[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Letter H 21 - 12/11/1855 - "-The common - pretty - timid - mistletoe bought kind of kiss was not what Dante meant. Rossetti has thoroughly understood the passage throughout. You will see that in the first of the series it is really not Francesca's fault. She is nearly fainting and cannot help it."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Letter H. 28 - 23/12/1855 - "You have Carey's Dante I suppose - else Matilda's quotation from the Psalms might be useless to you. Carey is on the whole the best - and very beautiful. Cayley is sometimes closer to the original."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
"Why do you say that I don't like Dante? I read him through with the help of your crib & was profoundly impressed."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
'It occurred to me lately to read Dante again &, as I required a crib very constantly I took yours & by its help went through the whole. It suggested to me innumerable speculations upon which I should have liked to ask your questions? I should have liked to know, to suggest only one question, what Dante himself really believed? That is, of course, unanswerable; but I should like to get a little nearer to an answer at all conceivable to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen 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, Aenied, 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
Fanny Kemble, 22 July 1831, following record of discussion with her aunt Dall in which the prospect was raised of her having to give up her career and personal wealth if she should marry: 'I took up Dante, and read about the devils boiled in pitch, which refreshed my imagination and cheered my spirits very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 20 August 1832, on board ship to America: 'I have done more in the shape of work to-day, than any since the first two I spent on board; translated a German fable without much trouble, read a canto in Dante, ending with a valuation of fame.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble 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
'Reading the "Purgatorio" again, and the "Compendium Revelationum" of Savonarola'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'[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
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
[Read] 'Purgatorio'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Dante - finish Lambs specimens. walk to Mr Olliers. read Zapolya'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley has finished the life of Tasso & reads Dante - read Pamela'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'begin Clarissa Harlowe in Italian - S. reads and finishes Dante's Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. unwell - he reads the Paradiso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Saturday [...] May 1st. [...] Read 1st Canto of Dante's Paradiso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday May 16th. Read 4 Canto's [sic] of Dante's Purgatorio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday May 17th. [...] Read 5th. 6th. 7th. & 8 Canto of Dante's Purgatorio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday May 18th. [...] Read Alfieri's Tragedy of Mirra [...] Read 9 & 10th Canto of Dante's Purgatorio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday May 19th. [...] Read 11th. & 12th. Cantos of Purgatorio [...] '.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday May 20th. Read 13th. 14th. 15th. & 16th Cantos of Dante's Purgatorio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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
'Saturday Dec. 2nd. [...] Read 1 Canto of Purgatorio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Dec. 6th. [...] Read a Canto of Purgatorio.'
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 2 Canto's of Dante with Shelley - he reads Livy and Winkhelmann aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'Read Dante - S. reads Winkhelmann aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Georgics - read 25th & 26th Cantos of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Inferno of Dante & the 9th book of Livy - S & I read Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Sismondi - & the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Since I left Rome I have read several books of Livy - Antenor - Clarissa Harlowe - The Spectator - a few novels - & am now reading the Bible & Lucan's Pharsalia - & Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Write - read Lucan & the Bible S. writes the Cenci & reads Plutarch's lives - the Gisbornes call in the evening - S. reads Paradise Lost to me - Read 2 Cantos of the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Write - Finish the 5th book of Lucan - Read the bible & with S. two Canto's of the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy and Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Dante's Vita Nuova'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads the vita nuova aloud to me in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Vita Nuova.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - Tacitus - Emile & 1 Canto of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 3rd Canto of l'Inferno'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Wednesday 5 December 1917: 'L[eonard]. reading Life of Dilke [...] I'm past the middle of
Purgatorio, but find it stiff, the meaning more than the language, I think.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 31 July [entry headed 'My Own Brain,' and beginning 'Here is a whole nervous breakdown in miniature']: 'A desire to read poetry set in on Friday. This brings back a sense of my own individuality. Read some Dante & Bridges, without troubling to understand, but got pleasure from them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 20 August 1930: 'I am reading Dante, & I say, yes, this makes all writing unnecessary [...] I read the Inferno for half an hour at the end of my own page [of current work]: & that is the place of honour'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 24 September 1930: 'I am reading Dante; & my present view of reading is to elongate immensely. I take a week over one canto. No hurry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 27 November 1936, following lunch at Claridges with others including Sir Ronald Storrs: 'Sir R. Storrs. [...] stolid, second rate, a snob, & very vain [...] Reads seasonally: Dante: Homer: Shakespeare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Ronald Storrs Print: Book
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, 21 December 1845:
'Yesterday I was reading the "Purgatorio" and the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one, struck me with a new purpose [goes on to quote, and to translate "off hand", lines 52-57 from Purgatorio V]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
'Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia 1309 (?) which I'd never read and now only have in translation, must have been written excitedly, and while Div[ina]. Com[media] was forming in his mind. What a pity it only deals with Canzone! [goes on to comment further on passages noted from text]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. "His 'Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson 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 and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Under title 'Naples, 1826', C.M.G. describes the city and (mis)quotes a line from Dante, "Inferno," Canto 7: "Qui vid'i gente, piu che altrove troppa..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon] Print: Book
'In February 1896, seven titles were added to his [Oscar Wilde's] store. These were: Dante's "Divina commedia", accompanied by an Italian grammar and dictionary to help Wilde with the poem's medieval Italian; two massive folio volumes containing the entire surviving corpus of Greek and Latin poetry and drama; the equally weighty Liddell and Scott's "Greek Lexicon", and Lewis and Short's "Latin Dictionary". More Adey, the tranlator of Henrik Ibsen...procured the volumes and dispatched them to Reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'I noticed in Dante today, the two lines, "quali dal vento &c." (Inferno, book 7th, 12) as curiously describing the moment chosen by Turner in the battle of Trafalgar.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'W.S. Rowntree read a paper on Dante & Florence [,] H.R. Smith explained the Vita Nuova from which Mrs W.H. Smith & Mrs Edminson read selections'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
'W.S. Rowntree read a paper on Dante & Florence [,] H.R. Smith explained the Vita Nuova from which Mrs W.H. Smith & Mrs Edminson read selections'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
'W.S. Rowntree read a paper on Dante & Florence [,] H.R. Smith explained the Vita Nuova from which Mrs W.H. Smith & Mrs Edminson read selections'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mebers of XII Book Club Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Marriage Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 25 November 1829:
'We have a quantity of leisure here, and go on in a spirited manner with Dante. I am now reading a book that interests and enchants me, Sumner's "Records of the Creation."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Granville family Print: Book
'Italian quite comes up to K's promises about its easiness and on Sunday I read the first 200 lines
of Dante with much success. By the end of term I should be able to read it as easily as French.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'David Watson, M.A. of St. Andrews University, used to spend every spare moment of his day
and whole Sundays on end with this writer [Ford] standing beside him at his pulpit and
construing for him every imaginable kind of book from “Ataxerxes” of Madame de Scudéry and
“Les Enfants de [sic] Capitaine Grant” by Jules Verne, to ode after ode of Tibullus, Fouqué’s
“Udine”, all of the “Inferno”, the greater part of “Lazarillo de Tormes” and “Don Quixote” in the
original[…]
In addition, Mr. Watson had this writer translate for him orally into French “The Two Admirals”,
“The Deerslayer”, and “The Last of the Mohicans”—which made this writer appreciate what a
magnificent prose writer Cooper was.’
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
