"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked ... I read all Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked." (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 3 p.372).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth 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
Transcribed from title page to edition of Don Quixote in 30 May 1813 letter from William Wordsworth to Basil Montagu:
'The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant / Don Quixote of the Mancha / Written in Spanish by Michael Cervantes / Translated in to English / By Thomas Shelton / And now printed Verbatim from the 4to / Edit: of 1620 / With a curious set of new Cuts, from / the French of Coypel / London, printed for D. Midwinter &c. / M.DCCXL.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
The seventeenth-century waterman-poet John Taylor had read More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Montaigne, and Cervantes in translation, but he never mastered a foreign language and he relentlessly satirised latinate prose:
I ne'er used Accidence so much as now,
Nor all these Latin words here interlaced
I do not know if they with sense are placed,
I in the book did find them".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor Print: Book
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards 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
'Bookbinder Frederick Rogers read Faust "through from beginning to end, not because I was able at sixteen to appreciate Goethe, but because I was interested in the Devil". Moving on to Don Quixote, "I did not realise its greatness till long after; but its stories of adventure and its romance and homour appealed to me strongly enough".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 10 July 1833: 'Mr. [Edward Trelawny, writer and friend of Byron and Shelley] read Don Quixote to us [on board boat travelling up 'valley of the Mohawk']: he reads very peculiarly; slowly, and with very marked emphasis.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Trelawny Print: Book
Another great source of amusement as well as knowledge, I have met with in reading almost all the best novels (Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Miss Burney, Voltaire, Sterne, Le Sage, Goldsmith and others).?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'after dinner began Duffield's translation of Don Quixote and Myers' Wordsworth'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, April 7, 1794
'At present I am puzzling at Persian and Arabic, and I mean to begin Hebrew. I get on at least with Spanish, for I have been able to meet with only one book since I read Don Quixotte, which was the "History of the Incas" by Garcillaso de la Vega. I was very pleased with it, though it is very long and in some parts tedious.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
'Coming upon a copy of "Don Quixote" in a warder's house, he thought it was "the most wonderful book [he] had ever seen". When he refused to give it up, the warder said he might keep it... "Don Quixote" awakened in Arthur a "passion for reading", and before long, he had read Scott, then Byron, who, he had been told was" a very, very great poet, and a very, very wicked man, an atheist, a writer whom it was dangerous to read".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830:
'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of
the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell 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: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
'Shelley reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Don Quixote - afterwards read mem. of the Prin/sse of Ba/th aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Drawing lesson - read Alphonsine - Shelley reads Don Q.[uixote] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Introduction to Sir H. Davy's Chemistry - write. In the evening read Anson's voyage and Curt. Shelley reads Don Q. aloud after tea - Finish Anson's voyage before night.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Davy's Chemistry with Shelley - read Curt. and Ides travels. Shelley reads Montaigne and Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Ides travels. S. reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'It is one of the most extraordinary accidents in my life, and gives ground to think of Don Quixot's adventures how people may be surprized'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Read Livy - Persiles & Sigismunda'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Don Quixote & Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I taught myself besides to read Spanish - for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no-one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of the book which I knew so well by name'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Tuesday 10 August 1920: 'Reading Don Q. still -- I confess rather sinking in the sand -- rather soft going [...] but he has the loose, far scattered vitality of the great books, which keeps me going'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Our library too was a weighty affair. Shipton had the longest novel that had been published in recent years, Warren a 2,000-page work on physiology.[...] On Good Friday [...] the rest of us lay about ,played chess or read the less technical portion of our curiously assorted library. This included "Gone with the Wind" (Shipton) "Seventeenth Century Verse" (Oliver), "Montaigne's Essays" (Warren), "Don Quixote" (self), "Adam Bede" (Lloyd), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Smythe), "Stones of Venice" (Odell) and a few others. Warren,who rejoined us that day, besides his weighty tome on Physiology -in which there were several funny anecdotes if one took the trouble to look - had with him a yet weightier volume on the singularly inappropriate subject of Tropical Diseases. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: W.H.(Bill) Tilman Print: Book
Tuesday 10 September 1918: 'My intellectual snobbishness was chastened this morning by hearing from Janet [Case] that she reads Don Quixote & Paradise Lost, & her sister Lucretius in the evenings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Case 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
'In the spring of 1831 my father was much distressed about the condition of his eyes and feared that he was going to lose his sight [...] He took to a milk diet for some months, which apparently "did good." At all events his eyesight was strong enough to allow him to study Don Quixote in the original.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Johnson praised "The Spectator," particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, "Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die.— I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'It was at this time, too, in the 'silent' reading periods at school, that - conventionally enough, I suppose, for a bookish child - I came upon Stevenson's "Treasure Island", "Don Quixote", "David Copperfield", all in abridged versions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I believe it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquatance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Books read from Feby 16th/18
King Richard II Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream do.
Henry the Eighth do.
As You Like It do.
Ziska Marie Corelli
Lorna Doone R. D. Blackmore
Don Quixote de la mancha Vol II
(Miguel de Cervantes Savedra)
Food of the Gods H. G. Wells
Odette's Marriage Albert Delpit
A Walking Gentleman James Prior
The Making of a Marchioness F. H. Burnett
Vixen Mrs. Braddon
The Magnetic North Eliz. Robins
A Roman Singer Marion Crawford
In the Reign of Terror G. A. Henty
Songs of a Sourdough R. W. Service
Forest Folk James Prior
John Henry Hugh McHugh
The Inviolable Sanctuary G. A. Birmingham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Henry Jones Print: Book
'A good many English here. We stare and are silent, following the manners of
our own race. Don Quixote and walking are my only friends.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield 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
