the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Charles Montagu Doughty : Travels in Arabia Deserta

'[King] likes Doughty, Arabian Knights [sic], Froissart.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Cecil King      Print: Book

Charles Montagu Doughty : The Dawn in Britain

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: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford      Print: Book

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