'Weeton's reading becomes important in communication with friends, but also a point of conflict: when she visits her brother and his wife, they complain that she spends all her time reading, though she insists that she read very little ("only... Gil Blas, now and then a newspaper, two or three of Lady M. W. Montagu's letters, and few pages in a magazine'), and only because her hosts rose so late. Since her literacy is important as a sign of status, she repeatedly presents herself not as a reader of low status texts like novels but of travels, education works, memoirs and letters, including Boswell's "Tour of the Hebrides", the Travels of Mungo Park, and Mme de Genlis' work. She approves some novels, like Hamilton's "The Cottagers of Glenburnie", but generally finds them a "dangerous, facinating kind of amusement" which "destroy all relish for useful, instructive studies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Home past 9 almost starv'd to death...Read 'Gill Blas'. Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Home near 11. 'Gil Blass'. Bed past 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Made an end of 'Gil Blas'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
"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
'On 19 Aug. 1810, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] told W[ordsworth] that she was "reading Malkin's Gil Blas - and it is a beautiful Book as to printing etc but I think the Translation vulgar."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
