesuvius.
11. Roger Moore read some of Keats’s letters which were much enjoyed, and a
Keats evening was suggested for some future meeting.
[signed as a true record:] S A Reynolds
18/3/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Hilliers, Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40.
Rosamund Walis in the Chair
[...]
2. Minute 7 of 19th Dec. – relating to the accounts – was continued
[...]
[signed as a true record:] S A Reynolds
18/3/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Hilliers, Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40Meeting held at Hilliers,
Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40.
Rosamund Walis in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
2. Minute 7 of 19th Dec. – relating to the accounts – was continued
[...]
5. The subject of letters was introduced by Roger Moore, and led to a desultory but
amusing discussion ranging from the Pastons to modern family letters and
scurrilous blackmailing letters.
[...]
7. Margaret Dilkes read from Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son.
8. Ethel Stevens read letters which she had cut out of the papers from time to
time, notably one from a child of thirteen to John Ruskin.
9. H. R. Smith read some four or five short letters from E. V. Lucas, “The Second
Post.”
10. Mary Pollard read Pliny’s account of the Eruption of Vesuvius.
11. Roger Moore read some of Keats’s letters which were much enjoyed, and a
Keats evening was suggested for some future meeting.
[signed as a true record:] S A Reynolds
18/3/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at Hilliers, Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40.
Rosamund Walis in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
2. Minute 7 of 19th Dec. – relating to the accounts – was continued
[...]
5. The subject of letters was introduced by Roger Moore, and led to a desultory but
amusing discussion ranging from the Pastons to modern family letters and
scurrilous blackmailing letters.
[...]
7. Margaret Dilkes read from Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son.
8. Ethel Stevens read letters which she had cut out of the papers from time to
time, notably one from a child of thirteen to John Ruskin.
9. H. R. Smith read some four or five short letters from E. V. Lucas, “The Second
Post.”
10. Mary Pollard read Pliny’s account of the Eruption of Vesuvius.
11. Roger Moore read some of Keats’s letters which were much enjoyed, and a
Keats evening was suggested for some future meeting.
[signed as a true record:] S A Reynolds
18/3/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue: 18. 3. 40.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. We began our meeting with four readings taken before the interval. These
reading were love scenes from the following books or poems:
Chas. Kingsley’s “Westward Ho”: read by Elsie Sikes
Jas. Hilton’s “Goodbye Mr. Chips”: [read by] M Dilkes
J. R. Lowell’s “Coortin’”: [read by] C. E. Stansfield
Rev. W. Barnes’s “Bit o’ Sly Coortin’”: [read by] S. A. Reynolds
These readings stirred the amorous instincts of certain of our members who
regaled the club with courting stories. [...]
5. We then [...] listened to readings from
Shakespeare’s: Merchant of Venice, by R & M Robson
Browning’s: By the Fireside, by F. E. Pollard
F. Stockton’s: Squirrel Inn, by Rosamund Wallis
H. M. Wallis’s: Mistakes of Miss Manisty, by H. R. Smith
Thackeray’s: The Rose and the Ring, by Muriel Stevens
6. These duly received their meed of comment & appreciation, and we then took
our leave, two or three of the husbands going home, we suspect, to curtain
lectures.
[signed as a true record:] F. E. Pollard
17.IV.40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue: 18. 3. 40.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. We began our meeting with four readings taken before the interval. These
readings were love scenes from the following books or poems:
Chas. Kingsley’s “Westward Ho”: read by Elsie Sikes
Jas. Hilton’s “Goodbye Mr. Chips”: [read by] M Dilkes
J. R. Lowell’s “Coortin’”: [read by] C. E. Stansfield
Rev. W. Barnes’s “Bit o’ Sly Coortin’”: [read by] S. A. Reynolds
These readings stirred the amorous instincts of certain of our members who
regaled the club with courting stories. [...]
5. We then [...] listened to readings from
Shakespeare’s: Merchant of Venice, by R & M Robson
Browning’s: By the Fireside, by F. E. Pollard
F. Stockton’s: Squirrel Inn, by Rosamund Wallis
H. M. Wallis’s: Mistakes of Miss Manisty, by H. R. Smith
Thackeray’s: The Rose and the Ring, by Muriel Stevens
6. These duly received their meed of comment & appreciation, and we then took
our leave, two or three of the husbands going home, we suspect, to curtain
lectures.
[signed as a true record:] F. E. Pollard
17.IV.40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 17. IV 40.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. As an introduction to our subject of Modern English Humourists, R. H. Robson
read a passage analysing the nature of Humour. Discussion followed on the
distinction, if any, between wit & humour, & various alleged examples were
forthcoming.
6. A. B. Dilks read from Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody; many entries appealed to
members as characteristic of themselves or their friends.
7. In the regretted absence of C. E. Stansfield, F. E. Pollard read T. Thompson’s
Blitzkrieg, from the Manchester Guardian, in what purported to be the Lancashire
dialect.
8 Howard R. Smith read from A. A. Milne: the reader shared fully in the mirth of
the hearers.
9. M. Dilks gave us a passage from Macdonnell’s ‘England, their England’, which
must have been salutary for any suffering from insular complacency.
10. Rosamund Wallis’ contribution was from P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Carry on, Jeeves’;
certain methods of being off with the old love & on with the new were
characteristically indicated by the writer, effectively rendered by the reader, &
clearly appreciated by the company.
11. R. H. Robson’s Saki story supplied further satire on English standards – in this
case of music, & the services likely to secure a title.
12. The chapter from Barrie’s ‘Window in Thrums’, read by F. E. Pollard, told how
Gavin Birse did his best to be off with the old love, but failed.
13. The idea of a Barrie evening was mooted.
[signed as a true record:] M. Stevens
18-7-40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, Elm Road.
18–7–40
M Stevens in the chair.
1. Minutes of last were read and signed.
[...]
3. The Treasurer (V. W. Alexander) gave a statement of accounts up to the end of
1939, which showed the astonishingly large balance of £4/10/2. The statement was
accepted.
4. The Secretary (also V. W. Alexander) reported having received a letter of
resignation from Howard and Elsie Sikes who are no longer able to attend our
meetings. We are sorry to lose them.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a letter of resignation from Victor W. and Elizabeth
Alexander, who are leaving Reading. A telegram had been received from Elizabeth
Alexander during the day, wishing the Club “goodbye & good luck, with thanks for
many merry meetings.” Howard Smith expressed our gratitude for the very
valuable services of V. W. Alexander & his wife as Secretary and Treasurer, &
afterwards drafted a letter of thanks & good wishes to Elizabeth Alexander, which
was signed by all present.
6. As his last duty for us, V. W. Alexander wrote a letter of affectionate greeting
to Charles Stansfield who has been ill for many weeks. This was signed by all.
7. M. Stevens was asked to write minutes for this time.
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
20 Aug 40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, Elm Road.
18–7–40
M Stevens in the chair.
1. Minutes of last were read and signed.
[...]
3. The Treasurer (V. W. Alexander) gave a statement of accounts up to the end of
1939, which showed the astonishingly large balance of £4/10/2. The statement was
accepted.
4. The Secretary (also V. W. Alexander) reported having received a letter of
resignation from Howard and Elsie Sikes who are no longer able to attend our
meetings. We are sorry to lose them.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a letter of resignation from Victor W. and Elizabeth
Alexander, who are leaving Reading. A telegram had been received from Elizabeth
Alexander during the day, wishing the Club “goodbye & good luck, with thanks for
many merry meetings.” Howard Smith expressed our gratitude for the very
valuable services of V. W. Alexander & his wife as Secretary and Treasurer, &
afterwards drafted a letter of thanks & good wishes to Elizabeth Alexander, which
was signed by all present.
6. As his last duty for us, V. W. Alexander wrote a letter of affectionate greeting
to Charles Stansfield who has been ill for many weeks. This was signed by all.
7. M. Stevens was asked to write minutes for this time.
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
20 Aug 40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, Elm Road.
18–7–40
M Stevens in the chair.
1. Minutes of last were read and signed.
[...]
3. The Treasurer (V. W. Alexander) gave a statement of accounts up to the end of
1939, which showed the astonishingly large balance of £4/10/2. The statement was
accepted.
4. The Secretary (also V. W. Alexander) reported having received a letter of
resignation from Howard and Elsie Sikes who are no longer able to attend our
meetings. We are sorry to lose them.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a letter of resignation from Victor W. and Elizabeth
Alexander, who are leaving Reading. A telegram had been received from Elizabeth
Alexander during the day, wishing the Club “goodbye & good luck, with thanks for
many merry meetings.” Howard Smith expressed our gratitude for the very
valuable services of V. W. Alexander & his wife as Secretary and Treasurer, &
afterwards drafted a letter of thanks & good wishes to Elizabeth Alexander, which
was signed by all present.
6. As his last duty for us, V. W. Alexander wrote a letter of affectionate greeting
to Charles Stansfield who has been ill for many weeks. This was signed by all.
7. M. Stevens was asked to write minutes for this time.
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
20 Aug 40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at School House. 18th October 1940.
R. D. L. Moore in the Chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. The evening was devoted to reading “Roberts Wife” by St. John Moore with the
following cast:—
June Harvey —— Muriel Stevens
Anne —— Violet Clough
Miss Orley —— Rosamund Wallis
Sanchia Carson —— Margaret Dilks
Dick Jones —— A. B. Dilks
Robert Carson —— Roger Moore
Dr. Grahame, Bishop of Winterbourne —— F. E. Pollard
Mrs. Jones —— Edith Smith
Bob Carson —— A. B. Dilks
Mrs. Armitage —— Mary S. W. Pollard
Rev. Jefferson —— Howard Smith
Chief Inspector Lindsey —— F. E. Pollard
Inspector Futvoye —— Arnold Joselin
Violet Clough introduced the play, and read the stage directions.
[signed] Rosamund Wallis
Nov. 18th 1940'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Clough Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Frensham, Northcourt Avenue, 13.xii.40
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. An apology for absence was read from Mr. & Mrs. Joselyn.
2. Minutes of last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
4. Mrs. Pollard read a letter from Elizabeth Alexander telling of a very unfortunate
accident which had befallen our late secretary. Mrs. Pollard was asked, when
writing, to convey to the Alexanders our sympathy and hopes for a very speedy
recovery.
[...]
6. Typed lists of books suggested for this year’s reading were handed round an F.
E. Pollard made a few brief explanatory remarks about each book. Some doubt
was expressed regarding the number of books to be purchased this year in view of
our depleted numbers, but a brief journey into the realms of the higher
mathematics soon satisfied everyone that if we counted our single members
separately instead of in pairs, 12 books would provide one per house per month.
[...]
[...]
[Signed by] A. B. Dilks
10.2.41'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Typescript
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 17.1.39
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
3. A letter from R. H. Robson was then read. It stated that the excellence of Book
Club suppers has increased, is increasing, & ought to be diminished. This caused a
certain embarrassment. Several members who liked to think of themselves as
frugal folk, reflected uneasily that the interval for light refreshment had often
proved itself more palatable than some of the drier fare before and after.[...]
[...]
6. Francis E Pollard then gave an appreciation of H. G. Wells in the form of a
biographical sketch. He dealt too with the amazing variety and extent of Wells’s
output, and the development of his character and beliefs.
7. Victor W. Alexander read an extract from “God the Invisible King.”
8. Further passages were read as follows:-
Margaret J Dilks from “Mankind in the making”.
H. R. Smith from “The Sea Lady”.
Mary S. W. Pollard from “Joan & Peter”.
Muriel Stevens from “The Valley of Spiders”.
9. Finally the Chairman referred again to the Supper question. R. H. Robson’s
concern was one of those which demanded from us a statesmanlike Quaker
compromise, perhaps an acceptance in principle and a rejection in practice wold
best meet the case. It was felt we should thank R. H. Robson for his letter, and
watch him closely during heat.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
Feb. 20 1939.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 17.1.39
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
3. A letter from R. H. Robson was then read. It stated that the excellence of Book
Club suppers has increased, is increasing, & ought to be diminished. This caused a
certain embarrassment. Several members who liked to think of themselves as
frugal folk, reflected uneasily that the interval for light refreshment had often
proved itself more palatable than some of the drier fare before and after.[...]
[...]
6. Francis E Pollard then gave an appreciation of H. G. Wells in the form of a
biographical sketch. He dealt too with the amazing variety and extent of Wells’s
output, and the development of his character and beliefs.
7. Victor W. Alexander read an extract from “God the Invisible King.”
8. Further passages were read as follows:-
Margaret J Dilks from “Mankind in the making”.
H. R. Smith from “The Sea Lady”.
Mary S. W. Pollard from “Joan & Peter”.
Muriel Stevens from “The Valley of Spiders”.
9. Finally the Chairman referred again to the Supper question. R. H. Robson’s
concern was one of those which demanded from us a statesmanlike Quaker
compromise, perhaps an acceptance in principle and a rejection in practice would
best meet the case. It was felt we should thank R. H. Robson for his letter, and
watch him closely during heat.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
Feb. 20 1939.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [Unidentified member of the XII Book Club] Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Muriel Stevens Manuscript: Unknown
'The Excursion June 24th 1939.
H. R. Smith once again agreed to provide a route, & we had an excellent run
without going outside the boundaries of Berkshire.
There was some rain, but that did not seem to affect the great pleasure we had
from the scenery which to many of us was previously unknown.
Celia Burrow kindly made herself responsible for the supper, and owing to the
rain we were hospitably entertained by Howard & Edith Smith, as our hostess was
unable to be present.
[signed] A.B. Dilks
24. 11. 39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Lambia, 33 Conisboro Avenue 19.5.39
R. H. Robson in the chair.
[...]
1. The minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
2. R. H. Robson gave an introductory sketch of Hilaire Belloc & his work.
Belloc was educated at the Oratory School — at that time in Birmingham, &
became later an M.P. with a Liberal but independent outlook. He made himself a
champion of Roman Catholicism, wrote on such varied subjects a military tactics,
yachting, religion, & politics, topography, history especially the French Revolution,
as well as producing novels and poetry.
R. H. Robson read, as specimens of his work, his opinion of St. Just, and his
account of the Battle of Hastings.
Other readings were given by later contributors.
3. C. E. Stanfield read from “First and Last Things” giving us the man who
deplored the spread of education; and also extracts about rivers, mountains and
Algiers.
[...]
5. V. W. Alexander read from “Hills and the Sea” the description of the Valley of
the R. Rother, showing Belloc’s love of Sussex.
6. Muriel Stevens gave us some selections from his sonnets & other verse.
7. Celia Burrow then read the vivid account of Dronet’s ride which resulted in the
arrest of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Varennes.
[...]
9. H. R. Smith, reading from “The Historic Thames” told us of the once important
Osney Abbey & of Reading Abbey as it used to be.
10. Finally R. D. L. Moore read from “The Crisis of our Civilization”, showing
Belloc’s ideas & those of some other historians as to what History could or could
not teach.
[...]
[signed]A.B. Dilks
24. 11. 39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
'Meeting held at School House, 19·XII·39.
R. D. L. Moore in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
3. F. E. Pollard then nobly undertook the thankless task of auctioning last year’s
books [i.e. 1939 books]. That very few of the books fetched more than the
guaranteed price was no fault of the auctioneer to whom we were grateful. The
following were the results:
“Power” – R.H.R 4/-
“Thrice a Stranger” M.S.S. 5/3.
“Guns or Butter” F.E.P. 5/3.
“Joyful Delaneys” – R.W. 4/6.
Jonah & the Voice – M. Stevens 4/9.
The Rains Came – R.W. 4/6.
Ladies of Alderley E.C.S. 7/6.
Unforgotten Years R.D.L.M. 5/-
Diary of My Times E.B.S. 5/3.
Chateaubriand. A.B.D. 6/3.
Solitude. R.D.L.M. 3/3.
Malice Towards Some E.T.A. 3/9.
British Agriculture. H.R.S. 7/6
Perri M.S.S. 2/6.
4. Passing on to the question of the books for 1940, Charles E. Stansfield revealed
that inspite of all our good resolutions only four members had sent in lists of
suggestions amounting to 43 books in all. The Committee had selected 18 of these
and so we proceeded by vote to select 13 from this list – namely:
Book Guarantor Price
Country relics. F.E.R. 15/-
Rich Man Poor Man. J.R. 4/6.
Life of Mr. Justice Swift. M.S.W.P. 12/6.
How Green was my Valley. M.S.S. 8/6.
Corduroy etc. H.R.S. 8/6.
After Many a Summer. R.H.R. 7/6.
General Cargo. S.A.R. 6/-.
Pages from the Past. C.E.S. 10/-.
Ghosts of London. R.W. 6/-.
Too Late Now. A.B.D. 12/6.
The Old Century H.R.S. 8/6.
Caroline of England. H.M.W 12/6.
Mrs. Minniver M. Dilks 7/6.
[...]
5. Members adopted the suggestion that in September a meeting might be devoted
to talks on some of these books by those who had enjoyed them. Judging from the
voting earlier in the evening on the numbers who had read each of the 1939 books
it should be a lively meeting; since, apart from “Mr. Murray and the Boococks”
which won universal favour (as a matter of fact it was not a Book Club purchase)
the worst & spiciest books were most popular.
[...]
[signed] R. H. Robson
24. 1. 1940.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [Unidentified acting secretary to the XII Book Club] Manuscript: Notebook
'Weather very dud, nothing doing, might as well be at home.
After breakfast I spread myself out in front of our new open fire in the hut, and read pretty steadily on to about 3 in the afternoon—E. V. Lucas's new book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Book
'I essayed a new author the other day whom we have often heard praised and of whom I hoped
great things — Landor: but the book I got, a series of imaginary letters called "Pericles and
Aspasia" proved rather disappointing. Indeed I am afraid my appreciation of English prose is
very limited, and I certainly cannot fatten on mere prose when the matter is not interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I remember reading in a book called "The open Road" an extract from Hewlett's "Pan and the
Young Shepherd" which I thought splendid. Thanks to our Galahad's detestable handwriting I
can't tell whether your book is the "Lore" or the "Love" of P. In any case I have never heard of it
before, but, from your description, am very eager to read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I myself have been reading this week a book by a man named Love Peacock, of whom I had not
heard, but who seems to be famous. He was a contemporary of Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron etc., and
an intimate friend of Shelley. The book is a farcical novel called "Headlong Hall", and very
amusing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'I wonder what a book called "Letters from Hell" published at 1/- by Macmillan would be
like?' (2) 'I have written up for "Letters from Hell" and it ought to be here by the end of the
week. I am looking forward to it immensely...' (3) 'And now I must turn to "Letters of (sic)
Hell". I suppose I must have looked forward to it too much: at any rate - I will tell the truth - I
have failed to read it, have not enjoyed it a bit and have put it away in my drawer
unfinished.... I expected beauties of the phantastic type, and in reality it turns out only a
novel. For the parts about Hell are after all only a setting for the story of his previous life...
supremely commonplace. The characters are all absolutely crude.... The only part I liked was
the vision of paradise.... Still, when both you and Macdonald praise the book, I am ready to
believe that the fault must be in me and not in it.' (4) 'I am no longer in a position to take
your advice about "Letters from Hell" as we had a jumble sale ... and I contributed this....
They tell me it sold for 1/6! I am at present enjoying the malicious pleasure of expecting that
the buyer will be as disappointed as I was.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'… folk talk about men not wanting religion—the men
who really know what the War is have a different
tale to tell—have you read Neville’s book, just out?
I’ll send you a copy, if you like.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Thomas Byard Clayton Print: Book
‘There is an excellent article in this week Saturday Westminster, a paper of
which I am very fond. It is a review by Walter de la Mare, and is that poet’s
confession of Faith … My leave starts on Thursday—5 whole days … Do you
not like Laurence Binyon’s verses in the Times Supplement? Those and
Hardy’s and Kipling’s are the best of the bunch. Though I like Watson
Grenfell and Noyes. Hardy’s grows on one. Did you ever read his last book
of Short Stories—"The Changed Man"? … Have you read any of D F
Lawrence? I have just finished an extraordinary book called "The White
Peacock", full of arresting studies of character and most essentially
breathing of earth and clouds and flowers—though not a pleasant book …
we had Zeps here about a fortnight ago. Two bombs were dropped on
Chelmsford itself, both on or near the Glosters billeting area. The damage
was perhaps 5£ worth. It cured an old lady of muscular rheumatism, indeed
it made an athlete, a sprinter of her—she went down the street in her
nightgown like a comet or some gravity-defying ghost.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘I am back in the Trenches now and my address is altered as you notice.
Thank you for Lawrence offer but cloth books are so bulky and impossible
out here. I have sent home the Georgian book. I know his poems a little
and admire his power, but not his outlook. I suppose he is the necessary
spokesman for people that way inclined … I read an excellent poem in the
Westminster Gazette; it got the prize there … do you know who wrote it?
Its by someone at the front.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘I rec your play and Annual. Thank you very much. The play is gorgeous, one of
the chiefest pleasures of my leave days; and for this I thank you indeed. The
ideas are exactly what we all think out here—and the court martial of the
Kaiser and kings etc might have been copied from one of ours … I have not
had a chance of looking at the Annual yet but will do so before I go back.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘I am glad you sent that cutting from Wells’ Book. I hope you understood it.
I did not. Not a word of it can I make sense of. I would rather we did not
read this Book. Now "The Passionate Friends" I found astounding in its
realism but like all the great terrible books it is impossible to “take sides”. It
is not meant to be a comfortable book; it is discussional; it refuses to
ignore the unpleasant … At present I am deep in a marvellous work of
Hugo’s The Laughing Man.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'I arrived half-dead at La Neuville, and slept there
for twelve hours or more. The next day we went to
Braches, and then on foot to Rouvrel. About there,
the country was unscathed by war, and very
beautiful. On a bank by the roadside, I took
Walden out of my pocket, where it had been
forgotten since the morning of the 21st, and there
began to read it. At Rouvrel the rest of the
Battalion rejoined us the next day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Edward Read Print: Book
‘I have started to read again, having read nothing all the closing months of
last year. I have discovered a man called D. H. Lawrence who knows the
way to write, and I still stick to Hardy: to whom I never managed to convert
you … We talk of going out in March. I am positively looking forward to that
event, not in the brave British drummer-boy spirit, of course, but as a relief
from this boredom … We don’t seem to be winning, do we? It looks like an
affair of years.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Hamilton Sorley Print: Book
'I am just now (when at home) reading 'Cosmos', a sketch of a physical description of the universe.
Parts of it are very interesting, but others of too deeply scientific character for my limited capacity
to comprehend; still I hope to gather a good deal of curious and useful information from it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'At the time I received thy letter, I was reading Carlyle's 'Life of Cromwell'. I was unable to procure
the second volume immediately, and while waiting for it, I have been reading attentively his 'Past
and Present'. I have been extremely pleased with it, and deeply interested in his views of the
present state of society, or rather of the corruption of its state.. [extensive commentary follows]
Often while I have been reading it I have thought of thee, and wished I could read it with thee.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
We visited the church of San Pietro on the brow of the hill on which Perugia is situated; it contains many interesting pictures,.... I remarked a lovely little picture in the corner of the sacristy which none present seemed to know anything about, but I have since found it thus described in Passavant's life of Raffaelle by whom it was painted when he was still in the School of Perugino.[followed by long
quotation from Passavant's Life of Raphael, Vol 2. p.4]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Horner Print: Book
'Sat by the fire and read the Ranee of Sarawak's biography. Cannot think why she had such awful
daughters.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Sat and read Antony, by Lord Lytton.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Stayed up reading H. V. Morton's Women of the Bible. Loved the chapter on 'Ruth, Martha and
Mary'. Always inclined to Martha myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Unfortunately, I introduced the subject of Men must Weep by Beverley Nichols. I always forget
Mabel is an unrepentant Pacifist. Even now she will not admit that their Propaganda has largely led
us into this mess. He writes of the idea launched some years ago that a body of non-belligerents
should march between the battling armies and stop them. He says how ludicrous it all sounds now.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'A controversial book by H. V. Morton, called: I, James Blunt, is dedicated to Wishful Thinkers who
believe Britain is still an island, and that Russia will win the war for us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Reading a book by Oliver Baldwin. A lot of it is the sentimentalism of a few years back, which fell
to pieces when the Hun was at our Back and Front Door. He seems attracted to Spiritualism and
communication, in which he firmly believes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'A soldier saw me reading the Abyssinian book, and asked me if the Transvaal Scottish were
mentioned, as he had served with them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'In the afternoon came Barishnikov with his daughter Alexandra.... He has lent me a book called I
Married a Russian. ' [538] 'I Married a Russian has charmed us all. An educated English girl fell in
love with a Russian scientist at Cambridge Cavendish Lab. She married him and arrived in time to
enjoy bugs and lack of every comfort!' [540]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Mr Joseph Conrad, the author, writes: I don’t remember any child’s book. I
don’t think I ever read any; the first book I remember distinctly is Hugo’s
"Travailleurs de la Mer" which I read at the age of seven. But within the last
two years I’ve participated in my son’s (age 5) course of reading, and I share
his tastes – in prose, Grimm and Andersen; in verse, Lear.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Most army hospitals acquired a varied collection of
books and this ward was no exception. With plenty of
time to pass in bed I naturally spent a lot of it
reading, and browsed on a literary diet ranging from
Le Queux and Edgar Wallace, to Emily Brontë and
Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Geoffrey Ratcliff Husbands Print: Book
'I would not, I could not, give up the rides and
rambles that took up so much of my time, but I
would try to overcome my disinclination to serious
reading. There were plenty of books in the house —
it was always a puzzle to me how we came to have
so many. I was familiar with their appearance on
the shelves — they had been before me since I
first opened my eyes — their shape, size, colours,
even their titles, and that was all I knew about
them. A general Natural History and two little
works by James Rennie on the habits and faculties
of birds was all the literature suited to my wants
in the entire collection of three or four hundred
volumes. For the rest I had read a few story-books
and novels: but we had no novels; when one came
into the house it would be read and lent to our
next neighbour five or six miles away, and he in
turn would lend to another twenty miles further
on, until it disappeared into space'. I made a
beginning with Rollin's "Ancient History" in two
huge quarto volumes; I fancy it was the large
clear type and numerous plates [...] that
determined my choice. Rollin the good old
priest, opened a new, wonderful world to me, and
instead of the tedious task I feared the reading
would prove,it was as delightful as it had
formerly been to listen to my brother's endless
histories of imaginary heroes and their wars and
adventures. Still athirst for history, after
finishing Rollin I began fingering other works of
that kind: there was Whiston's "Josephus", too
ponderous a book to be held in the hands when read
out of doors; and there was Gibbon in six stately
volumes. I was not yet able to appreciate the lofty
artificial style, and soon fell upon something
better suited to my boyish taste in letters - a
"History of Christianity" in, I think, sixteen or
eighteen volumes of a convenient size. [...] These
biographies sent me to another old book, "Leland
on Revelation", which told me much I was curious
to know about the mythologies and systems of
philosophy of the ancients [...]. Next came
Carlyle's "French Revolution", and at last Gibbon,
and I was still deep in the "Decline and Fall"
when disaster came to us, my father was
practically ruined.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'Seebohm has nothing about this chucking cry or call
[of a species of snipe], nor has Shaw in his book on
the snipe in the Fur and Feather series. I doubt if
any of the books will enlighten you about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
I have been for two motor drives, so you see I am
getting on: and I am reading a book called
'Tadpoles and God' which pleases me by talking of
Mr Wells who 'in his wordy rush misses all but the
obvious and trivial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'I enjoyed your tales, the uneasy ones ["Tales of
the Uneasy"]—nasty on any night before going to
bed. I wonder which famous case you were
thinking of when you wrote “The Tiger Skin”. Was it
Penrudduck? That great house is now a desolation,
and I believe no visitors go there [...] Some of
your stories are rather horrible.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'Maria Stuart'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
Except Shakespeare, who grew from childhood as
part of myself, nearly every classic has come with
this same shock of almost intolerable enthusiasm:
Virgil, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Dante, Chaucer
and Milton and Goethe, Leopardi and Racine, Plato
and Pascal and St Augustine, they have appeared,
widely scattered through the years, every one like
a 'rock in a thirsty land', that makes the world
look different in its shadow.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Unknown
One can say of the more reticent British that, as
you come to know them, some are discovered and
some are found out. My father was of those who
are discovered. 'The Times' came to him
regularly, and he had a small shelf of books
which he read over and over, admitting a newcomer
now and then, after much deliberation. The whole
of George Borrow and of Charles Darwin, Hodson of
Hodson's Horse, Buckle's 'History of
Civilization', White's 'Selborne', Benvenuto
Cellini, and Sismondi's Italian Republics are
what I remember.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Stark Print: Book
After listing some canonical writers discussed by Pound and whom Ford had never read he then
goes on to write: 'On the other hand I possess a certain patience and, if I feel that I am going to
get anything out of it I can read in a prose or verse book for an infinite space of time. At
school I was birched into reading Vergil, who always excited in me the same hostility that was
aroused by Goethe's FAUST. Homer was also spoiled for me a good deal by the schoolmaster.
The schoolmaster did not contrive however to spoil for me Euripides. I have a good part of the
BACCHAE and some of the ALKESTIS still by heart. But so, indeed, I have Books Two and nine of
the AENEID, so that those mnemonics form no criterion; But for myself I have, I have read most
of the books recommended for the formation of my mind in HOW TO READ—excepting of course
"CONFUCIUS in full..." [...] I have read Doughty's DAWN IN BRITAIN, an epic in twelve books.
And SORDELLO only last night. And CANTO'S.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Ford on recalling when at the age of seven he met Turgenev at his grandfather Ford Madox Brown's
studio: 'I was conscious simply of a singular, compassionate smile that still seems to me to look up
out of the pages of his books when—as I constantly do, and always with a sense of amazement—I
re-read them.' Ford also also wrote that he re-read him when he was depressed—perhaps precisely
because his personality still felt like an antidote to intimidation [...]'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
