As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few books, and know nothing of what is stirring in the literary world. I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who was a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke, which do not add to, or detract from, what I knew and liked in him before. I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps this winter. . .
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
William Blake, in copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Works (1798) vol I: " '... I read Burkes Treatise [on the Sublime and Beautiful] when very Young at the same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancmt [sic] of Learning on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions & on looking them over find that my Notes on Reynolds in this Book are exactly Similar. I felt the Same Comtempt & Abhorrence then; that I do now.'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes Jeremy Bentham's annotations (including highlightings and marginal comments) to eight pamphlets by Edmund Burke.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jeremy Bentham
'Reading Burke's "Reflections on French Revolution" and "Mansfield Park" in the evenings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 8 November 1790: 'In this country the stock of the National Assembly is fallen down to bankruptcy [...] the fatal blow has been at last given by Mr. Burke. His pamphlet ["Reflections on the Revolution in France"] came out this day se'ennight, and is far superior to what was expected even by his warmest admirers. I have redde it twice, and tho' of 350 pages, I wish I could repeat every page by heart. It is sublime, profound, and gay. The wit and satire are equally brilliant, and the whole is wise, tho' in some points he goes too far, yet in general there is far less want of judgement than could be expected from [italics]him[end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole
[transcibed in what seems to be Lady Caroline's hand]: 'What is Majesty without its externals?-- / by Burke'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'Read Burke's "Letters on a Regicide Peace"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished a cursory perusal of Burke on the "Sublime and Beautiful"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Burke's "Vindication of Natural Society". Except in parts (as in the opening and ending) I cannot think that this piece has much of Bolingbroke's style and manner...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Burke's Disquisition prefixed to his "Sublime and Beautiful"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'I have read since I saw you Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin's "Enquirer", and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith 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
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 1 February 1940:
'Reading Burke. Reading Gide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 9 February 1940: 'For some reason hope has revived. Now what served as bait? [...] I think it was largely reading Stephen [Spender]'s autobiography [published Spring 1940 by Woolf's Hogarth Press] [...] its odd -- reading that & South Riding both mint new, give me a fillip after all the evenings I grind at Burke & Mill. A good thing to read one's contemporaries, even rapid twinkling slice of life novels like poor W.H.'s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson 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
'Mr. Burke's "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the affairs of America", being mentioned, Johnson censured the composition much, and he ridiculed the definition of a free government, viz. "For any practical purpose, it is what the people think so"--"I will let the King of France govern me on those conditions, (said he,) for it is to be governed just as I ".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Though it is probably the mightiest mind ever engaged in our politics, & tho there seems to have been great elevation & principle in is views, I am struck with the very personal nature of the politics of the day; so much more full of what the Dukes of Bedford & Richmond may think or do than of actual measures. He seems to have had strong religious convictions, but there is a want of gentleness & spirit'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Unknown
