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

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Listings for Author:  

Oliver Wendell Holmes

  

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Oliver Wendell Holmes : Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

'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

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 

'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 

"I took in Mr Holmes' humorous poems & Davidson (a very jolly little friend of mine) another light work & we sat together with Romer in the furthest corner enjoying literature mixed with 'light conversation' after your style."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner

'No doubt it is to you that I owe this pleasure, - of Buckle's 2d vol. Maria has been cutting and skimming, and she opines that I shall find it a very great treat indeed. My best thanks to you for it, dear friend. I am in the thick of a very different sort of book now, - "Elsie Venner", which I did not mean to read; but a look at the first page carried me on: How immensely clever some of these Americans are! and their style of tale so new! I dislike all the part connected with Elsie: but I enjoy the New England atmosphere of the thing, and the wonderful power of deep and incessant observation'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

'Friday, 5th March, I worked late tonight which allowed me to get in a nice little talk with Pat on the value of the classic books of criticism, as apart from their literary value. It was my opinion that in nearly all cases, as the minds of readers has evolved with the changing times so the light in which the classic must be viewed has altered and therefore old criticism must, in nearly every case be superseded. At least, as regards the ?human? as distinct from the literary element in the book. I feel that we cannot ever completely reconstruct the life of a past age or enter into the minds of people who lived in other times. Pat remarked that he was constantly struck by the little progress made in thought and the things of the mind. Read ? ?The Autocrat of the breakfast table? (O. W. Holmes).'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : unknown

'15th March 1929 Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner

'we have just been reading Elsie Venner & we were altogether [italics] very [end italics] American yesterday'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughter 'Meta' or Margaret     Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : [poem]

'I was so sorry to see that Dr Wendell Holmes called England "The Lost Leader". - I went & read the poem to Meta, who did not know it; - & we did so grieve!'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Unknown

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Guardian Angel

'I read a novel called the Guardian Angel to-day by the Author of "Elsie Vennor". It was quite up to the run of most novels & served to amuse me very well to-day. If it had not been for it & the papers I should have had dull times as I did'ent stir out at all.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Latter Day Warnings'

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: John J. Cooper      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Poet at the Breakfast Table, The

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Professor at the Breakfast Table, The

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: K. Evans      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Chambered Nautilus, The'

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Deacon's Masterpiece, Or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans      Print: Book

  

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. : The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
    A Bruce Dilks in the chair.

1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.

[...]

7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine, Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft, Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place of these & some others.

8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.

9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.

10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’], describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.

11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.


[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield      Print: Book

  

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