'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes 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 have finished Endymion with a painful feeling that the writer [Disraeli] considers all political life as mere play and gambling,' wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tait ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A. C. Tait 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
Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'After breakfast [on board steamboat] returned to my crib. As I was removing "Contarini Fleming" [a novel by Disraeli], in order to lie down, a lady said to me, "Let me look at one of those books," and without further word of question or acknowledgement, took it from my hand, and began reading. I was a [italics]little surprised[end italics], but said nothing, and went to sleep.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'After breakfast [on board steamboat] returned to my crib. As I was removing "Contarini Fleming" [a novel by Disraeli],in order to lie down, a lady said to me, "Let me look at one of those books," and without further word of question or acknowledgement, took it from my hand, and began reading [...] Arrived at the Delaware, we took boat again; and, as I was sitting very quietly reading "Contarini Fleming", with the second volume lying on the stool by my feet, the same unceremonious lady who had [italics]borrowed[end italics] it before, snatched it up without addressing a single syllable to me, read as long as she pleased, and threw it down again in the same style before she went to dinner.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'After breakfast [on board steamboat] returned to my crib. As I was removing "Contarini Fleming" [a novel by Disraeli],in order to lie down, a lady said to me, "Let me look at one of those books," and without further word of question or acknowledgement, took it from my hand, and began reading [...] Arrived at the Delaware, we took boat again; and, as I was sitting very quietly reading "Contarini Fleming", with the second volume lying on the stool by my feet, the same unceremonious lady who had [italics]borrowed[end italics] it before, snatched it up without addressing a single syllable to me, read as long as she pleased, and threw it down again in the same style before she went to dinner.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'Arrived at the Mansion House [in Philadelphia], which I was quite glad to gain [after coach and steamboat journey]. Installed myself in a room, and while they brought in the packages, finished "Contarini Fleming". It reminded me of Combe's [George Combe, Scottish phrenologist] book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
'there has been so much motion that it has been next to impossible for a person to work. I have read lately the "Newcomes" by Thackeray "Stuart of Dunleath" by Mrs Norton & "Coningsby" by Disraeli'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Thursday 29th July
?Sybil? ? (Disraeli)
[...]
I went to see Mother tonight and completed the preliminary draft for my syllabus on the Historical novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Monday 16th August
?John Inglesant? ? (J.H. Shorthouse).
I finished Sybil and think it certainly is a fine book for our syllabus purposes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 September 1844:
'I have just read Coningsby. It is very able, & yet scarcely efficient [...] It has no story, & not
a great deal of character; and is powerful as an exponent of the Young England political views,
without being specific. Still, a master-mind lives in the book, & the reader feels it
everywhere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
25 December 1931: 'After writing the last page, Nov. 16th, I could not go on writing without a perpetual headache; & so took a month lying down; have not written a line; have read Faust, Coningsby &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 30 April 1845:
'You ask me questions, "if I like novels," [...] There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago, -- well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end [italics]must[end italics] come, you feel -- and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you .. that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on and lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there [...] At this moment, Mr Somebody, a good man [...] "in answer from a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small, neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Maeso-gothic literature" -- This ends the page, -- which you don't turn at once! But when you [italics]do[end italics], in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read -- "On consideration, I" (Ben, himself) "shall keep them for Mr Colburn's 'New Magazine" -- and deeply you draw thankful breath!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 1 May 1845:
'Once I sate up all night to read Vivian Grey'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett 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
'He [Tennyson] read many novels after his evening's work, and among others he looked through Henrietta Temple again. He had told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love was given perfectly there. Lothair he did not admire, "altho' it was written to stir up the English gentry and nobility to be leaders of the people."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'He [Tennyson] read many novels after his evening's work, and among others he looked through Henrietta Temple again. He had told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love was given perfectly there. Lothair he did not admire, "altho' it was written to stir up the English gentry and nobility to be leaders of the people."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'During the day I read the War Supplement of the Australasian & made myself tolerably conversant with the particulars of the war so far as it has proceeded. Read also another portion of Lothair must confess with less pleasure than I felt in perusing some of the previous chapters. The part I read to-day related exclusively to the Wiles of the Roman Catholic Clergy in their strenuous efforts to ensnare Lothair in their toils & win him & his money over to the Church. It did not seem natural to me High Dignitaries of the Church within a step of the Pope himself would have condescended to plot as they are represented to Plot, nor that any one in his senses could have been imposed upon & made act so foolishly as Lothair is represented to have acted.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to Lord Brougham, 22 February 1853:
'I fear that the Government of the country is likely to become from such a strange mixture of things [described earlier in letter, about Lord John Russell's leadership of House of Commons] at once odious and ridiculous [...] I despair, and have done so ever since I read Disraeli's Buckinghamshire speeches.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
Lord Lyndhurst to Lord Strangford [1854]:
'I never hear Disraeli speak in any way unfriendly of [John Wilson] Croker, and was very much surprised and annoyed when I read "Coningsby," and was told that one of the characters was meant to represent him. Disraeli never spoke to me upon the subject.
'I think the biography [of Disraeli] is a very blackguard publication, and written in a very blackguard style. I don't know who Mr. Vernon-Harcourt is, though I read last year a pamphlet written by him, attacking Lord Derby somewhat in a similar manner, but with more scanty materials.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lyndhurst Print: Book
'Wilde's fellow pupils remarked on his veneration of the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, so it must have been a fairly unusual literary passion at Portora... Speranza literally passed her passion on to her youngest son by lending him several Disraeli novels. Wilde was ravished by the books...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Monday, 11 June 1827:
'The attendance on the committee and afterwards the Gnl meeting of the Oil Gas Company took up my morning and the rest dribbled away in correcting proofs and trifling, reading among the rest an odd volume of Vivian Grey -- clever but not so much so as to make [me] in this sultry weather go up stairs to the drawing room to seek the other volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
27 May 1878:
'Up early and off by the 11.30 train [from Fulda] to Berlin. They have a curious plan at Fulda of sounding the reveille at 4 o'clock in the morning [...] I first heard it on the Sunday. I was already awake and reading Disraeli's Sybil, which has interested us [Lady Charlotte and her husband Charles, a Conservative politician] by reason of the political opinions expressed in it. I finished the book today on the way to Berlin.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
27 May 1878:
'Up early and off by the 11.30 train [from Fulda] to Berlin. They have a curious plan at Fulda of sounding the reveille at 4 o'clock in the morning [...] I first heard it on the Sunday. I was already awake and reading Disraeli's Sybil, which has interested us [Lady Charlotte and her husband Charles, a Conservative politician] by reason of the political opinions expressed in it. I finished the book today on the way to Berlin.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
19 June 1878:
'A really warm day, quite summer at last. I did not go out till after dinner. I have finished Alroy, and am reading Wilhelm Meister.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
1 November 1879:
'We left Bruges by an early train, the express, joining the steamer at Ostend, and had a beautiful passage home reading Disraeli's pamphlet, which has given me great pleasure, especially by his descriptions of the scenes [in Syria and Cyprus] that Enid [reader's daughter] had been lately visiting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber
'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: Dorothy Brain Print: Book
'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: Howard Smith Print: Book
