'My father is now reading the Midnight Bell, which he has got from the library, and mother sitting by the fire.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Austen Print: Book
'Montalembert, it appears, kept a journal from his twelfth year to the end of his life, and I am tantalised with the sight of these volumes, which Madame de M. reads to me for a couple of hours in the afternoon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Madame de Montalembert Manuscript: Codex
'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Dr Delany read his wife an eclectic range of books from Eusebius' "Life of Constantine the Great" to "Peregrine Pickle".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Delany Print: Book
'Susan Sibbald knew Scottish shepherd Wully Carruthers who was a fellow-subscriber to the circulating library at Melrose, but while she borrowed Ann Radcliffe, he read "Ancient and Modern History", though he did sometimes read a "novel or nonsense buke", like "Sir Charles Grandison". He had also read Alan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd", and contrasted it ironically with the life of a real shepherd.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wully Carruthers Print: Book
'Princess Charlotte wrote of reading as a "great passion"; in a poignant attempt to construct bourgeois domestic intimacy in the dysfunctional household of the divorced Prince Regent she discussed and exchanged books with her friend Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, including memoirs and recent history, Byron's poems, and novels including Gothic fiction and works by Anne Plumptre and Jane Austen. (The perceptive Charlotte especially enjoyed "Sense and Sensibility" because she discerned in herself"the same imprudence" as Marianne's).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Charlotte Print: Book
'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
'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
'Yesterday my Elizabeth and I went to the most remarkable poets' Reading I have ever attended. It was held at Lord Byron's beautiful house in Piccadilly... I was moved by Mr de la Mare reading five poems of great beauty. Elizabeth was thrilled at seeing for the first time W.H. Davies, a strange tiny poet. He read "Love's Silent Hour" and three others. Hilary [Hilaire Belloc] read "The Poor of London" and "the Dons". He got a big reception'.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter de la Mare
'Growing up in extreme poverty in East London, Crooks spent 2d. on a secondhand "Iliad" and was dazzled: "What a revelation it was to me. Pictures of romance and beauty I had never dreamed of suddenly opened up before my eyes. I was transported from the East End to an enchanted land. It was a rare luxury for a working lad like me just home from work to find myself suddenly among the heroes and nymphs of ancient Greece".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Will Crooks Print: Book
'Read in Milton: his account of his blindness is very pathetic & I am always affected to tears'. Makes reference to 'Paradise Lost and 'regaind' "'Comus' & 'Allegro' & 'Penserose' are those which I take up most often"Quotes from 'Comus' ll.291-3.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
I Read the travels of Roderick Random, who had been into different Quarters and he Exposed the severaty of the Captains over the Men, Esspeatialy the Sick, in a Most Shocking Manner, Which I believe in a great Measure to be true.
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Yeoman
'If Clynes needed a second lesson in the subversive power of print, it came when his foreman nearly sacked him for sneaking a look at "Paradise Lost" during a work break at the mill.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: J.R. Clynes Print: Book
Read the Second Part of Mr. Roderick Random
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Yeoman
'Their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation an not to murmur at the dispensations of providence... those kinds of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to convince me of my errors for instance there was [Hannah More's] the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain... the Farmers fireside and the discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I could see their design'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
'Sufferings of the post-horse... from Bloomfields 'the Farmers Boy'...Poplar 7th May 1832. T.W.M.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: T.W.M.
'Evening [transcription of poem] James Montgomery. Weedon Nov 11th 1836.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Weedon
From the 'West Indies' a Poem by Montgomery.Part 2 Page 22 'In These romantic regions[...] From the same, Part 3 'There is a land[...] From the Same part 3. Page 35 'And is the negro outlaw from his birth [...] From the same, part 3rd. Page 40.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Warburton
Transcription of poem as 'The Song of Music'. 'Moore'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'The Fickleness of Love'. 'Moore'. [Transcription of poem].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'A Reflection at Sea'. 'Moore'. [Transcription of poem].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'Weep not for Those'. 'Moore'. [Transcription of poem].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'Stanzas'. 'Moore'. [Transcription of poem]'Go, let me weep there's bliss in tears /...'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'Perpetual Adoration'. 'Moore'. [Transcription of poem]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'The Inspiartion of Love'. 'Moore'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'The Meeting of the Waters'. 'Moore'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'The Tear / Moore' [transcription of text].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'The Wintery smile of Sorrow / Moore' [transcription of text].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
transcript of the poem headed 'battle of hohenlinden / campbell'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
transcript of the poem headed 'battle of hohenlinden / campbell'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'death scene in gertrude of wyoming/ campbell'; there is also a footnote that gives the context of the scene in the tale.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'friendship, love & truth / montgomery'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'stanzas. addressed to a friend on the birth of his first child. / montgomery'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'poet's address to twilight / montgomery'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'coeurde lion at the bier of his father / new monthly magazine' [includes prose note] [transcription of poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom Print: Serial / periodical
'happiness is a very common plant...' 'e. smith's fragments' 'greenock'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan
'the christain life may be compared...' 'e. smith's fragments'. followed by extract ascribed to 'hannah more' 'those who are rendered unhappy by frivolous troubles seek comfort in frivolous enjoyments...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan
'the cause of all sin...' 'e.smith's fragments'. signed 'e.d.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan
'far less shall earth now hastening to decay...' 'world before the flood' 'isle of man June 15th 31'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan
'Highland Hospitality' 'I once resolved to leave London for a little time [...]' 'Hermit in London'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: E.E.R. Print: Book
'I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end of the year 1835. [?] During the last thirteen months I have read Aeschylus twice; Sophocles twice; Euripides once; Pindar twice; Callimachus; Apollonius Rhodius; Quintus Calaber; Theocritus twice; Herodotus; Thucydides; almost all Xenophon?s works; almost all Plato; Aristotle?s Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides dipping elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch?s Lives; about half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenaeus; Plautus twice; Terence twice; Lucretius twice; Catullus; Tibullus; Propertius; Lucan; Statius; Silius Italicus; Livy; Velleius Paterculus; Sallust; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero. I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left; but I shall finish him in a few days. I am now deep in Aristophanes and Lucian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'Macaulay began with the frontispiece, if the book possessed one. "Said to be very like, and certainly full of the character. Energy, acuteness, tyranny, and audacity in every line of the face." Those words are writen above the portrait of Richard Bentley, in Bishop Monk's biography of that famous writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'The Last Man by T. Campbell esq' [transcribes text] 'All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom...' Signed 'Fanny'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Dugdale
'Graves of a Household' [transcript of text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
'My Ain Fire Side' 'O I hae seen great ones...'[transcript of text] 'from the Nithsdale and Galloway Songs'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly Print: Book
'Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness / 'When I consider how my light is spent...'[transcript of text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
'The Homes of England' [transcribes text] 'Mrs Hemans'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Browne
'Mrs Hemans. Evening Prayer at a girls school' [transcribes text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Browne
'The Wings of the Dove. Mrs Hemans' [transcribes text]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Browne
'"Forget Thee?" By the Rev John Moultrie [transcript of poem].
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
'Fairy Favours' [transcript of poem] 'Mrs Hemans'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Engaged in a 2nd perusal of the Pursuits of Literature and the Monthly Magazine
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book
In Lincoln, I now took up the Memorabilia of Xenophon, ran through the odes of Anacreon, and then commenced the Iliad. I worked hard at Greek.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Cooper Print: Book
"Under his instruction - while we read together part of Voltaire's 'Charles the Twelfth' and Moliere's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' - I caught hold of such good French pronunciation as would have enabled me soon to converse very pleasantly in the language, could I have found a companion."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Cooper Print: Book
I am reading "Maunders Treasury of Geography" a very entertaining work.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
"I have been reading lately "Natural Philosophy" by Tomlinson and Sir John Herschel, and am now reading the "Chemistry of Creation" by Dr Ellis."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'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
I have been reading lately "Maunders Geography" and working a little at "Thompson's Natural Philosophy["]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
I have been reading lately "Maunders Geography" and working a little at "Thompson's Natural Philosophy["]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Mary read to me a little before dinner, (which she does tolerable); 'Cyrus' a Romance. I wound silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Lay till near 11. Mary read 'cyrus', I winding silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Supper alone. Read life of Mr Savage.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Sup'd alone. Read 'The Sophy', a play of Sir J Deham's.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Read 'Sesostris, a new Tragydy'; a so-so one.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Read 'The travells of Cyrus' after supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Home past 9. Supper alone, Read 'Cyrus', Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Rise at 10. Mary read 'Cyrus'. Knited [knitted] till 7.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Took Phisick. Rise at 10. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Took phisick. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Read 'The Adventures of Six Days'. 1 hour. Bed 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Read 'Six Days Adventures' after supper. Bed 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
'Adventures of Six Days' 1 hour after supper. Bed 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Read 'Adventures of Six Days'. Bed 1.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
[Marginalia by Macaulay on Conyers Middleton's 'Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Christian Church']: 'I do not at all admire this letter. Indeed Middleton should have counted the cost before he took his part. He never appears to so little advantage as when he complains in this way of the calumnies and invectives of the orthodox.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Writt till supper. Read 'Sesostris'. Bed near 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Masenger - Believe ye are to blame, much to blame Lady; [...] That Feel a Weight of Sorrow through their Souls.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Read 'travells of Cyrus' alone 2 1/2 hours. A fine book. Bed near 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
I finished Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", and with some parts have been much pleased - the Scotch is interesting to me from not being acquainted with it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book
[Editorial commentary by Annie Coghill, Mrs Oliphant's cousin] 'George Macdonald's first book, or at any rate his first successful book, "David Elginbrod", had been published many years before by Messrs Hurst & Blackett, at Mrs Oliphant's warm recommendation. She always spoke of it as a work of genius, and quoted it as one of the instances of publishers' blunders, for when the MS. came to her it came enveloped in wrappings that showed how many refusals it had already suffered.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: MS of a book
'Thank you very much for the "Life of George Eliot," and for the kind and flattering inscription. I am very glad to have the book, which is as curious a book as any I ever saw. The personality of the great writer is as yet very confusing to me in the extreme flatness of the picture. I don't mean by flatness dulness [sic], though there is something of that, but only that it is like mural paintings or sculpture in very low relief. I have just run over your reviewer's article and think it very good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
I have been steadily & delightedly reading Mitford's History. First of all, he is an Historian after my own heart, and I really believe a perfectly upright & honest man [...] the merit of this history is great, in proving that bad as the world is now, even under Christian regulations, it is not nationally anywhere so bad as it was in Pagan Greece - except during the height and fury of the French Revolution - and still and ever perhaps inTurkey.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Contains a contents list, index to illustrations, index to maps and cross references to other texts in his library.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Dawson Print: Book
To Jane Whene'er I see those smiling eyes... [the 'transcript' does not follow the original to the letter]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
'Extract from Murphy's Grecian Daughter' 'Filial Affection'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
May heavenly Angels their soft wings display And guide you safe thro' ev'ry dangerous way In every step may you most happy be And tho far distant often think of me [some differences from the original]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophia
'I knew, I knew it could not last...' [transcript (exact) of lines 277-294]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
'Oh! Had wenever met/...' [transcript of lines 384-387]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
I read some of Chrysostom's commentary on the Ephesians. I am getting tired of this commentary. Such underground dark passages before you get at anything worth standing to look at! Very eloquent sometimes: but such a monotony & lengthiness! Sunday is not a reading day with me. Driving to church, driving back again, driving to chapel, driving back again - & prayers three times at home besides! All that fills up the day, except the few interstices between the intersections.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
We [Barrett and Hugh Stuart Boyd] talked comparatively about Homer, Aeschylus & Shakespeare: and positively about Aeschylus's Prometheus ? Praises of the speech in the Medea.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Print: Book
At breakfast, my parcel of books from Eaton came up the road. Fresh from the carrier. Unpacked it eagerly, & read the title pages of Barnes?s Euripides, Marcus Antoninus, Callimachus, the Anthologia, Epictetus, Isocrates, & Da Vinci?s Painting. The last I had sent for, for Eliza Cliffe, but the externals are so shabby that I have a mind to send it back again. Finished my dream about Udolpho; - & began Destiny, a novel by the author of the Inheritance [Susan Ferrier] which Miss Peyton lent me. I liked the Inheritance so much that my desires respecting this book were ?all alive?. I forgot to say that I don?t like the conclusion of the Mysteries. It is ?long drawn out? & not ?in linked sweetness?. Read some of the Alcestis. Mr. Boyd wishes me to read it; & I wished so too.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'After tea...[on a Sunday, my father]...liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Molly Vivian Print: Book
'At age thirteen John Clare was shown The Seasons by a Methodist weaver and though he had no real experience of poetry, he was immediately enthralled by Thomson's evocation of spring'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Christopher Thomson was a "zealous" Methodist until he discovered Shakespeare, Miilton, Sterne and Dr Johnson at a circulating library. When his absence from Sunday chapel was noticed, "I was called to account for it; by way of defence I pleaded my desire for, and indulgence in, reading. This appeared rather to aggravate than serve my cause. It was evidently their opinion, that all books, except such as they deemed religious ones, ought not be read by young men. I ventured somewhat timidly to hint, that it was possible for a young man to read novels, and other works of fiction, and still keep his mind free from irreligion and vice...".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'Byron had intoxicated him "with the freedom of his style of writing, with the fervour or passionateness of his feelings and with the dark and terrible pictures which he seemed to take pleasure in painting". The general effect of reading Milton, Hobbes, Locke and Newton had been "to make me resolve to be free. I saw that it was impossible for the soul of man to answer the end for which it was created, while tramelled by human authority, or fettered with human creeds. I saw that if I was to do justice to truth, to God, or to my own soul, I must break loose from all creeds and laws of men's devising, and live in full and unrestricted liberty..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'While he read little but the Bible and religious periodicals, his son was working his way through the Rhymney Workmen's Institute Library and Cassell's National Library of 3d paperbacks. MacAulay's essays, Goldsmith's History of England, Far from the Madding Crowd, Self-Help, Josephus, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Pepys, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and The Sorrows of Young Werther were among the books Jones read, often on his employer's time. (He hid them under the ledger at the Rhymney Iron Works, where he worked a thirteen hour day as a timekeeper for 9s. a week.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
'While he read little but the Bible and religious periodicals, his son was working his way through the Rhymney Workmen's Institute Library and Cassell's National Library of 3d paperbacks. MacAulay's essays, Goldsmith's History of England, Far from the Madding Crowd, Self-Help, Josephus, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Pepys, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and The Sorrows of Young Werther were among the books Jones read, often on his employer's time. (He hid them under the ledger at the Rhymney Iron Works, where he worked a thirteen-hour day as a timekeeper for 9s. a week.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson... "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Book
'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Book
'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Unknown
'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Frost Print: Book
"'Within the last month I have read Tristram Shandy, Brydone's Sicily and Malta, and Moore's Travels in France,' D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote in March 1796."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'As a Manchester warehouse porter, Samuel Bamford found the same richness in Milton: "His 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' were but expressions of thoughts and feelings which my romantic imagination had not unfrequently led me to indulge, but which, until now, I had deemed beyond all human utterance".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'As a Manchester warehouse porter, Samuel Bamford found the same richness in Milton: "His 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' were but expressions of thoughts and feelings which my romantic imagination had not unfrequently led me to indulge, but which, until now, I had deemed beyond all human utterance".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth and beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says,
Thus let me live unseen, unknown
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world and not a stone
Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
'by age twenty [Mary Smith] had read and understood George Payne's Elements of Mental and Moral Science, Thomas Brown's Moral Philosophy, and Richard Whateley's Logic. But two authors in paticular offered magnificent revelations. First there was Emerson on Nature; and later, as a governess for a Scotby leatherworks owner, she discovered Thomas Carlyle: "Emerson and he henceforth became my two great masters of thought for the rest of my life. Carlyle's gospel of Work and exposure of Shams, and his universal onslaught on the nothings and appearances of society, gave strength and life to my vague but true enthusiasm. They proved a new Bible of blessedness to my eager soul, as they did thousands beside, who had become weary of much of the vapid literature of the time".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
"[in Aug. 1787 Dorothy Wordsworth] reported that 'I am at present [reading] the Iliad' ... "
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'I have read only one play, the Bashful Lover and one or two of Plutarch's lives since we wrote last.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth describes to Lady Beaumont how she received a letter from her: 'A few minutes before your letter arrived, William [Wordsworth] had set forward with his Daughter on his back, and our little Nursemaid and I were on foot following after, all on our road over the high mountain pass betwixt Grasmere and Patterdale, by which road we were going to Park House to remove the Child from the danger of catching the hooping-cough which is prevalent at Grasmere. The letter was sent after us and we halted by the way-side to read it ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter
'I often think of the happy evening when, by your fireside, my Brother read to us the first book of the Paradise lost ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'I have read your quondam Friend's, Dr. Symmonds' life of Milton, on some future occasion I will tell you what I think of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'I have read your sermon [Human Laws best supported by the Gospel] (which I lately received from Longman) with much pleasure. I only gave it a cursory perusal, for since it arrived my family has been in great confusion, we having removed to another House, in which we are not yet half settled. The Appendix I had received before in a frank, and of that I feel more entitled to speak, because I had read it more at leisure [goes on to discuss this in detail].'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'Your sermon [The Gospel best promulgated by National Schools] did not reach me till the night before last. I believe we all have read it, and are much pleased with it.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
Henry Mayhew interviews a street author or street poet:
"I was very fond of reading poems in my youth, as soon as I could read and understand almost. Yes, very likely sir; perhaps it was that put it into my head to write them afterwards... I was very fond of Goldsmith's poetry always. I can repeat 'Edwin and Emma' now. No sir; I never read the 'Vicar of Wakefield'. I found 'Edwin and Emma' in a book called the 'Speaker'. I often thought of it in travelling through some parts of the country."
+ recites some of his own poetry to Mayhew
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Henry Mayhew interviews a penny mouse-trap maker (cripple):
"I found books often lull my pain... I can't afford them no, for I have no wish to incur any extraneous expense, while the weight of the labour lies on my family more than it does on myself. Over and over again, when I have been in acute pain with my thigh, a scientific book, or a work on history, or a volume of travels, would carry my thoughts far away ...I always had love of solid works. For an hour's light reading, I have often turned to a work of imagination, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare's plays; but I prefer science to poetry... I think it is solely due to my taste for mechanics and my love of reading scientific books that I am able to live so comfortably as I do in my affliction."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon 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
'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
'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
'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
'At the front of D[ove] C[ottage] MS 16, in use during 1798, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] copied Marlowe's Edward II V.v.55-108, with some omissions ... The extract was copied from Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
' ... a short extract from [Philip] Massinger's The Picture (III.v.211-19) [was] copied by D[orothy] W[ordsworth] into D[ove] C[ottage] MS 16 ... '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'During the spring or summer of 1789, W[ordsworth] translated Moschus' Lament for Bion [Idyllium III] ... '
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
'[Emrys Hughes] read the social history of Macaulay, Froude, and J.R. Green; Thorold Rogers's Six Centuries of Work and Wages particularly appealed to him because it offered "not the history of kings and queens, but of the way ordinary people ha struggled to live throughout the centuries..." Hughes was one of those agitators who found a virtual Marxism in Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution inspired the hope that a popular revolt somewhere would end the war...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
'On the rear flyleaf of his copy of [Charlotte Smith's] Elegiac Sonnets [5th edn, 1789]... W[ordsworth] copied two more of Smith's compositions, both of which were first published in her novel, Celestina (1791), and reprinted as XLIX and LI in Elegiac Sonnets (6th edn, 1792) ... W[ordsworth]'s copies vary from both texts as published.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
'[Francis] Wrangham was ... in the habit of reading MS verses to his friends: C[oleridge] heard his "Brutoniad" in Sept. 1794.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Wrangham Manuscript: Unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth to Thomas De Quincey, 1 August 1809: '... I took the pains when I was in Kendal of going to the Book Club to look at the Reviews ... have you seen the Edinburgh Review on Cam[p]bell's Poem [Gertrude of Wyoming]? I know not whther the Extracts brought forward in illustration of the encomiums or the encomiums themselves are more absurd ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Dorothy Wordsworth writes to Catherine Clarkson (12 November 1810) with description of three nights' stay during October (c.26-29) 1810 at Hackett (overlooking Langdale and other Lakeland locations) with William and Mary Wordsworth, their four children and a maid:
'The weather was heavenly, when we were there, and the first morning we sate in hot sunshine on a crag, twenty yards from the door, while William read part of the 5th Book of the Paradise Lost to us. He read the Morning Hymn, while a stream of white vapour, which covered the Valley of Brathay, ascended slowly and by degrees melted away. It seemed as if we had never before felt deeply the power of the Poet ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'At Ruskin College he was exposed to Marx, but he found a more compelling Utopian prophet when he read Lewis Carroll to his daughters: "Then one could look at life and affairs from the proper angle, for was not all our work to this end - that little children should live in their Wonderland, and mothers and fathers be heartful of the good of life because they were".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
[Alice Foley] read some Morris and less Marx, but for her a liberal education for the proletariat was not merely a means of achieving socialism: it was socialism in fact. At night school she staged a personal revolution by writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet and thriling to the "new romantic world" of Jane Eyre. She joined a Socialist Sunday School where 'Hiawatha' was recited for its "prophetic idealism", and a foundry hammerman intoned Keats's 'Eve of St Agnes and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
[Alice Foley] read some Morris and less Marx, but for her a liberal education for the proletariat was not merely a means of achieving socialism: it was socialism in fact. At night school she staged a personal revolution by writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet and thriling to the "new romantic world" of Jane Eyre. She joined a Socialist Sunday School where 'Hiawatha' was recited for its "prophetic idealism", and a foundry hammerman intoned Keats's 'Eve of St Agnes and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
'[Chaim Lewis] enthusiastically embraced the literature of an alien culture - "the daffodils of Herrick and Wordsworth... the whimsey of Lamb and the stirring rhythmic tales of the Ballads" and, yes, "the wry eloquence of Shylock".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
'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
'Blatchford, once he read it carefully found [Samuel Smiles's Self Help] "one of the most delightful and invigorating books it has been my happy fortune to meet with".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford Print: Book
'George Gregory offers a case study in the importance of Self-Help. His father was an illiterate Somsert miner, his mother a servant who read nothing but the Bible... Gregory only had a few school prizes - Jack and the Ostrich, a children's story; The Crucifixion of Philip Strong, a gripping tale of labor unrest; and the verses of Cornish poet, John Harries - and the family read a weekly serial, Strongdold the Gladiator. Having left school at twelve to work in the mines, Gregory had no access to serious reading matter until mid-adolescence, when a clerk introduced him to Self-Help. That book, he recalled in old age, "has lived with me, and in me, for more than sixty years... I was impressed by its quality for I had never touched a book of such high quality; and the impression deepened and became vivid as I took it home, read the stories of men who had helped themselves, struggled against enormous difficulties, suffered privations...but went on to rise phoenix-like from the ruins of their plans... I realised that my lack of education was not decisive of what I might become, so I commenced to reach out into the future".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gregory Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 14 August 1811: 'I have read nothing since I wrote to you except bits here and there and the Novel of John Bunkle - but I am going to set to and read - though I have still some sewing to do amongst mending the Bairns' cloaths.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to B. R. Haydon, 21 December 1815: 'Have you read the works of the Abbe [Johann Joachim] Winkelman on the study of the Antique, in Painting and Sculpture ... His Works are unknown to me, except a short treatise entitled Reflections concerning the imitation of the Grecian Artists in Painting and Sculpture, in a series of Letters. A translation of this is all I have read having met with it the other day upon a Stal[l] at Penrith ... This Book of mine was printed at Glasgow 1766.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Viscount Lowther, 22 September 1818: 'Your two interesting Letters, the Pamphlet, and Sun and Chronicle, have been duly received ... The Pamphlet I have carefully read ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham, 19 February 1819:
'I ought to have thanked you before for your versions of Virgil's Eclogues, which reached me at last. I have lately compared it line for line with the original, and think it very well done ... I think I mentioned to you that these Poems of Virgil have always delighted me much; there is frequently in them an elegance and a happiness that no translation can hope to equal. In point of fidelity your translation is very good indeed.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth to Joanna Hutchinson, 5 September 1819: 'We have been very comfortable and without the least bustle until last night when before the Gentlemen had left the dining room our loquacious Friend Mr Myers arrived half tipsy. He produced a letter he had received from Mr Crump and his own answer to it, four sides of a folio sheet which he deputed Mr Monkhouse to read to the gentlemen, and his own comments upon it were loud and long, with stamping and gestures ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Monkhouse Manuscript: Letter, Sheet
William Wordsworth (visiting Paris) to Helen Maria Williams, [15 October 1820], 'I had the honour of receiving your letter yesterday Evening, together with the several copies of your tender and beautiful Verses ... Allow me this opportunity of expressing the pleasure I shall have in possessing this little tribute from yourself - as also, the gratification which the perusal of both the Poems [including 'The Charter'] has afforded me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
'[Charles] Lamb copied ... [John Beaumont, Bart., the elder, "An Epitaph upon my dear Brother Francis Beaumont"] into his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher's Fifty Comedies and Tragedies (1679).'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Unknown
'[Sir George] Beaumont wriote to W[ordsworth] on 10 Aug. 1806, saying: "I am sure you will be pleased with my ancestor (sir Johns) Poems. the more I read them the more I am pleased, his mind was elevated, pious & pure."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir George Beaumont
S. T. Coleridge to James Tobin, 17 Sept 1800: 'What Wordsworth & I have seen of the Farmer's Boy (only a few short extracts) pleased us very much.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
S. T. Coleridge to James Tobin, 17 Sept 1800: 'What Wordsworth & I have seen of the Farmer's Boy (only a few short extracts) pleased us very much.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
'[Samuel] Rogers reported W[ordsworth]'s reaction to Brougham's harsh review of Byron's first volume: "Wordsworth was spending an evening at Charles Lamb's, when he saw the said critique, which had just appeared. He read it through, and remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, such an attack was abominable ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Crabb Robinson on Wordsworth's reading of Henry Brougham's review of Byron, Hours of Idleness: 'I was sitting with Charles Lamb when Wordsworth came in, with fume on his countenance, and the Edinburgh Review in his hand. "I have no patience with these reviewers," he said, "here is a young man, a lord, and a minor ... and these fellows attack him, as if no one may write poetry unless he lives in a garret."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
'De Qunicey's letter of 27 Aug 1810 to D[orothy] W[ordsworth] contains the last two lines of [John] Byrom's epigram ... which she in turn copied in her letter to Catherine Clarkson of 30 Dec. 1810.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey
'De Qunicey's letter of 27 Aug 1810 to D[orothy] W[ordsworth] contains the last two lines of [John] Byrom's epigram ... which she in turn copied in her letter to Catherine Clarkson of 30 Dec. 1810.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter
' ... the first three stanzas and two concluding stanzas of [Thoms] Campbell's poem [The Exile of Erin] were copied and pasted by S[ara] H[utchinson] into the Wordsworth Commonplace Book ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson
'On 7 Aug. 1805 the Wordsworths told Lady Beaumont that "We have just read a poem called the Sabbath written by a very good man in a truly christian spirit ... "'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
'W[ordsworth] copied out seven lines of Grahame's poem [Birds of Scotland] in a letter to Lady Beaumont of Dec. 1806, written at Coleorton, commending it as "exquisite".'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, Dialogue Between a Mother and Child] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, The Lady Blanch, regardless of her lovers' fears] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, "Virgin and Child"] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, "On the Same" ("Virgin and Child")] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Wu notes translated extract from Sir Bors' lament for Arthur (in the Morte D'Arthur of Thomas Malory) in the Wordsworth Commonplace Book.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Manuscript: Unknown
'C[oleridge] had read the Essay [on the Principle of Population] shortly after its first appearance in 1798.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'In late 1808 S[ara] H[utchinson] copied the description of the gawlin from [Martin] Martin, pp.71-2, into C[oleridge]'s notebook ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson Print: Book
'C[oleridge]'s letter to S[ara] H[utchinson] of May 1807 contained a transcription of Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew".'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
'Prelude MS W [Dove Cottage MS 38)] contains a transcription of Marvell's Horatian Ode dating from late 1802.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Wordsworth in the Fenwick Note to Miscellaneous Sonnets: 'In the cottage of Town-End, one afternoon, in 1801, my Sister read to me the Sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion with the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
'During his stay with the Beaumonts at Coleorton, 30 Oct. to 2 Nov. 1806, W[ordsworth] gave several readings from Paradise Lost - including Book I and Book VI, lines 767-84. Beaumont wrote to W[ordsworth] on 6 Nov., recalling "that sublime passage in Milton you read the other night ... where he describes ... the Messiah's ... coming as shining afar off ..."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
'"In reading Lady Mary W Montagu's letters, whi[ch] we have had lately, I continually felt a want - I had not the least affection for her" D[orothy] W[ordsworth] to Lady Beaumont, 11 April 1805).'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
'[Thomas De Quincey] got round to reading ... [Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife] only in late June or early July [1809], when "I read about 40 pages in the 1st. vol: such trash I really never did read."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey Print: Book
'Lamb read ... [Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife] at around ... [June-July 1809] ... on 7 June he told C[oleridge] that "it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels with the drawback of dull religion in it."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Book
'In the Fenwick Note to The Pet-lamb, W[ordsworth] recalled: "Within a few months after the publication of this poem, I was much surprised and more hurt to find it in a child's School-book which, having been compiled by Lindley Murray, had come into use at Grasmere School ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'In [Ashington Mechanics' Institute] library [Chester Armstrong] discovered a "new world", a "larger environment" in Defoe, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and Jules Verne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
'In [Ashington Mechanics' Institute] library [Chester Armstrong] discovered a "new world", a "larger environment" in Defoe, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and Jules Verne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
'A joiner's son in an early-nineteenth century Scottish village recalled [reading] his first novel, David Moir's The Life of Mansie Wauch (1828): "I literally devoured it... A new world seemed to dawn upon me, and Mansie and the other characters in the book have always been historical characters with me, just as real as Caius Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte... So innocent, so unsophisticated - I may as well say, so green - was I, that I believed every word it contained".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: a Scottish joiner's son Print: Book
Wu notes extracts from vol 1 of Volney, "Travels Through Syria and Egypt", in Dove Cottage MS 28.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Writing to [Francis] Wrangham in late Feb. 1801, W[ordsworth] remarked: "I read with great pleasure a very elegant and tender poem of yours in the 2nd Vol: of the [Annual] Anthology."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
' ... a most violent attack is preparing for me in the the next number of the Edinburgh Review, this I have from the authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript of the Critique ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: proofManuscript: Unknown
Byron to Edward Ellice, 4 July 1810: 'I hear your friend Brougham is in the lower house mouthing at the ministry ... you remember he would not believe that I had written my pestilent Satire [English Bards and Scotch Reviewers], now that was very cruel and unlike me, for the moment I read his speech, I believed it to be his entire from Exordium to Peroration.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
'Soldier's son Joseph Barker... first read the Bible "chiefly as a work of history and was very greatly delighted with many of its stories... One effect was to lead me to regard miracles as nothing improbable". Consequently his response to Pilgrim's Progress was exactly the same: "My impression was, that the whole was literal and true"...Ghost stories, highwayman stories, fairy tales, Paradise Lost and Daniel Defoe were all equally credible. "I was naturally a firm believer in all that was gravely spoken or printed", he recalled. "I doubted nothing that was found in books... I had no idea at the time I read Robinson Crusoe, that there were such things as novels, works of fiction, in existence".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'When young, Frederick Rogers read not only the Bible as a thriller ("the men and women of the sacred books were as familiar to me as the men and women of Alexander Dumas"), but also Pilgrim's Progress: "There is a dark street yet in East London along which I have run with beating heart lest I should meet any of the evil things Bunyan so vividly described".'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book
'As a child, William Heaton the Yorkshire weaver-poet, "rambled with Christian from his home in the wilderness to the Celestial City; mused over his hair-breadth escapes, and his conflict with Giant Despair", enjoying it exactly as he enjoyed Roderick Random and Robinson Crusoe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Heaton Print: Book
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 8 December 1811: 'I have gotten a book by Sir William Drummond (printed, but not published), entitled Oedipus Judaicus, in which he attempts to prove the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretation very roughly. I wish I could see it. Mr Ward has lent it me, and I confess it is worth fifty Watsons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 15 December 1811: 'I have been living quietly, reading Sir W. Drummond's book on the bible ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, 1 May 1812: 'I have read over the few poems of Miss Milbank with attention ... I like the lines on Dermody so much that I wish they were in rhyme. - The lines in the cave at Seaham have a turn of thought which I cannot sufficiently commend ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, 1 May 1812: 'I have read over the few poems of Miss Milbank with attention ... I like the lines on Dermody so much that I wish they were in rhyme. - The lines in the cave at Seaham have a turn of thought which I cannot sufficiently commend ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, 1 May 1812: 'I have read over the few poems of Miss Milbank with attention ... A friend of mine (fifty years old & an author but not Rogers) has just been here, as there is no name to the MSS I shewed them to him, & he was much more enthusiastic in his praises than I have been ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [friend of Byron's, probably Dallas] anon Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Lady Melbourne, 18 October 1812, on writing by Annabella Milbanke that she has forwarded to him: '... the specimen you send me is more favourable to her talents than her discernment, & much too indulgent to the subject she has chosen ... but you have not sent me the whole (I imagine) by the abruptness of both beginning & end ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to John Murray, 20 January 1813; 'In "Horace in London" I perceive some stanzas on Ld. E[lgin] - in which ... I heartily concur. - I wish I had the pleasure of Mr. S[mith]'s acquaintance ... What I have read of this work seems admirably done ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 22 August 1813, in description of Newstead Abbey: 'I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Byron to Lady Melbourne, 21 September 1813, from Aston Hall, Rotherham (where staying with Sir James Wedderburn Webster): 'There is a delightful epitaph on Voltaire in Grimm - I read it coming down - the French I should probably misspell so take it only in bad English - "Here lies the spoilt child of the/a world which he spoiled"'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Byron thanks J. Thomson (unidentified) for volume of poems, 27 September 1813: 'I have derived considerable pleasure from ye. perusal of parts of the book - to the whole I have not yet had time to do justice by more than a slight inspection.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Byron to Thomas Moore, 8 December 1813: 'I have met with an odd reflection in Grimm ... "Many people have the reputation of being wicked, with whom we should be too happy to pass our lives." I need not add it is a woman's saying - a Mademoisele de Sommery's.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Galt Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt]
Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became
source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and
Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Richard Fox Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Gregory Lewis Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Melbourne Manuscript: Letter
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 20 March 1814: 'Redde Machiavel, parts of Chardin, and Sismondi, and Bandello - by starts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Herman Merivale, [January 1814]: 'I have redde Roncesvaux with very great pleasure ... You have written a very noble poem ... your measure is uncommonly well chosen & wielded [goes on to advise March publication].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Annabella Milbanke, 12 February 1814: 'In thanking you for your letter you will allow me to say that there is one sentence I do not understand ... I will copy it ... "How may I have forsaken that - and under the influence of an ardent zeal for Sincerity - is an explanation that cannot benefit either of us - should any disadvantage arise from the original fault it must be only where it is deserved - Let this then suffice for I cannot by total silence acquiesce in that which if supported when it's [sic] delusion is known to myself would become deception." - - - This I believe is word for word from your letter now before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
The whole or nearly the whole of the eight months when I was not employed was not lost. I read many volumes in history, voyages, and travels, politics, law and Philosophy. Adam Smith and Locke and especially Humes Essays and Treatises, these latter I read two or three times over, this reading was of great service to me, it caused me to turn in upon myself and examine myself in a way which I should not otherwise have done. It was this which laid the solid foundation of my future prosperity, and completed the desire I had always had to acquire knowledge.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
The whole or nearly the whole of the eight months when I was not employed was not lost. I read many volumes in history, voyages, and travels, politics, law and Philosophy. Adam Smith and Locke and especially Humes Essays and Treatises, these latter I read two or three times over, this reading was of great service to me, it caused me to turn in upon myself and examine myself in a way which I should not otherwise have done. It was this which laid the solid foundation of my future prosperity, and completed the desire I had always had to acquire knowledge.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
I readily got through a small school book of Geometry and having an odd volume of the 1st of Williamsons Euclid I attacked it vigorously and perseveringly...
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
Byron in postscript of letter to Annabella Milbanke, 1 August 1814: 'I have read your letter once more -- and it appears to me that I must have said something which makes you apprehend a misunderstanding on my part of your sentiments ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
Byron to John Murray, 3 August 1814: 'I see advertisements of Lara & Jacqueline -- pray why? when I requested you to postpone publication till my return to town.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: AdvertisementManuscript: Letter
Byron to John Murray, 2 September 1814: ' ... [Thomas Campbell] has an unpublished (though printed) poem on a Scene in Germany (Bavaria I think) which I saw last year -- that is perfectly magnificent ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Unknown
Byron to Annabella Milbanke, early in their engagement, 19 September 1814: 'When your letter arrived my sister was sitting near me and grew frightened at the effect of it's contents -- which was even painful for a moment -- not a long one -- nor am I often so shaken.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
Byron to Lady Melbourne, 23 September 1814: 'I am glad you liked Annabella [Milbanke]'s letter to you -- Augusta said that to me (the decisive one ) [ie accepting his marriage proposal] was the best & prettiest she ever read ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Manuscript: Letter
Byron to Annabella Milbanke, 16 October 1814: 'In arranging papers I have found the first letter you ever wrote to me -- read it again ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
Byron to Thomas Moore, 10 January 1815: 'I have redde thee upon the Fathers, and it is excellent well ... you must not leave off reviewing. You shine in it ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
he was required to answer to some of the articles, viz. the signing and subscribing the two opinions; but I thinck it was not delivered to the house, for I find it engrossed in parchment,and signed by his councill, Henry Roll, John Hearne, Matthew Hale
Unknown
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bramston
Camden does credit this and repeates a tryal one made of forceing a Duck into one of those falls, which came out at the other side by Moles with its feathers allmost all rubbed off,which supposses the passage to be streight, but how they could force the Duck into so difficult a way or whither anything of this is more than Conjecture must be left to every ones liberty to judge.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Fiennes Print: Book
Byron to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin, 21 December 1815, regarding submission of MS [Bertram] to Drury Lane Theatre: 'Sir -- Mr. Lamb -- (one of my colleagues in the S[ub] Committee) & myself have read your tragedy: -- he agrees with me in thinking it a very extraordinary production ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin, 21 December 1815, regarding submission of MS [Bertram] to Drury Lane Theatre: 'Sir -- Mr. Lamb -- (one of my colleagues in the S[ub] Committee) & myself have read your tragedy: -- he agrees with me in thinking it a very extraordinary production ...'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Samuel Rogers, 29 July 1816: 'I have read "Glenarvon" ... & have also seen Ben. Constant's Adolphe ... a work which leaves an unpleasant impression ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Augusta Leigh, 17 September 1816 ("Alpine Journal"), on General Ludlow's monument at Vevey: 'black marble -- long inscription -- Latin -- but simple -- particularly the latter part -- in which his wife (Margaret de Thomas) records her long -- her tried -- and unshaken affection ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: tombstone epitaph
Byron to Thomas Moore, 6 November 1816: 'Among many things at Milan, one pleased me particularly, viz. the correspondence ... of Lucretia Borgia wth Cardinal Bembo ... I ... wished sorely to get a copy of one or two of the letters, but is was prohibited ... so I only got some of them by heart. They are kept in the Ambrosian Library, which I often visited to look them over ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter, Unknown
During this Spring read Shakspeare [sic] regularly through, and studied the characters of Hamlet, Douglas, Osman in 'Zara', Sir Charles Racket &c and purchased & read a great number of pieces of dramatic biography, and theatrical criticisms.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 17 November 1816: 'By the way, I suppose you have seen "Glenarvon". Madame de Stael lent it to me to read from Copet last autumn. It seems to me that if the authoress had written the truth ... the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
"Read my birthday book from Walter. 'Alec Forbes of Howglen' by Mac Donald."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Had a long morning to read 'Alec Forbes of Howglen'".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Read Lorna Doone in the evening and helped Mother in to bed."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Much interested in Lorna Doone. It is a truly romantic book."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Finished reading Lorna Doone and like it very much."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Read aloud to Maude from Lorna Doone. Very much taken with this little bit - 'the valley into which I gazed was fair with early promise, having shelter from the wind and taking all the sunshine. The willow bushes hung over the stream as if they were angling with tasseled floats of gold & silver, bursting like a bean-pod. Between them came the water laughing like a maid at her own dancing, and spread with that young blue which never lies beyond the April. And on either bank, the meadow ruffled as the breeze came by, opening (through new tufts of green) daisy-bud or celandine, or a shy glimpse now & then of a love-lorn primrose.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
One of my many visitors this summer, - R.M. Milnes, made earnest enquiry for you. I do hope you like his poetry almost as much as he likes yours. I keep a vol. of his always beside me, - & find some things there almost too beautiful. How wonderful, - almost miraculous is his sympathy, - his understanding of Evil in all its forms, - in combination with his robust cheerfulness of spirits & manners! I know it is the fashion among London people who despise speculative men to dislike Milnes. I cordially honour & like him.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Byron to John Murray 9 July 1817: 'I have got the sketch & extracts from Lallah Rookh ... the plan as well as the extract I have seen please me very much indeed ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Byron to Thomas Moore, 10 July 1817: '[John] Murray ... has contrived to send me extracts from Lalla Rookh ... They are taken from some magazine, and contain a short outline and quotations from the two first Poems. I am very much delighted with what is before me, and very thirsty for the rest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
Byron to John Murray, 15 July 1817: 'I lent [M. G.] Lewis who is at Venice ... your extracts from Lalla Rookh -- & Manuel -- out of contradiction it may be -- he likes the last -- & is not much taken with the first of these performances.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Gregory Lewis Print: Serial / periodical
Byron to John Murray, 15 July 1817: 'I lent [M. G.] Lewis who is at Venice ... your extracts from Lalla Rookh -- & Manuel -- out of contradiction it may be -- he likes the last -- & is not much taken with the first of these performances.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Gregory Lewis
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817: 'I have read 'Lallah Rookh' -- but not with sufficient attention yet -- for I ride about -- & lounge -- & ponder & -- two or three other things -- so that my reading is very desultory & not so attentive as it used to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817, on what he perceives to be inferiority of contemporary authors to Pope: 'I am the more confirmed in this - by having lately gone over some of our Classics - particularly Pope ... I took Moore's poems & my own & some others - & went over them side by side with Pope's - and I was really astonished ... and mortified - at the ineffable distance in point of sense - harmony - effect - & even Imagination Passion - & Invention - between the little Queen Anne's Man - & us of the lower Empire ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
For some reason we were never confronted with the famous animal books in childhood -neither "The Wind in the Willows" nor "Winne-the-Pooh", nor any Beatrix Potter -and when I did meet the works of Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne, at the age of twelve or thirteen, I was past them to the extent that I read from a height, like a connoisseur, with no involvement, accepting with sophistication rather than naivety the clothing, the speecg and the human motives of the animals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
For some reason we were never confronted with the famous animal books in childhood -neither "The Wind in the Willows" nor "Winne-the-Pooh", nor any Beatrix Potter -and when I did meet the works of Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne, at the age of twelve or thirteen, I was past them to the extent that I read from a height, like a connoisseur, with no involvement, accepting with sophistication rather than naivety the clothing, the speecg and the human motives of the animals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
After the age of ten, I turned to a series of works which were no less goody-goody, though the svaing blood of Jesus had been transmogrified into a more abstract sense of decency. All the good characters in the 'Anne' and 'Emily' books of L.M. Montgomery were churchgoers, their religious beliefs clearly being basic to their mode of life...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
After the age of ten, I turned to a series of works which were no less goody-goody, though the svaing blood of Jesus had been transmogrified into a more abstract sense of decency. All the good characters in the 'Anne' and 'Emily' books of L.M. Montgomery were churchgoers, their religious beliefs clearly being basic to their mode of life...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Byron to Charles, 8th Lord Kinnaird, 15 May 1819: 'Three years & some months ago when you were reding [sic] "Bertram" at your brother's -- on my exclaiming in the words of Parson Adams to his Son -- "Lege Dick -- Lege" (on occasion of some interruption ... ) ... you replied ... "my name is not Richard -- my Lord" ... This was a hint to me to address you in future with all Aristocratical decorum ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles 8th Lord Kinnaird
Byron to Lady Byron, 20 July 1819: 'I tried to discover for Leigh Hunt some traces of Francesca [character in Dante's Inferno] -- but except her father Guido's tomb -- and the mere notice of the fact in the Latin commentary of Benvenuto da Imola in M.S. in the Library -- I could discover nothing for him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
'I quite agree with you about Leonidas &c. I have greatly enjoyed finding myself a child again over Macaulay's 'Lays'. Castor & Pollux really took away my breath. How beautiful those Lays are!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 9 June 1820; 'Galignani has just sent me the Paris edition of your works (which I wrote to order), and I am glad to see my old friends with a French face. I have been skimming and dipping, in and over them, like a swallow, and as pleased as one.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 9 June 1820; 'I have just been turning over Little, which I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth summer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 9 June 1820; 'I have just been turning over Little, which I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth summer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 17 July 1820, on books used in research for Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: 'I have consulted Sanuto -- Sandi -- Navagero -- & an anonymous Siege of Zara -- besides the histories of Laugier Daru -- Sismondi &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 22 July 1820, about books received: 'the diary of an Invalid good and true bating a few mistakes about "Serventismo" which no foreigner can understand ... without residing years in the country. -- I read that part (translated that is) to some of the Ladies in the way of knowing how far it was accurate and they laughed particularly at the part where he says that "they must not have children by their lover" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
'[Joseph Keating's] initiation into modern literature came when his brother introduced him to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat: "I had thought that only Smollett and Dickens could make a reader laugh; and I was surprised to find that a man who was actually living could write in such a genuinely humorous way'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Serial / periodical
'orphanage boy Thomas Burke... devoured books until "my mind became a lumber room". Inevitably, "criticism was beyond me; the hungry man has no time for the fastidiousness of the epicure. I was hypnotised by the word Poet. A poem by Keats (some trifle never meant for print) was a poem by Keats. Pope, Cowper and Kirke White and Mrs Hemans and Samuel Rogers were Poets. That was enough."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burke Print: Unknown
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
'As for Mona Maclean I am afraid I could not say more than that it is a cleverish very youthful book, the author of which if she comes to anything will probably much regret having published it some years back. Marion Crawford's last novel is clever of course as are all his, but not pleasant and very long and dreary I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 5 January 1821: 'Read Mitford's History of Greece -- Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
" Read Betula (sic) Liberata to my beloved. Explained all the difficult passages."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 6 January 1821: Read Spence's Anecdotes ... Corrected blunders in nine apophthegms of Bacon -- all historical -- and read Mitford's Greece.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 6 January 1821: 'Came home [after going visiting at 8pm], and read Mitford again, and played with my mastiff ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 8 January 1821: 'Came home [from ?Guicciolis', where visited at 8pm] -- read History of Greece -- beore dinner had read Walter Scott's Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 10 January 1821: 'Looked over accounts. Read Campbell's Poets -- marked errors of Tom (the author) for correction. Dined ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 10 January 1821: '[after going out to hear music] Came home -- read. Corrected Tom Campbell's slips of the pen.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 11 January 1821: 'In reading, I have just chanced upon an expression of Tom Campbell's; speaking of Collins, he says that "no reader cares any more about the characteristic manners of his Eclogues than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy." 'Tis false ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 12 January 1821: 'Read the Poets -- English that is to say -- out of Campbell's edition. There is a good deal of taffeta in some of Tom's prefatory phrases, but his work is good as a whole.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 12 January 1821: 'How strange are my thoughts! -- The reading of the song of Milton, "Sabrina fair" has brought back upon me ... the happiest, perhaps, days of my life ... when living at Cambridge with Edward Noel Long ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 12 January 1821, on memories of Cambridge life with friend Edward Noel Long: 'I remember our buying, with vast alacrity, [Thomas] Moore's new quarto (in 1806) and reading it together in the evenings.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Edward Noel Young. Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 13 January 1821: 'Sketched the outline and Drams. Pers. of an intended tragedy of Sardanapalus ... read over a passage in the ninth vol. octavo of Mitford's Greece, where he rather vindicates the memory of this last of the Assyrians.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 15 January 1821: '... dined -- dipped into a volume of Mitford's Greece -- wrote part of a scene of "Sardanapalus".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 20 January 1821: 'Rode -- fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. Dined ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 21 January 1821: 'Dined -- visited -- came home -- read. Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm's Correspondence ... [reproduces part of text of vol. VI]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 31 January 1821 entry: 'Midnight. I have been reading Grimm's Correspondence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 18 February 1821: 'In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Laplander ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron's "Dictionary" (journal), 1 May 1821, on studies with tutor (Paterson): 'With him I began Latin in Ruddiman's Grammar ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Thomas Moore, 16 November 1821, on literary ambitions of an Irish visitor, John Taaffe: 'I read a letter of yours to him yesterday, and he begs me to write to you about his Poeshie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
Byron to John Murray, 9 October 1822, on his recent illness (painfully and ineffectually treated by a local doctor): 'At last I seized Thompson's book of prescriptions -- (a donation of yours) and physicked myself with the first dose I found in it ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Byron to Madame Sergent-Marceau, 5 May 1823 (translated from Italian): 'no present you might give me would be more welcome than the short work in which the actions of your Brother [General Marceau], whose memory I revere, are so well described. I have read this work with the greatest pleasure ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'In September and October [Grace Macaulay] is reading aloud to Margaret (ill with scarlet fever) Mrs Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and Charlotte M. Yonge's Chaplet of Pearls and The Heir of Redclyffe'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
'[Grace Macaulay's diary] entry for 2 March 1890 records that she "read the boys parts of Settlers at Home and Otto Spectere (sic), all of which Will as well as Aulay much enjoyed".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay 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
'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
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
'The neighbours and we have set up a book-club since the beginning of the year, & I want to beg you to tell me of some [italics] booklings [end italics] for it. We have got Macaulay and Layard, and the "Monasteries of the Levant," and other big books, but I want some moderately moral French novel, or some very amusing two and sixpence or five-shilling English book to keep the thing going. Such a book as "La Mare au Diable", or "La Chasse au Roman," would be the thing, or Murray's "Life of Conde", or his "Memoirs of a Missionary." Can you kindly recommend some?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Clive Print: Book
Rose Macaulay had a 'craze' 'for the ascetic Thomas a Kempis's meditations and rule of conduct, On The Imitation of Christ, which her godmother gave her when she was 13'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
'She read Renan's Life of Jesus, which had proved so critical to George Eliot's subsitution of Duty for God. As a corollary text, Rose discovered the rousing, hopeful words of Mill, who argued for the sacredness of her larger duty to herself'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
'Working class readers continued to enjoy Macaulay's drama and accessibility long after professional historians had declared him obsolete. Kathleen Woodward read Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Macaulay's History of England twice through over factory work, with such absorption she once injured a finger, leaving "an honourable scar".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kathleen Woodward Print: Book
'[J.M. Dent's] reading was marked by the autodidact's characteristic enthusiasm and spottiness. He knew Pilgrim's Progress, Milton, Cowper, Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts; but...did not read Shakespeare seriously until he was nearly thirty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
'[J.M. Dent's] reading was marked by the autodidact's characteristic enthusiasm and spottiness. He knew Pilgrim's Progress, Milton, Cowper, Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts; but...did not read Shakespeare seriously until he was nearly thirty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
'[J.M. Dent's] cultural contacts broadened when he became an apprentice bookbinder in London, discovering the work of William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson and the Arts and Crafts Movement'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
'James Murray, a Glasgow woodcarver, represented the kind of reader Dent and Rhys were trying to reach. He credited Everyman magazine with "opening up an entirely new set of ideas to which I had previously been a stranger. I became familiar with the names and works of all the truly great authors and poets, and was now throughly convinced I had been misplaced in my life's work". His reading ranged from Rasselas to Looking Backward'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Murray Print: Book
'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Book, Unknown
'every day Spike Mays ran to his East Anglia school, where he studied "Robinson Crusoe", "Gulliver's Travels" and "Tales from Shakespeare".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Spike Mays Print: Book
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's "The Decline of the West".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
'Lancashire weaver Elizabeth Blackburn... proceeded to an evening institute course in English literature and by the rhythm of the looms she memorised all of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy. She discovered the ancient Greeks at the home of a neighbour, a self-educated classicist with six children, and a Sunday school teacher introduced her to the plays of Bernard Shaw. While attending her looms she silently analysed the character of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, "sometimes to the detriment of my weaving".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Blackburn Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 4 October 1800: 'A ... rather showery and gusty, morning ... Read a part of Lamb's play.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hutchinson
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 29 January, 1802: 'William was very unwell. Worn out with his bad night's rest. He went to bed -- I read to him, to endeavour to make him sleep. Then I came into the other room and read the first book of Paradise Lost.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 1 February, 1802: 'In the morning a Box of clothes with Books came from London. I sate by his [William Wordsworth's] bedside, and read in The Pleasures of Hope to him, which came in the box.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 2 February, 1802: 'After tea I read aloud the eleventh book of Paradise Lost. We were much impressed, and also melted into tears.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 21 May 1802, 'Wm. wrote two sonnets on Buonaparte, after I had read Milton's sonnets to him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, in entry for Thursday 3 June 1802, 'A very affecting letter came from M[ary]. H[utchinson]., while I was sitting in the window reading Milton's Penseroso to William.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea running the heel of a stocking, repeating some of his own sonnets to him, listening to his own repeating, reading some of Milton's, and the Allegro and Penseroso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy and William Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea running the heel of a stocking, repeating some of his own sonnets to him, listening to his own repeating, reading some of Milton's, and the Allegro and Penseroso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy and William Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea running the heel of a stocking, repeating some of his own sonnets to him, listening to his own repeating, reading some of Milton's, and the Allegro and Penseroso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy and William Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea ... My beloved William is turning over the leaves of Charlotte Smith's sonnets ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'Tea between 9 and 10. I read aloud a little of 'The Pleasures of Hope'. Mrs Barlow [friend and lover] sat hemming one end of tablecloth and we were very cosy and comfortable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
' Tea at 8. Read aloud to my aunt the first 31pp of Moore's Buxton and Castleton Guide.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
[Extensive discusion of the text in a letter to Marianne Lawson 15/03/1823.] ...Throw in too, I grant, some fine poetry from p.48 to 63 but [it] is too voluptuous, too Anacreonic, too much that 'by the wildered senseis caught' ' [Quotes from 'The Second Angel's Tale' several times].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
[Letter dated 1823, to Miss Pickford]. Madame Marcet is a very good guide as far as she goes, but surely respecting the system of pulleys she has not gone quite far enough. She has left us to ourselves rather too soon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
The Grecian History has pleased me much you know Mr Trant made a present of the Roman History, what a brave people the Greeks in general were.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
I was rather unwell for about an hour, but not very bad when I could go on reading The Vicar of Wakefield
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'Dr Scudamore, recommended and has just sent me to look at Thomsons Conspectus of the Pharmacopeias, a nice little 42mo. Price 5/-, 5th edition.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Read...Demosthenes +...Lelands translation. This is the 4th Greek work I have read thro' & I certainly feel considerably improved but I am disatisfied with myself for not having got up in the morning as early as I thought.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Had no time for Eudid but looked into Emerson's mechanics for 1/4 hour, as I wish to prepare myself a little for Dalton's lectures which are to begin on Wednesday and which I mean to attend.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister
Just after ten read aloud to my aunt the very favourable review of Lallah Rookh; an Oriental romance by Thomas Moore...The extracts from this poetic romance are very beautiful.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister
'At 12 Marianna and I went upstairs. She sat sewing and I reading aloud to her the first 3 or 4 pages of the M.S. Lectures on physiology Dr Scudamore lent me 10 days ago. The writing so bad we could not get on very fast. Both of us uninterested.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Manuscript: Sheet
had no time for Euclid but looked into Emerson's Mechanics for 1/4 hour as I wish to prepare myself a little for Dalton's lectures which are to begin on Wednesday.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... Even before my teens my reading entered upon the romantic stage. I read Quo Vadis ... Rider Haggard's She ... Robert Ellesmere ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson 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
'[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
'In A Young Man's Passage (1950), Mark Tellar recalls "confessing to his prep-school teacher that during the holidays he had read Conway's 'Called Back', together with Fergus Hume's 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' (1887), and stories by Miss M. E. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Tellar Print: Unknown
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
"[In Lark Rise to Candleford (1947)] Flora Thompson recollected young Willie, whose family were village carpenters, being fond of reading, including poetry: 'somehow he had got posession of an old shattered copy of an anthology called A Thousand and One Gems', which he read aloud with her, sitting under nut trees at the bottom of the garden, in the 1890s."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Willie anon Print: Book
"[George Bernard] Shaw had read Marx's Das Kapital (in French translation) and he was converted to socialism ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw Print: Book
Philip Gibbs in The Pageant of the Years (1946), on work as writer of series of articles under name "Self-Help" in early 1900s: "'All the reading I had done as a boy, all my youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy ... was a great source of supply now when I sat down to write aout great books ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gibbs Print: Book
"As a teenager ... [Holbrook Jackson] had been transported from Merseyside to the South Sea Islands. The vessel that bore him was imagination in the form of a 'musty copy' of Herman Melville's Typee (1846), bought for 3d. from a second-hand bookstall by the Liverpool docks."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Holbrook Jackson Print: Book
In the afternoon, read aloud the first 30pp. glenarvon, vol.2. Miss Goodricke called and sat a little while with us. the girls introduced me. She thanked me for the book I had bought for Miss Morritt from Miss Emily Cholmley...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Dr Scudamore, recommended and has just sent me to look at Thomsons Conspectus of the Pharmacopeias, a nice little 42 mo. Price 5/-, 5th edition
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
'[George] Saintsbury [who became a Tory journalist] read Marx as an undergraduate ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Saintsbury Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
I procured a Greek grammar, and soon made considerable progress. I first read the New Testament almost throughout; then the Iliad of Homer, not omitting a line nor leaving a word obscure; then part of the Odyssey, which was recalled before I could finish it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
I procured a Greek grammar, and soon made considerable progress. I first read the New Testament almost throughout; then the Iliad of Homer, not omitting a line nor leaving a word obscure; then part of the Odyssey, which was recalled before I could finish it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
My father's large bookcase was stuffed with odd volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine and other miscellaneous matters. Anacharsis' 'travels in Greece', Robertson's 'America', Goldsmith's 'History of England', Adams' 'Rome', Wesley's sermons and Fletcher's controversial volumes. All these had been read by me, either for my own amusement, or aloud to my father, whose sight had been lost for years.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
My father's large bookcase was stuffed with odd volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine and other miscellaneous matters. Anacharsis' 'travels in Greece', Robertson's 'America', Goldsmith's 'History of England', Adams' 'Rome', Wesley's sermons and Fletcher's controversial volumes. All these had been read by me, either for my own amusement, or aloud to my father, whose sight had been lost for years.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
My father's large bookcase was stuffed with odd volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine and other miscellaneous matters. Anacharsis' 'travels in Greece', Robertson's 'America', Goldsmith's 'History of England', Adams' 'Rome', Wesley's sermons and Fletcher's controversial volumes. All these had been read by me, either for my own amusement, or aloud to my father, whose sight had been lost for years.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
How the young Alice Meynell gained her family's support for her writing: ' ... [in c. 1867 Alice Thompson] had shown ... [her poems] to an American friend of the family, who had read them to Mr Thompson [her father] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Manuscript: Unknown
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Cutlery worker, age seventy-two...Fond of Longfellow, Stevenson, Ruskin, William Morris and Charles Dickens'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'Harry Dorrell read his brother's copy of George Moore's "A Mummer's Wife", but "I could not understand wny the lady who was undressed said to the man 'Bite me' and also got into bed with no clothes on. Mother always wore a nightdress in bed".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Dorrell Print: Book
'... Helena Swanwick recalled one exception from among the succession of inadequate domestic servants who passed through her household in the 1890s: "The best I had in those years was a young Welshwoman, who read the novels of Meredith ... and enjoyed them ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon [servant of Helena Swanwick] Print: Book
'Theodore Watts-Dunton remembers Algernon Swinburne's fondness for reading aloud during his last years at Watts-Dunton's home: "... he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade and Thackeray."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne Print: Unknown
'When Wilfrid Blunt joined [William] Morris and his daughter at Kelmscott in 1891, Morris "read us out several of his poems ... including The Haystack in the Floods, but his reading is without the graces of elocution."'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Morris
[Annotation NOT in Cunningham's hand (unidentified)]: above the sentence 'Jacob Tonson is the first bookseller of any note we can treat of': 'bio. Prin & Shepherd'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Manuscript: Pamphlet
'At one poetical evening [at Wilfrid Blunt's home Crabbet Park], when the guests included A. E. Housman and Desmond MacCarthy ... Wilfrid [Meynell] was requested to read George Meredith's Modern Love. This he did, with running commentary ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Meynell Print: Book
'Elinor Glyn recalled "The Princess and the Goblin" (1872) being read to her as a child ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elinor Glyn Print: Book
Letter 8/2/1863 - "For, as far as I remember - my sayings to you have been very nearly limited to Goldsmith's model of a critical sentence on painter's work: "that it was very well - and would have been better if the painter had taken more pains."
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Letter 8/2/1863 - "I'm afraid to speak like the wicked girl in the fairy tale - who let - not pearls fall from her lips."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Constance Smedley on readings in American literature: 'Thoreau ... opened the door to a philosophy of life when I was about fifteen ... in his train came Emerson and Lowell ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Smedley Print: Book
" Finished reading that Emmeline, a Trumpery novel in four volumes. If I can answer for myself I will never again undertake such a tiresome nonsensical piece of business."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
" Began Les Memoires de Madame Maintenon. I doubt whether the vulgarity of stile (sic), absurd anecdotes and impertinent reflections will permit me to read it."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
" Nine till twelve in the Dressing room reading-finished Les Memoires de Maintenon. Began her letters"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Listed under "Books read since April the first 1789"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Listed under "Books read since April the first 1789"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Listed under "Books read since April the first 1789"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
' ... in Egypt during the Great War [E. M.] Forster applied himself to read [Henry] James. Struggling with What Maisie Knew (1897), he rather thought that "she is my very limit ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
"Back I went by Mr. Downing's order, and stayed there til 12 o'clock in expectation of one to come to read some writings, but he came not, so I stayed all alone reading the answer of the Dutch ambassador to our State, in which answer to the reasons of my lord's coming home which he gave for his coming, and did labour herein to contradict my Lord's arguments for his coming home."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Letter
"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
'I have been reading the life of Mr Symonds, and it makes me almost laugh (though little laughing is in my heart) to think of the strange difference between this prosaic little narrative, all about the facts of a life so simple as mine, and his elaborate self-discussions'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
'Robert Macpherson came down with us to Civita Vecchia to see us off, and, I remember, read to me all the way there a story he had written, one of the stories flying about Rome of one of the great families, which he wanted me to polish up and get published for him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Macpherson Manuscript: Sheet
"I think that Miss Thackeray and my wife have expressed to you their great pleasure in your article on their father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
"I think that Miss Thackeray and my wife have expressed to you their great pleasure in your article on their father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ann Thackeray Print: Serial / periodical
"By an accidental combination of circumstances I only saw your article on my 'secularism' this afternoon. I have no complaints to make of it & no wish to carry on the controversy. But I do wish (for I value highly your good opinion on moral character & respect all your opinions) to acquit myself from one or two charges of unfairness to Mr Maurice."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
"Excuse all this; but though you may not easily give me credit I really admired Mr Maurice; I attended his lectures as a boy; I studied his books carefully & I should be sorry that you think of my errors as caused by carelessness or undue superciliousness. They are at least the outcome of a good deal of as conscientious thinking as I can give."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
I always have a profound impression that human beings have been much more like each other than we fancy since they got rid of their tails & that the great outbursts of speculation or art imply some special excitement more than a radical difference in people themselves. I have even a belief that if Browning had lived 200 years ago he would have been a small Shakespeare & perhaps Tennyson a second rate Milton, though I agree that poor old Alfred has not quite the stuff in him.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
'The table is heaped with picture-books, and Maggie, rather sentimental with a bad cold, is reading Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Saints, so there you have a peep at our interior.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maggie Oliphant Print: Book
'It made me think of a poem that our german professor used to read us in class. Ja, das war zum letzenmal/ Das, wir beide, arm in arme/ unter einem Schirm gebogen. --/ Alles war zum letzenmal'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield
'I got up at that moment to re-read your article on Leon Bloy. The memory of it suddenly rose in my mind, like a scent'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Newspaper
'I got up at that moment to re-read your article on Leon Bloy. The memory of it suddenly rose in my mind, like a scent'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Newspaper
"[George] Meredtih's penultimate novel, Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), was, [Henry] James told Edmund Gosse [in letter of 22 August 1894], 'unspeakable' ... he could proceed only at 'the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
"[Wilfrid Scawen] Blunt was a great admirer of [Meredith's] Modern Love and, though he only read it thirty years after its publication when Meredith sent him a copy in 1892, Blunt was accused of plagiarising it in his own Songs of Proteus (1884)."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Print: Book
'I bought a book by Henry James yesterday and read it, as they say, "until far into the night". It was not very interesting or very good, but I can wade through pages and pages of dull, turgid James for the sake of that sudden sweet shock, that violent throb of delight that he gives me at times. I don't doubt this is genius: only there is an extraordinary amount of pan and an amazingly raffine' flash - '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
"Lady Cynthia Asquith ... believed [as she recorded in her diary] that 'Meredith is very good for reading aloud.' On 10 March 1916 she tested this proposition by reading 'Mamma [Countess Wemyss] two chapters of The Egoist after dinner: she fell asleep'."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith Print: Book
"... Lady Cynthia [Asquith] was gratified to learn that, found in his pocket when Billy Grenfell was killed in battle in 1915 was a Meredith poem, copied out for him by his mother, Lady Desborough."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Desborough
"At the age of 18 Violet Asquith ... tackled The Egoist, which 'I thought brilliant. The first 3 pages made me so angry by their obscureness ... that I nearly left off ... but I possessed myself with patience & loved the rest....'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Asquith Print: Book
' "When all is done human life is at its greatest and best but a little froward [sic] child to be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, and then the care is over" (Temple)
That's the sort of strain - not for what it says and means, but for the "lilt" of it - that sets me writing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'I have read - given way to reading - two books by Octave Mirbeau - and after them I see dreadfully and finally, (1) that the French are a filthy people, (2) that their corruption is so puante [stinking] - I'll never go near 'em again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'I have read - given way to reading - two books by Octave Mirbeau - and after them I see dreadfully and finally, (1) that the French are a filthy people, (2) that their corruption is so puante [stinking] - I'll never go near 'em again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
'Britain was a mainly urban society...and soon an expanding range of sexual literature became available in the cities. Mark Grossek, the son of a Jewish immigrant tailor in Southwark, acquired his knowledge from grafitti, scandalous stories in the local press, 'Lloyd's Weekly News', 'Measure for Measure', the Song of Solomon, some old plays a fellow student had dug out of his father's library, General Booth's 'In Darkest England', Tobias Smollett, Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine', as well as Leviticus ("For myself, the most subtle aura of enticement was wafted from the verb 'begat' and the noun 'concubine'"). There was also Ovid, but unfortunately the popular translation published by Bohn "had left all the tasty chunks in Latin".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Grossek Print: Book
Letter H.96 (Beginning of June 1861)
?The Defence of Guenevere by Morris is published by Bell & Daldy.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Letter H. 114. Postmark 15 May 1863
Referring to a picture of Helen of Troy: ?She is the sweetest character in all Homer ? and the true heroine ? even of the Odyssey ? (not to speak of the second Part of Faust).
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Letter H. 114. Postmark 15 May 1863
Referring to a picture of Helen of Troy: ?She is the sweetest character in all Homer ? and the true heroine ? even of the Odyssey ? (not to speak of the second Part of Faust).
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
"I have read, too, or repeated, for I know him by heart, our old friend Omar Khyyam. He is grand in his way & if spiritualised a little, strikes a right note at times but he needs to be a little spiritualised. Yet honestly, literature & religion are rather empty. The only thing is living affection & of that I have had most touching experience."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Gissing, diary entry for 9 December 1894: 'Gloomy day. Read "Esther Waters". Some pathos and power in latter part, but miserable writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'"Why do you want to break men's spirits for?" Shaw asked Henry James after reading his one-act play "The Saloon" in 1909.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw
'When Wilfrid Blunt ... reread "Loss and Gain" he was struck how "Newman's mind ... seems never to have faced the real issues of belief and unbelief, those which have to be fought out with materialism ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Print: Book
"Morley has just published a book on 'Compromise'; out of the Fortnightly. I think his writing improves. It seems to me good & dignified without being too much like a sermon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
'The books which I am at present employed in reading to myself are in English, Plutarch's Lives and Milner's Ecclesiastical History'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
In my learning I do Xenophon every day and twice a week the Odyssey, in which I am classed with Wilberforce.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
We have all read, by the way, The Poet at the breakfast table & sent him our sincere compliments on his performance."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
" But, when I was nearly sixteen, I made a purchase which brought me into sad trouble, and was the cause of a permanent wound to myself-respect. I had long coveted in the book-shop window a volume in which the poetical works of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were said to be combined.This I bought at length, and I carried it with me to devour as I trod the desolate road that brought me along the edge of the cliff on Saturday afternoons. Ben Jonson I could make nothing of, but when I turned to 'Hero and Leander' I was lifted to a heaven of passion and music. It was a marvellous revelation of romantic beauty to me, and as paced along that lonely and exquisite highway, with its immense command of the sea, and its peeps ever now and then, through slanting thickets, far down to the snow-white shingle, I lifted up my voice, singing the verses, as I strolled along..[quote]so it wenton, and I thought I had never read anything so lovely...[quote]it all seemed to my fancy intoxicating beyond anything I had ever even dreamed of, since I had not yet become aquainted with any of the modern romanticists."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
" When I reached home, tired out with enthusiasm and exercise, I must needs, so soon as I had eaten, search out my stepmother that she might be a partner in my joys. It is remarkable to me now, and a disconcerting proof of my still almost infantile innocence, that, having induced her to settle to her knitting, I began, without hesitation, to read Marlowe's voluptuous poem aloud to that blameless Christian gentlewoman. We got on very well in the opening, but at the episode of Cupid's pining, my stepmother's needles began nervously to clash, and when we launched on the description of Leander's person, she interruptedme by saying, rather sharply, 'give me that book, please, I should like to read the rest to myself.' I resigned the reading in amazement, and was stupefied to see her take the volume, shut it with a snap and hide it under her needlework. Nor could I extract from her another word on the subject." [Gosse goes on to tell how his Father told him off, and burned the book]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
"I have read your book with keen interest. I always read you with the pleasure of a literary critic recognising (and envying) mastery in the art of putting things."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
'The hero seems to me superior to the Rochester or the Louis Moore type, who are all rather lay-figures. Nor do I admire the sister?s work [Wuthering Heights] so much as you do. I see in it more violence than real strength & more rant than genuine passion. However all this is a matter of taste. I will remark, by the way, that I think there is some excuse for the charge of coarseness, as, e.g., the scene where Jane Eyre is half inclined to go to Rochester?s bedroom. I don?t mean coarseness in the sense of prurience; for I fully agree that Miss Bronte writes as a thoroughly pureminded woman; but she is more close to the physical side of passion than young ladies are expected to be?There is also some coarseness in the artistic sense in Jane Eyre. The mad wife is I fancy, unnecessarily bestial? I don?t think justice is generally done to C Bronte now & I shall be glad for that reason to insert your eloquent article.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Manuscript: article
'I finished old Newman?s book coming down & as the book is too metaphysical to give you pleasure I will tell you what it comes to, it is an elaborate apology for the morality of persuading yourself that a thing is absolutely certain when you really know that it is not certain at all? Why shouldn?t I say that such a creature is a liar & that I despise him? I do most heartily.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
?I have read two books lately wh. interested me. One for wh. you will not care is a history of English law down to the time of Edward I by F. W. Maitland? It is a wonderful piece of work as far as I can judge; & I should ask you to recommend it to some of your law professors, only that, as I take it, they will know about it already.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
?I have read your history; and when I say ?read? I mean that I have turned over the pages and read all such parts as were apparently on a level with my comprehension?I found a great deal that interested me very much. ?I could only read, as a rule, in all humility accompanied by constant admiration.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
"This minute I hear a carman is going to Navan, and I hasten to send you the Cottagers of Glenburnie, which I hope you will like as well as I do. I think it will do a vast deal of good to you, and besides it is extremely interesting, which all good books are not: it has great powers, both comic and tragic."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
?Cumberland attempted and failed to revive the classical English novel. We sit down in fact by Cumberlands? fireside and listen to his long dull stories as we would to the tales of a garrulous, good tempered, prosing old man, pleased with him sometimes for occasional amusement, and pleased with ourselves for our patience and charity.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
??the work of Mrs Hannah More called Coelebs in search of a wife, as not knowing well where to class it. It is too pure and too profound to be ranked with novels, and too sprightly and entertaining to be wholly given up to philosophy, theology or dialectics. Mrs More?s works form a class of themselves; it is enough, perhaps, to say Coelebs is one of them.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
?The transition from the vapid sentimentality of the novel of fifty years ago to the goblin horrors of the last twenty is so strong that it almost puzzles us to find a connecting link? Perhaps Charlotte Smith?s novels might have been the connecting link between these different species. ?The Old Manor House has really a great deal to answer for? Her heroines have all the requisites of persecuted innocence? The rage for lumbering ruins, for mildewed manuscripts.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
?I have been reading a power of good books; Montesquieu Sur la grandeur and d?cadence des Romains, which I recommend to you as a book you will admire, because it furnishes so much food for thought, it shows how history may be studied for the advantage of mankind, not for the mere purpose of remembering facts and reporting them.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth 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
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
The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an environment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader raange of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
??Moore, who is a poet of inspiration, could write in any circumstances. There is no man of the age labours harder than Moore. He is often a month working out the end of an epigram. Moore is a writer for whom I feel a strong affection, because he has done that which I would have done if I could; but after him it would be vain to try anything.??
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
[D.R. Davies was inspired by his school teacher] 'to read Macaulay's History of England before his twelfth birthday'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
?Have you seen Minor Morals by Mrs Smith ? There is in it a beautiful botanical poem called ?Calendar of Flora?.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
?We saw today the residence of the Prince de Cond? - and of a long line of princes famous for virtue and talents ? the celebrated palace of Chantilly, made still more interesting to us by having just read the beautiful tale by Madame de Genlis ?Mademoiselle de Clermont?; it would delight my dear Aunt Mary, it is to be had in the first volume of the Petits Romans??
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
8/1/1827 ? ?Finished M. R. Milford?s pretty book, and write out my new fable.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson 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
'[During the Great Depression] "Thousands used the Public Library for the first time", recalled itinerant labourer John Brown, who read Shaw, Marx, Engels, and classic literature until he exhausted his South Shields library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Brown Print: Book
'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley Print: Book
'Attending Oxford on a Cassel scholarship, John Allaway found that his WEA training, far from fitting him into a university mold, enabled him to criticize the conventional curriculum. Assigned the orthodox economics texts of Alfred Marshall, he read them "with deep suspicion" and made a point of going beyond the set books to study J.A. Hobson, Henry George, Hugh Dalton, and John Maynard Keynes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Allaway Print: Book
'For Dunfermline housepainter James Clunie, Das Kapital and the Wealth of Nations both demonstrated that industrialism inevitably increased economic inequality, the exploitation of labour and class conflict. To this The Descent of Man added "the great idea of human freedom... It brought out the idea that whether our children were with or without shoes was due to poverty arising from the administration of society".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clunie Print: Book
'For Dunfermline housepainter James Clunie, Das Kapital and the Wealth of Nations both demonstrated that industrialism inevitably increased economic inequality, the exploitation of labour and class conflict. To this The Descent of Man added "the great idea of human freedom... It brought out the idea that whether our children were with or without shoes was due to poverty arising from the administration of society".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clunie Print: Book
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
'In 1925 Ifan Edwards was driven by unemployment to read Das Kapital in the public library. "It took him about four hundred pages of close print to come to the crux of his argument in the classic illustration of a labourer looking for a job in a factory, and, as he said, expecting nothing but a hiding", Edwards remembered. "This little aside appealed to me very much, as I had had one or two hidings myself".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ifan Edwards Print: Book
[George Scott disliked the Communism of fellow journalist, Stan] 'He had read Das Kapital (or parts of it) and could talk slickly about dialectical materialism. His own dialectic was derived from Straight and Crooked Thinking, a guide to identifying faulty logic, but he "enjoyed it because it taught him how to twist truth to his own ends...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stan (acquaintance of George Scott) Print: Book
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard 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
Charlotte Bronte postscript to letter to William Smith Williams, 12 May 1848: 'I find -- on glancing over yours, that I have forgotten to answer a question you ask respecting my next work ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 22 November 1848: 'I put your most friendly letter [recommending homeopathic treatments] into Emily's hands as soon as I had myself perused it ... after reading your letter she said "Mr Williams' intention was kind and good, but he was under a delusion -- Homeopathy was only another form of Quackery."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 22 November 1848: 'I put your most friendly letter [recommending homeopathic treatments] into Emily's hands as soon as I had myself perused it ... after reading your letter she said "Mr Williams' intention was kind and good, but he was under a delusion -- Homeopathy was only another form of Quackery."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to Mrs Smith (mother of her publisher George Smith), 17 April 1851: 'Before I received your note, I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year ... But Pride has its fall. I read your invitation and immediately felt a great wish to descend from my stilts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 1 February 1851: 'Have you yet read Miss Martineau's and Mr Atkinson's new work "Letters on the Nature and Development of Man?" ... It is the first exposition of avowed Atheism and Materialism I have ever read ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it. My perusal of the continuation - eight volumes, of history as it is called, by Tobias Smollett MD and others was a much harder and more unprofitable task.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
But too much of one thing - as it is in the adage. Therefore I reserve the account of Hume's essays till another opportunity. At any rate the Second volume is not finished yet - and I do not like what I have read of any thing so well as I did the first.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
I, who was the reader, had not seen it for several years, the rest did not know it at all. I am afraid I perceived a sad change in it, or myself ? which was worse; and the effect altogether failed. Nobody cried, and at some of the passages, the touches that I used to think so exquisite ? Oh Dear! They laughed.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Louisa Stuart Print: Book
I remember so well its first publication, my mother and sisters crying over it, dwelling upon it with rapture! And when I read it, as I was a girl of fourteen not yet versed in sentiment, I had a secret dread I should not cry enough to gain the credit of proper sensibility.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Louisa Stuart Print: Book
'Walter Citrine won, as a Sunday School prize, a volume of school stories from the Captain, including one by P.G. Wodehouse. "The lady who gave this prize awakened in me a thirst for good literature", eventually leading to the works of Karl Marx and his followers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Citrine Print: Book
'As a boy Percy Wall adored the "Magnet", the "Boy's Own Paper", and G.A. Henty novels... [Later] While he read Henty for enjoyment, he studied the "Clarion", the "Freethinker", "The Struggle of the Bulgarians for Independence" and "The Philippine Martyrs" for their politics, and did not allow one body of literature to affect the other'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
'At the same time as she was entertaining herself with a variety of novels, [Frances] Burney was putting herself through an energetic course of solid reading, including Homer (in Pope's translation) and various histories of the ancient and modern world, as well as the works of major modern poets.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In 1768, Burney read in rapid succession Elizabeth and Richard Griffith's "A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances" (1757) ... Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766); and Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" (1759).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'It is equally possible for the same reader to adopt different frames for the same story, relishing it on one level while seeing through the claptrap on another. In his youth Aneurin Bevan enjoyed the Magnet and Gem surreptitiously (his father forbade them) and devoured H. Rider Haggard at the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library. But during the 'Phoney War' he lambasted the government's stupidly optimistic predictions in precisely the same terms: "Immediately on the outbreak of war, England was given over to the mental level of the Boys' Own Paper and the Magnet..." In 1944 Bevan freely admitted that "William le Queux, John Buchan and Phillips Oppenheim have always been favourites of ours in our off-moments. Part of their charm lies in their juvenile attitude".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin Bevan 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
'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
'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
'...he had read so much of de Maupassant, and had admired him for so many years, that probably his manner and his conceptions had sunk into his subconscious. As he said to himself, on re-reading "Bel-Ami" after ten years in 1903 - "People might easily say that in "A Man from the North" I had plagiarized from it..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'When he reread "Une Vie", in March 1908, he could find faults, but they were irrelevant to the work that had been done to him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'A more recent influence was Huysmans' "Les Soeurs Vatards", a novel about artisan life in a lace-maker's atelier in Paris, which he read with great admiration in March 1907, and which he admired for its uncompromising realism . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'. . . her short stories, 'The Little Karoo', all set in the South Africa of her childhood, were widely admired and are still remembered. Bennett must have felt a justified pride in writing an introduction for the collection, in 1925, describing himself as "the earliest wondering admirer of her strange, austere, tender and ruthless talent"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Girls in the top forms [at Roedean] were allowed to read ... in a small school library ... but ... [Margaret Cole] forfeited that privilege when a sub-prefect reported her for reading Macaulay's "Essays" during preparation time ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Cole Print: Book
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... :
"Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'Elizabeth Sewell ... remembered her mother in the 1820s reading aloud Anson's "Voyages", Lempriere's "Tour to Morocco", and "the History of Montezuma".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'When she was thirteen or fourteen, [Constance] Maynard's businessman father used to read Monier Williams on the religions of the East, William Law, and Jacob Boehme aloud to her.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Maynard Print: Book
'When she was thirteen or fourteen, [Constance] Maynard's businessman father used to read Monier Williams on the religions of the East, William Law, and Jacob Boehme aloud to her.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Maynard Print: Book
' ... [13-to-14-year-old Constance Maynard's] most intimate contact with reading .. took place ... in a secluded corner of the garden, where she haphazardly consumed Milton's sonnets, Cowper, Irving's "Orations", and Tennyson ...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Maynard Print: Book
'["In A Nursery in the Nineties" (1935)] Eleanor Farjeon (b.1881) ... recreates her identificatory enthusiam as she read "The Three Musketeers", which enabled her to step outside the bounds even of male, let alone female, notions of propriety.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Farjeon Print: Book
'Mary Paley Marshall ... one of Newnham's first students, recalls her father in the 1860s reading aloud "The Arabian Nights", "Gulliver's Travels", the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", Shakespeare, and, above all, Scott's novels ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Paley Print: Book
'Mary Paley Marshall ... one of Newnham's first students, recalls her father in the 1860s reading aloud "The Arabian Nights", "Gulliver's Travels", the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", Shakespeare, and, above all, Scott's novels ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Paley Print: Book
'Yeats forbade his sisters to read George Moore's "A Mummer's Wife": a proscription which led Susan Mitchell, who lived with the family, to "gulp ... guilty pages of it" as she went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Mitchell Print: Book
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985) noted as "especially interesting ... in its discussion of Webb's ... reading of autobiographies (such as John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, George Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Wordsworth's Prelude ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985) noted as "especially interesting ... in its discussion of Webb's ... reading of autobiographies (such as John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, George Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Wordsworth's Prelude ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aenied, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"At home, after leaving school in 1857 ... [Louisa Martindale's] reading was, at first, chiefly the Bible. On 16 September she started to take Fraser's Magazine, and her diary becomes full of references to this, and to articles in the Times on subjects as diverse as Fortification and The War in New Zealand. She read, and was charmed by, Symington on architecture, sculpture, and painting ... Further books which she read included Froude's History of England ... The Bible and Modern Thought, Butler's Analogy, Memorials of Fox, Bancroft's American Revolution, Rollin's Ancient History, Waddington's Church History, the Works of Paley, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Mrs Jameson's Characteristics of Women."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Martindale Print: Book
"At home, after leaving school in 1857 ... [Louisa Martindale's] reading was, at first, chiefly the Bible. On 16 September she started to take Fraser's Magazine, and her diary becomes full of references to this, and to articles in the Times on subjects as diverse as Fortification and The War in New Zealand. She read, and was charmed by, Symington on architecture, sculpture, and painting ... Further books which she read included Froude's History of England ... The Bible and Modern Thought, Butler's Analogy, Memorials of Fox, Bancroft's American Revolution, Rollin's Ancient History, Waddington's Church History, the Works of Paley, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Mrs Jameson's Characteristics of Women."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Martindale Print: Book
"Rocking her brother in his cradle ... [Marianne Farningham] was reading from the Sailor's Magazine and came across 'two poems, which had a marvellous effect on me'. The first was about a family Bible, the last line of each stanza being 'The old-fashioned Bible that lay on the stand'; the second was Felicia Hemans's 'The Better Land' [which almost caused her to faint with emotion] ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Marianne Farningham Print: Serial / periodical
"Enid Starkie claimed that reading Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' when she was ten made her feel as though she had been taken hold of and mastered, and determined that she should be a nun when she grew up."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Enid Starkie Print: Unknown
"Before she came into contact with Suffragism ... [Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence] felt her political outlook ... had been conditioned by reading Morris, Carpenter, and Whitman's poetry."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Print: Unknown
"Before she came into contact with Suffragism ... [Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence] felt her political outlook ... had been conditioned by reading Morris, Carpenter, and Whitman's poetry."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Print: Book
"Harriet Shaw Weaver, as an adolescent, found Leaves of Grass 'a liberating influence and could even read it on Sundays as it wasn't a novel!'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Shaw Weaver Print: Book
"In Holloway ... ['General' Drummond] read Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs and Samuel Smiles's Life and Labour."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: General Drummond Print: Book
have been in the shop steadily this day (which has been cold and blowing), reading in Hume's History of England- the Norman Conquest.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Am in shop about steady this day doing little else but reading Humes' England
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
'Mary Lakeman, a Cornish fisherman's daughter, confirmed what George Orwell had written in "Riding Down from Bangor": "Little Women", "Good Wives", "What Katy Did", "Avonlea", "Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn", and "The Last of the Mohicans" all created a romantic childhood vision of unlimited freedom and open space. "For me Jo, Beth and Laurie are right at the heart of a permanent unalterable American scene", she wrote, "and I can turn on Louisa M. Alcott and others so powerfully that Nixon and Watergate are completely blacked out".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lakeman Print: Book
'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
Letters on Mythology Addressed to a Lady by R. Morgan, 1 vol. A humourous and entertaining production, written in a light and easy style, to make it palatable to a lady's taste.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
The Cottagers of Glenburnie. 1 vol. by Miss Hamilton. A little tale tending to shew the folly of adhering to old customs merely because they have been habitual for many generations, particularlythe scottish tenacity, indolence, and want of cleanliness in their houses and about their farms. The tale is told in such a manner as scarcely to offend even a scotchman, and may very probably have some influence in effecting a reformation.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, 'Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, Motley's 'Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, Motley's 'Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
'"Blessings on his head said Sancho Panza who first invented sleep", But what shall we say of the character of the French which I lately saw in "Moor's France"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'It must be labour that makes things valuable Princes & Lords may flourish and may fade But a bold Peasantry, the Country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.' [this is the first of a number of references to Goldsmith's poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'I have read over the "History of Chivalry", it really is true to the title page as nothing but Chivalry can befound in it. I cannot say that it is very amusing or instructive, altho' one sees a little more of its folly than is to be found in Walter Scott.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'I know that Historians are very subject to give us their own views, instead of Facts. Hume is very partial to Royalty, and at every opportunity is ready to sneer at Religion, for which I do not admire him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'Moore's Lallah Rookh & Byron's Childe Harold canto fourth formed an odd mixture with these speculations. It was foolish, you may think, to exchange the truths of philosophy, for the airy nothings of these sweet singers: but I could not help it. Do not fear that I will spend some time in criticising the tulip-cheek.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
This is emphatic enough.- I need not speak of Dr Chalmers' boisterous treatise upon the causes & cure of pauperism in the last Edinr review. His reasoning (so they call it) is disjointed and absurd - & his language a barbarous jargon - agre[e]able neither to Gods nor men.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
" ... a young compositor encounters Macaulay for the first time:
"'Bernard Shaw tells me how he could get more intoxication from Mozart and Beethoven than any common mortal could from a bottle of brandy. I was as intoxicated that day far more completely than wine or whisky have ever made me, and intoxicated by literary art, as well as by the pageantry of its historical theme.'"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I have read most of Moore's Life of Sheridan, I see Mr Canning first came into notice in 1794...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
'I have begun to read Hill's history of Chivalry, the author seems to be delighted with his subject, and I have no doubt but he treats it in a proper manner; - This is a glorious day'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
"Henry Wotton recalled coming across Milton's A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle 'in the very close of the late R's Poems, Printed at Oxford' ..."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Wotton Print: Book
"One of the copies [of Paradise Regain'd ... Samson Agonistes] I examined at the British Library, London (shelfmark C14a12) ... contains handwritten corrections of both the errata and Omissa."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
'Read Buonaparte's Memorial to Sir Hudson Lowe, a poor performance and utterly unworthy his fallen greatness'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'Read Walpoe's Turkey amd M'Cleod's Voyage of the Alceste to China.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton
'Having lately read Chalmers Sermons on Astronomy in which he has expressed the highest admiration and respect for I. Newton's modest and firm faith in christianity.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton
'Read M'cleod's Voyage of the Alceste, his account of the Island of Lewchew is an account of the most amiable pagans I ever read of N.B. little or nothing is said of the females.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton
'Proceeded with Denham's "Physico-Theology". Read Hurd's sermon on "Every soul shall be salted with fire", an odd mode of preaching, he seems to give two guesses at the meaning of the passage and tells his audience they may take which they like.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
"Florence Nightingale's copy of Mrs. Trimmer's New and Comprehensive Lessons, Containing a General Outline of the Roman History (1818) has Nightingale's autograph in pencil on a flyleaf ... and pencilled marks -- an 'x' or an 'A' at the ends of chapters to show how far she had got with her reading."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
" ... [Alexander Pope's surviving books] allow us to be confident about his having read certain works, such as the essays of Montaigne."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Pope Print: Book
H. J. Jackson discusses copious annotations and commentary by unidentified, contemporary male reader in copy of William Mudford, Nubilia in Search of a Husband (1809); annotations include subject headings, and remarks including "'The preceding observations on tuition are, I make no doubt, very just ...'" and "'Let a certain fair reader attend to this passage.'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Finished Derham's "Physico Theology" and read Campbell's narrative of a voyage round the world'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
'Finished Derham's "Physico Theology" and read Campbell's narrative of a Voyage round the world'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
"Take, for instance, his 'Lyrics of Love', so full of beauty and tenderness. Nor are his 'Songs of Progress' less full of poetic power and beauty."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
"Take, for instance, his 'Lyrics of Love', so full of beauty and tenderness. Nor are his 'Songs of Progress' less full of poetic power and beauty."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
'These drawings were placed on the hands of Mr C J Smith, with whom I had become acquainted through an advertisement.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Advertisement
'This summer (1825) the author of 'A Journal of a naturalist', states to have been, what it certainly was, 'hot and dry'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'Read W Trimmer's Sacred History.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'Have you seen the little book, 'Cottage Dialogues', by Mrs Leadbetter. Edgeworth's notes are lively and [nationally] characteristic as ever: but I own I am tired a little of the receipts to make cheap dishes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes annotations by Macaulay made in 1836 in his copy of Joseph Milner, History of the Church of Christ; these include: "'You bolt every lie that the Fathers tell as glibly as your Creed'," and "'Here I give in. I have done my best -- But the monotonous absurdity dishonesty & malevolence of this man are beyond me. Nov 13'.'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
"Lady Mary [Wortley Montagu] used French for some of the (relatively few) notes in her Montaigne."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'On my return to Scarborough was busily employed in preparing for the season, & in editing the work called The Scarborough Album, and in soliciting contributions of a poetical description; these were of a good class, & abundantly bestowed. Archdeacon Wrangham wrote an original piece for the work 'Lines on the sea bathing infirmary at Scarborough'. The Mss of George Berret, the Younger, were freely offered to my use; & Hermione (Mrs Ballantyre, widow of the celebrated Publisher in Edinburgh) kindly controbuted. I also reprinted the celebrated pieces under the signature of Malvina, from The Scarborough Repository.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Unknown
'I?m reading "Of Human Bondage" of Somerset Maugham & it?s terribly good ? some wonderful school stuff, & of course the whole thing, in his subtle way, is quite itching with queerness. Perhaps I?ll send you a copy to Chicago to read in bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Pears Print: Book
'- have you ever read a book called "1066 & all that" ?i t's very funny, & one of the authors is on board.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
'I have read the greater part of the History of James I and Mrs. Montagues?s essay on Shakespeare, and a great deal of Gibbon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
"In January 1804 Coleridge annotated, heavily, in pencil, the first dozen or so pages of a copy of Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population by way of assistance to Southey, who had to review it."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'Rather like celibate life in Paris again. I dined at the club and read Macready's diary;. . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I am reading Martineau ["Types of Ethical Theory"] and like it, indeed I think I shall leave of writing this and go on.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
'I spent the morning reading dramatists, to qualify myself to teach English Literature [...] while in the evening I read Walt Whitman's last book aloud to Alice, thus establishing myself as a (qualified) Whitmaniac.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
'I went to the Library; read Bramhall against Hobbes'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Byrom Print: Book
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman:. "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman: "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
'Gifford had read only some ballads, the black-letter romance Parismus and Parismenus, some odd loose magazines of his mother's, the Bible (which he studied with his grandmother) and "The Imitation of Christ" (read to his mother on her deathbed). He then learned algebra by surreptitiously reading Fenning's textbook: his master's son owned the book and had deliberately hidden it from him'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes annotations by T. B. Macaulay in T. J. Mathias, Pursuits of Literature, including "'Bah!'" "'A contemptible heap of rant & twaddle'" and "'Noisome pedantry'."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
[Entry from Commonplace Book]: 'Mammon (figurative) description of, Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 680'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Davy Harrop Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
H. J. Jackson discusses "sarcastic" marginal remarks by Samuel Parr in his copy of Poems by Mrs Pickering (1794), a volume including poems by John Morfitt and Joseph Weston; Morfitt's poem "Lines on Hatton" includes a "verse portrait" of Parr, who was parson and schoolmaster of the village of Hatton.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Parr Print: Book
H. J. Jackson discusses copy of Paradise Lost annotated by John Keats for Mrs Dilke, in which passages highlighted and critical commentary added.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
H. J. Jackson notes annotations made by John James Raven over period of around 40-50 years in copy of Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome given to him in 1848, "when Raven was a schoolboy of fifteen."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John James Raven Print: Book
"Horatio Nelson's copy of Helen Maria Williams's Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic Towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1801) ... has very little marking and only a few actual notes in it, but all his notes correct the author on matters of fact ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Horatio Nelson Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'A.E. Coppard, a laundrywoman's son who grew up in dire poverty, left school at nine, ascended the ranks of clerkdom and became (at age forty) a professional author. At fourteen he was still enjoying "Deadeye Dick", by twenty he was reading Henry James...He secured a literary education at the Brighton Public Library, and as a professional runner he used prize money to buy Hardy's poems, Shakespeare, Mackail's translation of "The Odyssey", and William Morris's "The Earthly Paradise". In an undemanding job... he read on company time, though there was a row when his supervisor found "Jude the Obscure" on his desk'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book
'A.E. Coppard, a laundrywoman's son who grew up in dire poverty, left school at nine, ascended the ranks of clerkdom and became (at age forty) a professional author. At fourteen he was still enjoying "Deadeye Dick", by twenty he was reading Henry James...He secured a literary education at the Brighton Public Library, and as a professional runner he used prize money to buy Hardy's poems, Shakespeare, Mackail's translation of "The Odyssey", and William Morris's "The Earthly Paradise". In an undemanding job... he read on company time, though there was a row when his supervisor found "Jude the Obscure" on his desk'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book
'A.E. Coppard, a laundrywoman's son who grew up in dire poverty, left school at nine, ascended the ranks of clerkdom and became (at age forty) a professional author. At fourteen he was still enjoying "Deadeye Dick", by twenty he was reading Henry James...He secured a literary education at the Brighton Public Library, and as a professional runner he used prize money to buy Hardy's poems, Shakespeare, Mackail's translation of "The Odyssey", and William Morris's "The Earthly Paradise". In an undemanding job... he read on company time, though there was a row when his supervisor found "Jude the Obscure" on his desk'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book
'When the seventeen-year-old seaman entered Mr Pratt's bookstore on Sixth Avenue near Greenwich Avenue, he bought his first volume of Sir Thomas Malory's Morete d'Arthur; with this he began his career of serious reading as well as his devotion to pre-Renaissance English literature'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'Masefield habitually purchased a book each Friday evening and read it over the weekend. Among the first purchases was a seventy-five cent copy of Chaucer; and that evening, as he recalled, "I stretched myself on my bed, and began to read 'The Parliament of Fowls'; and with the first lines entered into a world of poetry until then unknown to me". As a result, Masefield's study of poetry deepened, and Chaucer, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats became his mentors. Shelley converted the impressionable youth to vegetarianism....Unfortunately [he] overdid vegetarianism by abjuring milk; and, weak from lack of protein, he finally gave up the regimen'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": "In 1584 ... in Cambridge, Harvey read Livy ... with Thomas Preston, master of Trinity Hall. They read Machiavelli's Discorsi at the same time ... They read several other up-to-date works on pragmatic politics as well, notably Jean Bodin's Methodus and Republic."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Preston Print: Book
Anthony Grafton, in "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," notes Harvey's reading, and light annotation, of Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War.
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'The conception of this particular novel ["Riceyman Steps"] was probably sparked off by the discovery, in an old Southampton bookshop, T. James and Co., of 34 Bernard Street, of a curious old book called "Lives and Anecdotes of Misers", by F. Sommer Merryweather (1850). Bennett bought it in 1921 on one of his yachting expeditions, read it and used it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Intellectually, he seems to have been most concerned with the affairs of Middleton Murry's new periodical, the "Adelphi". . . . doesn't like Murry's layout and advertising. . .criticized Middleton Murry's editorials about his late wife Katherine Mansfield. . . . Bennett's letters about this problem are a model of tact . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
'She was "surprised into tears" by "The Vicar of Wakefield", although she did not much like it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'[Mary Wortley] Montagu's Letters and accounts of the sexual freedom of Tahitian women were popular: Elizabeth Montagu and Anna Seward for instance, read both.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
'[Mary Wortley] Montagu's Letters and accounts of the sexual freedom of Tahitian women were popular: Elizabeth Montagu and Anna Seward for instance, read both.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
'Robert Boyle being made to "read the state adventures of Amadis de Gaulle and other fabulous stories" which met a "restless fancy, then made more susceptible of any impressions by an unemployed pensiveness" and accustomed his thoughts to such a habitude of roving, that he [had] scarce ever been their quiet master since.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Boyle Print: Unknown
[Sedgwick read the 'Essay' twice in 1811]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Sedgwick Print: Book
'During these twelve months [in prison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a freethinker if I had not been one before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
'During these twelve months [in prison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a free thinker if I had not been one before.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
'I have been reading Thompson's "History of the Late War in Britain"; Decrees Blockades.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
[Burney was] 'not impressed by Samuel James Arnold's "The Creole", Lady Morgan's "The Missionary", Edgeworth's "Patronage", which she found "dull and heavy" or Hannah More's "Coelebs", which she found "monotonously without interest of ANY kind", despite her approval of its politics.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'[Burney was] 'not impressed by Samuel James Arnold's "The Creole", Lady Morgan's "The Missionary", Edgeworth's "Patronage", which she found "dull and heavy" or Hannah More's "Coelebs", which she found "monotonously without interest of ANY kind", despite her approval of its politics.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
'In December 1810 a box of books arrived and the family began to read a novel which they "liked very much". This book is "modern Philosophy", whose anti-heroine, "Miss Biddy Botherin", who made them "Laugh a good deal", is a devotee of radical Godwinian philosophy, a satirical portrait probably combining elements pf Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft" [hence Grove is resisting her then-fiance Shelley's philosophy and aesthetics.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
'Janet Schaw and her cousin, sailing from Scotland to the Caribbean, try to keep calm in a terrifying storm by reading Lord Kames ('like philosophers not Christians').'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw Print: Book
'[opinion of William Mason's play, "Caractacus", entered in diary]: 'My soul melted into every pleasing sensation, the language charming! divine harmony, beams in every line such a love of virtue! such examples of piety, resignation and fortitude! raise the soul to an ecstatic height. Sweet Evelinda how my heart throbbed for her!'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'E- being called out for a few hours in the morning I attempted to amuse myself with Marmontel's Tales- it was but an attempt. For I hurried thro' them 'quite upon thorns' expecting every moment his return, - which prevented either pleasure or instruction to arise from it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'In the evening I read the whole of "Love and Madness"- not on account of the amorous epistles of Hackman, but with a view to make myself more acquainted with the fate of Poor Chatterton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'I took from my pocket the volume of "Love and Madness" which I had amused myself with a few evenings since- ...I read with great pleasure the whole of the History of Poor Chatterton to Mr H.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'I got thro 6 chapters of Count Fathom- about an hours undertaking- and this has been the way thro my whole readings- a chapter at one hour - the volume thrown aside for perhaps two more- take it up make another attempt- ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'Herman Melville's "The Green Hand" he had read but it "was not much use to me" - a phrase which suggests that already he was reading as a writer reads, with a view to using the book for his own development. He read other works by Melville, and enjoyed parts of "Moby Dick"'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'Herman Melville's "The Green Hand" he had read but it "was not much use to me" - a phrase which suggests that already he was reading as a writer reads, with a view to using the book for his own development. He read other works by Melville, and enjoyed parts of "Moby Dick"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'After "Trilby" came the effect of "Peter Ibbetson". "It came to me", writes the poet of this book, "just when I needed an inner life". From "Peter Ibbetson" he learned of the existence of Villon and of de Musset. He read these poets but "the time was not ripe for either".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'After "Trilby" came the effect of "Peter Ibbetson". "It came to me", writes the poet of this book, "just when I needed an inner life". From "Peter Ibbetson" he learned of the existence of Villon and of de Musset. He read these poets but "the time was not ripe for either".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'Before his departure for his native land he had read some of Dickens and Stevenson... and William Morris. John Masefield's debt to William Morris as a constructive thinker is considerable. It may be that Morris has been the formative influence, in his limitations as well as his liberations, on Masefield's view of life'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
[opinion of Thomson's Edward and Elinora, entered in diary]: 'A most affecting tale, pleasingly tender - fraught with virtuous sentiments.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent
[note in diary upon finishing Mackintosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae"]: 'As far as I am a Judge I think this work very well understood. The author is master on his subject & has the art of rendering others. HE is not scurrilous. He argues well, he seldom begs the question. He narrates what has passed in France, traces causes with precision - perhaps he speaks too strongly in the latter part. I gained much information from his work.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'I went through that extraordinary work of Lord Monboddo on the "Origin of Language". I was entertained and instructed from the singularity of the system, the many erroneous and yet plausible arguments on which it is founded, the infinite display of learning. A mind wedded to antiquity is the source together with a strong imagination easily biased from Credulity, of the principles offered in this work. I should apprehend the criticisms to be good in many parts... There is too much classical learning in it to allow me to form a Judgement of it, as a learned work. Indeed it is not to be supposed I understood it in a followed manner [.] Yet I never throw aside a book because it makes me feel an ignorance I am not ashamed of from its being one belonging to my Sphere as a female. I read on and often reap much information from the mere introduction to scholars.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
[We then read aloud a dialogue on taste by Mr Ramsay, a lively original book with some entertaining and instructive remarks on the progress of those arts that seem particularly to call forth the exertion to taste. I pointed out this, to carry on the pursuit in her mind though on a wholly different principle. Cozens forms beauties by mathematical Rules: reduces all to a regular, invariable System. Ramsay makes beauty the mere result of opinion in different persons, & consequently varying with the various persons he admits of no other standard for taste; the comparisons this difference of opinion drew and the observations that arose, the Books it led us to consult, gave us much amusing conversation.' [reading in turn with her pupil and sister Clara].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'In a ritual that was to be repeated throughout the holidays, Anna and John [her son] read passages from an instructive and improving work, Sarah Trimmer's sacred history, a didactic anthology from the scriptures written by the best-selling pious evangelical.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Larpent Print: Book
'In a ritual that was to be repeated throughout the holidays, Anna and John [her son] read passages from an instructive and improving work, Sarah Trimmer's sacred history, a didactic anthology from the scriptures written by the best-selling pious evangelical.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'While her friends were engaged in different sorts of women's work... she read them a great favourite, the sentimental novel "Marienne" by Pierre Marivaux.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
'Soon Pritchett was reading Penny Poets editions of "Paradise Regained", Wordsworth's "Prelude", Cowper, and Coleridge. He formulated plans to become Poet Laureate by age twenty-one'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
'as an office boy, Pritchett tried to read widely and dreamt of an escape to Bohemia. But his knowledge of the Latin Quarter was gleaned not from Flaubert, only from third-raters like George du Maurier, W.J. Locke, and Hilaire Belloc'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
'When Middleton Murry attacked George Moore in an editorial of the "Adelphi" in April 1924, he [Arnold Bennett] wrote a very strong letter of protest, and rightly: Murry's piece, "Wrap me up in my Aubusson Carpet", had been a characteristically emotional and unbalanced attack . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
'With autodidact diligence [Leslie Paul] closed in on the avant-garde. He read "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", though not until the 1930s. He smuggled "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" past customs. In "John O'London's" and "The Nation", in William MacDougall's Home University Library volume on "Psychology" and F.A. Servante's "Psychology of the Boy", he read up on Freud. In a few years he knew enough to ghost-write BBC lectures on modern psychology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Paul Print: Book
'After Stalingrad, [Bernard Kops] immersed himself in Russian literature. A GI dating his sister introduced him to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops Print: Book
"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading:
"'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks.
"'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen.
"'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer.
"'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Rivers Print: Book
'There is a pleasant story of how [Aunt Cara] once set a Jebb niece to read "Paradise Lost" aloud to herself and her sister Aunt Polly, in order to improve Aunt Polly's mind. The poor old lady was terribly bored and was nearly asleep, when Aunt Cara woke her up, by saying sternly: "Listen now, Polly; it's Satan speaking".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [unknown] Jebb Print: Book
'Uncle Richard had adored Ruskin, and worshipped Morris, and had slept for years with a copy of "In Memoriam" under his pillow. He told me once how he and his friends used to wait outside the bookshops in the early morning, when they heard that a new volume of Tennyson was to come out. He had read all Browning too, and all Wordsworth, and Carlyle, in fact nearly everything contemporary; and he constantly re-read the Classics in their own classic tongues... a triumph of timing occurred once when he was listening to the Thunderstorm in the Pastoral Symphony, and reading the thunderstorm in "Oedipus at Colonus", and a real thunderstorm took place!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Litchfield Print: Book
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
'At home all day. In the even read the 9th book of "Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'Read the 10th book of "Paradise Lost" in the even.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'At home all day. In the even read the 11th and 12th books of "Paradise Regained", which I think is much inferior for the sublimity of style to "Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'He returned to London to . . . Somerset Maugham's "Cakes and Ale", which he admired . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'At home all day. Not at church all day. Read part of Boyle's lectures and Smart's poem on eternity and immensity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'At home all day. Not at church all day. Read part of Boyle's lectures and Smart's poem on eternity and immensity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the even read Derham's "Sermons at Boyle's Lectures", wherein I find a man evacuates as much in one day by insensible perspiration as in 14 by stool.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
[in April 1792 Larpent read] 'Smellie's "Philosophy of Nature" [sic] which she considered poorly organized but of sufficient value to transcribe extracts for her children.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'The story of Percy is simple, pathetic, distressing, this worked up to the most moving height of distress; the power of virtue on the mind is well contrasted with the mad way of passion, Elwina's is an almost perfect character... A pure love of virtue appearing throughout and filling the virtuous heart with glowing pleasure... the struggle in Elwina's mind between love and duty is fine, the triumph of the latter nobly painted. There is a charming delicacy, and elevation of sentiment.' [opinion of More's "Percy" entered in diary].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'With a fine imagination and command of Language Charlotte Smith cannot write without Interest [.] this is an odd work. She introduces in a prettily wrought novel the more early French troubles in consequence of the Revolution, she is a wild leveller. She defends the revolution, she writes with the enthusiasm of a woman and a poetess. Her story is hurried [,] has faults in the conduct and narrative, yet it interests. Her descriptions are very pleasing and her characteristic conversations are somewhat forced. She writes herself out. yet her genius predominates.' [opinion of "Desmond", entered in diary].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In 1816, left alone in Bath by her husband, Mary Shelley records reading "The Solitary Wanderer", Charlotte Smith's "Letters of a Solitary Wanderer" (1799), a collection of interlocking tales in which a number of suffering women relate their stories. It is the single occasion her comprehensive reading diary mentions this book, which she seems to choose at this point to express a resentful, self-pitying protest against her desertion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Marginalia]: a few pencil marginal marks (in form of bracketed lines of text eg p 79 has lines 203-7 bracketed), plus some ms notes in ink on binding page. The ink notes read 'Envy-Love 78'; 'Hope - Grief 78'; 'The Deluge 79'; 'Effects of changing weather 80'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'In reading the "Odyssey" last night among many curious passages these two lines I think applicable to the present times, Viz, "why cease ye then ye wreath of Heaven to stay; be humbled all and Lead ye great the way".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'in the Even Tho. Davy at our House to whom I read the 4th Book of Milton's "Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the even read 2 books of Homer's "Odyssey", translated by Pope.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'Came home about 8.10. Read part of Homer's "Odyssey".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'After supper read the 13th book of Homer's "Odyssey", wherein I think the soliloquy which Ulysses makes when he finds the Phaeacians have, in his sleep, left him on shore with all his treasure, and on his native shore of Ithaca (though not known to him), contains a very good lesson of morality.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
[Marginalia]: one ms note at the end of the text: 'You are a story [?] teller I ... said Mr Joseph Emin'. Some of the page is missing.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot funds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
'[Carter] is sympathetic to women of different views, like Charlotte Smith or Helen Maria Williams whose books she finds "too democratical" but praises as "exprest with decency and moderation" and "very prettily written".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'At home all day... In reading Homer's "Odyssey", I think the character which Menelaus gives Telemachus of Ulysses, when he is a-speaking of his war-like virtues in the 4th book, is very good.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
[Marginalia]: p. 465 has a bookmark and marginal mark against item 'Regimen'; opposite the half-title there is reference to another medical work 'An Essay on The Action of Medicines in the system, or: on the Mode in which Therapeutic Agents introduced in the Stomack ... awarded ... Frederick William [Headland] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe Erskine Print: Book
[Maud Montgomery] 'wrote her first poem after reading "Seasons", a book of poems by James Thomson, written in blank verse. Maud was so enraptured by them that she had to sit down at once to write one of her own.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
'Along with her old school books [Maud Montgomery] read whatever she could find both for pleasure and to learn from their authors how to improve her own writing: religious tracts, newspapers, the Godey's Lady's Book, Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers", Sir Walter Scott's novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables", Washington Irving's "The Sketchbook", and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
[Marginalia]: ms note on binding page appears to refer both to the battle of Flodden and to poems about it: '... The battle of Flodden Field which was fought between the English under the Earl of Surrey ( in the absence of Henery 8th) and the Scots under their valiant King James IV who was slain on the field of battle in the year 1513. An ... poem ... collected from .... ms by Joseph Philamoth ... These three poems differ ... from each other. British Topography Chpt. [?] p. 61'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Print: Book
"When [Isaac] Newton arrived at Greenwich in September 1694, the astronomer [John Flamsteed] showed him 157 lunar positions calculated at the observatory ... Newton asked permission to take copies of them."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Newton Manuscript: Unknown
Adrian Johns discusses John Flamsteed's reading of sheets 1 and 3 of his star catalogue (submitted for printing without his authorisation, and much added to), apparently supplied to him by printing-house staff.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Flamsteed Print: sheets
Adrian Johns describes how "[Edmond] Halley ... [took] to 'correcting' the copy [of John Flamsteed's star catalogue] in Child's coffeehouse, and pointing out to his 'impious friends' there all Flamsteed's purported errors."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmond Halley
"As late as 1782 ... [Caroline Herschel] would employ a telescope to 'sweep' the sky for comets, with her brother William seated beside her. William helped her attain the vital skill of correlating in an instant what she observed in the sky with its representation in the Atlas [Coelestis] lying open beside her."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline and William Herschel Print: Book
'In the even read the 6th book of Milton's "Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the even read the 12th and last book of Milton's "Paradise Lost", which I have now read twice through and in my opinion it exceeds anything I ever read for sublimity of language and beauty of similes; and I think the depravity of human nature entailed upon us by our first parent is finely drawn.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'Read part of Salmon "On Marriage".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the even finished reading Salmon "On Marriage", which I think to be a very indifferent thing, for the author appears to me to be a very bad logician.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Noted by Leon Edel in "Brief Chronology" of Henry James: "1860: Returns to Newport ... Reads Balzac and Merimee."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from home of host family in Bonn, Sunday 5 August 1860: "[on Wednesday morning] I sat down to read [in the study] till our room should be made ready for me to go in and set to work. I looked over an old volume of the 'British Chronicle,' a lot of bound weekly newspapers of the time of Byron, Shelley, Tom Moore and Walter Scott and which I had discovered in a corner the night before. Then I finished the Letters of Lady M. W. Montague which I had commenced a few days before from curiosity and had continued from interest."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
[Marginalia]: ms annotations in form of numbers in margin from p.27- p.655 - as if reference system (they are in numerical order); there are also a few marginal notes in the introduction (unnumbered) and on p. 41 e.g. the text line 'Queen Mary herself, (naturally* a mild and loving Princess ....)' has ms note in margin '*false'; Text line '.. before amply conferred on Henry the Eighth, and the Queen* herself ...' has ms note '* therefore has the Popes Promd, not his obliging temper that made him do this ...'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Fox Print: Book
Leon Edel notes re Henry James's unsigned review of Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, in North American Review (July 1865): "Arnold read this review and praised it to his friends unaware it was the work of a twenty-two-year-old novice."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Arnold Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to William James, 22 November 1867: "I recd. about a fortnight ago -- your letter with the review of Grimm's novel ... I liked your article very much ... It struck me as ... very readable. I copied it forthwith and sent it to the Nation."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter
Henry James to Alice James, in letter begun 10 March 1869 (continued on 12 March), on evening spent at home of William Morris: "After dinner (we stayed to dinner, Miss Grace, Miss S. S. and I,) Morris read us one of his unpublished poems, from the second series of his 'un-Earthly Paradise,' and his wife having a bad toothache, lay on the sofa, with her handkerchief to her face."
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Morris
'After the breakdown of her marriage in 1752, Sarah Scott read voraciously and eclectically, the "History of Florence" and Lord Bacon's essays, and the Old Plays, Christianity not founded on argument, Randolph's answer to it... and some of David's Simple Life... an account of the Government of Venice, Montaigne's Essays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Scott Print: Book
'After the breakdown of her marriage in 1752, Sarah Scott read voraciously and eclectically, the "History of Florence" and Lord Bacon's essays, and the Old Plays, Christianity not founded on argument, Randolph's answer to it... and some of David's Simple Life... an account of the Government of Venice, Montaigne's Essays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Scott Print: Book
'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot finds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'In December 1810 a box of books arrived and the family began to read a novel which they "liked very much". This book is "Modern Philosophy", whose anti-heroine, "Miss Biddy Botherin", who made them "laugh a good deal", is a devotee of radical Godwinian philosophy, a satirical portrait probably combining elements of Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft.' [Grove is resisting her then-fiance Shelley's philosophy and aesthetics].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
'While I read [your letter], I have you before me in person: I converse with you and your dear Anna, as arm in arm you traverse the happy terrace...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Letter, Unknown
'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 1 January 1870 (letter begun 27 December 1869): " ... I felt a most refreshing blast of paternity, the other day in reading Father's reply to a 'Swedenborgian,' in a number [of The Nation] that I saw at the bankers."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
'In the even read part of Wiseman's "Chyrurgery".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'In the even read part of Derham's "Physico-Theology".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'I wish you would cannonade this N[ewto]n. I cannot bear, that another of Apollo's genuine Offspring should pass down to future Times with such crude and unworthy Notes.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James, in letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 16 January 1871, mentions "just having read in the Fortnightly for December two articles by your two friends F. Harrison and J. Morley, on Bismark and Byron respectively."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to William James, 28 September 1872 (letter begun 22 September): "I read your Taine and admired, though but imperfectly understood it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr, 24 March 1873: "Thank him [Henry James Sr] ... greatly for his story of Mr Webster. It is admirable material, and excellently presented: I have transcribed it in my notebook with religious care, and think that some day something will come of it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Sheet
Henry James to William James, 9 April 1873: "Your letter was full of points of great interest. Your criticism on Middlemarch was excellent and I have duly transcribed it into that note-book which it will be a relief to your mind to know I have at last set up."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter
'The fault of the great author, whose letters to his friend you have been reading, is, that Tully is wholly concerned for the fame of Cicero; and that for fame and self-exaltation sake. In some of his orations, what is called his vehemence (but really is too often insult and ill manners) so transports him, that a modern pleader... would not be heard, if he were to take the like freedoms... Cicero's constitutional faults seem to be vanity and cowardice. Great geniuses seldom have small faults. You have seen, I presume, Dr Middleton's "Life of Cicero". It is a fine piece; but the Doctor, I humbly think, has played the panegyrist, in some places in it, rather than the historian. The present laureat's performance on the same subject, of which Dr Middleton's is the foundation, is a spirited and pretty piece... You greatly oblige me, Madam, whenever you give me your observations upon what you read'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'His plan was to make use of me as a talking dictionary and grammar, confining my teachings exclusively to the answering of such questions as he thought fit to put. Having made this arrangement he produced a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield", and, commencing at the title-page, read it after me, looking to me for translation as he went along. In this way we got through four or five pages in the course of the first hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Henry James to William Dean Howells, 9 January 1874, regarding first half of "tale" (Eugene Pickering) being sent in separate cover: "I have been reading it to my brother who pronounces it 'quite brilliant.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
[Marginalia]: pencil annotations on last binding page are in Latin and appear to be brief notes relating to 4 classes of disorders.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Print: Book
''When I was seven years old [...] I was kept from chapel one Sunday afternoon by some ailment or other. When the door closed behind the other chapel-goers, I looked at the books on the table. The ugliest-looking of them was turned down open; and my turning it up was one of the leading incidents of my life. That plain, clumsy, calf-bound volume was "Paradise Lost";...there was something about Satan cleaving Chaos, which made me turn to the poetry; and my mental destiny was fixed for the next seven years.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Another lovely book called "The Story of San Michele".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Read most of day. I am reading "Dandelion Days", and love it. I must get some more of the Henry Williamson books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Old Man's Birthday".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Kidnapped". Not up to much... Dr came and said I couldn't go down [into lessons] until Monday. Damn. Felt miserable. Read "Trail of the Sandhill Stag" and tidied out the book cupboard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Read "Lorna Doone" and loved it. Must try to get it next hols.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'I read "The Man in Grey" which is simply glorious. I must ry and get it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'With regard to reading, you would think I have enough of time upon my hands at present: yet the truth is, I have often read more, almost never studied less!... There is Jameson with his most crude theories - his orders Mammalia, Digitala & fencibles of gli[illegible]rac & bruta with [chi[sel]-shaped foreteeth && grieves me every day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I heard the greatest part of the Gamester read by Mr Garrick, before it was brought upon the stage. On the whole, I much liked it. I thought it a very affecting performance. There are faults in it; but I think it a moral and seasonable piece'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick
'You did not tell me before, that you had read "the Hermit" and "Alfrida". There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words. of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'You did not tell me before, that you had read the Hermit and Alfrida. There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words. of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'You did not tell me before, that you had read the Hermit and Alfrida. There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book
'You did not tell me before, that you had read the Hermit and Alfrida. There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words of his poetical talents...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book
'Have you read Mad. Sevigne's Letters from the [French]? Fine passages and Sentiments there are in it, & a notion given of the French manner tho' written in the middle reign of Louis XIV. What are the Two volumes called the History of Man from the French also. There is a volume which is not chaste enough to be recommended to your Ladiship. It is truly French. Its language good. But for the knowledge of the hearts of people given up to what is called Gallantry, particularly French Gallantry, I have not seen its equal. It is called Letters of Ninon de Lenclos to the marquis of Sevigne. Son of the above-named Lady, and her contemporary. It will not offend the Ear. But I would not by any means recommend it to a very young Lady'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Read "The Count of Monte Cristo" (abridged) which is simply superb. Bought "Song of Bernadette" at last.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Spent the day reading Lamb [for Higher School Certificate Eng. Lit]. Have decided that if I read an author each fortnight I might manage to finish (by February) "The Age of Wordsworth"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Spent the day reading Lamb [for Higher School Certificate Eng. Lit]. Have decided that if I read an author each fortnight I might manage to finish (by February) "The Age of Wordsworth"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'1944 My Favourite:
Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele"
Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols
Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia
Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'1944 My Favourite:
Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele"
Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols
Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia
Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'1944 My Favourite:
Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele"
Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols
Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia
Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'With my scanty pocket-money, high-priced books were beyond my reach; but I was lucky enough, when hunting, as was my want, among the second-hand bookstalls in Newcastle market-place, to light upon some off volumes of Milton?s prose works, which I bought for a few shillings. I read them all ? politics, theology, travels, with touches of autobiography- nothing came amiss to my voracious appetite. Over and over again did I read the Areopagitica, ?that sublime treatise? which, Macaulay tells us, ?every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes?.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
?The gentle Cowper was my earliest favourite, a small second-hand copy of his poems, which I bought for eighteen pence, being the first book I bought for myself. It emptied my pocket, but I walked home, as I had walked to Newcastle (a distance some eighteen miles to and fro) with a light head, now and then reading as I fared along. Longfellow, Pope, Milton, Wordsworth and other poets were soon afterwards added to my little collection. I read them all. Many passages have clung to my memory, a life-long possession, giving, with their music, sometimes inspiration, sometimes solace in the conflicts and sorrows of life.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
?Two or three years my senior, Sam, like myself, was acquiring a taste for books. Our tastes were not wholly dissimilar. Both of us read and enjoyed poetry; but while Sam?s more solid reading was in science, especially in astronomy and geology, mine was in history, biography, logic, languages, oratory, and general literature. Sam?s favourite books at this time were Alison?s "History of Europe" and Humboldt?s "Cosmos".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bailey Print: Book
?Macaulay, who had recently died, was greatly in vogue. I had read with enjoyment and advantage his "History of England" and some of his essays.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
'In the even read part of Homer's "Odyssey", translated by Alexander Pope, which I like very well, the language being vastly good and the turn of thought and expression beautiful.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Henry James to Thomas Seregant Perry, 25 November 1883: "I have just been reading the two last [sixth and seventh] volumes of Mme de Remusat, just out -- her correspondence with her son -- and finding them interestng ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Francis Parkman, 24 August 1884: " ... I cannot hold my hand from telling you ... with what high appreciation and genuine gratitude I have been reading your Wolfe and Montcalm ... I have found the right time to read it only during the last fortnight, and it has fascinated me from the first page to the last."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 2 January 1885: "Three days ago ... came the two copies of Father's (and your) book ... All I have had time to read as yet is the introduction ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book, Unknown
Henry James to Theodore E. Child, 30 May 1885: "I ought already to have thanked you for your friendly thought and delicate attention in sending me Maupassant's ineffable novel, which I fell upon and devoured, with the utmost relish and gratitude. It brightened me up, here, for a day or two, amazingly."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson to Henry James, November-early December 1887: "I must break out with the news that I can't bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept, too; but I can't stand your having written it, and I beg you will write no more of the like."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'In Dodsley's "Miscellanies" there are two or three pretty pieces of Mr Mason. Bacon's "Life by Mr Mallet" perhaps you have seen. He is not near so good a Man, I fear, as Mr Mason'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'In Dodsley's "Miscellanies" there are two or three pretty pieces of Mr Mason. Bacon's "Life" by Mr Mallet perhaps you have seen. He is not near so good a Man, I fear, as Mr Mason.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
'Rudie inspired in all his children a love of literature, reading aloud to them from his own favourites, the great Victorians, particularly Dickens, and helping them to choose from the library shelves. "I had the run of my father's library", Rosamond remembered. "I was allowed to read anything and did". There was a bookcase in the hall where he would put books sent to him for review, and from these Rosamond, graduating from her beloved Hans Andersen, E. Nesbit and "Les Petites Filles Modeles", began to discover some of the more adult novelists'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
?There were other books which I then read and studied with care, including Adam Smith?s "Wealth of Nations" and Mill?s "Political Economy". This was not a kind of literature to borrow from public libraries, but to have in one?s possessions.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
?There were other books which I then read and studied with care, including Adam Smith?s "Wealth of Nations" and Mill?s "Political Economy". This was not a kind of literature to borrow from public libraries, but to have in one?s possessions.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
'I infinitely regret to say that having read the 2 vols of "Sinister Street", I don?t think it is permanent work; the beginning & the end are the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'While at Mitchelstown she brushed up on her French by reading Madame de Genlis's "Letters on Education", Louis Sebastien Mercier's comedy "Mon Bonnet de Nuit", and the Baroness de Montoliere's novel "Caroline de Litchfield". The first she pronounced "wonderfully clever", and it may well have proved helpful to her as a teacher; the last she described as "One of the prettiest things I have ever read", and it perhaps suggested that her own life could serve as the basis of a sentimental novel'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
'While at Mitchelstown she brushed up on her French by reading Madame de Genlis's "Letters on Education", Louis Sebastien Mercier's comedy "Mon Bonnet de Nuit", and the Baroness de Montoliere's novel "Caroline de Litchfield". The first she pronounced "wonderfully clever", and it may well have proved helpful to her as a teacher; the last she described as "One of the prettiest things I have ever read", and it perhaps suggested that her own life could serve as the basis of a sentimental novel'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
Henry James to Henrietta Reubell, 7 July 1890: "I have read Notre Coeur but haven't looked at Bourget in the Figaro."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
'I am so fatigued with poring over a German book, I scarcely can collect my thoughts or even spell English words.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
'Whenever I read Milton's description of paradise - the happiness, which he so poetically describes fills me with benevolent satisfaction - yet, I cannot help viewing them, I mean the first pair - as if they were my inferiors - inferiors because they could find happiness in a world like this.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 6 February 1891: " ... I blush to say I haven't had freedom of mind or cerebral freshness ... to tackle -- more than dipping in here and there -- your mighty and magnificent book ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'When the cigars came, Hoffmann was requested to read some of his poetry, and he gave us a bacchanalian poem with great spirit... little rain sent us into the house, and when we were seated in an elegant drawing room, opening into a large music salon, we had more reading from Hoffmann, and from the French artist who with a tremulous voice pitched in a minor key, read us some rather pretty sentimentalities of his own'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: Unknown, own poem
'Read "Letters of People in Love". Quite good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Read "Henry Brocken" all evening, as had finished prep. It's enchanting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Spent evening dancing, and reading Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'We read "Paradise Lost" in Gen. English & I tried to look enthusiastic, but I really can't appreciate Milton. He's so unreal and unalive. I must try to read a lot of him and get over this.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Bad headache all day. Gross Cophta in the evening. Looked through Moore's Life of Sheridan in the morning - a firstrate specimen of bad biographical writing'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
[In bed recovering from gastro-enteritis] 'I read "Crowthers" all day, and loved it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'I finished "The Conquered", and wrote to Uncle John, who sent me a really wizard book - 10/ - called "People and Places"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Spent afternoon reading "Twelfth Night"... read more of "England their England" which is a scream.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Reading "The Jew of Malta", which in spite of critics is the most interesting of the plays I've read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Slept all morning, then read quite a lot of "Utopia" in afternoon, & really it is very interesting (once you get over the spelling), & he had some very advanced ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Settled down to 3 hours solid slogging at "Utopia", & got it read & notes begun. Spent evening finishing "England their England", which I loved - it's most clever & interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Settled down to 3 hours solid slogging at "Utopia", & got it read & notes begun. Spent evening finishing "England their England", which I loved - it's most clever & interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Had a really wizard lecture from [Prof.] Renwick on Milton, in which he read a good lot of Milton and Shakespeare to us, and he certainly can read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 15 April 1892: "I send you by this post the magnificent Memoires de Marbot, which should have gone to you sooner by my hand if I had sooner read them ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James, in letters to his brother, and sister-in-law, Mr and Mrs William James (25 May 1894; 28 May 1894) discusses his reading of his copy of his sister Alice James's diary.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 22 August 1894: " ... I have vowed not to open Lourdes [by Zola] till I shall have closed with a furious bang the unspeakable Lord Ormont, which I have been reading at the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day ... I have finished, at this rate, but the first volume ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Mrs. Henry James Sr., 8 May 1876: "The other day I was at the house of a dreadful old lion huntress, Mme. Blaze de Bury -- an Englishwoman with a French husband and daughter. She invited me, unsolicited, from having read my threadbare tales in the Revue des Deux Mondes ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mme. Blaze de Bury Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Mrs. Henry James Sr., 8 May 1876: "I have been reading Macaulay's Life with extreme interest and entertainment, and admiration of the intellectual robustness of the man."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Wiliam James, 28 February 1877: " ... [Henry Sidgwick] has read Roderick Hudson (!) and asked me to stop with him at Cambridge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Sidgwick Print: Unknown
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 19 April 1878: "Two days since I dined with Frederick Macmillan to meet Mr Grove, the editor of their magazine, who had just been reading The American ... 'with great delight.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Archibald Grove Print: Unknown
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 29 May 1878: " ... Sir Charles Dilke ... appears to have found time ... to read and be 'struck' by my French essays."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Charles Dilke Print: Unknown
'Gruppe read us a translation of one of the Homeric Hymns - Aphrodite - which is really beautiful. It is a sort of Gegenstuck to "Der Gott und die Bayadere". He has struck out 150 lines which he believes to be interpolated and the connection of the poem appears perfect'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [Professor] Gruppe Manuscript: Unknown
'In the evening began Macaulay's History of England. Richard III and G's M.S. on Goethe's scientific labours'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Began... to read Cumming for article in Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'We are reading in the evenings now, Sydney Smith's letters, Boswell, Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences, the Odyssey and occasionally Heine's Reisebilder. I began the second Book of the Iliad in Greek this morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 18 January 1879: "I have just been reading ... [William James's] two articles -- the Brute and Human Intellect and the one in Mind ... I perused them with great interest, sufficient comprehension, and extreme profit."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 18 January 1879: "I have just been reading ... [William James's] two articles -- the Brute and Human Intellect and the one in Mind ... I perused them with great interest, sufficient comprehension, and extreme profit."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Mrs F. H. Hill, 21 March 1879, on his characterisation of Lord Lambeth in Daisy Miller: "That he says 'I say' rather too many times is very probable (I thought so, quite, myself, in reading over the thing as a book): but that strikes me as a rather venial flaw."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 8 April 1879: "I have received father's book from Trubner -- but really to read it I must lay it aside till the summer. I have however dipped into it and found it a great fascination."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 11 January 1880: "I know there are quite too many 'I's' in my Sainte-Beuve -- they shocked me very much when I saw it in print, and they would never have stayed had I seen it in proof."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Leon Edel notes: "In the weeks after his mother's death H[enry]J[ames] converted 'Daisy Miler' into a play, and before sailing read it to Mrs. [Isabella Stewart]Gardner."
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
Henry James to William James, 1 January 1883, on having received William's farewell letter to their father too late for Henry James Sr to see it before he died: "I went out yesterday (Sunday) morning, to the Cambridge cemetary ... and stood beside his grave a long time and read him your letter of farewell -- which I am sure he heard somewhere out of the depths of the still, bright winter air."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter
Henry James to G. W. Smalley, 21 February 1883: "I have just been reading in the Tribune your letter of Jan. 25, in which you devote a few lines to the silly article in the Quarterly on American Novels, etc [goes on to correct points in this]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
?About this time I was delighted by the acquisition of two books, the existence of which, until then, had been unknown to me. One was the second volume of Homer?s "Iliad", translated by Alexander Pope, with notes by Madame Dacier; and the other was a small volume of miscellaneous poems, by John Milton. Homer I read with an absorbed attention which soon enabled me to commit nearly every line to memory.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?About this time I was delighted by the acquisition of two books, the existence of which, until then, had been unknown to me. One was the second volume of Homer?s "Iliad", translated by Alexander Pope, with notes by Madame Dacier; and the other was a small volume of Miscellaneous Poems, by John Milton. Homer I read with an absorbed attention which soon enabled me to commit nearly every line to memory.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?Whilst in Mr W?s employ, I combined my poetic readings at all leisure moments. I procured and read speedily a complete "Iliad" in English. Some of Shakespeare?s works having fallen in my way, I read them with avidity, as I did almost every other book, and though deeply interested by his historical characters and passages, I never either then or since relished his blank verse, or that of any other poet.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?Milton?s miscellaneous works were still my favourites. I copied many of his poems into a writing book, and this I did, not only an account of the pleasure which I felt in their repetition, and in the appropriation ? so to speak ? of the ideas, but also as a means for improvement of my handwriting, which had continued to be very indifferent. The "Odyssey" and "Aeniad", which I also procured and read about this time, seemed tame and languid, whilst the stirring call of the old Iliadic battle trumpet was ringing in my ears, and vibrating within my heart. In short, I read or attentively conned [sic] over, every book I could buy or borrow, and as I retained a pretty clear idea of what I read, I became rather more than commonly proficient in book knowledge considering that I was only a better sort of porter in a warehouse.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'You are not to think that I am fretful. I have long accustomed my mind to look upon the future with a sedate aspect; and at any rate, my hopes have never yet failed me. A French Author (D'Alembert, one of the few persons who deserve the honourable epithet of honest man) whom I was lately reading, remarks that one who devotes his life to learning ought to carry for his motto-Liberty, Truth, Poverty; for her that fears the latter can never have the former.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Unknown
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'... I also enlarged my acquaintance with English literature, read Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", and, as a consequence, many of their productions also. Macpherson's "Ossain", whilst it gave me a glimpse of our most ancient love, interested my feelings and absorbed my attention. I also bent my thoughts on more practical studies, and at one time had nearly the whole of Lindsey Murray's Grammar stored in my memory, although I never so far benefited by it as to become ready at pausing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'... I also enlarged my acquaintance with English literature, read Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", and, as a consequence, many of their productions also. Macpherson's "Ossain", whilst it gave me a glimpse of our most ancient love, interested my feelings and absorbed my attention. I also bent my thoughts on more practical studies, and at one time had nearly the whole of Lindley Murray's "Grammar" stored in my memory, although I never so far benefited by it as to become ready at pausing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
[Marginalia]: Three entries (Perth, Haddington and Fife & Kinross) have been annotated with some extra information ex. from the Perth entry 'At a small village calld [sic] Pitcaithly within a mile of Dumbarny, 25 miles from Perth, is a well whose water is remarkable for curing sore eyes. Near Loch Dochart in Breadalbane, is Ben More, among the highest hills in Scotland.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Wemyss Print: Book
'It was about this time that I first met with Milton's "Paradise Lost", in a thick volume with engravings and copious notes, probably a copy of Bishop Newton's edition of that noble poem. I found it, however, little better than "a sealed book". Its versification puzzled me, while the loftiness of its subjects confused my understanding.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I pursued each of them with much interest, but especially the "Seasons". I found this to be just the book I had wanted. It commended itself to my warmest approbation, immediately on my perceiving its character and design...'[continues to describe impact of the book at length]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Somewhere about this time I met with a volume to which I am much indebted. This was a copy of Simpson's "Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings" - concerning which I have heard it said that it ought rather to have been called "A Plea for Infidelity" because of its dwelling so much upon the corruptions of Christianity and the inconsistent deportment of some among its ministers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Read the Shaving of Shagpat'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Unknown
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown, probably inbook publ. 1856
'I am reading in the evenings the Memoirs of Beaumarchais and Milne Edwards's Zoology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I am reading in the evenings the Memoirs of Beaumarchais and Milne Edwards's Zoology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I have continued reading Milne-Edwards aloud, and have also read Harriet Martineau's article on Missions in the "Westminster", and one or two articles in the "National". Reading to myself Harvey's "Sea-side Book", and "The Lover's Seat".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
'I have continued reading Milne-Edwards aloud, and have also read Harriet Martineau's article on Missions in the "Westminster", and one or two articles in the "National". Reading to myself Harvey's "Sea-side Book", and "The Lover's Seat".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Serial / periodical
'Began the Ajax of Sophocles. Also Miss Martineau's History of the Peace'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'In the evenings of late, we have been reading Harriet Martineau's sketch of "The British Empire in India", and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles of Clive and Hastings. We have lately read H.M.'s Introduction to the "History of the Peace" and have begun the "History of the Thirty Years Peace".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'In the evenings of late, we have been reading Harriet Martineau's sketch of "The British Empire in India", and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles of Clive and Hastings. We have lately read H.M.'s Introduction to the "History of the Peace" and have begun the "History of the Thirty Years Peace".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'In the evenings of late, we have been reading Harriet Martineau's sketch of "The British Empire in India", and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles of Clive and Hastings. We have lately read H.M.'s Introduction to the "History of the Peace" and have begun the "History of the Thirty Years Peace".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
[Marginalia]; Several pp of ms notes copied from another related work laid into v.1. Notes are entitled 'Extract from the 1st volume of Voyages et Recherches dans la Grece par le Chev.er P.O. Brondsted de l'Ile de Ceos'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
[Marginalia]: very brief annotations, bookmarks and marginal marks, indicating active use when on visit to Paris. Also has several tiny samples of fabric pinned into inside back cover with some notes eg "'ong gloves 2-16'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Erskine Print: Book
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
[Marginalia]: 8 leaves of ms notes, in ink, in French, have been bound in at the beginning of the volume. They consist of an introduction praising those who protect and encourage the arts, including Madame la Pompadour, 'who brought fame to this series of etchings', followed by a description of each etching. There is also a single sheet, in a different hand, containing more notes related to the item.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Print: Book
'While walking to Hampstead, I strayed into a copse not far from my road, where I seated myself upon the trunk of a tree, and read, with no small pleasure, several of the papers contained in that highly entertaining book, "Sturm's Reflections on the Works of God". As I read these, surrounded by many of the objects upon which they so pleasingly descant, I was enabled to look "through nature up to nature's God"; to hold, as it were, converse with that glorious and beneficient Being, and to recognise Him as a father and a friend.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Gave up Miss Martineau's "History" last night after reading some hundred pages in the second volume. She has a sentimental, rhetorical style in this history which is fatiguing and not instructive. But her history of the Reform Movement is very interesting'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Henry James to Edward Holton James, 15 February 1896: 'For the two stories in the "Harvard Magazine" I am [...] gratefully indebted to you. I have read them with a searching of spirit (to begin with) inevitable to one who has in a manner set an example and who sees it (in his afternoon of life) inexorably and fatally followed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
'I know not if there be a Goddess of Sloth - tho' considering that this of all our passions is the least turbulent and most victorious, it could not without partiality be left destitute - But if there be, she certainly looks on with an approving smile - when in a supine posture, I lie for hours with my eyes fixed upon the pages of Lady Morgan's France or the travels of Faujas St Fond - my mind seldon taking the pains even to execrate the imbecile materialism, the tawdry gossiping of the former, or to pity the infirm speculations and the already antiquated mineralogy of the latter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I know not if there be a Goddess of Sloth - tho' considering that this of all our passions is the least turbulent and most victorious, it could not without partiality be left destitute - But if there be, she certainly looks on with an approving smile - when in a supine posture, I lie for hours with my eyes fixed upon the pages of Lady Morgan's France or the travels of Faujas St Fond ... What shall I say to the woebegone Roderick last of the Goths; and others of a similar stamp? They go through my brain as light goes thro' an achromatic telescope.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton, 28 November 1899 (in letter begun 24 November 1899): 'I gather [...] that you have read Mackail's Morris [...] I felt much moved, after reading the book, to try to write [...] something positively vivid about it; but we are in a moment of such excruciating vulgarity that nothing worth doing about anything or anyone seems to be wanted or welcomed anywhere.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes:
'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes:
'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: proof
Henry James to Urbain Mengin, 1 January 1903: 'Your great handsome wide-margined large-printed, yellow-covered "Italie des Romantiques" came to me safely more months ago than I have the courage to confess to in round numbers [...] I have in any case attentively and appreciatively read it; finding in it much entertaining matter very succinctly and agreeably presented'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'When at home I usually retired to my garret, where I employed myself in either reading or working... In reading I usually sat in the Oriental, or, to use a less pompous word, in the tailor's posture, and thus had no need of either chair or table... The books I read at this time related chiefly to North America. Among the chief of them were Ramsay's "History of the American Revolution", Smith's "Travels in Canada and the United States", and Parkinson's "Travels in North America".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'When at home I usually retired to my garret, where I employed myself in either reading or working... In reading I usually sat in the Oriental, or, to use a less pompous word, in the tailor's posture, and thus had no need of either chair or table... The books I read at this time related chiefly to North America. Among the chief of them were Ramsay's "History of the American Revolution", Smith's "Travels in Canada and the United States", and Parkinson's "Travels in North America".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'We have just finished reading aloud "Pere Goriot" - a hateful book... I have been reading lately and have nearly finished Comte's "Catechism". We have also read aloud "Tom Brown's School Days" with much disappointment. It is an unpleasant, unveracious book'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
'I am reading Thomas a Kempis.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
'At one of these sales I bought a copy of "Bloomfield's Poems", but not so cheaply as to encourage me to combine my biddings. I read Bloomfield with much interest, as I also did a copy of Montgomery's "Wanderer in Switzerland, and other Poems". Being at the time in poor health of body, at which times my imaginative faculty has always been morbibly active, I was unwise to read poetry of this class, which, under the circumstances, was more likely to excite uneasy feelings than to invigorate the mind. And thus it fell out; for while I read of rural scenes and also of the comparative quietude and the superior happiness of country life, I grew uneasy and heartsick of the noisy and restless town...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'At one of these sales I bought a copy of "Bloomfield's Poems", but not so cheaply as to encourage me to combine my biddings. I read Bloomfield with much interest, as I also did a copy of Montgomery's "Wanderer in Switzerland, and other Poems". Being at the time in poor health of body, at which times my imaginative faculty has always been morbibly active, I was unwise to read poetry of this class, which, under the circumstances, was more likely to excite uneasy feelings than to invigorate the mind. And thus it fell out; for while I read of rural scenes and also of the comparative quietude and the superior happiness of country life, I grew uneasy and heartsick of the noisy and restless town...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 23 November 1905: 'I can read [italics]you[end italics] with rapture -- having three weeks ago spent three or four days with Manton Marble at Brighton and found in his hands ever so many of your recent papers and discourses, which having margins of mornings in my room, through both breakfasting and lunching there [...] I found time to read several of'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Leon Edel notes, regarding Henry James's letter to James B. Pinker of 14 October 1907: 'The eminent actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson read H[enry]J[ames]'s story "Covering End" in "The Two Magics" (1898) and proposed that the novelist turn it into a play for him.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Johnston Forbes-Robertson Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 17 October 1907: 'Why the devil I didn't write to you after reading your "Pragmatism" [...] I can't now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself (of interest and enthralment) that the book cast upon me'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to William James, 17 October 1907: 'Why the devil I didn't write to you after reading your "Pragmatism" [...] I can't now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself (of interest and enthralment) that the book cast upon me [...] I have been absorbing a number more of your followings-up of the matter in the American (Journal of Psychology[?]) which your devouring devotee Manton Marble of Brighton [...] plied'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 10 October 1912:
'I have received within a day or two dear old George Meredith's "Letters"; and, though I haven't been able yet very much to go into them, I catch their emanation of something so admirable, and, on the whole, so baffled and so tragic. We must have some more talk of them -- and also of Wells's book ["Marriage"], with which I am however having much difficulty. I am not so much struck with its hardness as with its weakness and looseness, the utter going by the board of any real self respect of composition and expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'It was about this time that I first read that very beautiful poem, "The Pleasures of Hope". I also repersued a large portion of Cowper's Poems; and, in spite of the unfavourable accounts of it given by critics, resolved upon reading Thomson's "Liberty". This resolution I carried into effect, to my very considerable amusement, if not instruction. As to its poetical merits, I did not venture to sit in judgement upon them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'It was about this time that I first read that very beautiful poem, "The Pleasures of Hope". I also repersued a large portion of Cowper's Poems; and, in spite of the unfavourable accounts of it given by critics, resolved upon reading Thomson's "Liberty". This resolution I carried into effect, to my very considerable amusement, if not instruction. As to its poetical merits, I did not venture to sit in judgement upon them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'By courtesy of a friend I had the loan of Mr. Pope's poetical works together with his translations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". I also read Mr. Hervey's "Theron and Aspasia", but with no great pleasure, because of its chiefly dwelling upon controverted points of theology. I was induced to read it by a sense of what was due to the request of a valued friend. As to Mr. Pope's works and translations, I read them with much satisfaction. In passing, I must observe that of Homer's poems I greatly preferred the "Odyssey"; for the "Iliad" was too full of warlike descriptions for one of my pacific temper. I still retain this preference. My reading times were at my meals, and after I had left work in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'By courtesy of a friend I had the loan of Mr. Pope's poetical works together with his translations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". I also read Mr. Hervey's "Theron and Aspasia", but with no great pleasure, because of its chiefly dwelling upon controverted points of theology. I was induced to read it by a sense of what was due to the request of a valued friend. As to Mr. Pope's works and translations, I read them with much satisfaction. In passing, I must observe that of Homer's poems I greatly preferred the "Odyssey"; for the "Iliad" was too full of warlike descriptions for one of my pacific temper. I still retain this preference. My reading times were at my meals, and after I had left work in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I was unable to work for a fortnight through lameness... While laid by from work, I read Mr. MacKenzie's "Man of Feeling" and other tales. I thought them a little too highly coloured to be of any great use, considered as pictures of men and manners.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'During this year I read an odd volume of that curious publication, the "Anti-Jacobin-Review", from which I gathered a little that pleased me. Among other things I met with some views respecting the conduct of Judas Iscariot towards his Divine Master which to me were quite new. I, however, thought them both reasonable and probable. I also read Mr. O'Meara's "Voice from St Helena", Dr. Henderson's "Travels in Iceland", and Captain Parry's "Narrative" of his Arctic Voyage. I must here beg the reader to remember that henceforth when I say that I have read any book it will only mean that I gave it a hasty perusal, for I had no time for close reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'By favour of my friendly draper I also had the satisfaction of looking over the elegantly written and very entertaining "Letters" of Mr. Gray together with M. Sismondi's "History of the Literature of the South of Europe".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
?While in this state I read the "Letters" of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and some of Dr Beattie?s and Mr Hume?s ?Essays?, together with part of Dr Beattie?s ?Essay on Truth?.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
?As to reading, I had neither time not strength for more than a very little, yet I did something; as I looked through a translation of the works of that eminent divine, James Arminius, with which I was well satisfied, but especially so with the prefixed memoir of his life. I had also, for a few days, the loan of Mr. Montgomery?s ?Lectures on poetry?, a book which I should have been glad to read thoroughly.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
?As to reading, I had neither time not strength for more than a very little, yet I did something; as I looked through a translation of the works of that eminent divine, James Arminius, with which I was well satisfied, but especially so with the prefixed memoir of his life. I had also, for a few days, the loan of Mr. Montgomery?s ?Lectures on poetry?, a book which I should have been glad to read thoroughly.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Henry James to Compton Mackenzie, 21 January 1914: 'When I wrote to [James B.] Pinker I had only read "S[inister].S[treet]"., but I have now taken "Carnival" in persistent short draughts -- which is how I took "S[inister].S[treet]". and is how I take anything I take at all'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Compton Mackenzie, 21 January 1914: 'When I wrote to [James B.] Pinker I had only read "S[inister].S[treet]"., but I have now taken "Carnival" in persistent short draughts -- which is how I took "S[inister].S[treet]". and is how I take anything I take at all'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James, in letter of 21 November 1914 to Hugh Walpole, writes of his bemusement at the second volume of Compton Mackenzie's "Sinister Street": 'I don't know what it means [...] the thing affects me on the whole as a mere wide waste.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
[Marginalia]: brief ink additions to some 6 pp of the text e.g p.57 against XXXVIII is the note 'This act is ... to be payed from imported commodities ...'; p. 49 against XXVIII is the note 'This act [word deleted] reshinded [sic]'.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Johannes [ie John] Chrystie Print: Book
?Macaulay, who had recently died, was greatly in vogue. I had read with enjoyment and advantage his "History of England" and some of his essays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Unknown
'Without reluctance, I push aside the massy quarto of Millar on the English government, to perform ther more pelasing duty of writing a few lines to you, by the conveyance of Mr Duncan.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have read Millar on the English government &c-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The title is, The Neighbours ? just a title for Miss Austen you see! ? And for Miss Austen, you shall praise her as much as you please. She is delightful exquisite in her degree! ? only I wdnt have one of your dear hands "cut off" that you shd "write one page like her?s with the other", - because, really & earnestly, your Village and Belford Regis are more charming to me than her pages in congregation. She wants (admit it honestly, because you know she wants it) she wants a little touch of poetry. Her "neighbours" walk about & gossip, all unconscious of the sunshine & the trees & the running waters ? to say nothing of the God of nature & providence. "Persuasion" (ah! You are cunning to bring "Persuasion" to me!) is the highest & most touching of her works ? and I agree with you gladly that it is perfect in its kind, & with touches of a higher impulse in it than we look generally to receive from her genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'The title is, The Neighbours ? just a title for Miss Austen you see! ? And for Miss Austen, you shall praise her as much as you please. She is delightful exquisite in her degree! ? only I wdnt have one of your dear hands "cut off" that you shd "write one page like her?s with the other", - because, really & earnestly, your Village and Belford Regis are more charming to me than her pages in congregation. She wants (admit it honestly, because you know she wants it) she wants a little touch of poetry. Her "neighbours" walk about & gossip, all unconscious of the sunshine & the trees & the running waters ? to say nothing of the God of nature & providence. "Persuasion" (ah! You are cunning to bring "Persuasion" to me!) is the highest & most touching of her works ? and I agree with you gladly that it is perfect in its kind, & with touches of a higher impulse in it than we look generally to receive from her genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Did you see ? what I am reading just too late (but we must be benighted sometimes) in the number before the last of the Edinburgh Review, a notice of Madme d?Arblay, very admirable in all ways, but chiefly interesting to you for the sake of the high estimate of your Miss Austen, who is called second to Shakespeare in the nice delineation of character.' [the review was in the January 1843 issue].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
'It is a long argument ? but I have been reading quite lately & for your sake & for the third time, her two best works ? Persuasion & Mansfield Park: & really my impressions do grow stronger & stronger in their old places. She is perfect after her kind ? true to the nature she SAW - & with a sufficient sense of the Beautiful, for grace. Like Mrs Hemans, she is too obviously a lady. I have put it in the shape of blame - & many might remark the same thing for praise: I mean however, that her ladyhood is always stronger in her than her humanity. Not that she is defective in strength as Mrs Hemans sometimes is ? she can "always do the thing she would" better than anybody else. Surely, surely I am not a niggard in my praise of Jane Austen! To call her a great writer & learned in the secrets, heights & depths of our nature, or a poet in anywise, is all that I refuse to call her ? and indeed I have not breath & articulation for such an opinion: & it astonishes me that you shd be so exorbitant my dearest Miss Mitford, in your claim for her!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'In my hours of leisure I read the works of Mr Charles Lamb, Mr Holcroft's memoirs, and the "Life of General Washington".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
?With this proposal I of course readily closed and accordingly the next day my father gave me the 1st vol of the "Universal History" (beginning with the life of Mohamed) and the 1st of Rapin?s "History of England", to begin with, an each of which in turn, I bestowed an hour in reading on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday mornings, allotting the other two mornings to a more amusing kind of reading such as Dryden?s "Virgil", "Telamachus", "Charles 12th". etc. I also began a translation of "Diable Boiteaux" & a prose one of Virgil?s "Eneid".?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
?The day after this being the last of the year, I managed to finish reading Blackstone?s Commentaries and Goldsmith?s History of England, both for the 2d time over & in the evening danced out the year at the Assembly.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'I am glad you ha[ve] attacked Hume. Your remarks are just as far as I can determine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John A. Carlyle Print: Book
'With my scanty pocket-money, high-priced books were beyond my reach; but I was lucky enough, when hunting, as was my want, among the second-hand bookstalls in Newcastle market-place, to light upon some off volumes of Milton?s prose works, which I bought for a few shillings. I read them all ? politics, theology, travels, with touches of autobiography- nothing came amiss to my voracious appetite. Over and over again did I read the Areopagitica, ?that sublime treatise? which, Macaulay tells us, ?every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes?.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
'Tuesday the 4th being a very wet day we were obliged to keep pretty close to our miserably dull apartments the walls of w'ch were about a yard thick & the windows very small. We however at the library (consisting of about 400 volumes) got Mrs Smiths [sic] novel of "Celestina" & "Humphrey Clinker" to amuse us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh, Elizabeth Marsh and Miss White Print: Book
'Tuesday the 4th being a very wet day we were obliged to keep pretty close to our miserably dull apartments the walls of w'ch were about a yard thick & the windows very small. We however at the library (consisting of about 400 volumes) got Mrs Smiths [sic] novel of "Celestina" & "Humphrey Clinker" to amuse us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh, Elizabeth Marsh and Miss White Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, 9 October 1832: 'I have begun Grahame's "History of America", and like it "mainly," as the old plays say'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately':
'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately':
'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Fanny Kemble to Harriet St. Leger, letter composed between 29 October-3 November 1838: 'I have just finished the play of which you read the beginning in England -- my "English Tragedy" [Kemble's third play]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet St. Leger Manuscript: Unknown
'To amuse ourselves at the inns on this road we brought with us Jackson's "30 Letters" & Moritz's "Travels in England" (both in our Society) but having finish'd the latter (w'ch John was now reading) & Mrs M being reading the other, I got Mrs Radcliffe's novel of the "Sicilian Romance" from the Library there, which I this day began reading & was much pleased with.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'To amuse ourselves at the inns on this road we brought with us Jackson's "30 Letters" & Moritz's "Travels in England" (both in our Society) but having finish'd the latter (w'ch John was now reading) & Mrs M being reading the other, I got Mrs Radcliffe's novel of the "Sicilian Romance" from the Library there, which I this day began reading & was much pleased with.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'To amuse myself during this solitary journey I got Cumberland's "Henry" (then a new publication)... Wishing to reach Maidstone in good time on the follow'g day I ordered the chaise to be ready at 4 in the morning, at w'ch time I sat off & breakfasted at Uckfield the end of my 2d stage, by w'ch time I [had] become much interested in my travelling companion "Henry".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'Having finish'd my business in this neighbourhood, I on the next day (Friday the 24th) return'd to London in the coach, in w'ch being alone great part of the way I finished the novel of the "Young Philosopher" & in the evening began that of "Ned Evans" which I sat and read at the Bolt and Tunn, where I found the principal topic of conversation in the coffee room was Sheridan's new play of Pizarro, w'ch came out that evening at Drury Lane.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
?Milton?s miscellaneous works were still my favourites. I copied many of his poems into a writing book, and this I did, not only an account of the pleasure which I felt in their repetition, and in the appropriation ? so to speak ? of the ideas, but also as a means for improvement of my handwriting, which had continued to be very indifferent. The "Odyssey" and "Aeniad", which I also procured and read about this time, seemed tame and languid, whilst the stirring call of the old Iliadic battle trumpet was ringing in my ears, and vibrating within my heart. In short, I read or attentively conned [sic] over, every book I could buy or borrow, and as I retained a pretty clear idea of what I read, I became rather more than commonly proficient in book knowledge considering that I was only a better sort of porter in a warehouse.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'I was reading to-day and I have since finished Miss Martineau's "Deerbrook", a capital novel though it is too full of preaching. It is inferior in execution to Miss Austen's novels in the development of common characters, but is suprior in the higher parts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
'When we were speaking of Dr. Moore?s Travels, I told her that the Character of Mr. C.?reminded me of our friend Mr. Seward . . .'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'Having heard much of Miss Hamilton's celebrated novel of the "Modern Philosopher" we on Wed'y the 14th got it from Humphrey's Library w'ch Edw'd & I afterw'ds read out on even'gs [...] to Mrs M & were all much entertained with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Marsh family Print: Book
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to Convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbooks
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to Convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbook
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbook
[List of favourite things of 1945]:
'My favourite Books: The Keys of the Kingdom. The Good Companions
Authors: Daphne du Maurier
Poems: Squinency Wort. The Hound of Heaven
Writers: Shaw. Galsworthy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of favourite things of 1945]:
'My favourite Books: The Keys of the Kingdom. The Good Companions
Authors: Daphne du Maurier
Poems: Squinency Wort. The Hound of Heaven
Writers: Shaw. Galsworthy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[List of books read in 1945]:
'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'For three years I continued a regular subscriber to the circulating library, during which time I read various works, including Milton's, Shakespeare's, Sterne's, Dr Johnson's, and many others. It was a usual practice for me to sit up to read after the family had retired for the night. I remember it was on one of these occasions that I read Lewis's "Monk". On rising from my seat to go to bed, I was so impressed with dongeon horror, that I took the candle and ? up stairs, not daring to look either right or left, lest some Lady Angela should plunge a dagger into me!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
'As an apprentice I was a subscriber to the Mechanic's Library, from which I borrowed a great supply of books - my tastes lying largely in the direction of biography ... series of books of Mr Smiles, is still worth the attention of young men in search of wholesome reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
'the diverse collection of literature that Christopher Thomson, a sometime shipwright, actor and housepainter, worked his way through [...] included adventure stories such as "Robinson Crusoe" and the imitative "Philip Quarll", books of travel, such as Boyle's "Travels", some un-named religious tracts, a number of "classics" including Milton and Shakespeare, some radical newspapers, particularly Cobbett's "Register" and Wooller's "Black Dwarf", mechanics' magazines, and some occasional items of contemporary literature, including the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
'Charles Shaw's dependance upon a small Sunday school library in Tunstall [...] imparted a magnificent if involuntary scope to his education:
'"I read "Robinson Crusoe" and a few other favourite boys' books [...] After these the most readable I could find was Rollin's "Ancient History". His narratives opened a new world [...] [which] I regarded as remote from Tunstall and England as those other worlds I read of in Dick's "Christian Philosopher," which book I found in the library too ... Then I read Milton's "Paradise Lost", Klopstock's "Messiah", and later on, Pollock's "Course of Time", and Gilfillan's "Bards of the Bible".These books may look a strange assortment for a boy of fourteen or fifteen to read, but [...] they just happened to fall into my hands"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Shaw Print: Book
'One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1838, whilst crossing Brumsfield links on my way home to Morningside, endeavouring as I walked over the grass to read a story in one of the volumes of "Chambers's Journal", then of a somewhat unwielding size, I was stopped by two gentlemen, one of whom asked what I was reading...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Serial / periodical
David Vincent notes how the nineteenth-century handloom weaver Wiliam Farish '"with Walkingham's arithmetic, and a slate and pencil at my side ... used to con over the problems as I worked the treadles"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Farish Print: Book
James Burn, on his first contact with literature after years of having seen none: '"In the latter end of the year of 1826, a friend made me a present of an old edition of Chevalier Ramsay's "Life of Cyrus". This little volume opened up to my enquiring mind a rich field of useful knowledge. The apendix to the work contained the [italics]heathen mythology[end italics]: this part of the work completely fascinated me, and for a considerable time became my constant companion."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Dawson Burn Print: Book
'Thomas Carter [a nineteenth-century Colchester and London tailor] wrote of "The Seasons" that, "With the exception of the Bible, I know not that I ever read any other book so attentively and regularly. Its beautiful descriptions of nature were delightful to my imagination, while its fine moral reflections [...] were, as I believe, greatly instrumental in promoting my best interests"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'When William Lovett arrived in London [from Newlyn, in the 1820s] he possessed a Cornish accent but no useful knowledge, and immediately set about remedying these twin defects with the aid of "Lindley Murray's Grammar".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lovett Print: Book
'Finished reading the four last volumes of the "Histoire des Ordres Religieux". Began "La Beata", a story of Florentine life by T.A. Trollope. I am also reading Sachetti's Novelle, and Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Finished reading the four last volumes of the "Histoire des Ordres Religieux". Began "La Beata", a story of Florentine life by T.A. Trollope. I am also reading Sachetti's Novelle, and Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Desultory morning, from feebleness of head. Osservatore Fiorentino and Tenneman's Manual of Philosophy'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Read, in the Athenaeum, an interesting article on Bishop Colenso's (of Natal), Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the toleration of Polygamy in converts to Christianity. In the evening read the "Monks of the West".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Read Comte on the Middle Ages'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read Hallam on the study of Roman law in the Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Read again Burlamacchi's Life of Savonarola'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
'Read Mrs Jameson's "Legendary Art".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'began Marullus. In the evening read Pettigrew on Medical Superstitions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Read... Manni's Life of Burchiello, copying extracts'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'copied out the Lives of some saints from Mrs Jameson'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'During our stay [in Malvern] I read Mrs Jameson's book on the Legends of the Monastic orders... and began Marchese's Storia di San Marco'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'During our stay [in Malvern] I read Mrs Jameson's book on the Legends of the Monastic orders... and began Marchese's Storia di San Marco'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Looked through Machiavelli's works'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Read Villari, making chronological notes. Then Muratori on Proper Names'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'In the evening read Monteil - a marvellous book: crammed with erudition, yet not dull or tiresome'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'This week I have read a satire of Juvenal, some of Cicero's "De Officiis", part of Epictetus' Enchiridion, two cantos of Pulci, part of the Canti Carnascialeschi, and finished Manni's Veglie Piacevole, besides looking up various things in the classical antquities and peeping into Theocritus'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'In the evening read Goldwin Smith's answer to Mansel'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Went to the British Museum. Found some details in Ammirato's Famiglie Nobili Fiorentini... In the evening I read Muratori on the Confraternita'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Went to the British Museum. Found some details in Ammirato's "Famiglie Nobili Fiorentini"... In the evening I read Muratori on the Confraternita'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read through Middleton's Letter from Rome'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read the Malmantile'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read passage from Du Bois Reymond's book on Johannes Mueller, a propos of visions. Finished Libro 1 of Machiavelli's Istorie. Read "Blackwood"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read passage from Du Bois Reymond's book on Johannes Mueller, a propos of visions. Finished Libro 1 of Machiavelli's Istorie. Read "Blackwood"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Charlotte [Mew] used to read [...] [lines from her 1912 poem "The Changeling", in which a child speaker ponders reasons for its own existence] aloud [...] to children of her acquaintance, giving no explanation, because she believed [...] that none would be needed. They understood her at once.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Unknown
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
Charlotte Mew to Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott, 12 May 1914: '"Looking through some of Ella [D'Arcy]'s old letters [...] I find she wrote to me 3 about the Requiescat ... she had seen it in "The Nation"and wrote [...] Thanking me for sending it to her [...] and adding "it goes into my private anthology".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ella D'Arcy Print: Serial / periodical
'In the early spring of 1913 Sappho [i.e. Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott, nicknamed after a poem she had authored] wrote in her diary:
'"When Charlotte [Mew] came [to Mrs Dawson Scott's house] I persuaded her to read to us "The Farmer's Bride", and May [Sinclair] was so won over that she deserted me and they went away together."'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew
'[Charlotte Mew's poem] "The Forest Road" is almost impossible to follow; Dr Scott [husband of Mew's friend Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] read it and said it was so deeply realized that he felt the author must be mad'.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Scott
'Alida [Klementaski], like Mrs [Catherine] Dawson Scott, had read "The Farmer's Bride" in 1912, and had not forgotten it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alida Klementaski Print: Serial / periodical
'Alida [Klementaski], like Mrs [Catherine] Dawson Scott, had read "The Farmer's Bride" in 1912, and had not forgotten it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Dawson Scott Print: Serial / periodical
'In the July of 1918 a copy of "The Farmer's Bride" arrived in [Sydney] Cockerell's vast daily post, with a stiff little note from Charlotte [Mew] [...] No worry [...] about his reading it; he always read everything, and he fell in love immediately with "The Farmer's Bride".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Cockerell Print: Book
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Scawen Blunt Print: Book
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Book
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: A. E. Housman Print: Book
'In 1916 one of the tasks of the second Mrs Hardy was to read aloud in the evenings at their Dorchester home, Max Gate, to the old great man whom she so carefully tended. It was difficult to know what he would and wouldn't like [...] but he took to "The Farmer's Bride"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Hardy Print: Book
Penelope Fitzgerald relates how, during Charlotte Mew's stay at his home in December 1918, Thomas Hardy 'read some of his own poems to her, and she read him something which pleased him very much, "Saturday Market".'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Serial / periodical
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Cockerell Print: Serial / periodical
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Serial / periodical
'Louis Untermeyer [an American poet] [...] had [...] been carried away by "Madeleine[in Church]" when Siegfried Sassoon read it to him [in 1920]'.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon
'Finished "La Mandragola", second time reading for the sake of Florentine expressions, and began "La Calandra"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Today we have been to the London Library and I have read J. Mill's article on "The American Conquest".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
[at Englefield Green] 'I have finished Pulci there, and read aloud the "Chateau D'If" to G.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'today I have been reading a book often referred to by Hallam: Meiner's "Lives of Picus von Mirandola and Politian". They are excellent. They have German industry and are succinctly and clearly written'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Began "Il Principe".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Reading Mommsen and Story's "Roba di Roma". Also Liddell's "Rome", for a narrative to accompany Mommsen's analysis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Reading Gibbon Vol 1 in connection with Mosheim. Read about the Dionysia. Also Gieseler, on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Reading Aeschlyus, "Theatre of the Greeks", Klein's "History of the Drama" etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Finished Bamford's "Passages from the life of a Radical". Have just begun again Mill's "Political Economy", and Comte's "Social Science" in Miss Martineau's edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Finished Bamford's "Passages from the life of a Radical". Have just begun again Mill's "Political Economy", and Comte's "Social Science" in Miss Martineau's edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Finished Bamford's "Passages from the life of a Radical". Have just begun again Mill's "Political Economy", and Comte's "Social Science" in Miss Martineau's edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'I have been reading Villemarque's "Contes populaires des Anciens Bretons".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
After Thomas Hardy's death on 11 January 1928, his literary executor Sydney Cockerell 'found a piece of paper on which Hardy had copied out "Fin de Fete" [by Charlotte Mew]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Serial / periodical
'The first scene is the Lamentation of Sampson [sic] which possesses much pathos of sublimity ... I think this is beautiful... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Felicia Hemans to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 November 1828: 'My dear Miss Mitford, Accept my late, though sincere and cordial congratulations on the brilliant success of "Rienzi," of which I have read with unfeigned gratification [...] I have yet only read of Rienzi a few noble passages given by the Newspapers and Magazines, but in a few days I hope to be acquainted with the whole'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Susan J. Wolfson notes Felicia Hemans's reading (probably some time after 1830) of Thomas Moore's "Life of Byron", 'which dismayed her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
'I am much obliged to you for the volume of Emerson Essays. I had heard of him before and I know that Carlyle rates him highly. He has great thoughts and imaginations, but he sometimes misleads himself by his own facility of talking brilliantly. However, I have not perhaps studied him sufficiently.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Ps. Have you read Miss Martineau on Mesmerism in the Athenaeum (two of them). I have got them and if you like I will send them to you. They are very wonderful [underlined]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
'Finished reading Fathom [underlined].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'I now thank you very much for your able inauguration essay on Architecture and live in expectation of its successors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Mr Moultrie's poem seems spirited but I have had no time to study it well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'It was in one of those cheerful moods that I one day took up The Life of John Buncle; and it is impossible for my friend to imagine with what eagerness and pleasure I read through the whole four volumes of this sensible pleasing work; it was wrote by the late Mr Amory of Wakefield, and I know not of any work more proper to be put into the hands of a poor ignorant bigotted superstititous methodist... In short I saw that true religion was no way incompatible with or an enemy to rational pleasures of any kind. ... I now also began to read with great pleasure the rational and moderate divines of all denominations.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
?After having read the great champions for Christianity, I next read the works of Lord Hesbert, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Collins, Woolston, Annet, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Williams, Voltaire, and many other Free-thinkers.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
?After having read the great champions for Christianity, I next read the works of Lord Hesbert, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Collins, Woolston, Annet, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Williams, Voltaire, and many other Free-thinkers.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
?After having read the great champions for Christianity, I next read the works of Lord Hesbert, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Collins, Woolston, Annet, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Williams, Voltaire, and many other Free-thinkers.? 237
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington 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
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
?? in looking over the title pages, I met with Hobbes translation of Homer, I had some how or other heard that Homer was a great poet, but unfortunately I had never heard of Pope?s translation of him, so we eagerly purchased that by Hobbes. At this stall I also purchased Walker?s Poetical paraphrase of Epictetus?s Morals; and home we went, perfectly well pleased with our bargains.
We that evening began with Hobbes's Homer; but found it very difficult for us to read, owing to the obscurity of the translation, which together with the indifferent language, and the want of poetical merit in the translator somewhat disappointed us; however we had from time to time many a hard puzzling hour with him.
But as Walker's Epictetus, although it had not much poetical merit, yet it was very easy to be read, and as easily understood; and the principles of the Stoic [underlined] charmed me so much, that I made the book my companion wherever I went, and read it over and over...?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'I have been keeping rather different hours--though the Priory is far from a late place [...] Wm. [Lady Caroline's husband William Lamb] & I get up about ten or 1/2 after or later [...] have our breakfasts, talk a little, read Newton on the Prophecies with the Bible--having finished Sherlock [...] he goes to eat & walk--I finish dressing & take a drive or little walk [...] then come up stairs where William meets me, & we read Hume with Shakespear till ye dressing bell, then hurry & hardly get dressed by dinner time'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'How pretty I think your verses they express so exactly what I felt but could not find words to speak [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'I have also read the Modern Philosophers, which in spight [sic] of a little vulgarity & too much sameness, I like extremely. Julia's character is beautiful & tho' Harriet Orwell gives one rather too much the idea of a blushing maid with a workbag, & I cannot fancy anything very romantic in the way of love--with an apothecary, yet her character is, I think, extremely well drawn & I like Bridgetina very much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Felicia Hemans to John Lodge, July 1831, on visit to Woodstock, Ireland: 'Amongst other persons of the party was Mr Henry Tighe, the widower of the poetess [Mary Tighe]. He had just been exercising, I found, one of his accomplishments in the translation into Latin of a little poem of mine [identified by source editor as "The Graves of a Household"]; and I am told that his version is very elegant.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Tighe
Thomas Medwin, in his memoir of Shelley: 'In the beginning of [1808] I showed Shelley some poems to which I had subscribed by Felicia Browne [...] Her juvenile productions, remarkable certainly for her age [14] [...] made a powerful impression on Shelley'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Joanna Baillie to Felicia Hemans, 11 May 1827: 'Yesterday your American volume from the Author was put into my hands, and dipping into it here & there without cutting the leaves, I see that it is full of Poetic beauty of the highest value, and that I have a rich feast abiding me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Felicia Hemans, 20 April 1834, thanking her for the gift of a copy of her "National Lyrics and Songs for Music": 'many of the Pieces had fallen in my way before they were collected; and had given me more or less pleasure [...] the pleasure is yet to come of perusing your Pieces in succession. I can only say that whenever I have peeped into the volume -- I have been well recompensed. This morning I glanced my eye over the Pilgrim Song to the evening Star with great pleasure.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth to Felicia Hemans, 20 April 1834, thanking her for the gift of a copy of her "National Lyrics and Songs for Music": 'many of the Pieces had fallen in my way before they were collected; and had given me more or less pleasure [...] the pleasure is yet to come of perusing your Pieces in succession. I can only say that whenever I have peeped into the volume -- I have been well recompensed. This morning I glanced my eye over the Pilgrim Song to the evening Star with great pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Felicia Hemans, 20 April 1834, thanking her for the gift of a copy of her "National Lyrics and Songs for Music": 'many of the Pieces had fallen in my way before they were collected; and had given me more or less pleasure [...] the pleasure is yet to come of perusing your Pieces in succession. I can only say that whenever I have peeped into the volume -- I have been well recompensed. This morning I glanced my eye over the Pilgrim Song to the evening Star with great pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Felicia Hemans, September 1834, praising her verse collection "Scenes and Hymns", of which he was the dedicatee: 'This morning I have read the stanzas upon "Elysium" with great pleasure. You have admirably expanded the thought of Chateaubriand.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to Felicia Hemans, September 1834, praising her verse collection "Scenes and Hymns", of which he was the dedicatee: 'This morning I have read the stanzas upon "Elysium" with great pleasure. You have admirably expanded the thought of Chateaubriand.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'I began Sir John Mo[o]res letters again and am very much struck if the account is true with the bad management there seems to have been at first setting out. I cannot also conceive how with such letters & opinions daily coming forth such a general infatuation about the Spaniards could prevail [...] [I]n Sir J Mo[o]res letter to Mr. Frere where one can see he is in a tiff at his appointment he agrees with you about titles wrongly bestowed [...] my blood curdled with the quantity of black bile Freres' pompous insignificant impudent letter brought forth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is''.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'I must tell you an act of kindness of William Lamb--he has been looking over and correcting Ada Reis for me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lamb Manuscript: Unknown, William Lamb would have read either fair copies or proofs from the printer.
'Thank you for being pleased with your visit and not displeased with Graham [Hamilton]'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Godwin Manuscript: Unknown
'[A]sk Ld M[orpeth] to read you the lost Peri & see the lines about the boy kneeling & the man of crime are not passing beautiful read it too with your heart and not with rules of criticism--I think many parts of Lalla Rookh perfectly beautiful & the idea and often the poetry but he has heaped such a mass of affection about it & affects such discord to make his harmony more sudden & conspicuous that it requires much good humour to admire'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'I must tell you that Lord Byron said Mrs Lee [Augusta Leigh?] & Lady Byron had read all my letters [and] verses'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Manuscript: Unknown
'I must tell you that Lord Byron said Mrs Lee [Augusta Leigh?] & Lady Byron had read all my letters [and] verses'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Annabella Byron (n?e Milbanke) Manuscript: Unknown
'Bennett selected the things that interested him - notably novelists such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and his friend George Paston. It was through a review of a book by H. G. Wells that the two men first became friends, Bennett taking the initiative and writing to Wells in September 1897 to say how much he liked his work, and to ask him how well he knew the Potteries, which Wells had mentioned in several of his stories.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'he claimed that he had not thought of using them [the Potteries] as fiction until he read another man's work of fiction, George Moore's A Mummer's wife [title in italics]; he wrote to Moore on 24 December 1920, "I wish also to tell you that it was the first chapters of A Mummer's wife [title in italics] which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district I had blindly inhabited for over twenty years.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'A Mummer's Wife [title in italics] had impressed him very much with its power and its Staffordshire setting.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I have been reading Fawcett's Economic condition of the Working Classes, Mill's Liberty, looking into Strauss's Second Life of Jesus, and reading Neale's History of the Puritans of which I have reached the fourth volume'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'began Hallam's Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'This evening read again Macaulay's Introduction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'I am reading Mill's Logic again, Theocritus still, and English History and Law'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gipsy" again, and am reading on Spanish subjects - Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorente etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Reading the Iliad, book III'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Finished reading "Averroes and l'Averroisme", and "Les Medecins Juifs". Reading "First Principles".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Reading Munk, Melanges de Philosophie juive et arabe'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Finished Guillemin on the Heavens'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'In the evening read aloud Bright's 4th speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the spectator some interesting facts about loss of memory, and "double life". In the Revue des Cours a lecture by Sir W. Thomson of Edinburgh on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Serial / periodical
'Aloud [these past two days] I have read Bright's speeches and "I promessi sposi". To myself I have read Mommsen's Rome'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Aloud [these past two days] I have read Bright's speeches and "I promessi sposi". To myself I have read Mommsen's Rome'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'I am reading about plants, and Helmholtz on music'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in Ancient Geography. Looked into Smith's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Litterature du Midi", for Roman de Rose, and ran through the first chapter, about the formation of the Romance Languages. Read about the Thallogens and Acrogens in "the Vegetable World". Drayton's Nymphidia - a charming poem. A few pages of his Polyolbion. Re-read Grote v-vii on Sicilian affairs down to rise of Dionysius'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in Ancient Geography. Looked into Smith's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Litterature du Midi", for Roman de Rose, and ran through the first chapter, about the formation of the Romance Languages. Read about the Thallogens and Acrogens in "the Vegetable World". Drayton's Nymphidia - a charming poem. A few pages of his Polyolbion. Re-read Grote v-vii on Sicilian affairs down to rise of Dionysius'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I am reading Maundeville's "Travels".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I have read rapidly through Max Muller's History of Sanskrit Literature and am now reading Lecky's "History of Morals". I have also finished H. Spencer's last number of his Psychology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, 19 November 1798: 'Don't let me forget to advise you to to read the "Natural Son," or "Lovers' Vows;" it is the entire and literal translation of the play which is now acting with such success at Covent Garden, but [italics]not[end italics] as it is acted; you can get it at Todd's [bookseller's], where I did, to read in the chaise [...] Another book which I purchased at Todd's and read in my chaise was the "Essay on Population" which Mr. Wrangham left with you. It is uncommonly clearly thought and written, and contains much curious and uncontrovertible reasoning on the subject in question.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, 14 December, 1798: 'During my illness I have finished the 2nd vol. of Wraxhall which I had just begun at Brandsby, and which I like better and better the farther I go. I have consulted, too, one of his authorities for many things in the age of Henry the Third, Montaigne's Essays, a very curious and an [italics]astonishing[end italics] book, considering the times in which it was written, and which one never consults without entertainment. I have re-read, too, Condorcet's book, and compared his ideas and arguments on the subject of population with those of the Essay [by Malthus] we have been reading, and certainly the Essay has not only the best of the argument [...] but is absolute [italics]conviction[end italics]on the subject of the different ratios in which population, and the means of subsisting that population, increase'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, 14 December, 1798: 'During my illness I have finished the 2nd vol. of Wraxhall which I had just begun at Brandsby, and which I like better and better the farther I go. I have consulted, too, one of his authorities for many things in the age of Henry the Third, Montaigne's Essays, a very curious and an [italics]astonishing[end italics] book, considering the times in which it was written, and which one never consults without entertainment. I have re-read, too, Condorcet's book, and compared his ideas and arguments on the subject of population with those of the Essay [by Malthus] we have been reading, and certainly the Essay has not only the best of the argument [...] but is absolute [italics]conviction[end italics]on the subject of the different ratios in which population, and the means of subsisting that population, increase'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Mary Berry, in reflections on reading (1798): 'When I read "Paradise Lost," I am no more able to conceive the powers of imagination and genius exerted by Milton in the composition of that poem, than I am able to conceive the intellect of Sir Isaac Newton in the demonstration of the phenomena of the universe. Both seem to me beings more exalted above myself in the scale of intellectual perfection, than I am above the brute creation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 12 January 1799: 'Somerville's "Anne" is, I think, more dry than his "William," but clear, distinct, impartial, and wonderfully informing; his chapters on the Union of Scotland are particularly so [goes on to note aspects of Scottish situation during Queen Anne's reign, including rebellious elements ('of none of which circumstances I had before any just idea') and to compare this with current situation in Ireland]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 3 February 1799: 'I hope you have read the Irish debates on the Union. I think you will have found in them much abuse, little eloquence, and very little argument [...] I myself was shown a letter by Mathew (Col. Mathew), which, from its handwriting, and the office manner in which it was drawn up, I am sure must have come from a clerk of the Parliament'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Letter
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 3 February 1799: 'In compliance with your request and my own wishes, I have been and am reading with much attention Mr. Wilberforce's book, and likewise strictures on it, in a series of letters by Mr. Belsham'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Unknown
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 2 April 1799: 'In the many hours I have spent alone this week, I have been able, though by very little bits at a time, to go entirely through Hannah More [whose "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education" she writes of receiving on 21 March 1799], and Mrs. Woolstonecroft [sic] immediately after her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
The Dowager Lady Spencer to Mary Berry, from Nuneham (seat of George Simon, second Earl of Harcourt), 21 August 1799: 'Have you ever seen the 3d vol. of Mason's Poems, published two years ago? I never did till I came here; and I have found some sweet things in them, which I have been reading this morning in the flower-garden facing the cinerary urn Lord Harcourt has erected to his memory [goes on to transcribe final six lines of sonnet written by Mason 'in his 70th year'].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: G., Dowager Lady Spencer Print: Book
Mary Berry, letter of 26 December 1799: 'What little I could read during two days and part of two nights has been Mercier's "Nouveau Paris", a sort of continuation of his former "Tableau de Paris". This last, in six vols. is one of the most stupid, unclearly thought, ridiculous books I ever saw, and yet I read it, not without entertainment and instruction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, letter of 26 December 1799: 'What little I could read during two days and part of two nights has been Mercier's "Nouveau Paris", a sort of continuation of his former "Tableau de Paris". This last, in six vols. is one of the most stupid, unclearly thought, ridiculous books I ever saw, and yet I read it, not without entertainment and instruction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, letter of 26 December 1799: 'What little I could read during two days and part of two nights has been Mercier's "Nouveau Paris", a sort of continuation of his former "Tableau de Paris". This last, in six vols. is one of the most stupid, unclearly thought, ridiculous books I ever saw, and yet I read it, not without entertainment and instruction [...] Of a very different nature is a little book I have lately read over again for the third or fourth time, -- I mean, Mackintosh's accounts of his proposed lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations. Such a compendious syllabus of all the leading principles of truth and virtue I never met with! I mentioned it to you last year, I think, when I first got it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'Durrell's studies at the British Museum turned even further towards the Elizabethans. He took in Sidney, Marlowe, Nashe, Greene, Peel and Tourneur, as well as Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'Barclay Hudson, an American living near by, lent him a new novel to read. It was published in Paris by the Obelisk Press, a publisher specializing mainly in pornography in English for visiting tourists, and in books banned elsewhere. The novel Hudson lent him was the recently published "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. The impact was immediate, and he read it straight through twice..."There isn't a good word to express its excellence", he wrote. "Of course, like all works of genius it's strong fruit and you'd have to be careful about getting it into England".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'Shelley reads a part of Comus aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'He [?my father?] also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar?s Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, McCrie?s Life of John Knox, and even Sewell?s and Rutty?s Histories of the Quakers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'He [?my father?] also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar?s Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, McCrie?s Life of John Knox, and even Sewell?s and Rutty?s Histories of the Quakers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'He [?my father?] also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar?s Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, McCrie?s Life of John Knox, and even Sewell?s and Rutty?s Histories of the Quakers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
'About this period, Mr Tymms sent down for inspection the proof of his Acct. of Northamptonshire for the Family Topographer to which I added several paragraphs and corrected others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Proof
'The house was behind the post office and below the town library, and in a few years not even the joys of guddling, girning and angling matched the boy's pleasure in Emerson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Pierce, Sidney Lanier and Mark Twain. Day after day... he carried a large washing basket up the stairs to fill it with books, choosing from upwards of twelve thousand volumes, then downstairs to sit for hours in corners absorbed in mental worlds beyond the narrow limits of Langholm.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Grieve Print: Book
'Aloud I read the concluding part of Walter Scott's "Life" which we had begun at Harrogate, two volumes of Froude's "History of England", and Comte's correspondence with Valat'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read J.S. Mill on Socialism'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Read Magnus on the Farbensinn'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Mary, William and Emma commenced their readings of Thomson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, William and Emma Cole Print: Book
[Read] 'Iliad in Munro's edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Homer IV. Foster, Physiology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 9 June 1808: 'Dined at Lady Donegal's with Agnes [Berry, her sister]. Philippa (Godfrey), Charles Moore, and Anacreon [ie Thomas] Moore at dinner. I praised highly the two poems ("Corruption" and "Intolerance") that I had been reading in the morning, before the author (little Moore), without knowing it. After dinner he owned the fact, and was much pleased with my unsuspicious praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 9 June 1808: 'Dined at Lady Donegal's with Agnes [Berry, her sister]. Philippa (Godfrey), Charles Moore, and Anacreon [ie Thomas] Moore at dinner. I praised highly the two poems ("Corruption" and "Intolerance") that I had been reading in the morning, before the author (little Moore), without knowing it. After dinner he owned the fact, and was much pleased with my unsuspicious praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 11 June 1808: 'In the evening I read 'Corruption' and 'Intolerance' aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 11 June 1808: 'In the evening I read 'Corruption' and 'Intolerance' aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
'Read [Mrs Merritt's] recollections of Mr Merritt.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud]
'Finished Monier Williams'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
[Read] 'Romanes, 'Theism'.
Tiele, History of Religions.
Odyssey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
[Read] 'Romanes, 'Theism'.
Tiele, History of Religions.
Odyssey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Finished Fanny Kemble's Records of a girlhood'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Finished Prose Edda, etc.
Akkadians.
Malthus.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
[Read] 'Sayce and Promessi Sposi'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Finished the Discours Preliminaire'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Read Comte and began Hermann and Dorothea'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'Having finished Spencer's Sociology we began Max Muller's Lectures on the Science of Language'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and John Cross 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
'He also again freely supplied me with the loan of books. At this time he lent me several volumes of the "New Monthly Magazine", among the very many interesting articles in which I was especially pleased with the "Letters from Algiers", written by Mr. Thomas Campbell, the eminent poet'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Serial / periodical
'I do sometimes wish for my library here, where it costs trouble to other people to get books for me, and yet I have done well enough lately with Montaigne, and a bit of Moliere with the boys, now and then, and I Promessi Sposi with Fanny discovering thereby that I can read Italian almost like French or English, which I was not aware of'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'I do sometimes wish for my library here, where it costs trouble to other people to get books for me, and yet I have done well enough lately with Montaigne, and a bit of Moliere with the boys, now and then, and I Promessi Sposi with Fanny discovering thereby that I can read Italian almost like French or English, which I was not aware of'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'I do sometimes wish for my library here, where it costs trouble to other people to get books for me, and yet I have done well enough lately with Montaigne, and a bit of Moliere with the boys, now and then, and I Promessi Sposi with Fanny discovering thereby that I can read Italian almost like French or English, which I was not aware of'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Have you read Emerson's Essays? I suppose it is the first immortal Amern book. It has come to me like a visitation of health'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 3 September 1808: 'In the evening Mr. Morritt read to us one of Massinger's plays ("The Duke of Milan").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John B. S. Morritt Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 5 September 1808: 'In the evening Mr. Morritt continued reading the "Duke of Milan." He reads very well, and Massinger is not easy to read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John B. S. Morritt Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 6 September 1808: 'In the evening Mr. Morritt began reading another of Massinger's plays [having finished "The Duke of Milan"], the "Fatal Dowry," from which Rowe has taken the story of "The Fair Penitent." The characters of the father and the husband in "The Fatal Dowry" are more interesting than in "The Fair Penitent;" but the events and catastrophes are badly drawn, and the wife detestable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John B. S. Morritt Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 10 September 1808, during stay at Bothwell Castle, seat of Lord Douglas: 'Lord and Lady Rosslyn arrived at four o'clock [...] Lord Rosslyn gave me a letter to read from Captain Adam to his father, praising the conduct of Ronald at Vimeira in the most satisfactory manner. I went away to read it, which I did not do without tears.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Letter
Mary Berry, Journal, 8 June 1811: 'Went to Lady Cork's. A curious party, where, by way of something to do, she had [John] Thelwall reading Milton's "Invocation to Light," so abominably as to amuse or shock all the company.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Thelwall Print: Book
'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
'We are reading Motley's last, - much surprised not to like it better. It is so diffuse and sinks so very low in its Carlylisms &c.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
?While in this state I read the "Letters" of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and some of Dr Beattie?s and Mr Hume?s ?Essays?, together with part of Dr Beattie?s ?Essay on Truth?.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Seward had been reading a five-volume edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters, and she had confessed her irritation with Lady Mary's avowed contempt for Pope'
[see letter to Mrs Childers, 1804]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
'As Catherine Talbot later remarked of the "Odyssey", "Mr Pope's verse can give dignity to a peg or a pig, and the divine Eumaeus is so worthy a man, that I overlook the unlucky circumstance of his being a hogherd'
[Letter to Elizabeth Carter, October 1746]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
'After reading Pope's "Illiad", the sixteen-year-old Burney confided in her journal that "I was never so charm'd with a poem in my life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'[Anna Seward's] training was not necessarily less rigorous for being informal and solitary. Seward scoffed at a male contemporary who claimed never to have read or studied poetry. "If Shakespeare's talents were miracles of uncultured intuition, we feel, that neither Milton's, Pope's, Akenside's, Gray's or Darwin's were such, but that poetic investigation, and long familiarity with the best writers in that line, cooperated to produce their excellence".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 10 July 1789: 'I enclose a most beautiful copy of verses which Miss H[annah]. More wrote very lately when she was with [the Bishop of London] ...] at Fulham, on his opening a walk to a bench called Bonner's. Mrs. Boscawen showed them to me, and I insisted on printing them. Only 200 copies are taken off, half for her and half for the printer, and you have one of the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Manuscript: Unknown
'At ten the poor infant was reading Smollett's History... She summed up her impression with scornful lucidity: "There seem to have been more weak kings than wise ones".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'there was always poetry. Campbell, just then at the top of his short-lived vogue; Ossian, the unreadable of to-day; Milton - and with the New Year of 1812 a Captain Boothby (met during the London season) as a visitor with whom to read the last, but not the other two. For he did not admire Campbell or Ossian; and indeed seems to have been a person of delicate discriminations, though not advanced in thought. They were reading "Paradise Lost"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'there was always poetry. Campbell, just then at the top of his short-lived vogue; Ossian, the unreadable of to-day; Milton - and with the New Year of 1812 a Captain Boothby (met during the London season) as a visitor with whom to read the last, but not the other two. For he did not admire Campbell or Ossian; and indeed seems to have been a person of delicate discriminations, though not advanced in thought. They were reading "Paradise Lost"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke and Captain Boothby Print: Book
'A Reverend Mr Darnell followed in this January of 1812. He too read Milton. This time it was Comus, and the whole party joined in, Annabella and her guests taking the various parts. They did the Trial-Scene from the Merchant of Venice too, and she "never heard anyone read with more discriminating judgment than Mr Darnell".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, Rev. Darnell and other house guests Print: Book
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'she asked [Byron] to recommend her some books of modern history. At present she was reading Sismondi's "Italian Republics". And she had read "Lara". Shakespeare alone possessed the same power as Byron had there displayed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but writes not history but romance). The best thing of that kind I met by accident at Athens in a Convent Library in old and not "very choice Italian". I forget the title - but it was a history in some thirty tomes of all Conjurazioni whatsoever from Catiline's down to Count Fiesco of Lavagna's in Genoa and Braganza's in Lisbon. I read it through (having nothing else to read) & having nothing to compare it withal, thought it perfection'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but writes not history but romance). The best thing of that kind I met by accident at Athens in a Convent Library in old and not "very choice Italian". I forget the title - but it was a history in some thirty tomes of all Conjurazioni whatsoever from Catiline's down to Count Fiesco of Lavagna's in Genoa and Braganza's in Lisbon. I read it through (having nothing else to read) & having nothing to compare it withal, thought it perfection'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
'[Annabella] had been reading Harriet Martineau's "Five Years of Youth", and wrote to a friend: "it is very good - chiefly directed against Romance, and therefore not necessary for Ada".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'It was through the reading of his narrative poem, "Within and Without" (published in 1855, but written a few years earlier), that their acquaintance began. She wrote to him of her admiration, and soon afterwards they met'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
'By the age of ten he had gone through E.W. Lane's three-volume translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night", Scott's Waverley novels, Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", the adventure stories of Captain Marryat, everything of Harrison Ainsworth, and other, now forgotten, works'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 23 November 1793, on meeting Edward Jerningham ('the Charming Man') at a gathering at the home of their friend Anne Damer the previous evening: 'I congratulated the Charming highly on the success of his tragedy ["The Siege of Berwick", which opened 13 November at Covent Garden], and on his prologue, which I had seen in the papers and like'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Newspaper
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 22 November 1795: 'I will, while expecting Marchand [...] transcribe the wonderful Sanscrit paragraph which you found t'other morning in Murphy's "Portugal," and which you will like to possess: --
'"From whose splendid virtues, the great men, who delight to sport in the atoms which float in the beams of light issuing from the beauty of the leaf of the sleepy Ketahee of the diadem of the goddess Saraskatee, went to adorn the females of the eight points."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 22 November 1795: 'I will, while expecting Marchand [...] transcribe the wonderful Sanscrit paragraph which you found t'other morning in Murphy's "Portugal," and which you will like to possess: --
'"From whose splendid virtues, the great men, who delight to sport in the atoms which float in the beams of light issuing from the beauty of the leaf of the sleepy Ketahee of the diadem of the goddess Saraskatee, went to adorn the females of the eight points."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 26 June 1812: 'We dined with the Princess [of Wales] at Kensington. The company: Lady C. Lindsay, Lady C. Campbell, Mr. Lewis, Sir H. and Lady Davy, Sir J. Mackintosh, Sir H. Englefield, Mrs. and Miss Pole, Lord Glenbervie and Campbell the poet, who was to read his first discourse upon Poetry, which he had delivered at the Institution; he did so during that evening with very good effect [...] Poor Lewis was in a very bad humour, and did not know where to hide his head during the reading, so he pretended to be sleeping.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Campbell
'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham Print: Book
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 9 March 1814: 'I dined with Madame de Stael; nobody but Campbell the poet, Rocca, and her own daughter [...] After dinner, Campbell read to us a discourse of his upon English poetry and upon some of the great poets. There are always signs of a poet critic and of genius in all he does, often encumbered by too ornate a style.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Campbell
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 March 1818: 'I went with the Comte Bardi to the Laurentian Library. Saw the travels (MSS.) of Cosmo III. in England in the year 167-, accompanied by Magalotti, who gives the description of the travels, and by an artist who made drawings of all the small towns where they stopped, and of all the country houses they saw. I remarked Wilton, Billingbear, Audley Inn, &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry, Journal, 19 December 1818: 'Sir James Mackintosh in my room this morning; hearing me read over and commenting on my "Memoir of Lady Russell," spoke frankly, seemed pleased, and satisfied me very tolerably with his opinion [...] In the evening he read some of Milton's "Paradise Regained" to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir James Mackintosh Print: Book
'read Elements of Morality and Smellie'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Berry to 'Mrs Somerville', from Bellevue, September 1834: 'I have just finished reading your book [apparently on astronomy], which has [italics]entertained[end italics] me extremely, and at the same time, I hope, improved my moral character in the Christian virtue of humility [...] Humbled I must be, by finding my own intellect unequal to following, beyond a first step, the explanations by which you seek to make easy to comprehension the marvellous phenomena of the universe'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to Thomas Babington Macaulay, 15 October 1834: 'Have they sent you among your books "Victor Jaquemont's Letters?" they are perfectly original [...] I never knew before half so much of the life of our countrymen in India; and the author himself is so natural and unaffected a character, that I had well-night cried at his death, as if it had not been true.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, [1841]: 'I have read every word of Mazzini, and agree entirely with him in his views of what civil liberty ought to be, and with most of his statements on the absence of it in Italy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Lord Francis Jeffrey to Mary Berry, 23 April 1842 (in letter begun 22 April): 'I still read a good deal [...] I have just finished the last number of the "Edinburgh Review," and have been charmed more than ever, I think, with that splendid paper of Macaulay's on Frederic of Prussia. I have read it twice over already, with thrillings of admiration whcih make my very weak heart leap rather too strongly; but it is delightful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Francis Jeffrey Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Berry to the Countess of Morley, 24 December 1848: 'Talking of Macaulay, I hope you have got his book, as the [italics]very[end italics] most entertaining reading I ever met with ... The first edition of 3,000 copies was sold in the first week; another, of 3,000 more, is to come out on Thursday next.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
'In ["Ciceronianus" (published 1577; delivered c.1575)] [...] Harvey says he has been for nearly twenty weeks in his Tusculan villa, i.e. at his father's house in Saffron Walden, assiduously studying not only the greatest of the old Roman writers, but renaissance writers such as Sturm, Manutius, Osorius, Sigonius and Buchanan. He had given more time to Cicero than to all the rest put together, yet sometimes he had dropped Cicero on Friendship to take up Osorius on Glory'.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Gabriel] Harvey no doubt has the incident [of Philip, Lord Surrey's 'attempts [...] on the virtue' of Harvey's sister Mercy, c. Christmas 1574] in mind when in his copy of Erasmus' "Parabolae" to the words "stultus magnifica fortuna iniucunda", he adds the notes, "you knowe, who vsed to write: 'Vnhappy Philip'."'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'Palm Sunday
Appropriate readings this week from Mant (?) [sic] &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'[Erasmus's "Parabolae"] was acquired by [Gabriel] Harvey in 1566, read by him at some time thereafter, and was re-read in September of 1577.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Erasmus's "Parabolae"] was acquired by [Gabriel] Harvey in 1566, read by him at some time thereafter, and was re-read in September of 1577.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'Throughout [Gabriel] Harvey's copy of [Lord Henry Howard's "A Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophesies"] are underlinings and comments [on the necessity of patience, Howard's work having contained attacks on Harvey's astrologer brother]'.
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[Gabriel] Harvey's favourite books were read and annotated a number of times [...] at the conclusion of [his Erasmus] is a large inscription which reads: "Relegi mense Septembri. 1577: Gabriel Harveius".'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'Lodovico Domenichi's "Facetie, motti, et burle" (1571) [an Italian collection of short miscellaneous observations and anecdotes] [...] stimulated Harvey to jot down [in its wide margins] a variety of musings and random philosophical reflections.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'Despite [Gabriel] Harvey's dissatisfaction with his progress in Italian, in 1580 he managed to read the "First Decade" of Machiavelli's "Discorsi"'.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'[One] branch of [Gabriel] Harvey's marginalia [...] has to do with his study of the techniques of warfare. Extensive notes in this area are found in his copies of [...] Machiavelli (Peter Whitehorne's 1573 translation of the "Arte of Warre"), and Whitehorne's "Certaine wayes for the ordering of Soldiours" (1574).'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595:
'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
'On looking over "The Penny magazine" I met with the following useful piece by my friend James' [?Edmeston].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Serial / periodical
'Mr. Perry tried upon us [at school in Norwich] the reading of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly [...] Not long after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in possession of a new sense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Perry Print: Book
'Mr. Perry tried upon us [at school in Norwich] the reading of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly [...] Not long after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in possession of a new sense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Perry Print: Book
'Mr. Perry tried upon us [at school in Norwich] the reading of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly [...] Not long after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in possession of a new sense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Mr. Perry tried upon us [at school in Norwich] the reading of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly [...] Not long after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in possession of a new sense.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau hears her first (pseudonymously) published work read by her unsuspecting eldest brother: 'After tea he said "[...] I will read you something"; and he held out his hand for the new "[Monthly] Repository." After glancing at it, he exclaimed, "They have got a new hand here. Listen." After a paragraph, he repeated, "Ah! this is a new hand; they have had nothing so good as this for a long while." [...] I was silent, of course.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau on her early writings: 'I immediately after [the publication of her first periodical essay] began to write my first work, -- "Devotional Exercises," [...] I remember my brother's anxious doubting looks, as he read the M.S.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martineau Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau on one of her early publications: 'A most excellent young servant of ours [...] went out to Madeira with my brother and his family [...] Her history was a rather remarkable, and a very interesting one; and I wrote it in the form of four of Houlston's penny tracts. He threw together, and made a little book of them; and the heroine, who would never have heard of them as tracts, was speedily put in possession of her Memoirs in the form of the little book called "My Servant Rachel." An aunt of mine, calling on her one day, found her standing in the middle of the floor, and her husband reading the book over her shoulder.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martineau family servant, and husband Print: Book
'It was in the autumn of 1827, I think, that a neighbour lent my [Harriet Martineau's] sister Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Political Economy." I took up the book, chiefly to see what Political Economy precisely was; and great was my surprise to find that I had been teaching it unawares, in my stories about Machinery and Wages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau on reading for research toward her series of 'Tales', during 1832: 'The scenery was furnished by books of travel obtained from the Public Library [...] The books of travel were Lichtenstein's South Africa for "Life in the Wilds:" Edwards's (and others') "West Indies" for "Demerara;" and McCulloch's "Highlands and Islands of Scotland" for the two Garveloch stories.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau on her concerns about the acceptability of some of her writings: 'While writing "Weal and Woe in Garveloch," the perspiration many a time streamed down my face, though I knew there was not a line in it which might not be read aloud in any family. The misery arose from my seeing how the simplest statements and reasonings might and probably would be perverted [...] when the number was finished, I read it aloud to my mother and aunt [...] they were as complacent and easy as they had been interested and attentive.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau, on a response to her series of "Tales", denounced as 'improper' in the Quarterly Review, by a woman lent the 'Garveloch' stories by one of Martineau's friends: 'A few days after, [she] brought back the book, saying [...] it was so harmless that her husband had read it aloud to the young people in the evening [having been offered another] [...] The lady and her husband read the whole series through in this way, and never could find out the "improper book."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, on a response to her series of "Tales", denounced as 'improper' in the Quarterly Review, by a woman lent the 'Garveloch' stories by one of Martineau's friends: 'A few days after, [she] brought back the book, saying [...] it was so harmless that her husband had read it aloud to the young people in the evening [having been offered another] [...] The lady and her husband read the whole series through in this way, and never could find out the "improper book."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon woman and husband Print: Book
'S. reads Prud'homme aloud to us'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read some of Miss Bailey's plays - Tahourdin calls in the evening Shelley reads Moores journal aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Drummond'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read Embassy to China. finish it in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'in the evening Miltons letter to Mr Hartlib on educations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'[Elizabeth Fry] told me [Harriet Martineau] that her brother, J. J. Gurney, and other members of her family had become convinced by reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my tales that they had been for a long course of years doing mischief where they meant to do good; that they were now convinced that the true way of benefiting the poor was to reform the Poor-law system'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J. J. Gurney Print: Unknown
'[Elizabeth Fry] told me [Harriet Martineau] that her brother, J. J. Gurney, and other members of her family had become convinced by reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my tales that they had been for a long course of years doing mischief where they meant to do good; that they were now convinced that the true way of benefiting the poor was to reform the Poor-law system'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Family of Elizabeth Fry Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau, on research for a story on Bills of Exchange to be set either in Holland or South America: 'I thought Holland on the whole the more convenient of the two; so I dipped into some book about that country (Sir William Temple, I believe it was), picked out the two ugliest Dutch names I could find, made them into a firm, and boldly advertised them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, on her research for a story to be set in Ceylon: 'I gathered what I could from books, but really feared being obliged to give up a singularly good illustrative scene for want of the commonest facts concerning the social life of the Cingalese. I found scarcely anything even in Maria Graham and Heber. At this precise time, a friend happened to bring to my lodging [...] Sir Alexander Johnstone, who had just returned from governing Ceylon [...] Before we had known one another half an hour, I confided to him my difficulty. He started off [...] and was soon at the door again, with his carriage full of books, prints and other illustrations [...] Among the volumes he left with me was a Columbo almanack, which furnished me with names, notices of customs, and other valuable matters.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Since reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my Numbers, [Lord Henley] had dropped his subscriptions to some hurtful charities, and had devoted his funds to Education, Benefit Societies and Emigration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Henley Print: Unknown
To Miss Hunt, Bath Sept 27, 1794
'I have the great store of Spanish lately; the "Teatro Critico Universale" by Feyjoo, a very clever work in 14 volumes; and I am now reading post-haste [italics] Mariana's "History of Spain", of which I have only read half, but am determined to finish it before I go. It is not so interesting as some other histories, but one must know it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
To Lady Isabella King, Bath March 8th 1798
'Have you read "The Pursuits of Literature"? It is a satirical poem. I dislike satire in general, but this appears to me one of the cleverest books I ever met with, and indeed this is the general opinion respecting it... I have read Robinson on the "Illuminati". It is said by people wel-informed on the subject to be a true representation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
'My [Harriet Martineau's] pleasure in [R. Monckton Milnes's poems] was greatest when I read them in my Tynemouth solitude. My copy is marked all over with hieroglyhics involving the emotions with which I read them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'I [Harriet Martineau] saw much of Fanny [Kemble] in America [...] She showed me the proof-sheets of her clever "Journal," and, as she chose to require my opinion of it, obtained a less flattering one than from most people [...] I was sufficiently shocked at certain passages to induce her to cancel some thirty pages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Manuscript: proofs
'I [Harriet Martineau] was spending a couple of days at Mrs. Marsh's, when she asked me whether I would let her read to me "one or two little stories" which she had written. From her way of speaking of them, and from her devotion to her children [...] I concluded these to be children's stories. She ordered a fire in her room, and there we shut ourselves up for the reading. What she read was no child's story, but "The Admiral's Daughter." My amazement may be conceived. We were going to dine at the Wedgwoods': and a strange figure we must have cut there; for we had been crying so desperately that there was no concealing the marks of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Marsh Manuscript: Unknown
'Mrs. Marsh asked me what I thought of getting her tales published. I offered to try if, on reading the manuscript at home, I thought as well of it ["The Admiral's Daughter"] as after her own most moving delivery of it. A second reading left no doubt in my mind; and I had the pleasure of introducing the "Two Old Men's Tales" to the world through Messrs. Saunders and Otley'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Manuscript: Unknown
'[S. T. Coleridge] told me [Harriet Martineau] that he (the last person whom I should have suspected) read my tales as they came out on the first of the month'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Serial / periodical
'A neighbour lent me [Miss Bremer's] novel, "Brothers and Sisters," the first volume of which we thought admirable: but the latter part about Socialism, Mesmerism, and all manner of [italics]isms[end italics] which she did not understand, made us blush as we read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau and neighbour Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, December 12 1792
'The "Lusiad" I never read. It was Middleton's "Life of Cicero" that I meant. I was not tired with its length because the chief of its contents were new to me. I have lately undertaken Smollet's "History of England", but must leave it in the middle.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, December 12 1792
'The "Lusiad" I never read. It was Middleton's "Life of Cicero" that I meant. I was not tired with its length because the chief of its contents were new to me. I have lately undertaken Smollet's "History of England", but must leave it in the middle.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
The elderly Harriet Martineau reflects upon her altered reading capacity: 'I could not now read "Lalla Rookh" through before breakfast, as I did when it appeared. I cannot read new novels [...] while I can read with more pleasure than ever the old favourites, -- Miss Austen's and Scott's. My pleasure in Voyages and Travels is almost an insanity'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, July 7, 1792
'At present I am engaged in an argument with my dear Miss Bowdlen concerning Ossian. I support him against all other poets. You may easily guess who will say all I can for Ossian, for I really love [italics] his poems beyond all others. Milton must stand alone; but surely Ossian is in some respects [italics] superior to Homer.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, July 7, 1792
'At present I am engaged in an argument with my dear Miss Bowdlen concerning Ossian. I support him against all other poets. You may easily guess who will say all I can for Ossian, for I really love [italics] his poems beyond all others. Milton must stand alone; but surely Ossian is in some respects [italics] superior to Homer.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
'At other times we studied Shakespeare, Milton and some other English poets as well as some of the Italians. We took long walks and often drew from nature. We read with great attention the whole of the New Testament, Secker's lectures on the Catechism and several other books on the same important subjects.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, April 7 1794
'I am very rich in German books right now for Dr Randolph, who has a great many, has given me his entire library, to take whatever I like. I have got your friend Kliest, which I think delightful; Hallen's poems; and Zimmerman's "Einsamkert", which pleases me more that [sic] almost any book I ever read... There are some ideas in Zimmerman's upon a future state very like your book [Essay on the happiness of the life to come].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, on plans for, and execution of, her work on Toussaint L'Ouverture: 'I went to my confidante, with a sheetful of notes, and a heartful of longings to draw that glorious character [...] But my friend could not see the subject as I did [...] I gave it up; but a few years after, when ill at Tynemouth, I reverted to my scheme and fulfilled it; and my kind adviser, while never liking the subject in an artistic sense, graciously told me that the book had kept her up, over her dressing-room fire, till three in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'At a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms, some time before [Queen Victoria's accession] (I forget what year it was) the Duchess of Kent sent Sir John Conroy to me [Harriet Martineau] with a message of acknowledgement of the usefulness of my books to the Princess [Victoria]: and I afterwards heard more particulars of the eagerness with which the little lady read the stories on the first day of the month [...] Her "favourite" of my stories is "Ella of Garveloch."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Victoria Print: Serial / periodical
'[A friend] one day desired to be allowed to see and criticise the first chapter of my [Harriet Martineau's] "Retrospect of Western Travel." I gave him the MS. at night; and in the morning he produced it, covered with pencil marks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau to 'Mr Atkinson', 21 November 1847: 'I saw a sort of scared smile on Mrs. ----'s face the other day, when in talking about education, I said we had yet to see what could be done by a direct appeal to human nature. She, liberal as she is, thinks we have such active bad tendencies [...] that we can do nothing without [...] Help. Yet she, and Mrs. ---- too, devours my Household education papers, as if she had never met with anything true before on that subject.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte (writing as Currer Bell) to Harriet Martineau, 7 November 1849: 'When C.B. first read "Deerbrook" he tasted a new and keen pleasure [...] "Deerbrook" ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas, and rectified his views of life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'"Currer Bell" [Charlotte Bronte] told me [Harriet Martineau] that she had read with astonishment those parts of "Household Education" which relate my own experience. It was like meeting her own [?]fetch'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'I [Harriet Martineau] wrote a letter [...] to an Assistant Poor-law Commissioner, who was earnest in his endeavours to get workhouses supplied with milk and vegetables, by the labour of the inmates on the land. To my amazement, I found my letter in the "Times," one day while I was at Bolton.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Newspaper
Harriet Martineau on the death of a Town Missionary acquaintance of hers:
'A friend of his at Birmingham wrote to me that he declared himself dying [of consumption] [...] she immediately wrote to suggest to me that a letter from me would gratify him. There was scarcely anything I would rather have done [Martineau having abandoned her Christian faith]: but it was impossible to refuse. I wrote at once [...] There was not a word about the future, or God, or even Christ. It was a letter of sympathy in his benevolent and happy life, and also, of course, in his present weakness. It reached him on the last day of his life. It was read to him. When he a little revived, he asked for it, and read it himself; and then desired his wife to tell all who loved him of "ths last flush on his darkness."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Letter
Harriet Martineau on the death of a Town Missionary acquaintance of hers:
'A friend of his at Birmingham wrote to me that he declared himself dying [of consumption] [...] she immediately wrote to suggest to me that a letter from me would gratify him. There was scarcely anything I would rather have done [Martineau having abandoned her Christian faith]: but it was impossible to refuse. I wrote at once [...] There was not a word about the future, or God, or even Christ. It was a letter of sympathy in his benevolent and happy life, and also, of course, in his present weakness. It reached him on the last day of his life. It was read to him. When he a little revived, he asked for it, and read it himself; and then desired his wife to tell all who loved him of "ths last flush on his darkness."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to Harriet Martineau, on Martineau's published correspondence with Atkinson: 'Having read your book, I cannot now think it will create any outcry. You are tender of others: -- you are serious, reverent and gentle.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Harriet Martineau on the inspirations for her project of translating Comte: 'I obtained something like a clear preparatory view, at second-hand, from a friend [...] What I learned then [...] impelled me to study the great book for myself; and in the spring of 1851 [...] I got the book, and set to work. I had meantime looked at Lewes's chapter on Comte in Mr. Knight's Weekly Volume, and at Littre's epitome'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'On the 8th of May [1851], I [Harriet Martineau] went for a fortnight to stay with some friends, between whom and myself there was cordial affection, though they were Swedenborgians [Martineau had renounced her Christian religion] [...] [The host's wife] came to my writing-table, to beg the loan of the first volume [of Auguste Comte, which Martineau was translating], when I was going out for a walk. When her daughter and I returned from our walk [...] the whole affair was settled. She [...] had decided that Comte knew nothing. I inquired in amazement the grounds for this decision. She had glanced over the first chapter, and could venture to say that she now "knew all about it."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Maria Weston Chapman on Harriet Martineau's story 'Mary and her Grandmother': 'I found it in the [italics]mansarde[end italics] of a Paris friend, and stood reading on the spot where I took it up, without the least idea of its authorship. It seemed like a Sunday-school book, but how different from its class in general!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Weston Chapman Print: Book
Lord Durham to Harriet Martineau, 1 January 1834: 'I have read your excellent paper with great pleasure'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Durham
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 10 September 1837: 'Read to Mrs ---- my last chapters of my first volume of "Retrospect." She says the book will do.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 24 September 1837: 'Revelled in Lamb's letters. What an exquisite specimen is that man of our noble, wonderful, frail humanity!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 24 September 1837: '[italics]Evening[end italics] Read [...] to my mother [...] my Sedgwick article, which she likes.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 12 October 1837: 'Read some of Beaumont's "Marie." Sentimental and un-American'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 7 November 1837: 'Read Waldo Emerson's oration. Though fanciful, it has much truth and beauty. It moved, roused, soothed and consoled me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, late November 1837: 'Read some of Brougham's education speech, but not all; so have no judgement to give.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 16 December 1837: 'Morning, read one of my own stories, -- "Loom and Lugger." Was quite disappointed in it. It has capital material, but is obscure, and not simple enough.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 10 January 1838: 'Read "Les Precieuses Ridicules," which did not amuse me very much; though acted I can fancy it capital.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 February 1838: '[At Captain Beaufort's] Met [...] C. Darwin, Mr. F. Edgeworth, and Mr. Hamilton, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, who had been reading my book up to dinner-time, and took a good gaze at me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hamilton Print: Book
Sir Arthur Helps to the publisher Macmillan, 'I have lately re-read "Deerbrook" with exceeding delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Arthur Helps Print: Book
'Trade very dull - weather very wet and rather windy as predicted by Murphy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Jenkinson Print: Book, almanac
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 4 January 1840: 'Read Mr. Thom's account of the Oxford theology, drawn from their own writings: good [...] Have been reading Wilberforce: grows twaddling in his old age, through want of cultivation of mind. Very noble, however, -- his keeping back Brougham's pledge about the Queen, and silently suffering universal censure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Unknown
Lord Jeffrey to 'Mr. Empson', December 1840: 'I have read Harriet [Martineau]'s first volume [of "The Hour and the Man"], and give in my adhesion to her Black Prince [Toussaint L'Ouverture] with all my heart and soul. The book is really not only beautiful and touching, but [italics]noble[end italics]; and I do not recollect when I have been more charmed, whether by very sweet and eloquent writing and glowing description, or by elevated as well as tender sentiments. I do not believe that the worthy people ever spoke or acted as she has so gracefully presented them, and must confess that in all the striking scenes I entirely forgot their complexion, and drove the notion of it from me as often as it occurred. But this does not at all diminish, but rather increases the merit of her creations.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
Florence Nightingale to Jane Martineau, 29 June 1876: 'I have thought of "The Hour and the Man" as the finest historical romance in any language. You would wonder if you knew how often I have read it over and over again, even in the last two years.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
From letter of Elizabeth B. Ker, niece of Harriet Martineau: 'I regret infinitely that she desired all her letters to be destroyed. I had so large a boxful that it took some time to read and burn them [...] on reading that most charming of all her publications, "Life in the Sick-Room" [...] I said, "Oh, but I have read it all before! -- this is only my burnt letters!"'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth B. Ker Print: Book
[Transcribed into a ms volume] Title 'Lines by Mrs Hemans'; Text 'Bring flowers, young flowers, for the festal board/ To wreathe the cup ere the wine is poured;/ Bring flowers! they are springing in wood and vale,/ Their breath floats out on the southern gale; ...' [total = 6 x 6 lines verses]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into commonplace book]: Title = 'The season of death' Text = 'Leaves have their time to fall/ And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath/And stars to set - but all/ Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh Death ...' (total - 5 x 4 line verses)
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
'One of them asked me if I was fond of reading and told me that she herself wrote books and was staying in the neighbourhood hoping to include the dale in her next book.
Many years afterwards I read "The History of David Grieve" and at once remembered our visitor. Comparing dates I realised it was Mrs. Humphry Ward, seeking the atmosphere of the wild valley she described so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
'The growth of the Rhizophora also pleased me much, although I had before a very good idea of it from Rumphius, who has a very good figure of the tree in his Herb. Amboin. [v. iii. tab. 71, 72]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'About a fortnight ago my gums swelled, and some small pimples rose on the inside of my mouth, which threatened to become ulcers; I flew to the lemon juice, which had been put up for me according to Dr. Hulme's method, described in his book, and in his letter, which is inserted here.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'Browne, in his "History of Jamaica" mentions three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly agrees.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'He was covered with a fine cloth of a manufacture totally new to us; it was tied on exactly as represented in Mr. Dalrymple's book, p. 63; his hair was also tied in a knot on the top of his head, but there was no feather stuck in it; his complexion brown but not very dark.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'The men in these boats were dressed much as they are represented in Tasman's figure, that is, two corners of the cloth they wore were passed over their shoulders and fastened to the rest of it just below their breasts; but few or none had feathers in their hair.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'Fortunately for me, about this time I read two books by Joseph Macabe, an ex-Catholic priest, "The Religion of Women" and "Women in Political Evolution", which I still think are the finest ever written on the subject. They are like a film showing women's life throughout the ages, our faults and our virtues, and the economic reasons for our inferiority before the law.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
'Fortunately for me, about this time I read two books by Joseph Macabe, an ex-Catholic priest, "The Religion of Women" and "Women in Political Evolution", which I still think are the finest ever written on the subject. They are like a film showing women's life throughout the ages, our faults and our virtues, and the economic reasons for our inferiority before the law.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title = 'The Voice of Spring'; Text = 'I come, I come ! ye have call'd me long;/ I come o'er the mountains with light and song!/ Ye may trace my steps o'er the wakening earth,/ By the winds which tell of the violet's birth ...' (total = 7 x 6 line verses)
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Untitled; Text = 'To sigh, yet feel no pain; /To weep - yet scarce know why/ To sport an hour with Beauty's chain/ Then throw it idly be ... ' [total = 2 x 10 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title = 'Night'; Text 'Night is the time for rest/ How sweet, when labors close/ To gather round an aching breast/ The curtain of repose ...'[total= 6x 6line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
'Followed by the thought that, had I not been reading Ethel Mannin's "Green Willow", which gives a vivid description of this development, perhaps I would not have taken sides.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'She [Lady Caroline Lamb] wrote at length to defend herself to [Thomas] Medwin, whom she treats respectfully, though she had told [John Cam] Hobhouse that it would have been better to publish Byron's journal rather than burn it, for Medwin's book [Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron] was "full of vulgarity & erros--even as to dates"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'With the most intense interest I have just finished your Book which does you credit as to the manner in which it is executed, and after the momentary pain in part which it excites in many a bosom, will live in despight [sic] of censure and be gratefully accepted by the Public as long as Lord Byron's name is remembered--yet as you have left to one who adored him a little legacy and as I feel secure the lines "remember thee-thou false to him then friend time"--were his--and as I have been very ill I am not likely to trouble any one much longer--you will I am sure grant me one favour--let me to you at least confide the truth of the past--you owe it to me--you will not I know refuse me [...] Still I love him [Byron]--witness the agony I experienced at his death & the tears your book has cost me. Yet, Sir, allow me to say, although you have unitentionally given me pain I had rather have experienced it than not have read your book. Parts of it are beautiful, and I can vouch for the truth of much as I read his own memoirs before Murray burnt them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'pray have you read Medwin's Book--the part respecting me gives me much pain--this is strange--why need I care--I do however [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'Our own attitude and our feeling of amateur enterprise have been summed up by Professor Bronislaw Malinowski, who in our first year's "Report" (Lindsay Drummond, 1938) describes how he first met one of us reading a paper to the Institute of Sociology.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown Manuscript: Sheet, Academic paper
'Twould make a Paradise of Hell--
& fill even Heaven itself with woe[...]'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The grave of a poetess (Mrs` Tighe at Woodstock near Kilkenny)'; [text] 'I stood beside thy lowly grave;/ Spring-odours breath'd around/ And music, in the river-wave/ pass'd with a lulling sound ...' [total = 13 x 4 lines verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Country and Town [by] H. Smith'; [Text] 'Horrid, in country shades to dwell!/ One positively might as well/ be buried in the quarries/ No earthly object to be seen/ but cows and geese upon the green/ As sung by Captain Morris...' [total = 6 x 6 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[transcription of Moore's poem 'Gazel' in what seems to be Lady Caroline's Hand]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title 'Address to Lord Byron by Dr Lamartine'; [Text] 'Toi, dont le monde encore ignore le vrai nom/ Esprit mysterieux, mortel ou demon/...' [total = 58 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [ Untitled]; [Text] 'In the morning of life when its cares are unknown/ and its pleasures in all their new lustre begin/ When we live in a bright beaming world of our own/ And the light that surrounds us is all from within/ ... [by] Moore' [total = 3 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The Illuminated City' ; [Text] 'The hills all glow'd with a festive light/ For the Royal city rejoiced by night/ ... [by] Mrs Hemans' [total = 5 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'From the Forest Sanctuary'; [Text] 'But the dark hours wring forth the hidden might/ Which hath lain bedded in the silent soul/ A treasure all undreamed of ; - as the night/ ... [by] Mrs Hemans' [total = 8 x 9 line verses, probably not a continuous extract]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'My Birthday [by] Moore'; [Text] 'My Birthday! what a different sound/ That word had in my youthful years!/ And how each time the day comes round/ Less and less white[?] the ? appears/ ?'; [total = 28 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'To my mother [by] Moore'; [Text] 'They tell us of an Indian tree/ Which howso'er the sun and sky/ May tempt its boughs to wander free/ And shoot and blossom wide and high?'; [total = 12 lines plus a 2 line quote]. [Quote Titled] 'Comfort for the loss of Friends'; [Text] 'My gems are fast falling away, but I do hope & trust/ it is because "God is making up his jewels"/ Charles Wolfe'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
'Having now, I believe, fairly passed through between New Holland and New Guinea, and having an open sea to the westward, so that to-morrow we intend to steer more to the northwards in order to make the south coast of New Guinea, it seems high time to take leave of New Holland, which I shall do by summing up the few observations I have been able to make on the country and people. I much wished, observing the people, as they differ so much from the account that Dampier (the only man I know of who has seen them besides us) has given of them: he indeed saw them on a part of the coast very distant from where we were, and consequently the people might be different; but I should rather conclude them to be the same, chiefly from having observed an universal confomity in such of their customs as came under my observation in the several places we landed upon during the run along the coast. Dampier in general seems to be a faithful relater; but in the voyage in which he touched on the coast of New Holland he was in a ship of pirates; possibly himself not a little tainted by their idle examples, he might have kept no written journal of anything more than the navigation of the ship, and when upon coming home he was solicited to publish an account of his voyage, may have referred to his memory for many particulars relating to the people, etc. These Indians, when covered with their filth, which I believe they never wash off, are, if not coal black, very near it. As negroes, then, he might well esteem them, and add the woolly hair and want of two front teeth in consequence of the similitude in complexion between these and the natives of Africa; but from whatever cause it might arise, certain it is that Dampier either was very much mistaken in his account, or else saw a very different race of people from those we have seen.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'This I should suppose to be the gum mentioned by Dampier in his voyage round the world, and by him compared with "Sanjuis draconis", as possibly also that which Tasman saw upon Van Diemen's Land, where he says he saw gum on the trees, and gum lac on the ground.' (See his voyage in a collection published at London in 1694, p. 133)
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'This I should suppose to be the gum mentioned by Dampier in his voyage round the world, and by him compared with "Sanjuis draconis", as possibly also that which Tasman saw upon Van Diemen's Land, where he says he saw gum on the trees, and gum lac on the ground.' (See his voyage in a collection published at London in 1694, p. 133)
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'When first we found the tree, we of course gathered the branches, and were surprised to find our hands instantly covered with legions of these small animals, who stung most intolerably; experience, however, taught us to be more careful for the future. Rhumphius mentions a similar instance to this in his "Herbarium Amboinense", vol. ii. p. 257; his tree, however, does not at all resemble ours.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'The chief inconvenience in handling the roots came from the infinite number; myriads would come in an instant out of many holes, and running over the hand tickle so as to be scarcely endurable. Rhumphius has an account of this very bulb and its ants in vol. vi. p.120, where he describes also another sort, the ants of which are black.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'All the shoals that were dry at half ebb afforded plenty of fish, left dry in small hollows of the rocks, and a profusion of large shell-fish (Chama gigas) such as Dampier describes, vol. iii. p. 191.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'In the evening a small bird of the noddy (Sterna) kind hovered about the ship, and at night settled on the rigging, where it was taken, and proved exactly the same bird as Dampier has described, and given a rude figure of, under the name of a noddy from New Holland (see his Voyages, vol. iii. p. 98, table of birds, Fig. 5).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
'Authors tell strange stories about the immense size to which this fruit grows in some countries which are favourable to it. Rumphius says that they are sometimes so large that a man cannot easily lift one of them: the Malays told me that at Madura they were so large that two men could but carry one of them; at Batavia, however, they never exceed the size of a large melon, which in shape they resemble, but are coated over with angular spines like the shootings of some crystals: they are, however, soft, and do not at all prick any one who handles them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
' "Well, because I do like Ernest Raymond's books and I read all of them as far as I can." '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'My life is serious enough without worrying over things like that, so I don't read the papers-only read d'Alroy and Ann Temple. Anyhow-if there's a war I shall be in it,
so it doesn't make any difference.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]' ?Oh! ask not, hope not thou too much/ of sympathy below/ For are the hearts whence one same touch/ Bids the sweet fountains flow/ ?' [total = 16 lines but not a continuous extract]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text] 'Oh that I had the wings of a dove/ that I might flee away and be at rest/ So prayed the Psalmist to be free/ From mortal bond and earthly thrall/ And such, or soon, or late, shall be/ Full oft the heart breathed [?] prayer of all/ ?' [total = 4 x 8 lines verses follow the 2 line quote]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]' ? Now I feel/ What high prerogatives belong to Death/ He hath a deep, though voiceless eloquence, /To which I leave my ? His solemn veil/ ... Mrs Hemans' [total = 12 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Adieu/ John Mackintosh/ The earnest student'; [Text] 'Adieu to God what words can else express/ The parting, and the prayer that soars to heaven/ When two fond hearts, long link'd in ternderness/ By the decree of fate at length are riven/ ...'; [Total = 12 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text] 'Weep not, tho' lonely and wild be thy path/ And the storm may be gathering round/ There is one ! who can shield from the hurricane's wrath/ and that one! may for ever be found;/ ... (Anonymous)'; [Total = 3 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Letter 271
4 July 1940
'Please forgive me not having written eight and a half days ago or more to thank you for your lovely birthday present. The thin mints went of course in twenty four hours, and I curled up on a sofa with Somerset Maugham until I had finished him. It was a new one to me and marvellously disagreeable and exciting! So acid it nearly burnt!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Pears Print: Book
'On the penult of the year 1819 I reached the last line of the "Iliad". To speak of the merits of the Maeonian Bard from one perusal only may be deemed presumption - yet I may be allowed to say that my Enjoyment fell far short of Expectation. I found, & I am ashamed to say it, little to please and much to offend- The Morals of his Divinities are those of St Giles- their language that of Billingsgate or Wapping- His Nestors are garrulous beyond endurance...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Mitchell Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
'Besides their own Family we met Mr Jerningham, the Poet. I have lately been reading his poems,- if [italics] his [close italics] they may be called, for he never writes 3 lines following of which one is not borrowed,-he has not a thought, a phrase, an [italics] epithet [close italics] that is not palpably stolen!- He seems a mighty delicate Gentleman, - he looks to be [italics] painted, [close italics] & is all daintification, in manner, speech and Dress.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'I would like you to read a little book called "The Forerunner", by Merejkowski, published by Constable. It is about Leonardo da Vinci, and though there is a lot of bosh in it, I think there is a fine idea running through it - half formed, and somewhat elusive, but nevertheless to a certain extent true.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
'Nothing material has occurred to me since I returned from Mainhill. I wrote the first half of "Hunsteen" and translated, from the German, the first half of "Mohs";'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Having just concluded the first volume of Sismondi's history, and the other not being yet arrived from Edinr, I think I cannot better employ the hour of leisure, which necessarily intervenes between the end of this and the beginning of a fresh employment, than in returning you my thanks for the kind and good-humoured letter which I received last Saturday.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I return to my Letter writing from calling on Miss Harriot Webb [...] She appears well pleased with her new Home - & they are all reaidng with delight Mrs H. More's recent publication.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriot Webb Print: Book
'When Wordsworth was then spoken of as a great poet, the ordinary question was, "Why is he not more popular?" The process through which public opinion gradually turns from an ephemeral popularity, permanently to repose upon works of imagination that are not extravagent stimulants, is admirably illustrated by his own experience. I remember distinctly, when "Lalla Rookh" first came out, I read it through at one sitting. To say I was delighted with it is a poor word for my feelings; I was transported out of myself-entranced or what you will.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Knight Print: Serial / periodical
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'I was reading an article by a Labour M.P. who wants to harbour refugees. He's all wrong. Good job we haven't got dictators here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'I well remember, and I sometimes think of it with tears, bringing to my lodgings Rollin's "Ancient History", in six volumes. I wanted something to read. I had no one to advise me to a course of reading, so I pitched on Rollin. Next I obtained a number of Wiley and Putnam's "Library of Choice Reading", and there I found essay, and biography, and history; but for the lack of a system, my reading was desultory. My time was soon fully occupied in speaking, day and night, in school-houses, vestries, and halls, so that the opportunities for intellectual culture were limited. Still, I read a great deal to small profit, owing to the lack of advantages, such as I might have obtained, by the training which an education would have imparted.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John B. Gough Print: Book
'I have been frightened from taking up Hannah More's last book which Fanny lent me, by the dread that it would more than ever convince me what a worthless wretch I am without giving me the virtue and courage to become better. But last night, wanting to compose my wayward spirit, I ventured to open it, and read the first chapter on Internal Christianity- And was agreeably suprised to find myself much pleased with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah H. Burney Print: Book
'In the 9th mo. [1800] died Thos Rutter, of Bristol ... His amiable character is so ably pourtrayed [sic] in 142 & c of the 1oth part of "Piety Promoted", 43 that it is needless for me to attempt any farther delineation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Jenkins Print: Book
'Bought Mr Smith's "Sermon to the Odd Fellows", Professor Robinson's "Proof of a Conspiracy" seems to have made a deep impression on his mind. Price 6d. Bought also the "Oeconomist" for July; they have raised the price to 2d.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter
'Brought Donald Campbell's "Journey Over Land to India" [from the Library]. We had a very high character given of it & the little I have read has not disapointed us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'I finished D. Campbell's "Journey over land to India". It is divided into three parts ... the story of Mr [Alli?] who was shipwrecked and imprisoned with him is very affecting.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Finished the "Whisperer or Tales & Speculations" by Gabriel Silvertongue. It was written by J. Montgomery and part of it appeared in "The Iris" in the year 1795. All the pieces are very entertaining, in so much that I do not know which I prefer above the rest. Mr Evans gave it me [bought on July 15] together with "Prison Amusements & his Trial" [by Montgomery].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Wrote out of Zimmerman on "Solitude" the introduction to it. [Notes that it is a 1797 edn when borrowed on 26 Aug. 1798].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Took Zimmermann to the library [In margin: 'vestry']. It consists for the most part of declamation, tho' it is very instructive; I have not finishe'd it but it was time to return it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Began to read Thomson's "Seasons".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Thought the following remarks in Miss Williams was exceeding applicable to the manufacturers of Sheffield: "There is a spirit in that class, in all countries more favourable to inquiry & consequently more hostile to unconditional submission" Vol 2 p.227.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Brought Wolstonecraft's "View of the French Revolution", from the Chapel Library, for Miss Haynes to read. Read in Miss Hannah More's "Sacred Drama", David & Goliath, I was much pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Miss Williams "Tour" is very entertaining; besides describing the scenery (which she does in a masterly manner) she gives short sketches of the government of the different cantons & compares the state of Switzerland to Paris.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Lines written to the Memory of Sir G Campbell' 'To Him whose loyal, brave, and gentle heart/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Love's Wreath!' 'When Love was a Child and went rolling along/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Lines written by Moore on Miss [Curria]' 'She is far from the Land, where her young Hero sleeps/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'The Tear' 'When the soft tear steals silently from the eye/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Remember thee yes while there's life in this heart/...'[Thomas Moore, 'Remember Thee': first 8 lines of 12-line text. Very little punctuation in transcript. Perhaps from song?]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'A Riddle/which every reader may solve for herself/but none to another'
'I know not who these lines may see/I know not what these lines will be' [ll. 1-2]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
'Battle of Hohenlinden' 'On Linden when the Sun was low/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Oh thou who driest the mourner's tear/...' 'Moore' [epigraph from Psalms not transcribed]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Extract from Moore's Love of the Angels' [The Second Angels Story, ll. 1043-1066]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'They tell us of an Indian tree/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Maingay [?] Print: Unknown
'A Fragment' 'And say when summoned from the world and thee/...' ['The Pleasures of Hope', part one, ll. 239-248. Some changes in punctuation]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Lines written by Montgomery on Home' 'There is a spot of earth...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'There's a bliss beyond all the Minstrel has told/...' ['Light of the Haram' ll. 648-655]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Took Beckman's "History of Inventions" to the Library; I have been very much entertained with it. Brought the "Gent. Mag" for 1793.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Read Home's "tragedy of Douglas", I was much pleased with it. I have seen it remarked, I believe in the "Memoirs of Living Authors", that Home [...] has never been able to please an English audience with any but Douglas.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'I think Mrs Montague [sic] has fully vindicated Shakespeare from the objections of Voltaire [...] Her three dialogues of the dead at the end of her essay, are I think very good ones.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Brought...a translation of the Greek, Latin, French and Italian quotations in the "Pursuits of Literature" which I had rather felt the want of in pursuing the work... I began with this preface but it was so dull that I gave it up after reading about a dozen pages of it. [The Pursuits] needs no apologist. It will stand with posterity on the same shelf as Juvenal, Boileau and Pope.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'It being the Saturday previous to the annual meeting at the SS Library I was oblig[e]d to return, rather unwillingly, the "Life of Macklin" without having finished the volume. I have found what I have read more entertaining than I expected from the account given in the "Monthly Review" some months past.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'She [Mrs Montagu] is characterised in this manner in the first part of the "Pursuits of Literature"; comparing the commentators upon Shakespeare [transcribes note on Montagu's essay]. I shall perhaps be accused of want of taste in sending Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" home unread & indeed I can give no good reason why I did so.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Read the first 3 parts of the "Pursuits of Literature", of these the first I admire the most. There are people who will not allow that the author has either wit or learning, or is capable of writing good poetry. I think that wit & learning may be found in every page & that in some parts the poetry is excellent. I will give an example. Page 19. [Two pages of commentary and extracts]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Finished the last vol of Beckmann's "History of Inventions"; I do not know the book that contains a greater variety of information mixed with so much amusement, than these 3 volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'search Blackstone and Goldsmith's "History"; much struck with style of latter; deserving, I think, to be more talked of'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
'Read papers, and last number but one of Cob. a little in the Milton. Licence for universal printing: and in Thucydides'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Unknown
'Afterwards, when upstairs, Mrs Montagu's "Letters" which I think very highly of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
'Found printed paper from Basil Montagu and sat up writing notes to detect its sophistry.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham
'Went on with Basil Montagu, a most shallow reasoner'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham
'I'm off reading this period, glance at Insanity Bir, and open Marjorie's British Commonwealth by Ramsay Muir, at the every page that shows so plainly how Napoleon first won Europe and then set about Britain. Just as Hitler would like to do now. So nicely put. These two books suddenly show me how we stand in this war
and how we must fight for out very existence. . . .Yes, I see all at once what we are up against -- How British would fight against any invasion here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'"Mary" At fond sixteen my roving Heart Was pierced by love's delightful Dart, ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'Evening by Charlotte Smith Oh soothing hour, when glowing Day, ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'The Three Black Crows Two honest tradesmen meeting in the Strand'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'That Man, I trow, is doubly curs't, Who of the best doth make the worst, ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'The Morning lark ascends on high And with its music greets the Sky... [6 lines]'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'To Love thou blam'st me not; for love thou say'st/Leads up to Heaven/ is both the way and guide/...' 'Milton'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'O Thou for whom my lyre Istring/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'The Dying Christian' 'Christianity rears its trophies on the tomb, treasure up then these best of stanzas in the heart' 'Spirit--leave thine house of clay!/...' [ll. 11-16, 49-56]
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'An Evening contemplation in a College; in imitation of Greys Elegy in a country Churchyard "The curfew tolls the hour of closing gates;/ With jarring sound the porter turns the key..."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'The Minstrel Boy' 'The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone, /... Moore. Benj. Beanlands, Otley, December 1831'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Beanlands
'To Fortune' 'I care not fortune what you deny me, ... J. Thompson'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Beanlands group
'My Ain Fire Side' 'O, I hae seen great ones...' >From the Nithsdale and Galloway Songs
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Elegy by Mr J. Hunter Sigh not ye winds as passing oer, The Chambers of the dead ye fly... J.H.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Lines by Mrs Siddons Say what's the brightest wreath of fame, ... >From Campbell's Life of Mrs Siddons Dec 1834'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Lift up thine eyes afflicted soul, ... James Montgomery'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group Print: Serial / periodical
'Graves of a Household' 'They grew in beauty side by side, ...' 'Mrs Hemans'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'As a beam oer the face of the waters may glow, ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'The Wish' 'Oh! Had we some bright little isle of our own,... S.W. 1821'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: 'S.W.'
'Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Milton's sonnet on his Blindness "When I consider howmy light is spent"'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
'Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.[...] you cannot avoid reading [him] aloud-to your-self or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one-and it degenerates into an audience.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Book
'[Part of a description of his wife] very impatient of contradiction, Reproof She cannot Brook- Milton' [This is a misquotation of 'restraint she will not brook', Book IX, l.1184].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Shaw Print: Book
'transcript of passages from chapter 4 under the commonplce book heading "non jurors"'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Fortescue Aland
'lookd into "Maddox on the culture of flowers" and the "Flora Domestica" which with a few improvments and additions woud be one of the most entertaining books ever written - if I live I will write one on the same plan'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Lookd into Miltons "Paradise Lost" I once read it thro when I was a boy at the time I liked the "Death of Abel" better [...] I cannot help smiling at my young fancys in those days of happy ignorance'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Lookd into Thompsons Winter there is a freshness about it I think superior to the others [...] the following minute descriptions are great favourites of mine [...] [he misquotes ll 104-5, 130-31]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Yesterday morning I received the enclosed note from that most conceited and not over-well-bred Mons. de Lamartine. I desired my friend Madame Belloc to use her own discretion in reporting my criticisms on his Histoire des Girondins, but requested that she would convey to him the thanks and admiration of our family for the manner in which he mentioned the Abbe Edgeworth, and our admiration of the beauty of the writing of that whole passage in the work...
I feel, and I am sure so will you and Mr. Butler, "What an egotist and what a puppy it is!" But ovation has turned his head.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
[An account of the boy's secret reading, and how his parents only found out when he asked a question about his reading].
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [a boy known to Elizabeth Hamilton] Print: Book
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made lifeworth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made life worth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
'We might mention the Rambler, the Guardian, and Shakespeare, as her favourites among older writers; and, among modern works, Hannah More's writings, memorials of a Departed friend, Private Life and others. From such books she was in the habit, with a sound judgement and a ready pen, of making extracts. Some of which have been collected and preserved...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Birch Print: Book
Letter from Aikin to her brother Edmund, dated March 1818: 'It is curious to observe the native eloquence of Humboldt struggling with the encombrance of all the sciences. Did ever mortal man study so many ologies, or travel with so many ometers!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Letter from Lucy Aikin to her niece Sue, dated Nov.17, 18..?: Aikin has been reading Mackintosh, and comments on the suitability of philosophical reading for women.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Two very long quotations:
1. 'Speech is as subject to interpretation there is so great a difference between indescretion and malice...'
2. 'Mythology. The promiscuous assemblage of truth and fiction would long since have been universally exploded...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Remark that this publication was 'Abt the Test Act', so presumably read it.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
24 Oct 1788:
'Smith's version of Longinus on the Sublime, a translation with notes and observations - is a credit to the author and reflects lustre on Longinus himself.
[Long quotation]: "to the unlearned also it may be of use ... an inclination to literature"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
13 Dec 1788
Another long quotation from Smith's translation:
'The Sublime is a certain force in discourse... from these three particulars joined together.'
Also listed Longinus's five sources of the sublime.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'Maybe to neutralise the Penny Dreadful, Cassells brought out the Penny Classics. These had a bluish-green cover and were world famous novels in abridged form, but sixty or seventy pages. And W.T. Stead brought out the Penny Poets. The covers of these were pimply surface-paper, a bright orange colour, and they contained selections from Longfellow, Tennyson, Keats, and many others. I first read "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline" in the Penny Poets and thought them marvellous; so marvellous that I began to write 'poetry' myself. Stead also brought out another penny book; this had a pink cover and contained selections from the ancient classics: stories from Homer, the writings of Pliny the younger, Aesop's "Fables". I took a strong fancy to Aesop, he was a Greek slave from Samos, in the sixth century BC, and workpeople were only just beginning to be called "wage slaves". I read all these; non-selective and Catholic my reading...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'I had not heard of "Wind in the Willows" until I read it during the summer holiday of my seventeenth year!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'We had read at school in our Reading Books, gorgeous bits from Macaulay's "History" -the Trial of the Seven Bishops and the Relief of Derry -and it was therefore natural that I should pounce with my penny at the sight of a copy of his essay on "Warren Hastings", which hit my eye on almost my first visit to the Row... I read it, I remember, on the Embankment -lying in the sun on my belly on the flat top of the ornamental arch, near Cleopatra's needle, up which a boy could climb... The series which included this edition of "Warren Hastings" gave an obvious first step along this road. It was one of Cassells National Library, a series of literary classics edited by Henry Morley, Professor of English Literature at London University, sold for 3d. paper and 6d. cloth. New or secondhand they opened an enticing field for adventurous exploration. So did a parallel series of shilling volumes the Universal Library issued by Routledge, batches of which used to be dumped upon the secondhand market and sold for 4d a copy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'We had read at school in our Reading Books, gorgeous bits from Macaulay's "History" -the Trial of the Seven Bishops and the Relief of Derry -and it was therefore natural that I should pounce with my penny at the sight of a copy of his essay on "Warren Hastings", which hit my eye on almost my first visit to the Row... I read it, I remember, on the Embankment -lying in the sun on my belly on the flat top of the ornamental arch, near Cleopatra's needle, up which a boy could climb... The series which included this edition of "Warren Hastings" gave an obvious first step along this road. It was one of Cassells National Library, a series of literary classics edited by Henry Morley, Professor of English Literature at London University, sold for 3d. paper and 6d. cloth. New or secondhand they opened an enticing field for adventurous exploration. So did a parallel series of shilling volumes the Universal Library issued by Routledge, batches of which used to be dumped upon the secondhand market and sold for 4d a copy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'I devoured poetry and nothing but poetry until I became insensible to poetry. Take an example; I happened upon some fat volumes of Campbell's "British Poets", the complete works of from four to eight poets in each volume which cost me 6d. apiece. They had shabby worn leather bindings, and the type was on the small side and closely set. But I ploughed through them, doggedly, as if reading for a bet, or an imposed task. One volume I remember contained the poetical works of Samuel Daniel, Browne, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Drummond (of Ha[w]thornden), John Donne, and some more minor ones. Another contained along with "also rans" Cowley, Milton and "Hudibras" Butler. And, I repeat, I ploughed through them with a stout heart, but little sense, and a dwindling understanding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'I devoured poetry and nothing but poetry until I became insensible to poetry. Take an example; I happened upon some fat volumes of Campbell's "British Poets", the complete works of from four to eight poets in each volume which cost me 6d. apiece. They had shabby worn leather bindings, and the type was on the small side and closely set. But I ploughed through them, doggedly, as if reading for a bet, or an imposed task. One volume I remember contained the poetical works of Samuel Daniel, Browne, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Drummond (of Ha[w]thornden), John Donne, and some more minor ones. Another contained along with "also rans" Cowley, Milton and "Hudibras" Butler. And, I repeat, I ploughed through them with a stout heart, but little sense, and a dwindling understanding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'Upon Mrs Digweed's mentioning that she had sent the Rejected Addresses to Mr Hinton, I began talking to her a little about them & expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh! dear, yes, very much; - very droll indeed; - the opening of the House! - & the striking up of the Fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say? - I sought no farther.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Upon Mrs Digweed's mentioning that she had sent the Rejected Addresses to Mr Hinton, I began talking to her a little about them & expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh! dear, yes, very much; - very droll indeed; - the opening of the House! - & the striking up of the Fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say? - I sought no farther.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Digweed Print: Book
'The Papillons have now got the Book [J & H Smith's "Rejected Addresses"] and like it very much; their niece Eleanor has recommended it most warmly to them. - [italics] She [end italics] looks like a rejected Addresser.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Papillon Family Print: Book
'The Papillons have now got the Book [J & H Smith's "Rejected Addresses"] and like it very much; their niece Eleanor has recommended it most warmly to them. - [italics] She [end italics] looks like a rejected Addresser.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Papillon Print: Book
'And what are their Biglands & their Barrows, their Macartneys & Mackenzies, to Capt. Pasley's Essay on the Military Police of the British Empire, & the Rejected Addresses?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Read a little of "Paradise lost"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Worked for an hour to day at French and read some Grecian History, The latter is certainly rather dry.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'learnt some French from "Allendorff" read some of "La petite Fadette" a novel by George Sand, and also some of Schmitz "History of Greece", it all helps to pass away the time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Have been working at French & reading "History of Greece"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I cannot work this weather it is too hot, I have read a chapter of the "History of Greece" to day and that is all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Finished the "Epicurean" by Moore, it is a sad story but very prettily written; began to read the play of "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare as I had all night, I was able to stay up till late - learning by heart "Paradise & the Peri"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Finished the "Epicurean" by Moore, it is a sad story but very prettily written; began to read the play of "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare as I had all night, I was able to stay up till late - learning by heart "Paradise & the Peri"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'Reading "Le Roi des Montagnes" by Ed About'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Reading Macauleys "history of England" for the 2nd time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I have been reading Macauleys "history of England", and have got thro 5 volumes, it is very interesting'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I am reading Macauleys "history of England", it is so interesting that it keeps me up at night, later than I ought to remain, it is a book, that when once a person has commenced it, he finds it impossible to leave off, until he has finished it -'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I have finished Macaulay's "history of England" and am now reading his speeches, they are interesting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I have finished Macaulay's "history of England" and am now reading his speeches, they are interesting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Reading a book by Alexr Dumas fils called "Antonine", a stupid book in my opinion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Lady Lee's Widowhood by Captain Hamley R.A. it is not so good a book as I expected, it has been praised too much; so that I do not think so much of it, as if I had never heard it spoken of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Reading the "Les filles des platre" by M. Xavier de Montepin it is like the generality of French Novels, and does not give a very exalted notions of French morals; the more I read French books, the more I am struck at the immense difference there is between the two nations that are only seperated [sic] by a narrow channel, twenty miles across; Customs manners & morals are entirely different; there is no nation in the world so much in love with domestic happiness & domestic comfort as the English, and none less so, than the French; that which affords great pleasure to our neighbours, excites only disgust in an Englishman; this I gather not only from the Books I read, but also from what I saw myself during my stay in France, and the older I get, the more thankful I am that I was not born a Frenchman.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'I am now reading a history of England by Douglas Hamilton, it seems to be very well written'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'As I expect a heap of books from England, I am having two book shelves put up in my cabin. I am afraid it will darken it a little, mais n'importe I am reading the constitutional history of England by Mr Hamilton it is very interesting. as soon as my books arrive I shall set to work in good earnest and try and improve myself, I think I have the brains, what I want is the application; my duties too interfere very much with any regular study.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Hobbies. Mentioned 10 times. Twice as normal, three times increased (walking, stamp collecting, reading). One "war outlook; making of aeroplanes, etc", one "Juniors play 'Germans and English' and 'Shoot the Dictator'". One "reading now of Houseman [sic], Eliot, and Owen", one "extra keenness in inter-school conferences", one "debates on hobbies".'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon
'Home and to bed, leaving my wife reading in "Polixandre".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
'So to Pauls churchyard and there bought "Montelion", which this yeardoth not prove so good as the last was; and so after reading it, I burned it. After reading of that and the Comedy of "The Rump", which is also very silly, I went to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'earley up in the morning to read the "Seamans grammar and dictionary" I lately have got, which doth please me exceedingly well.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'The afternoon, while Will is abroad, I spent in reading "The Spanish Gypsy", a play not very good, though commended much.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Read B[isho]p Andrew's Devotions & various other prayers. Read Blair's Sermon 'On our ignorance of good & evil in this life' [...] Read portions of Bryant 'On the plagues of Egypt' [...] In the Evening read Archp. Tellotison's Sermon 'On the happiness of heaven', which I found interesting & in simple language... Read sev.l Poetical pieces suitable to this sacred day among others Edmaston's delightful sonnet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'Used B[isho]p Andrew's exct Prayers both mg & aftn - read one of Blair's sermons morng. Evg read one of B[isho]p Moore's sermons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Unknown
'Yes, I read more as have more time- but have gone onto novels and escapist literature- cannot read such books as The Mortal Storm and books like Fallen Bastions now. I also try to keep up with political reading but find it rather difficult- for example to follow the communist line- but still read the Daily worker, Tribune,
New Statesman, each week to try and get a composite picture but get depressed as the papers differ so from the daily papers such as the Telegraph, Mail and Express.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'and so I left them with him and went with Mr Moore to Grayes Inne to his chamber, and there he showed me his old Cambdens "Brittannia", which I intended to buy of him and so took it away with me and left it at St Pauls churchyard to be bound'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'My dear Caroline, I am very glad to have an opportunity of answering your agreable [sic] little Letter. You seem to be quite my own Neice [sic] in your feelings towards Mde de Genlis. I do not think I could even now, at my sedate time of Life, read "Olimpe et Theophile" without being in a rage. It really is too bad! Not allowing them to be happy together, when they are married. Don't talk of it, pray. I have just let your Aunt Frank the 1st vol. of Les Veilles du Chateau, for Mary Jane to read.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Then we fell to reading of a book which I saw the other day at my Lord Sandwichs, entended for the late King, finely bound up - a treatise concerning the benefit the Hollanders make of our fishing; but whereas I expected great matters from it, I find it a very impertinent book; and though some things good, yet so full of tautologys that we were weary of it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and so home and to supper. And after reading part of "Bussy D'Ambois", a good play I bought today - to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Reading, MacNeice "Autumm Journal". I enjoyed it very much and think it good. A. Werth, "Moscow '41". Very good - clear - interesting. One of these books which fill out the mind a bit.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Reading H.V. Morton, "I James Blunt". I read it in half an hour. It is propaganda but first-class propaganda and interesting and very readable and horribly convincing. It should shake up the complacent. If invasion succeeded it would be like that here. The weak point was the suggestion that all the dominions had been overthrown too - at least New Zealand had.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Just now I'm reading books [of] what I call Geography plus books that give great insight in [to] different places. I'm reading now the causes and conditions that brought about this war. (Warning Light of Asia, Samson)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'It appealed to me - I like books about the country and farms and country life in general. (Lost Fields: McLaverty)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I read various types of novels. Some books give long involved descriptions. I don't mind a little of that, but in addition the story has to have a certain amount of faction....I've just finished "Escape" by Bessie Myers. I rather liked it. I admired the efficiency of the girls, as well as the incidents they experienced as a result of their flight. Part of it is in Diary Form, it gave you a certain sense of intimacy, and it
didn't seem a bit fantastic.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Oh, I like funny books, like Thorne Smith, you know, nothing too serious. ("For whom the Bell Tolls", Hemingway, was very good).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Oh, I like funny books, like Thorne Smith, you know, nothing too serious. ("For whom the Bell Tolls", Hemingway, was very good).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I liked Rebecca and 'Gone with the Wind".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I liked Rebecca and 'Gone with the Wind".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I like anything good....something like "The Stars Looked Down" or "Gone with the Wind"...."Fame is the Spur" is a lovely book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'"I don't read much - oh, a very mixed lot - "My Son Absalom" and "Fame is the Spur"' [then in response to question from interviewer] '- who, them? I enjoy travel books, that one there was so famous .!.. "Something in Tartary", extremely nice". (Fleming).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I like Travel books - something uplifting - teaches you something. Of course, I like dirty books too....Have you read John Blunt - you ought to - "Mein Kampf". Oh, I liked "Rebecca" and "Gone with the Wind".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I like Travel books - something uplifting - teaches you something. Of course, I like dirty books too....Have you read John Blunt - you ought to - 'Mein Kampf'. Oh, I liked 'Rebecca' and 'Gone with the Wind'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'H. Williamson's "Norfolk Farm", for the detail making me feel I had lived those hard days myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I went up vexed to my chamber and there fell examining my new "Concordance" that I have bought with Newmans, the best that ever was out before, and I find mine altogether as copious as that and something larger, though the order in some respects not so good, that a man may think a place is missing, when it is only put in another place.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
?Dr Milligen?s paper, he must re-write the last half of it; it has cost me three hours this morning, and I can make nothing of it. I think very little of the gentleman who writes so complacently from Northampton with his first of a Series; but I suppose he?s a great man in a small way.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Unknown
'The favourite literary pabulum of us boys at school, however, was less classical: "penny bloods" and other Weeklies issued in penny sheets, such as "Sweeny Todd the Barber". Romantic stories of highwaymen circulated freely from boy to boy until reduced to rags: Dick Turpin, Spring-heeled Jack, the gallant Claude Duval, gracefully dancing on the greensward with the ladies he had robbed, Edith the Captive, Edith Heron, with what impatience we awaited the issue of the next number, with what absorbing interest we followed the thrilling adventure!... What it did was to evoke the reading habit, and to one boy at least that was a valuable endowment. Nor did the "Boys of England" proffer a much healthier pabulum to the hunger of the young barbarian for extra-lawful adventure. I can even today visualise the number I read with the lovely alliterate title of its opening story, "Alone in the Pirates' Lair" - and the front page illustration - Jack Harkaway, sitting before the pirate on the island, open-eyed, drinking in the recital of his hazardous deeds;...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Okey Print: Serial / periodical
'Mrs C read me part of Murray's Power of religion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mrs] Cole Print: Book
'Read occasionally during my walk in Macdiarmid's "Sketches of nature".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'I have been reading a sweet work lately, and earnestly recommend it to you my dear, pray let me have your opinion when you have read it. "Looking into Jesus" is the title, written by Isaac Ambrose [sic] The original was a large book, the one I speak of is about the size of a New Testament having been abridged by Rev Robert Cox-Hackney to render it a more saleable work.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marshall Print: Book
'Mrs Hannah More's "Practical piety" is a very useful book I think, perhaps you have read it if you think of any [underlined] you wish me to read my dear Susan please to name them [...] I am much favor'd with books which the kindness of friends supply, but while drinking with pleasure of some streams, I find the water of life only [underlined] in the Fountain [underlined]! I need not say I mean the Bible.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marshall Print: Book
'In discussing Meredith's "Evan Harrington" (1861) in a letter to Campbell, Arthur reveals his Victorian-orientated interst in the autobiographical element in novels: "... there is really a wonderful sympathy & tenderness towards the suffering Lady Dunstane. Does it not seem as if she may be, at least in some points, his wife? I should like to think so."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
'. H. Ewing's diary entry: 'In the evening Boy read Milton to me and I worked'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander (Rex) Ewing Print: Book
'This day the first of the "Oxford Gazettes" came out, which is very pretty, full of news, and no folly in it - wrote by Williamson.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Newspaper
'Mr Jaegle makes us read an English book that is called "The Vicar of Wakefield" which is very pretty, interesting, well wrote and where there are some very good characters'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'[Betsey Wynne:] We read this evening "Les Femmes Savantes" and "Les Precieuses Ridicules" of the Theatre of Moliere. I thought I should die from laughing in hearing the latter piece which is as amusing as it is possible to be. [Eugenia Wynne] Mr de Regis read to us and made all the possible faces for Mascarille. I find that France has made a great loss when Moliere died. It is said that he died during an acting of "Le Malade Imaginaire", one of his own pieces for in straining to make himself appear the more natural he burst a vein in his chest and died a few hours after. It is wearying that such a superior talent as that which was possessed by Moliere should not be immortal. Excellent author! better poet! Who has more glorified the amiable Thalia? What more can one desire?'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: de Regis (M.) Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
'[Betsey Wynne:] We read this evening "Les Femmes Savantes" and "Les Precieuses Ridicules" of the Theatre of Moliere. I thought I should die from laughing in hearing the latter piece which is as amusing as it is possible to be. [Eugenia Wynne] Mr de Regis read to us and made all the possible faces for Mascarille. I find that France has made a great loss when Moliere died. It is said that he died during an acting of "Le Malade Imaginaire", one of his own pieces for in straining to make himself appear the more natural he burst a vein in his chest and died a few hours after. It is wearying that such a superior talent as that which was possessed by Moliere should not be immortal. Excellent author! better poet! Who has more glorified the amiable Thalia? What more can one desire?'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: de Regis (M.) Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
[Betsey Wynne]'Our reading today was of Moliere, Mr de Regis read "Le Tartufe" which is his finest piece'. [Eugenia comments the next day, 'Le vilain homme que ced Tartufe! cependant je crois qu'il y a bien des caracteres aussi ambominables et aussie hypocrites que cela'.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: de Regis (M.) Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
'As long as your last [letter] was, I read it over thrice in less then an hower, though to say truth I skipt some on't the last time, I could not read my owne confession soe offten. Love is a Terrible word, and I should blush to death if any thing but a letter accused mee on't . . .'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Manuscript: Letter
'Ten thousand thanks to you for Madame de Noyer's Letters; I wish Signor Roselli may be as diverting to you as [italics] she [italics]has been to me. The stories are very extraordinary, but I know not whether she has not added a few [italics] agremens [italics] of invention to them: however, there is some truth. I have been told, in particular, that the history of the fair unfortunate Madame de Barbesierre is so, by people who could not be suspected of romancing. Don't you think that the court of England would furnish stories as entertaining? Say nothing of my malice; but I cannot help wishing that Madame de Noyer would turn her thoughts a little that way. I fancy she would succeed better than the authoress of the "New Atalantis". I am sure I like her method much better, which has, I think, hit that difficult path between the gay and the severe, and is neither too loose, nor affected by pride.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'. . . I have just finished Guy de Maupassant?s Bel Ami. One of the most obviously truthful, British-matron-shocking, disgusting, attractive, overwhelmingly-powerful novels I have ever read. It would be a good antidote to Le Jardin de Berenice. Would you like it?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'we came back in the dark and read "L'Ecole des Maris" and after we played at 21'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
[Betsey]:'The gazettes from France were read this evening there was nothing remarquable in them. We began again "Les Precieuses Ridicules" but had no time to for supper was called'.
[Eugenia]: 'In the evening the Paris papers were read I did not give them any attention then we began to reread for Madame de Bombelles "Les Precieuses Ridicules" which was interrupted by supper'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Unknown
'As Mr de Regis was gone to St Gall today, M. l'Abbe read to us "Le Medecin Malgre lui" of Moliere a charming comedy that diverted me greatly'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: M. l'Abbe Print: Unknown
'I spent the evening reading with Mama "the Imitation of Jesus Christ" until supper'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'Friday, 1st January,
Completed my paper on Mazzini.
Read: ?One Act Plays of today? 2nd vol. (Harrap)
?Autocrat of the Breakfast table? (O.W.Holmes).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Thursday, 7th January,
Offered Pat 19th January or 16th March for his friend?s lecture.
Smith does not expect to leave for the Coast until about October. He expects to go with Adams.
Read: ?History of Florence? ( Machiavelli)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Saturday, 16th January,
Left letter at Beechcroft for Milligan re continuance of Discussion Group through the summer. Also re donation from Club and Mr. Milligan?s date on syllabus.
Read ? ?Socialism: Critical and Constructive? (J.R. McDonald)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Thursday,28th January,
?Peer Gynt? is good stuff. I hope the Beechcroft Players tackle it some time. Though I suppose it has been done too often. In any case Bensham have done it and Beechcroft must set the pace, not follow the lead.
Read ? ?A chair on the Boulevard? (L. Merrick)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Monday, 8th February,
Gave the Anno Domini a miss. Tired. Reading Herrick.
Also Oppenheim ?The Great Impersonation?. How efficiently this stuff is written. Exciting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Wednesday, 10th February,
Wrote to Mr Robinson and to Mr. D. Paterson re lecture dates.
Read ?Omoo? (Melville)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Saturday,13th February,
Read ?Notre Coeur? (Guy de Maupassant)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Sunday, 21st February,
Discussion group ? nothing doing ? arrived late. Members busy with a game in which, with the help of a pin and a newspaper they lost or won pennies. Whisper it not in Gath ? I joined in and ? extreme of immorality ? lost !
Read ? ?The American? (Henry James)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'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
'Monday, 29th March,
A 21st birthday party at the Roberts?. Pleaded illness and got off. My clothes will hardly do. Bought Ira ?Far from the Madding Crowd?.
Wrote Adana people re printing press. Have decided on a course for the Club next year ? ?The English Historical Novel??a study of English history, manners and institutions. A lot can be done with this if the books are carefully chosen.
Read -- ?the Tragedy of Education (Edmond Holmes)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Thursday 24th June.
?The Spanish Farm? ? (R.H. Mottram).
Our ?Robin Hood? Pageant tonight (250 present). I see the ?Daily Post? criticism on poor casting. Quite right too.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Saturday 26th June
?At the Sign of the Black Moon? ? (Wyndham-Lewis)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Wednesday 30th June.
?Orphan Island? ? (Rose Macaulay).
Looked after the infants today while Teddie went to work. Then a walk in the evening and bringing my arrears of writing up to date. We must look Dad up tomorrow, he will be lonely and depressed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Thursday 1st July
This has been one of those demoralising days when a late rising leaves one unable to make any use of the shortened day. We should have gone to see Dad but left it too late. However, I have finished ?Orphan Island? and so added a rich recollection to my sum of experience. It is a great book. Really Great. The whole idea is inimitably that of the author of ?Told by an Idiot?. Rose Macauley?s chief charm is the delightful sustained humour of her prose. Every word is charmingly quiet and sweet, and yet how devastating the satire and the irony. What a pity. I have to admit to being so hopelessly ?orphan? since she finds so little in them but noise and sentiment.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Saturday 7th August
?The Untilled Field? ? (George Moore)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sunday 26th September
?The Long Trick?, - ?Bartimeus?
A delightfully quiet day at home. Reading and writing. Had an hour or two at the piano and showed form.
I like ?Bartimeus? ? in the mood. He is delightfully humorous in a somewhat lugubrious manner.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Thursday 14th October
?Roderick Random? (T. Smolett)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'We were told that a Bible and Testament were placed at the head of each bed; and we saw one convict reading "Recreations in Astronomy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Monday 13th December
?The Boost of the Golden Snail? ? (Macclure)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Saturday 25th December.
?Scrambles among the Alps? (Whymper)
Trying to get the proper atmosphere in a snow-less Christmas. Certainly, if any book could give it, it is this one.
Today has been rather a bore. The usual heavyweight dinner made everybody too somnolent to allow of any attempt at enjoyment. So we slept and read and ate and ? finally ? slept.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'5th January ? Wednesday.
I have taken out a list of the books I read last year; they total 83. Not so bad, considering that I always read the books I start on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'29th March, Tuesday.
?La Gar?onne? V. Marguerite.
30th March, Wednesday.
These last few days I have been reading Marguerite?s ?La Gar?onne?. I am disappointed. Instead of an exciting chronicle of debauchery, full of hints on sex-relationship, I find it simply a rather vigorous, but incurably sentimental treatise on Malthusianism. One or two of its scenes are realistic in the strictest sense, but for the rest, his heroine is a most romantic young lad who finishes up by falling in love properly and setting up in matrimony. But then I have always found the French sentimental.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'14th March 1929.
I had the ?Open Road? in my pocket, and we [G.M. and a friend, Miss Mundel] read bits together, and talked of ?Wander-thirst?, of Stevenson, of gardens, of tobacco, and (with E.V.L. in our minds) of ?Punch?. I recommended some of the glorious days I have passed in the country beyond St. Cloud with this book for company, and recited Stevenson?s ?Requiem? which Miss M?ndel liked and copied.
The Websters gave me three numbers of ?Punch? for my week-end reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'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
'I read over your Homer here with an infinite pleasure, and find several little passages explained, that I did not before entirely comprehend the beauty of...It would be too tedious to you to point out all the passages that relate to present customs.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on being read to as a child by her mother, Jane Sewell (nee Edwards; married 1802):
'I can recall now the pleasure with which (taking turns with my sisters) I used to jump up into her lap and listen whilst she read to us [italics]Anson's Voyages[end italics], or [italics]Lemprier's Tour to Morocco[end italics], or the [italics]History of Montezuma[end italics]. When she had finished, we all, kneeling round her, said our prayers and went to bed happy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at school:
'At Miss Crooke's [school] [...] we learned Pinnock's Catechisms of History and Geography [...] For religious instruction we read portions of the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles in a class every day, using Mrs. Trimmer's "Selections"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Miss Crooke's school, Newport, Isle of Wight. Print: Book
'My chief acquaintance with the writers of the eighteenth century is derived from reading to Aunt Lyddy papers in the [italics]Spectator[end italics] and [italics]The Rambler[end italics], Mason's plays, Addison's [italics]Cato[end italics], etc. This we were often called to do when we were invited to dine with Aunt Clarke [reader's great-aunt, to whom "Lyddy," Sewell's father's unmarried sister, a companion].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
'I took my two lessons with Mr Jaegle, we began to read "Les Voyages du Jeune Anarchasis". The little that I heard today pleased me enormously and the style is very fine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book
'I read today an English Tragedy by Thomson that pleased me much and made me like that author's works'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'Your whole letter is full of mistakes from one end to the other. I see you have taken your ideas of Turkey from that worthy author Dumont, who has written with equal ignorance and confidentiality. 'Tis a particular pleasure to me here, to read the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so far removed from truth, and so full of absurdities, I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women, whom 'tis certain they never saw, and talking very wisely of the genius of the men, into whose company they are never admitted; and very often describe mosques, which they dare not peep into.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'I hope we shall have soon the Odyssey from your happy hand, and I think I shall follow with singular pleasure the traveller Ulysses, who was an observer of men and manners, when he travels in your harmonious numbers.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'It is true, the excellence of the Iliad does not depend upon his merit or dignity, but I wish, nevertheless, that Homer had chosen a hero somewhat less pettish and less fantastic: a perfect hero is chimerical and unnatural, and consequently uninstructive; but it is also true that while the epic hero ought to be drawn with the infirmities that are the lot of humanity, he ought never to be represented as extremely absurd.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
'But I cannot forbear takng notice to you of a mistake of Gemelli (though I honour him in a much higher degree than any other voyage-writer): he says that there are no remains of Calcedon; this is certainly a mistake.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 20 June 1845:
'The Meyricks have been here today. Mr. Meyrick told Edwards [Sewell's brother] there was no doubt that Newman is going over to Rome, which agrees but little with an observation made by Dr. Pusey to G. F. a short time since that no one could know how devoted a servant of the Church Newman was till after his death. The Church though may mean the Catholic or Universal Church, and so Rome may be included. It is a horrid, startling notion, but a sermon of Newman's I was reading to-night would be a great safeguard against being led into mischief
by it. "Obedience, the remedy for religious perplexity."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 26 November 1846:
'I read nothing scarcely [...] Miss Martineau's [italics]Tales on the Game Laws[end italics] I began, but they are so dull to me that I have scarcely patience to finish. The thing I like about them is their fairness. The rich people are not all wretches, though Miss Martineau's sympathies are evidently with the poor.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Unknown
Second confinement in the Prison at Hull:
'I remember how when the light began to fail of evenings, I often risked punishment by getting up to my window to finish an essay by Macaulay, whose style charmed me, or one of those vibrant, pulpitating lectures on hero-worship by Carlyle!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'Reading - for want of something better - "Macaulay's Essays". He is a born Edinburgh Reviewer, this Macaulay; and, indeed, a type-reviewer - an authentic specimen-page of nineteenth century "literature". He has the right, omniscent tone, and air, and the true knac; of administering reverential flattery to British civilisation, British prowess, honour, enlightenment, and all that, especially to the great nineteenth century and its astounding civilisation, that is, to his readers. It is altogether a new thing in the history of mankind, this triumphant glorification of a current century upon being the century it is...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'After breakfast, when the sun burned too fiercely on deck, went below, threw off coat and waistcoat for coolness, and began to read Macaulay's essay on Bacon - "the great English teacher", as the reviewer calls him. And to do the reviewer justice, he understands Bacon, knows what Bacon did, and what he did not; and therefore sets small store by that illustrious Chimera's new "method" of investigating truth...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
''4th-11th- Reading Homer and basking in the sun upon the sea side of the breakwater. Weather delicious. Have also been swallowing autobiographies - Gifford's, Thomas Elwood's, Capt. Crichton's autobiography by Dean Swift.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'I have omitted, of late, to set down the titles of - for want of a better name I must call them - books, that I have been reading these past months; chiefly because they are of such utter offal that there is no use in remembering so much as their names. Madame Pichler's "Siege of Vienna" ...; a life of Walter Scott, by one Allen, advocate, ... In truth the book is very presumptuous and very stupid; yet it is far excelled in both these respects by another I am reading now, a life of Cowper, by Dr Memes (bookseller's hack literator of that name). Not that the writer is without genius; for he has succeeded in making a book as repulsive as it is possible for a book giving anything like a narrative of Cowper's life to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'Have been reading in "Tait's Magazine" an elaborate review of a new book by the indefatigable Government literator, Macaulay - no less than a "History of England".'
'NB: Bothwell, V.D.L. 4 August 1851 - I have read the book itself here; for, having become one of the most popular books in the world, it is even in the village library of Bothwell. Mem. - It is a clever, base, ingenious, able and shallow political pamphlet in two volumes. This writer has the rare art of colouring a whole narrative by an apparently unstudied adjective or two, and telling stories of frightful falsehoods by one of the most graceful of adverbs. What is worse, the fellow believes in no human virtue - proves Penn a pimping parasite, because he hated penal laws; and makes a sort of Bromwicham hero out of the dull Dutch Deliverer'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 28 January [?1865]:
'I am reading [italics]French Essays on Literature[end italics] [sic] -- so clever they are! Charles de Remusat describes the French of the eighteenth century as "Des gens qui ne lisaient qu'afin de pouvoir parler". Could anything be more apt?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell!
Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell!
Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I couldn?t get her [?George Paston?] to give George Moore a good word. I have just been reading his first novel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Spent most of the day reading the "Paradise Lost"; I was quite delighted with it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Wynne Print: Book
'I have just returned from reading a chapter of your book to my wife and her daughter. There was not a dry eye at the table, and the reader had to suspend operations, choking upon sobs. They were tears of pride and sympathy. I beg to offer you this family anecdote as a testimony to the success of your reminiscences. Of making books there is said to be no end, and I have made many. But if I could only think once, before I died, that I had given so much and such noble pleasure to a reader, I should be more than rewarded. You have made me proud and glad to be a Scotsman.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'The individual...was a fellow-worker of mine for nigh two years in Dartmoor. He had, in his younger days, passed through the workhouse; read the pestilent literature of rascaldom which has educated so many criminal characters in this country; then graduated in the "School", and ultimately became a noted burglar. His reading in prison had been pretty extensive, while his intelligence would have insured him a position in society above that of a labouring man... I could not help looking upon it as a very novel experience, for even this grotesque world, to have to listen to a man who could delight in a literary discussion, quote all the choice parts of Pope's "Illiad", and boast of having read Pascal and Lafontaine in the original, maintain, in sober argument, that "thieving was an honourable pursuit", and that religion, law, patriotism and bodily disease were the real and only enemies of humanity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I noticed, with pleasure, the insertion of your "Critique": but was very much mortified, - at seeing the pitiful conclusion which the Editor had foisted in,- in addition to the error in the signature. 'Tis a matter of no consequence - only it [italics]ruffles[end italics] in the mean-time. Our Bard has at length compelled them to print his poetry - and prose too, for, was not that same [italics]Blattum-Bulgium[end italics] disquisition his? And had not he a letter last week "on Burns"? - What a flo[w] of language - what a strength of epithet he pos[s]esses!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'I was greatly diverted by your specimen of Mr. Maclaurin's prose-run-mad. He seems to have imbibed, in the full sense of the word, the melody of his native mountains; - and who can doubt, that, in a short time he will chaunt right pleasantly, with Celtic sweetness the praises and perfections of this [underscored twice]lamb of his heart[end underscoring]!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
'A-propos of Authors - This evening at tea, Miss Ramsay (our governess) inquired at me if I had read that affecting representation of the Calamities of Literary men, in the last Courier;- replying in the negative, she handed me the paper: - and judge of my surprise when, looking at the bottom, I recognised the signature of Mr. Murray - You will readily conceive, I read it with additional interest on this account - but allow me to remark (and this is all the Critique I design to pass on it) that it needed no such adventitious circumstance to recommend it. The melancholy truth which it contains, and the elegant sympathysing manner in which it is told, speak for themselves. - In sober sadness, now, did you really see that same melancholy old author, at Merchiston? - or is he not a creature of Mr. Murray's brain? Tell me whether I am right in being inclined to adopt the latter opinion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'I did not tell you that when I left Edinr for Dumfries, I put your paper in my pocket - and whilst my right worthy compagnons de voyage (for I came in the Mail from Moffat) were sunk in politics, post-horses, farming &c &c. I took out my friend's theorem, and leaving the base clod-hoppers to welter on among drains and dunghills and bullocks and balances of power -I entered Dumfries wholly disengaged from sublunary things; and well nigh perswaded that an angle [underscored twice]might [end underscore] be trisected'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Unknown
'? I had a sight of ?Waverley? soon after I received your letter, and I cannot help saying that, in my opinion, it is by far the best novel that has been written these thirty years - at least, that I know of. Eben. Cruickshanks, mine host of The Seven Golden Candlesticks, and Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, are described in the spirit of Smollett or Cervantes. Who does not shed a tear for the ardent Vich Ian Vohr, and the unshaken Evan Dhu, when perishing amid the shouts of an English mob, they refuse to swerve from their principles? And who will refuse to pity the marble Callum Beg, when, hushed in the strife of death, he finishes his earthly career on Clifton Moor, far from the blue mountains of the North, without one friend to close his eyes? 'Tis an admirable performance. Is Scott still the reputed author?'
Editor's addition: [In this letter Carlyle mentions reading Euler's ?Algebra,?1 Addison's ?Freeholder,?2 Cuvier's ?Theory of the Earth,?3 Moli?re's ?Comedies,? the monthly reviews, critical journals, etc.]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have read the four PIL which we have had. They seem to give all the information
required accurately and clearly, but sometimes they have tried to put things too
clearly, almost childishly, and seem to underrate the intelligence of the public.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon
'I am highly indebted to you for Hume. I like his essays better than any thing I have read these many days. He has prejudices, he does maintain errors - but he defends his positions, with so much ingenuity, that one would be almost sorry to see him dislodged. His Essays on "Superstition & Enthusiasm", on "the Dignity & meanness of Human Nature" and several others, are in my opinion admirable both in matter & manner: - particularly the first where his conclusions might be verified by instances, with which we are all acquainted. The manner, indeed, of all is excellent: - the highest & most difficult effect of art - the appearance of its absence - appears throughout. But many of his opinions are not to be adopted - How odd does it look for instance to refer all the modifications of "National character", to the influence of moral causes. Might it not be asserted with some plausibility, that even those which he denominates moral causes, originate from physical circumstances? Whence but from the perpetual contemplation of his dreary glaciers & rugged glens - from his dismal broodings in his long & almost solitary nights, has the Scandinavian conceived his ferocious Odin, & his horrid "spectres of the deep"? Compare this with the copper-castles and celestial gardens of the Arabian - and we must admit that physical causes have an influence on man. I read "the Epicurean," "the Stoic," "the Platonist" & "the Sceptic" under some disadvantage. They are perhaps rather clumsily executed - and the idea of David Hume declaiming, nay of David Hum[e] making love appears not less grotesque than would that of ad ? -oc [covered by seal: d]ancing a French cotillon. As a whole however [I am de]lig[hted w]ith the book, and if you can want it, I shall mo[reover] give it a second perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Have you seen the last Edinr review? There are several promising articles in it - Scotts "Lord of the Isles," Standard Novels, Lewis' & Clarke's travels up the Missouri, (of which a most delectable account is given in the Quarterly), Joanna Southcott, &c &c. I have been revising Akenside, since I saw you. - He pos[s]esses a warm imagination & great strength & beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not like Campbell's "Hope" consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner - & selected to illustrate his positions - it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers - He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles & had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity, he has been severely caricatured by Smollet[t] in his Peregrine Pickle - under the character of the fantastic English Doctor in Franc[e] - When we mention Shaftesbury - is his book in your pos[s]ession, and can you let me have a reading of it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The best book I have read, since I wrote you, is Hume's "Essays, political and literary". It is indeed a most ingenious production - characterised by acuteness and originality, in all its parts. I have not room to tell you where I agree with its Author, and where I differ; nor how highly I admire his reasoning powers. What pity that he is a Deist! How much might his strong talents have accomplished in the cause of truth, when they did so much in that of error! It is indeed melancholy to behold so many men of talent, in our times all leaning to the same side - but I am much inclined to believe, that the reign of infidelity is past its height.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I was re[a]ding lately, Stewart's "life of Robertson", Smith's "wealth of nations", and Kames' "Essays on the principles of morality". The first is a sensible sort of book - unworthy, however, of Stewart. Dr Smith is a man of much research, & appears to understand completely all the bearings of his complicated subject. I have read his first and second volumes with much pleasure. He always writes like a philosopher. With regard to Lord Kames - his works are generally all an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity and in this volume the latter quality it appears to me, considerably preponderates. It is Metaphysical; upon Belief, identity, Necessity &c &c and I devoutly wish that no friend of mine may ever come to study it - unless he wish to learn -
To weave fine cobwebs fit for scull
That's empty when the moon is full.
- and in that case he cannot study under a more proper master.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I was re[a]ding lately, Stewart's "life of Robertson", Smith's "wealth of nations", and Kames' "Essays on the principles of morality". The first is a sensible sort of book - unworthy, however, of Stewart. Dr Smith is a man of much research, & appears to understand completely all the bearings of his complicated subject. I have read his first and second volumes with much pleasure. He always writes like a philosopher. With regard to Lord Kames - his works are generally all an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity and in this volume the latter quality it appears to me, considerably preponderates. It is Metaphysical; upon Belief, identity, Necessity &c &c and I devoutly wish that no friend of mine may ever come to study it - unless he wish to learn -
To weave fine cobwebs fit for scull
That's empty when the moon is full.
- and in that case he cannot study under a more proper master.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'It is about ten days since I got rid of a severe inflam[m]ation-of the throat, which confined me to the house for two weeks. During two or three days, I was not able to speak plainly; & you will easily conceive, that I passed my time very heavily. I endeavoured to read several things: I tried a book of modern Biography "The British Plutarch"; but soon finding it to be a very miserable book, I shut it for good and all. I next opened the "Spectator" - and tho' his ja[u]nty manner but ill accorded with my sulky humours, I toiled thro' a volume & a half, with exemplary patience. Lastly, I had recourse to Lord Chesterfield's "advice to his son"; and I think I never before so distinctly saw the pitiful disposition of this Lord. His directions concerning washing the face & paring the nails are indeed very praiseworthy: and I should be content to see them printed in a large type, and placed in frames above the chimneypieces of boarding-schools - for the purpose of enforcing the duties of cleanliness, upon the rising generation. But the flattery, the dissimulation & paltry cunning that he is perpetually recommending, leave one little room to regret that Chesterfield was not his father. Such was the result of my studies, in my sickness: - a result highly unfavourable to those feelings of prostration before high birth & weight of purse, which (many tell us) it is so eminently the duty of all men to cultivate. Indeed this is not the first time that I have noticed in my mind, a considerable tendency to undervalue the great ones of this world'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I am glad to hear that you are getting forward so well with Homer. I know almost nothing about him - having never read any thing but Pope's translation, and not above a single book of the original - & that several years ago. Indeed I know very little of the Greek at any rate. I have several times begun to read Xenophon's anabasis completely: but always gave it up in favour of something else - You complain that nothing that you do leaves a vestige behind it: - what do you make of Homer?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'For the rest - I continued reading Newton's "Principia" with considerable perseverance & little success - till on arriving a short way into the third book - I discovered that I had too little knowledge of Astronomy, to understand his reasoning rightly. And I forthwith sent to Edinr for De Lambre's "abr?g? d'Astronomie"; and in the mean time, betook myself to reading Wood's "optics". I cannot say much about this book. Its author intermeddles not with the abstruse parts of the science - such as the causes of reflection & refraction?the reason why transparent bodies, at given angles of incidence, reflect their light almost entirely (concerning which, I meet with many learned details, in the Encyclopedia Britan) - but contents himself with demonstrating, in a plain enough manner, the ordinary effects of plane & spherical mirrors - and of lenses of various kinds - applying his doctrines, to the explanation of various optical instruments & remarkable phenomena. But in truth, I know little about it, I read it with too great velocity. - I also read Keil's "introductio ad veram Physicam"; but I shall let it pass till next time I write. In fine De Lambre arrived; & I have read into his fourth Le?on -and like it greatly.I intended to have told you some of his observations - but I would not overwhelm you with ennui all at once - and therefore, I shall be silent at present. - [italics]ne quid nimis[end italics] [moderation in all things - editor's note] ? as the proverb saith'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I return always to the study of Physics with more pleasure - after trying "The Philosophy of Mind". It is delightful, after wandering in the thick darkness of metaphysics?to behold again the fair face of truth. When will there arise a man who shall do for the science of mind - what Newton did for that of matter - establish its fundamental laws on the firm basis of induction - and discard forever those absurd theories - that so many dreamers have devised? - I believe this is a foolish question - for its answer is - never. - I am led to talk in this manner - by having lately read M[r.] Sweart's [Stewart's] "History of Philosophy" in the supplement to the "Encyclopedia Britannica"[.] I doubt I am going to displease you - but I must say - that I do not recollect of ever having bestowed as much attention with so little effect - upon any author as upon Profr Stewart. Let me study his writings as I like - my mind seems only to turn on its axis - but without progressive or retrograde motion at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'You have no doubt seen the "Tales of my Landlord". Certainly "Waverl[e]y" and "Mannering" and "the Black Dwarf" were never written by the same person. If I mistake not - Dr M'Crie's strictures are a little too severe, on some occassions - and his love of the Cameronians too violent. The Worthy Doctor's humour is as heavy as lead'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
[Having heard some lectures on Spurzheim's ideas] 'I have since looked into the Dr's book, and if possible the case is worse. Certainly, it is not true, that, our intellectual & moral & physical powers are jumbled in such huge disorder - surely it will be marvellous if these powers can be defined and estimated with such Mathematical precision, from the size & figure of the scull; but it is very silly to say that Spurzhiem has demonstrated all this - Spurzhiem has demonstrated nothing; -for any thing he knows to the contrary, the faculties of the soul are to be ascertained from the figure & size of the abdomen - if the venerable science of palmistry is not to be revived - It is in vain to rail against the opposition shewn to novelties?the doctrine is not to be rejected for its novelty, but for its want of truth'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'But Dr Chalmers, it would seem, is fearful lest these speculations [on the nature of the universe] lead us away from Christianity and has written a volume of discourses to prove that the insignificance of our planet in the universe is no argument against the truth of religion. Orthodox men declare, of course, that he has completely discomfited his opponents - I read it sometime ago - It abounds in that fiery thoroughgoing stile of writing for which the Author is so remarkable: nevertheless his best argument seems to be, that as it is in the scriptures, we have no business to think about it [at] all - an argument which was well enough known to be a panacea in cases of that nature - before his volume saw the light. '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'This same Doctor [Chalmers], as you will know wr[i]tes the first article in the late "Edinr review" - on the causes & cure of mendicity. After expatiating at considerable length on the evils of pauperism, he proposes as a remedy to increase the number of clergymen. They who know the general habits of Scottish ministers will easily see how sovereign a specific this is. The remainder of the review is good reading; but as you will have seen it before this time, I will not trouble you farther on the matter - I have seen the last Number of the "Quarterly review". It seems to be getting into a very rotten frothy vein. Mr Southey is a most unblushing character; & his political lucubrations are very notable. He has been sorely galled by "the Caledonian Oracle" poor man - I know nothing about Mr Duncan's controversy except thro the "Scotsman"; and they assign him the victory'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I have been reading little except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro' which he passed - Hume you know to be distinct & impartial: but he has less sympathy than might be expected with the heroic patriots - the Hampdens & the Sidneys that glorify the pages of English history. I fear Smollett is going to be a confused creature. I have read but a volume of Gibbon - and I do not like him - his style is flowery - his sarcasms wicked - his notes oppressive, often beastly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Dear Mr Lane,
I must apologise for not returning 'King Noanett'. But I have been so awfully busy lately that I have not had time to finish it. I propose to take it into the country with me & let you have it next week certain.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'My sole solaces have been Dumas, & Nolan?s delightful companionship at Brussels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
From Letter VIII, [italics]Letters on Daily Life[end italics]:
'In what spirit of self-denial, and with what noble motives acting can be undertaken as a profession, we have all learnt lately by the publication of Mrs. Fanny Kemble's autobiography [...] certainly after reading it I do not think any one can say that acting is incompatible with the highest womanly dignity, and most sincere religious purpose.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'Have you read de Maupassant?s '?tude sur Gustave Flaubert', preface to Bouvard et P?cuchet?from which I quote above? It is a most illuminating business, & one of the best bits of general literary criticism that I know of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I reckon I can do something with Moore. . . I occupy the time of waiting in reading G.M. & making notes. The business has given me vague flitting shapes of ideas for a book on modern fiction.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I took up de Maupassant to inspire me into a new theme; got one in about 5 minutes, & in an hour had arrived at the details. But it is too new to work at tonight.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'As the writer of the recent article upon you in the 'Academy' I venture upon the intrusion of telling you personally that I was much impressed by your remarkable novel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Have you read Housman?s poems A Shropshire Lad? They are only immortal, that?s all. I take them as a tonic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Have you read Moore? I come in, I see, for a little notice once or twice. I find the Peer and Poet (and I knew it only yesterday) has dedicated a stanza or two to me in Don Juan'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'We have read "Zohrab the Hostage" with the greatest pleasure. If you have not read it, pray do. I was so pleased with it that I could not help writing a letter of congratulation and collaudation to Morier, the author, who, by the bye, is an excellent man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Read Hamilton';s "America", it is quite excellent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I think you will like Sir James Mackintosh's Life; it is full of his own thoughts upon men, books and events, and I derived from it the greatest pleasure. He makes most honourable mention of your mother, whom I only know by one of her productions, - enough to secure my admiration'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Get, and read, Macaulay's Papers upon the Indian courts and Indian Education. They are admirable for their talent and their honesty. We see why he was hated in India, and how honourable to him that hatred is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Have you read Macaulay's Lays? they are very much liked. I have read some but I abor all Grecian and Roman subjects'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Tell William Murray, with my kindest regards, to get for you, when he comes to town, a book called "Arabiniana, or Remains of Mr Serjeant Arabin", - very witty and humorous. It is given away - not sold, but I have in vain endeavoured to get a copy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I have just read Miss Martineau's "Sick Room". I cannot understand it. It is so sublime, and mystical that I frequently cannot guess at her meaning; all that I can find out is that in long chronical illnesses, a patient finds sources of amusement that do not at first occurr, but which have a tendency to engage the mind, and alleviate pain; all this however I could have conjectured without the assistance of an Octavo book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I think "Ireland and its Leaders" worth reading and beg of you to tell me who wrote it if you happen to know, for you though you call yourself solitary live much more in the world than I do while I am in the Country'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Read Captain Marryats Settlement in Canada'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Read, in the evening, "Temple on the Origin of Government:" in which the source of political power is successfully traced....' [Green usually gives extensive summary comments about books, interspersed with his reactions.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Began, with a view of comparing notes, Macchiavel's "Historie Fiorentino"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read the 1st Book of Macchievel's "Discorsi sopra Livio"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked over Malone's "Enquiry into the Authenticity of Ireland's Shakesperian Papers"; a learned and decisive piece of criticism...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Adam Smith's "History of Astronomy", in his posthumous tracts, published by Dugald Stewart...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished, with much interest, the "Pursuits of Literature"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Macfarlane's "History of George III.": a strange amalgama of vulgarity, impudence, and scurrility, compounded into a specious and shewy mass, by a morbid vigour of intellect...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Began Campbell's "Rhetoric"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished the "Memoirs of Grammont"; which exhibit, with less wit and spirit than I expected, a shameful picture of the voluptuousness, intrigues, and abandoned profligacy, of the Court of Charles II...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Bertrand De Moleville's "Memoirs of the Last Year of the Reign of Louis the 16th". They contain much curious, and I presume, authentic information relative to the crisis of the Revolution...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Began Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland"; and read the two introductory sections, containing a masterly review of our political affairs...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Haslam on Insanity....'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees", and his "Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees", and his "Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read the first four Books of Montesquieu's "Esprit des Loix"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked into Mitford's "History of Greece". The Athenian Democracy imparts no sort of relish for that sort of government...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished the "Travels of Anacharsis". This work is ably executed, and must have cost prodigious pains; but it still leaves us, as we must ever be left, extremely ignorant of the political constitutions, religious worship, and private manners of the Greeks...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished the "Paradise Regained". Milton has been most unhappy in the choice of his subject;--an inexplicable and suspicious legend...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Milton's "Samson Agonistes";--a noble Poem, but a miserable Drama...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Perused, with delight and admiration, Mackintosh's "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Mackinosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae". His style and manner in the Piece are magnificent, but uniformly cumbrous, and occasionally coarse...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read the first 6 chapters of May's "History of the Long Parliament"; containing a retrospect of affairs, down to its assembling...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Cambridge's "Scribleriad". The mock heroic is well sustained throughout; but the Poem is deficient in broad humour...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read the 1st Vol. of Sully's "Memoirs". They open a scene of manners, which, to modern conception, appears perfectly romantic...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked over the Introduction to Pemberton's "View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy". He affirms (sec. 2.) that it is the gratification of our taste, which is the source of our desire of knowledge...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Moore's "Zeluco". The character is will contrived to purge the selfish and malignant passions, by exhibiting the hideous effect of their unrestricted indulgence...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Moore's "Edward". The outset of this novel delighted me highly; but as it advances, the interest declines...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Brougham's pamphlet accidentally happens to be very dull. It is not of much importance but there was no absolute necessity for its being so. Wit and declamation would be misplaced, but a clever man may be bright and flowing while he is argumentative and prudent. He makes out a great case in general: and nobody would accuse Lord Lonsdale and the Bishop of undue precipitation if they were to make some sort of reply to the charge of particular delinquencies levelled against them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith
'I recommend you to read Hall, Palmer, Fearon and Bradburys Travels in America, particularly "Fearon". There is nothing to me so curious and intersting as the rapidity with which they are spreading themselves over that vast continent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Finished the perusal of the first Six Books of Milton's "Paradise Lost". The scene betwixt Satan, Sin, and Death, in the 2d. Book, is transcendantly sublime...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Perused the "Farmer's Boy"; a rural Poem, by Robert Bloomfield; edited by Capel Lofft...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked into Marsh's "Michaelis"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Marsh's "Tract on the Politics of Great Britain and France"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked into Prettyman's "Theology". The Dedication to Pitt is insufferably fulsome...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished Malone's "Life of Dryden", prefixed to an Edition of his Prose Works. By the drudgery of searching deeds, wills, genealogies, registers, and recods of all sorts, Malone has discovered some new facts, and detected a few mistakes, respecting Dryden and his Famly, of very little consequence...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope". Parts of this Poem are animated and fine...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked into Kirkman's "Life of Macklin"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'I received about a month ago the Revd Willm Thomson of Ochiltree's new translation of the Testament. Of course I am no judge of his 'new renderings'; but the stile both of writing & thinking displayed in those parts which I have looked at, is dull & sluggish as the clay itself. He brags of having altered the expressions of the old translation - every body I suppose will readily admit this - and be ready to wish him joy of all the honour than [that] can arise from such alterations...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I perused your theorems with some attention. They are well worthy of a place in the Courier - though not for the purpose you mention. Mr Johnston, if I mistake not, is a small gentleman, whom it would be no honour to demolish.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Unknown
'I have been reading little [since I last wrote to you] except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro which he passed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Lord Grey will like that article in the Edinburgh Review upon Universal Suffrage; it is by Sir James McIntosh. There is a pamphlet on Bullion by Mr Copplestone of Oxford much read; but bullion is not I think a favourite dish at Howick'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Serial / periodical
'Hallam's style does not appear to me so bad as it has been represented; indeed I am ashamed to say I rather think it a good style. He is a bold man and great names do not deter him from finding fault; he began with Pindar, and who has any right to complain after that? The characteristic excellencies of the work seem to be fidelity, accuracy, good sense, a love of Virtue and a zeal for Liberty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell, in letter to '_____', from Albano, April 1861 [re Remains of Roman theatre at Tusculum]:
'The seats of this Theatre are quite perfect [...] We sat down there, and L -- read out Macaulay's Lay of the Battle of Lake Regillus.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: L anon Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell, describing travel from Pisa toward Spezzia in letter of 5 June 1861 to 'My Dear _____', headed 'Bugiasta or Pagiastra, or something of the kind; but we can't quite make out where we are, only it is half-way between Spezzia and Sestri, and on the road to Genoa.':
'We started after six [am], M and myself on the outside seat [?of coach]. What with pleasant conversation, the reading of "Rienzi" and the newspaper, and occasional little naps, I managed to spend an agreeable day.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'Have you read Mathilda? If you have, you will not tell me what you think of it, you are as cautious as Wishaw. I mentioned to Lord Normanby, that it was the book selected as a victim for the next No of the Edinburgh Review, and that my brethren had complimented me with the Knife?Lady Normanby gave a loud shriek.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I can make nothing of Craniology, for this reason: [Smith then discusses why he is not convinced by the idea] But to state what are original propensities, and to trace out the family or genealogy of each, is a task requiring great length, patience and metaphysical acuteness; and Combe's book is too respectably done to be taken by storm.'
Instead of this I will send you as you seem to be prest the review of [italics] Granby [end italics], a novel of very great merit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I am glad you were pleased with Clery. As I have succeeded in one recommendation, I will take the liberty of making another, and advise you to buy Count Rumford's Essays, and to read that in particular which treats of the food of the poor. The amazingly small expence at which they can be fed is really surprising'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste.
The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste.
The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste.
The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular constitution'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I have read since I saw you Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin's "Enquirer", and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I have read since I saw you Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin's "Enquirer", and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'after reading half thro' Porter's "Russian Campaign", I found it to be such an incorrigible mass of folly and stupidity, that nothing could be said of it but what was grossly abusive.
I have read the controversy about the Auxiliary Bible Society, and will speedily send you an article upon it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
"And tho' I call them Mine, I know that they are not Mine, being of the Same opinion with Milton when he says 'That the Muse visits his Slumbers & awakes & governs his Song when Morn purples the East', & being also in the predicament of that Prophet who says: I cannot go beyond the command of the Lord, to speak good or bad."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
"What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of Art? Why is the Bible more Entertaining and Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, & but mediately to the understanding or Reason?"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book, Unknown
'S. reads Livy - talk - in the evening S. read[s] Paradise Regained alloud and then goes to sleep'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'I have read Bragelonne'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'At present I am going for Macaulay's History and no novels at all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'All the reading up is Macaulay, p.530 to 535 and then p. 616 to 630'. [The context of the reference suggests the text is Macaulay's History of England. RLS has been referring to pages 530-535, and 616-630 in his research for the play he is writing entitled Monmouth.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Reader makes several references to the work: V.1, p.9, p.15, p.25, p.142; V.2 p.200. eg.: V.1 p.9 'Well, now I was very sure I would not smile this summer, nor yet read any book but the Bible and Night Thoughts*; even the Odyssey was to be rejected'. *'The Night Thoughts, and the Odyssey, were favourite studies among these friends, to which they were wont to make many serious and playful allusions' [footnote, p. 9] from Letter II to Miss Harriet Reid of Glasgow, April 28 1773. eg. p.25 'Though my sorrows should be multiplied, as very likely they may, I shall have consolations peculiarly my own, that, like Milton?s sweet music, ?will breathe above, about, and underneath?. How literal this truth is ?. A little dress, a little Odyssey, a little breakfast, and then ? I shall behold the faces of my kindred' from Letter III To Miss Reid.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'This enclosed article is the third of yours that I have read. The first (about modelling) was about the most impersonal thing I ever came across. The second (spiders) was much better. And this third surprises me by its force & vitality.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
'I think the article on Sir John Gorst is able & shows a sufficient grasp of the subject; the tone of it also seems to me to be right . . . . As it stands, I think little of the chances of "Coventry" . . . People don?t want to know about their own country. If Coventry was in Italy, it would be different. As the article is not finished it would not be proper for me to criticise it finally. . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
'I think the article on Sir John Gorst is able & shows a sufficient grasp of the subject; the tone of it also seems to me to be right . . . . As it stands, I think little of the chances of "Coventry" . . . People don?t want to know about their own country. If Coventry was in Italy, it would be different. As the article is not finished it would not be proper for me to criticise it finally. . .
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Quotes Milton throughout work:V.1 pp 25,75,90,101,169,190; V.2 pp118,206; V.3 p.87. Ex. Letter XI To Miss Reid, Glasgow, Fort William, May 17 1773 V.1 p.90 'If Fort Augustus be such a place, I will certainly become a votary of the ?Pensive nun, devout and pure,/ Sober, stedfast [sic], and demure? whom we used to admire so much. Expect to see me when we meet ?With sable stole of cypress lawn/ O?er my decent shoulders drawn."'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
"Now my lot in the Heavens is this, Milton lov'd me in/childhood & shew'd me his face./Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper/ years gave me his hand;/ Paracelsus & Behmen appear'd to me,"
Poem in letter to John Flaxman Letter 19 12th Sept 1800 explaining Blake's most influential reading.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake
"Blake and I read every Evening that copy of the Iliad which your namesake of St Paul's was so good as to send me, comparing it with the 1st edition and with the Greek as we proceed - we shall be glad to see the odyssey also, as soon as it is visible - & with it the pages of the Iliad that were not dispatched from the press, when our copy arrived".
Letter from William Hayley to John Johnson Letter 37
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Betsey]:'The gazettes from France were read this evening there was nothing remarquable in them. We began again "Les Precieuses Ridicules" but had no time to for supper was called'.
[Eugenia]: 'In the evening the Paris papers were read I did not give them any attention then we began to reread for Madame de Bombelles "Les Precieuses Ridicules" which was interrupted by supper'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here]
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here]
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here]
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'I think newspapers do a lot towards it, because one of the first things I do is to look at the women's page in the News Chronicle. I read her - Jill Adams, I think her name is, and sure enough you see something crop up. I may be out, see something on somebody that I like, and try and copy it. I make my own a lot, since I have been married, necessity started it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: unknown Print: Newspaper
Reader makes 4 references to the work V.1 pp 61,64; V.2 pp 4, 251. Eg. p. 61 'The sun shone on our social repast, but when we set out, Eolus did not perform the task Thomson assigns him in the opening of spring'; p.64 'I am reformed, and amended, but cannot fatigue myself or you with the description of this day; you will find it in Thomson ?Deceitful, vain, and void, passes the day.?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ewing, November 14, 1778 '? the former [ie Highlanders] indeed are a people never to be known unless you live among them, and learn their language. Smollet, in Humphrey Clinker, is the only writer that has given a genuine sketch of Scotch manners ?.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Reid May 17,1773 'As far as a mountain can resemble a man, it resembles the person Smollet has marked out by the name of Captain Gawky.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Mrs Macintosh September 9 1797 'The cheerfulness of our work-people, and the soft serenity of the air, during these tepid gleams that Thomson speaks of so feelingly, have almost made us this autumn ?Taste the rural life in all its joy,? and elegance'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee Macvicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ewing June 10 1774 'Yet I should like none of these climates, where
?Winter lingering chills the lap of May? if I could help it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Collector MacVicar, June 20 1773 'In the mean time I hope the best, and endeavour to pursue Oliver Cromwell through all his crooked paths. I have gone but a short way, my attention having been completely engrossed by a book that has bewitched me for the time; ?tis the Vicar of Wakefield, which you must certainly read. Goldsmith puts one in mind of Shakespear [sic]; his narrative is improbable and absurd in many instances, yet all his characters do and say exactly what might be supposed of them ?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry March 27 1791 'I am very fond of the lower class of people; they have sentiment, serious habits, and a kind of natural courtesy; in short, they are not mob, an animal which Smollet most emphatically says he detests in its head, midriff, and members; and, in this point, I do not greatly differ with him. You would wonder how many of the genteeler class live here. They are not rich to be sure; so much the better for us; For "Where no contiguous palace rears its head/To shame the meanness of the humble shed" people do very well, and keep each other in countenance."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry March 27 1791 'I am very fond of the lower class of people; they have sentiment, serious habits, and a kind of natural courtesy; in short, they are not mob, an animal which Smollet most emphatically says he detests in its head, midriff, and members; and, in this point, I do not greatly differ with him. You would wonder how many of the genteeler class live here. They are not rich to be sure; so much the better for us; For "Where no contiguous palace rears its head/To shame the meanness of the humble shed" people do very well, and keep each other in countenance."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Mrs F--R (formerly Miss Ourry) April 11 1795 ??Innovation disconcerts us; new lights blind us; we detest the Rights of Man, and abominate those of Woman. Think then how I am prepared to receive your friend H.M.W.?s* new publication; though I admire her style, and confess that nobody embellishes absurdity more ingeniously. I am greatly inclined too to respect the purity of religious principles. Yet when I think of the associates with whom her political bigotry has connected her, I think I hear the Syrian leper entreating the prophet?s permission to bow a little occasionally in the house of their god Rimmon. [footnote] *Helen Maria Williams before she forsook her country and her principles'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Mrs Macintosh November 23 1800 'Nay, I find the relapse to calm sorrow, a relief from constant perturbation, ?Tha solas an thireadh le sith, Ach claoidhidh fad thuirs soil doruin,?*. As I cannot cure the evil habit of quotation, you see I have changed ground, and taken shelter in another language ? This whimsical parody is not unmeaning, for the original is stronger, and softer than the sense can be given in our language?
[footnote]*This quotation from Ossian has been elegantly, and not unfaithfully, translated by James Macpherson. It runs literally thus??There is enjoyment in mourning with peace; yet long mourning wastes the children of calamity?'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Dunbar May 1802 [see note] 'Did I tell you I read "Campbell?s Pleasures of Hope" at Wells and was charmed and elevated beyond measure ?'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Serial / periodical
'finish Hermann d'Unna and write - Shelley reads Milton - After dinner Lord Byron comes down and Clare and Shelley go up to Diodati - Read Rienzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'After dinner read some of Madme Genlis novels - Shelley reads Milton'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read "Contes moreaux de Marmotel - Shelley reads the Germania of Tacitus'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Write & read "Contes Moreaux" - go down to the side of the lake to watch the waves - Lord Byron comes down - after dinner read Rienzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read Curt. and Caroline of Litchfield. Hobhouse and Scroop Davis come to Diodati - Shelley spends the evening there & reads Germania - Several books arrive among others Coleridges Christabel which Shelley reads aloud to me before we go to bed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Letter to Collector MacVicar June 30 1773 'I will not tire you with the detail of all the little circumstances that gradually acquired me the place in her favour which I ever continued to possess. She [ie Aunt Schuyler] saw me reading Paradise Lost with delighted attention; she was astonished to see a child take pleasure in such a book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'Read Fazio - Love and madness. & some of Rienzi - work - in the evening finish the antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'in the evening walk out - read the Solitary wanderer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read the Rambler - S reads Montaigne's essays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry Oct 14 1791 'This temporary triumph of irreligion and false philosophy will tear the mark off the monster ?What pains have been taken to promulgate that profound discovery, ?that bigotry and religious zeal have done more hurt in society, than scepticism and all the mere speculative, evils of philosophy?.? [it seems likely that this is a paraphrase of Hume's philosophical "Essay concerning human understanding"]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee Macvicar] Print: Book
'Read Clarendon - finish the life of Holcroft - read Glenarvon in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Not well - read Glenarvon all day and finish it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read Patronage & the Milesian chief - finish 5th vol of Clarendon - Shelley reads life of Cromwell'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Finish Milesian & Patronage - read Holcrofts travels - S. reads life of Cromwell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'S. reads Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'[Shelley] reads Montaigne - read Clarendon and O'Donnel'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. writes & reads Montaigne & Lucian & walks'.
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
'Here the Duke, among other things, did bring out a book, of great antiquity, of some of the customs of the Navy about 100 years since, which he did lend us to read and deliver him back again.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I also have been reading ?All Quiet?. Stanley and I stood for an hour outside my hotel at midnight in Southampton Row ? and rowed about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I am really appreciating all the books and seem at the moment to be reading only French. I have not by any means exhausted them yet. ?Mahatma Gandhi? I am reading at the moment, but someone yesterday lent me Katherine Mayo?s ?Mother India?, and all my thoughts are boulevers?es [upset] by the horrors she pictures.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I am busy also getting through the Keynes book, and chuckling over the fact that he wrote this book to make clear that Cambridge and London were a bit archaic as to the fundamentals of their economics. I stood for an hour arguing the main thesis (of course not worked out) with Harold one night at Euston. He had to walk home to Battersea Park in consequence.
A year or so before I had covered reams with letters of vituperation against Prof: Pigou, till Stanley became furious ? also on the point. I don?t think it should need so large a book to get it over, I am also going to read Dodsworth when Gerry isn?t looking.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I?m so glad that ?D?senchantement? pleases you. Apart from the subject Montague writes so beautifully ? and to me it was wonderful to see in print for the first time ? all the wretched facts that were ordinary knowledge to you and me when we returned from the war.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I have just read Gabouis ?Perfide Albion ? Entente Cordial?, quite good and informative ? this in English from the local library, and in French ?Les Anges Noirs? de Mauriac. Also Alexander Werth?s ?Before Munich? and a collection of the speeches of Daladier 1934 ? 1940, (these in English). At the moment I have ?Rond Point des Champs Elys?es? de Paul Maraud, and ?The French at Home? of Philip Carr.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'I have just read Gabouis ?Perfide Albion ? Entente Cordial?, quite good and informative ? this in English from the local library, and in French ?Les Anges Noirs? de Mauriac. Also Alexander Werth?s ?Before Munich? and a collection of the speeches of Daladier 1934 ? 1940, (these in English). At the moment I have ?Rond Point des Champs Elys?es? de Paul Maraud, and ?The French at Home? of Philip Carr.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'To return to my reading at the moment ? I have another book of Ford Madox Ford?s ? oh ! a lovely one, called ?Provence?. He died this year ? how sad he must have been in poor old London. But all you loved best in Provence comes out in that book ? and in the end the author says we must come back to it, learn to plant our cabbages ? and to cook them ? or we are doomed. How I regret that I could not send you that book ? but alas !! By the way I sent a ?Pied Piper? for Shirley. I hope it arrives.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East - [including] .. Timur's Institutes...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mounstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'When I first ventured to write a sentence for publication, having a deep sense of my profound ignorance of the rules of punctuation, I applied myself to the study of Lindley Murray's grammar -- then the one accepted authority for English people. He gave seventeen rules for the right placing of the comma, and I thought it my duty to endeavour to master them. But my patience did not hold out [...] I threw aside the seventeen rules of punctuation, and in their stead placed on one mental page the simple definitions of the respective values of periods, colons, semi-colons, and commas which I had learnt as a child, and then took which ever common sense and observation pointed out as suitable to my purpose; and in the end I found that I had escaped any special criticism.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East - [including] .. Orme's Hindustan (a second time) ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'It had [...] been a favourite idea of my mother's that her girls should learn Latin, and she engaged an old schoolmaster living in a back street in our native town to give my eldest sister and myself lessons when we were about ten and eight years of age [...] But the lessons did not last long. The tears I shed over the difficulties of the first verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was the material for our first Latin lesson, were so bitter that they were too much for my mother's tender heart, and I was allowed to give up the study [...] The failure of this attempt, which was never renewed, has been a regret to me all my
life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell recalls studies at the second school she attended (to the age of 15):
'Our subjects of study included -- besides English history and exercises in grammar -- lessons
in mythology and upon the English Constitution learnt by heart from Mangall's Questions, the
outlines of the rise of nations, with Roman, Grecian, and French history (the latter read in
French), Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry and Political Economy, and Joyce's
Scientific Dialogues.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell recalls studies at the second school she attended (to the age of 15):
'Our subjects of study included -- besides English history and exercises in grammar -- lessons
in mythology and upon the English Constitution learnt by heart from Mangall's Questions, the
outlines of the rise of nations, with Roman, Grecian, and French history (the latter read in
French), Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry and Political Economy, and Joyce's
Scientific Dialogues.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell recalls studies at the second school she attended (to the age of 15):
'Our subjects of study included -- besides English history and exercises in grammar -- lessons
in mythology and upon the English Constitution learnt by heart from Mangall's Questions, the
outlines of the rise of nations, with Roman, Grecian, and French history (the latter read in
French), Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry and Political Economy, and Joyce's
Scientific Dialogues.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'Write - read Davy - In the evening read Curt. and Les Incas'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read Les Incas - Shelley reads Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read Les Incas - Shelley reads Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Grandison and Curt. Shelley reads and finishes Montainge [sic] to his great sorrow - he reads Lucian'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes Gulliver and begins P.[aradise] L.[ost]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'in the evening Shelley read[s] 2nd book of Paradise Lost. S. reads Locke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'write - read Locke and Curt. S. reads Plutarch and Locke. He reads Paradise Lost - aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'begin Pamela. Shelley reads Locke and in the evening Paradise Lost aloud to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'work in the evening - & read Les Incas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'I left them there and walked to Deptford, reading in Wallsinghams "manuall", a very good book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and then down to Woolwich Deptford to look after things...All the way down and up, reading of "The Mayor of Quinborough", a simple play.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ... : not much of books not connected with India. ... an "Odyssey" or two ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ... : not much of books not connected with India. ... ;one book of Machiavelli's "History"; a novel and play of his ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India. ...;[but includes] Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion"; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'and so home, I reading all the way to make an end of "The Bondman" (which the oftener I read, the more I like), and begin "The Duchesse of Malfy", which seems a good play.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal ot the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal ot the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome, several dissertations of his Latin and English ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome, several dissertations of his Latin and English , one volume and a half of his "Cicero"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record of Shelley's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list.]
'Works of Theocritus Moschus &c - Greek
Prometheus of Eschylus - Greek
Works of Lucian - Greek
x Telemacho
La Nouvelle Heloise
x Blackwell's His. of the Court of August
De Natura Lucretius
Epistolae Plinii
Annals by Tacitus
Several of Plutarchs Lives - Greek
Germania of Tacitus
Memoires d'un Detenu
Histoire de la Revolution par Rabault and Lacretelle
Montaignes Essays
Tasso
Life of Cromwell
Lockes Essay
Political Justice
Lorenzo de Medicis
Coleridges Lay Sermon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read douglass [sic] & the Gamester'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read several papers in the Spectator - Locke - And Memoirs of Count Gramont'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Somnium Scipionis & Roderick Random'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'finish Roderick Random'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Comus. Knight of the swan - 1st Vol of Goldth citizen of the world'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Comus. Knight of the swan - 1st Vol of Goldth citizen of the world'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" ...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, ... most of Cowley, Butler, and Denham, Pope and Dryden often;...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, ... "Caractacus" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, ... ; many of Milton's Latin poems ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ...; Ramsay's "Revolution of South Carolina " ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I am in Milton's prose works, Cromwell's life, George Fox's Wanderings &c day & night, when I have any leisure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'So home to supper, and then to read a little in Moore's "Antidote against Atheisme", a pretty book; and so to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'And a little to my Lord Chancellors, where the King and Cabinet met, and there met Mr Brisband, with whom good discourse; to White-hall towards night, and there he did lend me the "Third Advice to a paynter", a bitter Satyr upon the service of the Duke of Albemarle the last year. I took it home with me and will copy it, having the former - being also mightily pleased with it. So after reading it, I to Sir W. Penn to discourse a little'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
'so did not enlarge, but took leave and went down and sat in a low room reading Erasmus "de scribendis Epistolis", a very good book; especially, one letter of advice to a Courtier most true and good - which made me once resolve to tear out the two leaves that it was writ in - but I forebore it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and then up and to my chamber with a good fire and there spent an hour on Morly's "Introduction to Music", a very good but inmethodical book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and so back home again, all the way reading a little piece I lately bought, call[ed] "The Virtuoso or The Stoicke", proposing many things paradoxicall to our common opinions; wherein in some places he speaks well, but generally is but a sorry man.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Read Cumberlands memoirs'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the memoirs - of Cumberland - read the Rambler'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Beaumonts Hermophroditus [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Not well - read the Martial Maid & the Wild goose chase of Beaumont and Fletcher'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Not well - read the Martial Maid & the Wild goose chase of Beaumont and Fletcher'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Waverly - Pliny's letters - Political Justice & Miltons Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Shelley reads Waverly - Tales of my Landlord & several of the works of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Lalla Rookh. Not well all day'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Homer and writes'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Julie - S reads Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tacitus - The Persian letters - S. reads Homer & writes - reads a canto of Spencer and part of the gentle shepherdess aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tacitus and Buffon. S. reads Homer and Plutarch'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley writes - reads Plato's Convivium - Gibbon aloud - Read several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read a little of Tacitus - Several of Beaumont and Fletchers Plays - S. reads Volpone and the Alchymist aloud and begins Lalla Rookh'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read a little of Tacitus - Several of Beaumont and Fletchers Plays - S. reads Volpone and the Alchymist aloud and begins Lalla Rookh'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the 11th book of Tacitus - Read some of Beaumont & X Fletchers plays - work - S. write - reads some of the plays of Sophocles - & Antony & Cleopatra of Shakespeare and Othello aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I am confined Teusday 2nd. Read Rhoda - Pastors Fire Side - Missionary - Wild Irish Girls - The Anaconda. Glenarvon - 1st Vol Percy's Northern antiquities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I am confined Teusday 2nd. Read Rhoda - Pastors Fire Side - Missionary - Wild Irish Girls - The Anaconda. Glenarvon - 1st Vol Percy's Northern antiquities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I am confined Teusday 2nd. Read Rhoda - Pastors Fire Side - Missionary - Wild Irish Girls - The Anaconda. Glenarvon - 1st Vol Percy's Northern antiquities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Fielding's Amelia - Sir Launcelot Greaves. a little of Tacitus - Twopenny post bag.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Fielding's Amelia - Sir Launcelot Greaves. a little of Tacitus - Twopenny post bag.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Lambs specimens.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Dante - finish Lambs specimens. walk to Mr Olliers. read Zapolya'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read George Dandin'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Family of Montorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Family of Montorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I read Tacitus - 3 of Hume's essays VIII IX X - some of the German theatre - write - walk - Shelleys [sic] reads Political Justice & 8 Cantos of his poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I read Tacitus - 3 of Hume's essays VIII IX X - some of the German theatre - write - walk - Shelleys [sic] reads Political Justice & 8 Cantos of his poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes reading his poem aloud. - read from the German theatre'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes Political Justice Read Tacitus & Hume - work in the evening read Mandeville.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the 1st part of Humes Essays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Hume'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Lady Morgans "France".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read the little thief - walk. S reads "France".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read the little thief - walk. S reads "France".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read "France"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S walks - & reads I book of Paradise Lost in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Gibbon a[nd] 2 book of Paradise Lost.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1817. As far as possible texts mentioned in journal entries are not given separate database entries from this list. Texts marked with an x were read by Percy Shelley too]
'Two vols of Lord Chesterfields Letters.
xColeridges Lay Sermon
Memoirs of Count Gramont
Somnium Scipionis
Roderick Random
Comus
Knights of the Swan
Cumberlands memoirs de se
Junius' letters
Journey to the World Underground
D. of Buckinhams Rehearsal and the Restoration
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Sir P. Sidney
Round Table by W. Hazlitt
Cupids Revenge
Martial Maid
Wild Goose Chase [these three bracketed as by Beaumont and Fletcher]
x Tales of my Landlord
Rambler
Waverley
Amadis de Gaul
Epistolae Plinii Secundi
x Story of Phsyche [sic] in Apuleius
Anna St Ives
Vita Julii Caesari - Suetonius
x Defoe on the Plague
x Wilsons City of the Plague
Miss Edgeworths Comic Dramas
Fortitude and Frailty by F. Holcroft
3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Quarterly Review
x Lalla Rookh by T. Moore
x Davis' travels in America
x Godwin's Mecellanies
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Manuscrit venu de St Helene
Buffon's theorie du terre
Beaumont and Fletchers Plays
x Volpone; Cynthia's Revels. The Alchymist.
Fall of Sejanus. Catilines conspiracy
La Nouvelle Heloise
Lettres Persiennes
Miss Edgeworths Harrington and Ormond
Arthur Mervyn
x Antony & Cleopatra - Othello
Missionary; Rhoda. Wild Irish Girl; Glenarvon; The Anaconda; Pastors Fire side; Amelia; Sir Launcelot Greaves; Strathallan; Twopenny post bag; Anti Jacobin poetry.
Miseries of human life
x Moores odes & epistles
Le Lettre d'Una Peruviana
Confessions et Lettres de Rousseau
x Lamb's Specimens
Molliere's George Dandin - le Testament
Family of Montorio - Querelles de famille
German Theatre - Eugenie & Mathilde
x Mandeville
x Laon and Cynthia
x Lady Morgan's "France".
The three brothers
First vol of Humes Essays
Annalium C. Cornelii Taciti.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S finishes Homer's Hymns'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Humes dissertation on the passions'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the merry beggars. Elvira'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Italian operas - Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Moliere's Plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Clare reads the memoir of Madme Ma[n]son aloud to us'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'and so away presently very merry, and fell to reading of the several "Advices to a Painter", which made us good sport; and endeed are very witty'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Shelley reads Manso's life of Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Aristodemo with S. Walk out in the evening on the mole. Read the Adelphi of Terence'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Adelphi of Terence - read Aristodemo'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 23 Canto of Ariosto & Gibbon - & the 3rd Ode of Horace - S. finishes the clouds - Reads Humes England aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 25 Canto of Ariosto - Gibbon & 6 & 7 odes of Horace - S. reads the Lysistratae of Aristophanes - finishes Gibbon - and reads Hume's England in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Aristophanes - & Anarcharsis [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 30th Canto of Ariosto - Livy - Horace - & Every Man in his humour. S. reads Aristophanes and Anacharsis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Only, here I met with a fourth "Advice to the painter", upon the coming in of the Dutch to the River and end of the war, that made my heart ake to read, it being too sharp and so true.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Thence homeward by coach, and stopped at Martins my bookseller, where I saw the French book which I did think to have had for my wife to translate, called "L'escholle de Filles", but when I came to look into it, it is the most bawdy, lewd book that I ever saw, rather worse than "putana errante" - so that I was ashamed of reading in it'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office, doing business and also reading a little of "L'escolle des Filles", which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world.'
The previous day Pepys bought the book, writing in his diary: 'which I have bought in plain binding (avoiding the buying of it better bound) because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and then they parted and I to my chamber, where I did read through "L'escholle des Filles"; a lewd book, but what doth me no wrong to read for information sake (but it did hazer my prick para stand all the while, and una vez to decharger); and after I had done it, I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame; and so at night to supper and then to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and then she to read a little book concerning Speech in general, a translation late out of French, a most excellent piece as ever I read, proving a soul in man and all the ways and secrets by which Nature teaches speech in man - which doth please me most infinitely to read.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
'making the boy read to me the life of Julius Caesar and Des Cartes book of music - the latter of which I understand not, nor think he did well that writ it, though a most learned man.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'and after supper, and W. Battler gone, my wife begun another book I lately bought, a new book called "The State of England", which promises well and is worth reading; and so after a while to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
'Up, and got my wife to read to me a copy of what the Surveyor offered to the Duke of York on Friday, he himself putting it into my hand to read; but Lord, it is a poor silly thing ever to think to bring it in practice in the King's Navy; it is to have the Captain's to endent for all stores and victuals; but upon so silly grounds to my thinking, and ignorance of the present instructions of Officers, that I am ashamed to hear it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
'I have already [read] The Song of Songs , and commented on it, a long time ago. As to the translation let me tell you at once what I think. It is a bad translation . . . '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Read 33rd Canto of Ariosto - Livy - Horace & The Magnetick lady - S reads Aristophanes & Anarcharsis - & Hume's England aloud in the evening after our walk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Anacharsis'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'We read Anacharsis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'S reads the Symposium and translates a part of it - he finishes Anacharsis & reads Hume's England aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. translates the Symposium and reads the Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 42nd Canto - Livy - Anacharsis. Horace - and Shakespears Coriolanus - S. translates the Symposium & reads Philaster'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. translates the Symposium - & reads a king and no king'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. translates the Symposium - and reads a part of it to me - he reads the Laws of Candy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S - translates the Symposium and Reads the wife for a Month - We ride out in the morning & after tea S. reads Hume's England'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read 2nd act of the Aminta - read Livy Finish Anacharsis - Transcribe the Symposium - S. reads Herodotus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Written by a scribe named Salthows between 1140 and 1450, probably in Norfolk, [British Library] MS Add. 61823 is considered to be an early copy [of The Book of Margery Kempe] of the original written by Margery's second amanuensis; it was owned and extensively annotated by the Carthusians at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire. The most prolific of these annotators, using red ink and in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century hand, has inscribed both in the
margins and between the lines, a lively, fascinating and fully-engaged reading of the Book.'
Century: 1450-1499 / 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Carthusian monks of Mount Grace Priory Manuscript: Unknown
'Written by a scribe named Salthows between 1140 and 1450, probably in Norfolk, [British Library] MS Add. 61823 is considered to be an early copy [of The Book of Margery Kempe] of the original written by Margery's second amanuensis; it was owned and extensively annotated by the Carthusians at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire. The most prolific of these annotators, using red ink and in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century hand, has inscribed both in the
margins and between the lines, a lively, fascinating and fully-engaged reading of the Book.'
Century: 1450-1499 / 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Unknown
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud
Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday Sept. 25th. [...] Read Smellie Philosophy [o]f Natural History.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Sept. 26th. Read the Empire of the Nairs & Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie. Pack up all morning. Remove about five o'clock to
Pancrass. Read Smellie in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie. Pack up all morning. Remove about five o'clock to
Pancrass. Read Smellie in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Sept. 29th. [...] Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Oct. 24th. Rise at eight [...] M. reads aloud She stoops to [C]onquer -- She sets out to
see Shelley at eleven -- I stay at home & read Political Justice'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'Friday Oct. 28th. [...] I walk out by myself about Kentish Town -- Read Comus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday -- 29th. [...] Read Comus. & Prince Alexy Haimatoff'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday Oct 30th. [...] Dine at four. Read Comus. S[helley] & M[ary Wollstonecraft Godwin] go
away in a coach at 1/2 past 8 [...] Sit up till ten reading Queen Mab'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Jany. 23rd. Do an Italian exercise & read some of Moore's Anacreon [...] Read
Anarcharsis [...] Begin Goldsmith's History of Greece p.40.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Jany. 23rd. Do an Italian exercise & read some of Moore's Anacreon [...] Read
Anarcharsis [...] Begin Goldsmith's History of Greece p.40.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday April 9th [...] Read [...] Le Tartuffe of Moliere'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 10th. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Mariage force, Le Festin de Pierre,
L'Amour Medecin, les Fourberies de Scapin de Moliere [...] Read a page or two of the Life of
Tasso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 10th. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Mariage force, Le Festin de Pierre,
L'Amour Medecin, les Fourberies de Scapin de Moliere [...] Read a page or two of the Life of
Tasso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 10th. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Mariage force, Le Festin de Pierre,
L'Amour Medecin, les Fourberies de Scapin de Moliere [...] Read a page or two of the Life of
Tasso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 10th. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Mariage force, Le Festin de Pierre,
L'Amour Medecin, Les Fourberies de Scapin de Moliere [...] Read a page or two of the Life of
Tasso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 10th. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Mariage force, Le Festin de Pierre,
L'Amour Medecin, Les Fourberies de Scapin de Moliere [...] Read a page or two of the Life of
Tasso.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 11th. Read the Life of Tasso -- Read Le Malade Imaginaire, Le Medecin malgre
lui, La comtess D'Escarbagnas of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 11th. Read the Life of Tasso -- Read Le Malade Imaginaire, Le Medecin malgre
lui, La comtess D'Escarbagnas of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 11th. Read the Life of Tasso -- Read Le Malade Imaginaire, Le Medecin malgre
lui, La comtess D'Escarbagnas of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday April 13th. [...] Read L'Etourdi of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday April 14th. Sit at home all day. Read the Life of Tasso and L'Etourdi of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday April 15th. Read the Life of Tasso. Read Le Depit Amoureux of Moliere -- The plot
and intrigue of this play is excellent.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday April 16. Finish the Depit Amoureux read Les precieuses ridicules. Also part of
Clarissa Harlowe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday April 17th. Read Clarissa Harlowe and Amphitryon of Moliere.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday March 11th [...] Read Vie de Mademoiselle de Montpensiers ecrite par elle meme.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday May [...] 2nd Rainy -- Read Floris & Fleur Blanche [sic] -- Cleomades et Clarimonde et Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelone -- Also 1st Chapter of Winkelmann [sic]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Many thanks for your letter and the book. I read the book at once, d?un trait. This is praise, I think! It reminds me of "Dominique".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Saturday -- Jan. 8th. Read the Auto of La Vida es Sueno. Begin the Life of Romulus [...] Work in the Evening while Shelley reads the Gospel of Mathew [sic] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Thursday March 16th. [...] Read the Life of Adam Smith [makes notes on this] [...] In Smith's
Treatise concerning the Imitative Arts I find the following: "The Minuet, where the Lady passes &
repasses the Gentleman, then gives him one hand and then another, and at last both, is
supposed to be a[...] Moorish dance emblematic of the passion of love." So little did our prudish
grandmother's [sic] know what they were about.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday March 17th. [...] Read [...] the Play of Beggar's Bush.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday March 18th. [...] Read the Woman Hater of Beaumont & Fletcher. Excellent Spy
scene
which would apply to the present ministers.'
[...]
'Sunday March 19th. [...] Finish Woman-Hater of Beaumont & Fletcher. '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday April [...] 19 [...] Finish the fall of Sejanus by Ben Jonson begin the Woman's
prize or the Tamer tam'd by Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit
without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit
without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit
without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday April 27th. [...] Read Noble Gentleman of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday April 30th. [...] Read Elder Brother [quotes two lines from Act II scene 1]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday May 10th. [...] Read Women Pleased [sic] and tragedy of Thierry & Theodoret of
Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday June 15th. [...] Go in a Calesse to Casa Ricci at Livorno. Read Vicar of Wakefield'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday July 16th. [...] Read Barber of Seville & Jerome Pointu.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Tuesday July 18th. [...] Read Continuation of the Stories of Old Daniel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday July 21st. Finish Essay on Irish Bulls -- Begin Edward by Dr Moore.
[...]
'Saturday July 22nd. Finish Edward by Dr Moore.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday July 23rd. Read Florence Macarthy all day by Lady Morgan which I finish.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - and the Tale of the Tub of B. Jon[s]on - Transcribe the Symposium - S. reads Herodotus - and Hume in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read a part of the 7 canto of Tasso - Livy - Montaigne and Eustace -S. reads Theocritus and Richard III aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 7 Canto's of Dante - Begin to translate A.[lfieri] - Read Cajo Graccho of Monti & Measure for Measure'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Sunday August 13th. Read the Life of Castruccio by Nicalao Tegrimi [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Sept. 9th. Read Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland written as it is said by
one Campbell.
'Sunday Sept. 10th. Read Survey of the South of Ireland.
[...]
'Tuesday Sept. 12th. [...] Read Philosophical Survey's [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday October 13 [...] Read Memoirs of O'Connor'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Nov. 30th. [...] Read the [...] Novella of Belfegor da Macchivelli.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Dec. 11th. Begin the Observations of Macchiavelli upon the Decades of Livy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Jany 10th. [...] Read Sintram by Baron de la Motte Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday Feb. 26th. [...] Read Prose Campestri da Pindemonte.'
[reading from this text also recorded in journal entry for 5 March 1821, with 'Finish Poesie
Campestre by Pindemonti [sic] recorded in entry for 8 March].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'[Tuesday] March 13th. [...] In the Evening read Das Lied von der Glocke [Schiller] and begin the
History of the Crusades by Michaud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - Manfredi of Monti - Shelley writes - Read 8 Canto of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - & the Virginia of Alfieri - walk out in the evening - after tea S. reads L'Allegro and il penseroso to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - & the Virginia of Alfieri - walk out in the evening - after tea S. reads L'Allegro and il penseroso to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'read Saul - S. reads Malthus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - Alfieri's Agide - S. reads Malthus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Spent a good deal of to day in reading "The Heir at Law" a Comedy proposed to be played by the Garrick Club. I have expressed an opinion that it is very suitable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Went home with Messrs Reed & then got back to my quarters. Studied a little of my part in the Heir at Law, saw all was right in the Gaol & then went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Called upon Nield in the evening and after a walk we came to my quarters and read the Parts we have in The Heir at Law.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Called upon Nield in the evening and after a walk we came to my quarters and read the Parts we have in The Heir at Law.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Neild Print: Book
'Read a chapter or two of Zimmermann on Solitude, and with that & ordinary business employed myself till four o clock.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Read Livy - The Tempest & two gentlemen of Verona - S finishes Ma[l]thus - & reads Cymbeline aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Vita di Tasso - Read Timon of Athens - work - S finishes the Winter's Tale'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read "Women" of Mathuerin [for Maturin] - the Fudge Family - Beppo &c. S. begins the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read "Women" of Mathuerin [for Maturin] - the Fudge Family - Beppo &c. S. begins the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Return to Este. read Mrs C. Smiths novel of Emmeline'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Emmeline - S. reads Joseph Andrews'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Montaigne - S. reads Plato's republic'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish 1st Book of the Georgics - S. begins reading Winkhelmann's Histoire de l'art to me in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Dante - S. reads Winkhelmann aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Livy & Winkhelmann aloud - read Dante - And Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Inferno of Dante & the 9th book of Livy - S & I read Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'finish Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Montaigne - the Bible & Livy - Walk to the Coliseum - S. reads Winkhelmann'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Montaigne - the Bible & Livy - Walk to the Coliseum - S. reads Winkhelmann'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Sunday July 29th. [...] Read Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'After dinner S. reads the first Book of Paradise Lost to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Metastasio - S. reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Metastasio - S. reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Metastasio - S. reads the Hist. P.[lay]s of Shakespeare'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - & Chrysostome'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Saturday September 1st. [...] Finish Anastasius and begin Lady Morgan's Italy.
[...]
'Sunday Sept -- 2nd. [...] Read Lady Morgan's Italy --
[...]
''Monday Sept. 3rd. Finish [...] 1st. Vol. Lady Morgan's Italy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
[Mary's reading list for Percy Shelley for 1818. Most volumes mentioned here are also mentioned in the journal so database entries are based on those references.]
'S
Humes England
Malthus's Essay on Population
Histoire de l'art de Winkhelmann
Latin
Georgics
Livy's History
Greek
The Hymns of HOmer
The Greek Tragedians
Memorabilia of Zenophon
Comedies of Aristophanes
The Symposium - Phaedrus - Apology f Socrates &c. of Plato
Herodotus
Theocritus
Italian
Vita di Tasso
Divina Comedia di Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Monday Dec. 10th. [...] Read Lady Morgan's Italy'.
[further readings in this text recorded in journal entries for 11, 12, 14, 15, 25, 27 December
1821, with 'Finish Lady Morgan's Italy' recorded on 28 December].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Dec. 29th. [...] read Hypermnestre a tragedy by M. le Mierre and Rhadamiste et
Zenobie by I. Crebillon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday May [...] 27th. [...] After dinner read Die Cypressenkranze de la Baronne la Motte
Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Monday May [...] 30th. [...] After dinner Mr. Gambs reads aloud his tale of Skold. It pleases me
very much -- Its principal charm is the naturalness of [...] its descriptions [...] and the extreme
variety of the style.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'Wednesday [...] June 1st. [...] After dinner M. Gambs reads aloud the 3, 4, 5, and 6th. Canto of
Moses [goes on to comment upon this text in detail].'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'Wednesday June [...] 29th. [...] Begin Mendelsohn's [sic] translation of Plato's Phaedon. and
Memoirs of Marmontel.'
[further readings from latter text recorded in journal entries for 1 and 2 July 1825]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday [...] August 4th. [...] Read Life of Gothe [sic], Lecture on Modern History by M. Gambs.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'Sunday [...] Oct. 9th. [...] I pack up [for family's departure from holiday home, following death
of a child] & read the whole day Memoirs of Madame Campan.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'[Tuesday] Nov. [...] 22nd. [...] After dinner read with [...] Midge [i.e. Chretien-Hermann
Gambs] a little of 1st Canto of Paradise lost by the side of the fire which is lighted in the great
drawing room.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Nov. [...] 30th. [...] After tea [...] begin Mullner's Schuld with M. G[ambs]. We
are interrupted by M. Baxter who spends the Evening.'
[also records reading this text, sometimes with Gambs, in journal entries for 1, 2, 6 ('read
till dinner time Die Schuld
which we begin over again'), 7 (transcribes passages) December 1825].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Dec. [...] 14th. [...] Read [...] Milton's Paradise Lost.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday [...] January 11th. ...] read Ritter Gluck by Hoffman with Mr. Gambs.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday [...] January 12th. [...] read Hoffman (Kreussleriana [sic]) untill bed-time.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday, January 28th [...] I read Medwin's book upon Lord Byron. -- My God, what lies that book
contained! Poor Shelley is made to play quite a secondary part [goes on to criticise book further,
and in detail] [...] When I was in bed today, I wept a great deal because my reading of to-day
had brought back Shelley vividly to my mind [goes on to inveigh against Byron's 'imposture' and
his treatment of his, and her, illegitimate daughter].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, c. December 1816:
'I have finished "Telemaque," and have read one, or two of Racine's plays, which I like very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, 30 December 1826, in response to his remarks on the description of a storm in George Robert Greig's The Subaltern:
'There is undoubtedly a new combination of striking circumstances in your Capture of St Sebastian [...] I cannot however allow that sulphur is only mentioned in [italics]Homer[end italics] when I find this expressive passage in Petronius Arbiter [slightly misquotes two lines from the Satyricon, followed by further relevant quotes from William Chamberlayne, Pharonnida (III canto 3); Beattie, The Minstrel, I v.54, and Shakespeare's Tempest I.2.203-204]
[...]
'After some searching, I have only found "the alarming impression of the storm, while yet collecting, on all animals" mentioned in Chatterton's Excellent Balade of Charitie, -- which I am sure you must think poetically excellent [quotes line from verse 5] [...] but here the cattle have had a more ordinary indication of the aproaching storm [i.e. falling rain] than your awful circumstances of close oppressive heat, praeternatural stillness & silence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Write - read Lucan & the Bible S. writes the Cenci & reads Plutarch's lives - the Gisbornes call in the evening - S. reads Paradise Lost to me - Read 2 Cantos of the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Write. Read Lucan & the wife for a Month - & 2 Cantos of Purgatorio with S. - he reads Philaster - & copies his tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Write. Read Lucan & the wife for a Month - & 2 Cantos of Purgatorio with S. - he reads Philaster - & copies his tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Beaumonts & Fletchers plays - and the Revolt of Islam aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Beaumont & Fletcher - Dante and Lucan - S. reads the Greek tragedians and Boccacio [sic] [...] He reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Read Beaumont & Fletcher - Dante and Lucan - S. reads the Greek tragedians and Boccacio [sic] [...] He reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Copy Shelleys Prometheus - work - read Beaumont & Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Massinger'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Arrive at Florence - Read Massinger - S. begins Clarendon - reads Massinger - & Plato's Republic'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Horace - work - S. reads B[eaumont] & F.[letcher] & Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Horace & the life of Gusman d'Alfarache - S reads Clarendon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Gusman d'A. - read Horace'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 2 book of Horace - Read Undine & c - S. finishes the 3 vol of Carendon aloud & reads Peter Bell - he reads Plato's republic'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'At 7 [...] I read the History of England and Rome -- at 8 I perused the History of Greece and
it was at this age that I first found real delight in poetry -- "The Minstrel" Popes "Iliad"[,]
some parts of the "Odyssey" passages from "Paradise lost" selected by my dearest Mama and
some of Shakespeares plays among which were "The Tempest," "Othello," and a few historical
dramatic pieces constituted my studies!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Read Horace - Memoires du Comte Grammont - S. writes his letter concerning Carlile - & reads Mme de Staels account of the Revolution - & Clarendon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of texts read by both herself and Shelley in 1819. All texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'M&S
Histoires des Republics Italiennes par Sismondi
Forsyth's tour
Boccacio
Dante's Paradiso and Purgatorio
Several plays of Shakespeare - Beaumont and Fletcher &c.
Ben Jonson
Voyages d'Antenor
Massinger
4 vols of Clarendon
Paradise Lost
Remorse - Undine - Novels &c &c'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
'This year [when aged twelve] I read Milton for the first time [italics]thro[end italics] together
with Shakespeare & Pope's Homer [...] I now read to gain idea's [sic] not to indulge my fancy and I
studied the works of those critics whose attention was directed to my favorite authors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, c.15 April 1827:
'I have done reading your correspondence with Mr Commeline [...] I thought it odd that an
article of the Edinburgh Review should be referred to, on a philological subject; &, on looking
into the one which Mr Commeline calls the "Manual of his heresy", I was surprised to find us
accused there of ["]subverting the true metrical structure of Latin hexameters, even according
to the accentual system" by [italics]not[end italics] laying our accent on the [italics]long[end
italics] syllable, & by laying it on the short ones. The Reviewer seems confused in his
speculations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 20-21 April 1828:
'I have been reading St Chrysostom in Greek & in your English [...] Besides this, I have been
reading several parts of your translation, exactly as you desired me to do -- slowly, & out
loud: and I have admired the particular cadences & the general rhythm, all the way.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 20-21 April 1828:
'I have been reading St Chrysostom in Greek & in your English [...] Besides this, I have been
reading several parts of your translation, exactly as you desired me to do -- slowly, & out
loud: and I have admired the particular cadences & the general rhythm, all the way.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'S. reads the bible - and Muller's universal History'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Julie. Read the Fable of the Bees.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Las Casas & Jeremiah aloud. read the F. of the bees'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Fable of the Bees - Read Catiline's Conspiracy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Utopia - Write - S reads Henry VI aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Utopia'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 July 1828:
'I will [italics]not[end italics] keep Miss Muschett's poem, -- notwithstanding your kind permission [...] My general impression of the poem is this, -- that it is very elegantly & feelingly & pleasingly written; but it is deficient in harmony, and the ideas seem to me to be diluted by a [italics]wordiness[end italics] in the expression [...] I like the 20th and 21st stanzas best.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 1829:
'I meant to have taken with me today the following extract from the learned Abbe Barthelemi's introduction to his "Voyage of Anarcharsis". It consists of his opposition to a few of the charges generally & principally brought against Homer [including lack of dignity in presentation of noble characters] -- & pleased me very much when I read it for the first time a few days ago [goes on to transcribe passage in own English translation].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 'Thursday Morng.', October 1829:
'You will think me very idle when I tell you that the Apologetis is not finished yet. But the
Oration on Eutropius [italics]is[end italics]; I have read it twice, -- & I have besides, been
reading a little of Longinus's treatise every day, of which I had previously read only own or
two chapters [...] the brilliancy of his imaginative powers dazzles you so much, as almost to
prevent your perceiving the roughness & cragginess [...] As to the Oration on Eutropius, it has
of course delighted me extremely [...] But it has [...] weakness occasioned not merely by
[italics]repetition[end italics], but by a super-abundance of supererogatory epithets.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 'Friday Night,' December 1829:
'I have read the seven orations on Paul, & the eighth one on the same subject [goes on briefly
to cite specific passages].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 16 January 1830:
'Chrysostom has been staggering me lately by his commentary on those passages of the Epistles to the Corinthians, which relate to the Lord's Supper. I have felt every now & then, that he [italics]must[end italics] hold transubstantiation, -- & then I look at your pencil marks upon those very passages, & recollect your opinion of his holding no such doctrine -- & then I am in perplexity'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Stuart Boyd Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 16 January 1830:
'Chrysostom has been staggering me lately by his commentary on those passages of the
Epistles to the Corinthians, which relate to the Lord's Supper. I have felt every now & then,
that he [italics]must[end italics] hold transubstantiation, -- & then I look at your pencil marks
upon those very passages, & recollect your opinion of his holding no such doctrine -- & then I
am in perplexity'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Read Macchiavelli Hist. of Castruccio Castracani - Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza]. S. reads a part of 4th B. of the Aenied aloud - read Condorcet's life of Voltaire - S. reads Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Translate Sxxxxxa - Read life of Voltaire. finish life of Castruccio. - S. reads Political Justice - finishes the 4th Book & all we mean to read of 5th book of Virgil - Visit at Casa Silva. S. reads Locke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S reads Fletcher's Tragedy of Bonduca aloud to me in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Robinson Crusoe. S. finishes the tragedy of Bonduca to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy and R Crusoe - S. reads Phaedon having read Phaedrus - reads the tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S finishes the Trajedy to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Paradise Regain[e]d aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Paradise regained aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Vicar of Wakefield'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Livy - Mrs Macauly's hist. of England - Lucretius with S. - he reads Greek Romances & Ricciardetto aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Middletons Cicero'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. finishes his translation of Homer's hymn to Mercury'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Ciceros 2nd oration - Hist. of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. begins Hist of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Ann Lowry Boyd, c. April 1831:
'For the last week I have not been at all well, & indeed was obliged yesterday to go to bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where I contrived to abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord Byron's Life by Moore.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, July 1832:
'I have read Hebrew regularly every day since I told you of my beginning Genesis, -- and I am
now more than half way through Genesis, & begin to relax a little from the lexicon. From its
being a primitive language it is very interesting in a philosophical point of view. I like to find
the roots of words & ideas at the same time [...] I am glad I thought of having recourse to it,
for if it had no other advantage, it has at least given a change of air to my mind. I have been
reading besides, two Italian novels -- one by Manzani [sic], entitled the Betrothed, which, tho'
heavy enough sometime, is very well written & very amiably written. The other is a
continuation of the story, by a different & an unequal writer'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 July 1832:
'I have read Miss Fanny Kemble's tragedy [...] It seems to me to be a very clever & indeed
surprising production as from the pen of a young person; but I think that from any other pen,
it would not find readers. The dialogue is sometime very spirited & ably done; but the poetry
is seldom good as poetry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 16 April 1832:
'I believe I ought to have written to you before to thank you for lending Synesius to me [...] I
have gone thro' the whole of Synesius; and notwithstanding his occasional diffuseness & self-
repetition [...] he does [italics]make you feel[end italics] that he is a poet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 28 July 1835:
'I have been reading [...] Lord Brougham's Natural Theology, -- and have shaken my head
over it [...] It seems to me to have its most valuable parts in its notes, -- in the observations
there upon Hume's philosophy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, c.September 1835:
'I have been reading the Bridgewater treatises, -- and am now trying to understand Prout upon
chemistry [...] Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful: as to matter, I
could not walk with him all the way -- altho' I longed to do it, for he walked on flowers, &
under shade'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 July 1836:
'You have not my dear kind friend thought me unkind and thankless in not writing my gratitude
to you the moment I felt it, for your books [...] [explains having waited until had time to do
justice to these, including one of Mitford's own] [...] My pencil has marked Emily and Fair
Rosamund and Henry Talbot The bridal Eve, The Captive & The masque of the Seasons as chief
favorites of mine. My pencil always does for me the prudent business which beans & pebbles
did for the heroes of childish romance .. marking his footsteps in the wood [...] In these
paths, these new paths -- thank you dear Miss Mitford for letting me walk in them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 August 1836:
'Jesse Cliffe -- I have read it! [italics]Thank you for it![end italics] and you must hear that
from so many!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 December 1836:
'How much ignorance I have to confess in sackcloth, with respect to the old dramatists! -- for
indeed I have had little opportunity of walking with them in their purple & fine linen. Only
[italics]extracts[end italics] from Bea[u]mont & Fletcher -- & Ford, -- have past before my
eyes!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 1837:
'I will write out two passages from Justin Martyr, the only ones which struck me while I was
reading him, on the subject of the Lord's supper [transcriptions follow from two works, in
Greek].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 1837:
'I will write out two passages from Justin Martyr, the only ones which struck me while I was
reading him, on the subject of the Lord's supper [transcriptions follow from two works, in
Greek].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning to William Charles Macready, January 1837:
'I have taken a cursory look at your [italics]addissions[end italics] in "Strafford," seeing it on the
table. I shall remedy every oversight I am sure out of an after crop of thoughts!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 23 January 1837:
'I have read Coombs [sic] Phrenology [...] [It] is very clever, & amusing; but I do not think it
logical or satisfactory.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ?17 March 1837:
'I have read your play [Otto of Wittelsbach] my dearest Miss Mitford, & so you will be obliged to
read my admiration upon it [goes on to discuss text in detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Hunter (aged 10) to Elizabeth Barrett, quoted in letter of Elizabeth Barrett to Mary
Russell Mitford, 2 May 1837:
'"I read today in a magazine a tale of Miss Mitford's about the widow's dog Chloe who was
very faithful and would go back to the widow's house. If you do not know the story, I dare
say she will tell it to you. I should like to know Miss Mitford very much -- for her writings are
[italics]so[end italics] beautiful & affectionate, -- and I think she would not dislike children."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hunter Print: Serial / periodical
'The Oration for Roscius the Comedian - Hist of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Muratori. Antichita d'Italia'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley writes an ode to Naples - Reads Mrs Macauly [sic]. finishes Appolonius [sic] Rhodius - Begins Swellfoot the Tyrant - suggested by the pigs at the fair of St Giuliano - Reads the double marriage aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 17 July 1837:
'Why should we [']'mere balladmongers" have so much to say of ourselves, when the "Country
stories" lie cut & read upon the table? They have the Mitford-charm all over them! [..] The
characteristic of your mind seems to be -- the power of bringing from the surfaces of things
that freshness of beauty, which others seek from in the profundities of nature [...] Indeed it is
a beautiful book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'S. finishes Mrs Macauly [sic] - Reads the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 19 August 1837:
'Has your Ladyship seen Lamb's letters, in Mr Talfourd's edition? I quite [italics]sighed[end
italics] when I finished them. They are exquisite -- & the "gentle-hearted Charles" [quotes
Coleridge] shows in them all his gentle heart, together with his very quaint sly brilliant (as
[italics]star[end italics]light) fancies.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 29 September 1837:
'I confess to you that I utterly dislike Lady Mary! [...] She had a hard shining imagination,
instead of a heart -- and words studied into carelessness, beating up & down, where warm
natural woman pulses ought to have beat. She had too little depth for manhood, -- & too little
softness for womanhood. Take away the corner stone & the top stone from Horace Walpole's
imagination -- or rather, take away what poetry he had -- & dress him up in a hoop -- & there
is Lady Mary Wortley Montague ready for court!! ---- I never could bear her -- or Horace
Walpole either -- and whenever I have looked at her letters, I have felt too much out of
humour to be amused.'
'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 September 1837:
'You certainly shd write Dash [Mitford's dog]'s memoirs! My youngest brothers, to say nothing
of my eldest, were delighted with the [italics]memorabilia[end italics], I read to them out of
your letter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
'Walk up the Mountain with S. - he reads aloud Lovers Progress'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Muratori - Greek - Travels of Rolando - S. reads Robertson's America - begins Bocaccio [sic] aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Antient Metaphysics'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Sismondi - B.[occaccio] - S. reads A.[ntient] M.[etaphysics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Sismondi - Ride to Pisa - Georgics - B.[occaccio]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Lambs Specimens'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Medwin reads Dramatic scenes to us & a part of his journal in India''
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Medwin Manuscript: diary
'read Armata - read Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's reading list for 1820, with texts also read by Percy Shelley marked with an x. Only texts not mentioned in the journal are given separate entries based on this list]
'M. (& (S with an x) - 1820
The remainder of Livy.
x The Bible until the end of Ezekhiel
x Don Juan
x Travels Before the Flood
La Nouvelle Heloise
The Fable of the Bees
Paine's Works
Utopia
x Voltaire's Memoires
x The Aenied [sic] And Georgics
Bridone's Travels
Robinson Crusoe
Sandford & Merton
x Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia
Vindication of the Rights of women
x Boswell's life of Johnson
Paradise regained & lost
Mary - Letters from Norway & Posthumus [sic] Works
Ivanhoe - Tales of my Landlord
Fleetwood - Caleb Williams
x Ricciardetto.
x Mrs Macauly's [sic] Hist. of Engd
x Lucretius
The 3 first orations of Cicero
Muratori Anti chita [sic] d'Italia
Travels & Rebellion in Ireland
Tegrino's life of Castruccio
x Boccacio [sic] - Decamerone
x Keats' poems
x armata
Corinne
The first book of Homer. Oedippus [sic] Tyrannus
A Little Spanish & much Italian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's reading list for 1820, with texts also read by Percy Shelley marked with an x. Only texts not mentioned in the journal are given separate entries based on this list]
'M. (& (S with an x) - 1820
The remainder of Livy.
x The Bible until the end of Ezekhiel
x Don Juan
x Travels Before the Flood
La Nouvelle Heloise
The Fable of the Bees
Paine's Works
Utopia
x Voltaire's Memoires
x The Aenied [sic] And Georgics
Bridone's Travels
Robinson Crusoe
Sandford & Merton
x Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia
Vindication of the Rights of women
x Boswell's life of Johnson
Paradise regained & lost
Mary - Letters from Norway & Posthumus [sic] Works
Ivanhoe - Tales of my Landlord
Fleetwood - Caleb Williams
x Ricciardetto.
x Mrs Macauly's [sic] Hist. of Engd
x Lucretius
The 3 first orations of Cicero
Muratori Anti chita [sic] d'Italia
Travels & Rebellion in Ireland
Tegrino's life of Castruccio
x Boccacio [sic] - Decamerone
x Keats' poems
x armata
Corinne
The first book of Homer. Oedippus [sic] Tyrannus
A Little Spanish & much Italian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'All the while I am writing now my head is running about the Tropics: in the morning I go and gaze at Palm trees in the hot-house and come home and read Humboldt: my enthusiasm is so great that I cannot hardly sit still on my chair.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
'I hope you continue to fan your Canary ardor: I read & reread Humboldt, do you do the same, & I am sure nothing will prevent us seeing the Great Dragon tree.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, March 1838:
'I have been reading the "Exile," from Marion Campbell, with much interest and delight'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 April 1838:
'I had to thank [John Kenyon] for [...] lending me Mr Milnes's Poems just printed for private circulation. They are of the Tennyson school [...] & very much delighted me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I now first felt even moderately well, & I was picturing to myself all the delights of fresh fruit growing in beautiful valleys, & reading Humboldts descriptions of the Islands glorious views.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
'If you really want to have a [notion] of tropical countries, study Humboldt.? Skip th[e] scientific parts & commence after leaving Teneriffe.? My feelings amount to admiration the more I read him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Arabella Moulton-Barrett, 4 June 1839:
''[Dr Barry] has been lending me his friend & patient Dr Cummings book, to read --
"Wanderings in search of Health" [...] His adventures in wandering down the Nile in search of
health inclined me to laugh as much as his confession that he was "a physician in search of
it'"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'This unfortunate O'Meara, It was the merest chance he was not sent to extend his localities in the Highlands. I would have returned the book immediately, finding how long it had been here, had the subject been any other than Napoleon - however I made what haste I could with it; but though I read whenever a temporary cessation of civilities on the part of the inhabitants left a minute at my own disposal, I only finished it at twelve o'clock the night you wrote for it - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I liked Milman's books better than your scanty recommendation led me to expect- The gentleman is certainly a poet - he excells in description - the outlines of his pictures want charecter [sic] but his colouring is rich and brilliant, and on the whole his manner is very graceful - he fails sadly when he makes his personages speak and feel - however 'the Bright City' is not without heart - the episode of Lilian and Vortimer is very natural and pathetic, and Rowena's love is quite Byronical - I think if you have not read it, it is worth your time - How very presumptuous it is in me to attempt criticising such an Author as Milman!-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I have read the 'bright city' and rejoiced to find your criticism of it so agreeable to my own. Milman is certainly a poet, but he takes a flight higher than he can sustain. He paints too gorgeously and indistinctly, he also whines too much, he is sometimes even liable to cant. I am astonished at your diffidence in judging him: it were well if he always found even critics by profession so well qualified.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'I remember that I had to learn, with another schoolfellow (Nesbet), an act from Home's tragedy of Douglas, and a long passage from Campbell's Poems, entitled "The Wizard's Warning", and recite, or rather act the passages with as much eloquence and action as we could muster.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
'I remember that I had to learn, with another schoolfellow (Nesbet), an act from Home's tragedy of Douglas, and a long passage from Campbell's Poems, entitled "The Wizard's Warning", and recite, or rather act the passages with as much eloquence and action as we could muster.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, late January 1840:
'Did you ever meet with an account partly translated partly composed by Miss
Schimmelpenninck, of the Port Royal? It is long since I read, will be longer before I forget that most interesting account of the most interesting establishment which ever owed its
conventual name & form to the Church of Rome, & its purity & nobility to God's blessing &
informing Spirit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 February 1840:
'I never received Mr Merry's book until a very few days since. Wasn't it too bad of my dear
people in Wimpole Street? [...] they [...] kept the book until boots, & shoes enough for a
colony cd be made -- allowing for that corresponding genius of procrastination common to
shoemakers. I really was ashamed to write to you until I had the book -- & when I had it I
read it off my conscience & wrote to Mr Merry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 3 March 1840:
'I had a kind message from Captain Marryat once [...] but I have never seen him. Without being one of his indiscriminate admirers, I like parts of his books (some of which I have read to my father), and have been told that they have done good in the profession -- suggestions
thrown out in them having been taken up and acted upon by the Lords of the Admiralty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'I have just this instant finished the O'Meara - and have no time to write. You quite distress me by sending me so many books-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book, Volume 2 of 2Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett, invalid, to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 December 1840:
'You cant guess what my business has been lately [...] my business has been retracing my
steps in the Village, your village [...] You cannot realize, -- you the writer -- cannot, -- the
peculiar effect of that delightful book, upon one in a prison like me, shut up from air & light
[...] It frees me at once for the moment -- shows me the flowers & the grass they grow by, &
pours into my face the sweetness & freshness & refreshment of the whole summer in a
breath.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'My dear Miss Mitford, Your good and kind father has just given Nancy a copy of a little volume of poems, in which I find the verses on Maria's winning the cup at Ilsley inscribed to me, and for which honour I beg you to accept of my best thanks; an honour which I value the more because these verses are in company with those elegant and truly pathetic strains, addressed to your dear mother; which, unlike most other poetical effusions of praise, contain nothing but what is founded in truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Cobbett Print: Book
'My dear sir [...] Your daughter's very amiable and interesting book is quite a refreshment to my spirit, wearied on the one hand by labour and on the other by pain; for it would be in vain to tell you how I have occupied my mind on the before-mentioned theme, and this was the very volume to lead me sweetly and softly from myself to many charming scenes, conducted by the hand of virtue and genius. Where all are amiable, it is hard to select, but the poem addressed to yourself (page 70), and that part of the "Epistle to a Friend" which contains the subject beginning with the line, "How true the wish, how pure the glow," to the end of the passage, went nearest to my affections.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: S.J. Pratt Print: Book
'Sir, I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of a volume of poems which Messrs. Longman transmitted to me a few days since, and for which I am indebted to your politeness. I have been very much pleased with Miss Mitford's poems generally, and many passages I think excellent. In particular I was delighted to see her muse busy in Northumberland, the scenery of which in many parts is well worthy of a poet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Mitford Print: Book
'The story of "Blanch", when the poem becomes fashionable, will be dramatized... I cannot help thinking it would make a good drama. The story is busy and pathetic. For the two small poems I thank you much. That to Lord Redesdale is most striking to me, and it is a just tribute to feeling where one would least expect it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.P. Smith Manuscript: Sheet
'Madam, I am really ashamed of not having answered your very obliging and interesting letter, and not hving acknowledged the receipt of the pretty poem which you have done me the honour of submitting to my perusal. The fact is, I have been confined to my room for several days, and though I have run through your entertaining M.S., I have by no means given that attention to it which it deserves, and which alone would entitle me to give you an opinion upon it.... I can, from the very cursory perusal I have hitherto made of it, say very truly that it gave me great pleasure, and is both an elegant and poetical work...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Holland Manuscript: Sheet
'I have just finished your poem of "The Sisters", and tell you truly and fairly that I read it with an interest and delight which I cannot express. I like it better than anything you have done (am I right or wrong?) and you have contrived to mix up poetical imagery and expression with such a great degree of interest as I have never before found in any poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book
[He wishes to express] 'the high gratification I have received from the perusal of "Foscari". I must frankly tell you that the play has very much surprised me. I gave you credit for a great deal, but not for what you are mistress of. The drama is your proper walk, and I pray you heartily henceforth to make the right use of your great talents, and to contribute something to the solid, permanent literature of your age.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: P. Bayley Manuscript: Unknown
'I was much better pleased with it ["Foscari"] than I expected, though I can truly add that my expectations were somewhat highly raised. The interest begins at once, and continues throughout, and there are a thousand little touches of great beauty, although (and this in a drama is perhaps the best praise) there is no one passage on which I can fix as possessing a distinct and paramount superiority... In your "Foscari" I find also a much greater strength than is usual from a female pen, accompanied with many a lambent spark of genuine heartfelt feeling... which none but a woman could have given.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden Manuscript: Unknown
'I should think the first volume of his [Sismondi's] "Literature du Midi de l'Europe" would be of some use in collateral information, and at any rate that is amusing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden Print: Book
'I think it ["Rienzi"] extremely clever; some scenes are very powerful, and capable of being wrought into a most effective play.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: W.C. Macready Manuscript: Unknown
'W. dines with us - walk with him - his play - S finishes Every Man in his Humour'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'read Malthus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read & finish Malthus - Begin the Answer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read greek - read Mackenzies works'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - Old plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - Diary of an Invalid'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'finish the First book of the Odessey [sic] - read old plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'The first thing which struck me in your essays was the exact accordance between your printed and epistolary style. Are you aware how very little the idea of writing of the public changes your mode of expression? Some of your sketches I like very much. "Hannah" I had read before, as well as the "Talking Lady," with whose portrait I was particularly struck...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Franklin Print: Book
'Thank you for it ["Cromwell"]. It is a strange, clever, absurd, lively, queer, farcical, indescribable production. It is impossible not to be amused - impossible not occasionally to admire. On the other hand, the Liston farce of part of it - even exceeds my notion of the liberty of the genre romantique.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Milman Manuscript: Unknown
'Madam, I can hardly feel that I am addressing an entire stranger in the author of "Our Village", and yet I know it is right and proper that I should apologize for the liberty I am taking. But really, after having accompanied you, as I have done again and again, in "violeting," and seeking for wood-sorrel ? after having been with you to call upon Mrs. Allen in "the dell", and becoming thoroughly acquainted with May and Lizzie, I cannot but hope that you will kindly pardon my obtrusion, and that my name may be sufficiently known to you to plead my case. There are writers whose works we cannot read without feeling as if we really had looked with them upon the scenes they bring before us, and as if such communion had almost given us a claim to something more than the mere intercourse between authors and "gentle readers". Will you allow me to say that your writings have this effect up me, and that you have taught me, in making me know and love your "Village" so well, to wish for further knowledge also of her who has so vividly impressed its dingles and copses upon my imagination, and peopled them so cheerily with healthful and happy beings?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
'We have not got a circulating library. It was too near Glasgow to thrive, and I am no ways acquainted in Glasgow. I am, therefore, famishing for the want of books. I have to pick up all my news of literature from the newspapers. I saw a delightful piece of yours quoted there lately from a book called "The Coronet, or Literary and Christian Remembrancer." It was entitled "Fanny's Fairings."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon (admirer of Mary Russell Mitford) Print: Newspaper
'Dear Madam, Accept my best thanks for the copy of "Rienzi", and allow me to assure you that it has not been thrown away, for, as [Rev William] Harness can bear witness, I can repeat long passages of it by heart. I have now the pleasure of forwarding to you the volumes I mentioned...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Dyce Print: Book
'Let me tell you that I never see a paper professing to give literary news from England without anxiously looking for your name.. I have read whole pages of extracts from the Annuals and "Our Village" - so well do the savages know how to make their papers sell - but I have not seen, what I chiefly [sic] sought, any account of the noble tragedy, three acts of which you read to me when I last saw you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Trollope Print: Newspaper
'Madam, Having understood from a friend that you wished to obtain the words of "The Bann of the Church of the German Empire," I take the liberty of sending them to you [...] You will find it in "Les Anecdotes Germaniques," page 151, and as I have experienced so much pleasure from the perusal and representation of your beautiful tragedies, I shall have great satisfaction in being of the smallest use to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G.E. Lynch Cotton Print: Book
'In your delightful sketch of Grace Nugent I was much amused by the donkey messengers. Such mercuries are common in Suffold, and I greeted your boys as old acquaintances.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Strickland Print: Book
'My dear Miss Mitford, I cannot employ the formal address of a stranger towards one who has inspired the vivid feeling of intimate acquaintance, a deep and affectionate interest in her occupations and happiness. You cannot be ignorant that your books are re-printed and widely circulated on this side of the Atlantic? your name has penetrated beyond our maritime cities, and is familiar and loved through many a village circle and to the borders of the lonely depths of unpierced woods ? that we eagerly gather the intimations of your character and history that we fancy are dispersed through your productions ? that we venerate "Mrs. Mosse", are lovers of "Sweet Cousin Mary" and have wept and almost worn mourning for dear bright little "Lizzie", that, in short, such is your power over the imagination that your pictures have wrought on our affections like realities.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine M. Sedgwick Print: Book
'My dear Miss Mitford,I cannot miss the opportunity my aunt allows me of writing to the author of "Our Village," to express my interest in her, and in the perusal of her charming book, one of the most valuable in my library, which I have read several times, and at each repetition have experienced increased delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Kate Sedgwick Print: Book
'She speaks of "Inez" as about to be produced. I have been long expecting to hear that it was out. Do you remember reading it to me (excepting the fourth act, which was not then born) just before I left England?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Trollope Manuscript: Unknown
'My dear Miss Mitford, May I be permitted to address thus familiarly a lady with whom, though not personally acquainted, I have long been on terms of intimacy, and for whom I have felt the most lively sentiments of regard and esteem. Ever since I had the pleasure of being a fellow contributor of yours in the Ladies? Magazine, I have most anxiously wished for an introduction to you, but was deterred from seeking an opportunity of making myself known by the consciousness of my own obscurity?When, however, I became an inhabitant of the house in Hans Place, which I knew to be the scene of your juvenile days, from the description given in the "Boarding School Recollections," and began to entertain a hope that my intimacy with Miss Landon and the acquaintance of Miss Skerrit would sanction my long-cherished wish?.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Roberts Print: Serial / periodical
'It has made me extravagant, for I have ordered the four other volumes. the work is perfectly unique. I know nothing like it in any language, and it is among the few to which one can turn again and again with even new pleasure. The "Farewell" is one of the sweetest bits of writing that I know.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Trollope Print: Book
'I was reading your inimitable description of Dora Creswell the other day to a friend of mine who was confined to his bed by illness. He laughed and cried by turns, and averred there could not be a word changed for the better, except that of reaper applied to Dora.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine M. Sedgwick Print: Book
'Dear Miss Mitford, I rejoice in finding an occasion to address you, that I may express the very great pleasure both my husband and myself have always derived from your writing. We know your "village" and all its crofts, and lanes and people, and we wish we had the happiness of peronally knowing you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
'Shall I confess to you that I have some dread of this wonderful lady [Harriet Martineau]...I agree with a good, simple lady of my acquaintance that "political economy is an excellent thing," but, alas! when I read Miss M's books, I slip [possibly skip?] the political economy as a friend of mine did the muscles when he studied anatomy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine Sedgwick Print: Book
'The most truly English sketches in the language are your country volumes. Well, through these volumes we have been wending this winter. We had read them before, and many of the stories were as familiar to us as household words; but they have been read this time principally that William might trace out their localities, and a great additional charm has his knowledge of your part of the country given them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and William Howitt Print: Book
'I have just finished Fanny Kemble's books, and when I say that I read them the next after your most charming volumes, and was amused, and on the whole much pleased with them. I am sure they are meritorious, let the critics say what they may.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Hofland Print: Book
'I have just finished Fanny Kemble's books, and when I say that I read them the next after your most charming volumes, and was amused, and on the whole much pleased with them. I am sure they are meritorious, let the critics say what they may.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Hofland Print: Book
'Our little community have been delighting themselves with your "Belford Regis"; accept their untied thanks for it [...] The book is republished rather shabbily by Carey. I am in great hopes that we shall get our ungracious laws altered at the next congressional session, so that you English contributors to our advantage shall get some remuneration for your pains.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine Sedgwick Print: Book
'Your last book still rolls on, gathering golden opinions, and I for one thank you, for I have been passing the last fortnight in the country, and perhaps there is no book in the world so pleasant to be on the grass with and read to a charming woman. I have only grudged the transfer of leaves from my right hand to my left, and if you had heard the "Is that all?" of my listener as I closed the last volume, you would have felt that you had not lived in vain - as who has, who has given pleasure to the world, or beguiled weariness, or refined the aspect of life?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: N.P. Willis Print: Book
'This new edition of "Our Village" I have been coveting ever since I saw the advertisement of it, and I will tell you why. It is one of those cheerful, spirited works, full of fair pictures of humanity, which, especially where there are children who love reading and being read to, becomes a household book, turned to again and again, and remembered and talked of with affection. So it is by our fireside; it is a work our little daughter has read, and loves to read, and which our little son Alfred, a most indomitable young gentleman, likes especially - not so much for its variety of character, which gives its charm to his sister's mind, but for its descriptions of the country... Such, dear Miss Mitford, being the case, when I saw the new edition advertised, I began to cast in my mind whether or not we could not buy it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Howitt Print: Book
'This new edition of "Our Village" I have been coveting ever since I saw the advertisement of it, and I will tell you why. It is one of those cheerful, spirited works, full of fair pictures of humanity, which, especially where there are children who love reading and being read to, becomes a household book, turned to again and again, and remembered and talked of with affection. So it is by our fireside; it is a work our little daughter has read, and loves to read, and which our little son Alfred, a most indomitable young gentleman, likes especially - not so much for its variety of character, which gives its charm to his sister's mind, but for its descriptions of the country... Such, dear Miss Mitford, being the case, when I saw the new edition advertised, I began to cast in my mind whether or not we could not buy it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Howitt Print: Book
'I have read Bulwer's "Rienzi" and yours also. I always thought your tragedy the best of your works, and I think so still. It is a glorious thing. I like Bulwer's too, very much, but unless there were historical ground for the love between a Colonna and the family of Rienzi, he has injured his work by the introduction. It is so palpably an imitation of the tragedy and with much less effect...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 August 1841:
'[Crow] is an excellent young woman -- intelligent bright-tempered & feeling-hearted, -- more to me than a mere servant; since her heart works more than her hand in all she does for me!
And her delight in your Village which I gave her to read, was as true a thing as ever was that
of readers of higher degree. She says to me that if we go to Reading, she means to visit the
Village, and will know every house in it just as if it were an old place to her!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Crow Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 August 1841:
'How glad I was to see the graceful stanzas in the Athenaeum! -- Lady Burlington's I mean!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Some marginalia, mainly in French but some in English, throughout.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Some marginalia in English in pencil, especially on the following pages: 47, 51, 63, 177-8
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
'read 2 books of Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Read - Tegrino'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Milton on divorce'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - Tacitus - Emile & 1 Canto of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Florence Macarthy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'begin Macchiavelli's history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - & Macchiavelli'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - & Macchiavelli'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'At Sarzana - read Memoirs of the court of Charles II - Attala'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - 3rd Georgic - Geografica Fisica & Samson Agonistes'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Geografica Fisica & Samson Agonistes'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 December 1841:
'What a singular movement is this Puseyite one [...] Mr Milnes is a Puseyite & wrote the "One
tract more," which I read at Torquay by grace of Mr Kenyon's kindness, but thought little of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 23-25 December 1841:
'Mrs Jameson's early writings -- the Ennuyee for instance -- have an adroit leaning to
sentiment, which is [italics]sentimentality[end italics], & provokes one the more for the
excellent taste observable & admirable even there. In her later books, I do, I confess, see
much to admire. The conversations, for instance, on the state of art & literature in Germany
.. oh surely, we cannot all but admire their acuteness & eloquence & high intonation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I have now finished [the 12th book, represented by a Greek character] of the Odyssey'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have tried to read Mme de Genlis' memoirs, but they are one large capital I from beginning to end; this amuses at first - but tires long before we get to the end of 8 vols. - Above all, dear, get the Promessi Sposi - at first you may lag a little, but as you get on the truth & perfect Italianism of the manners and desciptions - the beautiful language which differs from all other Italian prose - being really the Tusca[n] of the day that he writes, & not a bad imitation of the [ ] trecentisti - the pasion & even sublimity of parts rendered it to me a most delightful book - I can imagine a person who had not been to Italy not liking it but to [underlined] us [end underlining] it must be delightful.'
[letter to Jane Williams Hogg]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'[Merimee's] book has arrived yesterday. I have only begun reading it.'
[letter to Venceslas-Victor Jacquemont]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I am very much obliged to you for the books - I still keep the O'Hara Tales, not having quite finished them - I certainly exonerate the Anglo Irish from the charge of impropriety - but I do not think it as clever as the Nowlans'
[letter to ? Charles Ollier]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Except the occupation of one or two annoyances, I have done nothing but read since I got Lord Byron's life -
I have no pretensions to being a critic - yet I know infinitely well what pleases me - Not to mention the judicious arrangement and happy tact displayed by Mr Moore, which distinguish this book - I must say a word concerning the style, which is elegant and forcible. I was particularly struck by the observations on Lord Byron's character before his departure to Greece - and on his return - there is strength and richness as well as sweetness
The great charm of the work to me, and it will have the same for you, is that the Lord Byron I find there is our Lord Byron - the fascinating - faulty - childish - philosophical being - daring the world - docile to a private circle - impetuous and indolent - gloomy and yet more gay than any other - I live with him again in these pages - getting reconciled (as I used in his lifetime) to those waywardnesses which annoyed me when he was away, through the delightful and buoyant tone of his conversation and manners -
[...] There is something cruelly kind in this single volume When will the next come? - impatient before how tenfold now am I so.
Among its many other virtues this book is [underlined] accurate [end underlining] to a miracle I have not stumbled on one mistake with regard either to time place or feeling'
[letter to John Murray]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I saw my Father today who is quite delighted with Mr Moore's book - indeed who is not? - He thinks the whole sets Lord Byron in the light he best deserves - Generous open hearted and kind - He particularly thinks beautiful the account of the first acquaintance between Lord Byron and Mr Moore'
[Letter to John Murray]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Godwin Print: Book
'Could you lend me any new publ. - you wd eternally oblige me - not the Contrast - I have read it - But the Fair of May Fair or Arlington -'
[letter to Charles Ollier]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have just begun the Adone - & like it'
[letter to Maria Gisborne]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Two of your love poems are supremely beautiful -
O let not words, the callous shell of thought
& I will not say my life was sad
and I like infinitely
They owned their passion without shame or fear.
I hope some day you will come and read to me again'
[Letter to Richard Monckton Milnes]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Monckton Milnes Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 March 1842:
'I [italics]have[end italics] read Marmontel's memoirs .. & a most amusing book it is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27-28 March 1842:
'Do you know how Mr Macready has been attacked for trying [...] to suppress [italics]the
saloons[end italics] [...] and how it has been declared that no theatre can exist at the present
day without a saloon -- & how, if it could, the effect wd be to force vicious persons & their
indecencies into full view in the boxes --!! Now this appears to me enough to constitute a
repulsive objection! & I who have read hard at the old dramatists since I last spoke to you
about them, -- Beaumont & Fletcher Massinger Ben Jonson all Dodsley's collection, -- can yet
see that objection in all its repulsiveness! .. & read on!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27-28 March 1842:
'Do you know how Mr Macready has been attacked for trying [...] to suppress [italics]the saloons[end italics] [...] and how it has been declared that no theatre can exist at the present
day without a saloon -- & how, if it could, the effect wd be to force vicious persons & their
indecencies into full view in the boxes --!! Now this appears to me enough to constitute a
repulsive objection! & I who have read hard at the old dramatists since I last spoke to you
about them, -- Beaumont & Fletcher Massinger Ben Jonson all Dodsley's collection, -- can yet
see that objection in all its repulsiveness! .. & read on!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English and French throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Some marginal annotation in pencil in French throughout the volume.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Brief notes in pencil on the front flyleaf, and some marginalia on the following pages only (all in English): 32, 34.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Brief summary of notes on inside front cover, and marginalia in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Some marginalia in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett, 30 March 1842:
'I have been reading Emerson -- He does away with individuality & personality in a most
extraordinary manner -- teaching that [...] every man's being is a kind of Portico to the God
Over-soul -- with Deity for background [...] there are heresies as thick as blackberries. Still
the occasional beauty of thought & expression, & the noble erectness of the thinking faculty
gave me "wherewithal to glory".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 April 1842:
'Of course you know Mademoiselle de Monpensier's [sic] Memoires. They are most
characteristically delightful -- yet I am only just now reading them -- & the Duc de St Simon's
also. I have a sort of Memoir brain fever at the present season-- Don't you think so?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 April 1842:
'Of course you know Mademoiselle de Monpensier's [sic] Memoires. They are most
characteristically delightful -- yet I am only just now reading them -- & the Duc de St Simon's also. I have a sort of Memoir brain fever at the present season-- Don't you think so?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 May 1842:
'I cdnt help reading to Crow your beautiful story of your Flush [dog] [...] mine immediately took up the gesture of listening intently gathering his ears over his great eyes as if he saw a hare [...] & patting about his little paws everytime the word [...] "Flush" occurred. Be sure he thought I was reading about [italics]him[end italics]!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 June 1841:
'Yes [...] to [having read] Emerson's letters [sic]. Or rather, yes, to the letters, & "no" to
Carlyle's preface -- because I read the American edition. Mr Kenyon lent the book to me, the
book belonging to Mr Crabbe Robinson whose hair stood on end when he heard of its being
lent to me! "Why" he said "that book is too stiff even for myself -- and I am not very
orthodox." In fact the book [...] is very extravagant in some of its views. It sets about
destroying [...] the personality of every person, & speaks of the Deity as of a great
Background to which every created individual forms a little porch!!! For the
rest, there are beautiful & noble thoughts in the book, beautifully & nobly said.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 August 1842:
'Romilly's memoirs have interest [...] Not that I am an enthusiast about [italics]him[end
italics] [...] it is wonderful & chilling to me, his unconsciousness, -- apparent at least &
unbroken to the observation, by voice or sign, throughout these memoirs, -- of the Spiritual
Realities beyond his humanity. Is it not so? I think it was my impression.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'E[lizabeth] B[arrett] B[arrett] had read Marryat's [...] A Diary in America, With Remarks on
its Institutions (1839), in 1841'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 November 1842:
'Keep my secret -- but I have been reading a good deal lately of the new French literature [...]
I was curious beyond the patience of my Eve-ship, & besides grew so interested in France &
the French through my long apprentice ship to the old Memoirs that I felt pricked to the heart
to know all about the posterity of my heroes & heroines. And besides I live out of the world
altogether, & am lonely enough & old enough & sad enough & experienced enough in every
sort of good & bad reading, not to be hurt personally by a French superfluity of bad [...]
[George Sand] is eloquent as a fallen angel [...] Then there is Eugene Sue, & Frederic Soulie,
& De Queile .. why the whole literature looks like a conflagration -- & my whole being aches
with the sight of it [...] Full indeed of power & caprice & extravagance is this new French
literature [...] The want is, of fixed principle [...] Now tell me, what you think? That it is very
naughty of me to read naughty books -- or that you have done the same?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 December 1842:
'My thoughts have lately been of Frederica Bremer?s "Neighbours" instead of my own?I mean of the very charming novel which Mrs Howitt has just "done into English" from the Swedish ? or German peradventure ? it being probably a translation from the German ? Read it my dearest friend, & agree with me that it is delightful. "Like Miss Austen" says Mrs Howitt - & "like Miss Austen" being the best introduction to you possible, "I echo her" ? altho? in my private & individual opinion & saving your presence, I do consider the book of a higher & sweeter tone than Miss Austen had voice and soul for. There is more poetry, more of the inner life, more of the ideal aspiration more of a Godward tendency in the book than we need seek for or than even you my beloved friend, can, I think, imagine in any book or books of Miss Austen considered in a moment of your most enthusiastic estimation. I am pleased, & touched .. charmed for the better, by the book. The serenity, the sweetness, the undertone of Christian music,
affect me the more for coming to me in the midst of my lion & tiger hunting with La jeune
France [ie her reading of lurid, recent French fiction]; & the impression will not pass, it
appears to me, with the reading of the last page.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Headmistress takes Evensong in school because the church could not be blacked out. Instead of a sermon she read from books with a religious theme, e.g. "The Other Wise Man", "Who Moved the Stone?" and "In the Steps of the Master", which we all enjoyed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Headmistress of Casterton School Print: Book
'Headmistress takes Evensong in school because the church could not be blacked out. Instead of a sermon she read from books with a religious theme, e.g. "The Other Wise Man", "Who Moved the Stone?" and "In the Steps of the Master", which we all enjoyed.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Headmistress of Casterton School Print: Book
Robert Browning to Alfred Domett, 13 December 1842:
'The only novelty we have had in books as yet, has been Macaulay's Lays of Rome -- a kind of
revenge on that literature which so long plagued ours with Muses, and Apollo, and Luna and all
that, -- by taking the stalest subjects in it, and as plentifully bestowing on them the
commonplaces of our indigenous ballad-verse -- "Then out spake brave Sir Cocles" -- "Go,
hark ye, stout Sir Consul" -- and a deal more: I have only seen extracts, but they gave me
this notion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1842:
'I remember [...] reading in the curious Memoires d'une femme de qualite, a mot upon Madme
de Genlis who was said to have confessed in [italics]her[end italics] memoirs
[italics]everybody's sins except her own[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 January 1843:
'It is many years since I looked at Ossian; & I never did much delight in him as that fact
proves. Since your letter came I have taken him up again -- & have just finished 'Carthon' --
There are beautiful passages in it [...] But [...] nothing is articulate -- nothing
[italics]individual[end italics], nothing various.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, 10 January 1843:
'I have read only a small part of Ossian [...] I have been reading a good deal of Dr Blair's
Dissertation upon Ossian. The Miss Smiths can bear witness, that before I read it, I made
several of the remarks which I afterwards found in Blair.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Stuart Boyd Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, in hand of an amanuensis, letter postmarked 19
January 1843:
'Since I last wrote to you, the Poems of Darthula has been read to me again. It appears to
me, a thing very extraordannary [sic], that a mind like yours, should not take grate [sic]
delight in such Poetry as that of Ossian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Stuart Boyd Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, in hand of amanuensis, letter postmarked 3 March
1843:
'Since I last wrote to you expressly on the Poems of Ossian; I have read another, called, The
death of Cuthullin [sic]. I found, that it contained the idea you admired so much, about the
darkened half of the moon, behind its growing light [...] Harriet Holmes who read it to me,
thought it finer than the other [?Carric-thura]. I myself am doubtfull [sic] about it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Holmes Print: Book
'How good of you to send me these books. I am ashamed to say that I forget whether I thanked you for the last - but I [underlined] do [end underlining] thank you. I liked the 3d tale, "Maude Chapel Farm" very much.'
[letter to Edward Moxon]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 31 March 1843:
'I feel guilty before you, since your last letter has remained too long unanswered [...] I
thought it necessary to read "Cuthullin" steadily through as a preliminary to replying to your
remarks upon it. This has been achieved at last [...] I admit the great beauty of certain things
in the poem [...] although I preserve my opinion upon the general monotony & defective
individuality'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'we learned Pinnock's Catechisms of History and Geography, and parsed sentences grammatically. For religious instruction we read portions of the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles in a class every day, using Mrs Trimmer's "Selections"; and on Sundays we repeated the Collect and learned Watts's hymns, besides going through the Church Catechism. We also had Crossman's Catechism given us as an explanation of the Church Catechism'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'when we went to bed she [Sewell's mother] would go upstairs with us and read to us whilst we were being undressed, because she did not like us to run the risk of being frightened by ghost stories told by the nursery-maids, as she had been once frightened herself. I can recall now the pleasure with which (taking my turn with my sisters) I used to jump up into her lap and listen whilst she read to us "Anson's Voyages", or "Lemrier's Tour to Morocco", or the "History of Montezuma". When she had finished, we all, kneeling around her, said our prayers and went to bed happy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Sewell Print: Book
'My chief acquaintance with the writers of the eighteenth century is derived from reading to Aunt Lyddy papers in the "Spectator" and "The Rambler", Mason's plays, Addison's "Cato" etc. This we were often called upon to do when we were invited to dine with Aunt Clarke'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 May 1843:
'Mary Howitt's last translation from Frederika Bremer's swedish, "The Home" charms me even
more than "The Neighbours" did.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 July 1843:
'I like the spirit & courteous goodness of Mr James's books [...] I believe I have read almost
everyone [sic] of his books .. either when I was ill or when I was well. They have much of
what Chaucer calls "gentilesse" .. if not much passion & imagination -- and his scenic
descriptions are admirable. I do not know better books for an invalid -- although the author
may not be pleased with my reason for saying so -- viz that they seldom make the heart
beat.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 July 1843:
'You must remember Mademoiselle de Montpensier's delightful memoirs. She was fifty or past
it when she met Lauzun, & the tears ran down my cheeks as I read the recitation of her love
sorrows.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I had seen some numbers of "Tracts for the Times" lying on the counter in a bookseller's shop in Newport, and they had excited my curiosity, and led to inquiry; and, as my brother William's opinions had by that time become marked, he soon succeeded in indoctrinating us all with them. A very great comfort it certainly was to myself to have my ideas cleared upon subjects which had long been floating about in my brain, and worrying me almost without my knowing it. Especially it was a relief to me to find great earnestness and devotion in a system which allowed of reserve in expression, and did not make the style of conversation, which I had met with in the only definitely religious tales I had read, a necessary part of Christianity. Mrs Sherwood's "Tales" and others of a similar kind, described children as quoting texts, and talking of their feelings in an unnatural way, or what seemed to me unnatural; and I had really suffered so much at school from things said to me which jarred upon my taste that it was perfect rest to be able to talk upon religious subjects without hearing or using cant phrases'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'In 1840 Miss Yonge was a bright attractive girl, at least ten years younger than myself and very like her own Ethel in "The Daisy Chain". Great interest was expressed by her and her mother in Mrs Mozley (Cardinal Newman's sister), the author of a tale called the "Fairy Bower", which had appeared shortly before. It was the precursor of the many tales, illustrative of the Oxford teaching, that were written at this period, and which were hailed with special satisfaction by young people, who turned fom the texts, and prayers, and hymns, which Mrs Sherwood had introduced into her stories, and yet needed something higher in tone than Miss Edgeworth's morality'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Yonge and her mother Print: Book
'The Church though may mean the Catholic or Universal Church and so Rome may be included. It is a horrid, startling notion, but a sermon of Newman's I was reading to-night would be a great safeguard against being led into mischief by it, "Obedience, the remedy for religious pereplexity".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'I read nothing scarcely, all my spare time being given to German exercises. Miss Martineau's "Tales on the Game Laws" I began, but they are so dull to me that I have scarcely patience to finish. The thing I like about them is their fairness. The rich people are not all wretches,though Miss Martineau's sympathies are evidently with the poor'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Cornelius Mathews, 31 August 1843:
'I wrote immediately upon receiving your works in their reprint to acknowledge that kindness
[...] Since then, I have read them with great attention & recognised the power & talent which
are destined, I do not doubt, to develop themselves still farther & in more distinctive forms.
There is an inclination to the grotesque which while it gives evidence of a ready fancy,
disturbs the effect of the general impression to such readers as I am -- & the very faithfulness
to American manners & associations while I consistently applaud it, does nevertheless
occasionally in spite of myself increase this disturbance.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Cornelius Mathews, 31 August 1843:
'I wrote immediately upon receiving your works in their reprint to acknowledge that kindness
[...] Since then, I have read them with great attention & recognised the power & talent which
are destined, I do not doubt, to develop themselves still father & in more distinctive forms.
There is an inclination to the grotesque which while it gives evidence of a ready fancy,
disturbs the effect of the general impression to such readers as I am -- & the very faithfulness
to American manners & associations while I consistently applaud it, does nevertheless
occasionally in spite of myself increase this disturbance.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett, invalid, to Richard Hengist Horne, 5 October 1843:
'I very much admire Mr Macaulay -- & could scarcely read his ballads & keep lying down. They
seemed to draw me up to my feet as the mesmeric powers are said to do'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I can?t be more satisfactory [= about his travel plans]. I think I must be a relative of a man who advertises near here "[italics] D.V. Thomas [end italics], Purveyor of pure new milk?. Imagine anyone trusting to a man with so conditional a name for anything under heaven!'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Elizabeth Barrett to William Merry, 2 November 1843:
'Your book [...] is written in a spirit so amiable & conciliating, .. so Christian-heartedly [...]
that it almost reconciles me to its controversial character & its subject [...] again and again,
as I read along, I felt ... "[italics]That[end italics] is true" -- "[italics]that[end italics] is rightly
put"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 13 December 1843:
'I admired [Richard Monckton Milne's] first volume very much; but his later poetry seems to
want fire and imagination, and to strain too much at the didactic [...] And then that exquisite
"Lay of the Humble" which I was praising lately, and which affected me very much at the time
I read it (it appeared in the first volume), somebody told me the other day that it was not
original. Taken from the German I think they said it was. I wish I knew. It is very beautiful in
any case.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'The subject of "La Maison Tellier" is the licensed brothel and its inmates'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 5-6 January 1844:
'[George Payne Rainsford James] is a picturesque writer [...] Often when I have been very
unwell, I have been able to read his books with advantage, when I cd not read better ones.
You may read him from end to end without a superfluous beat of the heart -- & they are just
the sort of intellectual diet fitted for persons "ordered to be kept quiet" by their physicians
[...] I am grateful to Mr James for many a still serene hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 22 December 1843:
'I never saw [John Sterling']s book, although I have read many of his poems in Blackwood. He
falls, to my apprehension, into the class of respectable poets: good sense & good feeling,
somewhat dry & cold, and very level smooth writing, being what I discern in him -- There are
Mr Sterling, Mr Simmons, Lord Leigh [...] who have education & natural ability enough to be
anything in the world EXCEPT poets -- & who choose to be poets "in spite of nature & their
stars" [...] Moreover all these men, by a curious consistency, take up & use the Gallic-
Drydeny corruption of versification [source eds believe by this Barrett means blank verse] --
so at least the passing glances I have had of their proceedings lead me to suppose.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, c.8 November 1843:
'Browning & Sister[,] Dowson & wife dined with us a week back, Browning read us your letter,
a capital one [...] Your advice to him as to his [poetic] language, r[h]ythm & c was admirable
& he seemed [italics]really[end italica] grateful for it [...] he read it out to us himself & I can
assure you there was not in his manner the slightest semblance of anything approaching to
offence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9-10 August 1844:
'Do you remember, by the glance you had, my lovely little cousin Lizzie Barrett [...] Well --
that child is only ten years old, & not remarkable in any way for precocity, .. simply an
intelligent child, and fond of reading -- and she delights, quite delights in your books!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lizzie Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 29 October 1844:
'There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the Edinburgh Review, .. by whom? -- and I
have been reading besides the admirable paper by Macaulay in the same number.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett to Edward Moxon, 25 November 1844:
'I am grateful to you for the gift you have sent me [...] I have glanced through a good many of the sonnets already, & am able to appreciate their refined grace.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I have read aloud my death-cycles from Walt Whitman this evening. I was very much affected myself, never so much before, and it fetched the auditory considerable. Reading these things that I like aloud when I am painfully excited is the keenest artistic pleasure I know: it does seem strange that these dependant arts ? singing, acting and in its small way, reading aloud ? seem the best rewarded of all arts. I am sure it is more exciting for me to read, than it was for W.W. to write: and how much more must this be so with singing!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Also I have been hearing ?Adelaide? many times; O! That is all I can say..'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
[Marginalia in Keats' annotated copy of "Paradise Lost"]: 'The Genius of Milton, more particularly in respect to its span in immensity, calculated him, by a sort of birthright, for such an "argument" as the paradise lost: he had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of ease and pleasure, poetical Luxury; and with that it appears to me he would fain have been content, if he could, so doing, have preserved his self-respect and feel of duty performed; but there was working in him as it were that same sort of thing as operates in the great world to the end of a Prophecy's being accomplished: therefore he devoted himself rather to the Ardours thean the pleasures of Song, solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine; and those are with some exceptions the finest parts of the Poem. With some exceptions - for the spirit of mounting and adventure can never be unfruitful or unrewarded: had he not broken through the clouds which envellope [sic] so deliciously the Elysian fields of Verse, and committed himself to the Extreme, we should never have seen Satan as described - But his face/ Deep Scars of thunder had entrench'd etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" on "The Argument"]: There is a greatness which the "Paradise Lost" possesses over every other poem - the Magnitude of Contrast, and that is softened by the contrast being ungrotesque to a degree. Heaven moves on like music throughout. Hell is also peopled with angels; it also move[s] on like music, not grating and harsh, but like a grand accompaniment in the Base to Heaven.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" on the opening]: 'There is always a great charm in the openings of great Poems, more particularly where the action begins - that of Dante's Hell. Of Hamlet, the first step must be heroic and full of power; and nothing can be more impressive and shaded then the commencement of the action here - "Round he throws his baleful eyes -" '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 53-75]. Keats underlines the following phrases and lines: 'round he throws his baleful eyes'; 'At once, as far as Angel's ken, he views/ The dismal situation waste and wild'; 'sights of woe,/ Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace/ And rest can never dwell; hope never comes/ That comes to all'. He writes after line 75: 'One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another. Things may be described by a Man's self in parts so as to make a grand whole which that Man himself would scarcely inform to its excess. A Poet can seldom have justice done to his imagination - for men are as distinct in their conceptions of material shadowings as they are in matters of spiritual understanding: it can scarcely be conceived how Milton's Blindness might here ade [for aid] the magnitude of his conceptions as a bat in a large gothic vault'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 318-21]: Keats underlines the line 'To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?' and writes: 'There is a cool pleasure in the very sound of vale. The english word is of the happiest chance. Milton has put vales in heaven and hell with the very utter affection and yearning of a great Poet. It is a sort of delphic Abstraction - a beautiful thing made more beautiful by being reflected and put in a Mist. The next mention of Vale is one of the most pathetic in the whole range of Poetry. "Others, more mild, / Retreated in a silent Valley etc". How much of the charm is in the Valley!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 527-67]: Keats underlines the lines from 'the glittering staff unfurl'd' to 'Of warriors old with order'd spear and shield'. He then writes: 'The light and shade - the sort of black brightness - the ebon diamonding - the ethiop Immortality - the sorrow, the pain, the sad-sweet Melody - the Phalanges of Spirits so depressed as to be "uplifted beyond hope" - the short mitigation of Misery - the thousand Melancholies and Magnificences of this Page - leaves no room for anything to be said thereon but "so it is".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 591-9]: Keats underlines the lines from 'his form had not yet lost/ All her original brightness, nor appear'd' to 'Perplexes monarchs', and writes: 'How noble and collected an indignation against Kings, "and for fear of change perplexes Monarchs" etc. His very wishing should have had power to pull that feeble animal Charles from his bloody throne. "The evil days" had come to him; he hit the new System of things a mighty mental blow; the exertion must have had or is yet to have some sequences.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 710-30]: Keats underlines the lines from 'Anon out of the earth a fabric huge/ Rose like an exhalation' to 'yielded light/ As from a sky' and writes: 'What creates the intense pleasure of not knowing? A sense of independence, of power, from the fancy's creating a world of its own by the sense of probabilities. We have read the Arabian Nights and hear there are thousands of those sorts of Romances lost - we imagine after them - but not their realities if we had them nor our fancies in their strength can go further than this Pandemonium - "Straight after the doors opening" etc. "rose like an exhalation" - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 2, lines 546-61]: Keats underlines the following: the lines from 'Others, more mild, /Retreated in a silent valley' to 'By doom of battle'; 'Their song was partial, but the harmony'; 'Suspended Hell'; 'in discourse more sweet/ (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)/ Others apart sat on a hill retired'. He writes: 'Milton is godlike in the sublime pathetic. In Demons, fallen Angels, and Monsters the delicacies of passion, living in and from their immortality, is of the most softening and dissolving nature. It is carried to the utmost here - "Others more mild" - nothing can express the sensation one feels at "Their song was partial" etc. Examples of this nature are divine to the utmost in other poets - in Caliban "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments" etc. In Theocritus, Polyphemus, and Homer's Hymn to Pan where Mercury is represented as taking his "homely fac'd" to heaven. There are numerous other instances in Milton - where Satan's progeny is called his "daughter dear", and where this same Sin, a female, and with a feminine instinct for the showy and martial is in pain lest death should sully his bright arms, "nor vainly hope to be invulnerable in those bright arms." Another instance is "pensive I sat alone". We need not mention "Tears such as Angels weep."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 December 1844:
'Ah! dearest love, Frederika Bremer! I did read half "The Neighbours," and really you are the
only person of a high class of mind whom I have found liking her works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'Moreover I have been reading Meredith's letters - undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of English literature -especially the 1st vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'You shock me. Not by liking "The Way of all Flesh", but by liking "The Devil?s Garden" and "Fortitude" . . . . it is not excusable to lose your head about badness or mediocrity. About "The Devil?s Garden" there is nothing to be said, it simply does not exist. "Fortitude" is by a man who has written one real book ("Mr, Perrin & Mr. Traill") , but "Fortitude" is undoubtedly a failure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I have nearly finished "Confession d?un homme d?aujourd?hui". It is very good and helped me to pass a difficult Sunday.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'... I find I have nothing to say that has not been already perfectly said and perfectly sung in Adelaide.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'Metastatio is improving I finish Themistocles and the second book of Annals today also - what tempted you to send me that deplorable (these blots are no work of mine) volume of calamities? it was enough to throw any one in my case into the blue devils for a twelvemonth to come.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I am busy with the fourth volume of Gibbon and Machiavelli's discourses on Livy. He is the only Italian that has interested me - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'I finished your Musaeus ten days ago: it is a nice little book and will do very well. You shall have it at Had[dingto]n whenever you get there, with multifarious advices and palavers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'?Miss Griffin? is capital stuff; not the least dull, a little ragged and loquacious, of course. Go on. Give me more types in the same style; and when I have the lot , I?ll tell you about the?[end of extract]'.
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
'I have seen nothing new, & have been reading the Memoirs of Mde de Maintenon in French, which are exceedingly entertaining'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Wilbraham Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Miss] Wilbraham Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wilbraham Print: Book
'[underlined] My [end underlining] favorite passage in [underlined] Il Paradiso Perduto [end underlining] is this - When our good old grand pa', Adam, and the Angel Gabriel are discoursing over the repast Eve had set before them, Milton, to put our minds at ease as to the ill consequences of such dawdling, kindly tells us - the meal consisting wholly of fruits
"No fear lest dinner cool!" -
In "Paradise Regained", however, there is an address from the Devil to our Saviour worth its weight in gold - meeting him in the Wilderness, & affecting not to know him, he begins a conversation thus -
"Sir, by what ill chance &c -
Now that [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] appears to me the very acme of burlesque - and sets me a shouting every time it comes into my head. - My two dear grown-ups, Miss Wilbraham, & Miss Eliza, who as well as me read [underlined] both [end underlining] Paradises last winter doat upon [twice underlined] Sir [end underlining] as much as I do: - and whenever we prate over fruit luncheons, apologise for it by saying - "No fear lest luncheon cool".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wilbraham Print: Book
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'I hate to be tantalized in such a way [referring to erratic correspondence]. - It is like being condemned to eat green pease, one by one, with a tooth-pick, a method much recommended, for the economization of human pleasures, by Count Rumford. Did you ever meet with the passage? If the goods of life are to be thus scantily doled out to me, I had rather philosophically make up my mind to do without them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 December 1844:
'I saw the sonnet [of Wordsworth] [...] which gave me so much offence by the prose note attached to it beginning .. "This is not mere poetry, but truth" -- or something to that effect! So unworthy of a poet, as giving in to the vulgar notion of poetry & truth being different things! Also, I saw Mon[c]kton Milnes's sonnet in reply -- very good -- but not one of his best sonnets.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Newspaper
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 December 1844:
'If you do not remember the memoires of "La Grande Mademoiselle" as she was called, mind to
read them again. They made me laugh and cry -- [italics]at[end itaics] her & [italics]with[end
italics] her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844:
'With regard to "La Confession Generale," I am in just your case, -- having read only the first
volume, & failed of the others [i.e. not been able to obtain them from library], -- there are
three: & I was the more provoked because I was interested in the denouement [...] Do you
know "Fernande" by Dumas? It was sent to me instead of "Un homme serieux", last night __ &
I rather like the opening. But Dumas is a second-class writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'My dear Katharine, I have gone over your paper at last (I would have done it sooner, had I found the time) [?].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, RLS calls it "your paper".
'Then your simile about the spider and the King?s palace is very grim and good; like a sort of Quarles emblem; and that sentence begins admirably, although its feet are of clay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October
1846, on receiving her father and brother's responses to her marriage:
'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...]
Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but
I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...]
And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from
dearest Papa & dearest George'.
'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October
1846, on receiving her father, brother's, and sisters' responses to her marriage:
'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...]
Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but
I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...]
And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from
dearest Papa & dearest George [...]
'Now I will tell you -- Robert who had been waiting at the door [...] came in & found me just
able to cry from the balm of your tender words -- I put your two letters into his hands, &
[italics]he[end italics], when he had read them, said with tears in his eyes, & kissing them
between the words -- "I love your sisters with a deep affection -- I am inexpressibly grateful
to them -- It shall be the object of my life to justify their trust as they express it here."'
'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October
1846, on receiving her father, brother's, and sisters' responses to her marriage:
'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...]
Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but
I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...]
And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from
dearest Papa & dearest George [...]
'Now I will tell you -- Robert who had been waiting at the door [...] came in & found me just
able to cry from the balm of your tender words -- I put your two letters into his hands, &
[italics]he[end italics], when he had read them, said with tears in his eyes, & kissing them
between the words -- "I love your sisters with a deep affection -- I am inexpressibly grateful
to them -- It shall be the object of my life to justify their trust as they express it here."'
'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to James and Julia Martin, 1 February 1847:
'We are reading (much at the latest) Custine's Russia'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Even at the Palace where they read so little they are all devouring those
eloquent Volumes -- the Queen & all. I would not have believed that Lamartine's prose could
be so fine -- but the prose of poets is often finer than their verse [...] The Author does
injustice to Napoleon I think, & is over candid to Robespierre & many of the other
Revolutionary Heroes -- so that one wonders sometimes [italics]who[end italics] was guilty --
but still the book is charming.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Even at the Palace where they read so little they are all devouring those
eloquent Volumes -- the Queen & all. I would not have believed that Lamartine's prose could
be so fine -- but the prose of poets is often finer than their verse [...] The Author does
injustice to Napoleon I think, & is over candid to Robespierre & many of the other
Revolutionary Heroes -- so that one wonders sometimes [italics]who[end italics] was guilty --
but still the book is charming.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Queen Victoria and Royal Household Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant
esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too
close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I
was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was
interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story
of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le
Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s
Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a
mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant
esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too
close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I
was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was
interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story
of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le
Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s
Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a
mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 April 1847:
'At Pisa, Robert read to me while I was ill [following miscarriage], & partly by being read to &
partly by reading I got through a good deal of amusing French book-work, & among the rest,
two volumes of Bernard's new ["]Gentilhomme Campagnard." Rather dull I thought it, but
clever of course -- dull for Bernard. Then we read "Le Speronare" by Dumas -- a delightful
book of travels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
'I have been steadily & delightedly reading Mitford's History. First of all, he is an Historian after my own heart, & I really believe a perfectly upright & honest man. He suffers not himself to be dazzled by the splendid qualities of the people he writes about - but, by turns, causes either an enthousiastic admiration of their magnanimity or a just horror of their atrocity. Individually they were the most glorious creatures, God ever permitted to shine upon earth - Collectively, they were infernal: and I take it, as good and honourable Mitford says, it was owing to their faulty religious & political institutions. But certainly the merit of this history is great, in proving, that bad as the world is now, even under Christian regulations., it is not nationally anywhere so bad as it was in Pagan Greece - except during the height and fury of the French Revolution - and still, and ever perhaps in Turkey'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I have been frightened from taking up Hannah More's last book which fanny lent me, by the dread that it would more than ever convince me what a worthless wretch I am without giving me the courage and virtue to become better. But last night, wanting to compose my wayward spirit, I ventured to open it, and read the first Chapter on Internal Christianity - And was agreeably surprised to find myself much peased with it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am also reading with great veneration, but some degree of despondency, Practical Piety. The Chapter on "Comparatively small Faults and Virtues" merits to be written in letters of gold, and comes home to the feelings with an aptness and force not to be resisted or described. All she says on Prayer, though but a new modification of her former sentiments delivered on this subject, is touching and beautiful: - in short, the first volume, which I have just finished, edifies and charms me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Bartelemi's Anacharsis. which forms a sort of Appendix or rather comentary to the Grecian History I was so much taken up with last summer. Without such a previous brushing up of the memory, about those Grecian chaps, I should not have enjoyed Anacharsis at all'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I have read both Scott's visits, and Mrs Hulse has just lent me the life of John Sobieski, K. of poland. I have only just begun it, but it promises facility of style, & I think I shall like it. I tried Pallas's Travels in Russia lately: but there was too much about progressive improvements in agriculture, & manufactuaries amongst the grown-up Muscovite babes, & I got tired, as I easily do of all that relates to half civilised nations. Give me a whole Savage or no Savage at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I somehow could not think the gulph so impassable and read him some notes on the Duke of Argyll.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I have been out reading Hallam in the garden ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I have read Morley's second article on Education today'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
'Last night, after reading Walt Whitman a long while for my attempt to write about him, I got the tete-montee, rushed out up to Magnus Simpson, came in, took out Leaves of Grass, and without giving the poor unbeliever time to object, proceeded to wade into him with favourite passages.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Read, read, read M.Leod's Narrative of the Voyage of the Alceste to China, & her wreck in coming home. Ellis's Account of the Embassy is comparatively dull, but I had it lent me, & was glad to swap.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Tor Hill, I have read - and was amused to find myself [underlined] en pays de connaissance [end underlining]. Many years ago, I walked with my poor brothers James & Martin, from a little village in Somersetshire called Uphill, to Glastonbury, and thence three miles further, to visit Glastonbury Tor, on the Summit of a high hill. The local descriptions are very accurate, at least as far as I remember - and there are some interesting sketches of character - of personages who attach - but the concluding part of the story is wretchedly huddled together -the attempts at facetiousness beneath contempt - and throughout, there is a hardness of manner which gives to the book what the earliest Masters gave to their paintings, dryness, meagerness, & want of gradual light and shade. [underlined] He [end underlining] cope with the Author of Waverley! - he be hanged!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I have meditated also a large work, on the Plan of ... Campbell's Chancellors ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virginia Stephen to Thoby Stephen, 2 November 1901:
'I have been reading Marlow [sic], and I was so much more impressed by him than I should
be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightnt be more in the great William than I
supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to [the] company of
worshippers -- though I still feel a little oppressed by his -- greatness I suppose [...] I read Dr
Faustus, and Edward II -- I thought them very near the great man -- with more humanity I
should say -- not all on such a grand tragic scale [comments further on points of comparison
and contrast between Shakespeare and Marlowe].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Stephen to Thoby Stephen, 2 November 1901:
'I have been reading Marlow [sic], and I was so much more impressed by him than I should
be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightnt be more in the great William than I
supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to [the] company of
worshippers -- though I still feel a little oppressed by his -- greatness I suppose [...] I read Dr
Faustus, and Edward II -- I thought them very near the great man -- with more humanity I
should say -- not all on such a grand tragic scale [comments further on points of comparison
and contrast between Shakespeare and Marlowe].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Stephen to Clive Bell, 18 August 1907:
'I am reading Henry James on America; and feel myself as one embalmed in a block of
smooth amber: it is not unpleasant, very tranquil, as a twilight shore -- but such is not the
stuff of genius: no, it should be a swift stream.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Stephen to Clive Bell, 19 August 1908:
'I split my head over Moore every night, feeling ideas travelling to the remotest part of my
brain, and setting up a feeble disturbance, hardly to be called thought. It is almost a physical
feeling, as though some little coil of brain unvisited by any blood so far, and pale as wax, had
got a little life into it at last, but had not strength to keep it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'I am alone in the house, and so I allowed myself, at dinner, the first light reading I have indulged in since my return in the shape of some Montaigne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'As Montaigne says, talking of something quite different:"Pour se laisser tomber a plomb, et de si haut, il faut que se soit entre les bras d'une affection solide, vigoureuse et fortunee."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I had almost as soon have it in the Portfolio, as the Saturday; the P. is so nicely printed and I am gourmet in type.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Virginia Woolf to Violet Dickinson, 11 April 1913:
'[italics]I've[end italics] never met a writer who didn't nurse enormous vanity, which at last made him unapproachable like Meredith whose letters I am reading -- who seems to me as hard as an old crab at the bottom of the sea'.
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 October 1915:
'I should think I had read 600 books since we met. Please tell me what merit you find in Henry
James. I have disabused Leonard [Woolf, husband] of him; but we have his works here, and I
read, and can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar, and
pale as Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it? I admit I can't be bothered to snuff out
his meaning when it's very obscure. I am beginning the Insulted and Injured [Dostoevsky,
1862]; which sweeps me away. Have you read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Saxon Sydney-Turner, 25 February 1918:
'Asheham is very lovely at the moment. I started upon Sophocles the day after we came -- the
Electra, which has made me plan to read all Greek straight through [...] I found great
consolation during the influenza in the works of Leonard Merrick, a poor unappreciated
second-rate pot-boiling writer of stories about the stage, whom I deduce to be a negro,
mulatto, or quadroon; at any rate he has a grudge against the world, and might have done
much better if he hadn't at the age of 20 married a chorus girl, had by her 15 coffee coloured
brats and lived for the rest of the time in a villa in Brixton, where he ekes out his living by
giving lessons in elocution to the natives'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 12 October 1918:
'I read the Greeks, but I am extremely doubtful whether I understand anything they say; also I
have read the whole of Milton, without throwing any light upon my own soul, but that I rather
like. Don't you think it very queer though that he entirely neglects the human heart? Is that
the result of writing one's masterpiece at the age of 50?'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 30 November 1919:
'I'm in the 2nd vol. of Ethel Smyth. I think she shows up triumphantly, through sheer force of
honesty. It's a pity she can't write; for I don't suppose one could read it again. But it
fascinates me all the same. I saw her at a concert two days ago -- striding up the gangway in
coat and skirt and spats and talking at the top of her voice [...] she keeps up the figure of the
nineties to perfection. Of course the book is the soul of the nineties.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Janet Case, 20 March 1922:
'Literature still survives. I've not read K. Mansfield [The Garden Party], and don't mean to. I've
read Bliss; and it was so brilliant, -- so hard, and so shallow, and so sentimental that I had to
rush to the bookcase for something to drink. Shakespeare, Conrad, even Virginia Woolf.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ottoline Morrell, 18 August 1922:
'Poor Rebecca West's novel bursts like an over stuffed sausage. She pours it all in; and one is
covered with flying particles; indeed I had hastily to tie the judge tight and send it back to
Mudies [Library] half finished. But this irreticence does not make me think any the worse of
her human qualities [...] I do admire poor old Henry [James], and actually read through the
Wings of a Dove [1902] last summer, and thought it such an amazing acrobatic feat, partly of
his, partly of mine, that I now look upon myself and Henry James as partners in merit. I made
it all out. But I felt very ill for some time afterwards. I am now reading Joyce, and my
impression, after 200 out of 700 pages, is that the poor young man has got the dregs of a
mind compared even with George Meredith. I mean if you could weigh the meaning on Joyces
[sic] page it would be about 10 times as light as on Henry James'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928:
'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, 8 November 1930:
'We had a terrific visitation from Hugh Walpole. If you want a book from the Times, get Cakes
and Ale by Somerset Maugham. All London is ringing with it. For there poor Hugh [Walpole] is
most cruelly and maliciously at the same time unmistakably and amusingly caricatured [as
Alroy Kear]. He was sitting on his bed with only one sock on when he opened it. There he sat
with only one sock on till 11 next morning reading it [...] He almost wept in front of Hilda
Matheson, Vita [Sackville-West] and Clive [Bell], in telling us. And he couldn't stop. Whenever
we changed the conversation he went back.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, c.28 December 1932:
'D'you know I get such a passion for reading sometimes its like the other passion -- writing --
only the wrong side of the carpet [...] this passion, which has been so well advised, lands me
tonight in a book like the reek of stale cabbage and cheap face powder -- a book called The
Story of San Michele by [Axel] Munthe [1929] [...] A book more porous with humbug, reeking
more suddenly with insincerity, I've never read. I'm at page 50 [...] And I'm reading Stella
Benson [Tobit Transplanted (1931)]: with pleasure'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'MacMahon's address is pasted up everywhere and political pictures fill the windows.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Another book of a very different character has amused me mightily; it is entitled "Tablettes Romaines", and is full of wit and vivacity, and gives a very just and true picture of modern Rome, at least, as far as I am competent to judge. I wish you could get it. The pretended name of the Author is Santo Domingo, but, somehow, I suspect that to be a fudge. It was printed at Bruselles, for neither in Italy nor at Paris would such free opinions have been allowed to see the light - at least during the Carlists day'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Leonard Woolf, 14 July 1936:
'A very good, though very dull day. No headache this morning, brain rather active in fact: but
didn't write -- did nothing but lie in bed and read Macaulay.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 3 May 1938:
'I am reading for the first time a book which I think a very good book -- Mandeville's Fable of the bees [1714].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Shena, Lady Simon, 22 January 1940:
'I've had too many distractions to write [...] But not too many to read your paper. I find it
useful, suggestive, and sound. I agree with most of your arguments [...] do cast your mind
further that way: about sharing life after the war: about pooling men's and women's work:
about the possibility, if disarmament comes, of removing men's disabilities. Can one change
sex characteristics? How far is the women's movement a remarkable experiment in that
transformation? Mustn't our next task be the emancipation of man?'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
'By the way, have you read Mr Morier's Hohrab, or the Hostage? And if you have, do you (as I hope) like it? And if you have not, can you tell whether others like it? I was charmed with it here in manuscript, when he kindly lent it to me. Besides, I delight in Mr Morier as a man, as well as an author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Manuscript: Unknown
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'That reminds me of Mallock?s New Republic in Belgravia; it is decidedly clever ? Jowett especially. If you have the key to all the actors please send it to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Serial / periodical
'I am now off to bed after reading a chapter of S. Thomas ? Kempis. I think half-an-hour's warping of the inner man daily is greatly conducive to holiness.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'All I can say at all likely to give you any pleasure is, that I read poor dear Charles Lamb's Memoirs and Letters with the utmost delight; & not the less so for seeing such continual allusions to one "H.C. Robinson". Do you know such a person? And my dear brother James too, and kind-hearted Martin - these reminiscences were very pleasant to me. But of Lamb himself - what an affectionate disposition - what originality, what true wit, & what a singular, and I must say, melancholy combination of the truest & warmest piety, with the most extraordinary and irreverent profaneness. I cannot understand the union of two such opposites: but I believe there have been many other instances of it. Amongst fools who may take up the work, the oaths and the levity might do harm, & therefore I regret their insertion: but those who knew him, can only regret, & love him [underlined] notwithstanding [ end underlining].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Pray do you now and then read modern Biography? I have been highly entertained, & even interested by the Memoirs of Mathews, edited & mostly written by his wife. Well, and another lively amusing book of the same class is the Life of Grimaldi, by Dickens. Both Mathews & Grimaldi, though considered as Buffoons, were full of good feeling, & excellent private characters. I arose from the perusal of each work, with respect & love for both men; and since the publication of Crabb's Memoirs, and Campbell's Life of Mrs Siddons, I have read no Biography I like half so well'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Pray do you now and then read modern Biography? I have been highly entertained, & even interested by the Memoirs of Mathews, edited & mostly written by his wife. Well, and another lively amusing book of the same class is the Life of Grimaldi, by Dickens. Both Mathews & Grimaldi, though considered as Buffoons, were full of good feeling, & excellent private characters. I arose from the perusal of each work, with respect & love for both men; and since the publication of Crabb's Memoirs, and Campbell's Life of Mrs Siddons, I have read no Biography I like half so well'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I think I said in one of myy recent scrawls all I had to say concerning Mr Macauley's Review: every part of which I like mainly, except his severe mention of the Royal Family, and his unnecessary critique of my Sister's Life of Dr Burney. Surely Croker had cut that up quite bitterly enough; - I cannot see why it need have been brought forward again'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Serial / periodical
Tuesday 19 January 1915:
'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me
to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary
people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the
likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also
reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday
in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman
in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 19 January 1915:
'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me
to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary
people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the
likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also
reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday
in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman
in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 21 January 1915: 'I went to the London Library [...] Here I read Gilbert Murray on
Immortality, got a book for L[eonard]. & so home, missing my train, & reading the Letter to
Arbuthnot on Hammersmith Station.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 13 February 1915: 'After luncheon [...] I went to a concert at the Queen's Hall [...] I
was annoyed by a young man & woman who took advantage of the music to press each other's
hands; & read "A Shropshire Lad" & look at some vile illustrations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: 'young man and woman' Print: Book
Sunday 14 February 1915: 'I am now reading a later volume of Michelet, which is superb, &
the only tolerable history.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 12 November 1917: 'I went to Mudies, & got The Leading Note, in order to examine
into R.T. more closely [...] I came home with my book, which does not seem a very masterly
performance after Turgenev, I suppose; but if you dont get your touches in the right place the
method is apt to be sketchy & empty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 22 November 1917: 'Ottoline keeps me [...] devoted to her "inner life"; which made
me reflect that I haven't an inner life. She read me a passage [of her diary] in my praise
though, so the realities do come in sometimes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ottoline Morrell Manuscript: Codex
'Mahaffy's book of Travels in Greece will soon be out. I have been correcting his proofs and like it immensely.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Manuscript: Codex, publisher's proofs
'I am deep in a review of Symonds's last book whenever I can get time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'[?] it was that paper of yours that made me think of the book[Baudelaire's "Petits Poemes en Prose"]' (see RED ID18015)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Referred to here by RLS as "that paper of yours".
2 March 1918: '[On 19 February] we went to Asheham [...] I saw no-one; for 5 days I wasn't in a state for reading [due to influenza]; but I did finally read Morley & other books; but reading when done to kill time has a kind of drudgy look in it [...] One day I sat in the garden reading Shakespeare; I remember the ecstacy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
29 July: 'I'm paralysed by the task of describing a week end at Garsington. I suppose we spoke some million words between us [...] There was Gertler; Shearman & Dallas for tea; Brett, Ottoline, 3 children & Philip. The string which united everything together was Philip's attack on Murry in The Nation for his review of Sassoon [...] to prove his case Philip read Murry's article, his letter, & his letter to Murry, three times over, so I thought, emphasising his points, & lifting his finger to make us attend. And there was Sassoon's letter of gratitude too. I think Ott. was a little bored.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Serial / periodical
29 July: 'I'm paralysed by the task of describing a week end at Garsington. I suppose we
spoke some million words between us [...] There was Gertler; Shearman & Dallas for tea;
Brett, Ottoline, 3 children & Philip. The string which united everything together was Philip's
attack on Murry in The Nation for his review of Sassoon [...] to prove his case Philip read
Murry's article, his letter, & his letter to Murry, three times over, so I thought, emphasising
his points, & lifting his finger to make us attend. And there was Sassoon's letter of gratitude
too. I think Ott. was a little bored.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell
7 August 1918: 'Our excitement [has been] the return of the servants from Lewes last night,
with [...] the English review for me, with [...] Katherine Mansfield on Bliss. I threw down Bliss
with the exclamation, "She's done for!" Indeed I don't see how much faith in her as as woman
or writer can survive that sort of story [...] her mind is a very thin soil, laid an inch or two
upon very barren rock [...] she is content with superficial smartness; & the whole conception
is poor, cheap, not the vision, however imperfect, of an interesting mind. She writes badly
too. And the effect was as I say, to give me an impression of her callousness & hardness as a
human being. I shall read it again; but I dont suppose I shall change.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
6 March 1920: 'On Thursday, dine with the MacCarthys, & the first Memoir Club meeting [hosted by MacCarthys]. A highly interesting occasion. Seven people read -- & Lord knows what I didnt read into their reading. Sydney [Waterlow] [...] signified as much by reading us a dream [...] altogether a queer, self-conscious, self analytic performance [...] Clive purely objective; Nessa starting matter of fact: then overcome by the emotional depths to be traversed; & unable to read aloud what she had written. Duncan fantastic & tongue -- not tied -- tongue enchanted. Molly literary about tendencies & William Morris, carefully composed at first, & even formal: suddenly saying "Oh this is absurd -- I can't go on" shuffling all her sheets; beginning on the wrong page; firmly but waveringly, & carrying through to the end [...] Roger well composed; story of a coachman who stole geraniums & went to prison.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Molly MacCarthy Manuscript: Unknown
Tuesday 25 January 1921: 'K. M. (as the papers call her) swims from triumph to triumph in the reviews; save that [J. C.] Squire doubts her genius -- so, I'm afraid, do I. These little points, though so cleanly collected, don't amount to much, I think. I read her at the Club last night'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Friday 15 April 1921: 'I have been lying recumbent all day reading Carlyle, and now Macaulay, first to see if Carlyle wrote better than Lytton [Strachey], then to see if Macaulay sells better. Carlyle (reminiscences) is more colloquial and scrappy than I remembered, but he has his merits. -- more punch in his phrase than in Lytton's.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 12 September 1921: 'I have finished the Wings of the Dove, & make this comment. His [Henry James's] manipulations become so elaborate towards the end that instead of feeling the artist you merely feel the man who is posing the subject. And then I think he loses the power to feel the crisis. He becomes merely excessively ingenious [goes on to comment further on text].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 15 September 1921: 'I have been dabbling in K.M.'s stories, & have to rinse my mind -- in Dryden? Still, if she were not so clever she coudn't be so disagreeable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Tuesday 14 February 1922: 'I am reading [in convalescence, following week of illness] Moby Dick: Princesse de Cleves; Lord Salisbury; Old Mortality; Small Talk at Wreyland; with an occasional bite at the Life of Lord Tennyson, of Johnson; & anything else I find handy. But this is all dissipated & invalidish. I can only hope that like dead leaves they may fertilise my brain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Then again, I have nice books to read. The new French poets. Prudhomme is adorable − I shall have a lot of Sully Prudhomme to read when I come to you. Soulary better perhaps − better certainly, [italics]comme forme[end italics], but so unsympathetic when compared to Prudhomme in character and thought. Prudhomme is a [italics]good[end italics] man. Fancy! And a modern French poet! Wonders after that will never cease.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
[her governess Helen Roothman] 'introduced Edith to the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme. Though Edith had had a taste for Baudelaire through Swinburne's translations of the author of "Les Fleurs du mal", she found her governess' favorites even more to her liking'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
[her governess Helen Roothman] 'introduced Edith to the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme. Though Edith had had a taste for Baudelaire through Swinburne's translations of the author of "Les Fleurs du mal", she found her governess' favorites even more to her liking'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
'Edith, though a great reader, did not consume all and any poetry as a child; she was kept in regularly on Saturday afternoons at one time because of her refusal to learn by heart Mrs Hemans's "Casabianca" ("The boy stood on the burning deck..."). The reason for her recalcitrance was that "as everybody had left the Burning Deck, and he was doing no conceivable good by remaining there, why in heck didn't he get off it!"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
[Helen Roothman] 'brought Edith new poetry too - the French symbolists, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire - to enlarge her own rapt readings of Swinburne, William Morris, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Yeats'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Tuesday 22 August 1922: ''Boen [Hawkesford] came to tea on Sunday [...] She is changing; reading Bliss under [Edward] Shanks' orders'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Boen Hawkesford Print: Book
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Monday 2 September 1929: 'I have just read a page or two out of Samuel Butler's notebooks to take the taste of Alice Meynell's life out of my mouth. One rather craves brilliance & cantankerousness. Yet I am interested; a little teased by the tight airless Meynell style; & then I think what they had that we had not -- some suavity & grace, certainly [comments further on Meynell's work, life and personality] [...] When one reads a life one often compares one's own life with it. And doing this I was aware of some sweetness & dignity in those lives compared with ours [...] Yet in fact their lives would be intolerable -- so insincere, so elaborate; so I think [goes on to comment further on Meynell family, and others' reminiscences of them]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 23 October 1929: 'Since I have been back [apparently to London, from Sussex home] I have read Virginia Water (a sweet white grape); God; -- all founded, & teased & spun out upon one quite simple & usual psychological experience; but the mans no poet & cant make one see; all his sentences are like steel lines on an engraving. I am reading Racine, have bought La Fontaine, & so intend to make my sidelong approach to French literature, circling & brooding'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'V[irginia] W[oolf] made notes (see Holograph Reading Notes, vols XI and XII in the Berg Collection) on George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589); on William Webbe's A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) -- both in Constable's English reprints of 1895; and on Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1884; his Commonplace Book, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1913; and his Letter Book, 1573-1580, ed. E. J. L. Scott, 1884.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 3 March 1930: 'Molly Hamilton writes a d----d bad novel. She has the wits to construct a method of telling a story; & then heaps it with the dreariest, most confused litter of old clothes. When I stop to read a page attentively I am shocked by the dishabille of her English. It is like hearing cooks & scullions chattering; she scarcely articulates [...] And the quality of the emotion is so thick & squab, the emotions of secondrate women painters, of spotted & pimpled young men'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 28 August 1930: 'I am reading R. Lehmann, with some interest & admiration -- she has a clear hard mind, beating up now & again to poetry; but I am as usual appalled by the machinery of fiction: its much work for little result. Yet I see no other outlet for her gifts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I send you some verses which I read in the Examiner; I think them very witty, although very abominable'. [What follows is Charle's Lamb's poem, 'The Triumph of the Whale':
Io! Paean! Io! sing
To the funny people's King.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he
Flounders round the polar sea.
See his blubbers--at his gills
What a world of drink he swills,
From his trunk, as from a spout,
Which next moment he pours out.
Such his person--next declare,
Muse, who his companions are.--
Every fish of generous kind
Scuds aside, or slinks behind;
But about his presence keep
All the Monsters of the Deep;
Mermaids, with their tails and singing
His delighted fancy stinging;
Crooked Dolphins, they surround him,
Dog-like Seals, they fawn around him.
Following hard, the progress mark
Of the intolerant salt sea shark.
For his solace and relief,
Flat fish are his courtiers chief.
Last and lowest in his train,
Ink-fish (libellers of the main)
Their black liquor shed in spite:
(Such on earth the things _that write_.)
In his stomach, some do say,
No good thing can ever stay.
Had it been the fortune of it
To have swallowed that old Prophet,
Three days there he'd not have dwell'd,
But in one have been expell'd.
Hapless mariners are they,
Who beguil'd (as seamen say),
Deeming him some rock or island,
Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land,
Anchor in his scaly rind;
Soon the difference they find;
Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them;
Does to ruthless seas bequeath them.
Name or title what has he?
Is he Regent of the Sea?
From this difficulty free us,
Buffon, Banks or sage Linnaeus.
With his wondrous attributes
Say what appellation suits.
By his bulk, and by his size,
By his oily qualities,
This (or else my eyesight fails),
This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Serial / periodical
'Since I have been in London I have read nothing but Miss Seward's letters and Miss Owenson's Missionary. Of Miss Seward I am bound to speak well, as she doth so of me; and her monodies are beauiful; but the letters are naught; they abound in false sentiment, and a great many other false things. As to the Missionary, Ambrosio is his father, and Matilde his mother; but, wanting the indelicacy of papa, and the delicacy of mamma, he's a dull fellow. I could think of nothing else but poor Margaret Stewart of Blantyre, and her presbyterian minister, while I read this. Miss Luxina brought her hogs to a bad market, for Hilarion was little better than a beast. Walter Scott's last poem I have also seen, but so hastily that I can be no competent judge of its merits. Talking of words, allow me to recommend to you Ford's plays, lately re-published. Some of them are excellent; the first in the series (which hath an awkward name, I must confess) and the Broken Heart, are particularly admirable. I am sure that you will be struck with them; for Ford is almost as moving as Otway or Lee, - who is the mad poet I adore, yet I can persuade nobody to read him. The History of the Somerville Family, which I have seen in MS., is soon to be printed, and that of Sutherland is to be out shortly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Manuscript: MS book
'I am glad to hear you are giving Macaulay a turn. I believe, though it sounds rude and foolish, nothing will do you more good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sidney Colvin Print: Book, Articles in the Edinburgh Review?
Sunday 8 May 1932: 'Here it is, the last evening [of holiday in Greece]; very hot, very dusty. The loudspeaker is braying; L. reading, not without sympathy, Ethel Smyth; it is 2 minutes to 7'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 8 May 1932: 'I've scarcely read [on holiday in Greece] [...] only Roger's Eastman, & Wells, & Murry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 8 May 1932: 'I've scarcely read [on holiday in Greece] [...] only Roger's Eastman, & Wells, & Murry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 2 June 1932: 'Lord David [Cecil]'s party last night. Half across London [...] Edwardes Sq[a]re very large leafy silent Georgian refined: so too no. 41 [...] Talk about Auden & Naomi Mitchison: her review of Auden read aloud'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
'Took notes from Miss Plumtre. Finished the first volume'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'I read Montaigne and Metastasio'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'I read Montaigne and Metastasio'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Sunday 14 May 1933: 'I am reading -- skipping -- the Sacred Fount [by Henry James] -- about the most inappropriate of all books for this din -- sitting by the open window, looking across heads & heads & heads -- all Siena parading in gray & pink & the cars hooting. How finely run along all those involuted thread [in James]? I dont -- thats the answer. I let 'em break. I only mark that the sign of a masterly writer is the power to break his mould callously [goes on to comment further on James].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'But instead of learning to sail, I read Edward Whymper's "Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator". The author is better known for his "Scrambles among the Alps", but this came later in my education.[...] I have not read the book again but I still have the most vivid impressions of it: the climbing of Chimborazo [...] the night spent on Cotopaxi [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eric Shipton Print: Book
'My early reading had been confined to the work of the pioneers, and in consequence it never occurred to me that big mountains coud be climbed without guides.[...] I had acquired a copy of Abraham's "Swiss Mountain Climbs" which set out in depressing detail the official tariffs of the great peaks, the study of which acted as a constant check on my ambitions.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eric Shipton Print: Book
23 September 1933: 'I am reading Margot [Oxford] -- "V W our greatest English authoress;" Molly Hamilton on Webbs: & Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I read Lady Morgan's Florence Macarthy. There is originality and genius in all she writes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'Mr North has been reading Lady Morgan's "O'Donnel", and is delighted with it. He says he never read a book that amused him so much, and that it has the merit of being more interesting in the last than in the first volume'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr North Print: Book
'Adam Smith, Sir [-] informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet,
Say Stella, - feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well-spent?
Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "they do well", said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is". Beattie's Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", but preferred the "Pastor Fido", of which he spoke with rapture'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Smith Print: Book
'Adam Smith, Sir [-] informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet,
Say Stella, - feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well-spent?
Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "they do well", said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is". Beattie's Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", but preferred the "Pastor Fido", of which he spoke with rapture'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Smith 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: Eric Shipton 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: Charles B.M. Warren Print: Book
His reading this summer included much Browning, Turgenev's Smoke and Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age ('which surely is the most beautiful book published for many years').
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'I have become acquainted with a Mr Cumberland, who must be agreeable, for he has an hereditary right to it. I have been reading his father's life. It explains the story of a paper in the Observer, written by him, that always interested me much, of his going to see a friend's place after his death, with the circumstance of his decease. It was the late Lord Sackville'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I have become acquainted with a Mr Cumberland, who must be agreeable, for he has an hereditary right to it. I have been reading his father's life. It explains the story of a paper in the Observer, written by him, that always interested me much, of his going to see a friend's place after his death, with the circumstance of his decease. It was the late Lord Sackville'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'[Lady Caroline Lamb's] novel of Glenarvon showed much genius, but of an erratic kind; and false statements are so mingled with true in its pages, that the next generation will not be able to separate them; otherwise, if it were worth any person's while [italics] now [end italics] to write explanatory notes on that work, it might go down to posterity as hints for memoirs of her times. Some of the poetry scattered throughout the volumes is very mellifluous, and was set to music by more than one composer'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
'Amongst various verses, which she insisted on my accepting, she gave me the following lines, which she said she had written as supposing them to be spoken by the Duchess of D[evonshire].'
[the poem that follows is entitled WINTER AMUSEMENTS]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Manuscript: Sheet
'Letters bring Lady M. W. M[ontagu] into my head, which I now do not confess in public ever to have read, for they are deemed so naughty by all the world, that one must keep up one's reputation for modesty, and try to blush whenever they are mentioned. Seriously dear [-], I never was more surprised with any publication in my life. It was, perhaps, no wonder that the editor, my Lord of W[harncliffe], cheated by the charms of his subject, might lose his head and in the last volume kick up his heels at Horace Walpole and Dr Cole, and print the letters about Reevemonde, &c. But how the discreet Lady Louisa S[tuart]t could sanction this, I cannot guess'. [he then comments at length on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
'You seem so much interested with the translation of "Pastor Fido" that I shall take the liberty of sending it to you, that you may judge of its merits: not being skilled in the Italian tongue I cannot possibly give an opinion of it as a [italics] translation [end italics]. As anything else, I do not like it, nor ever liked pastorals or pastoral writing, even of the first order, further than as vehicles for fine poetry; and then the poetry would have pleased me better had it spoken for itself, than from the mouth of a creature to me so inconceivable as a shepherd or shepherdess, whose chief, or rather [italics] only [end italics] characteristics are innocence and simplicity. I am sorry to say they are but too apt to be insipid and uninteresting to those who merely read about them [she continues this critique at length, concluding] It may be owing to some defect in my mind that I really never yet knew an interesting pastoral character, or cared a straw about whether they hanged themselves upon the first willow, or drowned themselves in the neighbouring brook. I can enter into the delights of Homer's gods, and follow to their darkest recesses Milton's devils, and delight in the absurdities and extravagancies of Shakespeare's men and women, but I never could sympathise in the sufferings of even Virgil's shepherd swains'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'You seem so much interested with the translation of "Pastor Fido" that I shall take the liberty of sending it to you, that you may judge of its merits: not being skilled in the Italian tongue I cannot possibly give an opinion of it as a [italics] translation [end italics]. As anything else, I do not like it, nor ever liked pastorals or pastoral writing, even of the first order, further than as vehicles for fine poetry; and then the poetry would have pleased me better had it spoken for itself, than from the mouth of a creature to me so inconceivable as a shepherd or shepherdess, whose chief, or rather [italics] only [end italics] characteristics are innocence and simplicity. I am sorry to say they are but too apt to be insipid and uninteresting to those who merely read about them [she continues this critique at length, concluding] It may be owing to some defect in my mind that I really never yet knew an interesting pastoral character, or cared a straw about whether they hanged themselves upon the first willow, or drowned themselves in the neighbouring brook. I can enter into the delights of Homer's gods, and follow to their darkest recesses Milton's devils, and delight in the absurdities and extravagancies of Shakespeare's men and women, but I never could sympathise in the sufferings of even Virgil's shepherd swains'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'I am reading on Sundays "Morehead's Discourses on the Principle of Religious Belief", which are greatly admired, though I canot say I think there is either much strength or novelty in them. It seems to me as if he had taken some of the most striking passages in scripture and [italics] beat them out [end italics], and worked them up, as a [italics] cunning artificer [end italics] does a bit of pure gold'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'I received yours yesternight with the poem of [italics] the Sabbath [end italics], a good part of which I have already perused and have concluded that the Cameronian hath more in his head than hair'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
Tuesday 16 January: 'I have let all this time -- 3 weeks at Monks [House, Sussex residence] -- slip because I was there so divinely happy & pressed with ideas [...] So I never wrote a word of farewell to the year [...] nothing about the walks I had ever so far into the downs; or the reading -- Marvell of an evening, & the usual trash.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 21 August 1934: 'I read Une Vie last night, & it seemed to me rather marking time & watery -- heaven help me -- in comparison [to last chapter of own work in progress]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of startling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of stratling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 2 October 1934:
'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]:
Sh[akespea]re. Troilus.
Pericles.
Taming of Shrew.
Cymbeline.
Maupassant.
de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS]
St Simon.
Gide.
Library books: Powys
Wells
Lady Brooke.
Prose. Dobree.
Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 2 October 1934:
'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]:
Sh[akespea]re. Troilus.
Pericles.
Taming of Shrew.
Cymbeline.
Maupassant.
de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS]
St Simon.
Gide.
Library books: Powys
Wells
Lady Brooke.
Prose. Dobree.
Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 2 October 1934:
'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]:
Sh[akespea]re. Troilus.
Pericles.
Taming of Shrew.
Cymbeline.
Maupassant.
de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS]
St Simon.
Gide.
Library books: Powys
Wells
Lady Brooke.
Prose. Dobree.
Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 14 October 1934: 'I cant write. When will my brain revive? in 10 days I think. And it can read admirably. I began [Thomson's] The Seasons last night; after Eddie [Sackville-West]'s ridiculous rhodomontade -- or so I judge it [...] a vast book called The Sun in Capricorn: a worthless book I think [...] No. I don't like him. Trash & tarnish; and this morbid silliness.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I am reading Maupassant with delight. I have just finished "Le Lys rouge" by Anatole France. it means nothing to me. I can do no serious reading. I have just begun to write -only the day before yesterday.["The Two Vagabonds" subsequently to become "An Outcast of the Islands"(1896)]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, see additional comments
'I fear I may be too much under the influence of Maupassant. I have studied "Pierre et Jean" - thought, method and all - with the profoundest despair. It seems nothing but has a technical complexity which makes me tear my hair. one feels like weeping with rage while reading it. Ah well!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I had this morning a charming surprise in the shape of the "Spoils of Poynton" sent me by H. James with a very characteristic and friendly inscription on the flyleaf. I need not tell you how pleased I am. I have already read the book. It is as good as anything of his--almost--a story of love and wrongheadedness revolving around a houseful of artistic furniture. It's Henry James and nothing but Henry James.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I've just finished reading "Liza of Lambeth" It is certainly worth reading--but whether it's worth talking about is another question. I at any rate have nothing to say except this--that I do not like society novels--and Liza to me is just a society novel--society of a kind.[...] It will be fairly successful I believe--for it is a "genre" picture without any atmosphere and consequently no reader can live in it. He just looks on--and that is what the general reader prefers.'
Conrad then compares the novel to George Du Maurier's illustrations.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Humphry James is good. Is he very deep or very simple? And by the bye R. Bridges is a poet I'm damned if he ain't! There's more poesy in one page of "Shorter Poems" than in the whole volume of Tennyson. This is my deliberate opinion. And what a descriptive power! The man hath wings--sees from on high.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Sunday 14 April 1935: 'Now for Alfieri & Nash & other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night [...] I read Annie S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from an Au[tobiograph]y: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she cant count, & has no illusions about, but she cant stop telling stories, are wash, pigs, hogs -- any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 26 May 1935: 'I'm writing at Aix-en-Provence on a Sunday evening [...] I'm dipping into K.M.'s letters, Stendhal on Rome [...] Cant formulate a phrase for K.M. All I think a little posed & twisted by illness & [John Middleton] Murry; but agonised, & at moments that direct flick at the thing seen which was her gift.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 31 August 1935: 'Read Hind & Panther. D.H.L. by E. (good) & slept.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 13 September 1935: 'Reading Love for Love, Life of Anthony Hope, &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'A gentleman who deems himself libelled at in the Wake has sent a long poem to Edin. to be printed [italics] in quarto [end italics] which he denominates [italics] The Hoggiad [end italics] or [italics] A Supplement to the Queen's Wake [end italics] It is the most abusive thing I ever saw but has otherwise some merit'..
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'Yesterday I finished the "Life" [the biography of Saint Teresa of Avila by Cunninghame Graham's wife Gabriela.] Ca m'a laissé une profonde impression de tristesse [...] I can say no more just now.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'The "Impenitent Thief" has been read more than once. I've read it several times alone and I've read it aloud to my wife. Every word has found a home.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'In the issue for December 23rd, 1915 of the NewYork "Nation" there is an extremely fine article on me by Stuart P. Sherman. On the whole I regard it as the best article I have seen on the subject. I should very much like to have seen this article reprinted, either with other by the same hand or alone, but I suppose that there is no chance of this.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
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
Tuesday 10 September 1918: 'Though I am not the only person in Sussex who reads Milton, I mean to write down my impressions of Paradise Lost [...] Impressions fairly well describes the sort of thing left in my mind. I have left many riddles unread. I have slipped on too easily to taste the full flavour [goes on to describe and discuss in detail] [...] But how smooth, strong & elaborate it all is! What poetry!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Now the first sensation of oppression has worn off a little what remains with one after reading the "Life of Santa Teresa" is the impression of a wonderful richness; a world peopled thickly--with the breath of mysticism over all--the landscapes, the walls,the men,the women. Of course I am quite incompetent to criticise such a work; but I can appreciate it .[...] It is absorbing like a dream amd as difficult to keep hold of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'[Arthur] Symons reviewing "Trionfo della Morte" (trans:) [Gabriele d'Annunzio's 1894 novel] in the last "Sat. Rev" went out of his way to damn Kipling and me with the same generous praise. He says that "Captains Courageous" and the "Nigger" have no idea behind them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'The "Bristol Fashion" business is excellently well put. You seem to know a lot about every part of the world and what's more you can say what you know in a most individual way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'The Guide book simply magnificent [italics] Everlastingly good!. I've read it last night having only then returned home.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'This morning I had the "Aurora" from Smithers, No.2 of the 500 copies. C'est tout simplement magnifique yet I do not exactly perceive what on earth they have been making a fuss about.[...] I notice variations in the text as I've read it in the typewritten copy.This seems the most finished piece of work you have ever done.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, see additional comments
'I return the pages "To Wayfaring Men". I read them before I read your letter and have been deeply touched.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Sheet, Presumably typewritten pages
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
'I think MacGill has written one or two excellent things on the Push. [Patrick MacGill, The Great Push , 1916] I do want you to realise that intelligent people here, though civilian, well understand that most of the stuff printed in the dailies about the army is largely tosh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Tuesday 25 May 1937, in account of travels in France, 7-23 May 1937: 'Reading Beckford by [Guy] Chapman [1937] -- but why write about this cold egotist? this nugatory man?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 1 June 1937: 'I should make a note of Desmond [MacCarthy]'s queer burst of intimacy the other evening [...] last Tuesday, that is; [he] read us his L[eslie]. S[tephen]. lecture, a rather laboured but honest but perfunctory lecture: after which he & I sitting in the twilight with the door open, L[eonard]. [Woolf] coming in & out, discussed his shyness: he says he thinks it made him uncreative.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Desmond MacCarthy
'The "Melodies" bear a few striking marks of the master's hand but there are some of them feeble and I think they must be Lady B's. He is not equal to Moore for [italics] melodies [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I love the Warder as much as I detest these radicals and the general harping spirit of the Whigs Pray is my dear friend Cunninghame the author of The Cameronians Surely he must it is so like him and so graphic'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'In 1937 she was having "a heavenly time" reading Montherlant, and writing a piece on him for the "New Statesman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
'Maupassant never meant as much to her as Flaubert, or as Proust. She was reading collections of Maupassant's stories in mid-winter at Bowen's Court when she wrote to Virginia Woolf:
"I suppose he had sharp sense but really rather a boring mind. You soon get to know his formula, but there is always the fascination: it's like watching someone do the same card trick over and over again. I did feel the fascination so strongly that I wondered if I were getting brutalised myself. There is a particularly preposterous story called 'Yvette'...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
'the short stories she did know, from Downe days, were Richard Middleton's colection "The Ghost Ship" and E.M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
'Melville is a terribly dull book: I do not think it will take so well as Knox'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'Melville is a terribly dull book: I do not think it will take so well as Knox'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I like some things in the last Mag. very well but there is a grievious [sic] falling off in Cunningham's Cameronian The one is a drawing from life the other a composition and not at all in keeping'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'When ever I saw your Cameronians I knew the hand but I do not like your last ideal picture half so well as the one you drew from life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I have not got all the Mag. read but think it is an exceedingly good one. I only wish the term [italics] Galloway Stott [end italics] had been left out of Scott's prize poem It is exceedingly shrewd and clever. New York I do not understand The poetry of Cunningham is perfectly beautiful'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'At one o'clock [Neil] Munro and I went into the street. We talked. I had read up "The Lost Pibroch" which I do think wonderful in a way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
' "Higginson's Dream" is super-excellent. It is much too good to remind me of any of my work, but I am immensely flattered that you discern some points of similitude. Of course I am in complete sympathy with the point of view. For the same accomplishment in expression I can never hope--and Robert [Cunninghame Grahame] is too strong an individuality [sic] to be influenced by anyone's writing. He desired me to correct the proofs but the "Sat. Rev" people did not send me the proofs.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'PS I've read "Two Magics" Henry James's last. The first story ["The Turn of the Screw"] is all there. He extracts an intellectual thrill out of the subject. The second ["Covering End"] is unutterable rubbish.Quite a shock to one of the faithful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Your photograph came yesterday (It's good!) and the book ["Mogreb-el-Acksa"] arrived by this evening's post. I dropped everything--as you may imagine and rushed at it paper knife in hand. It is with great difficulty I interrupt my reading at the 100th page -- and I interrupt it only to write to you.
A man staying here has been reading over my shoulder; for we share our best with the stranger within our tent. No thirsty men drank water as we have been drinking in, swallowing, tasting, blessing, enjoying, gurgling, choking over, absorbing, your thought, your phrases, your irony [...Then follows ten lines of enthusiastic praise for the book.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Just a word or two about Robert's book. It is a glorious performance. Much as we expected of him. [...] Nothing approaching it has appeared since Burton's "Mecca" ["Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah" 1855] [...] The Journey in Morocco is a work of art, a book of travel written like this is no longer a book of travel--it is a creative work.[...] The book pulled at my very heart strings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Today, from your kindness, I received the "Chronicle" with Robert's [Cunninghame Graham] letter. C'est bien ça -- c'est bien lui!' [Its good, that-- it's really him!]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
'The thing ["A Paheka"] in "West.Gaz." is excellent, excellent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'Piercy Mallory is an extraordinary work. In character it is inimitable not in original design but in amazing strength of colouring. In nature and interest it is defective but I cannot tell you the half I would say about it in this line. The Maga. is excellent. no dross. But I think I am still most delighted with old Tim of them all. He is uniformly the first I read and Wrestliana is the very thing for me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I have only got about half through Cyral Thornton as yet and cannot therefore be decided on its merits. But I suspect it to have one grievious fault that of introducing innumerable curous [sic] and original characters of whom you would like to be well acquainted and of whom you hear no more. I have no patience at all with this rambling and deesultory mode of running through a life, and if it do not turn out better embodied ultimately than it has done thus far I shall damn it as the work of a man of high accomplishments given to prosing and garrulity'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I have recieved Maga with the inclosures safe to night but have only as yet got her looked over. For one thing I percieve that Mr More's hymn to the Evening star is perfectly beautiful and I think the masterpiece of all he has yet written'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I have just read "Family Portraits". I am a bad critic: it is difficult for me to express with the right words the pleasure that the reading of your charming sketch has given me; but when I raised my eyes from the page , it was with the very vivid feeling of having seen not only the long line of the portaits but also the beauty of the profound and tender idea which illuminated for you all the faces portrayed, the sad eyes of the dead with the flame of a gentle pity and a penetrating sympathy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
Thursday 24 June 1937: 'A letter from Ott. [...] She has been [italics]very[end italics] ill [following stroke] [...] but is recovering at Tunbridge Wells. Pipsy reads Emma to her, & she reads H. James to herself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Ottoline Morrell Print: Book
Tuesday 30 November 1937: 'Reading Chateaubriand now, bought in 6 fine vols for one guinea at Cambridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 22 March 1939: 'Reading Eddie Marsh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I have just finished Miss Martineau's new romance. Toussaint the hero is a magnificent character, - and all connected with his personal private character is very interesting, & the conversations (where we may suppose she speaks herself) are just like those in Deerbrook very interesting. The [italics] story [end italics] is too like reading a history - one knows all along how it must end, - & there's a map at the beginning [italics] like [end italics] a history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'I have just finished Miss Martineau's new romance. Toussaint the hero is a magnificent character, - and all connected with his personal private character is very interesting, & the conversations (where we may suppose she speaks herself) are just like those in Deerbrook very interesting. The [italics] story [end italics] is too like reading a history - one knows all along how it must end, - & there's a map at the beginning [italics] like [end italics] a history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Wednesday 3 January 1940: 'I have just put down Mill's autobiography, after copying certain sentences in the volume I call, deceptively, the Albatross.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 14 September 1940: 'I am reading Sevigne: how recuperative last week [during heavy air raids]; gone stale a little with that mannered & sterile Bussy now [...] I'm reading Henry Williamson. Again I dislike him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 16 September 1940: 'Have been dallying with Mr Williamson's Confessions, appalled by his ego centricity [...] He cant move an inch from the glare of his own personality -- his fame. And I've never read one of those immortal works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 21 September 1940: 'I have forced myself to overcome my rage at being beaten at Bowls & my fulminations against Nessa [for issuing invitation to Igor and Helen Anrep] by reading Michelet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 26 October 1940: '"The complete Insider" -- I have just coined this title to express my feeling towards George Trevelyan; who has just been made Master of Trinity: whose history of England I began after tea (throwing aside Michelet vol.15) with a glorious sense of my own free & easiness in writing now) [...] I like outsiders better. Insiders write a colourless English. They are turned out by the University machine.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 9 January 1941: 'Desmond's book has come. Dipping I find it small beer. Too Irish, too confidential, too sloppy & depending upon the charm of the Irish voice. Yet I've only dipped, I say to quiet my critical conscience, which wont let me define things so easily.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'The dead lights [shutters used to protect ships' interiors during storms at sea]were no sooner up and a candle made fast to the table by many a knot and twist of small cord, than my young companion took up a book, and very composedly began to read to herself. I begged her to let me share her amusement by reading aloud. This she instantly complied with. She had however taken up the first book that came to hand, which happened to be not very apropos to the present occasion, as it proved to be Lord Kaims's Elements of Criticism. She read on however and I listen'd with much seeming attention, tho' neither she nor I knew a word it contained [...] The storm roared over and around us, the Candle cast a melancholy gleam across the Cabin, which we now considered as our tomb. We did not, however, assist each other's distress, for neither of us mentioned our own.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Rutherfurd Print: Book
'The dead lights [shutters used to protect ships' interiors during storms at sea]were no sooner up and a candle made fast to the table by many a knot and twist of small cord, than my young companion took up a book, and very composedly began to read to herself. I begged her to let me share her amusement by reading aloud. This she instantly complied with. She had however taken up the first book that came to hand, which happened to be not very apropos to the present occasion, as it proved to be Lord Kaims's Elements of Criticism. She read on however and I listen'd with much seeming attention, tho' neither she nor I knew a word it contained [...] The storm roared over and around us, the Candle cast a melancholy gleam across the Cabin, which we now considered as our tomb. We did not, however, assist each other's distress, for neither of us mentioned our own.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Rutherfurd Print: Book
'[After sighting land believed by captain and crew of Jamaica Packet to be Graciosa, island in the Azores] the next thing was to get the Captain to ly to, as it was very dangerous for him to proceed on his way, thro' a cluster of Islands, of which he was confessedly ignorant. This being agreed to, we all returned to the Cabin. Read the description of the Island from Salmon's Geographical Grammar. We're charmed to find it produces every thing we want, Sheep, poultry, bread, wine and a variety of Vegetables, besides the finest fruits in the world.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw and other passengers on board Jamaica Packet Print: Book
'I was yesterday at Belleim, the winter palace of the King [of Portugal] [...] The house is by no means fine, and did not the garden and other appurtenances atone for it, it would hardly be worth the trouble of going to see, but those indeed are well worthy of a traveller's Notice. This garden contains within it variety enough to satisfy a Sir William Chalmers [sic], and had I not read his account of what a garden ought to be, I should not venture to express all I saw under that single appellation, but tho' it is far from being so extensive as his plan, yet it contains a great deal more than his three natural notes of earth, air and water, water, earth and air.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 3 January 1845: 'I send back your "Vestiges of Creation" [...] it appears to me that I have read in my life few more melancholy books'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 7 January 1845:
'It is true that posterity remembers the good; but how often does it happen that the immediate public, looking at the new bad, forgets or is ignorant of the old good! Just this occurred to me in reading Lamartine's dull piece of extravagance, "La Chute d'un Ange." Nothing but your recommendation could have induced me to read another line of his writing. Now, I have gone through "Jocelyn;" and, although I dislike the story -- the heroine in man's clothes, and the hero made a priest, Heaven knows how -- I have yet been delighted with the general feeling and beauty of the poem, particularly with one portion full of toleration, and another about dogs.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 7 January 1845:
'It is true that posterity remembers the good; but how often does it happen that the immediate public, looking at the new bad, forgets or is ignorant of the old good! Just this occurred to me in reading Lamartine's dull piece of extravagance, "La Chute d'un Ange." Nothing but your recommendation could have induced me to read another line of his writing. Now, I have gone through "Jocelyn;" and, although I dislike the story -- the heroine in man's clothes, and the hero made a priest, Heaven knows how -- I have yet been delighted with the general feeling and beauty of the poem, particularly with one portion full of toleration, and another about dogs.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 11 January 1845: 'Mr Kenyon has read to me an extract from a private letter -- addressed by H. Martineau to Moxon the publisher, .. to the effect that ... Lord Morpeth was down on his knees in the middle of the room a few nights ago, in the presence of the somnambule J__ & conversing with her in Greek & Latin -- that .. the four Miss Liddels were also present, .. & that .. they five talked to her during one seance in five foreign languages, .. viz .. Latin, Greek, French, Italian & German.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Kenyon Manuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 January 1845:
'Did I say anything to you of "Fernande" -- Dumases --? I fancy I did, during the reading of the first seven pages. Beware of it, I tell you now -- If Mr Lovejoy ordered it for his library, he will be taken to be disorderly by "prude Angleterre." As Schlegel said of the "Sad shepherdess," that it was "unchaste praise of chastity", so we might reverse the saying for "Fernande." At least -- the heroine is a courtezan [sic] by profession -- but you wd not guess it, except by her talking too much of modesty [...] for the rest, she is a Grace, a muse, a saint & martyr. No virtuous woman could have half her fascinations -- (& that's the moral of the whole!) [...] M. Dumas's "Fernande" will make some of your country gentlemen open their eyes, be certain, if Mr Lovejoy introduces her into Berkshire -- I advise you to advise against it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Tomorrow I go on to Ben Jonson, but I shan't like him as much as Marlow. I read Dr Faustus...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'Tomorrow I go on to Ben Jonson, but I shan't like him as much as Marlow. I read Dr Faustus, and Edward II...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'Suffice it to say that its who can revere Mr Newman most with Mr Darbishire, the Winkworths and myself, the book is absolutely simply the utterance of the man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'I am going through a course of John Henry Newman's Sermons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'But I think you are probably seeing more of what has never fallen in my way exactly, but of what I read of in that striking and curious sermon of Mr Maurice's, entitled 'Religion versus God'. In which he spoke of the falseness of that religious spirit which led people to disregard those nearest to them, to wound or leave those whom God had placed around and about and dependent on them, in search of some new sphere of action.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
'Wm brought me Bernard Palissy, but it so happened I had not a moment of time for reading except one day, when I got very interested in four or 5 chapters, & then the book had to go back'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'I have a friend who was educated at Nieuwied, - & who is just crazy about 'Brother Mieth'. First she made me write to Mr Wills, and ask who wrote it; and now, as much would ever have more, she wants me to ask you if Brother Mieth was not Brother Andrup - (Anthrup?) and if you were there at the time of his death; and if you, like her, got a piece of wood shaving out of the bed on which he lay and kept it for a relic? and if you heard his Leben read? - and - and - I don't know how many more questions, all hinging on the one supposition that Brother Mieth was Brother Andrup - It is a charming paper, I, the exoteric may say. But she will hardly allow that I [italics] can [end italics] recognise it's merits, and has gone off upon Neuwied ever since, taking the bit between her teeth. Would you be so kind as to stop her with a hair of the dog that bit her, & give us all another paper on Neuwied in some shape.
That reading the Diary & the confessions of sins over the coffin must have been most striking. I don't know half enough about the Moravians.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Patterson Print: Serial / periodical
'I have a friend who was educated at Nieuwied, - & who is just crazy about 'Brother Mieth'. First she made me write to Mr Wills, and ask who wrote it; and now, as much would ever have more, she wants me to ask you if Brother Mieth was not Brother Andrup - (Anthrup?) and if you were there at the time of his death; and if you, like her, got a piece of wood shaving out of the bed on which he lay and kept it for a relic? and if you heard his Leben read? - and - and - I don't know how many more questions, all hinging on the one supposition that Brother Mieth was Brother Andrup - It is a charming paper, I, the exoteric may say. But she will hardly allow that I [italics] can [end italics] recognise it's merits, and has gone off upon Neuwied ever since, taking the bit between her teeth. Would you be so kind as to stop her with a hair of the dog that bit her, & give us all another paper on Neuwied in some shape.
That reading the Diary & the confessions of sins over the coffin must have been most striking. I don't know half enough about the Moravians.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
'Here is the beautiful Commonplace book awaiting me on my return home! And I give it a great welcome you may be sure; and turn it over, & peep in, and read a sentence and shut it up to think over it's graceful suggestive wisdom in something of the 'gourmet' spirit of a child with an eatable dainty; which child, if it have the proper artistic sensuality of childhood, first looks it's cake over to appreciate the full promise of it's appearance, - next, snuffs up it's fragrance, - and gets to a fair & complete mouth-watering before it plunges into the first [italics] bite [end italics]. I do like your book. I liked it before, - I like it better now - it is like looking into deep clear water, - down below at every instant of prolonged gaze, one sees some fresh beauty or treasure of clear white pebble, or little shady nooks for fish to lurk in, or delicate water weds. Thank you for it. I do value it'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Friday 6 October 1939: 'I compose articles on Lewis Carroll & read a great variety of books -- Flaubert's life, R[oger Fry].'s lectures, out at last, a life of Erasmus & Jacques Blanche.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 26 February 1845:
'Do you know the "Napoleon et Marie Louise" of M. de Meneval, the secretary of the emperor? The three little volumes have interest in them -- and if you require (which you dont I hope) any further impulse towards hating the Austrian [Marie Louise], you will find it there [makes further comments] [...] Well might Napoleon shrink from speakng of her .. & from analysing the motives of her conduct! -- His [italics]silence[end italics], as Meneval describes it, strikes me as very affecting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'we, as a family, are going through a whole course of Indian literature - Kaye and Malcolm to wit; but I am afraid I read it for duty's sake, without taking as much interest as I ought to do, in all the out-of-the-way names & places, none of which give me any distinct idea'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'Thanks for telling me about the articles. I always like to read anything of your writing, even when it is not of such supreme interest as 'Lucknow' because your style (may I say it?) has such a great charm for me. It is such pure beautiful English. I had heard of the forthcoming article on Buckle, without knowing whom it was by. Thank you for telling me'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart':
'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart':
'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
'I hold "Ipané". Hoch! Hurra! Vivat! May you live! And now I know I am virtuous because I read and had no pang of jealousy. There are things in that volume that are like magic and though space and through the distance of regretted years convey to one the actual feeling, the sights, the sounds, the thoughts; one steps on the earth, breathes the air and has the sensation of your past. I know of course every sketch; what was almost a surprise was the extraordinarily good convincing effect of the whole. [...] I have read it already three times.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Reading your Domestic Annals of Scotland, warms up all my old Scottish blood, - and makes me wish heartily that our four girls could see something of Scotland'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'after reading the dedication of your Essay on Liberty I can understand how any word expressing a meaning only conjectured that was derogatory to your wife would wound you most deeply. And therefore I now write to express my deep regret that you received such pain through me.' [Gaskell is referring to the printing of a letter about John Stuart Mill's future wife in her Life of Charlotte Bronte, to which he had reacted angrily].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'To go back to books. H. Martineau's is, I think, the best guide book [to the Lakes].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'thanks [...] most especially for those brilliant lines of Father Prout's; how we did delight in them, and how I should like to have written them. I think our Magazine promises to be a famous success; and I enjoy - now you know [italics] you [end italics] did, so you need not look moral - the Saturday's cutting up of 'Dead [?heart]; - oh [italics] how [end italics] stupid it was. - I don't think we shall ever be so stupid.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
'thanks [...] most especially for those brilliant lines of Father Prout's; how we did delight in them, and how I should like to have written them. I think our Magazine promises to be a famous success; and I enjoy - now you know [italics] you [end italics] did, so you need not look moral - the Saturday's cutting up of 'Dead[?heart]; - oh [italics] how [end italics] stupid it was. - I don't think we shall ever be so stupid.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
'I ought to have told you that my dear Madame Mohl was the author of that Recamier article, - stay, I'll put her letter in, - I know I can trust you, - and we are just off to Church. [italics] Please [end italics] return it; it will explain that what you have is the National R. article as it was [italics] first written [end italics] - twice as long as it was when printed, - [italics] she [end italics] thinks the best part was taken out'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
'we are reading with [Florence] Macaulay's Biographies and Milman's Latin Xtianity and I don't think it is a bad thing for either Marianne, Meta, or myself to have an obligation to sit and settle to a little steady reading every day'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughters Marianne, 'Meta' and Florence Print: Book
'we are reading with [Florence] Macaulay's Biographies and Milman's Latin Xtianity and I don't think it is a bad thing for either Marianne, Meta, or myself to have an obligation to sit and settle to a little steady reading every day'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughters Marianne, 'Meta' and Florence Print: Book
'I suspect that Meta has taken up either the 5th vol. of Modern Painters, or Tyndall on Glaciers, both of which books she is reading now, and Florence is probably reading the 'Amber-Witch'.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Elizabeth Gaskell Print: Book
'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
'[...] but now since I've received the "Sat. Review" I've something to write about. The "German Tramp" is not only excellent[...] but it is something more. Of your short pieces I don't know but this this is the one I like best. The execution has a vigour-the right touch-- and an ease that delight me.'
Hence follows around ten lines of appreciative criticism including a reference to two other stories published in the Saturday Review in 1899.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'But as to "Buta" it is altogether and fundamentally good, good in matter--that's of course--but good wonderfully good in form and especially in expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'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
'on their wedding journey they [John Symonds and Catherine North] have been writing a paper on Christmas, - which looks to me [italics] very [end italics] clever, & Mr Symonds wants to know if it can go into the Cornhill for January'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
'I've read "Cruz Alta" four days ago. c'est tout simplement magnifique. I know most of the sketches, in fact nearly all, except "Cruz Alta" itself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'As to "Charlotte" the genuineness of its conception the honesty of its feeling make that work as welcome as a breath of fresh air to a breast oppressed by all the fumes and cheap perfumes of fiction that is [sic ]thrown on the altar of publicity in the hopes of propitiating the god of big sales. It is refreshing indeed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'I am altogether under the charm of that book ["A Vanished Arcadia"] in accord with its spirit and full of admiration for its expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am reading, ... "Life" of William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'...- I spend 5 days of precious time toiling through Henry James' subtleties for Mrs Lyttleton, and write a very hardworking review for her...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'However I forgave him, and read him that bit of Walt Whitman about the widowed bird, which I thank God affected him quite tolerably.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'It's wonderful how well sustained is the excellence of "Charlotte".I've just read the last instalment [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'I'm sorry I kept the MS so long.[...] However I've read it more than once; the difficulty was to say something useful.[...] I do not want to deface the pages tho' I have meditated them.[...] The passages I have written on loose sheets embody my criticism which is concerned solely with the technique.'
Hence follow five lines of constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
'I've lazed-- though I must say I did look through all the stories. It was the first look and I have done no actual underlining.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
'I feel so dull and muddle-headed that I daren't even attempt to give you now an idea of the effect the little volume ["Success"] had produced on me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Excellent, the last number of "Maga".especially [...] Neil Munro's instalment'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'Miss Jewsbury lay on the floor and read half through the Essays of Elia and called our drawing room "such an ugly room in which we should always be unhappy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Jewsbury Print: Book
'All evening that I have been reading Lord Mahon aloud I have been thinking how I could rush home via Strasbourg & Paris to see her [Julia, her daughter, who was unwell] for myself.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'I know I shall never be wise enough in a tete a tete with a girl who does not read poetry & novels but Adam Smith, Niall etc. & "has no sense of humour but takes everything literally".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Thompson Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 3 January 1845:
'I send back your "Vestiges of Creation". The writer has a certain power in tying a knot -- -- (in mating a system) -- but it is not a love-knot, & it appears to me that I have read in my life few more melancholy books -- Did the thought ever strike you of [italics]Mr. [Andrew] Crosse having anything to do with the writing[end italics]? I understand that Sir Richard Vivian [sic] denies it determinedly -- & his brother, who visits here, does it for him besides, by all manner of oaths.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 18 March 1845:
'Do you know "Le macon" by Michel Raymond --? It is not as vivid as most of these books from France, -- nor as passionate, -- but it is interesting as a picture of the life of the people in Paris & I have read it with pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 5 April 1845:
'For Mr Horne's storybook, I like some of the stories & think it a pretty book. A few children of six years old might be too old for it, -- but, in general, I do not quarrel with the fitnesses [...] I remember a little book which was a favorite in our nursery, called "A visit to a farm-house [by S.W.]," with precisely the same characteristics, & a better & more interesting general construction. There are a few touches more of poetry in this book, -- owing to Mr. Horne, of course, but the defect is the absolute want of reference to Deity, as creator, which the child looks for, .. which the first instinct of the child looks out to meet. Not that I advocate the teaching of theological systems to children of that early age; but that if the sense of beauty is to be educated, the sense of God should be educated also.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'With this parcel we return Messrs Marshall and Young. some Observations from the former I lay by as matters to be inquired into but have taken nothing by way of Extract, so that all you intend to take may be put in the proper Place in your work, without Danger of Repetition'
[Crabbe is alluding to his work on the 'Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir', a collaboration with John Nichols]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 26 May 1845:
'I know Bamford's "Life of a Radical," which contains some of his verses -- but there seemed to me to be more poetry in the prose. It is a vividly interesting autobiography which I shd. have mentioned to you long ago.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Serial / periodical
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1845:
'I have been loitering over "Le monde comme il est" & think your thoughts of it. Good things, excellent things, admirable things are in it, but one cannot call it a success.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 13-14 January 1846:
'Will you have Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this moment I [italics]dare not[end italics], because they are reading them here.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Moulton-Barrett family Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15 January 1846:
'Papa used to say .. "Dont read Gibbon's history -- it's not a proper book -- Dont read "Tom Jones" -- & none of the books on [italics]this[end italics] side, mind -- So I was very obedient & never touched the books on [italics]that[end italics] side, & only read instead, Tom Paine's Age of Reason, & Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, & Hume's Essays, & Werther, & Rousseau, & Mary Woolstonecraft [sic] .. books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, & which were not "on [italics]that[end italics] side" certainly, but which did as well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
'I have now read the remainder [underlined twice] nearly [end underlining] of Glenarvon! & should not give th[e Wr]iter as an Example of the good Ladies: the [wo]man absolutely holds forth the doctrine of [irre]sistable Passion, & that if Lady Avondale falls desperately in love with Lord Glenarvon, after marrying the Man of her own Choice, there is no help for it: if he spare her, well & good! if not she must fall! charming Morality & such as my dear Miss Houltons will never be taught.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
'Mr Boswell the younger. Malone's papers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown
[present at dinner at Mr Murray's was] 'The Mrs Graham who wrote the lively India Journal, a delightful woman!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'Here is Mr Mackensie - with the Surprise I heard it - the Author of "the Man of Feeling" & indeed he is so called.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'I have been engaged by Spurzheims new Edition of his Phrenology: he does not write English Accurately & even where I understand, I cannot always agree & that in Assertions which do not immediately relate to the Science to which I lean sceptically.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'How are you supplied with Books; I have some from Bath, but I begin to be weary of toil & Humour. yet Mr Reynolds was amusing: "not so Gayeties & Gravities" an affected work & here is the journal of a young Officer but not yet read: a pretty good Quarterly Review & John's Gentleman's Magazine'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 1 October 1849:
'We have had much quiet enjoyment here [...] read some amusing books, (Dumas & Sue! -- shake your head!) & seen our child grow fuller of roses & understanding day by day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850:
'I return the "Confidences" with thanks upon thanks. Both Robert & I began with a sort of interest & pleasure, & ended with a sort of sickness of the book & the man. Weakness & falseness are two bad things indeed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850:
'I am finishing the "Memoires d'un medecin"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Thomas Westwood, 12-13 December 1850:
'If you had not sent me the Athenaeum article I never should have seen it probably, for my husband only saw it in the reading room, where women dont penetrate, (because in Italy we cant read, you see) & where the periodicals are kept so strictly like Hesperian apples, by the dragons of the place, that none can be stolen away for even half an hour. So he could only wish me to catch sight of that article -- and you are good enough to send it & oblige us both accordingly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Thomas Westwood, 12-13 December 1850:
'If you had not sent me the Athenaeum article I never should have seen it probably, for my husband only saw it in the reading room, where women dont penetrate, (because in Italy we cant read, you see) & where the periodicals are kept so strictly like Hesperian apples, by the dragons of the place, that none can be stolen away for even half an hour. So he could only wish me to catch sight of that article -- and you are good enough to send it & oblige us both accordingly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Serial / periodical
'I think you do not mean the Treatise of Copplestone that I do, for I see nothing in his Discourses of Necessity and Contingency, of Predestination & Free-will, which are his Subjects,that I do not cordially assent to. He pretends not to see farther into the mill-stone than you & I do. I may read the Cardiophonia of Mr Newton as you recommend it, but the Title offends my Taste & who could guess what Cardiophonia was about? - I have been engaged by the confessions of St Augustine in Milner's History of the Church: the piety is impressive and the Story of his philosophic-Life & Conversation, curious: His "City of God" I expect to find very interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair.
Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages, meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair.
Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Serial / periodical
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 9 April 1901:
'I have been in the wilderness to-day but before I end I must tell you that I did live last week an hour or two -- which being interpreted is that I read The Column by Charles Marriott which if you have not, do. If I were a reviewer I should shout & scream "A New Great Author". But I'm not. Farewell.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902:
'[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 27 January 1905:
'I sit in the Kachcheri [a government office] most of the day & sign my name. I play tennis, dine, read Henry James (Jaffna has a library which contains him & [Dinah Craik's] John Halifax, Gentleman), & go to bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 23 July 1905:
'I have just finished The Golden Bowl & am astounded. Did he invent us or we him? He uses [italics]all[end italics] our words in their most technical sense & we can't have got them all from him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 3 September 1905:
'Euphrosne arrived. It is a queer medley. There are only 3 things in it wh. I ever want to read again, the Cat [by Strachey], Ningamus & the thing about the song, I forget its name.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906:
'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906:
'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'At present sunk deep in Harriet Martineau: very much attracted in spite of her complacent priggishness and self-righteousness. A very [italics] true [end italics] nature there; honest and unflinching and courageous. One gets nourished by the oddest people...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'On my First Communion day, November 21st 1914, I felt nothing at the actual receiving of the sacrament but in reading Francis Thompson's poems that day (my mother had bought them for me not knowing what she was giving me) I found something terrible, sweet and transforming which really did make me draw breath and pant after it...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'[a young Quaker] has made me read Woolman's journal which I found very genuine and moving but not so [italics] bouleversant [italics] as to convert me to the Friends. Can one talk of spirituality as being "provincial"? Or is that just my old Catholic snobbery?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'[in journal entry] from E.O. S[iepmann]'s notebook
Free spirit liable to possession or obsession...
Debauchery is the most frozen isolation to which man can condemn himself...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown
'I love Emily and am too much afraid of hurting her. Her book ['The Tigron' - unpublished] is so very personal to her. she seems to wants us and the world to judge it, not as a thing in itself but "think what this woman must have been through to write it..." I love a great deal of the book but I am not happy about it as a whole.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown
'[Basil Nicholson] loves Marvell's poems and Durer's drawings. He has a great admiration for Keats but won't read the letters "because he feels they will probably annoy him".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Basil Nicholson Print: Book
'I feel a curious kinship with, dislike of, yet pity for Katherine Mansfield, whose letters I am reading again. I see all my weaknesses in her, admire her for her frantic attempts to be honest and deal with them. I can now read her, feeling her equal not an awestruck inferior as I used to. I know all she knew.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution with much interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I had hoped to have a clear head here - to get on with German, Italian, etc. and to read some history. But I have been so heavy and tired all the time that I can only manage snatches of [italics] War and Peace [end italics] and [italics] Sherlock Holmes [end italics]. I am supposed to have done a detailed criticism of Emily's book - I have skimmed through it but that is all.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White
'I am nearly done with McCrie's Knox.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to G. E. Moore, 4 January 1909:
'I don't think you realize how pleased I was to get your letter & paper [...] I read your paper but to tell the actual truth I was disappointed, disappointed in the way in which most papers disappoint one. I want your opus magnum which will tell me what things are true much more than papers which tell me that Pragmatism, which I don't believe in, is false.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Unknown
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, postscript to letter postmarked 1 February 1909:
'I never thanked you for the books [...] they are a godsend especially as I have just got to the end practically of the last batch I ordered out. I suddenly thought I must read Maupassant again & when I reread the tale about the child who is pinched on the buttocks by the adulterating captain I thought I was right. I also read [the Earl of Cromer's] Modern Egypt & you can deduce my state of mind by the fact that I think it is the greatest book written in the last 25 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, postscript to letter postmarked 1 February 1909:
'I never thanked you for the books [...] they are a godsend especially as I have just got to the end practically of the last batch I ordered out. I suddenly thought I must read Maupassant again & when I reread the tale about the child who is pinched on the buttocks by the adulterating captain I thought I was right. I also read [the Earl of Cromer's] Modern Egypt & you can deduce my state of mind by the fact that I think it is the greatest book written in the last 25 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 August 1911:
'Les Freres Karamazov is one of the greatest of novels [...] Have you read it? & the extraordinary speech of Ivan about Christ & Christianity & socialism which goes on without stopping for about 50 pages? I am halfway through. The Agamemnon is childish compared to it. I read it in trains & on steamers in inextricable fjords & on great lakes, very slowly, as befits it, in perpetual sunshine; I shall never finish it I think or perhaps it will never end. And Edgar [Woolf] is always sitting by me reading the Ordeal of Richard Feverel [...] We went up the coast from Gotenberg towards Norway [...] Then we wandered up a fjord to a detestable town called Uddevala [...] Then we took a toy steamboat & sailed over the lake [...] to Leksamd & thence here [Raatvik]. It was pleasant to sit on deck reading Les Freres at the rate of a page an hour, gliding past the shores from which the fair haired naked men & women perpetually waved their hands to us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Woolf, 13 March 1914:
'Another amusing book I looked at here is Hurrell Froude's Remains. I have read partly Newman's Apologia; he seems to me a self-sentimentalist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'Whoever reads the Part of the Fairies in the [italics] Midsummer Night's Dream [end italics] may easily perceive how many beautiful Images [italics] Milton [end italics] has borrowed thence to adorn his Masque of [italics] Comus [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'Yesterday Badams wrote me (from admist the 'wild beasts of Ephesus,' as he calls the new Mining Companies, with whom he is in constant treaty about some important smelting schemes): he wishes me to stay till his return, but if I cannot, he entreats me to take Taffy (a little fiery corn-fed indefatigable Welsh Pony of his, on which I ride) with all its furniture, for the love of him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
'He has written to me twice since his departure; he insists that I shall take a little pony of his with all its furniture; ride home on it thro' the Peak country in Derbyshire, and keep the steed in remembrance of him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
'I have had a letter from Mrs Montague and, (which is still more extraordinary) I have answered it. What on earth did you say, to make her so good to me? She could not have written more frankly and affectionately if I had been her own child. I have never met with any thing like this from Woman before- I purpose loving Mrs Montague all my life; if I find her always the same as she has introduced herself to me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
'I am very curious to see Mrs Montagu's catalogue of duties: so take care that you do not light your pipe with the letter. I have heard from the "noble Lady" again, and written again - She will surely be satisfied that there is no worm of disappointment preying on my damask cheek; for I have told her in luminous EngLIsh that my heart is not in England but in Annandale!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
I had two sheets from Mrs Montagu the other day trying to prove to me that I knew nothing at all of my own heart (Mercy how romantic she is[.)] write presently to Templand.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
'My dearest
I thought to write to you from this place with joy; I write with shame and tears. The enclosed letter, which I found lying for me, has distracted my thoughts from the prospect of our meeting-the brightest in my mind for many months, and fixed them on a part of my own conduct which makes me unworthy ever to see you, or be clasped to your true heart again. I cannot come to you cannot be at peace with myself:... I loved [Edward Irving]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
E. M. Forster to Alice Clara Forster, ?summer 1899:
'I hear much of Mr Dimbleby, and have tried to read his books. I can't think how Maimie [i.e. Mary Aylward, family friend] is taken in. Scattered scraps of information such as "in 1903 there will be a second Flood: 'one of the continents' (!) will sink below the sea. In 1910 the world will probably be consumed in the tail of a comet, &tc."
'"Dear me," says Maimie, "to think that we shall probably be alive to see it."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to George Barger, 27 July 1899:
'I have had a good time in Scotland & here [Northumberland] & go home next week. I have just read James' "A portrait of a Lady" [sic]. It is very wonderful but there's something wrong with him or me: he is not as George Meredith. Now I'm reading the Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett, and am a little bored though there is lots of delightful writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 3 Ocotber 1906:
'You would hardly know me, so violently has Chartres gothicised me [...] In or outside Chartres you can find every human passion. Huysman[s], amid much nonsense, does make this point -- that the middle ages did not shirk things [...] His is an interesting book -- I forget if you set me onto it: at all events you first told me his name.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I have had an answer from Mrs Montagu full of rhetoric, and kindness; but no matter for the rhetoric! She is good to me; and charity covereth a multitude of sins- She says "Mr Carlyle ought not to have stept in between you and your kind intention; nay more, he ought himself to have seen my boy"-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 June 1910:
'I am reading Manucci's "Storia do Mogor" -- a most entertaining book [...] He is so amusing & vivid about the Indian character that I can't believe it's all lies, though it is said to be partly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'E[dward]M[organ]F[orster] was reading, as well, Lyall's Asiatic Studies: Religious and Social (1882) and G. F. I. Graham, The Life and Works of Syed Ahmed Khan (1909).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 July 1911:
'I have been reading Kipling's child's history of England with mingled joy and disgust. It's a fine conception, but oh is it necessary to build character on a psychological untruth? In other words to teach the young citizen that he is absolutely unlike the young German or the young Bashahari -- that foreigners are envious and treacherous, Englishmen, through some freak of God, never --? Kipling and all that school know it's an untruth at the bottom of their hearts -- as untrue as it is unloveable. But, for the sake of patriotism, they lie. It is despairing [...]
'I couldn't on the other hand read the New Machiavelli, finding it too fretful and bumptious, and very inartistic, but must try again -- the more so as Wells, in an article in Le Temps has mentioned me among the authors qui meritent etre mieux connus en France [...] The best novels I have come across in the past year are Rosalind Murray's The Leading Note [...] and Wedgwood's Shadow of a Titan -- unfortunately written in an affected and unreadable style.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912:
'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912:
'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912:
'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 12 March 1912:
'I seem to have read several good books -- William James's Memories and Studies, Walter de la Mare's The Return -- supernatural, profound, and fine --: The Reward of Virtue by Amber Reeves [...] Foemina is interesting on L'Ame des Anglais, though she theorises too much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 12 March 1912:
'I seem to have read several good books -- William James's Memories and Studies, Walter de la Mare's The Return -- supernatural, profound, and fine --: The Reward of Virtue by Amber Reeves [...] Foemina is interesting on L'Ame des Anglais, though she theorises too much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912:
'The day before yesterday I read The Ghost Ship by R. Middleton [...] I thought it very good, and it added to the other qualities I want in a supernatural story, the quality of good nature. The others in the same book did not look as interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
'I was one Day exceedingly surprised when the Penny-post brought a Letter, directed to my Son; as it was marked [italics] Teddington [end italics] I open'd it, judging it was some business that Mrs [italics] Meade [end italics] wanted to have transacted; when, O shameful! it was a Love-letter to the Child, who was but sixteen Years of Age, and she is four Years older than I am, with a Direction to him to meet her at a Coffee-house in [italics] London [end italics], and an Offer of Marriage to him'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
'From a tattered old volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales passed around among us, we learned to read, even I, at long last, discovering suddenly what the mystery was all about. I have no recollection of the actual process; I do not know how or why or when or wherefore the light dawned. I only know that when I went to Miss Beck’s Academy I could not read, and that by the end of my first term, without any apparent transition period, I was reading, without too much trouble, anything that came my way.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
'And then one day I found a book.
It was a book called Emily of New Moon, about a little girl whose father died of consumption – that made a change, to start with - after which she was brought up by strict aunts in an old farmhouse somewhere in Canada. A Canadian story, not an American one; but I barely registered that at the time. What made it so different from other books of its kind I did not know, and I do not really know even now. But for me it was magic. I carried it off and kept it under my pillow or clutched to my bosom at bed-making time, and it seems as though I read it all that summer long, which can scarcely have been the fact; but I think I must have read it through, at first voraciously and then with slow and lingering delight, at least three times on the trot. And it was summer. On fine summer nights the beds remained out on the concrete strip all night, and I used to read, half under the bedclothes to evade Night Nurse’s eagle eye, until the last dregs of the light had drained away [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
'I think she thought I was French as I was reading the "Matin". But when I picked up Lamb which was obviously an English book, she began throwing out leading questions.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
'I read about your earlier dinner quite by accident in "Books" - & by the way I have never had the copy with your Stephen Crane article. I liked [underlined] very [end underlining] much the article about Ezra -
I have read Hemingway's book - It seems pretty good. I like that hard clean sort of effect - but I think it gives also the effect of brittleness - or is that nonsense? It is also rather dazzling & tiring. He has touched me off rather nastily - rather on Jean's lines - So I feel very discouraged! Even you don't quite escape. Still its all of no consequence.
Jenny had Violet's book lying about yesterday, which really [underlined] did [end underlining] rather upset me - The Envoi appears to say, that with someone who has had so [underlined] many [end underlining] final grand Passions there will [underlined] never [end underlining] be [underlined] any [end underlining] means of knowing who was really "the" one!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
'The Last Post has hitherto had rather a bad press. There were two most violent attacks - on that and N.Y.i. N. A. in the [underlined] Times [end underlining] last Sunday, for no discoverable reason, and the [underlined] Herald-Tribune [end underlining] was not very good. I have written nice things on everbody on that paper, so they can't very well employ their staff to write about me. So Irita - rather at my suggestion - got an English novelist called Macfee to do it, a sort of blighted person I wanted to give a job to. However, as a set off Harry Hensen of the World which has hitherto not liked me, gave it his column and as he is one of the most celebrated column-writers in the States that is not so bad.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Serial / periodical
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'I have been reading again the "[A] Vanished Arcadia" - from the dedication, so full of charm, to the last paragraph with its ironic aside about the writers of books "proposing something and concluding nothing" - and its exquisite last lines [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I read J. H. A. Macdonald's speech with interest.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
'Larkin later admitted that he spent most of his time straying from the path Bone [his tutor] intended him to follow. "I was on a great [George] Moore kick at that time", he said; "probably he was at the bottom of my style, then".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Unknown
'This "new direction" [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'Your mention of Hawthorne puts me in mind to tell you what rabid [underlined] admirers we
are of his [...] There is no prose write of the present day I have half the interest in I have in
him, his style, in my mind is so beautifully refined and there is such exquisite pathos and
quaint humour, and such an awfully [underlined] deep knowledge of human nature, not that
hard unloving detestable, and, as it is purely one sided (or wrong [underlined] sided) false
reading of it that one finds in Thackeray. He reminds me in many things of Charles Lamb, and
of heaps of our rare old English humourists, with their deep pathetic nature--and one faculty
he possesses beyond any writer I remember (not dramatic, for then I would certainly
remember Shakespeare, and others on further though perhaps) viz. that of exciting you to the
highest pitch without on any [underlined] occasion that I am aware of making you feel by his
catastrophe ashamed of having been excited. What I mean is, if you have ever read it, such a
case as occurs in the "Mysteries of Udolpho" where your disgust is beyond all expression on
finding that all your fright about the ghostly creature that has haunted you throughout the
volumes has been caused by a pitiful wax image! [...] And no Author I know does [underlined]
try to work upon them [i.e. the passions] more, apparently with no [underlined] effort to
himself. I cannot satisfy myself as to whether I like his sort of Essays contained in the twice
told tales best, or his more finished works such as Blithedale romance. Every touch he adds to
any character gives a higher interest to it, so that I should like the longer ones best, but there
is a concentration of excellence in the shorter things and passages that strike, in force like
daggers, in their beauty and truth, so that I generally end in liking that best which I have read
last [...] There are beautiful passages in Longfellow, above all, as far as my knowledge goes
in the Golden Legend, some of which in a single reading impressed themselves on my
memory.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret De Quincey
'Your Saturday Review fling is first rate. Nothing I liked more since the gold-fish carrier story'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Referring to Elsie Hueffer's translation of Maupassant: 'I've "suggested" on the proof numbered 2 everything that occurred to me as improvement. Your work and your corrections are all right. The preface is extremely good.' Hence follow twelve lines of minor comments about the translation, mostly directed at Ford's preface,rather than Elsie's translation of the text.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Proofs
'She comments, with discrimination, on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Rousseau and Cervantes, "Tom Jones", "Emma", "A Man of Feeling", Coleridge, Mrs Shelley, and Crabbe'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
'I have to thank you for Morel's pamphlet which reached me from L'pool a few days ago.There can be no doubt that his presentation of the commercial policy and the administrative methods of the Congo State is absolutely true. It is a most brazen breach of faith as to Europe. It is in every aspect an enormous and atrocious lie in action.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
'Next to tell you that "H.[Hernando] de Soto" is most exquisitely excellent: your very mark and spirit upon a subject that only you can do justice to-with your wonderful English and your sympathetic insight into the souls of the Conquistadores.' Thence follows half a page of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Have you read your sister in laws Doges Farm? Well that describes much the same sort of country that this is; and you see how she, a person of true artistic soul, revels in the land.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'However, to make up, the Times has sent me two trashy books, about Thackeray and Dickens and I may write 1500 words or so - Bruce Richmond is generous...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'By the bye, I think I read your Mr Morritt's account of Hampton Court in Herefordshire, one of the oldest baronial seats in the kingdom, lately purchased by Sir -- Arkwright, son of the cotton-mill inventor. I can now tell you the fate of Newstead Abbey'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 19 February 1913:
'Do you know Sleeman's Rambles & Recollections of an Indian Official? It is a charming book to read in, but the best chapter, about a Suttee on the Nerbudda, you would perhaps be inclined to skip. I have also been reading The Private Life of an Eastern King by E. W. Knighton who was librarian to one of the Kings of Oudh, a very entertaining and intersting little book, and it rings true. It is certainly out of print, but may be in the L[ondon] L[ibrary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 19 February 1913:
'Do you know Sleeman's Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official? It is a charming book to read in, but the best chapter, about a Suttee on the Nerbudda, you would perhaps be inclined to skip. I have also been reading The Private Life of an Eastern King by E. W. Knighton who was librarian to one of the Kings of Oudh, a very entertaining and interesting little book, and it rings true. It is certainly out of print, but may be in the L[ondon] L[ibrary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914:
'I am not a Pro-German [...] I have read the White Paper, and Cramb, and some Bernhardi, and I am sure we could not have kept out of this war.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
'Plato and tact sounds like Plato and puppy, an incongruous mixture of ancient and modern, such as only suits the language of second-rate novels. Lady Morgan, I suppose, talked of tact in her "Ida of Athens".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
'Have you read the "Martyr of Antioch"? I read it (aloud) at Ditton, and did not like it much - heavy and dragging, I think.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
[Marginalia]: several pencil and ink annotations (some fading to illegibility) throughout text, usually of the form of a marked item within the text followed by annotation in the margin example(1) p.542 (v.1. The Prince chpt. VI) against the footnote "r" on religion and armed conflict is the marginal note "NB The hindoo religion refutes Machiavel's position"; (2)p. 690 (v.1. The Prince chpt XXV) has the marginal note "his Majesty first defined the word chance or fortune" against the translator's note "o".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
'I take this opportunity of returning you A.K.'s fragments. I do believe it has been of material service... as for A.K.'s French pasage, you will be surprised at the impression it makes on my mind - as neither more nor less than [italics] commonplace [end italics] Perhaps she has not, but I have read so many descriptions of concentrated feelings, boiling passion under [italics] un froid exterieur [end italics], dark and gloomy minds, that this strikes me as only what I have seen fifty times before [LS then critiques 'The school of Sentiment']
By her further description I should pronounce it [italics] unwholesome [italics] reading. The smallest grain of [italics] amour physique [end italics] poisons the whole, renders it literally and positively [italics] beastly [end italics], for it is describing the sensations of a brute animal. And here lies the difference between even [italics] bad [end italics] English books and the French ones, which everyone reads without blushing. Mrs Bellamy and Mrs Baddeley, two women of the town, whom I remember as actresses, wrote their Memoirs. They painted their first false steaps either as the effect of seduction, they were victims to the arts employed to ruin them, or else they had been led away by their [italics] affections [end italics]; they had conceived a violent passion for such and such a man, whom they took pains to paint as formed to captivate the [italics] heart [end italics]. Madame Roland, one of the heroines of the French Revolution, a [italics] virtuous [end italics] woman, so far as chastity goes, writes her Memoirs and tells you what were her [italics] sensations towards the opposite sex in general [end italics] (without any particular object) at 14 or 15 years old!!! And young ladies were taught to read and admire this who would not have been allowed to open "Tom Jones", where Fielding does describe [italics] l'amour physique [end italics] between Tom and Molly Seagrim, but I daresay would as soon have given Sophia an inclination to commit murder as hinted that she ever had Madame Roland's [italics] sensations[end italics], or even that Tom had them towards her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
'This moment I receive "Progress", or rather the moment (last night) occurred favorably to let me read before I sat down to write. Nothing in my writing life [...] has give mre a greater pleasure, a deeper satisfaction of innocent vanity [...] than the dedication of the book so full of admirable things, from the wonderful preface to the slightest of the sketches between the covers.' Hence follow nine more lines of unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 August 1916:
'I saw from the Hospital Lists that an officer from Lovats Scouts was here, and went round at once to get news of Jermyn [Moorsom]. But he was still in England [...] My only other link with our joint past is the Hot Stuff article in last month's English Review, which was provided by Mrs Turner. In fairness I must add that it contained more stuff than heat, stuff curiously disposed into metrical lengths. Quite three pages of the prose ran into the rhythm of Hiawatha. "There before us lay the village. Members of the etat-major walked around Celestine's garret." I cannot make out what she is up to, but then I never could. Some sort of effect is obviously intended.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Serial / periodical
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 August 1916:
'I saw from the Hospital Lists that an officer from Lovats Scouts was here, and went round at once to get news of Jermyn [Moorsom]. But he was still in England [...] My only other link with our joint past is the Hot Stuff article in last month's English Review, which was provided by Mrs Turner. In fairness I must add that it contained more stuff than heat, stuff curiously disposed into metrical lengths. Quite three pages of the prose ran into the rhythm of Hiawatha. "There before us lay the village. Members of the etat-major walked around Celestine's garret." I cannot make out what she is up to, but then I never could. Some sort of effect is obviously intended.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Serial / periodical
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916:
'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916:
'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Laura Mary Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 1 January 1917:
'For the last hour I have occupied myself with copying extracts into my "War Anthology" [...] I have put in "your" Milton passage and next to it a passage from Pater -- that in which he describes the longings of Marcus Aurelius for the Ideal City [...] (The passage is in Marius the Epicurean -- at the end of the chapter called Urbs Beata) [...] It is somehow very tranquil to copy out passages such as these, and the very labour of writing seems to bring one nearer to those who wrote them in the past.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 29 January 1918:
'I am already deep in The Piddle Years [sic]. I never find Henry James difficult to understand, though it [italics]is[end italics] difficult to throw off the interests of one's larger life, and flatten oneself -- flat flatter flattest -- to crawl down his slots.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Siegfried Sassoon, 2 May 1918:
'Have just finished The Sense of the Past, and though it's so obscure -- find it much nearer the work of other writers than is the rest of the later James. He is really interested in his subject [time travel] as well as in his treatment of it. And a topping subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Will you remember us kindly to Mr Dumont, and tell him that I have received his letter; and, that since I wrote to him, I have found No 1 and 2 of Thompson's "Annals of Philosophy" - the Report of the Committee of the H of commons on Transportation to Botany Bay (July 10 12)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Serial / periodical
'We have read the speech which you were so good as to send me, which I most truly consider as the effusion of honest feeling and of cultivated eloquence. In the whole of the speech there were but two words which I would have ommitted...
Nothing could be added by any person of sound taste and enlarged understanding.
I hope that Lady Romilly will be curious to know the two words which I would have ommitted. - The two epithets "horrible" and "foul" page 10 - because in the last lines of the preceding page you had said that vague and general terms of reprobation such as "inhuman", "sanguinary", "detestable" can convey but inadequate notions etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Manuscript: Unknown
'We have read the speech which you were so good as to send me, which I most truly consider as the effusion of honest feeling and of cultivated eloquence. In the whole of the speech there were but two words which I would have ommitted...
Nothing could be added by any person of sound taste and enlarged understanding.
I hope that Lady Romilly will be curious to know the two words which I would have ommitted. - The two epithets "horrible" and "foul" page 10 - because in the last lines of the preceding page you had said that vague and general terms of reprobation such as "inhuman", "sanguinary", "detestable" can convey but inadequate notions etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Manuscript: Unknown
'The review [by Maria Edgeworth] of "Les Peines et les Recompenses" [French edition by Dumont of Bentham's treatise] cannot please Sir Js Mackintosh because it expresses sentiments on [italics] utility [end italics] different from those which he has endeavored, contrary to his conscience, to establish in compliment we suppose to Madame de Stael, in his "Edinburgh Review" of her "Allemagne".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Serial / periodical
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
'Goldsmiths description of the Appennines is exact - "Woods over Woods in [italics] gay theatric pride [end italics]". Never was epithet more appropriate to the whole scenery'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
'I imagine "Glenarvon" has lost much of its merit in your eyes from not being acquainted with the different persons intended to be portrayed. Many characters are drawn I think full as well as the Princess of Madagascar. The circle at Lady Oxford's is surely well drawn and faithful; Buchanan, Sir Godfrey Webster - and even Lady Byron's own character is not ill done. The letter is an original, the signature alone different, and I am a firm believer in the whole history as far as relates to Calantha and "Glenarvon". He did not quit her until he was tired, and the letter was actually sealed with Lady Oxford's seal and directed in her hand writing'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Do you not think the contrast of the manners between Melbourne House and Devonshire House [in "Glenarvon"] well drawn? One of our friends, well read in Johnson, told me most of the serious parts were extracts from the "Rambler". I have not had time or patience to compare them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'[Maria Edgeworth's brother] talked a great deal of you and of "Glenarvon". Have you read the preface of the second edition? I took it up at the Library, having read an extract from it in the newspapers, I brought it home, and really think if Lady Caroline wrote it she deserves high place amongst the fair authors of the present day. I cannot think it is hers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'[Maria Edgeworth's brother] talked a great deal of you and of "Glenarvon". Have you read the preface of the second edition? I took it up at the Library, having read an extract from it in the newspapers, I brought it home, and really think if Lady Caroline wrote it she deserves high place amongst the fair authors of the present day. I cannot think it is hers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Edgeworth Print: Book
'Have you not been delighted with Mrs Marcet? What an extraordinary work for a woman! Everybody who understands the subject is in a state of astonishment, and those, who like me know very little or nothing about it, are delighted with the knowledge they have acquired. One of our ci-devant Judges, Sir James Mansfield, who in his 83rd year devours all that is new in Literature, is charmed and laments extremely that he did not know as much as that Book has taught him when he was at the Bar'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Have you not been delighted with Mrs Marcet? What an extraordinary work for a woman! Everybody who understands the subject is in a state of astonishment, and those, who like me know very little or nothing about it, are delighted with the knowledge they have acquired. One of our ci-devant Judges, Sir James Mansfield, who in his 83rd year devours all that is new in Literature, is charmed and laments extremely that he did not know as much as that Book has taught him when he was at the Bar'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mansfield Print: Book
'What a pity it is that Mr B[entham] carries this oddity of language [which AR has just been joking about] into his works. It makes them unreadible [sic] and of much less use than they otherwise would be. He has just published a singular Book the title of which is "Bentham on Codification", a great deal very excellent, Sir Samuel says, but most injudicious and injurious to the good cause, not only from throwing a ridicule on it, but also from going so much too far, for it is scarcely attempted to be disguised that Republicanism is his great object'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'What a pity it is that Mr B[entham] carries this oddity of language [which AR has just been joking about] into his works. It makes them unreadible [sic] and of much less use than they otherwise would be. He has just published a singular Book the title of which is "Bentham on Codification", a great deal very excellent, Sir Samuel says, but most injudicious and injurious to the good cause, not only from throwing a ridicule on it, but also from going so much too far, for it is scarcely attempted to be disguised that Republicanism is his great object'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Book
'Mr Mill's great work on India will soon be published in 3 vol. quarto. Sir Samuel saw the two first, and seems to think that it will be extremely curious, and very well done, but finds the style very bad'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Manuscript: Unknown
'How merciless and ungentlemanlike the"Quarterly Review" is upon Lady Morgan! It is the only thing that could have made me pity her, for she is very flippant and full of error from beginning to end'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
'Reggie Smith, also a producer at the BBC, was married to the novelist Olivia Manning. She was to draw him with exquisite accuracy, and some bitterness, as Guy in her series of novels, The Balkan trilogy - schoolboy innocence, unthinking cruelty, shallow enthusiasms, superficially generous-spirited and outgoing but essentially egotistical, a mixture of coldness and an insatiable need for warmth'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
'The music of "La Boheme" having taken special hold of me, I read the libretto in the Mitchell Library, and as much as I could find about Murger and his world, and the people he knew who lived on black coffee and little else in romantic Paris, and was saddened and perplexed by the opera's alloy of sordidness and sentimentality'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
'There is, in the British Museum, a letter from Bishop Warburton to Dr Birch, on the subject of biography; which, though I am aware it may expose me to a charge of artfully raising the value of my own work, by contrasting it with that of which I have spoken, is so well conceived and expressed, that I cannot refrain from here inserting it: [the letter follows, including this passage] "Almost all the life-writers we have had before Toland and Desmaiseaux, are indeed strange inspid creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau, where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of disinteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Warburton Print: Book
'Instead of melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray [ie connecting quotations, conversation and letters with narrative]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'That the conversation of a celebrated man, if his talents have been exerted in conversation, will best display his character, is, I trust, too well established in the judgment of mankind, to be at all shaken by a sneering observation of Mr Mason, in his "Memoirs of Mr William Whitehead", in which there is literally no "Life", but a mere dry narrative of facts'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'His figure and manner appeared strange to them [the company on the night of Johnson's arrival in Oxford]; but he behaved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'More I reflect on the novel the higher I place it: attempts to read Swift, Miss Burney, Smollett, place it on a pinnacle.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Impossible to read a Meredith as simply and fairly as a Fielding, with one eye fixed on the author's interests and the other on his achievement. [read Tom Jones & Evan Harrington when I had chicken pox, 19, and felt this strongly]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Among texts discussed and quoted from at length in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Henry James, The Ambassadors, with comments including 'Pattern exquisitely woven,' and 'However hard you shake his sentences, no banality falls out.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Among texts discussed and quoted from in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Herman Melville, Billy Budd, with remarks including 'Billy Budd [...] has goodness, of the glowing aggressive sort which cannot exist unless it has evil to consume'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including 'V. of W. gets out of his [depth] 1/2 way through -- after the painting of the family group with Mrs Primrose as Venus all the grace and wit vanishes [...] the happy ending to the tragedy makes all worse than ever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'[editor's words] Previous to her arrival in Stirlingshire she had learnt to read with distinctness and propriety; and, under the tuition of Mrs Marshall, became an adept in this rare accomplishment. In books she soon discovered a substitute even for a playmate: her first hero was Wallace, with whom she became enamoured, by learning to recite Blind Harry's Lays. Two or three of Shakespeare's historical plays came in her way; the history of England followed. She happened to meet with Ogilvie's translation of Homer's Iliad, and soon learnt to idolize Achilles, and almost to dream of Hector'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[editor's words] Previous to her arrival in Stirlingshire she had learnt to read with distinctness and propriety; and, under the tuition of Mrs Marshall, became an adept in this rare accomplishment. In books she soon discovered a substitute even for a playmate: her first hero was Wallace, with whom she became enamoured, by learning to recite Blind Harry's Lays. Two or three of Shakespeare's historical plays came in her way; the history of England followed. She happened to meet with Ogilvie's translation of Homer's Iliad, and soon learnt to idolize Achilles, and almost to dream of Hector'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[editor's words] without literary pretensions, Mrs Marshall had a genuine love of reading, and when no other engagement intervened, it was one of her domestic regulations, that a book should be read aloud in the evening for general amusement; the office of reader commonly devolved on Miss Hamilton, who was thus led to remark that the best prose style was always that which could be longest read without exhausting the breath. These social studies were far from satisfying her avidity for information; and she constantly perused many books by stealth. Mrs Marshall, on discovering what had been her private occupation, expressed neither praise nor blame, but quietly advised her to avoid any display of superior knowledge by which she might be subjected to the imputation of pedantry. This admonition produced the desired effect, since, as she herself informs us, she once hid a volume of Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism under the cushion of a chair lest she should be detected in a study which prejudice and ignorance might pronounce unfeminine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[according to Thomas Campbell] he begged of me that when I returned to Ireland, I would endeavour to procure for him a poem of Dr Madden's called "Boulter's Monument". The Reason (said he) why I wish for it, is this: when Dr Madden came to London, he submitted that work to my castigation; and I remember I blotted a great many lines, and might have blotted many more, without making the poem worse. However, the Doctor was very thankful, and very generous, for he gave me ten guineas, [italics] which was to me at that time a great sum [end italics]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Transcribed in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1927):
'What is principle to me? I am a Pitt. -- Lady Hester Stanhope. Copyright? What is copyright to me? I am a Beerbohm -- Max'
Forster notes underneath: '[Letter from Max to Lytton]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Letter
In Commonplace Book for 1927 E. F. Forster transcribes passage on time from vol. I, ch.iv of Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, accompanying this with comments including: 'Thomas Mann a bore, but from a sense of literary duty rather than personally.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book for 1927 include Oscar Browning's reflections, quoted in H. E. Wortham's biography of him, on the potential of the human mind, and the chances governing realisation, or non-realisation of this ('I have been drawn to think rather of the tens who have failed than of the units who have succeeded, and of the ore that lies buried in our social strata rather than of the bright coins which circulate from hand to hand').
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1928) include reflections on lovers' perceptions from Francois Mauriac, Le Desert de l'Amour (1925), and one line, 'La nuit etait vouee au vent et a la lune,' from Mauriac's La Pharisienne, added by Forster in 1942.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1928) include reflections on lovers' perceptions from Francois Mauriac, Le Desert de l'Amour (1925), and one line, 'La nuit etait vouee au vent et a la lune,' from Mauriac's La Pharisienne, added by Forster in 1942.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'L'Heroisme consiste a ne pas permettre au corps de renier les impudences de l'esprit
'runs an epigram of Maurois which bowled me at the first reading; then, as so often, I thought "not really worth writing down." He is only saying that [italics]Byron[end italics] acted up to his theories. But he has written a very fine biography in which one always feels secure over the facts and has not to depend on the flashes of intuition cultivated by the Strachey school.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'"A little book we had in the house" led him, "Almost as early as I can remember", to develop an interest in astronomy; and Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary" "Fell into my hands when I was eight" (as he said in his old age) and "attached my affections to paganism".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edward Housman Print: Book
'At home there were daily Bible-readings in the family circle for many years, but secular reading aloud happily also found a place. Lucy was "A good reader" and gave them Scott and Thackeray and Tom Moore as well as Shakespeare; Edward read Pickwick.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Housman Print: Book
'Sir, this book ("The Elements of Criticism", which he had taken up,) is a pretty essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr James Macpherson as translations of [italics] Ossian [end italics], was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr Fordyce, Dr Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children". Dr Johnson did not know that Dr Blair had just published a "Dissertation", not only defending their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems of [italics] Homer [end italics] and [italics] Virgil [end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr James Macpherson as translations of [italics] Ossian [end italics], was at its height. Johson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr Fordyce, Dr Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children". Dr Johnson did not know that Dr Blair had just published a "Dissertation", not only defending their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems of [italics] Homer [end italics] and [italics] Virgil [end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Blair Print: Book
'Dr John Campbell, the celebrated political and biographical writer, being mentioned, Johnson said, "Campbell is a man of much knowledge, and has a good share of imagination. His "Hermippus Redivivus" is very entertaining, as an account of the Hermetick philosophy, and as furnishing a curious history of the human mind. If it were merely imaginary it would be nothing at all.".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930) include Poem LII ('Far in a western brookland') of A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
[entered in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930), underneath quoted passage opening 'I wonder what morality is, whether eternal justice exists, immutable right & wrong, or whether law and custom rule the world of humanity, evolved for social convenience from primal savagery']
'J. A. Symonds: but whence? copied into this book off an odd scrap of paper, and into an odd space in the book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Unknown, Copied from earlier transcription in Forster's hand.
[entered in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930), underneath quoted passage opening 'I wonder what morality is, whether eternal justice exists, immutable right & wrong, or whether law and custom rule the world of humanity, evolved for social convenience from primal savagery']
'J. A. Symonds: but whence? copied into this book off an odd scrap of paper, and into an odd space in the book.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
Texts quoted from at length in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1931) include Henry James, Letters, passages from which cover topics including the writings of Pater, Kipling and Hardy.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I at this time kept up a very frequent correspondence with Sir David [Dalrymple]; and I read to Dr. Johnson to-night the following passage from the letter which I had last received from him:
"It gives me pleasure to think that you have obtained the friendship of Mr. Samnel Johnson. He is one of the best moral writers which England has produced. At the same time, I envy you the free and undisguised converse with such a man. May I beg you to present my respects to him, and to assure him of the veneration which I entertain for the author of the 'Rambler' and of 'Rasselas'? Let me recommend this work to you; with the 'Rambler' you certainly are acquainted. In 'Rasselas' you will see a tender-hearted operator, who probes the wound only to heal it. Swift, on the contrary, mangles human nature. He cuts and slashes, as if he took pleasure in the operation, like the tyrant who said, [italics] Ita feri ut se sentiat emori [end italics]." Johnson seemed to be much gratified by this just and well-turned compliment.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter
'The conversation now turned upon Mr. David Hume's style. Johnson. "Why, Sir, his style is not English; the structure of his sentences is French. Now the French structure and the English structure may, in the nature of things, be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is established, he is wrong. My name might originally have been Nicholson, as well as Johnson ; but were you to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. If I could have allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expence of truth, what fame might I have acquired Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited, that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so that there may be objections raised against any thing. There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum; yet one of them must certainly be true."
I mentioned Hume's argument against the belief of miracles, that it is more probable that the witnesses to the truth of them are mistaken, or speak falsely, than that the miracles should be true. [Johnson then argues against this]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. If I could have allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expence of truth, what fame might I have acquired Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited, that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so that there may be objections raised against any thing. There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum; yet one of them must certainly be true."
I mentioned Hume's argument against the belief of miracles, that it is more probable that the witnesses to the truth of them are mistaken, or speak falsely, than that the miracles should be true. [Johnson then argues against this]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'He told me, that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He told me, that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Michael Johnson Print: Book
'On Thursday, July 28, we again supped in private at the Turk's Head coffee-house. Johnson. "Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether "The Tale of a Tub" be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner."
"Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He had in his pocket, "Pomponius Mela de Situ Orbis," in which he read occasionally, and seemed very intent upon ancient geography.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He said of Goldsmith's "Traveller," which had been published in my absence, "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] The same enlightened judgment [of a friend] which had protected "The Rajah", gave its sanction to "The Modern Philosophers", notwithstanding the objections of the too scrupulous author. Experience justified the decision: the work appeared early in 1800, and passed through two editions before the end of the year'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs G- Manuscript: Unknown
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] The same enlightened judgment [of a friend] which had protected "The Rajah", gave its sanction to "The Modern Philosophers", notwithstanding the objections of the too scrupulous author. Experience justified the decision: the work appeared early in 1800, and passed through two editions before the end of the year'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs G- Manuscript: Unknown
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] In composing this work [her "Letters on Education"], she accustomed herself to read a few letters to some sensible female, who had an interest in the subject; - a practice repugnant to the self-importance of literary egotism, but from which she learnt to measure the capacities of those it was her object to enlighten, and her ambition to instruct'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Manuscript: Unknown
'When the first proof came home, I did not like its look in print; so stopped the press, and wrote another first chapter'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: proof
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] 'On reading the first sheets [of her "Cottagers of Glenburnie"] at her own fire-side, she was encouraged by observing, that it excited mirth. This induced her to extend the plan'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Manuscript: Unknown
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] She had, however, dwelt long enough on the idea [of aging] to make it the subject of a sportive poem, which she one evening read with a smiling countenance to her little family circle' [the poem is reproduced].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Manuscript: Unknown
'I meant to inform you, that besides those books already mentioned, I sent for Bishop Horne's Sermons, 4 vols. Carr's Sermons, Blairs Sermons, 5vols. Scott's Christian Life, 5vols. several leaned and sensible expositions of the Bible; Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, with the Fragments; Josephus' Works, Prideaux's Connections, 4vols. Mrs H. More's Works, and various other excellent Works. For some time one sermon was read on every Sunday, but soon Mrs L. began to like them, and then two or three were read in the course of the week; at last one at least was ready every day, and very often part of some other book in divinity, as Mrs. L said that she preferred such kind of reading far beyond the reading of novels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'I meant to inform you, that besides those books already mentioned, I sent for Bishop Horne's Sermons, 4 vols. Carr's Sermons, Blairs Sermons, 5vols. Scott's Christian Life, 5vols. several leaned and sensible expositions of the Bible; Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, with the Fragments; Josephus' Works, Prideaux's Connections, 4vols. Mrs H. More's Works, and various other excellent Works. For some time one sermon was read on every Sunday, but soon Mrs L. began to like them, and then two or three were read in the course of the week; at last one at least was ready every day, and very often part of some other book in divinity, as Mrs. L said that she preferred such kind of reading far beyond the reading of novels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'He [Dr Johnson] said, "Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet he affirms for a truth, that when a ship arrives there all the inhabitants are seized with a cold".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'A Lady of Norfolk, by a letter to my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following solution [to the question of why the St Kildans always got a cold when visited by outsiders]: "Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that of the author. Reading the book with my ingenions friend, the late Reverend Mr. Christian of Docking—after ruminating a little, 'The cause, (says he,) is a natural one: The situation of St. Kilda renders a North-East wind indispensably necessary before a stranger can land. The wind, not the stranger, occasions an epidemick cold'."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'A Lady of Norfolk, by a letter to my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following solution [to the question of why the St Kildans always got a cold when visited by outsiders]: "Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that of the author. Reading the book with my ingenions friend, the late Reverend Mr. Christian of Docking—after ruminating a little, 'The cause, (says he,) is a natural one: The situation of St. Kilda renders a North-East wind indispensably necessary before a stranger can land. The wind, not the stranger, occasions an epidemick cold'."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Reverend Christian Print: Book
'When I talked of our [the Scots'] advancement in literature, "Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have written History, had not Voltaire written it before him. He is an echo of Voltaire." Boswell "But, Sir, we have Lord Kames." Johnson. "You [italics] have [italics] Lord Кames. Keep him; ha, ha, ha! We don't envy you him. Do you ever see Dr. Robertson?" Boswell. "Yes, Sir." Johnson. "Does the dog talk of me ?" Boswell. "Indeed, Sir, he does, and loves you." Thinking that I now had him in a corner, and being solicitous for the literary fame of my country, I pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robertson's "History of Scotland". But, to my surprise, he escaped.—" Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'When I talked of our [the Scots'] advancement in literature, "Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have written History, had not Voltaire written it before him. He is an echo of Voltaire." Boswell "But, Sir, we have Lord Kames." Johnson. "You [italics] have [italics] Lord Кames. Keep him; ha, ha, ha! We don't envy you him. Do you ever see Dr. Robertson?" Boswell. "Yes, Sir." Johnson. "Does the dog talk of me ?" Boswell. "Indeed, Sir, he does, and loves you." Thinking that I now had him in a corner, and being solicitous for the literary fame of my country, I pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robertson's "History of Scotland". But, to my surprise, he escaped.—" Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Letter
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter
'Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare [sic], being mentioned:—Reynolds. "I think that essay does her honour." Johnson. "Yes, Sir; it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread. I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book." Garrick. "But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done." Johnson. "Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that ? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare [sic], being mentioned:—Reynolds. "I think that essay does her honour." Johnson. "Yes, Sir; it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread. I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book." Garrick. "But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done." Johnson. "Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that ? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Unknown
'Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare [sic], being mentioned:—Reynolds. "I think that essay does her honour." Johnson. "Yes, Sir; it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread. I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book." Garrick. "But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done." Johnson. "Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that ? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick Print: Unknown
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935) include reflections on associations of placenames and other words, and on effects of 'the world' upon strong and weak characters, in Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935-6) include two quotations from Herman Melville, Mardi.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935-6) include quotation from letter of Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
' "I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy him all brain like a watch' ".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1937) include part of Le Morte D'Arthur, XX.3, opening: ' "So upon Trinity Sunday at night King Arthur dreamed a womderful dream [...] that to him there seemed he sat upon a chaflet [platform] in a chair, and the chair was fast to a wheel "'. Underneath, Forster notes: 'Copied, with modernised spelling, just as King George VI returned from his coronation to his palace.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Murphy Print: Book
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Oliver Goldsmith Print: Book
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[Boswell having expressed doubt about the power of prayer, Johnson] mentioned Dr. Clarke and Bishop Bramhall on "Liberty and Necessity", and bid me read South's "Sermons on Prayer"; but avoided the question which has excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The poem of "Fingal", he said, was a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. "In vain shall we look for the [italics] lucidus ordo [end italics], where there is neither end or object, design or moral, [italics] nec certa recurrit imago [italics]".' [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Speaking of Arthur Murphy, whom he very much loved, "I don't know (said he) that Arthur can be classed with the very first dramatick writers; yet at present I doubt much whether we have any thing superiour to Arthur".' [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Speaking of Homer, whom he venerated as the prince of poets, Johnson remarked that the advice given to Diomed by his father, when he sent him to the Trojan war, was the noblest exhortation that could be instanced in any heathen writer, and comprised in a single line:
[Greek characters; 'Be ever best and o'ertop other men'; "Iliad" vi]
which, if I recollect well, is translated by Dr. Clarke thus: [italics] semper appetere prestantissima, et omnibus aliis antecellere [end italics]'.
[account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1940-41) under heading 'Eighteenth Centuriana' include reported last words of Sir Robert Walpole and Sir Thomas Mann, from R. W. Ketton-Cremer's Horace Walpole: A Biography.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include remarks on bigotry (opening 'Bigotry is an odd thing') from chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1941).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include stanza 7 of Malherbe, 'Consolation a Monsieur du Perier, sur la Mort de sa Fille' (1607, followed by remark: 'If I admire this, do I like French poetry? I do admire it. And, mythology lost, what will become of poetry? Mythology gave a stiffening to the fabric.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include stanza 32 of Malherbe, 'Pour le Roi, allant chatier la Rebellion des Rochelois' (1628), followed by remark: 'If I admire this, do I like French poetry? I do admire it. And, mythology lost, what will become of poetry? Mythology gave a stiffening to the fabric.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
He had said in the morning that "Macaulay's 'History of St. Kilda' was very well written, except some foppery about liberty and slavery. I mentioned to him that Macaulay told me, he was advised to leave out of his book the wonderful story that upon the approach of a stranger all the inhabitants catch cold; but that it had been so well authenticated, he determined to retain it. Johnson. "Sir, to leave things out of a book merely because people tell you they will not be believed is meanness. Macaulay acted with more magnanimity".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'What philosophy suggests to us on this topick [the possibility of life after death] is probable: what Scripture tells us is certain. Dr. Henry More has carried it as far as philosophy can. You may buy both his theological and philosophical works in two volumes folio, for about eight shillings'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He [Dr Johnson] said, "Goldsmith's 'Life of Parnell' is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and sat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the "London Chronicle" Dr. Goldsmith's apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookseller, on account of a paragraph 5 in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. The apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson's manner that both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his; but when he came home, he soon undeceived us. When he said to Mrs. Williams, "Well, Dr. Goldsmith's manifesto has got into your paper;" I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though subscribed by Goldsmith. Johnson. "Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to write such a thing as that for him than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do any thing else that denoted his imbecility. I as much believe that he wrote it as if I had seen him do it".'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson
'I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland", and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Russel and Algernon Sydney. Johnson. " Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to be rascals." Boswell. "But, Sir, may not those discoveries be true without their being rascals?" Johnson. "Consider, Sir, would any of them have been willing to have had it known that they intrigued with France? Depend upon it, Sir, he who does what he is afraid should be known has something rotten about him. This Dalrymple seems to be an honest fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing, it is the mere bouncing of a school boy: Great He! but greater She! and such stuff."
I could not agree with him in this criticism; for though Sir John Dalrymple's style is not regularly formed in any respect, and one cannot help smiling sometimes at his affected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivacity, and much of a gentlemanly spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland", and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Russel and Algernon Sydney. Johnson. " Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to be rascals." Boswell. "But, Sir, may not those discoveries be true without their being rascals?" Johnson. "Consider, Sir, would any of them have been willing to have had it known that they intrigued with France? Depend upon it, Sir, he who does what he is afraid should be known has something rotten about him. This Dalrymple seems to be an honest fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing, it is the mere bouncing of a school boy: Great He! but greater She! and such stuff."
I could not agree with him in this criticism; for though Sir John Dalrymple's style is not regularly formed in any respect, and one cannot help smiling sometimes at his affected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivacity, and much of a gentlemanly spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I spoke of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," in the Scottish dialect, as the best pastoral that had ever been written; not only abounding with beautiful rural imagery, and just and pleasing sentiments, but being a real picture of manners; and I offered to teach Dr. Johnson to understand it. "No, sir (said he), I won't learn it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that species of wit, deigned to allow that there was one good pun in "Menagiana," I think on the word corps'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
[Following notes on life and thought of Pelagius] 'From a good article in the Biographie Universelle.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Texts quoted from and discussed at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1942) include St Jerome, Letters ('Loeb'), with closing remarks:
'Now farewell St Jerome for ever, but I must not ignore some similarities between us: we both decline to concentrate on the political catastrophe. Your obsession with virginity helps you, for it is in danger whether there's peace or war.'
[in notes, Forster expresses disapprobation for Jerome's attitudes to sexuality in particular, describing Letter 117 (p.136; on female modesty) as 'terrifying in its blindness and vigour']
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1944) include two short quotations, from Bede ('Two most wicked spirits rising with forks in their hands[...]') and Amiel ('S'en aller toute d'un fois est un privilege; tu periras par morceaux'), accompanied by note:
'I encounter these two mournful small fry on the same day. Boo hoo down the ages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Their [the Tennyson children's] imaginative natures gave them many sources of amusement. One of these lasted a long time: the writing of tales in letter form, to be put under the vegetable dishes at dinner, and read aloud when it was over. I have heard from my uncles and aunts that my father [Alfred Tennyson]'s tales were very various in theme, some of them humorous and some savagely dramatic; and that they looked to him as their most thrilling story-teller.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson family Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson, aged twelve, to his aunt Marianne Fytche:
'You used to tell me that you should be obliged to me if I would write to you and give you my remarks on works and authors. I shall now fulfil the promise which I made at that time. Going into the library this morning, I picked up "Samson Agonistes," on which (as I think it is a play you like) I shall send you my remarks [goes on to comment in detail on various transcribed passages from text, with points discussed including Classical allusions, and etymologies of words]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson 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
'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
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged]
'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged]
'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Arthur Hallam to Alfred Tennyson:
'I have been reading Mrs Jameson's Characteristics, and I am so bewildered with similes about groves and violets, and streams of music, and incense and attar of roses, that I hardly know what I write. Bating these little flummeries of style, it is a good book, showing much appreciation of Shakespeare and the human heart'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Gissing read as widely as ever, with the same unbridled curiosity as during his youth but now with an intelligence tempered by experience. Of course he continued to read the Latin, Greek, English and French classics, but of the particular titles he noted in his diary during the second part of 1889 there are a number that indicate fairly and squarely the direction in which his thoughts were carrying him. Besides books like J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and Frederick [sic]Bremer's "Hertha", he also read Taine's "English Literature", Bourget's "Etudes et Portraits" as well as the "Essais Psychologiques", A.H. Buck's "Treatise on Hygiene", W. B. Carpenter's "Principles of Mental Physiology" and the books he just mentions as Ribot's "Hereditie".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [Johnson] attacked Lord Monboddo's strange speculation on the primitive state of human nature; observing, "Sir, it is all conjecture about a thing useless, even were it known to be true. Knowledge of all kinds is good. Conjecture, as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether men went upon all four [sic], is very idle." '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'His disbelief of the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, a Highland bard, was confirmed in the course of his journey by a very strict examination of the evidence offered for it: and although their authenticity was made too much a national point by the Scotch, there were many respectable persons in that country who did not concur in this; so that his judgment upon the question ought not to be decried, even by those who differ from him. As to myself, I can only say, upon a subject now become very uninteresting, that when the fragments of Highland poetry first came out, I was much pleased with their wild peculiarity, and was one of those who subscribed to enable their editor, Mr. Macpherson, then a young man, to make a search in the Highlands and Hebrides for a long poem in the Erse language, which was reported to be preserved somewhere in those regions. But when there came forth an Epick Poem in six books, with all the common circumstances of former compositions of that nature; and when, upon an attentive examination of it, there was found a perpetual recurrence of the same images which appear in the fragments; and when no ancient manuscript to authenticate the work was deposited in any publick library, though that was insisted on as a reasonable proof, [italics] who [end italics] could forbear to doubt?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I have just made my will and am reading Aimard's novels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I find here (of all places in the world) your Essays on Art, which I have read with signal interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
[Following Hallam Tennyson's description of his mother's attendance of her younger sister as bridesmaid in May 1836]
'My uncle Arthur says: "It was then I first saw your mother, and she read to me Milton's 'Comus,' which I had not known before and which I have loved ever since."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Sellwood Print: Book
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute [...] My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, "the dear old fellow," as he called him [...] Fitzgerald notes again:
'"I could remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in 'Michael' which he now read us in admiration [...]"
'My father also read Keats and Milton'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Alfred Tennyson's journal of his tour in Cornwall, 1848:
'19th [June]. Finished reading Fathom.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Sometimes he [Tennyson] read Grimm's Fairy Stories or repeated ballads to us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
[Aubrey De Vere writes] 'In 1854 I went [...] to Farringford, where the poet [Tennyson] then made abode with his wife and two children [...] in the afternoon we sometimes read aloud in the open air, or rather we listened to the Poet's reading [...] On one occasion our book, which we agreed in greatly admiring, was Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House, then recent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and Aubrey De Vere Print: Book
'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
'Johnson. "Sheridan is a wonderful admirer of the tragedy of Douglas, and presented its author with a gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, I called to him, 'Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan, how came you to give a gold medal to Home for writing that foolish play ?' This, you see, was wanton and insolent; but I meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value but as a stamp of merit. And was Sheridan to assume to himself the right of giving that stamp?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Johnson. "Sheridan is a wonderful admirer of the tragedy of Douglas, and presented its authour with a gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, I called to him, 'Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan, how came you to give a gold medal to Home for writing that foolish play ?' This, you see, was wanton and insolent; but I meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value but as a stamp of merit. And was Sheridan to assume to himself the right of giving that stamp?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Sheridan Print: Book
'The "Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion," in ridicule of "cool Mason and warm Gray", being mentioned, Johnson said, "They are Colman's best things." [Boswell reports a conversation about their possible joint authorship] Johnson. "The first of these Odes is the best: but they are both good. They exposed a very bad kind of writing." Boswell. "Surely, sir, Mr. Mason's 'Elfrida' is a fine Poem: at least, you will allow there are some good passages in it." Johnson. "There are now and then some good imitations of Milton's bad manner".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The "Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion," in ridicule of "cool Mason and warm Gray", being mentioned, Johnson said, "They are Colman's best things." [Boswell reports a conversation about their possible joint authorship] Johnson. "The first of these Odes is the best: but they are both good. They exposed a very bad kind of writing." Boswell. "Surely, sir, Mr. Mason's 'Elfrida' is a fine Poem: at least, you will allow there are some good passages in it." Johnson. "There are now and then some good imitations of Milton's bad manner".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The "Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion," in ridicule of "cool Mason and warm Gray", being mentioned, Johnson said, "They are Colman's best things." [Boswell reports a conversation about their possible joint authorship] Johnson. "The first of these Odes is the best: but they are both good. They exposed a very bad kind of writing." Boswell. "Surely, sir, Mr. Mason's 'Elfrida' is a fine Poem: at least, you will allow there are some good passages in it." Johnson. "There are now and then some good imitations of Milton's bad manner".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I often wondered at his [Johnson's] low estimation of the writings of Gray and Mason. Of Gray's poetry I have, in a former part of this work, expressed my high opinion; and for that of Mr. Mason I have ever entertained a warm admiration. His "Elfrida" is exquisite, both in poetical description and moral sentiment; and his "Caractacus" is a noble drama. Nor can I omit paying my tribute of praise to some of his smaller poems, which I have read with pleasure, and which no criticism shall persuade me not to like'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I often wondered at his [Johnson's] low estimation of the writings of Gray and Mason. Of Gray's poetry I have, in a former part of this work, expressed my high opinion; and for that of Mr. Mason I have ever entertained a warm admiration. His "Elfrida" is exquisite, both in poetical description and moral sentiment; and his "Caractacus" is a noble drama. Nor can I omit paying my tribute of praise to some of his smaller poems, which I have read with pleasure, and which no criticism shall persuade me not to like'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I often wondered at his [Johnson's] low estimation of the writings of Gray and Mason. Of Gray's poetry I have, in a former part of this work, expressed my high opinion; and for that of Mr. Mason I have ever entertained a warm admiration. His "Elfrida" is exquisite, both in poetical description and moral sentiment; and his "Caractacus" is a noble drama. Nor can I omit paying my tribute of praise to some of his smaller poems, which I have read with pleasure, and which no criticism shall persuade me not to like'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'[Dr Thomas Campbell, who dined with Johnson on 3 April 1775] has since published "A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland," a very entertaining book, which has, however, one fault:—that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I've read your book ["His People"] with the usual delight and more than the usual admiration.[...] Three times I've gone through your pages so vigorous, so personal and so exquisite. What a "Return of the Native" you have given us! "His People" is a wonderful piece of description and an amazing piece of analysis.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Years ago I looked into "Typee" and "Omoo" but as I didn't find there what I am looking for when I open a book I did go no further. Lately I had in my hand "Moby Dick". It struck me as a rather strained rhapsody with whaling for a subject and not a single sincere line in the 3 vols of it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Vol 7
On the Griphi and Impromptus
(quotation) 'I was very large at my birth and likeways in old age; but very small when at maturity.' A Shadow. Such also is this 'There are two sisters who incessantly ... each other day and night.' both of which words are in Greek.
Other Griphi turn on the resemblance of names as for example 'What is that which is at once found on the earth, in the sea and in the heavens' - The Dog, the Serpent and the Boar.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "When Lord Lyttelton's 'Dialogues of the Dead' came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.'"
Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of the "Biographia Britannica" Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so much in his great work, "A Political Survey of Great Britain," as the world had been taught to expect'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Johnson had with him upon this jaunt, "Il Palmerino d'Inghilterra", a romance praised by Cervantes; but did not like it much. He said, he read it for the language, by way of preparation for his Italian expedition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's uneasiness on account of a degree of ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's "History of Animated Nature", in which that celebrated mathematician is represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no reparation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Maclaurin Print: Book
'He [Joseph Simpson] wrote a tragedy on the story of Leonidas, entitled "The Patriot". He read it to a company of lawyers, who found so many faults, that he wrote it over again: so then there were two tragedies on the same subject and with the same title. Dr. Johnson told us, that one of them was still in his possession. This very piece was, after his death, published by some person who had been about him, and, for the sake of a little hasty profit, was fallaciously advertised, so as to make it be believed to have been written by Johnson himself'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Simpson Manuscript: Unknown
'We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had partly borrowed from him "The dying Christian to his Soul". Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe:
"Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains,
Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains,
And rides a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins".
I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it stamps a value on them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had partly borrowed from him "The dying Christian to his Soul". Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe:
"Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains,
Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains,
And rides a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins".
I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it stamps a value on them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Mr. Murphy said, that "The Memoirs of Gray's Life" set him much higher in his estimation than his poems did; "for you there saw a man constantly at work in literature". Johnson acquiesced in this; but depreciated the book, I thought, very unreasonably. For he said, "I forced myself to read it, only because it was a common topick of conversation. I found it mighty dull; and, as to the style, it is fit for the second table". Why he thought so I was at a loss to conceive. He now gave it as his opinion, that "Akenside was a superiour poet both to Gray and Mason".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels, who compiled Cibber's "Lives of the Poets", was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked,-Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the highest admiration. Well, Sir, (said I,) I have omitted every other line".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Sir Joshua [Reynolds] mentioned Mr. Cumberland's "Odes", which were just published. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, they would have been thought as good as Odes commonly are, if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his "Odes" subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name, but has made them carry double".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I asked him whether he would advise me to read the Bible with a commentary, and what commentaries he would recommend. JOHNSON. "To be sure, Sir, I would have you read the Bible with a commentary; and I would recommend Lowth and Patrick on the Old Testament, and Hammond on the New".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' I have had the new edition of Sta. Teresa sent down for a leisurely re-reading. It seems no end of years since I read first this wonderful book--the revelation for the profane of a unique saint and a unique writer.Tempi passati!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have read M. Auguste.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I have read M. Auguste and the Crime Inconnu, being now abonne to a library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'The Damned Ones of the Hindies now occupy my attention.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[ letter from Boswell to Johnson, responding to the latter's contention that there existed no adequate 'Life' of Thomson] Since I received your letter I have read his [Thomson's] "Life", published under the name of Cibber, but as you told me, really written by a Mr. Shiels; that written by Dr. Murdoch; one prefixed to an edition of the "Seasons", published at Edinburgh, which is compounded of both, with the addition of an anecdote of Quin's relieving Thomson from prison; the abridgement of Murdoch's account of him, in the "Biographia Britannica", and another abridgement of it in the "Biographical Dictionary", enriched with Dr. Joseph Warton's critical panegyrick on the "Seasons" in his "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope": from all these it appears to me that we have a pretty full account of this poet.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
' [letter from Boswell to Johnson] Without doubt you have read what is called "The Life of David Hume", written by himself, with the letter from Dr. Adam Smith subjoined to it. Is not this an age of daring effrontery?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of "Ne sit ancillae tibi amor", &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, 'Ah the poor shepherd's mournful fate', and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, [italics] wishes [end italics] and [italics] blushes [end italics], reading [italics] wushes [end italics]--and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the 'Inscription in a Summer-house', and a little of the imitations of Horace's 'Epistles'; but said he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. "Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?" I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
'See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c.
He asked why an 'iron chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Andrew Erskine Print: Book
'He repeated a good many lines of Horace's "Odes", while we were in the chaise. I remember particularly the Ode [italics] Eheu fugaces [italics].
He said, the dispute as to the comparative excellence of Homer or Virgil was inaccurate. "We must consider (said he) whether Homer was not the greatest poet, though Virgil may have produced the finest poem. Virgil was indebted to Homer for the whole invention of the structure of an epick poem, and for many of his beauties".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Mallet's "Life of Bacon" has no inconsiderable merit as an acute and elegant dissertation relative to its subject; but Mallet's mind was not comprehensive enough to embrace the vast extent of Lord Verulam's genius and research. Dr. Warburton therefore observed, with witty justness, "that Mallet, in his "Life of Bacon", had forgotten that he was a philosopher; and if he should write the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, which he had undertaken to do, he would probably forget that he was a general".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Mallet's "Life of Bacon" has no inconsiderable merit as an acute and elegant dissertation relative to its subject; but Mallet's mind was not comprehensive enough to embrace the vast extent of Lord Verulam's genius and research. Dr. Warburton therefore observed, with witty justness, "that Mallet, in his "Life of Bacon", had forgotten that he was a philosopher; and if he should write the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, which he had undertaken to do, he would probably forget that he was a general".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Warburton Print: Book
'Often, when my incompetent needle refused, as it has always refused throughout my life, to collaborate with my intentions, the kimono was abandoned for such scanty literature as I had collected from home - Thomas Hardy's poems, John Masefield's "Gallipoli", numerous copies of "Blackwood's Magazine", and the recently published Report of the Commission on the Dardanelles.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical, magazines
'I had lent him "An Account of Scotland, in 1702," written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. "It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an
elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's "Account of the Hebrides" is written, A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do better".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I had lent him "An Account of Scotland, in 1702," written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. "It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an
elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's "Account of the Hebrides" is written, A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do better".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'I looked into Lord Kaimes's "Sketches of the History of Man"; and mentioned to Dr. Johnson his censure of Charles the Fifth, for celebrating his funeral obsequies in his life-time'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson's opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him. "Atterbury?" Johnson. "Yes, Sir, one of the best". Boswell. "Tillotson?". Johnson. "Why, not now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's style: though I don't know; I should be cautious of objecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages. — South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes
coarseness of language. — Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. — Jortin's sermons are very elegant. — Sherlock's style too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. — And you may add Smallridge. All the latter preachers have a good style. Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: everybody composes pretty well. There are no such inharmonious periods as there were a hundred years ago. I should recommend Dr. Clarke's sermons, were he orthodox. However, it is very well known where he is not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned heretic: so one is aware of it." Boswell. "I like Ogden's "Sermons
on Prayer" very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty of reasoning. "Johnson. "I should like to read all that Ogden has written." Boswell. "What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence." Johnson. "We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Bennet Langton Print: Unknown
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Fox Print: Unknown
'Those 2 poems of Masefield's are very good....Poetry counteracts the deadening influence a good deal....I am reading "The Loom of Youth" in bits....It is very good and it is very true even if slightly exaggerated....'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Brittain
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
'After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time, I got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK: (to Harris.) "Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's Aeschylus?" HARRIS. "Yes; and think it pretty." GARRICK. (to Johnson.) "And what think you, Sir, of it?" JOHNSON. "I thought what I read of it verbiage: but upon Mr. Harris's recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris.) Don't prescribe two." Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which. JOHNSON. "We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for people who cannot read the original." I mentioned the vulgar saying, that Pope's Homer was not a good representation of the original. JOHNSON."Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been produced" BOSWELL. "The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time, I got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK: (to Harris.) "Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's Aeschylus?" HARRIS. "Yes; and think it pretty." GARRICK. (to Johnson.) "And what think you, Sir, of it?" JOHNSON. "I thought what I read of it verbiage: but upon Mr. Harris's recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris.) Don't prescribe two." Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which. JOHNSON. "We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for people who cannot read the original." I mentioned the vulgar saying, that Pope's Homer was not a good representation of the original. JOHNSON."Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been produced" BOSWELL. "The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time, I got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK: (to Harris.) "Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's Aeschylus?" HARRIS. "Yes; and think it pretty." GARRICK. (to Johnson.) "And what think you, Sir, of it?" JOHNSON. "I thought what I read of it verbiage: but upon Mr. Harris's recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris.) Don't prescribe two." Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which. JOHNSON. "We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for people who cannot read the original." I mentioned the vulgar saying, that Pope's Homer was not a good representation of the original. JOHNSON."Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been produced" BOSWELL. "The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'JOHNSON. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded". Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. "He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty. Every [italics] substance [end italics], (smiling to Mr. Harris,) has so many [italics] accidents [end italics].--To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically". GARRICK. "Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's 'Martial' the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn.' I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick Print: Book
'JOHNSON. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded". Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. "He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty. Every [italics] substance [end italics], (smiling to Mr. Harris,) has so many [italics] accidents [end italics].--To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically". GARRICK. "Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's 'Martial' the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn.' I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick Print: Book
'JOHNSON. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded". Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. "He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty. Every [italics] substance [end italics], (smiling to Mr. Harris,) has so many [italics] accidents [end italics].--To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically". GARRICK. "Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's 'Martial' the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn.' I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
' [Johnson said] "Sir, you know the notion of confinement may be extended, as in the song, "Every island is a prison." There is, in Dodsley's 'Collection', a copy of verses to the authour of that song".
Smith's Latin verses on Pococke, the great traveller, were mentioned. He repeated some of them, and said they were Smith's best verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'His books, over three hundred of which are preserved as he left them in 1918, show the range - and limitations - of his interests at school and later. Shakespeare, Scott, Keats and Dickens predominate, but he also worked on Milton, several eighteenth-century authors, and some Elizabethan and late Medieval poets. About two thirds of his library can be classified as "English literature", including biographies of at least twenty authors [explanatory sentence about dominance of biography not criticism in those days]. There are also nearly fifty books in or about French, a high proportion for someone of Owen's respectable but ordinary educational background. the rest are mostly botany, history and classics. The imprints are often those of the popular "libraries" of the time - Everyman's Library, the People's Books, the Home University Library, Penny Poets - cheap editions aimed at the growing market of young people like himself who were keen on self-improvement'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'His [Wilfred Owen's] literary interests must always have been a mystery to her, although she admired them, for her own reading scarcely extended beyond light novels and the pious, naive verse of John Oxenham'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Owen Print: Book
'Another, much less predictable [than that of Shelley] influence on Owen's thinking at Dunsden and much later began in October 1911 when he happened to buy a book of new poems by "A modern aspirant (Unknown to me)... I am idly-busy trying to discover the talent of our own days, and the requirements of the public". This book was undoubtedly "Before Dawn: Poems and Impressions" by Harold Monro. Owen read it carefully and could still quote from it two months later'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Not long afterwards I was reminded of this conversation by some lines from E. A. Mackintosh's "Cha Till Maccruimein," in his volume of poems "A Highland Regiment", which Roland's mother and sister had sent me for Christmas:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'Still sore and indignant, I happened one day to read some verses by Sir Owen Seaman which I found in a copy of "Punch" dated April 3rd, 1918 - the very week in which our old strongholds had fallen and the camp at Etaples had been a struggling pandemonium of ambulances, stretchers and refugee nurses:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical, magazine
'I read […] Martin’s "History of France"[…]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I read […] Allan Ramsay […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I read […] Comines […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[Owen] bought [Harold] Monro's latest book, "Children of Love", and became a familiar visitor [at the Poetry Bookshop]. He was impressed by the war poems in "Children of Love"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Monro gave [Owen] access to new work that was to be invaluable to him in 1917-18 and may have drawn his attention to several established writers whom he had hitherto neglected (Yeats, Housman and Tagore, for instance, are mentioned in 1916 letters for the first time)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'the two poets [Owen and Sassoon] probably talked more about literature than anything else. Owen found that they had been "following parallel trenches all our lives" and "had more friends in common, authors I mean, than most people can boast of in a lifetime". By chance, Sassoon was reading a small volume of Keats which Lady Ottoline [Morrel] had sent him. He shared Owen's interest in the late-Victorian poets, including Housman, whose influence is often apparent in his war poems, but Owen was surprised to discover that he admired Hardy "more than anybody living". No doubt Sassoon persuaded him to start reading Hardy's poems. In return, Owen showed him Tailhade's book'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Book
'He [Owen] bought Monro's latest collection "Strange Meetings" (1917), with its interesting title, and "Georgian Poetry 1916-1917". This new volume of the anthology, published by the Bookshop in November, included work by Sassoon, Graves, Monro, Robert Nichols, John Masefield, W.W. Gibson, Walter de la Mare and John Drinkwater. Owen eventually possessed at least fifteen volumes by these Georgians and their original leader, Brooke; this was by far the largest representation of modern verse in his shelves, and most of it was bought and read in November-December 1917.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'[that civilians could believe soldiers were happy in the trenches] is evident from plenty of civilian verse, including, for example, a poem in John Oxenham's "The Vision Splendid" (1917), a book Owen had read at Craiglockhart'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Gen. Robertson called and presented me with Hamley's Operations of War in which I am now drowned a thousand fathoms deep.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'In December he read Lang's translation of the elegies by Bion and Moschus that had been Shelley's model for "Adonais".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'In December he read Lang's translation of the elegies by Bion and Moschus that had been Shelley's model for "Adonais".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'JOHNSON. "The fallacy of that book [Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees"] is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it eat better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice. Having a garden, which we all know to be perfectly innocent, is a great pleasure. [Johnson discusses Mandeville at length, concluding] I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe, fifty years ago. He did not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life very much".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Mr. Allen, the printer, brought a book on agriculture, which was printed, and was soon to be published. It was a very strange performance, the authour having mixed in it his own thoughts upon various topicks, along with his remarks on ploughing, sowing, and other farming operations. He seemed to be an absurd profane fellow, and had introduced in his book many sneers at religion, with equal ignorance and conceit. Dr. Johnson permitted me to read some passages aloud.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of the first book of Tasso's "Jerusalem", which he did, and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem. The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote. JOHNSON. "I recollect but one passage quoted by Thucydides from Homer, which is not to be found in our copies of Homer's works; I am for the antiquity of Homer, and think that a Grecian colony, by being nearer Persia, might be more refined than the mother country.".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Filippo Antonio Pasquale di Paoli Print: Book
'He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of the first book of Tasso's "Jerusalem", which he did, and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem. The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote. JOHNSON. "I recollect but one passage quoted by Thucydides from Homer, which is not to be found in our copies of Homer's works; I am for the antiquity of Homer, and think that a Grecian colony, by being nearer Persia, might be more refined than the mother country.".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Figure to yourself, I wrote a review of Lord Lorne for "Vanity Fair" − a few pages of scurrility that I wrote laughing in an hour or two − and I got − guess! − I got five pounds for it and the price of the book! That was jolly, wasn’t it? Long live "Vanity Fair"!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I remember [...] [Tennyson's] reading with admiration this passage from Maurice's Friendship of Books. "If I do not give you extracts from any of Milton's specially controversial writings, it is not that I wish to pass them over because the conclusions in them are often directly opposed to mine, for I think that I have learnt most from those that are so."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Oct 4th. [1858] "To-day," my mother says [in diary], "A. took a volume of the Morte d'Arthur and read a noble passage about the battle with the Romans. He went to meet Mr and Mrs Roebuck at dinner at Swainston: and the comet was grand, with Arcturus shining brightly over the nucleus. At dinner he said he must leave the table to look at it, and they all followed [...]" When he returned next night he "observed the comet from his platform, and, when he came down for tea, read some Paradise Lost."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Oct 4th. [1858] "To-day," my mother says [in diary], "A. took a volume of the Morte d'Arthur and read a noble passage about the battle with the Romans. He went to meet Mr and Mrs Roebuck at dinner at Swainston: and the comet was grand, with Arcturus shining brightly over the nucleus. At dinner he said he must leave the table to look at it, and they all followed [...]" When he returned next night he "observed the comet from his platform, and, when he came down for tea, read some Paradise Lost."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'On Feb. 17th [1861] my father told my mother about his plan for a new poem, "The Northern Farmer."
'By the evening of Feb. 18th he had already written down a great part of "The Northern Farmer" [...] They also read of Sir Gareth in the Morte d'Arthur.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Aubrey De Vere, on how he 'first made acquaintance with Alfred Tennyson's poetry':
'Lord Houghton, then Richard Monckton Milnes, a Cambridge friend of my eldest brother's, drove up to the door of our house at Curragh Chase one night in 1832 [...] He had brought with him the first number of a new magazine entitled The Englishman containing Arthur Hallam's essay on Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The day on which I first took the slender volume into my hands was with me a memorable one. Arthur Hallam's essay had contrasted two different schools of modern poetry, calling one of these classes Poets of Reflection, and the other class Poets of Sensation, the latter represented by Shelley and Keats. Of Keats I knew nothing, and of Shelley very little; but the new poet seemed to me, while he had a touch of both the classes thus characterized, to have little in common with either. He was eminently original, and about that originality there was for me a wild, inexplicable magic and a deep pathos [goes on to discuss further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey De Vere Print: Serial / periodical
Edward Fitzgerald to Emily Tennyson [1862], in reponse to request for information on fishing and fishermen (as background for writing of Alfred Tennyson's), and after various observations on the topic:
'Oh dear! this is very learned, very useless, I dare say. But you ask me and I tell my best. I have been almost tempted to write you out some morsels of Dampier's Voyages which I copied out for myself: so fine as they are in their way I think, but they would be no use unless A. T. fell upon them by chance: for, of all horses, Pegasus least likes to drink.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
'But at least, through my work at Oxford and my subsequent reading of F. S. Marvin and Gilbert Murray and H. G. Wells, I had come to realise history as the whole story of man's development from the cave to comparative civilisation,'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'RAMSAY. "I suppose Homer's 'Iliad' to be a collection of pieces which had been written before his time. I should like to see a translation of it in poetical prose like the book of Ruth or Job".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Allan Ramsay Print: Book
'He [Johnson] said, "I have been reading Lord Kames's 'Sketches of the History of Man'. In treating of severity of punishment, he mentions that of Madame Lapouchin, in Russia, but he does not give it fairly; for I have looked at 'Chappe de l'Auteroche', from whom he has taken it. He stops where it is said that the spectators thought her innocent, and leaves out what follows; that she nevertheless was guilty".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Looking at Messrs. Dilly's splendid edition of Lord Chesterfield's miscellaneous works, he laughed, and said, "Here now are two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were written by me: and the best of it is, they have found out that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero".
He censured Lord Kames's "Sketches of the History of Man" for misrepresenting Clarendon's account of the appearance of Sir George Villiers's ghost, as if Clarendon were weakly credulous; when the truth is, that Clarendon only says, that the story was upon a better foundation of credit, than usually such discourses are founded upon; nay, speaks thus of the person who was reported to have seen the vision, "the poor man, if he had been at all waking"; which Lord Kames has omitted.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'We had a quiet comfortable meeting at Mr. Dilly's; nobody there but ourselves. Mr. Dilly mentioned somebody having wished that Milton's "Tractate on Education" should be printed along with his Poems in the edition of "The English Poets" then going on. JOHNSON. "It would be breaking in upon the plan; but would be of no great consequence. So far as it would be any thing, it would be wrong. Education in England has been in danger of being hurt by two of its greatest men, Milton and Locke. Milton's plan is impracticable, and I suppose has never been tried. Locke's, I fancy, has been tried often enough, but is very imperfect; it gives too much to one side, and too little to the other; it gives too little to literature.--I shall do what I can for Dr. Watts; but my materials are very scanty. His poems are by no means his best works; I cannot praise his poetry itself highly; but I can praise its design".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson
'[Johnson said] "I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield", which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: 'I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing'." BOSWELL. "That was a fine passage". JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: 'When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false'."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'[Johnson said] "King James says in his 'Daemonology', 'Magicians command the devils: witches are their servants. The Italian magicians are elegant beings'."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[from the 1780 Johnsoniana passed to Boswell by Bennet Langton] 'Callimachus is a writer of little excellence. The chief thing to be learned from him is his account of Rites and Mythology; which, though desirable to be known for the sake of understanding other parts of ancient authours, is the least pleasing or valuable part of their writings.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[from the 1780 Johnsoniana passed to Boswell by Bennet Langton] 'Mattaire's account of the Stephani is a heavy book. He seems to have been a puzzle-headed man, with a large share of scholarship, but with little geometry or logick in his head, without method, and possessed of little genius. He wrote Latin verses from time to time, and published a set in his old age, which he called "Senilia"; in which he shews so little learning or taste in writing, as to make [italics] Carteret [end italics] a dactyl. In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give the bare names as they are; but in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them. His book of the Dialects is a sad heap of confusion; the only way to write on them is to tabulate them with Notes, added at the bottom of the page, and references'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] Spanish plays, being wildly and improbably farcical, would please children here, as children are entertained with stories full of prodigies; their experience not being sufficient to cause them to be so readily startled at deviations from the natural course of life. The machinery of the Pagans is uninteresting to us: when a Goddess appears in Homer or Virgil, we grow weary; still more so in the Grecian tragedies, as in that kind of composition a nearer approach to Nature is intended. Yet there are good reasons for reading romances; as--the fertility of invention, the beauty of style and expression, the curiosity of seeing with what kind of performances the age and country in which they were written was delighted: for it is to be apprehended, that at the time when very wild improbable tales were well received, the people were in a barbarous state, and so on the footing of children, as has been explained.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] As I recollect, Hammond introduces a hag or witch into one of his love elegies, where the effect is unmeaning and disgusting'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] In the latter part of his life, in order to satisfy himself whether his mental faculties were impaired, he resolved that he would try to learn a new language, and fixed upon the Low Dutch, for that purpose, and this he continued till he had read about one half of "Thomas a Kempis"; and finding that there appeared no abatement of his power of acquisition, he then desisted, as thinking the experiment had been duly tried'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[Johnson said of Rev. Zacariah Mudge] The general course of his life was determined by his profession; he studied the sacred volumes in the original languages; with what diligence and success, his "Notes upon the Psalms" give sufficient evidence. He once endeavoured to add the knowledge of Arabick to that of Hebrew; but finding his thoughts too much diverted from other studies, after some time desisted from his purpose.
His discharge of parochial duties was exemplary. How his "Sermons" were composed, may be learned from the excellent volume which he has given to the publick'. [article by Johnson in 'the London Chronicle', 2nd May 1769]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[Johnson said of Rev. Zacariah Mudge] The general course of his life was determined by his profession; he studied the sacred volumes in the original languages; with what diligence and success, his "Notes upon the Psalms" give sufficient evidence. He once endeavoured to add the knowledge of Arabick to that of Hebrew; but finding his thoughts too much diverted from other studies, after some time desisted from his purpose.
His discharge of parochial duties was exemplary. How his "Sermons" were composed, may be learned from the excellent volume which he has given to the publick'. [article by Johnson in 'the London Chronicle', 2nd May 1769]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Sir Joshua Reynolds praised "Mudge's Sermons". JOHNSON. "'Mudge's Sermons' are good, but not practical. He grasps more sense than he can hold; he takes more corn than he can make into meal; he opens a wide prospect, but it is so distant, it is indistinct. I love "Blair's Sermons". Though the dog is a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian, and every thing he should not be, I was the first to praise them. Such was my candour." (smiling.)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Book
'Sir Joshua Reynolds praised "Mudge's Sermons". JOHNSON. "'Mudge's Sermons' are good, but not practical. He grasps more sense than he can hold; he takes more corn than he can make into meal; he opens a wide prospect, but it is so distant, it is indistinct. I love "Blair's Sermons". Though the dog is a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian, and every thing he should not be, I was the first to praise them. Such was my candour." (smiling.)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Miss Hannah More has admirably described a [italics] Blue-stocking Club [end italics], in her "Bas Bleu", a poem in which many of the persons who were most conspicuous there are mentioned.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown
'Johnson and Shebbeare were frequently named together, as having in former reigns had no predilection for the family of Hanover. The authour of the celebrated "Heroick Epistle to Sir William Chambers", introduces them in one line, in a list of those "who tasted the sweets of his present Majesty's reign". Such was Johnson's candid relish of the merit of that satire, that he allowed Dr. Goldsmith, as he told me, to read it to him from beginning to end, and did not refuse his praise to its execution'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown
'Johnson and Shebbeare were frequently named together, as having in former reigns had no predilection for the family of Hanover. The authour of the celebrated "Heroick Epistle to Sir William Chambers", introduces them in one line, in a list of those "who tasted the sweets of his present Majesty's reign". Such was Johnson's candid relish of the merit of that satire, that he allowed Dr. Goldsmith, as he told me, to read it to him from beginning to end, and did not refuse his praise to its execution'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Oliver Goldsmith Print: Unknown
'Johnson thought the poems published as translations from Ossian had so little merit, that he said, 'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would [italics]abandon [end italics] his mind to it'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Sir William Chambers, that great Architect, whose works shew a sublimity of genius, and who is esteemed by all who know him for his social, hospitable, and generous qualities, submitted the manuscript of his "Chinese Architecture" to Dr. Johnson's perusal. Johnson was much pleased with it, and said, "It wants no addition nor correction, but a few lines of introduction"; which he furnished, and Sir William adopted'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
'BOSWELL. "Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book?" JOHNSON. "No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her 'Life', says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, 'Dunton's Life and Errours', we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'BOSWELL. "Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book?" JOHNSON. "No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her 'Life', says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, 'Dunton's Life and Errours', we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'[Johnson said] There is in "Camden's Remains", an epitaph upon a very wicked man, who was killed by a fall from his horse, in which he is supposed to say,
'Between the stirrup and the ground, I mercy ask'd, I mercy found'."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Lord Hailes had sent him a present of a curious little printed poem, on repairing the University of Aberdeen, by David [italics] Malloch [end italics], which he thought would please Johnson, as affording clear evidence that Mallet had appeared even as a literary character by the name of Malloch; his changing which to one of softer sound, had given Johnson occasion to introduce him into his "Dictionary", under the article [italics] Alias[end italics]. This piece was, I suppose, one of Mallet's first essays. It is preserved in his works, with several variations. Johnson having read aloud, from the beginning of it, where there were some common-place assertions as to the superiority of ancient times;--"How false (said he) is all this, to say that in ancient times learning was not a disgrace to a Peer as it is now. In ancient times a Peer was as ignorant as any one else. He would have been angry to have it thought he could write his name. Men in ancient times dared to stand forth with a degree of ignorance with which nobody would dare now to stand forth".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'[Johnson said] The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. However, I have this year read all Virgil through. I read a book of the "Aeneid" every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and I had great delight in it. The "Georgicks" did not give me so much pleasure, except the fourth book. The "Eclogues" I have almost all by heart. I do not think the story of the "Aeneid" interesting. I like the story of the "Odyssey" much better; and this not on account of the wonderful things which it contains; for there are wonderful things enough in the "Aeneid";--the ships of the Trojans turned to sea-nymphs,--the tree at Polydorus's tomb dropping blood. The story of the "Odyssey" is interesting, as a great part of it is domestick.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'In this letter [to Boswell from Mr Mickle] he relates his having, while engaged in translating the "Lusiad", had a dispute of considerable length with Johnson, who, as usual, declaimed upon the misery and corruption of a sea life, and used this expression:--"It had been happy for the world, Sir, if your hero Gama, Prince Henry of Portugal, and Columbus, had never been born, or that their schemes had never gone farther than their own imaginations".
"This sentiment, (says Mr. Mickle,) which is to be found in his "Introduction to the World displayed", I, in my Dissertation prefixed to the "Lusiad", have controverted; and though authours are said to be bad judges of their own works, I am not ashamed to own to a friend, that that dissertation is my favourite above all that I ever attempted in prose. Next year, when the "Lusiad" was published, I waited on Dr. Johnson, who addressed me with one of his good-humoured smiles:--'Well, you have remembered our dispute about Prince Henry, and have cited me too. You have done your part very well indeed: you have made the best of your argument; but I am not convinced yet'."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[william Mickle said] Dr. Johnson told me in 1772, that, about twenty years before that time, he himself had a design to translate the "Lusiad", of the merit of which he spoke highly, but had been prevented by a number of other engagements'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Johnson was very quiescent to-day [17th May 1784] . Perhaps too I was indolent. I find nothing more of him in my notes, but that when I mentioned that I had seen in the King's library sixty-three editions of my favourite "Thomas a Kempis", amongst which it was in eight languages, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Arabick, and Armenian, he said, he thought it unnecessary to collect many editions of a book, which were all the same, except as to the paper and print; he would have the original, and all the translations, and all the editions which had any variations in the text'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'He had dined that day [30th May 1784] at Mr. Hoole's, and Miss Helen Maria Williams being expected in the evening, Mr. Hoole put into his hands her beautiful "Ode on the Peace": Johnson read it over, and when this elegant and accomplished young lady was presented to him, he took her by the hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the finest stanza of her poem; this was the most delicate and pleasing compliment he could pay.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
'Mrs. Kennicot related, in his [Johnson's] presence, a lively saying of Dr. Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written "Paradise Lost" should write such poor Sonnets:--"Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Mrs. Kennicot related, in his [Johnson's] presence, a lively saying of Dr. Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written "Paradise Lost" should write such poor Sonnets:--"Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah More Print: Book
'Mrs. Kennicot related, in his [Johnson's] presence, a lively saying of Dr. Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written "Paradise Lost" should write such poor Sonnets:--"Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah More Print: Book
'I then read Mason on self knowledge till dinner, not with so much attention as I could wish; I seldom attend sufficiently to what I am reading, to remember at all accurately what I have been reading about'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
'I had a quiet afternoon on the sofa in my room reading Mason on self knowledge, French, and Job Scott's journal, which I like vastly and found really doing me good, at least edifying me'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] 'it appears to me, that even in your slighter pieces, this illusion [hiding judgment under imagination] is kept up; while, in your more finished producions, it is preserved in an uncommon degree. This, my feelings tell me; and to them, in this instance, judgment delegates her authority. Had I, previously to publication, known of your intention of paying a compliment to Lord N., I should certainly have remonstrated. I confess I was revolted by the idea of your virtuous muse binding her laurels round the brow of one of the most profligate and worthless of the human race; but that single passage excepted, I found so much pleasure in the perusal of the whole, that I would not have taken a thousand pounds to have gone critically over every if and and, purposely to pick out some faults'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss H. Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H'.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss H. Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] In what you say with regard to the second volume of "Letters on Education" being, in some parts, too abstruse for certain readers, you are, by no means, singular; nor was the objection unforeseen or unexpected'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hector Macneil Print: Book
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] Do I not well remember hiding "Kaims's Elements of Criticism", under the cover of an easy chair, whenever I heard the approach of a footstep, well knowing the ridicule to which I should have been exposed, had I been detected in the act of looking into such a book?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[letter to Dr S.] I submitted my half finished manuscript [to my friend Mr D. S-], which he read over with critical and minute attention. He flatters me with the assurance, that it is written in a far more mastely manner than any of my former productions; and pronounces biography to be my [italics] forte [end italics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr D.S- Manuscript: Unknown
'[letter to Miss J-B-] I have just been looking over the fifth volume of poor Burns. it contains much that he would have been sorry to imagine before the public eye; but his letter to Mr Erskine, and some others, are invaluable'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'He censured a writer of entertaining Travels for assuming a feigned character, saying, (in his sense of the word,) "He carries out one lye; we know not how many he brings back."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'[letter from Johnson to Dr Brocklesby] Tell Dr. Heberden, that in the coach I read "Ciceronianus" which I concluded as I entered Lichfield. My affection and understanding went along with Erasmus, except that once or twice he somewhat unskilfully entangles Cicero's civil or moral, with his rhetorical, character'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'A distinguished authour in "The Mirror", a periodical paper, published at Edinburgh, has imitated Johnson very closely. Thus, in No. 16,--
"The effects of the return of spring have been frequently remarked as well in relation to the human mind as to the animal and vegetable world. The reviving power of this season has been traced from the fields to the herds that inhabit them, and from the lower classes of beings up to man. Gladness and joy are described as prevailing through universal Nature, animating the low of the cattle, the carol of the birds, and the pipe of the shepherd."
The Reverend Dr. KNOX, master of Tunbridge school, appears to have the [italics]imitari aveo [end italics] of Johnson's style perpetually in his mind; and to his assiduous, though not servile, study of it, we may partly ascribe the extensive popularity of his writings.
In his "Essays, Moral and Literary", No. 3, we find the following passage:--
"The polish of external grace may indeed be deferred till the approach of manhood. When solidity is obtained by pursuing the modes prescribed by our fore-fathers, then may the file be used. The firm substance will bear attrition, and the lustre then acquired will be durable."
There is, however, one in No. 11, which is blown up into such tumidity, as to be truly ludicrous. The writer means to tell us, that Members of Parliament, who have run in debt by extravagance, will sell their votes to avoid an arrest, which he thus expresses:--
"They who build houses and collect costly pictures and furniture with the money of an honest artisan or mechanick, will be very glad of emancipation from the hands of a bailiff, by a sale of their senatorial suffrage".
But I think the most perfect imitation of Johnson is a professed one, entitled "A Criticism on Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-Yard", said to be written by Mr. Young, Professor of Greek, at Glasgow, and of which let him have the credit, unless a better title can be shewn. It has not only the peculiarities of Johnson's style, but that very species of literary discussion and illustration for which he was eminent. Having already quoted so much from others, I shall refer the curious to this performance, with an assurance of much entertainment'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Serial / periodical
'The poets John read at Highgate Junior School included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Campbell and Edgar Allan Poe'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
'[quotation from Maurice Bowra's Memoirs] The first time I met him [John Betjeman] he talked fluently about half forgotten authors of the nineteenth century - Sir Henry Taylor, Ebeneezer Elliott, Philip James Bailey, and Sir Lewis Morris'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
'Doctor Collier used to say that although Milton was so violent a Whig himself, he was obliged to write his poem upon the purest Tory principles - it is very observable and very true'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Collier Print: Book
'Doctor Collier used to say that although Milton was so violent a Whig himself, he was obliged to write his poem upon the purest Tory principles - it is very observable and very true'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'the Verses written by Bentley upon Learning & publish'd in Dodsley's Miscellanies - how like they are to Evelyn's Verses on Virtue published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a Plagiarisme; old Bentley would have scorned such Tricks, besides what passed once between myself and Mr Johnson should cure me of Suspicion in these Cases. We had then some thoughts of giving a Translation of Boethius, and I used now & then to shew him the Verses I had made towards the Work: in the Ode with the Story of Orpheus in it - beginning
"felix qui potuit &c"
he altered some of my Verses to these which he [italics] thought [end italics] his own.
"Fondly viewed his following Bride
Viewing lost, and losing died."
Two Years after this, I resolved to go through all the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in one of them - Bonduca, I found two Lines so like these of Johnson's that one would have sworn he had imitated them: that very Afternoon he came, & says I, did you ever delight much in Reading Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays - I never read any of them at all replied he, but I intend some Time to go over them, here in your fine Edition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'the Verses written by Bentley upon Learning & publish'd in Dodsley's Miscellanies - how like they are to Evelyn's Verses on Virtue published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a Plagiarisme; old Bentley would have scorned such Tricks, besides what passed once between myself and Mr Johnson should cure me of Suspicion in these Cases. We had then some thoughts of giving a Translation of Boethius, and I used now & then to shew him the Verses I had made towards the Work: in the Ode with the Story of Orpheus in it - beginning
"felix qui potuit &c"
he altered some of my Verses to these which he [italics] thought [end italics] his own.
"Fondly viewed his following Bride
Viewing lost, and losing died."
Two Years after this, I resolved to go through all the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in one of them - Bonduca, I found two Lines so like these of Johnson's that one would have sworn he had imitated them: that very Afternoon he came, & says I, did you ever delight much in Reading Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays - I never read any of them at all replied he, but I intend some Time to go over them, here in your fine Edition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I must let off a little steam. I am wroth beyond expression about Mr Kirkham’s cheek in publishing our letters. I did not want that to become public property. If you had seen & loved Tennyson & his belongings you would know what I feel & how anything in the nature of a Newspaper’s Interview as our own pleasant reminiscence is now reduced to – would gall one. Please don’t let any more of my letters get out. Some time hence when I am hence & personalities have ceased to be so – I will put them into a book - & if they are printed now the freshness will have departed. It was stupid of me not to have issued a Caveat long ago – but I knew you knew I was going to print ‘em some day – and I did not dream of their being printed now. However – it can’t be undone now. Don’t worry about it – only please don’t let it happen again. You could not know how I would feel about it – but you know now.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Cornelia Sorabji Print: Newspaper
'Doctor Marriott wrote the prettiest Verses in French of any Englishman I know'.[she then gives lengthy examples]
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
'Here is an odd Book come out to prove Falstaff was no Coward, when says Dr Johnson will one come forth to prove Iago an honest Man?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'[Mr Pepys] is admirably described by the same Words with which Menage describes Mr de Costar; C'est (dit il), le Galant le plus Pedant, et le Pedant le plus galant qu'on puisse voir. His verses on Mrs Greville and Mrs Crewe I think are very [italics] smart [end italics] ones, and have a Turn remarkably elegant at the End'. [she gives the verses]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Copious MS notes, some correcting translation, others commenting on world affairs or noting events in Trevelyan's own life. MS dates of reading up to 1921 and list of 8 men selected for University Scholarship in 1850, incl. Trevelyan. Notes include: "August 18 1887" "Oct. 15. 1919" Page 573: "George's convoy have reached Udine [i.e. G.M. Trevelyan, his son]. How extraordinarily interesting the notes written during this crisis are!" P. 469: "Aug 16 1915 Warsaw has fallen. Rige in dire peril" P. 511: " Aug 16 1915 Runciman and Massingham visited us yesterday." "P. 560: "Aug 14 1889. Rain and no grouse, having spoiled the day's shooting".
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
"This volume was being read by Sir George Trevelyan when his last illness came on him": MS note in the hand of Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, GOT's son.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'I had by this time [his mid-teens] also struck up a friendship with a young, unemployed, linotype operator, six or seven years older than myself. He lived in a street at the back of the Lodging House, was a member of the Left book Club, and lent me (among much else) his copy of Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier". Somehow, too, I came upon the poems of Auden, Spender, Day-Lewis, MacNeice; Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
This book, originally owned and read by Lord Macaulay in June-Oct 1836, was given to his nephew who wrote on flyleaf: "Given me when at Harrow, by Macaulay to prepare for the examination for the Gregory Scholarship Summer 1856".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
MS notes and marks throughout, including: "May 2 1919. Exquisite book! I seem to hear my dear friend [Henry James] talk, - oh so slowly - as we stroll arm in arm in the Warwickshire meadows which he loved so long and well - as I loved him, and he me". On t-p: "Trevelyan Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
MS notes including various dates of reading from Feb 16, 1899 - March 25 1901. Final volume summarised as: "A fine, compact story; disfigured by a delight in the loathsome such as I have never known in any other great and grave writer. It amounts to monomania."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, Lines 51-9]: The management of this Poem is Apollonian. Satan first "throws round his baleful eyes", then awakes his legions, he consults, he sets forward on his voyage - and just as he is getting to the end of it we see the Great God and our first parent, and that same satan all brought in one's vision - we have the invocation to light before we mount to heaven - we breathe more freely - we feel the great Author's consolations coming thick upon him at a time when he complains most - we are getting ripe for diversity - the immediate topic of the Poem opens with a grand Perspective of all concerned.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 135-7]: 'Hell is finer than this'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 487-9]: 'This part in its sound is unaccountably expressive of the description.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 606-17]: Keats underlines the phrases and lines "Breathe forth Elixir pure"; "when with one virtuous touch/ The arch-chemic Sun" and "as when his beams at noon Culminate from the equator". He writes: 'A Spirit's eye'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 4, lines 1-5] Keats underlines the lines: "O for that warning voice, which he who saw/ The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud,/ Then when the Dragon put to second rout,/ Came furious down to be revenged on men,". He writes: 'A friend of mine says this Book has the finest opening of any - the point of time is gigantically critical - the wax is melted, the seal is aobut to be applied - and Milton breaks out, "O for that warning voice," etc. There is moreover an opportunity for a Grandeur of Tenderness - the opportunity is not lost. Nothing can be higher - Nothing so more than delphic.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 4, lines 268-72] Keats underlines the lines: "Not that fair field/ Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers,/ Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis/ Was gather'd, which cost Ceres all that pain/ To seek her through the world." He writes: 'There are two specimens of a very extraordinary beauty in the "Paradise Lost"; they are of a nature as far as I have read, unexampled elsewhere - they are entirely distinct from the brief pathos of Dante - and they are not to be found even in Shakespeare - these are according to the great prerogative of poetry better described in themselves than by a volume. The one is in the fol[lowing] - "which cost Ceres all that pain" - the other is that ending "Nor could the Muse defend her son" - they appear exclusively Miltonic without the shadow of another mind ancient or modern.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 6, lines 58-9] Keats underlines "reluctant flames, the sign/ Of wrath awaked", and writes '"Reluctant" with its original and modern meaning combined and woven together, with all its shades of signification has a powerful effect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 7, lines 420-34] Keats underlines the phrase "With clang despised the ground, under a cloud/ In prospect." He writes: 'Milton in every instance pursues his imagination to the utmost - he is "sagacious of his Quarry", he sees Beauty on the wing, pounces upon it and gorges it to the producing of his essential verse. "So from the root the springs lighter the green stalk," etc. But in no instance is this sort of perseverance more exemplified than in what may be called his stationing or statuary. He is not content with simple description, he must station, - thus here, we not only see how the Birds "with clang despised the ground" but we see them "under a cloud in prospect." So we see Adam "Fair indeed and tall - under a plantane" - and so we see Satan "disfigured - on the Assyrian Mount." This last with all its accompaniments, and keeping in mind the Theory of Spirits' eyes and the simile of Gallilio [sic], has a dramatic vastness and solemnity fit and worthy to hold one amazed in the midst of this "Paradise Lost" -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 9, 41-7]: 'Had not Shakespeare liv'd?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 9, 179-91]. Keats underlines the whole passage, excluding "where soonest he might find /the serpent", and writes: 'Satan having entered the Serpent, and inform'd his brutal sense - might seem sufficient - but Milton goes on "but his sleep disturb'd not". Whose spirit does not ache at the smothering and confinement -the unwilling stillness - the "waiting close"? Whose head is not dizzy at the prosaible [sic] speculations of satan in the serpent prison - no poetry ever can give a greater pain of suffocation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
Copious MS notes and marginal marks, including some showing signs of irritation: v.5 p.96 "Oh do have done!"; v.4: "Oh do shut up". Several dates of reading noted including: "Read aloud Nov 7 1904. Charles Dalrymple came this evening"; "Read aloud June 28 1923".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Various MS notes and marks including date of reading: June 23 1923 and a note on p.311 "The birthplace": "This was based on the story of Mr. Skipsey, told to Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] by the Spence Watsons, and by her to Henry James."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869:
'Sept. 13th. [...] Read the "Idylls" through in their proper sequence during these months, also Tom Hughes' Alfred the Great, Pressense's Life of Christ, Martineau's Endeavours After a Christian Life, and Lecky's European Morals.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869:
'Dec. 11th. Farringford. A. read me some of Maurice's Social Morals; "a noble book" it seemed to me, as A. called it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1870:
'Nov. 8th. [...] A. read me Pepys' Diary [...] We read about starlings in Morris; I did not know (what A. had put into his Idyll ["The Last Tournament"] by his own observation) that the starlings in June, after they have brought up their young ones, congregate in flocks in a reedy place for the sake of sociability.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872:
'June 22nd. Farringford. Every night A. has read Shakespeare, or Pascal, or Montesquieu (Decadence des Romains).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872:
'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Marginal marks and MS notes. Dates of reading on final page and the note: "What was the year when we saw so much of the American family who so much reminded us of the Dossons? It could not be 1913; as we spent Christmas with them in Rome; and in 1913 Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] never left her bed!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Various marginal marks and MS dates of reading including: "Welcombe. Read to C[Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and Anna [his sister-in-law]. Feb 14 1910"; "Feb 21 1924".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'The other day I borrowed a volume of Symonds's poems from himself and returned it to him without a word of comment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
This book has copious notes and marginal marks, including many unrelated to the text written on pastedown and fly-leaf: "I used to note down sentences for my history, that had ocurred to me in the watches of the night, in the flyleaf of the novel which I had in hand at that time."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
MS annotations and marginal marks incl. v.1 p.503, in reply to the author's comment "we must now throw a glance to the external", Sir George writes: "High time that you did. Seldom has so able a writer been so swamped and mastered by his materials." Describes ch. 6 as "Terribly lengthy. Such masses of extracts ... are out of place in such a book as this." V.4 p.530 in reply to the author's wish to have fostered through his work a "love of freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" Sir George writes "This is a true claim on the part of Motley, and is the prime merit of his history". "Motley on the whole has raised himself by this volume [2]. He has a fine enthusiasm for liberty and public right." "The fourth volume ... is deeply interesting, and, in some respects, better constructed and written than the other three. Welcombe. May 26. 1916". Dates of reading include: "Nov 3 1915 - Wallington" and "June 28 - with C[aroline] Wallington 1921."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
MS notes and marginal marks throughout the book, in the hand of Sir George Otto Trevelyan. Dates of reading include "Sept. 21 1914 Aloud to C[aroline]"; "Dec 30 1920 with C". One note alludes to the First World War: when Motley writes of a "train of unforeseen transactions", Sir George comments: "We have enough of that just now. Aug . 31 1915".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'Cumberland had written two Odes, what says Mrs Montagu to me do you think of them? I think said I they are as like Gray's Odes as he can make them, Ay, replied She, as like as a little Thing can be to a big Thing, Why to be sure Madam said I he is not the great Mr Gray - he is only the [italics] Petit Gris [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Cumberland had written two Odes, what says Mrs Montagu to me do you think of them? I think said I they are as like Gray's Odes as he can make them, Ay, replied She, as like as a little Thing can be to a big Thing, Why to be sure Madam said I he is not the great Mr Gray - he is only the [italics] Petit Gris [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
'I was told to-day that Joshua and Jesus are the very same Name. I never heard it before, and suppose it not commonly known among Christians - 'tis a Shame however not to have known it always - Milton mentions it in the last Book of Paradise Lost'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'At the time when Owen Ruffhead was writing the "Contest" in opposition to Murphy's "Test"; Gilbert Cooper it seems thought so highly of the performance that he would persuade himself Mr Pitt was the Authour'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gilbert Cooper Print: Serial / periodical
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, "A Hymne to our Creator" by Dr Dillingham.
Unknown
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
'It was on the 18: day of July 1773 that we were sitting in the blue Room at Streatham and were talking of Writers - Steele's Essays were mentioned - but they are too thin said Mr Johnson; being mere Observations on Life and Manners without a sufficiency of solid Learning acquired from Books, they have the flavour, like the light French wines you so often hear commended; but having no Body, they cannot keep. Speaking of Mason Gray &c. he said The Poems they write must I should suppose greatly delight the Authors; they seem to have attained that which themselves consider as the Summit of Excellence, and Man can do no more: yet surely such unmeaning & verbose Language if in the Morning it appears to be in bloom, must fade before Sunset like Cloe's Wreath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He had in his Youth been a great Reader of Mandeville, and was very watchful for the Stains of original corruption both in himself & others'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He had however no Taste for Modern Poetry - Gray Mason &c - Modern Poetry says he one day at our house, is like Modern Gardening, every thing now is raised by a hot bed; every thing therefore is forced, & everything tasteless'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Thomas Flatman, 'On Dr. Brown's Travels'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
'He [Tennyson] had been reading Motley's Dutch Republic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society:
'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...]
'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following:
'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter.
'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.)
'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison.
'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot.
'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison.
Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson.
Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick.
Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rev. F. D. Maurice
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society:
'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...]
'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following:
'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter.
'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.)
'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison.
'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot.
'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison.
Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson.
Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick.
Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Martineau
'of Elphinstone's specimen of Martial he [Johnson] said, there was too much Folly in them for Madness, and too much Madness for Folly'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Another favourite Passage too in the same Author [Metastasio's Adriano]; which Baretti made his Pupil - my eldest Daughter get by heart - Johnson translated into Blank Verse - [italics] sur le Champ [end italics]: Baretti wrote it down from his Lips, and I write it now from Baretti's Copy, which is almost worne out with lying by in the folds'. [the verses are given in Italian and English]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Maria Thrale Print: Book
'I myself like Smollet's Novels better than Fielding's; the perpetual Parody teizes one; - there is more Rapidity and Spirit in the Scotsman: though both of them knew the Husk of Life perfectly well - & for the Kernel - you must go to either Richardson or Rousseau'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Mr Murphy's Grecian Daughter is I think unquestionably the best of all our modern Tragedies, & all its Merit is the Power it has over our Passions too; for nobody I believe ever dreamed of repeating a line on't:
Now though to move Terror & Pity those two throbbing Pulses of the Drama, be the first Thing required in a Tragedy; there are others which are necessary to make it complete, as Sentiment Diction &c. 'tis entertaining enough to observe the effect of each style separately - & we shall have Cato and Irene at one End; the Earl of Essex and George Barnwell at the other'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'[when Mrs Thrale was a child] The Duchess of Leeds likewise took an odd Delight in my excellent company, used to send her chair for me & set me to read Milton I remember sometimes to Lord Godolphin sometimes to Mr Garrick who used often to be there & Mr Quin'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Salusbury Print: Book
'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox, Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
'I was reading today where Menage tells a story of a notable fellow in his native town Angers, who was such a bustler that they called him sport Monsieur Tracas.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Lord Kaimes again tells us a wild Story of Savages who eat all their own children & have done so for six Hundred Years backward - he then begins gravely to argue about parental Affection, never reflecting that if the children were eaten the Race could not be continued'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I could not help thinking the other Day as I read the Epigram of Martial ending thus
Iam dic Posthume de tribus Capellis.
that it would have a good effect enough in English adapted to the present Times - Dec: 1778.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'There was a very pleasant Copy of Verses ran about the Town that Year [1776], but I forgot to lay them up, & now I have lost Sight of them: they celebrated Mr Rudd's Fame very comically, & ended with a Parody upon Young's Tag to the 4th Act of the Revenge.[some of the parody is given] I have a Notion these Verses were written by Mason, who would not to be sure think it worth while to own them; his being found out to be the Authour of the heroick Epistle shews he has under that appearance of Coldness - a large portion of Fire and pungent Satire'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
'20: Jan: 1779.] My second Daughter Susanna Arabella who will not be nine Years old till next May, can at this Moment read a French Comedy to divert herself, and these very Holy days her Amusement has been to make Sophy & sometimes Hester help her to act the two or three 1st Scenes of Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme: add to this she has a real Taste for English Poetry, and when Mr Johnson repeated Dryden's Musick Ode the other day, She said She had got the whole poem, & Pope's too upon the same Subject by Heart for her own Amusement'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Arabella Thrale Print: Book
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'Yesterday I went to the workhouse to spend the evening with the children; a prospect I have had in view for some time... I took them things for tea: I dreaded going on many accounts, fearing I should not feel at liberty to make any remarks I might wish to the children during their reading which it was my principal object in going to attend. I did not exactly see my way, however, I thought I would (as the Friends say) make my way. I found after tea they did not read till nearly eight, and I could not remain later than a little past seven. I spoke to the governess about it and she was quite willing to alter the hour, and so was the stewardess. I proposed reading a little pamphlet that has lately come out by Frederick Smith to the children. There was a solemnity during reading it; so that Ann Withers was in tears most of the time, and some of the children were disposed that way; afterwards, when we had finished, I endeavoured to weigh up whether I really had any thing to say to them or not; I thought that I had, and therefore took up the book as if to explain it; making my own remarks which appeared to affect the children and the governess so that those who were on the point of tears really wept. Now this event has made me feel rather odd; it is marvellous to me how I got courage to do it before Ann Withers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Fry Print: Book
'In the beginning of September [1892], though feeling very ill, my father looked over a book of poems at the earnest entreaty of a stranger, Mr Dalmon, and made one or two criticisms. He crossed out Mr Dalmon's despairing words about poetry -- "[italics]The end is failure[end italics]" -- saying to him: "How can there be failure, if the divine speak through the human, be it through the voice of prince or peasant?"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father:
'"'L'Agonie' by Sully Prudhomme I have just been reading, and think it very beautiful, yet very sad; and there are things of Alfred de Musset like 'Tristesse' which seem to me perfect."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father:
'"'L'Agonie' by Sully Prudhomme I have just been reading, and think it very beautiful, yet very sad; and there are things of Alfred de Musset like 'Tristesse' which seem to me perfect."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'In 1885 he [Tennyson] came across Amiel's Journal Intime, and thought his criticisms on Hugo and literature in general good; but that the Journal throughout was too morbid for anything.
'The modern French poets were read by him with great interest. The last French poems he read were by Coppee, and by Jean Aicard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days:
'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...]
'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...]
'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'"Ye Grots & Caverns shagg'd with horrid Thorn!" This Verse from Pope's Eloisa was originally Milton's - 'tis in Comus, but I think very little remember'd'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Johnson's newly written Lives are delightful, but he is too hard on Prior's Alma: he will be keenly reproached for his Toryism, but what cares he? he calls himself a Tory, & glories in it. he should have been more sparing of Praise to the Fair Penitent I think, because the Characters are from Massinger - I care not how much good is said of the language; but Old Phil: has the Merit of that Contrast, more happy perhaps than any on our Stage, of the Gay Rake, and the virtuous dependent Gentleman'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Psalmanazar wrote the Cosmogony, and the History of the Jews after his Conversion; how odd that he shold quote the Formosan Opinions therefore as corroborative of some Hypothesis; which he certainly does, and with a Touch of his old Effrontery too. see Page 84: Vol: I. Universal History.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I did not go out again but passed the time away in reading, amused the youngsters with some stories from Grimms Goblins a book I brought a few nights since.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'After tea I read some goblin stories to the youngsters, then I went to the Mechanics & read the papers. "Touchstone" has come to life again. The first number of the new series was published to-day.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening after tea I read a fairy tale to the Youngsters then went to the Mechanics & had a look at the Papers.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'After tea I read a fairy tale to the youngsters & then went to the Mechanics & read the papers.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Dotty's two little girls are on a visit to us they came either yesterday or on the day previous. This evening I read them a fairy tale & they seemed very much delighted. Went into town & read the papers at the Mechanics, then returned'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Jean's friend lent her George Moore's "Heloise and Abelard" - "one of the loveliest; all that my Wyclif book should have been and was not," Winifred confessed, lamenting that she was required to present prizes just when she wanted to finish it. In spite of the novel's length and these interruptions, its owner reported that Winifred returned it, read from cover to cover, within a couple of days.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson:
'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...]
'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson:
'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...]
'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson:
'Shakespeare and Milton [...] he read aloud by preference: always coming to Paradise Lost with manifest pleasure and reverent admiration [...] I may name [...] the great vision of Eden (Book IV. 205-311), which he read aloud at Ardtornish in Morvern (August, 1853), and often afterwards; dwelling always upon the peculiar grace of lines 246-263.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson:
'In G. Meredith's first little volume he was delighted by the "Love in a Valley" (as printed in 1851: the text in later issues has been greatly changed)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Here's a pretty Sonnet of Povoleri's; I must translate it. [the verse is given in Italian and English] over the Page we shall see another Sonnet, written by the Abbate Buondelmonte: I live with the Italians till I run mad after their Literature, their Talents &c.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
'In the afternoon I read a story out of Grimm's Goblins to the little girls & after Muster as the weather was wet I stayed at home & read ... In the evening I went to the Mechanics & read the papers, nothing however very startling. Bowman's lecture on "Shams" appeared in the Ovens & Murray of Saturday last'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'What a strange Book is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning, Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence - 'tis printed in the Tatler; Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew. See page 277 of Burton.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'What a strange Book is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning, Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence - 'tis printed in the Tatler; Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew. See page 277 of Burton.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Mustered this afternoon, then sat & read till tea time. After tea had more than an hour with the youngsters reading to them from Grimm's Goblins.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'I worked in the Gaol in the morning for a time then lazily read ["Lalla Rookh"?] till dinner time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Was to-night reading Lemon's Story of "Wait for the End" and waited myself for the end which I did not reach until after eleven o'clock though I did little more than skim the reading to get at the Plot & the "denouemont"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Unknown
'Don't read noble old Fred's Pirate anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I was reading to the Girls to day More's Acct of The King of Prussia's Severity to his favourite Valet who unable to endure it, shot himself' [there follows a long account of her daughters' responses and evaluation of their characters]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I was reading Derham's Astro, not his Astro, his Physico Theology; and can hardly help laughing when I see these simple Philosophers praising God Almighty for making the World so wisely - saying in what a [italics] Workman-like [end italics] Manner he has managed Things: how should he [italics] not [end italics] make the World wisely? and how should their Praises add any Thing to him?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
'I stayed at home amusing the children by reading a fairy tale to them. They seemed to take great interest inn the narrative & after I had finished it Flory went [smiling?] home & Sissy & Dotty went away good temperedly to bed. Read "Poor dog [Tray?]" out of ["Ingolitsby"?] to Harry & then sent him off to bed also'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Played Bezique with Polly in the evening after I had read aloud three Acts of "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening took Polly out for a little walk after I had finished reading [aloud?] "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Began to-night to read again "The Vicar of Wakefield" & was delighted with its quaint easy style, read two or three chapters to Harry who was very attentive & in a sad state when I had to send him away to his lessons.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'The ladies did not retire till after eleven & then I laid myself down on the sofa & tried to sleep. The mosquitoes however would'ent allow anything of the kind & so after kicking about & turning over several scores of times I got up again, raised the gas & went on reading Dumas' "Memoirs of a Physician".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Harry this evening commenced reading McAuley's (sic) History of England. He is getting a great deal too fond of Plays & funny pieces & as he reads for marks I mean for the future to make him earn them with literature more solid & substantial. Polly amused herself this evening with the Family Herald & I read the Australasian until it was time to go to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening I read to the youngsters out of Peter [Parley?] & then heard Harry read a Page of Macauley. Went into the office & looked over some of the pages of my last year's Diary.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Castieau Print: Book
'It was while serving here [Willenslee at the farm of Mr Laidlaw] , in the eighteenth year of my age, that I first got a perusal of "The Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace", and "The Gentle Shepherd"; and though immoderately fond of them, yet (which you will think remarkable in one who hath since dabbled so much in verse) I could not help regretting deeply that they were not in prose, that every body might have understood them; or, I thought if they had been in the same kind of metre with the Psalms, I could have borne with them. The truth is, I made exceedingly slow progress in reading them. The little reading that I had learned I had nearly lost, and the Scottish dialect quite confounded me; so that, before I got to the end of a line, I had commonly lost the rhyme of the preceding one; and if I came to a triplet, a thing of which I had no conception, I commonly read to the foot of the page without perceiving that I had lost the rhyme altogether. I thought the author had been straitened for rhymes, and had just made a part of it do as well as he could without them. Thus, after I got through both works, I found myself much in the same predicament with the man of Eskdalemuir, who had borrowed Bailey's Dictionary from his neighbour. On returning it, the lender asked him what he thought of it. "I dinna ken man", replied he: "I have read it all through, but canna say that I understand it; it is the most confused book that ever I saw in my life!".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'It was while serving here [Willenslee at the farm of Mr Laidlaw] , in the eighteenth year of my age, that I first got a perusal of "The Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace", and "The Gentle Shepherd"; and though immoderately fond of them, yet (which you will think remarkable in one who hath since dabbled so much in verse) I could not help regretting deeply that they were not in prose, that every body might have understood them; or, I thought if they had been in the same kind of metre with the Psalms, I could have borne with them. The truth is, I made exceedingly slow progress in reading them. The little reading that I had learned I had nearly lost, and the Scottish dialect quite confounded me; so that, before I got to the end of a line, I had commonly lost the rhyme of the preceding one; and if I came to a triplet, a thing of which I had no conception, I commonly read to the foot of the page without perceiving that I had lost the rhyme altogether. I thought the author had been straitened for rhymes, and had just made a part of it do as well as he could without them. Thus, after I got through both works, I found myself much in the same predicament with the man of Eskdalemuir, who had borrowed Bailey's Dictionary from his neighbour. On returning it, the lender asked him what he thought of it. "I dinna ken man", replied he: "I have read it all through, but canna say that I understand it; it is the most confused book that ever I saw in my life!".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'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
'I return "The Moon and Sixpence" and your criticism. I agree with your criticism but I do not think that you have laid sufficient [? stress] on the positive qualities of the book. Any how, I read it with interest, and I think the Tahiti chapters are really very good. Also the man has a sardonic crude humour which pleaseth me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Young as he [Allan Cunnigham] was, I had heard of his name, although slightly, and, I think, seen one or two of his juvenile pieces. Of an elder brother of his, Thomas Mouncey, I had, previous to that, conceived a very high idea, and I always marvel how he could possibly put his poetical vein under lock and key, as he did all at once; for he certainly then bade fair to be the first of Scottish bards'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
'Young as he [Allan Cunningham] was, I had heard of his name, although slightly, and, I think, seen one or two of his juvenile pieces. Of an elder brother of his, Thomas Mouncey, I had, previous to that, conceived a very high idea, and I always marvel how he could possibly put his poetical vein under lock and key, as he did all at once; for he certainly then bade fair to be the first of Scottish bards'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
'I was astonished at the luxuriousness of his [Allan Cunningham's] fancy. it was boundless; but it was the luxury of a rich garden overrun with rampant weeds. he was likewise then a great mannerist in expression, and no man could mistake his verses for those of any other man. I remember seeing some imitations of Ossian by him, which I thought exceedingly good; and it struck me that that style of composition was peculiarly fitted for his vast and fervent imagination.
When Cromek's "Nithsdale and Galloway Relics" came to my hand, I at once discerned the strains of my friend, and I cannot describe with what sensations of delight I first heard Mr Morrison read the "Mermaid of Galloway", while at every verse I kept naming the author'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'I was astonished at the luxuriousness of his [Allan Cunningham's] fancy. it was boundless; but it was the luxury of a rich garden overrun with rampant weeds. he was likewise then a great mannerist in expression, and no man could mistake his verses for those of any other man. I remember seeing some imitations of Ossian by him, which I thought exceedingly good; and it struck me that that style of composition was peculiarly fitted for his vast and fervent imagination.
When Cromek's "Nithsdale and Galloway Relics" came to my hand, I at once discerned the strains of my friend, and I cannot describe with what sensations of delight I first heard Mr Morrison read the "Mermaid of Galloway", while at every verse I kept naming the author'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
'I was astonished at the luxuriousness of his [Allan Cunningham's] fancy. it was boundless; but it was the luxury of a rich garden overrun with rampant weeds. he was likewise then a great mannerist in expression, and no man could mistake his verses for those of any other man. I remember seeing some imitations of Ossian by him, which I thought exceedingly good; and it struck me that that style of composition was peculiarly fitted for his vast and fervent imagination.
When Cromek's "Nithsdale and Galloway Relics" came to my hand, I at once discerned the strains of my friend, and I cannot describe with what sensations of delight I first heard Mr Morrison read the "Mermaid of Galloway", while at every verse I kept naming the author'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Morrison Print: Book
'While Polly was away I read to Harry & Dotty one of the Ingoldsby's Legends'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'George Moore’s 'Avowals' is highly agreeable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'. . . There have been 2 supreme books since your regretted departure. G. Moore’s 'Avowals' and the letters of Chekhov . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Got home to tea & after tea listened to Polly who read a manuscript Miss McDermott wanted to get an opinion about. It was a very [?] thrilling story for young ladies, but no originality, nor yet much grit about it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Castieau Manuscript: Unknown
'In the evening I sat down to read "the Vicar's Daughter" & got so interested in it that I began to read tit bits aloud. Polly who was very tired got interested also & pressed me to go on reading I did so till nearly ten o'clock then we had some toddy & went to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening I played a game of bagatelle with Dotty & a game of Bezique with Sissy & with that & "Monte Christo" managed to get through the evening until Polly went to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'it was during this year [1884] that she began her translation of Amiel's "Journal".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[letter from Mrs Ward's brother William Arnold] I served on a jury at the Assizes last week - two murder cases and general horrors. I sat next to a Mr Amiel - prounounced "Aymiell" - a worthy Manchester tradesman; no doubt his ancestor was a Huguenot refugee. I had one of your vols. in my pocket, and showed him the passage about the family. He was greatly interested, and borrowed it. Returned it next day with the remark that it was "too religious for him". Alas divine philosophy!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Amiel Print: Book
Robert Southey to Thomas Davis Lamb, c. 18 June 1792: 'To see the manners of different countries is certainly of the utmost utility & what no university can teach — Homer may tell us of the method to cut up an ox three thousand years ago, or give a specimen of Penelopes politesses when she calls her maid bitch — or Ulysses decency when he threatens to leave Thersites in the situation of the man who cut off his hairs — but Homer can give no information either of men or manners as they are now — knowledge of the world is unattainable from books you have made a judicious choice.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Thomas Davis Lamb, c. 18 June 1792: 'To see the manners of different countries is certainly of the utmost utility & what no university can teach — Homer may tell us of the method to cut up an ox three thousand years ago, or give a specimen of Penelopes politesses when she calls her maid bitch — or Ulysses decency when he threatens to leave Thersites in the situation of the man who cut off his hairs — but Homer can give no information either of men or manners as they are now — knowledge of the world is unattainable from books you have made a judicious choice.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 4 December 1792: 'I have already said too much. I have an old poem of the heroic class before me. Pharonnida — one of the Cantos was finishd on the morning of the second battle of Newberry.
[Quotes several lines of "Pharonnida"]
This man would have written blank verse wonderfully well. he mistook his bent & in spite of an interesting story & a bold imagination Pharonnida is forgotten. you see he was a royalist...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'I have now one great satisfaction, which is reading Hume's "History". It entertains and instructs me. It elevates my mind and excites noble feelings of every kind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'David Hume and John Dryden are at present my companions'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'I employed the day in reading Hume's "History", which enlarged my views, filled me with great ideas, and rendered me happy'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'[letter from Mrs Ward to Gladstone] Thank you very much for the volume of "Gleanings" with its gracious inscription. I have read the article you point out to me with the greatest interest, and shall do the same with the others. Does not the difference between us on the question of sin come very much to this - that to you the great fact of the world and in this history of man, is [italics] sin [end italics] - to me, [italics] progress [end italics]? I remember Amiel somewhere speaks of the distinction as marking off two classes of thought, two orders of temperament.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 12-13 January 1793: 'Whether or not man has the stain of original sin I leave to theologians & metaphysicians. That education tends to give it him I do not even doubt. Rousseau's plan is too visionary — it supposes such unremitted attention in the tutor & such natural virtue in the pupil that I doubt its practability of this however when we read Emilius (an occupation I look forward to with pleasure) we will freely determine. Madame Brulerck (late Genlis) appears to me to have struck out a path equally new & excellent — the Emilius of L Homme de la Nature existed only in his imagination. but the two sons of Phillipe Egalitè are living proofs of her capacity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 31 March 1793: 'On Wednesday morning about eight o clock we sallied forth. my travelling equipage consisting of my diary — writing book, pen & ink silk handkerchief & Miltons defence. We reached Woodstock to breakfast where I was delighted with reading the Nottingham address for peace...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 4-20 April 1793: 'I have lately read the Man of Feeling — if you have never yet read it — do now from my recommendation — few books have ever pleasd me so painfully or so much — it is very strange that man should be delighted with the highest pain that can be produced — I even begin to think that both pain & pleasure exist only in idea but this must not be affirmed, the first twitch of the toothache or retrospective glance will undeceive me with a vengeance. It is Mackenzies writing if I am not mistaken the author of Julia de Roubigne & La Roche & Louisa Venoni in the Mirror.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'I proceeded on sad & solitary to Hounslow & there gave one shilling for Sir Launcelot Greaves to amuse me on the road.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'In the interim you shall have the remarks that occurrd upon reading Sir Launcelot Greaves on the road. Broad coarse humour seems to be the chief excellence of Smollet incidents almost too gross to please & too strange to be probable happen at every inn his heroes stop at & we are sure to find the sailors dialect & the clowns broad Scotch or broad Yorkshire in the place of humour. When he gets upon those subjects which perhaps none but Rousseau knew how to treat he rhapsodizes about charms angels & Hymens & thinks passion & nonsense mean the same. Some strange discovery of birth comes in at the end & all the dramatis personæ are tacked together at the altar. Yet with all these faults you are not soon tired of Smollets novels. They insensibly lead you on & if they do not come near the heart certainly play round the head. Humphrey Clinker strikes me as his best — the characters are less outrè & of course more natural. perhaps the epistolary form of it kept him in some bounds.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'In the interim you shall have the remarks that occurrd upon reading Sir Launcelot Greaves on the road. Broad coarse humour seems to be the chief excellence of Smollet incidents almost too gross to please & too strange to be probable happen at every inn his heroes stop at & we are sure to find the sailors dialect & the clowns broad Scotch or broad Yorkshire in the place of humour. When he gets upon those subjects which perhaps none but Rousseau knew how to treat he rhapsodizes about charms angels & Hymens & thinks passion & nonsense mean the same. Some strange discovery of birth comes in at the end & all the dramatis personæ are tacked together at the altar. Yet with all these faults you are not soon tired of Smollets novels. They insensibly lead you on & if they do not come near the heart certainly play round the head. Humphrey Clinker strikes me as his best — the characters are less outrè & of course more natural. perhaps the epistolary form of it kept him in some bounds.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'after I had supped, I reed of grenhame, and se went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
'and reed of Granhame tell supper time'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to his wife, 28 July 1850:
'After dinner I read some of the letters written by Charles Long and Lord Mulgrave to the late
Lord Lonsdale about the time I came into political life, which of course amused me. Lord
Mulgrave writes to Lord Lonsdale, in October, 1809, to say that he had written to offer the
Secretary of the Admiralty "to Mr. Croker who was active, quick, and intelligent, and who
might go off to Canning if he were not attended to." In this last point, at least, Lord Mulgrave
was mistaken, for before the offer was made me, I had already answered Mr Canning that I
could not take his view of the differences in the Cabinet.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
'and then I hard Margaret Rhodes reed of Mr Grenhm'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Rhodes Print: Book
'after, I hard Mr Rhodes Read of Grenhame, and then I praied and so went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
'after, I wrought, and hard Mr Rhodes read of Mr Grenhame, and so praied priuatly and then went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
'and hard Auerill reed of Grenham, and then praied'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Euerill Aske Print: Book
From John Wilson Croker's Note Book:
'On the 25th November 1825, I went by His Majesty's invitation to dine and sleep at the Royal
Lodge in Windsor Park. His Majesty had intended to have shown me the plantations and
improvements made during the autumn, but it snowed heavily in the night, and next morning
the weather was so exceedingly bad that there was no possibility of stirring out, and His
Majesty admitted me to his dressing-room, and conversed with me for a considerable time --
indeed all the morning. Mr. Moore's "Life of Sheridan" was lying on the table, and in allusion to
the variety of misstatements made in that work with regard to His Majesty's conduct, he took
up the book to point out to me particularly some of these errors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: King George IV and John Wilson Croker Print: Book
From John Wilson Croker's Note Books, 24 October 1825:
'The first time I ever saw [Germaine de Stael] was at dinner at Lord Liverpool's in Combe
Wood [...] During dinner she talked incessantly but admirably, but several of her apparently
spontaneous mots were borrowed or prepared. For instance, speaking of the relative states of
England and the Continent at that period, the high notion we had formed of the danger to the
world from Buonaparte's despotism, and the high opinion the Continent had formed of the
riches, strength and spirit of England; she insisted that these opinions were both just, and
added with an elegant elan, "Les etrangers sont la posterite contemporaine." This expression I
have since found in the journal of Camille Desmoulins.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
'She had been reading much of Chateaubriand and Mme de Beaumont during the winter, and had felt her imagination kindled by the relationship between the two'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'and from thence came home and reed of Grenhame, and hard Megg Rhodes read'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was
Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Arnold Print: Book
'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was
Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[report by Mrs Ward of the library at her Passmore Edwards Settlement] boys were sitting hunched up over "Masterman Ready", or the ever-adored "Robinson Crusoe"; girls were deep in "Anderson's [sic] Fairy Tales" or "The Cuckoo Clock", the little ones were reading Mr Stead's "Books for the Bairns" or looking at pictures'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: boys at the Passmore Edwards Settlement Print: Book
'[report by Mrs Ward of the library at her Passmore Edwards Settlement] boys were sitting hunched up over "Masterman Ready", or the ever-adored "Robinson Crusoe"; girls were deep in "Anderson's [sic] Fairy Tales" or "The Cuckoo Clock", the little ones were reading Mr Stead's "Books for the Bairns" or looking at pictures'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: girls at the Passmore Edwards Settlement Print: Book
'[Mrs Ward's average day at Stocks began] at 5.30 a.m, with the reading of Greek, or writing of letters, or much reading, for the reading of many books was still her greatest solace and delight. "For reading, I have been deep in Emile Faguet's "Dix-huitieme siecle", she wrote to Mrs Creighton in August, 1908, "comparing some of the essays in it with Sainte-Beuve, the reactionary with the Liberal; reading Raleigh's Wordsworth, and Homer and Horace as usual. If I could only give three straight months to Greek now I should be able to read most things easily, but I never get time enough - and there are breaks when one forgets what one knew before".
Greek literature meant more and more to her as the years went on, and though she could give so little time to it, the half-hour before breakfast which she devoted, with her husband, to Homer, or Euripides, or the "Agamemnon", became gradually more precious to her than any other fraction of the day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta ward Print: Book
'She was deep in the writings of Father Tyrrel, of Bergson and of William James during these years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to her daughter Janet Trevelyan] It is good to be alive on spring days like this! I have been reading William James on this very point - the worth of being alive - and before that the Emmaus story and the appearance to the Maries'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 30 October -7 November 1793: 'In this interval however my baggage has arrived & no poor devil at the foot of the gallows was more overjoyd at a reprieve than I was at the recovery. I have begun to transcribe Joan of Arc — read Enfield History of Philosophy, Gillies History of Greece V.2nd & begun Adam Smith since my return so you see Bristol does not make me idle. I may not form a taste here but I can increase a stock of useful knowledge and you know the prettiest nosegays are formed of various flowers.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 3-4 November 1793: 'I am reading Adam Smith on the Wealth of Nations.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 12-15 November 1793: 'I have been reading Courtney Melmoths Liberal Opinions to-day. I know not if you have ever read the book — but it contains the history of Benignus — some parts of which pleasd me much. a young man sets out in life with this principle. To be good is to be happy. of course he becomes miserable by practising or rather by attempting to practise theoretical principles of universal benevolence. Men of feeling (I hate to use the word but no other expresses the meaning) men of feeling are exposed to a thousand pangs which the fool escapes because his faculties are too gross to comprehend them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 12-15 December 1793: 'Lucan & Beccaria dei delitti & delle pene are my pocket companions. the republican Bard & the philosopher of humanity. Lucan pleases me more than any author in despite of his numerous faults. his ninth book is wonderful & when I say that he has not fallen short of Cato in his character of that illustrious stoic panegyric can go no farther. the character of Erictho is wonderfully imagined. how would Lucan have excelled himself in the death of Cato & of Caesar! I will venture to assert that had he finishd his Pharsalia — it would have been the noblest monument of human genius. Mays supplement disappointed me. I expected more from his abilities — forgetting that the sycophant of a Stuart was ill qualified to handle the pen of Lucan.
Beccaria pleases me much. I had long been self-convinced that the punishment of death was as improper as inhuman. Godwin carries this idea farther. so far I agree with him that society makes the crime & then punishes it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 12-15 December 1793: 'Lucan & Beccaria dei delitti & delle pene are my pocket companions. the republican Bard & the philosopher of humanity. Lucan pleases me more than any author in despite of his numerous faults. his ninth book is wonderful & when I say that he has not fallen short of Cato in his character of that illustrious stoic panegyric can go no farther. the character of Erictho is wonderfully imagined. how would Lucan have excelled himself in the death of Cato & of Caesar! I will venture to assert that had he finishd his Pharsalia — it would have been the noblest monument of human genius. Mays supplement disappointed me. I expected more from his abilities — forgetting that the sycophant of a Stuart was ill qualified to handle the pen of Lucan.
Beccaria pleases me much. I had long been self-convinced that the punishment of death was as improper as inhuman. Godwin carries this idea farther. so far I agree with him that society makes the crime & then punishes it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c 26 December 1793: 'I take Milton to have introduced this kind of alcaics into the English language in his translation of Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa &c. it is since used most elegantly by Collins Mrs Barbauld — in the gent. of Devon & Cornwalls poems — & by my favourite Dr Sayers — so here I have strong authority.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Sir Robert Peel to John Wilson Croker, 29 September 1833:
'Strange as it may seem, I have not read nor have I seen the Ministerial pamphlet. I saw some extracts from it in the newspapers, which sated my appetite for such reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Robert Peel Print: Newspaper
'. . . and I wish to tell you that it was the first chapters of 'A Mummer’s Wife' which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district that I had blindly inhabited for over twenty years. You are indeed the father of all my Five Towns books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Pardon my forwardness, but I must tell you I think that 'Streaks' is another what-I-call-a-book. In fact I should say it is better than 'Impressions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Pardon my forwardness, but I must tell you I think that 'Streaks' is another what-I-call-a-book. In fact I should say it is better than 'Impressions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I have read 'Roasted Angels' and I now return it. It is a very unusual and even a very remarkable play. It is full of wit and fancy and most admirably written. I should like to know who H. Hamer is. He, or she, must have been writing for quite some little time.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett
I have not read 'La Garçonne'. I got about half way through it and then I had to give up, not because of its indecency but because it its dullness, poorness, and badness. The indecency is only episodic, but I have never read such indecency in the work of a reputable author published by a reputable firm. . . . It has also to be remembered that M. Margueritte has written, whether alone or in collaboration with his late brother, several novels of genuine importance, such as 'Le Désastre'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I have not read 'La Garçonne'. I got about half way through it and then I had to give up, not because of its indecency but because it its dullness, poorness, and badness. The indecency is only episodic, but I have never read such indecency in the work of a reputable author published by a reputable firm. . . . It has also to be remembered that M. Margueritte has written, whether alone or in collaboration with his late brother, several novels of genuine importance, such as 'Le Désastre'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Mr Edminson then read a paper on Mrs Besant's autobiography. Some discussion folowed. Mr Morland gave a summary of Fairbairn's Christ in Modern Theology which also excited some remark.
Mrs W.H. Smith also commented on some of the points in F. Harrison's Meaning of History in which she was joined by other members'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Adelaide Morland Manuscript: Unknown
'then I wrought and hard Mr Rhodes read of Grenhame'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Charles Arbuthnot to John Wilson Croker, 7 December 1848:
'That I had the greatest regard and affection for my departed friend Lord Castlereagh is most true. But I have not read his brother's memoirs of him, though I happened to see the first two volumes; but I did no more than just look at them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Arbuthnot Print: Book
John Gibson Lockhart to John Wilson Croker, 12 January 1849, on Macaulay's recently-published History of England:
'He has written some very brilliant essays [...] but he has written [italics]no history[end italics] [...] his bitter hatred of the Church of England all through is evident; it is, I think, the only very strong feeling in the book [...]
'Then his treatment of the Whig criminals Sidney and Russell, is very shabby [...]
'You will tell me by-and-bye what you think of this. I own that I read the book with breathless interest, in spite of occasional indignations, but I am now reading Grote's new volume of his "History of Greece," and, upon my word, I find the contrast of his calm, stately, tranquil narrative very soothing. In short, I doubt if Macaulay's book will go down as a standard addition to our [italics]historical[end italics] library, though it must always keep a high place among the specimens of English rhetoric.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gibson Lockhart Print: Book
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849:
'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries.
'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854:
'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
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: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lyndhurst Print: Book
'After priuat praers I made me readie, and then went to work and hard Mr Rhides read of Latimers sarmons and some other thinges'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
'after I Came home I hard Mr Ardington Read of Grenhame vnto me'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Ardington Print: Book
'this day it pleased god to blesse my reading and medetation, and, in the afternone my hearinge of Mr Vrpith: after, I Came home and Caused Mr Stillington to Read of Grenhame, and, after, I went to priuatt readinge and praier'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Stillington Print: Book
'In H. James " Little Tour of France" (which I will send to Ada [Galsworthy] to take west with her for leisurely reading) there occurs a simple sentence which came forcibly to my mind. He had been looking at some picture in a provincial gallery--and he says: All this is painted in a manner to bring tears into one's eyes. I don't quote literally--(the book is downstairs where it is dark and I feel too fagged out doing nothing to move from my chair)--but that's just it!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I wrote a fatherly letter to Hughie & told him the error of his ways & also that I didn’t like 'The Cath'. well enough even to say anything about it to him at all. . .
I had the happy idea of reading the McLauchlin trial, one of the most captivating of the Hodge series, & found it full of small useful ‘sordid’ details of daily life in a small house. The old grandfather (87) trying to get into bed with the servant, & refusing to go away when she wanted to make water (after he’d tried to murder her). A1 stuff. . . .
Look here, I’ve exchanged books with W. B. Maxwell, & read 'Spinster of This Parish'. The opening of it is a masterly exposition of narrative - the sort of thing Hughie would like to do but can’t. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I am obliged for your letter and the enclosures. I return all the latter, together with my report and adjudication. . . . In my opinion the three best contributions, in order of merit, are: 1. Tommy Fiddler By “Muda” [may have been Lapage] 2. From Bondage By “Cinna” [Geoffrey Bullough] 3. The Best Policy By Kate Simmonds.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
The Lawrence is magnificent. Pity he is falling more & more into the trick of repeating a word or a phrase. It irritates the reader & enfeebles the sturff. Also the connection between trees & human beings is not very strong. But really this article is the goods. The Tomlinson article is also magnificent. Not better stuff than this is being done. The K.M. story is excellently characteristic. Mr. Joiner is good; it halts at the beginning. . . . I think the number is simply splendid—especially for a first number. & you are to be seriously & gravely congratulated upon it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
The Lawrence is magnificent. Pity he is falling more & more into the trick of repeating a word or a phrase. It irritates the reader & enfeebles the sturff. Also the connection between trees & human beings is not very strong. But really this article is the goods. The Tomlinson article is also magnificent. Not better stuff than this is being done. The K.M. story is excellently characteristic. Mr. Joiner is good; it halts at the beginning. . . . I think the number is simply splendid—especially for a first number. & you are to be seriously & gravely congratulated upon it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
The Lawrence is magnificent. Pity he is falling more & more into the trick of repeating a word or a phrase. It irritates the reader & enfeebles the sturff. Also the connection between trees & human beings is not very strong. But really this article is the goods. The Tomlinson article is also magnificent. Not better stuff than this is being done. The K.M. story is excellently characteristic. Mr. Joiner is good; it halts at the beginning. . . . I think the number is simply splendid—especially for a first number. & you are to be seriously & gravely congratulated upon it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1 October 1795, 'Of Citoyenne Rolands appeal I have read the first only. at present the politics of France puzzle me — there is little ability at the head of affairs — Louvet may mean well — but the decree of 5th Fructidor is an oppressive one. Lanjuinais is almost the only man of whom I entertain a tolerable opinion. of all possible villains what think you of Barrere? have you read Helen Williams’ letters & Louvet account of his escape?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'I am obliged to Nares for a very handsome review. it is my intention next year to write a tragedy. the subject from the Observer. the Portuguese accused before the Inquisition of incest & muder. read the story.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'I have got an old translation of Montaignes essays & hugely delighted am I with this honest egotism! buy Cottles poems for the mans sake — I love him so well that I would have you love whatever comes from him — read nothing but the monody — omne ignotum pro magnifico — & you will think him a first rate poet. it is a most masterly composition.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'Mr Morland then read a paper on Wm Morris & his writings & gave illustrative readings assisted by Mrs Morland'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold J. Morland Manuscript: Unknown
'Mr Morland then read a paper on Wm Morris & his writings & gave illustrative readings assisted by Mrs Morland'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold J. Morland Print: Book
'Mr Morland then read a paper on Wm Morris & his writings & gave illustrative readings assisted by Mrs Morland'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Adelaide Morland Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 24 February - 2 March 1796 'Timothy Dwight an American publishd an heroic poem on the Conquest of Canaan in 1785. I had heard of it & long wishd to read it in vain — but now the American minister — (a good humourd man whose poetry is worse than any thing except his criticisms) has lent me the book. there certainly is some merit in the poem — but when Colonel Humphreys speaks of it he will not allow me to put in a word in defence of John Milton. if I had written upon this subject I should have been terribly tempted to take part with the Canaanites, for whom I cannot help feeling a kind of brotherly compassion.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23-27 April, 1796 'The Poetry of Spain & Portugal wants taste, & generally, feeling. I should have thought Camoens deficient in feelings if I had only read his Lusiad — but the Sonnets of Camoens are very beautiful. those given by Hayley in his notes to the Essay on Epic P. tho among the best are but a wretched specimen to the English reader. the translations are detestable — & the originals so printed as to be unintelligible. I bought some ballads in Spain in remembrance of Rio Verde — but they prove bad enough. but six months after my return I will tell you more.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23-27 April, 1796 'The Poetry of Spain & Portugal wants taste, & generally, feeling. I should have thought Camoens deficient in feelings if I had only read his Lusiad — but the Sonnets of Camoens are very beautiful. those given by Hayley in his notes to the Essay on Epic P. tho among the best are but a wretched specimen to the English reader. the translations are detestable — & the originals so printed as to be unintelligible. I bought some ballads in Spain in remembrance of Rio Verde — but they prove bad enough. but six months after my return I will tell you more.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
George Grote to George W. Norman, 26 June 1816:
'From England, in 1816, it is delightful to retire, even to Italy in its most disorganized periods. I have not yet arrived at Sismondi's second volume, as I have employed myself in deducing a short narrative of Italian transactions, from the invasion of the Lombards [...] I have always found that, in order to make myself master of a subject, the best mode was to sit down and give an account of it to myself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
George Grote to George W. Norman (April 1817):
'I send you down the best "Lucretius" I have [...] Though the reasoning is generally indistinct, and in some places unintelligible, yet in those passages where he indulges his vein of poetry without reserve, the sublimity of his conceptions and the charm and elegance of his language are such as I have hardly ever seen equalled [...] I likewise send you the Tragedies attributed to Seneca, which I think I have heard you express an inclination to read. I have read one or two of them, and they appeared to me not above mediocrity. ****
'I am now studying Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." His reasonings on the subject of morals are wonderfully just and penetrating, and I feel anxious, as I read on, for a more intimate acquaintance with him. Hume's Essays, some of which I have likewise read lately, do not improve, in my view, on further knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
'The writings of this remarkable man [Jeremy Bentham] were now beginning to tell upon the thinking portion of young public men and lawyers [...] Grote caught the infection with readiness, and not only became a reader of Bentham's works on Jurisprudence, Reform of the Law, and Political Philosophy, but he also frequented the society of the recluse author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (September 1818):
'Rose at 7 [...] Sat reading Smith's "Wealth of Nations" until 8.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Rose at 8. Read once again the "Dissertation on Virtue" which is subjoined to Butler's "Analogy" with very great pleasure [...] After breakfast I opened the second volume of the "Wealth of Nations" and read the first chapter on the employment and accumulation of capital stock. With the exception of a few points, chiefly I believe of phraseology, I agree with him in all he says.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed.
'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed.
'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819):
'January, 1819.
'Sunday -- Rose about 9. After reading Ricardo for some little time, I set to and wrote down some stuff upon Foreign Trade [...] At 1 I mounted my horse and rode to the Park [...] Returned to dinner at 6, very tired; read some of Lessing's "Laocoon" [...] After tea set to at Ricardo again, but not finding my attention sufficiently alive, I dropt him, and looked over Melon's "Essai sur le Commerce," which I had had some curiosity to see. I found it the stupidest and most useless volume I ever opened.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Unknown
'F.J. Edminson read an able and interesting paper on "The Tempest".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning, not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning,not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The programme on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham [sic] was as follows.
Reading of the poem by Mrs Edminson and Mrs Rawlings
Paper on the life of the poet by Mrs Smith
Song from Omar by Mr Goadby
Paper on Fitzgerald's Life and Omar's Philosophy by C.E. Stansfield
Notes on Legalliennes Rhubaiyat [sic] by A Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: 'Somebody (a painter I believe — Tresham?) has [MS torn] a poem called the Sea Sick Minstrel lately. tis a villainous subject.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'Rondeau
On reading a work by M. Auguste Maquet entitled Les Vertes Feuilles.
See, "The Green Leaves", I leave them here uncut, −
Drop them, recoiling, at the first debut −
Lay down the book and with superb disdain,
Smiling but sold, go on my way again
Through life’s green vale, remarking simply “Zut!”
Devoid of style, of fable and of smut,
How, how, shall I portray its dullness? − Tut!
See for yourself − see, whelmed in grief and pain, −
See "The Green Leaves"!
Thus one, sweet-toothed, yet of a tender gut,
Who sees before him many peaches put
In some tall cafe by the shores of Seine,
Schools his bold heart to choose and to refrain:
The ripe he eats with gluttonous ardour − but,
See, the green leaves!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Katherine Mansfield is a cunt, but I share a hell of a lot of common characteristics with her. I should like to read her letters again. The trouble with her seems to be that she luxuriated in emotion far too much. Admittedly the head is an evil thing & I'm a tied-up bugger, but anyone who can spew out their dearest and closest thoughts, hopes, and loves to J. M. Murry must be a bit of an anus.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin
'We rowed past these [floating islands of the Dal Lake] on our way to the Shalimar Gardens, already so well known to me from reading "Lalla Rookh".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 1-7 January, 1797: '...the view is bounded by the accursed smoke of London. methinks like Camoens I could dub it Babylon & write lamentations for the “Sion” of my birth place, having like him no reason to regret the past [words scored out] except that it is not the present. it is the country I want. a field thistle is to me worth all the flowers of Covent Garden.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
'I kept my hours conscientiously, but when I had no work to do I read continuously. I read parts of "The Times", the "Standard" and the "Morning Post" ever day. The theatrical and policitcal news interested me more than anything else. The study was lined with book shelves, and besides all the classical writers there was a large section filled with the works of French dramatists. I read several plays by Marivaux, and found, to my astonishment, that a serial I had read in the "Girls' Own Paper" had its origin in one of his plays. Encouraged by this, I wrote a play which also derived from a play by Marivaux.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: '...the French never can have a good epic poem till they have republicanized their language; it appears to me a thing impossible in their metres; & for the prose of Fenelon Florian & Bitaubè — I find it peculiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read the works of Florian aloud; his stories are very interesting & well conducted, but in reading them I have been felt obliged to simplify as I read & omit most of the similes & apostrophes. they disgusted me & I felt ashamed to pronounce them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this stile, there is a melancholy obscurity in the history of Ossian & of almost his heroes that must please — ninety nine readers in an hundred cannot understand Ossian & therefore they like the book. I read it always with renewed pleasure.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: '...the French never can have a good epic poem till they have republicanized their language; it appears to me a thing impossible in their metres; & for the prose of Fenelon Florian & Bitaubè — I find it peculiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read the works of Florian aloud; his stories are very interesting & well conducted, but in reading them I have been felt obliged to simplify as I read & omit most of the similes & apostrophes. they disgusted me & I felt ashamed to pronounce them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this stile, there is a melancholy obscurity in the history of Ossian & of almost his heroes that must please — ninety nine readers in an hundred cannot understand Ossian & therefore they like the book. I read it always with renewed pleasure.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 28 July 1797: 'Since you left me I have been reading the Saint Louis of Le Moyne: an epic poem in 18 books. Le Moyne had genius — but he has introduced the most incredibly ridiculous thing in his poem. Louis is wounded with a poisoned arrow, for which there is no earthly cure, but he is healed by the waters of a fountain in which the Virgin Mary had, on the way to Egypt, washed her little boys clouts!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 9 August 1797: 'I have only seen the former parts of the Pursuits of Literature. the author appeared to me to have the malevolence of Gifford without his wit. the lines on Darwin were however uncommonly good. if he has wiped me with civility he will serve the book, & the advertisement makes amends for the censure.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
I will strive to let you have a note about André Maurois’s 'Ariel ou la vie de Shelley'. It is a very bright thing.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 12 November 1797: 'I know that our tastes differ much in poetry. & yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb. I believe you know his history — & the dreadful death of his mother'. Southey then quotes several lines beginning: 'Thou shouldst have longer lived, & to the grave...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 14 December 1797: 'Your parcel & its contents arrived safe. I found it on my return from a library belonging to the dissenters — in Redcross Street; from which, by permission of Dr Towers one of the Trustees, I brought back books of great importance for my Maid of Orleans. a hackney coach horse turned into a field of grass falls not more eagerly to a breakfast which lasts the whole day, than I attacked the old folios so respectably covered with dust. I begin to like dirty rotten binding, & whenever I get among books pass by the gilt coxcombs & yet disturb the spiders. — But you shall hear what I have got. a Latin poem in four long books upon Joan of Arc. very bad — but it gives me a quaint note or two — & Valerandus Valerius is a fine name for a quotation. a small quarto of the Life of the Maid, chiefly extracts from forgotten authors, printed at Paris. 1612. with a print of her on horseback, & another on foot in the same dress & attitude as the one I have. A sketch of her life, by Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis — bless the length of his erudite name! — this is short but the most valuable of all, inasmuch as I have his authority for her prediction of her death — & that he has given me matter for a noble speech in Book 3. (I write in the spirit of prophecy for its nobleness.) by saying that her first vision was in a ruined church, where the weather drove her to pass the night with her flock. there are more treasures in this library — & I go there again on Monday next.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 14 December 1797: 'Your parcel & its contents arrived safe. I found it on my return from a library belonging to the dissenters — in Redcross Street; from which, by permission of Dr Towers one of the Trustees, I brought back books of great importance for my Maid of Orleans. a hackney coach horse turned into a field of grass falls not more eagerly to a breakfast which lasts the whole day, than I attacked the old folios so respectably covered with dust. I begin to like dirty rotten binding, & whenever I get among books pass by the gilt coxcombs & yet disturb the spiders. — But you shall hear what I have got. a Latin poem in four long books upon Joan of Arc. very bad — but it gives me a quaint note or two — & Valerandus Valerius is a fine name for a quotation. a small quarto of the Life of the Maid, chiefly extracts from forgotten authors, printed at Paris. 1612. with a print of her on horseback, & another on foot in the same dress & attitude as the one I have. A sketch of her life, by Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis — bless the length of his erudite name! — this is short but the most valuable of all, inasmuch as I have his authority for her prediction of her death — & that he has given me matter for a noble speech in Book 3. (I write in the spirit of prophecy for its nobleness.) by saying that her first vision was in a ruined church, where the weather drove her to pass the night with her flock. there are more treasures in this library — & I go there again on Monday next.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Walter Scott quotes four lines from 'My Jo Janet' in Allan Ramsay's 'Tea-Table Miscellany'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
'From Axel Munthe's "San Michele": "Imprisoned monkeys, so long as they are in company, live on the whole a supportable life. They are so busy finding out all that is going on inside and outside their cage, so full of intrigue and gossip, that they hardly have time to be unhappy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Newspaper
'I read "My Greatest Adventure" by Malcolm Campbell. While treasure hunting on the Cocos, he mentions as typical of the hardships they had to endure the fact that he had to eat a boiled egg without a spoon. This makes us laugh like drains.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
'I get "Lorna Doone". It is a good book so far.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
'I finish reading "The Vicar of Wakefield". The world has changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 150'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of two lines from 'On a Laurel, cut down by a Hatchet. Merivale', beginning 'Oh! where was Phoebus, when the God of arms/ Dared to profane his Daphne's virgin charms.' (unidentified).
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Translation of Madame la Countess de Genlis invocation at the beginning of her own history. London 1825'. This begins, 'If I were conscious in my heart of the slightest resentment - of any rancour against the persons of whom I am to speak...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'March 1837'. Transcription of various of Madame de Sévigné's letters.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819):
'Between 4 and 5 read Mr. Galton's "Chart on the Late Depreciation of Bank Notes" [...] During
the evening I read some more of Hemsterhuis'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Unknown
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819):
'[after 11pm] Read Hemsterhuis for an hour -- some beautiful passages on religion. Bed at 12.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Unknown
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819):
'Rose at 9. Breakfasted and read some of Hemsterhuis, "Sur la Divinite." my brother Joseph
came to town and interrupted me. Between 4 and 5 read the "Edinburgh Review" on Mill's
British India, which is excellent [...] read with considerable attention some more of Hemsterhuis'
"Sur la Divinite."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Unknown
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Of M. De Glessir, Tutor to the young Marquis Grignan (Admirable advice!), "The Chevalier is of more use to the dear boy, than can easily be imagined; he is continually striking the full chords of honour and respectability, and takes an interest in his affairs, for which you cannot sufficiently thank him, he enters into everything, attends to every thing, and wishes the Marquis to regulate his own accounts, and incur no necessary expenses..." M. de Sevigne to Mad de Grignan Letter DCCCXXII. Vol. VL.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin, Saturday 13 March 1819:
'Rose at 1/2 past 7, after a sleepless night. Read some of Hume's Essay on the Academical
Philosophy [...] Between 4 and 5 read some more of Kant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin, Thursday 25 March 1819:
'Between 4 and 5 I read some of Kant's Prolegomena [...] went up to Palsgrave Place; drank tea
with [Charles] Cameron; we conversed about Kant, and read some of Bentham upon Legislation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote and Charles Cameron Print: Unknown
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Several pages are transcribed from the 'Diary of an Ennuyee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon] Print: Book
'Mrs Edminson then read an interesting paper on Lecky's Map of Life'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'Mr W. H. Smith then read a paper on the life of John Ruskin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'The study of Metaphysics and Mental Philosophy in general had always been one of the
favourite pursuits of George Grote. In the winter of 1829, a small group of students in this
branch of knowledge resumed the habit begun two years previous, of meeting at George
Grote's house on two mornings of the week, at half past eight A.M.
'They read Mr. Mill's last work, "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind," Hartley on
Man, Dutrieux's Logic, Whately's works, &c., discussing as they proceeded.. Mr. John Stuart
Mill, Mr. Charles Buller, Mr. Eyton Tooke [...] Mr. John Arthur Roebuck, Mr. G. J. Graham, Mr.
Grant, and Mr. W. G. Prescott formed part of this class. Mr. George Grote was always present
at their meetings, which lasted an hour, or an hour and a half, as time served.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote, J. S. Mill, Eyton Tooke, Charles Buller, J. A. Roebuck, G. J. Johnson and others Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Mrs Hannah More says in her "Essay on Saint Paul," that he had the loftiness of Isaiah, the devotion of David, the pathos of Jeremiah, the vehemence of Ezekiel, the didactic gravity of Moses...' etc. Various other parts of the Essay are transcribed in the next 3 pages.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon]
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Maxims of Bishop Middleton'. Various maxims follow, including 'Keep your temper', 'Employ leisure in study,' and [doubled underlined] 'remember the final account.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon]
George Grote to Sir William Molesworth (c.1838-40):
'Have you read Comte's "Traite de Philosophie Positive," of which a third volume has just been
published? It seems a work full of profound and original thinking [...] I am sorry to say,
however, that I do not find in it the solution of those perplexities respecting the fundamental
principles of geometry which I have never yet been able to untie to my own satisfaction. Nor
can I at all tolerate the unqualified manner in which he strikes out morals and metaphysics
from the list of positive sciences.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
'The consideration of the Life & work of Wm Morris was opened by the reading of a short account of the Life by Mrs Goadby in which his many activities were passed in review. After some comments Mrs Edminson read the opening verses to the Earthly Paradise the idle singer of an empty day. Miss Goadby followed with an excellent paper entitled "Some Illustrations of Wm Morris's love of nature" which showed a wide knowledge and keen appreciation of the author's works both in prose & verse. After some appreciative remarks Mrs Ridges read a paper on Wm Morris & Socialism in which it was pointed out that the socialism was the direct & logical outcome of his artistic attitude. [this argument is summarised] Some discussion folowed & was hardly concluded at ten o clock when the Chairman called upon A. Rawlings for some remarks on the art of Wm Morris. In two or three minutes a very incomplete statement of Morris's methods & aims was made & a very pleasant evening was brought to a close'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
'The consideration of the Life & work of Wm Morris was opened by the reading of a short account of the Life by Mrs Goadby in which his many activities were passed in review. After some comments Mrs Edminson read the opening verses to the Earthly Paradise the idle singer of an empty day. Miss Goadby followed with an excellent paper entitled "Some Illustrations of Wm Morris's love of nature" which showed a wide knowledge and keen appreciation of the author's works both in prose & verse. After some appreciative remarks Mrs Ridges read a paper on Wm Morris & Socialism in which it was pointed out that the socialism was the direct & logical outcome of his artistic attitude. [this argument is summarised] Some discussion folowed & was hardly concluded at ten o clock when the Chairman called upon A. Rawlings for some remarks on the art of Wm Morris. In two or three minutes a very incomplete statement of Morris's methods & aims was made & a very pleasant evening was brought to a close'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges Print: Book
'The consideration of the Life & work of Wm Morris was opened by the reading of a short account of the Life by Mrs Goadby in which his many activities were passed in review. After some comments Mrs Edminson read the opening verses to the Earthly Paradise the idle singer of an empty day. Miss Goadby followed with an excellent paper entitled "Some Illustrations of Wm Morris's love of nature" which showed a wide knowledge and keen appreciation of the author's works both in prose & verse. After some appreciative remarks Mrs Ridges read a paper on Wm Morris & Socialism in which it was pointed out that the socialism was the direct & logical outcome of his artistic attitude. [this argument is summarised] Some discussion folowed & was hardly concluded at ten o clock when the Chairman called upon A. Rawlings for some remarks on the art of Wm Morris. In two or three minutes a very incomplete statement of Morris's methods & aims was made & a very pleasant evening was brought to a close'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Goadby Print: Book
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Pollard Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Goadby Print: Book
'Mrs Ridges read an interesting paper on The Solitary Summer fully descriptive of the charm of the book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges Print: Book
'F. Edminson read an able review of Morley's Life of Cromwell and A. Rawlings read a ['charming' inserted in another hand and crossed out] paper on Wm Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book
'F. Edminson read an able review of Morley's Life of Cromwell and A. Rawlings read a ['charming' inserted in another hand and crossed out] paper on Wm Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
I have a collection of 8 short stories of hers, [Pauline Smith] all, in my opinion, fine. Middleton Murry would have published them in a small volume, but his publishing enterprise has not come to anything. I have been wondering whether you would care to publish them. . . . I ought to mention that Miss Smith is now at work on a novel, which, so far as I have read it, is at least as fine as the best things in the short stories.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
I have a collection of 8 short stories of hers, [Pauline Smith] all, in my opinion, fine. Middleton Murry would have published them in a small volume, but his publishing enterprise has not come to anything. I have been wondering whether you would care to publish them. . . . I ought to mention that Miss Smith is now at work on a novel, which, so far as I have read it, is at least as fine as the best things in the short stories.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
'I finish reading "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell - A most remarkable book. I enjoyed it very much, but what a little bitch Scarlet O'Hara is! Vic's invariable comment is: "What a wonderful book for a WOMAN to have written!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
'Its really good of you to have sent "Faith". Your magic never grows less; each of your prefaces is a gem and my enthusiasm is roused always to the highest pitch by your amazing prose. I have already read (the book arrived but two hours ago) "The Idealist" and "The Saint". Admirable in conception and feeling are these two sketches.[...] This afternoon I shall sit down with the book and forget my miseries in the delight of your art so strong and human.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Reading "Forbidden Journey" written by Ella Maillart in 1936, I am interest in her remarks about our friend, the enemy: "Once again, I saw the military supreme, not only over civilians of their own country who often have different ideas, but also over the natives who are full of hatred for their brutal masters..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
George Grote to Harriet Grote (wife), 14 October 1853:
'I immediately sent for the "Edinburgh Review," and have read [italics]the[end italics] article
with much satisfaction and even delight.
'It seems to me executed in John's best manner [...] It is certainly complimentary to me, in a
measure which I fear will bring down upon me the hand of the reactionary Nemesis.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical
'In the course of the summer of this year [1856] an article appeared in the pages of the
"Quarterly Review," upon Mr. Grote's "History of Greece," taken collectively as a complete
work.
'Among the numerous tributes which flowed in upon the author after the publication of the final
volume, I recollect his being unusually impressed by the perusal of this paper in the
"Quarterly." Not only at the time, but on repeated occasions, would he avow the lively
satisfaction he had derived from perceiving how thoroughly his views and arguments had been
understood.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical
George Grote to John Stuart Mill (October 1857):
'I have looked at W. Humboldt's book: it is written in a very excellent spirit, and deserves every
mark of esteem for the frankness with which it puts forward free individual development as an
end, also for the low comparative estimate which it gives of passive imitation and submission.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
'Began reading through the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" today. Another ten years project, at least. My odyssey through Chambers's "Twentieth Cent. Dictionary" seems to be within a year of completion - that will make it nine years - one less than my calculated time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Mr M- along. I lay back and listened to all his plans for the regeneration of Scotland - including the one in which he is to be editor of a terrifically high-brow and inter-stellar-national review. Then he read me potential journalism of his own and a synopsis of a short story which ought never to have been even a synopsis - and after he had filled my room full of cigarette smoke he "swep out" with a smile on his face'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Sheet
'An historical moment - completed my odyssey through Chambers's "Dictionary" - I began 8 years and 8 months ago. Have still 30 pages of supplement - but last night saw the completion of the dictionary proper.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Finished "Capital" - the cenotaph of its subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'About 3.30, C.M.G. came striding in, resplendent in full Highland rig-out ... He had a number of MSS with him and read part of his "Red Scotland", which sounded quite convincing. As he read, he supported himself at an angle over my table, the angle increased with the reading until he was literally dropping cigarette ash and dialectical materialism all about me. I thought it might relieve the congestion if he removed his plaid - but discovered that it was part of the regalia.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Murray Grieve Manuscript: Unknown
'Finished reading Murray's "Keats and Shakespeare" again. This work to me was, and still is, a critical masterpiece: I can think of no other study - of this nature - carried through so consistently and with so keen an awareness: it is a classic of imaginative sensitivity.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Having read again Housman's "More Poems", one is forced to the conclusion that his philosophic attitude had been definitely exploited in his previous two collections; and his self-awareness is shown in limiting his work to these.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'It was an exhilarating coincidence that my re-reading of H.T.'s "As It Was" should follow just after I had made my diary entry on the "spiritual" type of women suggested by Mrs X.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Such a shocked surprise came to me the pther day on opening T.F. Henderson's book on "Scottish Vernacular Literature" to find out what he had to say by way of comment on Hume's "The Day Estivall". I had just been reading this poem again - a poem to which I am often persuaded to return when prompted by a lovely day - and, having its freshness so vividly in my mind, it was all the more astonishing to be confronted by Henderson's contemptuous aside: "...'The Day Estivall', if absurdly prosaic, is occasionally picturesque."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Read a little book of verse entitled "Cage Without Grievance", by a "modern Scot", W.S. Graham. Montgomerie's gift; and inscribed on it by him is Marston's line: "I feare Gods onely know what Poets meane" - certainly applies to Graham's stuff.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Finished reading Amiel's "Journal Intime" today. How easy for a critic to lapse into a patronising attitude towards this most sensitive man who was so critical of himself. But it is Amiel who reveals the world's malformities in the undistorted mirror of his self-revelation'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'Re-read MacDiarmid's "Scot's Unbound" - some fine lyrics; but the "thoct" in the lengthy poems confounds the poetry; why must Grieve so often use his verse as a shop-window for displaying curiosities of erudition?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
'It is very difficult to assess the poetry of De la Mare. Compared with Davies and Housman (for example), he is the most comprehensive poet of the three, and has definitely created a world of imagination; but Davies and Housman have a reality in their poems which is often absent from De la Mare, and in the optimism of the one and the fatalism of the other we are ever conscious of listening to human utterance, the warmth of the flesh is in the words.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
George Grote to John Stuart Mill (January 1862):
'I have just been reading your three articles in "Fraser's Magazine," upon the Principle of Utility, having waited until I could peruse them all de suite. I consider the essay altogether a most useful and capital performance.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical
'Sir William Gomm served for some time in India, and indeed had been commander of the forces there. Being at Simla, he occupied himself with the study of Grote's "History of Greece," having got hold of the first five volumes. He was so absorbed in the book, that he made copious notes upon portions of it; which I have since had the privilege of reading, and Mr. Grote also looked through them. The observations and comments indicate an attentive following of the author's text, especially in connection with the military incidents, on which Sir W.'s remarks are pertinent and even instructive.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grote
'Sir William Gomm served for some time in India, and indeed had been commander of the forces there. Being at Simla, he occupied himself with the study of Grote's "History of Greece," having got hold of the first five volumes. He was so absorbed in the book, that he made copious notes upon portions of it; which I have since had the privilege of reading, and Mr. Grote also looked through them. The observations and comments indicate an attentive following of the author's text, especially in connection with the military incidents, on which Sir W.'s remarks are pertinent and even instructive.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 23 September 1802:
'I am now going, my dearest G. (depending upon your secrecy), to transcribe for you some of George's verses, which he gave me last night. Some lines are very good and some very bad, but it will give you a good idea of our proceedings and I think them very amusing. It is a parody on Burns' Tim [sic] O'shanter, and called John O'Thanet. The beginning is long and tiresome, so I shall not send it you. You must know that [italics]John[end italics] is making a tour round the Island, and arrives at Ramsgate just in time for the ceremonies' ball:--
[transcribes 17 lines of satirical poem on Ramsgate social life, opening:
'"When now the moon shot forth her gleams
And ocean glistened in her beams,
When winds blow cold and loud and drear
And Ladies 'gin to walk the Pier,
When chattering teeth by Luna's light
Just stammer out a 'charming night'"]
'I send you these merely because they give a faithful account of our evening walks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Manuscript: Unknown
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 13 November 1803:
'I have been reading M'Cormick's [sic] Life of Burke, a violent and abusive book, but chiefly composed of extracts from his works and speeches in parliament. These I think in eloquence and brilliancy of talent quite unrivalled and in the beginning of his life, his sentiments delightful. I hope you will approve in my choice of [italics]hero[end italics] [comments further][...] I have been reading more (at least more to the purpose) in this last week, than I have for a good while before, and I cannot express to you how much pleasure it gives me, and the difference to me in making my time pass quickly or tediously is inconceivable. Indeed here in bad weather and the very small party we are, it is necessary not to make our sejour here very disagreeable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 16 November 1803:
'I have begun Belsham's History of England. It begins with Charles the second, and comes down to our present reign. I mean to confine myself for some time to the history of England as it is a shame not to be well acquainted with it, and I certainly am not.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 19 November 1803:
'I have only read 2 of Belsham's lives; Charles the second and James the second. Charles the first I feel pretty well acquainted with, from our old friend Clarendon. I do not mean to go on with Belsham till I have finished Madame de Sevigne's letters, one volume of which I have read. It is a great undertaking to read them through, but they are so very delightful, and I have so much time for reading here, that I do not find it at all too tedious. I do think her letters and her sentiments quite incomparable, and the endless variety of anecdote and wit, assure their never tiring or boring.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 19 November 1803:
'I have only read 2 of Belsham's lives; Charles the second and James the second. Charles the first I feel pretty well acquainted with, from our old friend Clarendon. I do not mean to go on with Belsham till I have finished Madame de Sevigne's letters, one volume of which I have read. It is a great undertaking to read them through, but they are so very delightful, and I have so much time for reading here, that I do not find it at all too tedious. I do think her letters and her sentiments quite incomparable, and the endless variety of anecdote and wit, assure their never tiring or boring.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her mother, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (December 1804):
'I have been reading a great deal of Italian, there are a thousand beauties in Metastasio that I had never observed and I had never read some of the best parts of it. "Isacco" is, I think, almost more beautiful and affecting than any of them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her grandmother, the Countess Dowager Spencer, 23 July 1807:
'This morning I got up between 8 and 9, read 500 lines of Milton's Paradise Lost, walked in the garden, played upon a Russian Bilboquet Willy brought me last night, and pride myself upon my candour in confessing this last occupation to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
'You know Marris--the man of the East who wrote the letter I read to you? Well he is going back to his Malay princess wife and his kid, right away. I have asked him to come on Monday here for the day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Letter
'Looking at Sismondi's "Italian Republics" an odd fit of industry came over me in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Staid in all day for cold, but sketched some figures from window, and heard some of Sismondi's "Italian Republics", and my day has been rather profitable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Marryat's diary on Continent gives many interesting anecdotes of animals, but I am afraid to remember them, lest they should not be true'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Curious essay of Newman's I read some pages of - about the ecclesiastical miracles; full of intellect but doubtful in tendency. I fear insidious, yet I like it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Read Dumas's "Essai de Statique Chimique" - clear but too short.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read a little of the life of Baxter; very interesting, and apparently deserving Coleridge's recommendation. Dreadful picture of the state of the church at that time - players, gamblers, drunkards with forged notes; men 80 or 90 years old, of course never preaching; Maypole dancing &c. on the Sunday.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Note Baxter's opinion in describing George Lawson: "the ablest man of them all, or of almost any I know in England, especially by the advantage of his age and very hard studies and methodological head, but above all by his great skill in politicks, wherein he is most exact, and which contributeth not a little to the understanding of Divinity."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Much disappointed with Wilkie's life: he is a thoroughly low person and his biographer worse. I could not have imagined Cunningham could have so little knowledge of art'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Much disappointed with Wilkie's life: he is a thoroughly low person and his biographer worse. I could not have imagined Cunningham could have so little knowledge of art'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read a pamphlet by the Revd. George Smith, lent me by Macdonald: "Hints for the times", true and useful, but a painful instance of the weak and conventional writing which does so little honour to its cause.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
I do not know sufficient about Villiers de l’Isle Adam to advise you. His best known book is 'L’Eve Future'. I have read half of it twice, but could never get to the end of it. Axel (play) is another famous book of his but I have not read it. His short stories are very renowned indeed. Contes Cruels and Nouveaux Contes Cruels. I have read all these. I should say that they were pretty wonderful fifty or sixty years ago , but what they would look like in a translation I cannot predict.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 16 December 1807:
'Lady Elizabeth is reading Semple's travels through Spain and says they are excessively interesting and entertaining. You will see a review of them in the last number of the Edinburgh Review. Let me know if I shall send them you, they are in two small volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Elizabeth Foster Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her grandmother, the Countess Dowager Spencer, 7 November 1808:
'I am glad that I mentioned the Castle of Indolence to you, as I am sure you will be pleased with it. There are descriptions of the Aeolian and British Harp, one of the Musick of Indolence and the other of Industry, and an address to Dreams, that I think beautiful poetry and 3 verses beginning "It was not by vile loitering in ease," that I beg you to admire. Lady Stafford pointed these last out to me, and, in this instance, I admire her taste and agree with her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her grandmother, the Countess Dowager Spencer, 7 November 1808:
'I am glad that I mentioned the Castle of Indolence to you, as I am sure you will be pleased with it. There are descriptions of the Aeolian and British Harp, one of the Musick of Indolence and the other of Industry, and an address to Dreams, that I think beautiful poetry and 3 verses beginning "It was not by vile loitering in ease," that I beg you to admire. Lady Stafford pointed these last out to me, and, in this instance, I admire her taste and agree with her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Stafford Print: Book
'Read ".'Dame aux Camelias"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
I do not know sufficient about Villiers de l’Isle Adam to advise you. His best known book is 'L’Eve Future'. I have read half of it twice, but could never get to the end of it. 'Axel' (play) is another famous book of his but I have not read it. His short stories are very renowned indeed. 'Contes Cruels' and 'Nouveaux Contes Cruels'. I have read all these. I should say that they were pretty wonderful fifty or sixty years ago , but what they would look like in a translation I cannot predict.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I do not know sufficient about Villiers de l’Isle Adam to advise you. His best known book is 'L’Eve Future'. I have read half of it twice, but could never get to the end of it. 'Axel' (play) is another famous book of his but I have not read it. His short stories are very renowned indeed. 'Contes Cruels' and 'Nouveaux Contes Cruels'. I have read all these. I should say that they were pretty wonderful fifty or sixty years ago , but what they would look like in a translation I cannot predict.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I do not know sufficient about Villiers de l’Isle Adam to advise you. His best known book is 'L’Eve Future'. I have read half of it twice, but could never get to the end of it. 'Axel' (play) is another famous book of his but I have not read it. His short stories are very renowned indeed. 'Contes Cruels' and 'Nouveaux Contes Cruels'. I have read all these. I should say that they were pretty wonderful fifty or sixty years ago , but what they would look like in a translation I cannot predict.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'The meeting at the Lawn on Dec 9 1901 was devoted to the life & works of Moore & Hood. F.J. Edminson read a paper on their works and Miss Goadby one entitled Reminiscences of Moore. Mr Goadby read The Demon Sleep [?] and Nellie Gray, Mrs Edminson the Song of the Shirt & Mrs Rawlings selections from Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The meeting at the Lawn on Dec 9 1901 was devoted to the life & works of Moore & Hood. F.J. Edminson read a paper on their works and Miss Goadby one entitled Reminiscences of Moore. Mr Goadby read The Demon Sleep [?] and Nellie Gray, Mrs Edminson the Song of the Shirt & Mrs Rawlings selections from Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'The meeting at the Lawn on Dec 9 1901 was devoted to the life & works of Moore & Hood. F.J. Edminson read a paper on their works and Miss Goadby one entitled Reminiscences of Moore. Mr Goadby read The Demon Sleep [?] and Nellie Gray, Mrs Edminson the Song of the Shirt & Mrs Rawlings selections from Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Goadby Print: Book
'The meeting at the Lawn on Dec 9 1901 was devoted to the life & works of Moore & Hood. F.J. Edminson read a paper on their works and Miss Goadby one entitled Reminiscences of Moore. Mr Goadby read The Demon Sleep [?] and Nellie Gray, Mrs Edminson the Song of the Shirt & Mrs Rawlings selections from Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book
'Everything seems to have been designed to develop the serious fold in her nature. At ten, the poor infant was reading Smollett's History [...] She summed up her impression with scornful lucidity: "There seem to have been more weak kings than wise ones."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'We may suspect that the library was dearer to Papa and Annabella than to Mamma [...] She liked visiting the neighbours and tenants, with a friendly finger ready to stick in everybody's pie, and consequent plums to bring back for the Jack Horners at home, writing their verses and reading their Milton and Cowper and Campbell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Ralph and Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'We may suspect that the library was dearer to Papa and Annabella than to Mamma [...] She liked visiting the neighbours and tenants, with a friendly finger ready to stick in everybody's pie, and consequent plums to bring back for the Jack Horners at home, writing their verses and reading their Milton and Cowper and Campbell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Ralph and Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'In 1809 [Anne Isabella Milbanke] wrote the Lines supposed to be spoken at the Grave of Dermody. It is one of the earliest of her compositions extant [goes on to quote 11 lines from poem, beginning with "Degraded genius! o'er the untimely grave / In which the tumults of thy breast were still'd, / The rank weeds wave...."] [...] These, with some other verses, were sent to Byron for his opinion, in 1812, by Annabella's cousin-by-marriage, Lady Caroline Lamb. He liked the Dermody lines "so much that I could wish they were in rhyme."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
'Read Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in evening: the most naive assumption of Nature that ever was'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Mrs Edminson then read an appreciative article on the life and letters of J.S. [?] Brown which was much appreciated'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'F.J. Edminson read a paper on Matthew Arnold with special reference to Literature & Dogma. Readings from both the prose & poetical works of Matthew Arnold were given by various members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Pollard Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Little Print: Book
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'Read also Cardinal Wiseman on Chartres and the Chemise - very wonderful and delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read in Machiavelli's "Florence" Cosmo de' Medici's sad saying before his death: keeping his eyes shut, his wife asking why - "To get them into the way of it."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read Sir T. More in evening'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'One of the "golden books" of his childhood was J.W. Meinhold's 1847 Gothic historical novel "Sidonia the Sorceress". Wilde's mother, who was an accomplished translator of European fiction, produced a celebrated English version of this German book. Wilde would remember it fondly as "my favourite romantic reading when a boy" and he returned to it at various times in his adult life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Wilde praised "Melmoth" [the Wanderer] as a pioneering work of European Gothic fiction. He admitted, however, that it was stylistically "imperfect" and laughed at its aburdity'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'The first volume of Symond's "Studies of the Greek Poets", issued in 1873, was "perpetually" in Wilde's "hands" at Trinity [Dublin]. The second volume came out in 1876, when he was at Oxford. On the title-page, he wrote "Oscar F.O'F. W. Wilde. S.M. Magdalen College, Oxford, May '76." The date indicates that Wilde purchased the book hot off the printing press.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Once again, Wilde assisted his mentor [Classical scholar John Pentland Mahaffy], this time by proof-reading "Rambles and Studies" before its original publication in 1876.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Manuscript: proofs
'Wilde loved to curl up with a book in bed. In one letter he mischievously described himself as "lying in bed... with Swinburne (a copy of)"; in another, he mentioned "The Imitation of Christ, the pious manual for Christian living penned by the fifteenth-century German monk Thomas a Kempis. Wilde read the book before going to sleep...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
In the main, the reviews of I.P. [Imperial Palace] have been excellent. But it is curious that 2 out of 3 of Max’s papers were excessively rude about it, the third (Sunday Express) was fulsome. I wrote privately to the Editor off the Standard pointing out grave misstatements in fact in Bruce Lockhart’s article on it. He could offer no defence whatever. Similarly I protested to the editor of the Times Lit. Supplement about its assertion that I had been imitating Priestley’s fashion of length, for the sake of gain. . . . Maugham’s 'Cakes & Ale' is 1st rate. But easily the finest of all recent novels is D.H. Lawrence’s 'The Virgin and the Gipsy'.
Nothing else exists by the side of it. Believe me. It is marvellous, truly.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'A meeting was held at Whinfield [?] on Dec 8 1904 devoted to H.G. Wells's Mankind in the Making. Howard R. Smith gave a good resume of the political and social proposals and C.E. Stansfield of the Educational system suggested by the author. Both papers prompted considerable discussion'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
'Mrs Smith then read an interesting biography of Keats which was followed by a reading of "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill" by Helen Rawlings. Howard R. Smith read from Endymion & Mrs Ridges the Ode to a Nightingale. Alfred Rawlings read a paper upon the poetry of Keats & Mrs Edminson some of the sonnets & H.M. Wallis a portion of "Isabella".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Yesterday I had a letter from Murray in answer to one I had written in something of a determined stile for I had no idea of permitting him to start from the course after my son giving up his situation and profession merely because a contributor or two chose to suppose gratuitously that Lockhart was too imprudent for the situation. My physic has wrought well for it brought a letter from Murray saying all was right (Footnote: Scott enclosed Murray's letter in one written to Lockhart the previous day. Murray writes that 'There is nothing to apprehend'), that D'Israeli was sent to me not to Lockhart, and that I was only invited to write two confidential letters, and other incoherencies which intimate his fright has got into another quarter. It is interlined and franked by Barrow (Footnote: That interlineation reads 'No one has any ill will against Mr Lockhart!!!') which shows that all is well and that John's induction in to his office will be easy and pleasant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Letter
'There was always poetry. Campbell, just then at the top of his short-lived vogue; Ossian, the unreadable of to-day; Milton -- and with the New Year of 1812 a Captain Boothby (met during the London season) as a visitor with whom to read the last, but not the other two. For he did not admire either Campbell or Ossian [...] They were reading Paradise Lost; he said that he "believed almost all the events in it." Only almost; and he went on to point out a passage in Book X which proves that, when diction was his theme, he knew what he was talking about [cites lines 'While yet we live, but one short hour perhaps, / Between us two let there be peace,' and notes Boothby's admiration of their simplicity].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke and Captain Boothby Print: Book
'At present [August 1814] she [Anne Isabella Milbanke] was reading Sismondi's Italian Republics. And she had read Lara.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'The girl [Ada Byron] was then [1831] seventeen; her mother had been reading Harriet Martineau's Five Years of Youth, and wrote to a friend: "It is very good -- chiefly directed against Romance, and therefore not necessary for Ada."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'Lady Byron was to [George] MacDonald the protectress, the adviser, and once at least the extremely rigorous critic.
'It was through the reading of his narrative poem, Within and Without (published in 1855, but written a few years earlier), that their acquaintance began. She wrote to him of her admiration, and soon afterwards they met.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron Print: Book
'Howard R. Smith then read a paper on the history of the House of Lords which was followed by considerablee discussion. Mr Binns then followed with an exhaustive paper which was much appreciated & which also led to free expression of opinion'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'An excellent programme illustrative of R.L. Stevenson's work was then proceeded with. A biographical paper was read by H. R. Smith & a critical appreciation of the works by J. Ridges & selections by several members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Mr Smith read a paper on Shelley & Mrs Ridges selections from a paper by Dr Scott on the poet's literary characteristics while other members read selections from his works'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth (August 1812):
'La Princesse Wilhelmine is not as interesting as she might be. There is so much detail of the
pettiest kind, all the valets and governesses brought so much sur la scene, but I have only
read the first volume. Her descriptions, her abuse and her coarseness, put me much in mind
of the Princess of Wales, whose early life was probably spent in much the same way.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 29 September 1815:
'"Fazio,' the new tragedy, is in parts very fine and in others as bad. It is written by a young
Mr. Milman, son to the physician. It is well worth sending for. Some people think it beautiful.
Lord Lansdowne brought it to Saltram and said it was one of the finest things he had ever
read, so do get it. The woman's character is very interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 29 September 1815:
'"Fazio,' the new tragedy, is in parts very fine and in others as bad. It is written by a young
Mr. Milman, son to the physician. It is well worth sending for. Some people think it beautiful.
Lord Lansdowne brought it to Saltram and said it was one of the finest things he had ever
read, so do get it. The woman's character is very interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lansdowne Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 12 August 1818:
'Yesterday evening Granville [husband], Hart [her brother, the Duke of Devonshire] and I
looked over books. A beautiful edition of Camoens, brown and gold, with D. and the coronet
inlaid in diamonds. It is like a book in a fairy tale. The Duchess of Devonshire's editions of
Horace's journey. The prints are from beautiful drawings, one by herself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Duke of Devonshire and Lord and Lady Granville (his brother-in-law and sister) Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 25 August 1820:
'I send you a list of new books. Chalmers' sermon, preached after the disturbances in
Glasgow, very good.
'"Sketches of Life and Manners," clever and entertaining, supposed to be by Lord John.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
The whole three are sitting sewing in the most peaceful manner at my hand: our Mother has been reading the Man of Feeling and my last Paper (with great estimation) in the Edinburgh Review.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Carlyle Print: Book
Now the other morning Dr Irving shows me the last vol. of Constable's Miscellany, and a most magnificent passage in the Preface about this very book. Be so good as to look at that before we go farther.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The other day I took up "Yvette". How well she [Ada Galsworthy] has done it all!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, from Paris, 5 December 1824:
'It amused me to open a new volume of Mme. Campan's journal at these words: "Tu dois juger si je suis fatiguee, mais je m'etais laissee un peu arrieree, et quand une fois les lettres s'amassent, il faut un jour de sainte colere pour deblayer les tiroirs de mon bureau." It is so exactly the state of my case. I have more than a dozen letters for tomorrow's courier [...] I have paid a number of English visits and have been receiving them three times a week, between two and half-past three.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A varied series of anonymous essays were then read - with the following titles
The Love of a Nation
The Tiger & the Lady
Building
Quaker Stories
Henry Lawrence
The Pleasure of Winter Bathing
On Washing Seldom & then not much
Poetry'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'The subject of the evening - 'English Ballads' - was then discussed in two papers, by F.J. Edminson & H.M. Wallis, and illustrated by readings recitations & songs. Recitations were given by Rosamund Wallis & Mrs Ridges. Readings by H.M. Wallis, Mrs Smith & Mrs Edminson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'The following was the programme for the evening
Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Monday, 5 December 1825: 'Dined at the Royal Society Club where as usual was a pleasant
meeting of from 20 to 25. It is a very good institution. We pay two guineas only for six
dinners in the year present or absent. Dine at 5 or rather 1/2 past 5 at the Royal hotel [...] till
half past seven then coffee and we go to the Society [...]
'Henry Mackenzie now in his eighty second year read part of an Essay on Dreams.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Mackenzie
Friday, 23 December 1825:
'Sir Gilbert [the first Earl Minto] was indeed a man among a thousand. I knew him very
intimately at the beginning of the century [...] He loved the Muses and worshipd them in
secret and used to read some of [his] poetry which was but middling. One upon a walk with
his lady which involved certain conclusions (most delicately couchd) but which it is not usual
to allude [to].'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Gilbert Eliot, first Earl Minto
Friday, 10 March 1826:
'Breakfasted with me Mr. Francks [...] and Captain Longmore of the Royal Staff. He has written
a book of poetry, Tales of Chivalry and Romance, far from bad yet wants spirit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Tuesday, 14 March 1826:
'I have amused myself occasionally very pleasantly during the few last days by reading over
Lady Morgan's novel of O'Donnel which has some striking and beautiful passages of situation
and description and in the comic part is very rich and entertaining. I do not remember being
so much pleased with it at first -- there is a want of story always fatal to a book the first
reading and it is well if it gets the chance of a second [...]
'Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride
and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and
characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with [...] What a pity
such a gifted creature died so early.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Thursday, 16 March 1826:
'In the evening after dinner read Mrs. Charlotte Smith's novel Desmond, decidedly the worst of
her compositions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Wednesday, 5 April 1826:
'Read Clapperton's journey and Denman's [sic] into Bornou -- very entertaining and less
botheration about mineralogy botany and so forth than usual. Pity Africa picks up so many brave
men however.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Tuesday, 1 August 1826:
'Yesterday evening [...] I took to arranging the old plays of which Terry had brought me about
a dozen and dipping into them scrambled through two -- One called Michaelmas Term full of
traits of manners and another a sort of bouncing tragedy called The Hector of Germany or The
Palsgrave. The last, worthless in the extreme, is like many of the plays in the beginning of the
17th. Century written to a good tune [goes on to comment further on language in seventeenth-
century drama].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Tuesday, 1 August 1826:
'Yesterday evening [...] I took to arranging the old plays of which Terry had brought me about
a dozen and dipping into them scrambled through two -- One called Michaelmas Term full of
traits of manners and another a sort of bouncing tragedy called The Hector of Germany or The
Palsgrave. The last, worthless in the extreme, is like many of the plays in the beginning of the
17th. Century written to a good tune [goes on to comment further on language in seventeenth-
century drama].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Tuesday, 17 October 1826:
'Read over Sir John Chiverton and Brambletye House, novels in what I may surely claim as
the stile [quotes from Jonathan Swift, "On the Death of Dr. Swift," lls. 57-8]
'"Which I was born to introduce
Refined it first and showd its use."
'They are both clever books, one in imitation of the days of chivalry, the other by John Smith
[...] dated in the time of the civil wars and introducing historical characters. I read both with
great interest during the journey [to London].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'The subject of Occultism was introduced in a general & comprehensive way [by] C. Stansfield. H.R. Smith read a paper on Subliminal Consciousness & W.S Rowntree on Evidence of continued existence after corporeal death.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'No end of thanks for the little vol: so charming inside and outside--in its slender body containing a gently melodious soul. I see quite a new aspect of you in these few delightful pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thanks for the little book ["Light and Twilight"] so full of good things. You know I have a prediliction for your prose with its quiet,flowing felicity of phrase and what I call "penetrative" power of expression.' Hence follow 11 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"Tell me thou Soul of her I love" - Thomson', beginning 'Tell me thou Soul of her I love’.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of ‘"A Devonshire Lane compared to Marriage" by Mr Marriott' beginning ‘In a Devonshire lane as I trotted along…’
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of four lines from Moore's Lalla Rookh [untitled and unattributed], beginning 'I wept thy absence – oer and oer again’.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“On the death of a friend” T. Moore.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"Epitaph on Viscountess Palmerston written by her Husband” Romsey Church.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen Print: tombstone
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of lines by Hannah More (“Mrs H. More”) beginning “Since trifles make the sum of human things”.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“Lines by the Princess Amelia” beginning 'Unthinking, idle, wild and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked and sung…'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of "My birthday" T Moore' beginning '"My Birthday” what a different sound/ That word had in my youthful ear!'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of “Friendship” by the Revd Francis Murray.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“A Search after Happiness H. More” beginning “Expect not perfect happiness below…’
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
'Thank you for the fine present.[...] While reading delightedly this little work which shines with so soft a brightness, I have for a moment been able to forget the passage of time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The book has arrived too. It was very kind of you to think of sending it to me. As everything that Professor [William] James ever wrote it's most suggestive and interesting and morally valuable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The volume is very emphatically all right. In many respects better than I expected.' Hence follows a page of strong but constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Saturday, 10 March 1827:
'About three o'clock I got to a meeting of the Bannatyne club [...] Thomson is superintending a capital edition of Sir James Melville's Memoirs. It is brave to see how he wags his Scots tongue and what a difference there is in the force and firmness of his language compared to the mincing English edition in which he has hitherto been alone known.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Sunday, 13 May 1827:
'Spent the day, which was delightful, wandering from place to place in the woods, sometimes reading the new and interesting volumes of Cyril Thornton, sometimes chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy which strangely alternated in my mind idly stirred by the succession of a thousand vague thoughts and fears'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Friday, 8 June 1827:
'I was fatigued and sleepy when I go[t] home [from business meetings] and nodded, I think, over Sir James Melville's Memoirs.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Transcript of interview: 'I don’t think there was anything that I wasn’t allowed to read. It was only when I went to school to boarding school and all my friends were reading Gone with the Wind, and my mother decided she would rather I didn’t read Gone with the Wind because of a very racy chapter where Melanie gives birth to a baby and she didn’t think that was suitable for me. I was thirteen or fourteen and I didn’t read it but I did read Vicky Baum’s Hotel Berlin which had a much worse scene where a woman gave birth in a rowing boat… I can’t think of anything that was actually banned at all. I read lots and lots of my father’s books and this was a book that I loved - Palgrave’s Golden Treasury [shows book]. My mother gave me this [shows book]. This is the one I learned to read on. This is the Water Babies. I remember sitting up in bed reading Mrs Be Done By As You Did and shouting out “I can read, I can read”! I was six. I didn’t learn to read until quite late.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Transcript of interview: 'We [Hilary and schoolfellows] used to recommend things to each other a lot, and we had crazes – Georgette Heyer, D.K. Broster, Cronin, Axel Munter, Hugh Walpole. And then there were F Brett Young and my own particular favourite Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard – I read that when I was about 15 and I read it almost every year for about 6 years afterwards. I loved it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'A programme consisting of the following eight anonymous essays was then proceeded with. Viz A Theory of Language - Further East. Perpetual Motion - 2 Essays by different authors entitled A Vignette of Local History - Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century, The Court of Appeal & A Feat of Journalism. All proved of an interesting character & some provoked discussion. Much entertainment arose at the end in guessing at the authorship.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'J.J. Cooper introduced the subject of the life and Work of Goldwin Smith in an interesting essay. F.J. Edminson dealt with his historical work & his position as an historian & A. Rawlings read some extracts from his Life of Wm Lloyd Garrison'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'J.J. Cooper introduced the subject of the life and Work of Goldwin Smith in an interesting essay. F.J. Edminson dealt with his historical work & his position as an historian & A. Rawlings read some extracts from his Life of Wm Lloyd Garrison'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
'J.J. Cooper introduced the subject of the life and Work of Goldwin Smith in an interesting essay. F.J. Edminson dealt with his historical work & his position as an historian & A. Rawlings read some extracts from his Life of Wm Lloyd Garrison'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Print: Book
'J.J. Cooper introduced the subject of the life and Work of Goldwin Smith in an interesting essay. F.J. Edminson dealt with his historical work & his position as an historian & A. Rawlings read some extracts from his Life of Wm Lloyd Garrison'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John James Cooper Print: Book
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Thursday, 15 November 1827:
'Met with Chambers and complimented him about his making a clever book of the 1745 for Constable's Miscellany. It is really a lively work and must have a good sale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Friday, 28 March 1828:
'Read Tales of an Antiquary, one of the chime of bells which I have some hand in setting a ringing. He really is entitled to the name of an Antiquary. But he has too much description in proportion to the action. There is a capital wardrope [sic] of properties but the performers do not act up to their character.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sunday, 15 February 1829:
'I wrought [i.e. worked at writing] to day but not much -- rather dawdled and took to reading Chambers' Beauties of Scotland which would be admirable if they were more accurate. He is a clever young fellow but hurts himself by too much haste.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Monday. 16 February 1829:
'Went to the Royal Society. There Sir William Hamilton read an Essay, the result of some anatomical investigations, which containd a maskd battery against the phrenologists. It seems these worthies are agreed that the cerebellum is that part of the headpiece which influences the sexual organs and according to this hypothesis that same cerebellum should be stronger in men than in women, in adults than in children, in old men than in youths, in persons mutilated than in those who are in the natural state [...] But if Sir William's course of experiments are correct the very opposite is the truth.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Hamilton
'Now hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour I have got the goodhumoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M-' (Footnote: Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) author of Man of Feeling).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'Colonel R. told me that the European government had discoverd an ingenious mode of diminishing the number of burnings of widows...This is the reverse of our system of increasing game by shooting the old cock-birds. It is a system would aid Malthus rarely.' (Footnote: Scott sent to Lockhart on 17 February a short article on the burnings for publication in the Representative).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
'Observe in the same number, how Will. J. Sharman girds at your poor friend ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
'Talking of which, in Heaven's name, get the Bondage of Brandon (3 vols) by Bracebridge Hemming.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Morris's Sigurd is a grrrrreat poem; that is so.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Some notes on the subject of Christian Science by E.A. Smith were read & C.E. Stansfield described some of the literature on the subject.
The Secretary read a letter of resignation of membership from W. Binns'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: a member of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'A programme devoted to Shelley was arranged which included readings from Adonais, the Skylark & Francis Thompson's Essay on Shelley'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'A series of readings from Maeterlinck were given by various members'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
It would not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present….I can assure you, your little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure and encouragement in the world...' [Note 1]Martin read RLS’s essay ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ in "Cornhill" for August 1876 and wrote to him expressing his pleasure.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Wednesday, 10 June 1829:
'I have been reading over the Five Days of St. Albans [sic], very much [quotes Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I.72] extra moenia flammantia mundi ['Beyond the flaming walls of the universe'] and possessed of considerable merit though the author loves to play at Cherry pit with Satan.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Friday, 12 June 1829:
'After dinner I wrote to Walter, Charles, Lockhart and John Murray and took a screed of my novel so concluded the evening idly enough.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Monday, 15 June 1829:
'I read Genl. Miller's account of the South American War. I liked it the better that Basil Hall brought the author to breakfast with [me] in Edinr., a fin[e] tall military figure, his left hand withered like the prophet's gourd and plenty of scars on him. There have been rare doings in that vast continent but the strife is too distant, the country too unknown, to have the effect upon the imagination which European wars produce.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'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
'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
'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
'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
'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
'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
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the reading of a number of short stories which were more or less anonymous. Most of the stories were seasonal in that they dealt with some ghostly episode.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'The Meeting then considered the Life & Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Walter S. Rowntree gave us an account of Wallace's life from the autobiography reading a number of well chosen extracts. This was followed by a paper from Henry M. Wallis on his scientific work and one from Mrs Smith on his psychical work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'He [Hoffman] had made some translations from the German which he does extremely [well], for give him ideas and he never wants choice of good words, and Lockhart had got Constable to offer some sort of terms for them.' (footnote: Scott owned his translation of Hoffman's The Devil's Elixirs, 1824)
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Wednesday, 26 October 1831:
'Here we are [at Portsmouth] still fixd by the inexorable wind [...] I engaged in a new novel by Mr. Smith calld New Forest. It is written in an old stile calculated to meet the popular ideas, somewhat like Man as He is Not [by Robert Bage] and that class. The author's opinions seem rather to sit loose upon [him] and to be adopted for the nonce and not very well brought out. His idea of a heroe is an American philosopher with all the affected virtues of a republican which no man believes in. This is all very tiresome not to be able to walk abroad for an instant but to be kept in this old house which they call the Fountain [inn], a mansion made of wood in imitation of a ship.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 25 November 1829:
'We have a quantity of leisure here, and go on in a spirited manner with Dante. I am now reading a book that interests and enchants me, Sumner's "Records of the Creation."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 31 July 1832:
'I have the greatest pleasure in reading religious books. I find that I understand the Bible better than I ever did before, that I know much better what I am not and what I ought to be, that the subject interests and occupies me deeply, whilst I am employed on it [...] I have been reading Fenn's sermons and like most of them extremely as explaining and directing. Bradley's third volume is excellent. Adams' "Private Thoughts" one likes better and better. There are parts that one cannot, but these always redeemed by something so true, so feeling, so practical.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle (April 1834):
'The anxiety of the last two months has given me an impossibility of feeling happy [...] The
only thing that calms my nerves is sitting at an open window, reading Mrs. Fry or Adams'
"Private Thoughts;" but my religion is like my feeling, and I do not find its influence when I
have the immediate occupation of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her brother, the Duke of Devonshire, 20 June 1835:
'Lord Fitzwilliam [...] and five offspring came [...] Meg took them under her especial care,
hurried them off to a couch in the ball-room, got partners for the girls, offered her own two
pretty little things up to the boys. But the youngest, Wentworth, preferred sitting all night in
the drawing room, studying the comic annual, and, that done, beginning "Belford Regis."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wentworth ?Fitzwilliam Print: Book
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 10 January 1844:
'Tell me more about Miss Martineau's book [Letters on Mesmerism]. I am afraid of it. The old tales, which I have been re-reading, have such an effect upon me that I can scarcely read them. She writes in a way that harrows up every feeling. It is, I think, quite a strange power, because no writer is so simple and so strong upon sorrows that come to all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 10 January 1844:
'Tell me more about Miss Martineau's book [Letters on Mesmerism]. I am afraid of it. The old tales, which I have been re-reading, have such an effect upon me that I can scarcely read them. She writes in a way that harrows up every feeling. It is, I think, quite a strange power, because no writer is so simple and so strong upon sorrows that come to all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle (February 1844):
'I should like Miss Martineau, if somebody would translate it. I have only read a chapter, which I cannot understand.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
'When a boy [William Gifford] had read the Bible left to him by his mother, together with her "Imitatio Christi," and a few odd numbers of magazines.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book
'Then followed the reading of 7 essays. They were supposed to be anonymous & were certainly read withot any author's name being attached but the inquisitive by internal or external evidence began to sort them out & at the end of the meeting the identity of the various writers was disclosed' [the essays are then discussed, but without mention of authors or readers]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'Child- Study then claimed our attention. Three papers (or contributions) were given first of all by Mrs Smith, Mr Evans & Mr Stansfield so as to give the remaining time to discussion. Mrs Smith in reading the opening paper quoted part of an extremely interesting article from 'The Spectator' - dealing with the child's mind & what the problems were about which the young members of society thought. [the discussion on the subject and Unwin's own opinions are then given at length]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (1815):
'I have just finished Miss Williams's narrative [...] I consider it a [italics]a capital work[end
italics], written with great skill, talent, and care; full of curious and new developments, and
some facts which we did not know before. There breathes through the whole a most attractive
spirit, and her feelings sometimes break out in the most beautiful effusions [...] it must be
popular, as it is the most entertaining [book] imaginable; one of those books one does not like
to quit before finishing it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Print: Book
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (1815):
'I have just finished Miss Williams's narrative [...] I consider it a [italics]a capital work[end
italics], written with great skill, talent, and care; full of curious and new developments, and
some facts which we did not know before. There breathes through the whole a most attractive
spirit, and her feelings sometimes break out in the most beautiful effusions [...] it must be
popular, as it is the most entertaining [book] imaginable; one of those books one does not like
to quit before finishing it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Print: Book
John Murray to Walter Scott, 25 December 1815:
'I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was
indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy,
which Lord Byron received late in the evening and read through, without being able to stop. He
was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager [at Drury Lane
theatre], the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it was, could not go to bed without finishing it.
The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the [theatre] Commitee; they, or rather
Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of Covent
Garden.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
John Murray to Walter Scott, 25 December 1815:
'I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was
indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy,
which Lord Byron received late in the evening and read through, without being able to stop. He
was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager [at Drury Lane
theatre], the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it was, could not go to bed without finishing it.
The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the [theatre] Commitee; they, or rather
Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of Covent
Garden.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Hon. George Lamb
'The evening was then devoted to the subject of Psychical Phenomena. The Secretary (Ernest E. Unwin] read a brief introductory paper, giving some indication of the way in which the subject had come under his notice, and one or two general fundamental points which he was prepared to accept. This was followed by a paper dealing with the sub-conscious mind by Mary Hayward. The very great importance of the subconscious - the way in which we can use it to free our minds of worry - the relationship between mind & mind or telepathy were clearly brought out. Then Mrs Smith read a paper which gave a deeper note to the subject. She dealt with communications from the spirit world with living people - giving personal experiences & experiences of her friends'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'In the absence of C.E. Stansfield Mrs Stansfield read extracts from Raymond chosen by C.E.S.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
'Essays were then read. The Secretary does not feel able to do more than indicate the general nature of these essays.
1. Read by R.H. Robson. An essay written by H.M.W. about the remains of an altar stone found near Carthage. Vivid & interesting, bloodstained though the stone was, with human sacrifice.
2. Mrs Smith read a very interesting paper dealing with the mind & its training. 'My mind to me a kingdom is'. Considerable discussion followed.
3. Mr Stansfield read a fantasia (written surely by a historian. R.H.R.) relating the musings of Mendax II giving expression to a cynical prophecy of European politics if events evolved or devolved along present lines. We hope that the assassination of Ld. George by a Quaker pacifist & the suppression of L.P.S. will not be fulfilled.
4. E.E. Unwin read a paper entitled 'The Humours of Man' which consisted of a number of humorous stories lightly linked together'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'The Secretary read 'An Open Letter' to the XII Book Club. It was read without discussion - the discussion postponed until later in the evening.' [the letter was about the Club's relationship with the wider Quaker community]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Letter
'The main business of the evening was then proceeded with - 5 mins essays upon some book read recently.
Mrs Evans read 'An English Lumber Camp' - from internal evidence it is probably true that this was an essay drawn from real life rather than from any book read. It was a magnificent literary effort in the author's best style. Perhaps more of 'H.M.W.' than 'Ashton Hillier'.
Mrs Smith read a paper upon 'The Garden of Survival' a book by Alg. Blackwood. The paper gave rise to much interest. The extraordinary beauty of the extracts read from the book and the insight into the spiritual meaning of 'Guidance' displayed by the author impressed us all.
Ernest E. Unwin read a paper on 'The End of a Chapter' by Shane Leslie - this paper was written by H.M. Wallis & introduced most of us to a new writer of power. The change in the world, in the balance of the classes & their future importance formed the theme of the book.
Mary Hayward described her discovery of 'The Story of my Heart' by Richard Jefferies & read some extracts from it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Edwards Manuscript: Unknown
'The main business of the evening was then proceeded with - 5 mins essays upon some book read recently.
Mrs Evans read 'An English Lumber Camp' - from internal evidence it is probably true that this was an essay drawn from real life rather than from any book read. It was a magnificent literary effort in the author's best style. Perhaps more of 'H.M.W.' than 'Ashton Hillier'.
Mrs Smith read a paper upon 'The Garden of Survival' a book by Alg. Blackwood. The paper gave rise to much interest. The extraordinary beauty of the extracts read from the book and the insight into the spiritual meaning of 'Guidance' displayed by the author impressed us all.
Ernest E. Unwin read a paper on 'The End of a Chapter' by Shane Leslie - this paper was written by H.M. Wallis & introduced most of us to a new writer of power. The change in the world, in the balance of the classes & their future importance formed the theme of the book.
Mary Hayward described her discovery of 'The Story of my Heart' by Richard Jefferies & read some extracts from it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire:
The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth)
The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge)
Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard)
The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton)
Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?)
The Talisman (Walter Scott)
Ivanhoe (Walter Scott)
St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale)
The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake)
The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge)
The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge)
The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling)
The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling)
Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth)
Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling)
Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling)
The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge)
and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire:
The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth)
The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge)
Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard)
The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton)
Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?)
The Talisman (Walter Scott)
Ivanhoe (Walter Scott)
St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale)
The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake)
The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge)
The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge)
The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling)
The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling)
Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth)
Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling)
Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling)
The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge)
and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp 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
A rare thing this literature or love of fame or notoriety which accompanies it. Here is Mr H.M. [Henry Mackenzie] on the very brink of human dissolution as actively anxious about it as if the curtain must not soon be closed on that and every thing else...No man is less known from his writings.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
John Barrow to John Murray, 1 September 1830:
'I sat up last night over Mr. Macleod's narrative till I had nearly got through it, which proves at least that it interested [italics]me[end italics], and I am much deceived if it will not interest others. There is no pretence of science or fine writing about it; but the story of the voyage, and the description of the Loo-Choo islands in particular, is told in a plain, intelligible, and unaffected manner. It will certainly make a very entertaining readable octavo volume'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Barrow Manuscript: Unknown
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 22 December 1821:
'I am happy to tell you that your Review is abominably bad -- happy for your sake, because, as you will, I dare say, sell 12,000, it only shows that you have an estate which produces wholly independent of its culture. All that ridiculous importance given to Dupin, a wretched ecrivasseur, and that affectation of naval statistics, I think very unsuitable. Your "Alchemy" is appropriate enough, great elaboration and pomp of work ending in smoke and dross. If Dalzell's "Lectures" are as obscure and dull as your commentary, they were not worth reviewing, no more than the commentary is worth reading [...] The article on Hazlitt is good, and that on the Scotch novels [italics]excellent[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Serial / periodical
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 22 December 1821:
'I am happy to tell you that your Review is abominably bad -- happy for your sake, because, as you will, I dare say, sell 12,000, it only shows that you have an estate which produces wholly independent of its culture. All that ridiculous importance given to Dupin, a wretched ecrivasseur, and that affectation of naval statistics, I think very unsuitable. Your "Alchemy" is appropriate enough, great elaboration and pomp of work ending in smoke and dross. If Dalzell's "Lectures" are as obscure and dull as your commentary, they were not worth reviewing, no more than the commentary is worth reading [...] The article on Hazlitt is good, and that on the Scotch novels [italics]excellent[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Serial / periodical
The Marchioness of Abercorn to John Murray, 4 December 1817, in reponse to a gift of books:
'[The Marquess of Abercorn] returns Walpole, as he says since the age of fifteen he has read so much Grecian history and antiquity that he has these last ten years been sick of the subject. He does not like Ellis's account of "The Embassy to China," but is pleased with Macleod's narrative. He bids me tell you to say the best and what is least obnoxious of the [former] book. The composition and the narrative are so thoroughly wretched that he should be ashamed to let it stand in his library.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Marquess of Abercorn Print: Book
The Marchioness of Abercorn to John Murray, in reponse to a gift of books:
'Lord Abercorn says he thinks your conduct with respect to sending books back that he does not like is particularly liberal. He bids me tell you how very much he likes Mr. Macleod's book; we had seen some of it in manuscript before it was published.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Abercorn Manuscript: Unknown
William Lamb to John Murray, 20 December 1822:
'The incongruity of, and objections to, the story of "Ada Reis" can only be got over by power of writing, beauty of sentiment, striking and effective situation, &c. [...] Mr. [William] Gifford [Murray's reader], I dare say, will agree with me that since the time of Lucian all the representations of the infernal regions, which have been attempted by satirical writers, such as Fielding's "Journey from this World to the Next," have been feeble and flat. The sketch in "Ada Reis" is commonplace in its observations and altogether insufficient [...] I think, if it were thought that anything could be done with the novel, and that the faults of its design and structure can be got over, that I could put her [i.e Lady Caroline Lamb] in the way of writing up this part a little, and giving it something of strength, spirit, and novelty, and making it at once more moral and more interesting. I wish you would communicate these my hasty suggestions to Mr. Gifford, and he will see the propriety of pressing Lady Caroline to take a little more time to this part of the novel. She will be guided by his authority, and her fault at present is to be too hasty and too impatient of the trouble of correcting and recasting what is faulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Hon. William Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
'"Hajji Baba" was more read than any other of [James Morier's] works. Sir Walter Scott was especially pleased with it, and remarked that "Hajji Baba" might be termed the Oriental "Gil Blas."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'The evening was then given up to the subject Gilbert & Sullivan's operas. Mr R.B. Graham read an able paper dealing with the subject in a most interesting & vivid way'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
John Gibson Lockhart to John Murray, 29 September 1829:
'Sir Walter [Scott] has just read the first 120 pages of Moore's "Life of Byron"; and he says they are charming, and not a syllable de trop.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
'The first volume of "Lord Byron's Life and Letters," published on the 1st of January, 1830, was read with enthusiasm, and met with a very favourable reception. Moore says in his Diary, that "Lady Byron was highly pleased with the 'Life'"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
Mary Shelley to John Murray, 19 January 1830:
'Except the occupation of one or two annoyances, I have done nothing but read, since I got "Lord Byron's Life." I have no pretensions to being a critic, yet I know infinitely well what pleases me. Not to mention the judicious arrangement and happy [italics]tact[end italics] displayed by Mr. Moore, which distinguish the book, I must say a word concerning the style, which is elegant and forcible. I was particularly struck by the observations on Lord Byron's character before his departure to Greece, and on his return. There is strength and richness, as well as sweetness.
'The great charm of the work to me, and it will have the same to you, is that the Lord Byron I find there is [italics]our[end italics] Lord Byron -- the fascinating, faulty, philosophical being [...] I live with him in these pages -- getting reconciled (as I used in his lifetime) to those waywardnesses which annoyed me when he was away, through the delightful tone of his conversation and manners.
'His own letters and journals mirror him as he was, and are invaluable. There is something cruelly kind in this first volume. When will the next come? [...] Among its many other virtues, this book is accurate to a miracle. I have not stumbled upon one mistake with regard either to time, place, or feeling.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Somerville to John Murray, 13 January 1831:
'You have kindly afforded me a source of very great interest and pleasure in the perusal of the second volume of Moore's "Life of Byron." In my opinion, it is very superior to the first; there is less repetition of the letters; they are better written, abound more in criticism and observation, and make the reader better acquainted with Lord Byron's principles and character. His morality was certainly more suited to the meridian of Italy than England; but with all his faults there is a charm about him that excites the deepest interest and admiration [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Somerville Print: Book
Mary Somerville to John Murray, 13 January 1831:
'You have kindly afforded me a source of very great interest and pleasure in the perusal of the second volume of Moore's "Life of Byron." In my opinion, it is very superior to the first; there is less repetition of the letters; they are better written, abound more in criticism and observation, and make the reader better acquainted with Lord Byron's principles and character. His morality was certainly more suited to the meridian of Italy than England; but with all his faults there is a charm about him that excites the deepest interest and admiration [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Somerville Print: Book
Colonel D'Aguilar to John Murray, 15 January 1831, on the second volume of Moore's Life of Byron:
'I have sat up all the night, and devoured every line of it. As a whole it is beautiful, the genuine transcript of his mind and body. But there are passages in it on the score of discretion which can never be sufficiently regretted. I lament this the more because you know the pains I took to prevent it..... The minor and minute detail of those grosser irregularities, to which, for a time, he abandoned himself in the rashness of despair, and when his mind was without an object, should never have been inserted..... I grieve over this beyond measure, becuase so little is wanting to make the book perfect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Colonel D'Aguilar Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to John Murray (1831), on the second volume of Moore's Life of Byron:
'No doubt there are longeurs, but really not many. The most teasing part is the blanks, which perplex without concealing [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Gally Knight to John Murray, 17 February 1831:
'I have seen the second volume of Moore's "Life of Byron," and though it can be matter of surprise to no one to find himself the object of the spleen of the noble author, yet I confess I [italics]am surprised[end italics] at seeing myself so gratuitously offered up as a victim to the public [comments further] [...] The second volume appears to me to be neither more nor less than "Don Juan" in prose, and I cannot say how much I regret to see Lord Byron's amours so openly paraded before the public. It is an indecorous exhibition, and but too likely to do harm, for young men will admire [italics]the whole[end italics] of the life, because it belonged to genius; and will imitate the only part of it with which metal superiority had nothing to do.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Gally Knight Print: Book
Sir Alexander Burnes to John Murray, 'On the Nile,' 30 March 1835:
'The Quarterly is lying before me [...] I have been reperusing the very article which
treats of Mahommed Ali in that able essay regarding the encroachment of Russia.
The Journal from which the quotations are made regarding the state and
government of Egypt prove the writer to have been an accurate and an acute
observer, but I do think that he has been too severe on the Pasha. To be sure he
[Pasha] is a wholesale merchant and a wholesale oppressor, but compare him with
his predecessors in this land of bondsmen, and then judge [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Alexander Burnes Print: Serial / periodical
Joanna Baillie to John Murray, 16 March 1832:
'I thank you very heartily for your great courtesy in sending me a copy of Miss Kemble's tragedy. I have read it very eagerly and found it a very extraordinary work, written with much force and ability, containing many traits of real genius. It well deserves the success which I see by to-day's papers it has met with, and I doubt not it will continue to enjoy the favour of the public. If you have an opportunity I should be very much obliged to you to convey my congratulations to the young authoress on this brilliant beginning of her career as a dramatic writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
Fanny Kemble to John Murray (1832):
'The article in the Quarterly on my "Francis the First," more than satisfied me, for it made me out a great deal cleverer than ever I thought I was, or ever, I am afraid, I shall be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Serial / periodical
Fanny Kemble Butler to John Murray, 26 March 1836:
'Surely Captain Marryat is not a man to be trifled with; he don't write as if he were. How much I like his books, and how much I should like to know him!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Butler Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was occupied by the reading of Dr Faustus. The various parts were read by the members - the chief being
Mephisto - C.I. Evans
Faustus - R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club including Charles Evans and Reginald Robson Print: Book
Lord Mahon to John Murray, 11 December 1836:
'I am much obliged to you for the early copy of the [Quarterly] Review which I am reading
with great pleasure. The article on myself was very gratifying to me. Its approbation of the
work is joined to so much knowledge of the subject as to make the former truly valuable.
Pray, when you see Mr. Lockhart, tell him how highly I appreciate it.
'Lord Wellesley's letter is quite beautiful -- no less noble in sentiment than nervous in
language [...]
'The third article on Napier makes me think the following no bad plan [goes on to suggest
collection of all Quarterly Review article on this subject in a 'a pocket volume, for the use of
the army']'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Mahon Print: Serial / periodical, 'early copy'
Mr Lockhart to John Murray, 24 September 1839:
'Morritt has just finished "Hallam's Literature." He is in raptures with it, and says such a book,
forty years ago, would have been beyond all price for the direction of his studies. He is going to
interleave his copy and annotate largely.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Morritt Print: Book
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts.
1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith
2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith
3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings
4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole
5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin
6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham
7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds
8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson
9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith
10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin
11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis
12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith
13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds
14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis
15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto]
16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson
17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith
18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith
19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin
20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts.
1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith
2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith
3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings
4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole
5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin
6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham
7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds
8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson
9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith
10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin
11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis
12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith
13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds
14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis
15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto]
16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson
17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith
18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith
19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin
20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Serial / periodical
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts.
1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith
2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith
3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings
4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole
5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin
6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham
7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds
8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson
9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith
10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin
11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis
12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith
13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds
14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis
15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto]
16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson
17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith
18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith
19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin
20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
2 July 1876, from Brussels:
'After I went to bed I read over that wonderful part of Macaulay's History, the death of Charles II, and was quite excited by it, when I dropped asleep about 1 a.m.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
18 July 1876:
'Left Paris by tidal service at half-past nine, reaching London before seven... I am reading again, with great delight, Thackeray's Esmond. Since I left England [on ceramics-collecting expedition] I have read Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Mrs Elliot's Old Court Life in France, various in style, all in their way of much interest to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
7 December 1879:
'I was a little chilly in the morning [...] and I feared I had taken cold, so I did not go out. Read over the fire. First Freeman's account of the Bayeux tapestry, then some of Thackeray's Humorists.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Unknown
'[...] the volume ["Charity"] which on my first visit to London in many months I carried off home. From the first word of the wonderful preface to the last short sketch of the Pampa as it was, it has been one huge delight. Of course some of these stories--gems--I've read (The incomparable "Aurora" is a long time ago first) but the cumulative effect is magnificent in its pictorial force and emotional power.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am delighted and honoured by your gift of an inscribed copy [presumably of "Voices of Tomorrow" but see additional comment]. It is with great pleasure that I discover in myself an intellectual (or perhaps instinctive) sympathy for what you say in your book with such force, clearness and conviction. In the article on myself what I see first is the generosity of your appreciation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical, see additional comment
'Thanks for the houseflags little book. I have marked in it all the ships I used to know--a good many of them.[...]. After you went away I re-read your Fog on the River paper. In the E.[nglish] R.[eview]. Jolly well done and rightly felt and artistically expressed. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'Sunday morning, as I was out getting chocolate, I found two new manifestoes on the walls. One from a private person, editor of a Radical journal, calling on the people to be calm, and rest on the weight of their majority. The other, a declaration of the President’s, which made me so mad that I could have broken his head if he had been within my reach. It was written, I firmly believe, with the intention of driving on the Republicans to extremities, and shook the cat in the air with a sort of paternal menace, that must have been maddening to the Opposition.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster, election posters.
'I was thoroughly charmed by the volumes of verse. I read them with the liveliest sympathy and sincere admiration. The study of Pierre Loti is very interesting. What's more I think nothing could be fairer. As for "L'enseignement de Goethe" I am all the more inclined to accept it from your hand since I have never read a line of the Great Man. I don't know German and I quail before translations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I was thoroughly charmed by the volumes of verse. I read them with the liveliest sympathy and sincere admiration. The study of Pierre Loti is very interesting. What's more I think nothing could be fairer. As for "L'enseignement de Goethe" I am all the more inclined to accept it from your hand since I have never read a line of the Great Man. I don't know German and I quail before translations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I was thoroughly charmed by the volumes of verse. I read them with the liveliest sympathy and sincere admiration. The study of Pierre Loti is very interesting. What's more I think nothing could be fairer. As for "L'enseignement de Goethe" I am all the more inclined to accept it from your hand since I have never read a line of the Great Man. I don't know German and I quail before translations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I had hesitated, knowing that "The New Statesman" and "The Week-end Review" regarded each other as rivals; two days later I agreed to write the notice, and subsequently reviewed a number of well-known books which included Storm Jameson's autobiographical "No Time Like the Present".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'Infinite thanks for the most precious and admirable volume [Knave of Hearts] [...] meanwhile I am as ever yours with admiration of the poet and affection for the man...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'That's why [an attack of gout] I did not write to thank you for your book ["A Hatchment"] (and the Ranee's) ["My Life in Sarawak"] as soon as I ought to have done. Upon my word it's a marvellous volume [...]. The Ranee's book is delightfully ladylike but her sentiment for the land and the people is so obviously genuine that all her sins of omission shall be forgiven her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Thanks too for the Chinese books. I have already looked at the introduction and certain sections of the "Lute [of Jade]". Very fine. Extraordinary subtle feeling I'll write more about them after getting the full taste.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'5. The Club now considered the subject for the evening - Berkshire - & the opening paper was by H.M. Wallis who touched upon the History of the County in his inimitable way from the Piltdown race to Archbishop Laud. Alfred & his battles. Reading & the 35 religious houses & the breweries are prominent features of the story & may be responsible for the saying Piety Spiders & Pride.
6. Rosamund Wallis read a gruesome story from Thomas of Reading about a couple of Reading inhabitants who had murdered 60 people by the simple device of a trapdoor floor to the spare bedroom & a cauldron of boiling water below.
7. 3 Berkshire folksongs were then given by Mrs Robson & E.E. Unwin.
8. S.A Reynolds read a Ballad entitled 'A Berkshire Lady', though speaking as a mere male I doubt whether her conduct would be considered quite lady-like today'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'The subject of the meeting was 'Gardens' & all members were asked to bring contributions [...] The following is a list of the contributions.
C.E. Stansfield a reading from 'Paradise Lost' followed by a short essay entitled "The Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life"
Mary Hayward. Song "Now sleeps the Crimson petals"
C.I. Evans. Two Readings. Of an Orchard. Higson. The Apple. John Burrough.
Mrs Robson. Song. "Thank God for a Garden"
Miss Cole. Recitation. 'The Flower's Name'. Browning.
E.E. Unwin. Song. "Come into the Garden Maud"
Mrs Evans. Reading from "The Small Garden Useful" dealing with the Cooking of Vegetables.
C.I. Evans. Reading. "My Garden"
interval for supper
Miss Wallis. Reading by Request 'My Garden' - a parody
Miss Cole. Recitation. Gardens. by Kipling
Miss Hayward. Song.
R.H. Robson Violin Solo
C.I. Evans. Reading. A ballad of trees & the master
Mrs Robson. Song.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
' I've just finished "B[ernal] Diaz". The terminal pages of the preface are just lovely with their irresistable reference to the tempi passati. As to the book itself no personal friend of the old Conquistador could have put it together with greater skill and more tender care.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was spent in the company of Samuel Pepys (Peeps)
The Club was much indebted to H.M. Wallis and to H.R. Smith for able essays giving an outline of Pepys' life & an estimate of his character. From H.R. Smith we were introduced to Pepys as the competent official who by keenness made himself master of his job.
Readings from the diary were given by
Rosamund Wallis on "The Great Fire"
Mrs Robson on Mrs Pepys
E.E. Unwin on "The Plague"
& R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'The evening was then devoted to Samuel Johnson as seen through the biography of Boswell. Two papers were contributed.
By Mr Burrow on "a Second Hand Book" which threw an interesting sidelight on Dr Johnson
& By H.R. Smith who gave us an interesting account of the biographer.
Readings from the biography were given by Mr Rawlings, Mr Unwin, Mr Evans & Mr Wallis, Mr Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
19 November 1880, from Paris:
'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
19 November 1880, from Paris:
'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
19 November 1880, from Paris:
'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Ever so many thanks for the honour of the dedication; and for the copy [of "Figures of Several Centuries"] which reached me yesterday. I sat up with it of course. There are marvellous pages there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage, Ernest Unwin & Alfred Rawlings Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine and Charles Evans Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman.
The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women.
Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'.
R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community.
Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister.
There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'I'll show you where I got the hint for it [his story "The Warriors' Soul"] in Philippe de Ségur. There's a hint for another in him but I fancy too macabre (and improper) to use.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
21 August 1886:
'It is a great effort to me to think of moving; my feeling of desolation makes it difficult for me
to decide on any change, and yet I am always eager to be at work. A passage in Macaulay's
Essay on Atterbury struck me very much the other day. He says: "Grief, which disposes gentle
natures to retirement, to inaction and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more
restless." I am sure this is the case with me, I must be always doing something. My reading,
this past summer, has chiefly been Macaulay's History. It has been of immense interest to me,
but I forget it almost as fast as I read it. My chief time for reading is in the night if I happen
to wake, or in the early morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
21 August 1886:
'It is a great effort to me to think of moving; my feeling of desolation makes it difficult for me
to decide on any change, and yet I am always eager to be at work. A passage in Macaulay's
Essay on Atterbury struck me very much the other day. He says: "Grief, which disposes gentle
natures to retirement, to inaction and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more
restless." I am sure this is the case with me, I must be always doing something. My reading,
this past summer, has chiefly been Macaulay's History. It has been of immense interest to me,
but I forget it almost as fast as I read it. My chief time for reading is in the night if I happen
to wake, or in the early morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'The Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
'The Minutes of last meeting were read & agreed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
'C.I. Evans read Geoffrey Young's [?] poem 'Mountain Playmates' & Mary Hayward read Leslie Stephen's account of the first ascent of the Rothorn. R.B. Graham circulated snapshots illustrating this reading & his own climb of the same mountain. After supper R.B. Graham gave a general chat on Mountaineering with views. A passage by Whymper on accidents was summarised by A. Rawlings who then read Whymper's account of an extraordinary accident he himself sustained. To conclude the Secretary read a parody of Wadsworth [Wordsworth?] 'We are Seven' composed by H.m. Wallis on climbing at Arolla'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'Mr Burrow then introduced John Masefield's work setting out the little publicly known of his life following with a short review of his work and a few hints as to the topgraphy of his poems. C.I. Evans then read three short poems "Sea Change", "Cargoes" & "Ships" which well illustrated the poet's love of Ships & the Sea. H.R. Smith read from the earlier part of "Reynard the Fox" illustrating his love of energy the open air & his vivid portraiture of very round human types. This was followed by an interesting discussion on the quality of Masefield's work. H.M. Wallis read a moving passage from Gallipoli. After supper Mrs Reynolds read several short poems of personal feeling Tewkesbury Rd, Beauty, I Went into the Fields, Laugh & be Merry & By a Bierside. To conclude the evening Mr Burrow read the latter portion of "The Everlasting Mercy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'As soon as I had learned to read, my great delight was that of learning epitaphs and monumental inscriptions. A story of melancholy import never failed to arrest my attention, and, before I was seven years old, I could correctly repeat Pope's Lines ot the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady; Mason's Elegy on the Death of the beautiful Countess of Coventry; and many smaller poems on similar subjects.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Darby Print: Book
'The evening's subject of William de Morgan was introduced by Geo Burrow who gave some account of his life drawing attention to his whimsical nature & unpractical business methods. Mrs Rawlings read a powerful but sad scene of shipwreck from Joseph Vance. F.E. Pollard chatted on the novels emphasizing their apparent but not real shapelessness the author's great interest in problems of memory the reality of the conversations the way in which characters were drawn & well drawn in all kinds of situations & from all ranks of society. The ensuing discussion showed how the healthy & delightful tone of the books had been enjoyed. R.H. Robson & H.R. Smith read from Alice for short & Somehow Good & A. Rawlings gave some account of De Morgan's methods on his tiles & pottery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The evening's subject of William de Morgan was introduced by Geo Burrow who gave some account of his life drawing attention to his whimsical nature & unpractical business methods. Mrs Rawlings read a powerful but sad scene of shipwreck from Joseph Vance. F.E. Pollard chatted on the novels emphasizing their apparent but not real shapelessness the author's great interest in problems of memory the reality of the conversations the way in which characters were drawn & well drawn in all kinds of situations & from all ranks of society. The ensuing discussion showed how the healthy & delightful tone of the books had been enjoyed. R.H. Robson & H.R. Smith read from Alice for short & Somehow Good & A. Rawlings gave some account of De Morgan's methods on his tiles & pottery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The evening's subject of William de Morgan was introduced by Geo Burrow who gave some account of his life drawing attention to his whimsical nature & unpractical business methods. Mrs Rawlings read a powerful but sad scene of shipwreck from Joseph Vance. F.E. Pollard chatted on the novels emphasizing their apparent but not real shapelessness the author's great interest in problems of memory the reality of the conversations the way in which characters were drawn & well drawn in all kinds of situations & from all ranks of society. The ensuing discussion showed how the healthy & delightful tone of the books had been enjoyed. R.H. Robson & H.R. Smith read from Alice for short & Somehow Good & A. Rawlings gave some account of De Morgan's methods on his tiles & pottery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
'The evening's subject of William de Morgan was introduced by Geo Burrow who gave some account of his life drawing attention to his whimsical nature & unpractical business methods. Mrs Rawlings read a powerful but sad scene of shipwreck from Joseph Vance. F.E. Pollard chatted on the novels emphasizing their apparent but not real shapelessness the author's great interest in problems of memory the reality of the conversations the way in which characters were drawn & well drawn in all kinds of situations & from all ranks of society. The ensuing discussion showed how the healthy & delightful tone of the books had been enjoyed. R.H. Robson & H.R. Smith read from Alice for short & Somehow Good & A. Rawlings gave some account of De Morgan's methods on his tiles & pottery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'The evening's subject of William de Morgan was introduced by Geo Burrow who gave some account of his life drawing attention to his whimsical nature & unpractical business methods. Mrs Rawlings read a powerful but sad scene of shipwreck from Joseph Vance. F.E. Pollard chatted on the novels emphasizing their apparent but not real shapelessness the author's great interest in problems of memory the reality of the conversations the way in which characters were drawn & well drawn in all kinds of situations & from all ranks of society. The ensuing discussion showed how the healthy & delightful tone of the books had been enjoyed. R.H. Robson & H.R. Smith read from Alice for short & Somehow Good & A. Rawlings gave some account of De Morgan's methods on his tiles & pottery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'F.E. Pollard gave some account of Walt Whitman's Life indicating the variety of livelyhood [sic] & of expression which he sought he also told us something of the leading ideas expressed in his work "The Splendour of Life" World wide Comradeship Immortality Freedom Broad Vistas. Geo Burrow read from the poem Memories of President Lincoln. After supper R.B. Graham read Captain, My Captain & Manhattan Faces. F.E. Pollard sang "Ethiopian Saluting the Colours". R.H. Robson amused us by reading passages showing Whitman's fondness for lists. In the discussion which concluded the evening it was concluded that whilst Whitman is often effective his poems are often not poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'F.E. Pollard gave some account of Walt Whitman's Life indicating the variety of livelyhood [sic] & of expression which he sought he also told us something of the leading ideas expressed in his work "The Splendour of Life" World wide Comradeship Immortality Freedom Broad Vistas. Geo Burrow read from the poem Memories of President Lincoln. After supper R.B. Graham read Captain, My Captain & Manhattan Faces. F.E. Pollard sang "Ethiopian Saluting the Colours". R.H. Robson amused us by reading passages showing Whitman's fondness for lists. In the discussion which concluded the evening it was concluded that whilst Whitman is often effective his poems are often not poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'F.E. Pollard gave some account of Walt Whitman's Life indicating the variety of livelyhood [sic] & of expression which he sought he also told us something of the leading ideas expressed in his work "The Splendour of Life" World wide Comradeship Immortality Freedom Broad Vistas. Geo Burrow read from the poem Memories of President Lincoln. After supper R.B. Graham read Captain, My Captain & Manhattan Faces. F.E. Pollard sang "Ethiopian Saluting the Colours". R.H. Robson amused us by reading passages showing Whitman's fondness for lists. In the discussion which concluded the evening it was concluded that whilst Whitman is often effective his poems are often not poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
'F.E. Pollard gave some account of Walt Whitman's Life indicating the variety of livelyhood [sic] & of expression which he sought he also told us something of the leading ideas expressed in his work "The Splendour of Life" World wide Comradeship Immortality Freedom Broad Vistas. Geo Burrow read from the poem Memories of President Lincoln. After supper R.B. Graham read Captain, My Captain & Manhattan Faces. F.E. Pollard sang "Ethiopian Saluting the Colours". R.H. Robson amused us by reading passages showing Whitman's fondness for lists. In the discussion which concluded the evening it was concluded that whilst Whitman is often effective his poems are often not poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
'F.E. Pollard gave some account of Walt Whitman's Life indicating the variety of livelyhood [sic] & of expression which he sought he also told us something of the leading ideas expressed in his work "The Splendour of Life" World wide Comradeship Immortality Freedom Broad Vistas. Geo Burrow read from the poem Memories of President Lincoln. After supper R.B. Graham read Captain, My Captain & Manhattan Faces. F.E. Pollard sang "Ethiopian Saluting the Colours". R.H. Robson amused us by reading passages showing Whitman's fondness for lists. In the discussion which concluded the evening it was concluded that whilst Whitman is often effective his poems are often not poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate.
Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis
One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield
Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson
The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham
If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham
The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow
Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis
Revenge or Justice C Evans
Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis
A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate.
Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis
One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield
Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson
The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham
If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham
The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow
Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis
Revenge or Justice C Evans
Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis
A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate.
Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis
One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield
Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson
The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham
If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham
The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow
Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis
Revenge or Justice C Evans
Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis
A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
'The Financial Statement was read & approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
'I wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of the "Review", for I know I wished to say something on that head more particularly than I can from memory; […] I was very much pleased with the article on Bret Harte; it seemed to me just, clear, and to the point.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
'Of your poems I have myself a kindness for ‘Noll and Nell’. Although I don’t think you have made it as good as you ought: verse five is surely not [italics]quite melodious[end italics]. I confess I like the Sonnet in the last number of the "Review"− the ‘Sonnet to England’.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Serial / periodical, Both (2 poems, one in a book, one in a periodical).
Aaron Hill to Samuel Richardson, 1 June 1730:
'It pleases me, but does not surprise me at all, that your sentiments concerning Milton's prose writings, agree with those I threw out, under influence of that back-handed inspiration, which his malevolent genius had filled me with, as I drew in the bad air of his pages [...] One might venture on a very new use of two writers: I would pick out my friends and my enemies, by setting them to read [italics]Milton[end italics] and [italics]Cowley[end italics]. I might take it for granted, that I ought to be afraid of his [italics]heart[end italics], who, in the fame and popularity of the first, could lose sight of his malice and wickedness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Aaron Hill Print: Unknown
J. Duncombe, of Benet College, Cambridge, to Samuel Richardson, 15 October 1751:
'Mr Graham is not in Cambridge; but his brother is, who is [...] very ingenious, and expressed a great desire to be acquainted with you,as he already thoroughly is with your writings [...] The short epigram which Mr Graham sent you was wrote by himself, and is much liked here, because we think it partakes of the sublime simplicity of the ancients.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Duncombe and others in Cambridge
'I was in Paris during the elections for the Chamber, when a triumphant majority was returned, as of course you know, against the very bad, or very stupid, or else both, person, Marshal MacMahon. It was an interesting time, you may imagine. On the morning of the elections, a manifesto of the President’s came out. I was living at the time in what we call Bohemian style, buying and cooking my own food, and had occasion to go out early for some chocolate. When I read the proclamation, which was on all the walls, I could have beaten MacMahon with my cane. It was a scandalous attempt to insult the poor people and so drive them to the barricades; if that was not the intention of the document, it was either written by a man out of his mind, or I do not know the meaning of words when I see them. They disappointed him for one while; but how it is all to end, who can foresee?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 12 August 1751:
'I have not seen the Oxford and Cambridge Verses. The only late publication I have met with is Mr Smart's Prize Verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Unknown
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 24 October 1751:
'I am sick of all human greatness and activity, and so would you be if you had been turning over with me five great folios of Montfaucon's French Antiquities, where warriors, tyrants, queens, and favourites, have past before my eyes in a quick succession, of whose pomp, power, and bustle, nothing now remains but quiet Gothic monuments, vile prints, and the records of still viler actions [...] [later comments, in same letter] Let me do justice to human nature and French history; my last night's reading afforded some instances of most charming generosity [...] and of real goodness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 22 April 1752:
'I thank you for your offer of sending me Miss Mulso's verses, Mr Richardson has been so good as to shew them to me. I admire her and them as I ought, and indeed from all I have heard of her character, or seen of her writing, I love and esteem her much.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 December 1752:
'Did I ever tell you I was reading Madame de Maintenon's Letters? [...] She seems to have been both a great and a good woman. [comments further]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 10 June 1754:
'I will send you a sonnet that I am extremely fond of, from no modern author, but from one whom I am sure you never met with, because you never mentioned him, Carlo Maria Maggi [...] [reproduces sonnet opening "Care dell'alma stanca Albengatrici..."] Is not this sonnet perfect in its way? And is it not utterly untranslatable?'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 10 June 1754:
'Your cousin [Richard Owen] Cambridge has writ many lively papers in the World this winter from the mere motive of charity; and some of them are very pretty.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 10 July 1754:
'I am beyond description charmed with the Italian sonnet you sent me. I am afraid your opinion is too well grounded of its being absolutely untranslatable, at least into our Gothic language.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Manuscript: Letter, Transcribed by Catherine Talbot in letter of 10 June 1754.
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 10 July 1754:
'After that exquisitely beautiful sonnet [by Carlo Maria Maggi, opening 'Care dell'alma stanca Albengatrici...'] you sent me, I am quite ashamed to let you see poor Metastasio's love song [as previously promised], but the simplicity of it pleased me, and simplicity is an excellence not often to be met with in any modern compositions, except those of our own country, of which I think it is the characteristic.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter
'At a P.E.N. dinner I sat beside him, and questioned him about the "lighted door" in his novel "Guy and Pauline".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'In the "Sunday Times" for September 12th, a letter of protest from Dame Marie Tempest had coincided with another from G., who described the contrasting practice of the Spaniards in the Civil War.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper, Unknown
'In the "Sunday Times" for September 12th, a letter of protest from Dame Marie Tempest had coincided with another from G., who described the contrasting practice of the Spaniards in the Civil War.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper, Unknown
'K.S. Evans assisted [her husband's discussion of superstition] by reading from Walter Raymond's "The Book of Simple Delights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'After refreshment Geo Burrow told us of Meinholt's [sic] book "The Amber Witch" & of witchcraft & Howard R. Smith read a story written by H.M. Wallis who was unable to be present entitled "The Price of his Soul" dealing with sin eating in Wales'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'C.I. Evans read a short essay on W.H. Hudsons story Green Mansions H.R. Smith followed on Rates & Taxes & Geo Burrow read a short paper of H.M. Wallis on some points in recent Geology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with.
Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing.
Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo.
C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson
F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action.
Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son.
The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Unknown
'The treasurers report showing a balance in hand of 19/- was read'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Smith Manuscript: Unknown
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 16 June 1758:]
'Since I came home I have picked up [reading] at Mrs Gambieu's the Memoirs of Anne of Austria, in a vile and most unintelligible translation; yet I keep reading on, and am much inclined to love Madame Motteville a great deal better than her heroine, against whom I have just now an irreconcileable quarrel for leaving her to all the dangers and miseries of a siege.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 15 August 1758, following Talbot's stepfather's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, and his household's change of residence:]
'I have not had any spare time, not but that I have lounged away many a half hour over Ben Jonson, Marivaux's Spectateur Francois, and any such idle books as chance presented me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Unknown
'Four one act plays were then read:
"Windows by J. Galsworthy, "the Dear Departed" by Stanley Houghton, "The Boy Comes Home" by A. A. Milne, "Fame & the Poet" by Lord Dunsany & a delightful evening was spent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history.
F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon
Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens
Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil
Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known"
Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding
After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts
F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden"
Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden
Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin
and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history.
F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon
Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens
Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil
Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known"
Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding
After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts
F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden"
Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden
Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin
and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
'After supper the Secretary read the Minutes of the last Meeting'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
'The Minutes of last Meeting were read & approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
'The financial statement was read showing a balance in hand of 11/ 3 1/2'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Smith Manuscript: Unknown
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 26 April 1763:]
'Your Carlo Maggi, were he not such a horrible papist, is a most excellent companion to me. Do you remember the laughing prologue to a comedy of Plautus? Surely it is quite original: and whether Carlo is penitential, or merry, or critical, or satirical, or complimental, one sees the same pure amiable good mind through every form. Indeed it hurts me grievously that he should have been born in a popish country, and some flights of his popery are quite shocking [...] but surely there might be a scelta made even with parts of his Letters to Rosa, that would be a most valuable book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 26 April 1763:]
'Your Carlo Maggi, were he not such a horrible papist, is a most excellent companion to me. Do you remember the laughing prologue to a comedy of Plautus? Surely it is quite original: and whether Carlo is penitential, or merry, or critical, or satirical, or complimental, one sees the same pure amiable good mind through every form. Indeed it hurts me grievously that he should have been born in a popish country, and some flights of his popery are quite shocking [...] but surely there might be a scelta made even with parts of his Letters to Rosa, that would be a most valuable book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 10 May 1763:]
'Carlo Maggi is, indeed, a most excellent companion, and I agree with you in lamenting that one cannot recommend the most elegant, the most amiable, and the most useful of all the Italian poets without so many cautions and qualifications [...] I fear some of his finest pieces have often a mixture of popish wildness and absurdity. I do not particularly recollect the prologue ["to a comedy of Plautus"] you mention, and perhaps never read it, as I am apt to skip the humorous pieces, but I will look over it on your recommendation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 May 1763:]
'Some of [Carlo Maggi's] prose is delightful. Pray do not read the death of Adam. It is
extremely fine, but so painful, that at first it gives one's thoughts a wrong turn -- one cannot get it out of one's head; yet if one thinks it thoroughly over, one may get a great deal of good out of it. We shall have a very different one after supper, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. They are very amusing for that half hour, and I dare say genuine. Mrs Montagu whom I saw a few days ago, first told me of them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 May 1763:]
'Some of [Carlo Maggi's] prose is delightful. Pray do not read the death of Adam. It is
extremely fine, but so painful, that at first it gives one's thoughts a wrong turn -- one cannot get it out of one's head; yet if one thinks it thoroughly over, one may get a great deal of good out of it. We shall have a very different one after supper, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. They are very amusing for that half hour, and I dare say genuine. Mrs Montagu whom I saw a few days ago, first told me of them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 October 1763:
'Our after-supper book is Hume -- his English history however; but I hear it with infinite caution.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 15 October 1763:]
'It is more from the testimony of others than from any recollection of my own, that I had formed the idea that Erasmus was in some parts of his works a very indecent writer [...] It is I believe more than thirty years since I read his dialogues, and then only those which were pointed out to me.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 5 December 1763:]
'Have you read Mrs Macaulay's history? I have seen only some extracts from it, which seemed to be writ with strength and spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Unknown
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, during stay in Canterbury, 12 February 1764:]
'I brought with me Hurd's Dialogues on Education, which have entertained his Grace very well, and a silly harmless story book called Maria, which serves to entertain myself at minutes when I am fit for nothing else.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 12 June 1766:]
'I have been reading your third volume of Peruvians with pleasure, and though the objection you made is just, it does not hurt me in these as in the Tales of the Genii. The Peruvian seems a patriarchal religion before it grew corrupted, but Christian piety with Mahometan doctrines, is "a jewel of gold in a swine's snout."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 October 1768, during a visit to the Cornwall family:]
''We found them here reading Mosheim. They are in the second volume, which we read in the evenings; and I have got the first in my room here studying it with great pleasure.'
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 October 1768:
'Mosheim has really convinced me that the desart [sic] unsociable system is a very wrong and a false one. In the main he seems a very sensible and candid writer -- now and then we differ, and I grumble over my book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Talbot and Cornwall family Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 29 April 1763:]
'I am rather scandalized that you should even ask how I like the Malincolia d'Alcindo, which is beautiful in the highest degree, and it is impossible to be unaffected by it without an absolute want of all taste and all feeling [comments further]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 6 August 1766:]
'Be so good as to tell Mrs Handcock that I do like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and likewise that I do not [...] Indeed it has admirable things in it, though mixt with provoking absurdities, at which one should not be provoked if the book in general had not great merit [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 28 February 1752:]
'I often entertain myself with reading over those charming Odes of Miss Mulso's, and admire them more and more every time I read them. I am so proud of the honour she has done me in one of them, that my gratitude has forced from me another sonnet [...] which I desire you to give her.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 5 March 1753:]
'I am much obliged to you for the sonnet; it is very pretty'.
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 1 March 1754:]
'Who is that Miss Nanny Williams who has published a pretty copy of verses addressed to you in the Gentleman's Magazine of January last? Whoever she be, the girl has a good heart; and writes very well [...] If you know her, I desire my service and thanks to her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Serial / periodical
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 29 May 1754:]
'I very much wonder, how it came to pass that I did not hear a syllable of Mr Duncombe's performance, till Miss Sally happened to rummage it out among other things for my entertainment that evening which I spent without you at North-End. I have since got it. I hope I am not bribed by the compliment to me, but I think it a very pretty poem. I indeed very much dislike the title [...] there can be no such word as Feminiad with an [italics]i[end italics] after the [italics]n[end italics] formed from femina; the Battiad, the Causidicad, and other foolish things which have come out with that termination in imitation of the Dunciad, have given people a surfeit of, and even an aversion to, "omne quod exit in ad." But what say the ladies to it? I wish it might be a means to persuade them to publish, though without names. If they would join to give us a miscellany, it would be a better collection than most we have had, and do honour both to themselves and the sex.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Unknown
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 18 July 1754:]
'The verses from my fair [italics]Pupil[end italics], as she does me the honour to call herself, did indeed a little alarm me. To chide me in a sonnet for writing of sonnets, was doing as a physician did by me the other day, -- who at the very time he was taking a pinch out of my box reproved me for taking snuff.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
'Thank you very much for sending me your contribution towards the solution of the great problem [Polish independence].[...] Your arguments and your conclusions seem to me absolutely incontrovertible.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, see additional comment, identity of text uncertain
'Thank you very much for the books. Monahan I like. E[zra] P[ound] is certainly a poet but I am afraid I am too old and too wooden-headed to appreciate him as perhaps he deserves.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical
'Here I read the three-year-old newspapers which described the unusual murder trial, and studied a "background" book, "The Neuroses in War", published by the Tavistock Clinic, for the psychology of my chief character.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 22 April 1818:]
'Read Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 6 January 1820:]
'Read Goldsmith's History of Rome.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
[Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, on life as a teacher at Miss Wooler's school, Dewsbury Moor, June 1837:]
'My life since I saw you last has passed on as monotonously and unvaryingly as ever, nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, or a call from the Taylors [friends], or by meeting with a pleasant new book. "The Life of Oberlin" and Legh Richmond's "Domestic Portraiture" are the last of this description I have perused. The latter work strongly attracted, and strangely fascinated, my attention. Beg, borrow, or steal it without delay; and read the "Memoir of Wilberforce," that
short record of a brief, uneventful life, I shall never forget; it is beautiful, not on account of the incidents it details, but because of the simple narration it gives of the life and death of a young, talented, and sincere Christian. Get the book, Ellen (I wish I had it to give you), read it and tell me what you think of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
[Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, on life as a teacher at Miss Wooler's school, Dewsbury Moor, June 1837:]
'My life since I saw you last has passed on as monotonously and unvaryingly as ever, nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, or a call from the Taylors [friends], or by meeting with a pleasant new book. "The Life of Oberlin" and Legh Richmond's "Domestic Portraiture" are the last of this description I have perused. The latter work strongly attracted, and strangely fascinated, my attention. Beg, borrow, or steal it without delay; and read the "Memoir of Wilberforce," that
short record of a brief, uneventful life, I shall never forget; it is beautiful, not on account of the incidents it details, but because of the simple narration it gives of the life and death of a young, talented, and sincere Christian. Get the book, Ellen (I wish I had it to give you), read it and tell me what you think of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'My first real understanding of the "terrific sensation" came from an article published in the "Sunday Chronicle" on March 12th by the American columnist, Dorothy Thompson. [Brittain then proceeds to quote from the article.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper
'To the "Evening Standard" Anne Matheson had contributed a later and similar description of Nuremberg.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper
'More stimulating was the reading of Somerset Maugham's short novel, "A Christmas Holiday".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'written in a bad American style, turgid, & obscurely fractious, but interesting from its matter'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'fine imagery, but is too speculative'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Unknown
'A most striking book, & gives abundant food for thought & admiration, one of those which to read is an epoch for the mind… I think the whole book calculated to be of great use both to invalids & still more to those who are with them, it is so searching & so ennobling; at the same time there is a good deal of pride and sterness, perhaps of self-sufficiency which seem s the besetting taint of her line of opinions, & she presents rather an appalling idea of pain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'loud... parts of it forcibly stated, but too inflamatory'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'parts are eloquent & true, some too partial & self-satisfied, underrating the evil more than overrating the good, a little of it we should formerly at Christ Church have thought Ex-Collegee'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Serial / periodical
'elaborate, striking, almost too glaring'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'It is clear to me that mesmerism is not to be poo-pood, but diligently & reverently investigated'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Unknown
'full of his living wit & wisdom, & not without some of his flippancy on solemn themes, however there is so much of manly justice in the whole argument that I could only wish for the suppression of one or two unnecessary jokes about extreme unction'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Manuscript: Unknown
'which has much that is able, startling, striking; it is said not be be accurate in its details, & it obviously strikes out often at random, his account of creation does not seem to me to conflict more with the Masonic accounts than the received theories of modern Geology; the order assigned to the appearance of man certainly harmonises with them. I do not care much for the notion that we are engendered by monkeys... I do not like the idea of all the starts [possibly stars] all being just the same as this world'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'very powerful & interesting, in parts very fine, not altogether pleasing — some striking delineation of character; it is said to be by a woman, but it is not feminine — I should certainly say by a Socinian — not by Miss Martineau'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'I had read it first to nearly the very same people after my Father's illness in 1844; it is only less beautiful than practical & useful'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Unknown
'I only hope that its appalling details of profligacy are exaggerated'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Book
'In the face of such topics, how can I grovel any longer? Do I not feel the thraldom & restlessness of worldly ambitions… Lord, save me from double-mindedness'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Unknown
'a greater mixture of very good & very bad that I remember to have read — great occasional beauty of thought & language, greater still in the delineation of character, occasional interest of plot, but infinite mysticism & obscurity, stiffness & vulgarity of dialogue'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Book
From Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (Vol II, pp.307-309):
'"Kingsley, in a letter to Mrs Gaskell, rejoices that he had never expressed in print his opinion
[of Charlotte Bronte's writing].
'""Shirley disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books, with a notion
that she was a person who liked coarseness.""'
[source ed. adds in note: 'Kingsley repented on reading Miss Bronte's Life.']
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kingsley Print: Book
'All day I read and finished Rosamond Lehmann's novel, The Ballad and the Source, which Logan P.-S. thinks the best novel since Henry James. I daresay he is right and I am immensly impressed. My only criticisms are that the story is told in dialogue, and I do not think that a child of 10 to 14 should be the channel through which a terrible drama is unfolded. Nevertheless, what a story!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lees-Milne Print: Book
'This morning I sat in the back garden roasting myself in the sun and reading Fiske Kimball's Rococo book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lees-Milne Print: Book
'Assure Mr Montagu, that his Book was the most delightful I have read for many days. Your hand also was visible in it. Why does he not publish more such?'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle
'I have got old Ascham, and read a little of him, when I have done work, every evening.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle
'Did you read Sir W Hamilton on Cousin's Metaphysics in the last Edinburgh Review? And what inferences are we to draw from it? Pity that Sir W. had not the gift of delivery! He has real knowledge on those matters; but all unsorted, and tumbled topsy-turvy like a "bankrupt stock."'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'That vol[ume]["Colour Studies in Paris"] is full of charm and contains many pages of rare distinction and luminous like pearls[...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
[Charlotte Brontë to the grandson of Henry James Mercier, 1 June 1848:]
'I have read 2,500 with pleasure. It is a very clever and ingenious production, Your grandfather must have been an intellectual, clever and accomplished man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
[Charlotte Brontë, as Currer Bell, to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 15 June 1848:]
'I duly received Mirabeau from Mr Smith [...] When I have read the book, I will tell you what I think of it — its subject is interesting. One thing a little annoyed me — as I glanced over the pages I fancied I detected a savour of Carlyle's peculiarities of style. Now Carlyle is a great man, but I always wish he would write plain English; and to imitate his Germanisms is, I think, to imitate his faults.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte, as Currer Bell, to her publisher W. S. Williams, 22 June 1848:
'I feel a little difficulty in telling you what I think of the "Life of Mirabeau." It has interested me much, and I have derived additional information; in the course of reading it, I have often felt called upon to approve the ability and tact of the writer [...] but I have also been moved frequently to disapprobation. It is not the political principles of the writer with which I find fault, nor is it his talents [...] it is his manner of treating Mirabeau's errors that offends [...] there, I think, he betrays a little of crudeness — a little of presumption — not a little of indiscretion.
Could you with confidence put this work into the hands of your son, secure that its perusal would not harm him — that it would not leave on his mind some vague impression that there is a grandeur in vice committed on a colossal scale? [comments further, at length, on text]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher W. S. Williams, 13 July 1848:
'I have just read your article in the "John Bull"; it very clearly and fully explains the cause of the difference obvious between ancient and modern paintings. I wish you had been with us when we went over the Exhibition and the National Gallery: a little explanation from a judge of art would doubtless have enabled us to understand better what we saw'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Taylor to her friend and former schoolfellow Charlotte Bronte, in letter postmarked 24 July 1848:
'About a month since I received and read "Jane Eyre." It seemed to me incredible that you had actually written a book [...] Your novel surprised me by being so perfect as a work of art. I expected something more changeable and unfinished. You have polished to some purpose [...]
You are very different from me in having no moral to preach. It is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production. Has the world gone so well with you that you have no protest to make against its absurdities? [...] I do not believe in Mr Rivers [...] A missionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, or he goes from enthusiasm, and that is both too good and too bad a quality for St John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in such a man [...] You never stop to explain or defend anything [...] how have you written through three volumes without declaring war to the knife against a few dozen absurd doctrines, each of which is supported by "a large and respectable class of readers"?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 31 July 1848:
'You will have seen some of the notices of "Wildfell Hall." I wish my sister felt the unfavourable ones less keenly [...] For my part, I consider the subject [domestic abuse and marital separation] unfortunately chosen — it was one the author was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural — quiet description and simple pathos are, I think, Acton Bell's forte. I liked "Agnes Grey" better than the present work.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 31 July 1848:
'You will have seen some of the notices of "Wildfell Hall." I wish my sister felt the unfavourable ones less keenly [...] For my part, I consider the subject [domestic abuse and marital separation] unfortunately chosen — it was one the author was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural — quiet description and simple pathos are, I think, Acton Bell's forte. I liked "Agnes Grey" better than the present work.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 31 July 1848:
'I never read Emerson; but the book which has had so healing an effect on your mind must be a good one [...] Emerson, if he has cheered you, has not written in vain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Smith Williams Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her former teacher, Margaret Wooler, 28 August 1848:
'Do you remember once speaking with approbation of a book called "Mrs Leicester's School," which you said you had met with, and you wondered by whom it was written? I was reading the other day a lately published collection of the "Letters of Charles Lamb," edited by Serjeant Talfourd, where I found it mentioned that "Mrs Leicester's School" was the first production of Lamb and his sister. These letters are themselves singularly interesting; they have hitherto been suppressed in all previous collections of works and relics, on account of the frequent allusions they contain to the unhappy malady of Miss Lamb [goes on to recount incident of Mary Lamb's killing of her mother, and Charles's subsequent care of her] [...] I thought it both a sad and edifying history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her former teacher, Margaret Wooler, 28 August 1848:
'Do you remember once speaking with approbation of a book called "Mrs Leicester's School," which you said you had met with, and you wondered by whom it was written? I was reading the other day a lately published collection of the "Letters of Charles Lamb," edited by Serjeant Talfourd, where I found it mentioned that "Mrs Leicester's School" was the first production of Lamb and his sister. These letters are themselves singularly interesting; they have hitherto been suppressed in all previous collections of works and relics, on account of the frequent allusions they contain to the unhappy malady of Miss Lamb [goes on to recount incident of Mary Lamb's killing of her mother, and Charles's subsequent care of her] [...] I thought it both a sad and edifying history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wooler Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne to Sir T. Wemyss Reid, in response to Reid's Charlotte Bronte: A Monograph, 24 September 1877:
'I need not say how grateful I should be for any further information about the glorious and immortal lady whom you have already so nobly and justly vindicated and explained to us. From the first hour when as a schoolboy I read "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" I have always retained the first intense desire I felt then to know all that I might or ought to know about the two women who wrote them.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Charles Swinburne Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne to Sir T. Wemyss Reid, in response to Reid's Charlotte Bronte: A Monograph, 24 September 1877:
'I need not say how grateful I should be for any further information about the glorious and immortal lady whom you have already so nobly and justly vindicated and explained to us. From the first hour when as a schoolboy I read "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" I have always retained the first intense desire I felt then to know all that I might or ought to know about the two women who wrote them.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Charles Swinburne Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne to Sir T. Wemyss Reid, in letter responding to Reid's Charlotte Bronte: A Monograph, 24 September 1877:
'The only reference [...] in your book which seemed to indicate a different point of view from my own was the passage in which you seem to deprecate the tone of, of not to depreciate the merit, of "Wuthering Heights." Many years ago I lent a copy of that book to a lady of the class described in it — daughter of a Westmoreland "statesman" or small gentleman-farmer living on his own land — warning her that though I liked it very much I knew that people in general called it "horrible," &c &c. She returned it to me, after reading it through, with the remark that [...] she had known wilder instances of lawless and law-defying passion and tyranny, far more horrible than any cruelty of Heathcliff's, in her own immediate neighbourhood. One of them, which even the Titaness Emily Bronte would have shrunk from telling in print, was the Cenci story done over again by a "statesman," who having bullied his wife to death was left alone in the farm with a beautiful daughter, whom he used with horrible brutality [i.e. raped] — and his character was such that all the neighbours said it was monstrous that the wretched girl should be left alone in the house with him — but nobody would come forward and "bell the cat" — and the end of it was that she was seen late one evening flying out of the house, with all her clothes disordered [...] evidently raving mad, towards the river Eden [...] and was fished out dead next morning. And I knew one of the women who for charity's sake went to nurse or sit up with the horrible old father — and said "she never could have imagined anything so unutterably dreadful as that deathbed" — and, if I remember rightly, that he raved for three days and nights before death came to release him and rid the world of him. Now, seeing that Emily Bronte was a tragic poet, and reared in the same degree of latitude which bred this humble version of the "Cenci," I cannot think that anything in her book is at all excessive or unjustifiable.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 1 February 1849:
'The parcel [of books, from Williams] came yesterday [...] The choice of books is perfect. Papa is at this moment reading Macaulay's "History," which he had wished to see. Anne is engaged with one of Frederika Bremer's tales.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 1 February 1849:
'The parcel [of books, from Williams] came yesterday [...] The choice of books is perfect. Papa is at this moment reading Macaulay's "History," which he had wished to see. Anne is engaged with one of Frederika Bremer's tales.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 4 February 1849:
'I send the parcel [returning books loaned by Williams] up without delay [...] Emerson's essays I read with much interest and often with admiration, but they are of mixed gold and clay — deep and invigorating truth — dreary and depressing fallacy seem to me combined therein. In George Borrow's works I found a wild fascination, a vivid graphic power of description, a fresh originality, an athletic simplicity (so to speak) which give them a stamp of their own. After reading his "Bible in Spain" I felt as if I had actually travelled at his side [...] wandered in the hilly wilderness of the Sierras — encountered and conversed with Manchegan, Castillian, Andalusian, Arragonese, and above all with the savage gitanos.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 25 June 1849:
'I have always forgotten to acknowledge the receipt of the parcel [of books, regularly sent by Williams] from Cornhill [...] I looked at it the other day — it reminded me too sharply of the time when the first parcel arrived — last October; Emily was then beginning to be ill — the opening of the parcel and fascination of the books cheered her — their perusal occupied her for many a weary day: the very evening before her last morning dawned I read to her one of Emerson's essays — I read on till I found she was not listening — I thought to recommence next day — Next day, the first glance at her face told me what would happen before night-fall.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'Some three weeks ago, a packet of Books arrived here, accompanied with a Letter addressed A l'Auteur de l'Article intitule, Caractere de notre Epoque, the whole perfectly uninjured, the Books complete according to the list sent with them. Being actually the writer of that Paper, headed Signs of the Times, in the Edinburgh Review, there referred to, I cannot but cheerfully accept this present: by what route it came hither I shall perhaps learn by and by... Pursuant to your directions, I have looked over these Writings, with such leisure and composure as I could command; well purposing to investigate the matter farther, as I have opportunity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Some three weeks ago, a packet of Books arrived here, accompanied with a Letter addressed A l'Auteur de l'Article intitule, Caractere de notre Epoque, the whole perfectly uninjured, the Books complete according to the list sent with them. Being actually the writer of that Paper, headed Signs of the Times, in the Edinburgh Review, there referred to, I cannot but cheerfully accept this present: by what route it came hither I shall perhaps learn by and by... Pursuant to your directions, I have looked over these Writings, with such leisure and composure as I could command; well purposing to investigate the matter farther, as I have opportunity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
James Chesterton Bradley to Robert Keating Smith, 3 May 1902:
'A short paper of yours in "The Tatler" of April 2nd brought before me my old friend James W[illiam]. Smith. He and I were fellow curates in Yorkshire, he curate of Haworth, and I of the hill part of Keighley which joined on to Haworth [...] He and I with another of the name of Grant were the three curates in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley." I need not say how indignant I have often been at the way in which she speaks of him in the novel. He was a thorough gentleman in every sense of the word, and there was not the slightest ground for the insinuation she makes against him [...] We used to read together, walk together, and as often as we could, about once a week, would meet either at his or my lodgings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Chesterton Bradley Print: Serial / periodical
James Chesterton Bradley to Robert Keating Smith, 3 May 1902:
'A short paper of yours in "The Tatler" of April 2nd brought before me my old friend James W[illiam]. Smith. He and I were fellow curates in Yorkshire, he curate of Haworth, and I of the hill part of Keighley which joined on to Haworth [...] He and I with another of the name of Grant were the three curates in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley." I need not say how indignant I have often been at the way in which she speaks of him in the novel. He was a thorough gentleman in every sense of the word, and there was not the slightest ground for the insinuation she makes against him [...] We used to read together, walk together, and as often as we could, about once a week, would meet either at his or my lodgings.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Chesterton Bradley Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 13 September 1849:
'Reading has, of late, been my great solace and recreation [in year following the deaths of her brother and two sisters] [...] I am beginning to read Eckermann's "Goethe" &mdash: it promises to be a most interesting work. Honest, simple, single-minded Eckermann! Great, powerful, giant-souled, but also profoundly egotistical, old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 20 September 1849:
'I read with pleasure "Friends in Council," and with very great pleasure "The Thoughts and Opinions of a Statesman." It is the record of what may with truth be termed a beautiful mind — serene, harmonious, elevated and pure; it bespeaks, too, a heart full of kindness and sympathy. I like it much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 1 October 1849:
'The perusal of Harriet Martineau's "Eastern Life" has afforded me great pleasure; and I have found a deep and interesting subject of study in Newman's work on the "Soul." Have you read this work? It is daring — it may be mistaken — but it is pure and elevated. Froude's "Nemesis of Faith" I did not like; I thought it morbid; yet in its pages, too, are found sprinklings of truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 1 October 1849:
'The perusal of Harriet Martineau's "Eastern Life" has afforded me great pleasure; and I have found a deep and interesting subject of study in Newman's work on the "Soul." Have you read this work? It is daring — it may be mistaken — but it is pure and elevated. Froude's "Nemesis of Faith" I did not like; I thought it morbid; yet in its pages, too, are found sprinklings of truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
From Lady Ritchie (W. M. Thackeray's daughter)'s recollections of her first meeting with Charlotte Bronte:
'To say that we little girls had been given Jane Eyre to read scarcely represents the facts of the case; to say that we had taken it without leave, read bits here and read bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-of and hitherto unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places, all utterly absorbing, and at the same time absolutely unintelligible to us, would more accurately describe our state of mind on that summer's evening as we look at Jane Eyre — the great Jane Eyre — the tiny little lady.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thackeray sisters Print: Book
Catherine Winkworth to Eliza Paterson, 5 December 1849:
'So you like "Shirley" better than "Jane Eyre"; so do I, in some points. In power and in descriptions of scenery, there is nothing in "Shirley" which seems to me to come up to some parts of "Jane Eyre," but then there is nothing also in "Shirley" like the disagreeable parts of "Jane Eyre."'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Winkworth Print: Book
Catherine Winkworth to Eliza Paterson, 5 December 1849:
'So you like "Shirley" better than "Jane Eyre"; so do I, in some points. In power and in descriptions of scenery, there is nothing in "Shirley" which seems to me to come up to some parts of "Jane Eyre," but then there is nothing also in "Shirley" like the disagreeable parts of "Jane Eyre."'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Winkworth Print: Book
Catherine Winkworth to Eliza Paterson, 5 December 1849:
'So you like "Shirley" better than "Jane Eyre"; so do I, in some points. In power and in descriptions of scenery, there is nothing in "Shirley" which seems to me to come up to some parts of "Jane Eyre," but then there is nothing also in "Shirley" like the disagreeable parts of "Jane Eyre."'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Paterson Print: Book
Catherine Winkworth to Eliza Paterson, 5 December 1849:
'So you like "Shirley" better than "Jane Eyre"; so do I, in some points. In power and in descriptions of scenery, there is nothing in "Shirley" which seems to me to come up to some parts of "Jane Eyre," but then there is nothing also in "Shirley" like the disagreeable parts of "Jane Eyre."'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Paterson Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte (as Currer Bell) to Harriet Martineau, in note accompanying copy of Bronte's novel Shirley:
'When C. B. first read Deerbrook he tasted a new and keen pleasure, and experienced a genuine benefit. In his mind Deerbrook ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas and rectified his views of life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'I now, after too long delays, return you the Westminster Review, with Chalmers' Picture of Scotland; both of which I was very glad to see. The Picture is a very amusing work, of a proper plan and tone; only, I fear, it is defective in accuracy.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The Scottish Songs and Ballads, by the same collector, were a highly acceptable present to mel for which pray accept my best thanks. A work of that kind was certainly needed, and must be or have already been widely popular.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
W. M. Heald to Ellen Nussey, 8 January 1850:
'The celebrated "Shirley" has just found its way hither. And as one always reads a book with more interest when one has a correct insight into the writer's designs, I write to ask a favour [...] the story goes that either I or my father [...] are part of "Currer Bell's" stock-in-trade, under the title of Mr Hall, in that Mr Hall is represented as black, bilious, and of dismal aspect, stooping a trifle, and indulging a little now and then in the indigenous [Yorkshire] dialect. This seems to sit very well on your humble servant -- other traits do better for my good father than myself [speculates further as to originals of various characters and settings in Shirley] [...] Now pray let us get a full light on all other names and localities that are adumbrated in this said "Shirley." [...] as I or mine are part of the stock-in-trade, I think I have an equitable claim to this intelligence'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Margetson Heald Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 19 March 1850:
'I enclose for your perusal a scrap of paper which came into my hands without the knowledge of the writer. He is a poor working man of this village — a thoughtful, reading, feeling being, whose mind is too keen for his frame, and wears it out. I have not spoken to him above thrice in my life, for he is a Dissenter, and has rarely come in my way. The document is a sort of record of his feelings, after the perusal of "Jane Eyre"; it is artless and earnest, genuine and generous. You must return it to me, for I value it more than testimonies from higher sources. He said: "Miss Bronte, if she knew he had written it, would scorn him"; but, indeed, Miss Bronte does not scorn him; she only grieves that a mind of which this is the emanation should be kept crushed by the leaden hand of poverty — by the trials of uncertain health and the claims of a large family.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Mary Taylor to her schoolfriend Charlotte Bronte, 25 April 1850:
'I have seen some extracts from "Shirley" in which you talk of women working. And this first duty, this great necessity you seem to think that some women may indulge in — if they give up marriage and don't make themselves too disagreeable to the other sex. You are a coward and a traitor. A woman who works is by that alone better than one who does not and a woman who does not happen to be rich and who still earns no money and does not wish to do so, is guilty of [...] a dereliction of duty which leads rapidly and almost certainly to all manner of degradation. It is very wrong of you to plead for toleration of workers on the ground of their being in peculiar circumstandes and few in number or singular in disposition. Work or degradation is the lot of all except the very small number born to wealth.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Taylor to her schoolfriend Charlotte Bronte, 13 August 1850:
'After waiting about six months we have just got "Shirley." It was landed from the Constantinople on Monday afternoon [...] On Wednesday I began "Shirley" and continued in a curious confusion of mind till now, principally at the handsome foreigner who was nursed in our house when I was a little girl [...] What a little lump of perfection you've made me! There is a strange feeling in reading it of hearing us all talking. I have not seen the matted hall and painted parlour window so plain these five years. But my father is not like [...] he is not honest enough [...] "Shirley" is much more interesting than "Jane Eyre," who never interests you at all unless she has something to suffer. All through this last novel there is so much more life and stir that it leaves you far more to remember than the other.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Book
Mary Taylor to her schoolfriend Charlotte Bronte, 13 August 1850:
'After waiting about six months we have just got "Shirley." It was landed from the Constantinople on Monday afternoon [...] On Wednesday I began "Shirley" and continued in a curious confusion of mind till now, principally at the handsome foreigner who was nursed in our house when I was a little girl [...] What a little lump of perfection you've made me! There is a strange feeling in reading it of hearing us all talking. I have not seen the matted hall and painted parlour window so plain these five years. But my father is not like [...] he is not honest enough [...] "Shirley" is much more interesting than "Jane Eyre," who never interests you at all unless she has something to suffer. All through this last novel there is so much more life and stir that it leaves you far more to remember than the other.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to G. H. Lewes, 23 November 1850:
'I am glad to hear that Miss Martineau's little story in the "Leader" touched you and made you
cry. I thought it a sample of real suffering; a case piteous, cureless,
voiceless. It is to be feared there are many such [...] I used to think human destinies were
nearly equal, but the older I grow the weaker becomes my hold on this doctrine'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte to G. H. Lewes, 23 November 1850:
'I am glad to hear that Miss Martineau's little story in the "Leader" touched you and made you
cry. I thought it a sample of real suffering; a case piteous, cureless,
voiceless. It is to be feared there are many such [...] I used to think human destinies were
nearly equal, but the older I grow the weaker becomes my hold on this doctrine'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 7 January 1851:
'I did enjoy my visit to Miss Martineau very much [...] I rather tremble at
the anticipation of a work she is about to publish conjointly with a Mr Atkinson. She read me
some passages of it which partially mesmerised me, but she is ready to meet any shock of
opposition for the sake of what she believes the Truth.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 7 January 1851:
'I did enjoy my visit to Miss Martineau very much [...] I rather tremble at
the anticipation of a work she is about to publish conjointly with a Mr Atkinson. She read me
some passages of it which partially mesmerised me, but she is ready to meet any shock of
opposition for the sake of what she believes the Truth.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 5 February 1851:
'Those papers on the London Poor are singularly interesting; to me they open a new and
strange world, very dark, very dreary, very noisome in some of its recesses, a world that is
fostering such a future as I scarcely dare to imagine [...] The fidelity and simplicity of the
letterpress details harmonise well with the daguerrotype illustrations.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Serial / periodical
'Villette was published on January 28th, 1853 [...] George Eliot wrote enthusiastically to Mrs
Bray, "I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading
Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in
its power"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud.) Print: Book
Catherine Winkworth to Emma Shaen, 23 March 1853:
'I made up my mind not to write to you again till I had read "Villette" and now I have finished
it [...] It is a thorough enjoyment to read it, so powerful everywhere, no rant, as there were
bits of in her other books, so deep and true in its appreciation of character [comments on
characters of John Bretton and Paul Emanuel] [...]
'"Villette" makes one feel an extreme reverence for any one capable of so much deep feeling
and brave endurance and truth, but it makes one feel "eerie," too, to be brought face to face
with a life so wanting in Versohnung, as Germans would say. I wonder whether Miss B[ronte].
is so, and I wonder, too, whether she ever was in love; surely she could never herself have
made love to any one, as all her heroines, even Lucy Snowe, do. [comments further]
[...]
there are bits that go very deep into one's heart; more especially with me all she says about
facing and accepting some evil fate. And yet, yet, it never goes quite deep
enough; it comes to an heroic Stoicism which is grand, but not the best.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Winkworth Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 28 May 1853:
'I despatch to-day a box of return books [loaned by Williams]: among them will be found two or
three of those just sent, being such as I had read before — i.e. Moore's "Life and
Correspondence," 1st and 2nd Vols., Lamartine's "Restoration of the Monarchy," etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 28 May 1853:
'I despatch to-day a box of return books [loaned by Williams]: among them will be found two or
three of those just sent, being such as I had read before — i.e. Moore's "Life and
Correspondence," 1st and 2nd Vols., Lamartine's "Restoration of the Monarchy," etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
From Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte:
'"I recollect [...] [Bronte's] saying how acutely she dreaded a charge of plagiarism when, after
she had written "Jane Eyre," she read the thrilling effect of the mysterious scream at midnight
in Mrs Marsh's story of "The Deformed." She also said that, when she read "The Neighbours,"
she thought every one would fancy that she must have taken her conception of Jane Eyre's
character from that of "Francesca," the narrator of Miss Bremer's story. For my own part, I
cannot see the slightest resemblance between the two characters"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Unknown
From Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte:
'"I recollect [...] [Bronte's] saying how acutely she dreaded a charge of plagiarism when, after
she had written "Jane Eyre," she read the thrilling effect of the mysterious scream at midnight
in Mrs Marsh's story of "The Deformed." She also said that, when she read "The Neighbours,"
she thought every one would fancy that she must have taken her conception of Jane Eyre's
character from that of "Francesca," the narrator of Miss Bremer's story. For my own part, I
cannot see the slightest resemblance between the two characters"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'I write to thank you for the book [...]. I have already seen most of the papers composing your new vol. ["Old Junk"] and I have appreciated their graphic power, personal point of view and felicity of expression. I glanced in here and there with renewed pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charles Kingsley to Elizabeth Gaskell, 14 May 1857:
'Let me renew our long interrupted acquaintance by complimenting you on poor Miss Bronte's
"Life." You have had a delicate and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably [...] I
confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself. "Jane Eyre" I hardly looked into, very
seldom reading a work of fiction — yours, indeed, and Thackeray's are the only ones I care to
open. "Shirley" disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a
notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! [...] Well have you
done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings I
shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has written'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kingsley Print: Book
Margaret Wooler, Charlotte Bronte's former schoolteacher, to Ellen Nussey, another former
pupil (1857):
'Did I name to you that Mrs E. Gibson knows two or three young ladies in Hull who finished
their education at Madame Heger's pension? Mrs Gaskell said they read "Villette" with keen
interest — of course they would.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: 'young ladies' Print: Book
Patrick Bronte to George Smith, his daughter Charlotte's publisher before her death in 1855,
26 March 1860:
'Though writing is to me now something of a task I cannot avoid sending you a few lines to
thank you for sending me the magazines, and for your gentlemanly conduct towards my
daughter in all your transactions with her [...] All the magazines were good; the last
especially attracted my attention and excited my admiration. The "Last Sketch" took full
possession of my mind. Mr Thackeray in his remarks in it has excelled even himself [...] If
organless spirits see as we see, and feel as we feel, in this material clogging world, my
daughter Charlotte's spirit will receive additional happiness on scanning the remarks of her
Ancient Favourite.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Brontë Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Robinson, author of an early study of Emily Bronte, to Charlotte Bronte's friend Ellen
Nussey, 5 April 1882:
'I am an architect's daughter and like the Bronte's [sic] finished my schooling in Brussels. But
long before then I had read and re-read their books.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Print: Book
Mary Robinson, author of an early study of Emily Bronte, to Charlotte Bronte's friend Ellen
Nussey, 5 April 1882:
'I am an architect's daughter and like the Bronte's [sic] finished my schooling in Brussels. But
long before then I had read and re-read their books.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Print: Book
Mary Robinson, author of an early study of Emily Bronte, to Charlotte Bronte's friend Ellen
Nussey, 5 April 1882:
'I am an architect's daughter and like the Bronte's [sic] finished my schooling in Brussels. But
long before then I had read and re-read their books.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Print: Book
'Thank you for your prettily bound little volume which I feel sure must be interesting to all your mother's friends. There is no doubt something gracious always in the simple record of a blameless life, however far from the march of intellect, the clash of science, and the visions and wonders of art, that life may have been passed. [...] As a daughter's memorial to her mother however there is much that is charming in your little book, much that springs from the tenderest love.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
'This is a very interesting journal and I read it with a particular pleasure derived both from the matter and from the expression of the writer's personality.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
'At the beginning I must say that I have not read the tales ["Tales of a Cruel Country"] through as yet'.
[Conrad then makes several comments indicating that he has at least read some of them.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am just fresh from the second reading of your vol ["Brought Forward"]'.
Hence follow twelve lines of admiring comment.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I know the work of Paul Adam very little and all I have in the house is his "Lettres de Malaisie".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thank you for the "Saint-Simon", which to my great joy arrived this morning. I finished the play the day before yesterday. Tonight I finish revising. Tomorrow I plunge into "Saint-Simon".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Ever so many thanks too for the "Life and Miracles" which I have just read for the second time.There is no one but you to render so poignantly the pathetic and desperate effects of human credulity. It is a marvellous piece of sustained narrative and of intensely personal prose.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Warm thanks for the charming copy of "Wild Oranges" which it was a great pleasure to have in this interesting form. [...] You will be good enough to give my most friendly regards to Hergesheimer whose vital work combining strength of vision with delicate perception and masterly expression arouses my admiration and sympathy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The book ["The Rescue"] which has found favour in your eyes has been inspired in a great measure by the history of the first Rajah's enterprise and even by the lecture [i.e.reading] of his journals as partly reproduced by Captain Mundy and others.[...]. It was a great pleasure to read "My Life in Sarawak" [...] I have looked into that book many times since.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I do know the Mérimée story you speak of. It is "Tamango". A rather good piece of work. [...] I read it years ago.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What to me [...] seems most wonderful in the "Cartagena" book is its inextinguishable vitality, the unchanged strength of feeling, steadfastness of sympathies and force of expresssion. I turned the pages with unfailing delight [...].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have just read through the Zeromski novel you mean: "History of a Sin". I don't think it will do for translation. The international murderess episodes take but a little space after all. The whole thing is disagreeable and often incomprehensible in comment and psychology. Often it is gratuitously ferocious. You now I am not squeamish. The other work the great historical machine is called "Ashes" (Popioly). Both of course have a certain greatness.[...] [but] both take too much for granted in the way of receptivity and tolerance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have just read through the Zeromski novel you mean: "History of a Sin". I don't think it will do for translation. The international murderess episodes take but a little space after all. The whole thing is disagreeable and often incomprehensible in comment and psychology. Often it is gratuitously ferocious. You now I am not squeamish. The other work the great hstorical machine is called "Ashes" (Popioly). Both of course have a certain greatness.[...] [but] both take too much for granted in the way of receptivity and tolerance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Symonds, talking of cultshaw, has just written a book of sonnets, which I think really should interest and amuse a few of us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Proof copy
'I would have written to you before about my delight in "The Conquest of Granada" if it had not been for the beastly swollen wrist which prevented me from holding the pen.'
[Hence follow eight lines of praise.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thanks for the press cuttings. The accident on board that ship was an extraordinary one.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'Thank you for your little book of innermost thoughts.[...] And you have proved your excellent humanity by the manner and matter of your essays.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I read with the greatest pleasure what you say about Trollope. I made his acquaintance full thirty years ago and made up my mind about his value then, as a writer of remarkable talent for imaginative rendering of the social life of his time, with its activities and interests and incipient thoughts.[ ...] I was considerably impressed with them [The "Palliser" novels] in the early eighties when I chanced upon a novel entitled "Phineas Finn". Haven't seen them since, to tell you the truth [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
'The play arrived yesterday and I read it in the evening (the proper time for plays) with the greatest appreciation.' [...] Some day — if you permit me — I'll send you the copy so you may write your name and mine on the flyleaf.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, playscript
'My warm thanks for the inscribed copy of "Bolshevik Persecution" you have been kind enough to send me. I have read with interest this most remarkably able account of a significant episode in the long tale of religious persecution.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Even H. Norman corroborates me out of his short experience. See his "Far East".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thanks for the copy of "Good Reading". It's a charming little book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Many thanks for the copy of your book which I have read with the greatest of interest and pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have this moment received your very kind letter with the enclosure of verse for which I hasten to send you my warm thanks. The verse is very genuine and has appealed to me. My compliments to David Morton for having captured this musing mood so charmingly and with such a felicity of expression and images.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
'Throughout his career Conrad was haunted by the idea of writing a Napoleonic novel, for which he did a prodigious amount of background reading.[...] However it was not until June 1920 that he eventually started to write "Suspense", and early in 1921 he spent two months in Corsica to saturate himself in Napoleonic atmosphere, revive memories of harbours and sailors and do further background reading, as the list of books borrowed from the Ajaccio library, recorded by Jean-Aubry, indicates.' [see note 118, p.316]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'... read
Fortune by Sea and Land
written by
Tho, Heywood
W. Rowley
It is so sweet'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Talking about G. Meredith, I have just re-read for the third and fourth time The Egoist.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Ad[e]ler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Ad[e]ler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
"I am writing this on the Maid's tragedy which I have read since tea with great pleasure -
Besides this
volume of Beaumont & Fletcher - there are on the table two volumes of chaucer and a new work
of Tom
Moores call'd 'Tom Cribb's memorial to Congress' - nothing in it - These are trifles...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
'Was much instructed in the duty of believing by reading Marshall's Gospel mystery of Sanctification. I have great cause to be daily thankful for the discovery of a free saviour so inimitably delineated in this book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Davies Print: Book
'Read a very searching book called Meads Almost Christian. Did not dare read it til I had sought the lord, that he would not suffer Satan to apply what was not my portion'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Davies Print: Book
'I believe [Arthur] Symons' verse was almost the only verse that my husband ever read, I mean with any real appreciation and pleasure. Usually I had to read any manuscript in this form — and he would, quite unblushingly, put forward my opinion as his own when acknowledging receipt.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'He [Joseph Conrad] would read to me for long periods and make birds and other things out of sheets of paper which he folded with great dexterity. [...] His choice of books always met with my approval; I believe he must have read them all during his youth and enjoyed re-reading them almost as much as I enjoyed listening. Among them were Charles Kingsley's "Greek Heroes", Fennimore [sic] Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans", "[The] Deerslayer", "The Pathfinder" and Captain Marryat's "Peter Simple", "[Mr] Midshipman Easy",etc.[...] Some of these volumes [...] are still on my bookshelves here with his signature inside the cover.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'He [Joseph Conrad] would read to me for long periods and make birds and other things out of sheets of paper which he folded with great dexterity. [...] His choice of books always met with my approval; I believe he must have read them all during his youth and enjoyed re-reading them almost as much as I enjoyed listening. Among them were Charles Kingsley's "Greek Heroes", Fennimore [sic] Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans", "[The] Deerslayer", "The Pathfinder" and Captain Marryat's "Peter Simple", "[Mr] Midshipman Easy",etc.[...] Some of these volumes [...] are still on my bookshelves here with his signature inside the cover.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What really brought us [Ford and Conrad] together was a devotion to Flaubert and Maupassant. We discovered we both had Félicité, "St.-Julien l'Hospitalier", immense passages of "Madame Bovary", "La Nuit", "Ce Cochon de Morin" and immense passages of "Une Vie" by heart. Or so nearly by heart that what the one faltered over the other could take up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What really brought us [Ford and Conrad] together was a devotion to Flaubert and Maupassant. We discovered we both had Félicité, "St.-Julien l'Hospitalier", immense passages of "Madame Bovary", "La Nuit", "Ce Cochon de Morin" and immense passages of "Une Vie" by heart. Or so nearly by heart that what the one faltered over the other could take up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'What really brought us [Ford and Conrad] together was a devotion to Flaubert and Maupassant. We discovered we both had Félicité, "St.-Julien l'Hospitalier", immense passages of "Madame Bovary", "La Nuit", "Ce Cochon de Morin" and immense passages of "Une Vie" by heart. Or so nearly by heart that what the one faltered over the other could take up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,The late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,The late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,The late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'From that time for ten years Conrad followed the sea. The deep sea, reading all sorts of books. Once an officer with quarters of his own he resumed his reading of French along with the English popular works. He read with the greatest veneration Flaubert and Maupassant; with less, Daudet and Gautier; with much less, Pierre Loti. Tormented with the curiosity of words, even at sea, on the margins of the French books he made notes for the translation of phrases. The writer has seen several of these old books of Conrad, notably an annotated copy of "Pêcheur d'Islande" — and of course the copy of "Madame Bovary" upon the endpapers and margins of which "Almayer's Folly" was begun.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Have you ever read Olympe de Cleves? If not, remember, it must be read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Even George Meredith says: "It contains a remarkable study of love."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'The tent flaps were laced over, the rain had ceased, the guns were silent and Jimmy Harding lay motionless. I ate slowly and dully, staring at my candle. I took my Palgrave from the valise head; it opened at "Barbara" and I read quite coldly and critically until I came to the lines
In vain, in vain, in vain
You will never come again.
There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful fringe
of rain
then with a great gulp I knocked my candle out and buried my face in the valise.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Stephen Campion Vaughan Print: Book
'I have corrected all the proofs of The Old Wives Tale — 578pp. I am sure Tertia is wrong about those two chapters. I deliberately lowered the tension in the last part of the book, in obedience to a theory which objects to violent climaxes as a close; and now I have done it, I don’t know that I am quite satisfied. I know the public will consider the fourth part rather tame and flat, if not dull. And I am not sure whether I don’t slightly share this view. This is annoying.... I read Un Vie again (than which I meant to try and go one better) and was most decidedly disappointed in it. Lacking in skill.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
A Meeting held at Mark Ash Tuesday May 8th 1928
C. J. Evans in the Chair
1 Minutes of last approved
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
The Club was then much impressed by a reading from Christopher Marlows Doctor Faustus parted as under
Thos. C Elliot Faustus
R H Robson Metistopholes [sic]
A Rawling An old Man
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Live dramatic reading featuring T. C. Elliott, R. H. Robson, and A. Rawling of XII Book Club
The Club was then much impressed by a reading from Christopher Marlows Doctor Faustus parted as under
Thos. C Elliot Faustus
R H Robson Metistopholes [sic]
A Rawling An old Man
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
'My mother told us how when she was only five, she began ''Paradise Lost'', but soon asked her
mother to finish it for her, and how nice it was of her mother not to refuse.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Wedgwood Print: Book
A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue [Oct 19/28]
Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[This apparently refers both to the minutes of the meeting held 8 May 1928, which were signed off by the chair of the current meeting on 19 October, and to the minutes/report of the picnic meeting held on 12 June 1928, which are also signed off by Miss Stevens.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue [Oct 19/28]
Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[This apparently refers both to the minutes of the meeting held 8 May 1928, which were signed off by the chair of the current meeting on 19 October, and to the minutes/report of the picnic meeting held on 12 June 1928, which are also signed off by Miss Stevens.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at 9 Denmark Rd 13/11/1928 F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
8[.] Essays were read (1) Alfred Rawlings on Beauty (2) R H Robson on The Abolition of the House of Commons'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A meeting held at School House 4/12/28 T. C. Elliott in the chair
1 Minutes of the last read and approved
[...]
4 The Most Part of the Tempest was then read the Play being cast as follows.
Alonso King of Naples Mrs Stansfield.
Sebastian, his brother Miss Brain.
Prsopero [sic], the right Duke of Milan Mr Stansfield.
Antonio, his brother, usurping Duke of Milan Mr Elliott.
Ferdinand, son to King of Naples Mr Reynolds.
Gonzalo, honest old Counsellor Mr Rawlings.
Adrian, a Lord Mrs Pollard
Caliban, a savage and deformed slave Mr Pollard.
Trinculo, a Jester Mr Smith.
Stephano, a Drunken Butler Mr Robson
Miranda, daughter to Prospero Miss Bowman Smith
Ariel, an airy Spirit Miss Wallis
Mrs Rawlings read the stage directions
Mrs [or Mr.?] Robson sang some of Ariel’s songs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
[Letter: 31 July 1837]
'Mamma read aloud all the poison for us in your last letter. I suppose she thought M. Moulton's compliments will not ruin us for life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Wedgwood Manuscript: Letter
'A Meeting held at Whinfell 21/1/29 Alfred Rawlings in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of Plato was then taken F. E. Pollard explained briefly the subject and manner
of "The Republic"
following which Alfred and Janet Rawlings read one of the earlier dialogues. H. B. Lawson then
gave us a most
fascinatingly interesting account of Plato's life and work.
After supper Chas E. Stansfield read from Book 7 of the "Republic" "The Cave" this reading
being illustrated by a
diagram kindly made and explained by F. E. Pollard. F. E. Pollard then outlined for us the main
thoughts of Platos [sic]
Philosophy Ideas the true reality[.] The evening concluded by T. C. Elliott reading the affecting
account of Socrates
death in the Phaedo. Thus came to an end a most interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'A. Meeting held at Frensham 19/3/1929 H. R. Smith in the chair
Min 1 Minutes of last read and approved
Min 2 The date of the next Meeting was fixed for Friday May 3rd at Grove House by kind
invitation of Mrs Lawson[.] Mr H. B. Lawson was added to the committee
Min 3 Three short Plays of John Galsworthy were then read in parts. The first was "Hall Marked"
not a great success as it depends so much on exit. [illegible word similar to ‘cutranas’] glances &
backs. After supper Came "The Little Man" which was much enjoyed and finally Punch & Go
which also gave much pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard
introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us
several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard
introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us
several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the
chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was
directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The
Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on
some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the
chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was
directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The
Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on
some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Letter
'A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue 19/10/29 Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 F E Pollard then introduced "The Alcestis" of Euripides by reading from Gilbert Murray's
introduction of his translation of the play, Which was read in parts after refreshments the
parts being taken as follows
Apollo S.A. Reynolds
Thanatos C. I. Evans
Elders C. E Stansfield & Miss Brain
Choros T. C. Elliott
Handmaid Mrs Pollard
Admetus F. E. Pollard
Alcestis Mrs Elliott
Little Boy Mrs Pollard
Heracles H. R. Smith
Phaeres [sic] Geo Burrow
Servant S. A. Reynolds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue 19/10/29 Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 F E Pollard then introduced "The Alcestis" of Euripides by reading from Gilbert Murray's
introduction of his translation of the play, Which was read in parts after refreshments the
parts being taken as follows
Apollo S.A. Reynolds
Thanatos C. I. Evans
Elders C. E Stansfield & Miss Brain
Choros T. C. Elliott
Handmaid Mrs Pollard
Admetus F. E. Pollard
Alcestis Mrs Elliott
Little Boy Mrs Pollard
Heracles H. R. Smith
Phaeres [sic] Geo Burrow
Servant S. A. Reynolds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Ashton Lodge 8/11/29
H. M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'I think I have never written to you since I read ''Glenarvon''. I agree with you in admiring it exceedingly in some respects [...] I almost think that as a picture of the feelings, ''Glenarvon'' is superior to any work I ever read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Wedgwood Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House
3/12/29
T. C. Elliott in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
5. The subject of the evening Ghost Stories was then taken
H. R. Smith read an account written by Clarkson Wallis of a ghost appearing in Brighton
Meeting.
Geo Burrows read a Newcastle Ghost story
Miss Brain read of the Ghost of Southcote Manor & Mrs Elliott read of Mrs S. The Morton
Ghost.
C. E. Stansfield read an essay on the subject especially with reference to the work of the
Physchical [sic]
Research Society thereafter he and H. R. Smith told a story apiece.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Whinfell 24/1/30
A Rawlings in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[...]
The subject of Arnold Bennett was then taken F.E. Pollard read from the Old Wives Tale the
account of John
Baines Funeral. Mrs Rawlings read from Riceymans Steps the Wedding Ring. Mrs Elliott read
an Essay the
story Tellers Craft. After Refreshments the Play intitled The Title was read with a few cuts The
following
took part
Mr Culver R H Robson
Mrs Culver Muriel Bowman Smith
Hildegarde Janet Rawlings
John T. C. Elliott
Tranto F. E. Pollard
Miss Starky Dorothy Brain
Sampson Straight H. R. Smith
Parlourmaid F. E. Reynolds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Reckitt House 27/2/30
R. H. Robson in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
5. The subject of “Medieval Social Life” which by some strange metamorphosis had changed into “Renaissance Social Life” was then taken. Mrs T. C. Elliott read a paper on “Domestic Life in the Fifteenth Century as seen in the Paston Letters”. Alfred Rawlings read a paper on “Medieval Artists and their
Methods”, illustrated by Medici reproductions of Giotto’s fresco St. “Francis: the birds”, Fra Angelico’s fresco “The Annunciation”, and Mantegna’s painting “Madonna and Child with Cherubim”[.] This was followed up by some readings anent the development of painting and the Renaissance.
R. H. Robson read a paper on “Vittorino da Feltre”, a Renaissance Schoolmaster & a “Romance of Federigo, Duke of Urbino”, illustrated by a Medici card reproduction of Piero della Francesca’s portrait of Duke Federigo. Mr Burrow read extracts from Children of the Olden Time [sic] by Eliz[abe]th Godfrey particularly
on the education of Royal Children.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [Unidentified member of the XII Book Club] Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road
Thursday, May 8th 1930
F. E. Pollard in the chair
The minutes of last meeting were approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Manuscript: Notebook
'On his arrival in Poland Conrad knew from our contemporary literature only "Popioly" and "Panna Mery". During his two-month stay he devoured almost all that was worth reading in fiction and drama. "Devoured" is the right word, for he read with unusual, unbelievable speed. I was constantly bringing him new books; he used to get impatient when on finishing one, there was not another at hand. In every case his judgement was correct — in respect both of the book as a whole and of the particular style of each author. Wyspianski and Zeromski made the greatest impression on him. "Oh, how I would like to translate it!" he said about "Warszawianska".[...] His favorite books by Zeromski were "Popioly" and "Syzyfowy prace". I should mention Prus. The first work of Prus I gave Conrad was "Emancypantki", one of my favorite books.[...] I warned him "Perhaps the first volume will not be up to your expectations, but don't give up [...]" (In the case of "Chlopi" I could not persuade him to read further volumes; "I know already what's coming" he said.) [...] When he had finished the entire novel ["Emancypatki"], he remarked with amazement, "Ma chère, c'est mieux que Dickens!". [...] First I gave him "Lalka " to read, then "Faraon". [...] Conrad kept asking for more books by Prus [...]. He read with passion "Palac i rudera" and "Powracajaca fala", books which I confess left me thoroughly bored.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'On his arrival in Poland Conrad knew from our contemporary literature only "Popioly" and "Panna Mery". During his two-month stay he devoured almost all that was worth reading in fiction and drama. "Devoured" is the right word, for he read with unusual, unbelievable speed. I was constantly bringing him new books; he used to get impatient when on finishing one, there was not another at hand. In every case his judgement was correct — in respect both of the book as a whole and of the particular style of each author. Wyspianski and Zeromski made the greatest impression on him. "Oh, how I would like to translate it!" he said about "Warszawianska".[...] His favorite books by Zeromski were "Popioly" and "Syzyfowy prace". I should mention Prus. The first work of Prus I gave Conrad was "Emancypantki", one of my favorite books.[...] I warned him "Perhaps the first volume will not be up to your expectations, but don't give up [...]" (In the case of "Chlopi" I could not persuade him to read further volumes; "I know already what's coming" he said.) [...] When he had finished the entire novel ["Emancypatki"], he remarked with amazement, "Ma chère, c'est mieux que Dickens!". [...] First I gave him "Lalka " to read, then "Faraon". [...] Conrad kept asking for more books by Prus [...]. He read with passion "Palac i rudera" and "Powracajaca fala", books which I confess left me thoroughly bored.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Once, talking about Zeromski I asked Konrad [sic] if he had read "Roza". He had not. So I ran to my room and brought down a copy. I laid it on the table so he could read it when he pleased. [...] Konrad moved towards the light, and having opened the book on the table leaned over it on his elbows. He did not ask me any questions and without a word remained a long time in that position.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Meeting held at Broomfield June 3rd 1930
G. Burrow in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
7. John Galsworthys “The Roof” was then read in parts
Gustave C.E. Stanfield
Hon R Fanning R. H. Robson
Major Moultenay H. M. Wallis
Baker H. R. Smith
Brice T. C. Elliott
Mr Beeton S. A. Reynolds
Mrs Beeton E. B. Smith
H. Lennox Geo Burrow
Evelyn Lennox Celia Burrow
Diana D. Brain
Brye J. Rawlings
A Nurse R. Wallis
A Young Man F. E. Pollard
A Young Woman Mrs Pollard
Froba Mrs Robson
Two Pompiers Thomas C. Elliott
Miss Stevens read the stage directions'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Clough
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mignon Castle
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds
'Meeting held at Frensham October 1st 1930
H. R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last meeting read and approved.
[...]
7. The Subject of Mary Webb's work was then taken
Mrs Burrow read 4 short Poems Snowdrop Time
Hawthorn Berry
The Poplar Tree
The Neighbours Children
Mrs R. Wallis read from the House in Dormer Forest
Miss E. C. Stevens read from the Golden Arrow
After refreshments had been taken
H. M. Wallis read from the Golden Arrow
H. R. Smith read Blessed are the Meek
in conclusion H. M. Wallis gave us a slight appreciation of Mary Webbs work which was
followed by discussion in
which Mary Webb was compared with such writers as Sheila Kaye[-]Smith Geo. Elliott &
Thomas Hardy but very
especially the latter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28th October 1930
C.E. Stansfield in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
3. For the next meeting the Club accepted the kind offer of hospitality made by Mrs Castle when the
meeting would vote in new Books, the following to act as a committee [...] E. B. Castle Miss Brain
and H. R. Smith.
4 For the following meeting it was decided to have a symposium with E. B. Castle R. H. Robson and
V. W. Alexander as a Committee. The Club accepted the kind offer of hospitality made by Miss E. C.
Stevens.
5 The Books were then auctioned by the Secretary as list overleaf.
6 After refreshments the Club settled down with many giggles to a general Knowlege paper attached,
For (the answering of) which 40 minutes was allowed. The correction of the papers caused much
discussion & amusement The total of marks gainable was 85 & Mr Mitchell a visitor[?] came out first
with 43 H.M. Wallis came next with 39 1/2 & E B Castle third with 38 1/2. Mrs Alexander proved
herself the leading lady with a score of 31.
Result of Book Auction 28/10/30
High Wind in Jamaica H. M. Wallis 5/-
Henry the VIIIth V. W. Alexander 8/6
Alice Meynell Miss E. C. Stevens 8/6
Tarka the Otter Geo Burrow 3/6
English Tradition in Education E. B. Castle 8/-
Magellan do 7/3
Studies in Literature Miss D. Brain 6/9
Peep Show of the Port of London S. A. Reynolds 6/-
[?] Around us C. E. Stansfield 10/6
C. E. Montague H. M. Wallis 8/9
Waters of Africa Mrs Alexander 6/6
Good Companion Mrs D. Brain 7/9
[total] 4/7/-
'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
'Meeting held at Mark Ash 25/11/30 E. B. Castle in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Mark Ash 25/11/30 E. B. Castle in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Mark Ash 25/11/30 E. B. Castle in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene Jan 23rd 1931
S A Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6 After supper Bernard Shaw’s “You never Can tell” was read in parts with the exception of
one
short Act for which there was no time[.] Characters as follows
Fergus Crampton G H Burrow
Bohun K.C. S. A. Reynolds
Finch McComus H. R. Smith
William the Waiter R. H. Robson
Valentine W. Fraser Mitchell
Philip Clandon Miss[?] Mary Reynolds
Parlour Maid Miss Margot Reynolds
Mrs Clandon Miss Janet Rawlings
Dolly Clandon Miss D. Brain
Gloria Clandon Mrs R. H. Robson
Considering that owing to illness many of the parts were taken at the shortest notice the
reading
was very well done'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Oakdene Jan 23rd 1931
S A Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6 After supper Bernard Shaw’s “You never Can tell” was read in parts with the exception of
one
short Act for which there was no time[.] Characters as follows
Fergus Crampton G H Burrow
Bohun K.C. S. A. Reynolds
Finch McComus H. R. Smith
William the Waiter R. H. Robson
Valentine W. Fraser Mitchell
Philip Clandon Miss[?] Mary Reynolds
Parlour Maid Miss Margot Reynolds
Mrs Clandon Miss Janet Rawlings
Dolly Clandon Miss D. Brain
Gloria Clandon Mrs R. H. Robson
Considering that owing to illness many of the parts were taken at the shortest notice the
reading
was very well done'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at Reckitt House Feb 27 1931
R. H. Robson in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6 The subject of the evening Persian Art was then taken. R. H. Robson gave us a short survey
of Persian History emphasizing the way in which the natural Features of the Country had kept
it in a separate entity throughout the ages[.] Mrs Robson sang us "Myself When Young" and to
Geo Burrow we were indebted for a fascinating description of the Persian Art Exhibition. After
Supper Mrs Burrow read us some short & charming Persian lyrics, C.E. Stansfield read from
Fitzgeralds Omar Kyaham [sic] Mrs Pollard gave us Laurence Binyons impressions of Persian
Art & Miss Brain read the last scene from Flecker’s Hassan.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: BookManuscript: Notebook
'Special Meeting held at Frensham 17/3/31
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1 Minutes of last approved
'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Special Meeting held at Frensham 17/3/31
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1 Minutes of last approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
'Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road 14/4/31
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
5 The subject of Wordsworth was then taken[.]
Charles E. Stansfield gave us a sketch of his life which provoked some discussion. R H Robson
read from The Prelude both before and after supper.
H. R. Smith read “The Happy Warrior”.
Mrs Robson read “She was a Phantom of Delight”[.]
To Conclude F. E. Pollard gave a most interesting appreciation of Wordsworth’s work which
was followed by some discussion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue
Dec 19th 1930
Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
Min 1 Minutes of last Meeting approved
[...]
7 After refreshments a Symposium was opened by Miss D. Brain who took the standpoint of a
Salvationist lass giving a moving description of that outlook & experience, E. B. Castle
following
with a thoughtful setting out of the Position of the Scientist[.] C. E. Stansfield put before us
the
viewpoint of a Revolutionary of the masses & R. H. Robson racily endeavoured[?] to convert
us to
the views of a Blue Blooded Aristocrat. There followed a keen & amusing discussion which
perhaps
centred too much on the Aristocrat & his doings[...].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
'... doubly read Cristowell by Blackmore.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour, these 2 lines to happiness
Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled
To hide in shades thy meek contented head
Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Book, Unknown
'Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd., 30. i. 32.
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
3. Howard Smith spoke to us of the social and literary sides of Sheridan's life.[...]
4. Reginald H. Robson followed with an account of Sheridan as Parliamentarian, telling us of
his thirty-two years in opposition to reactionary government, his aversion from bribery in a
corrupt age, and his conduct of the Hastings Impeachment. This last brought into remarkable
combination Sheridan's dramatic and rhetorical gifts; so that we quite fell beneath the spell,
accepting him as a heroic character, and were ready to condone, if not indeed even to
acclaim, his less creditable convivialities with the Prince Regent and Mrs.[or Mr.] Robson's
ancestors!
5. Francis E. Pollard then read a passage from Sheridan's speech on the devastation of
Oudh.[...]
6. We then listend to extracts from "The School for Scandal" starring Mrs. Robson as Lady
Teazle and C. E. Stansfield as Sir Peter. As is not unusual on such occasions the humours of
the play as devised by the author had to compete with other unrehearsed attractions — actors
borrowing books, adjusting their spectacles, turning two pages instead of one, and, perhaps
best of all, the pure milk of the expurgated editions looking a little sour at the strong wine of
the original text.
Be that as it may, ancestral portraits from the brush of Vandyke or Lely, Kneller or Rawlings
changed owners with the accustomed success: Mr. Robson* as Joseph Surface mad love to his
own wife as Lady Teazle[...].
* R.H.R. states that Gio. B. was Jos. Surface [Footnote is in MS]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'You will find Lucy and Richard in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith ... I have read Richard thrice ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'... after that you will read the Egoist by the same ... I have read... The Egoist six times ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Meeting held at Broomfield: 22.3.1932
George Burrow in the chair
1. The minutes of last were read by Sylvanus Reynolds, who had kindly deputised for the
Secretary in his absence.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the Victorians and their literature.[...] When the paper was
discussed there proved to be a very general measure of consent.[...]
Howard Smith disturbed us a little by accusing the Victorians of complacency[...].
Finally Reginald Robson deplored the disappearance of the Victorian countryside. As it was
foretold by Malthus the Economist, so it had come to pass. Over population had done its work.
There could be no more rural simplicity or village Hampdens, no more nurture of man by
nature any more. The Victorian age can be guaranteed unique: the mould from which it was
cast has been shattered.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
br/>[...]
4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its
fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis
Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the
XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were
taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Print: Book
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style
of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much
ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the
interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the
author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs.
Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious
combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the
Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage
Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century
Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either
the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there
was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every
appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that
three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings
needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences
by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a
most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest?
" by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as
committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from
Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time
& space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an
amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the
Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting
with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from
"Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of
England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as
committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from
Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time
& space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an
amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the
Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting
with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from
"Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of
England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham: 23.5.33
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the subject for the evening "The Jew in Literature", which was dealt
with by eight readings and some discussion of several of them. It proved to be rather a vast
subject, & there was considerable disagreement as to what really are the racial characteristics
of the Jews, and there is an even greater indefiniteness in the Secretary's mind as to what the
Club collectively thinks on all this. It must suffice then to give a list of the readers and their
readings.
Mary E. Robson an extract from Du Maurier's Trilby describing Svengali
Howard R. Smith from Heine, in the Temple
Shakespeare, on Shylock's love for Jessica
George H. S. Burrow two XIII Century ballads, Sir Hugh & The Jew's Daughter
Mary S. Stansfield from The Children of the Ghetto
Edgar B. Castle from F. W. H. Myers's St. Paul
Victor W. Alexander from Frazer's Folklore of the Old Testament
Sylvanus A. Reynolds, the Jew's Tale in Longfellow's Wayside Inn
Howard R. Smith from Hilaire Belloc's The Jews'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham: 23.5.33
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the subject for the evening "The Jew in Literature", which was dealt
with by eight readings and some discussion of several of them. It proved to be rather a vast
subject, & there was considerable disagreement as to what really are the racial characteristics
of the Jews, and there is an even greater indefiniteness in the Secretary's mind as to what the
Club collectively thinks on all this. It must suffice then to give a list of the readers and their
readings.
Mary E. Robson an extract from Du Maurier's Trilby describing Svengali
Howard R. Smith from Heine, in the Temple
Shakespeare, on Shylock's love for Jessica
George H. S. Burrow two XIII Century ballads, Sir Hugh & The Jew's Daughter
Mary S. Stansfield from The Children of the Ghetto
Edgar B. Castle from F. W. H. Myers's St. Paul
Victor W. Alexander from Frazer's Folklore of the Old Testament
Sylvanus A. Reynolds, the Jew's Tale in Longfellow's Wayside Inn
Howard R. Smith from Hilaire Belloc's The Jews'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd., 20.XII.33.
E. Dorothy Brain in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. Schoolmasters in Literature were portrayed by a series of readings from biography and
fiction. There were ten in all and they reflected the various estimation in which these beings
are held, and were held generations ago. In spite of the dullness, the jealousy and the morbid
introspection that characterize the assistant, the profession is in part redeemed by the haloes
that flicker around its heads - generally, it must be admitted, very much in retrospect.
After all, would other professions fare much better?
We are certainly indebted to the committee who prepared the readings, and regret that
Reginald Robson felt it necessary to omit the one he had allotted to himself.
The readings were given in this order.
1. From Roger Ascham V. W. Alexander
2. [From] Westward Ho H. R. Smith
3. [From] Essays of Elia Janet Rawlings
4. [From] T. E. Brown's Clifton Celia Burrow
6. [From] Stalky & Co G. H. S. Burrow
5. [From] Life of Frederick Andrews Mary Robson
7. [From] Vanity Fair S. A. Reynolds
8. [From] Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill Dorothy Brain
9. [From] Jeremy at Crale E. B. Castle
10. [From] Rugby Chapel F. E. Pollard
'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander
'I am deep in ''Maurice'', and if I could keep to my resolution of never even trying to understand him, I should quite enjoy the book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with
themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good
hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going
on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical
associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the
observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised
writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the
progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our
number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same
trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately
named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow
closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure
whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up
reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist
for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and
amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of
seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares
in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his
friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from
restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose
romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find
happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his
extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson
telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature
in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of
this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised
the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris
would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was
wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in
united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and
amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of
seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares
in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his
friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from
restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose
romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find
happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his
extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson
telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature
in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of
this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised
the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris
would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was
wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in
united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, Glebe Road: 15. V. 34.
Reginald H. Robson in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. And so we turned, a little wistfully maybe, to Charles Stansfield reading from the “Earthy
Paradise”, & its rather pathetic refrain “The idle singer of an empty day”. The word pictures of the
Greek and Norse myths came vividly before our minds, and their beauty drew us very pleasantly.
7. Frank Pollard then gave us a general survey of Morris and his work, & Mary Pollard read a short
poem. Those who had some familiarity with Morris’s writings compared their impressions & the rest
of us caught something of Morris’s desire to present a different world from the unpleasant one he
lived in, and also of the joy we have in praising great men and how we turn their stories over. The
contribution of Morris, we gathered, was not so much the foregoing of life in order to live in some
deeper sense, but the happier if less heroic creation of a life in some considerable accordance with
his own ideals.
8. Howard Smith then talked to us of William Morris’s Prose Romances and read us extracts from
them. These romances were turned off, we were told, during his leisure evenings in a thoroughly
matter of fact manner reminding us perhaps of Trollope. But they were crammed full of the fanciful
& even the fantastic. Not only did the author draw upon his imagination for quaint names like
Utterhay, Evilshore, Bindalone: he also freely indulged his fancy for archaic expressions — hard by,
whilom, Child (with capital C), dight, gayass[?], hight (for named) are a few examples.
9. Finally we heard from Reginald Robson an extract from “News from Nowhere.” In this ideal world
of the poet’s dreaming there was no meanness and no money, no jarring jangle of train or tram
with rolling smoke or strident screech, nothing more disturbing than the quiet plash of the oar upon
the tranquil surface of the Thames. It may be that the the rowing boat was once itself anathema to
the aesthetes of an earlier age, but for Morris its very antiquity had hallowed its shapely curves. Is
it as well that he did not live to see the vermillion sports car [...]?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, Glebe Road: 15. V. 34.
Reginald H. Robson in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. And so we turned, a little wistfully maybe, to Charles Stansfield reading from the “Earthy
Paradise”, & its rather pathetic refrain “The idle singer of an empty day”. The word pictures of the
Greek and Norse myths came vividly before our minds, and their beauty drew us very pleasantly.
7. Frank Pollard then gave us a general survey of Morris and his work, & Mary Pollard read a short
poem. Those who had some familiarity with Morris’s writings compared their impressions & the rest
of us caught something of Morris’s desire to present a different world from the unpleasant one he
lived in, and also of the joy we have in praising great men and how we turn their stories over. The
contribution of Morris, we gathered, was not so much the foregoing of life in order to live in some
deeper sense, but the happier if less heroic creation of a life in some considerable accordance with
his own ideals.
8. Howard Smith then talked to us of William Morris’s Prose Romances and read us extracts from
them. These romances were turned off, we were told, during his leisure evenings in a thoroughly
matter of fact manner reminding us perhaps of Trollope. But they were crammed full of the fanciful
& even the fantastic. Not only did the author draw upon his imagination for quaint names like
Utterhay, Evilshore, Bindalone: he also freely indulged his fancy for archaic expressions — hard by,
whilom, Child (with capital C), dight, gayass[?], hight (for named) are a few examples.
9. Finally we heard from Reginald Robson an extract from “News from Nowhere.” In this ideal world
of the poet’s dreaming there was no meanness and no money, no jarring jangle of train or tram
with rolling smoke or strident screech, nothing more disturbing than the quiet plash of the oar upon
the tranquil surface of the Thames. It may be that the the rowing boat was once itself anathema to
the aesthetes of an earlier age, but for Morris its very antiquity had hallowed its shapely curves. Is
it as well that he did not live to see the vermillion sports car [...]?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, Glebe Road: 15. V. 34.
Reginald H. Robson in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. And so we turned, a little wistfully maybe, to Charles Stansfield reading from the “Earthy
Paradise”, & its rather pathetic refrain “The idle singer of an empty day”. The word pictures of the
Greek and Norse myths came vividly before our minds, and their beauty drew us very pleasantly.
7. Frank Pollard then gave us a general survey of Morris and his work, & Mary Pollard read a short
poem. Those who had some familiarity with Morris’s writings compared their impressions & the rest
of us caught something of Morris’s desire to present a different world from the unpleasant one he
lived in, and also of the joy we have in praising great men and how we turn their stories over. The
contribution of Morris, we gathered, was not so much the foregoing of life in order to live in some
deeper sense, but the happier if less heroic creation of a life in some considerable accordance with
his own ideals.
8. Howard Smith then talked to us of William Morris’s Prose Romances and read us extracts from
them. These romances were turned off, we were told, during his leisure evenings in a thoroughly
matter of fact manner reminding us perhaps of Trollope. But they were crammed full of the fanciful
& even the fantastic. Not only did the author draw upon his imagination for quaint names like
Utterhay, Evilshore, Bindalone: he also freely indulged his fancy for archaic expressions — hard by,
whilom, Child (with capital C), dight, gayass[?], hight (for named) are a few examples.
9. Finally we heard from Reginald Robson an extract from “News from Nowhere.” In this ideal world
of the poet’s dreaming there was no meanness and no money, no jarring jangle of train or tram
with rolling smoke or strident screech, nothing more disturbing than the quiet plash of the oar upon
the tranquil surface of the Thames. It may be that the the rowing boat was once itself anathema to
the aesthetes of an earlier age, but for Morris its very antiquity had hallowed its shapely curves. Is
it as well that he did not live to see the vermillion sports car [...]?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, Glebe Road: 15. V. 34.
Reginald H. Robson in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. And so we turned, a little wistfully maybe, to Charles Stansfield reading from the “Earthy
Paradise”, & its rather pathetic refrain “The idle singer of an empty day”. The word pictures of the
Greek and Norse myths came vividly before our minds, and their beauty drew us very pleasantly.
7. Frank Pollard then gave us a general survey of Morris and his work, & Mary Pollard read a short
poem. Those who had some familiarity with Morris’s writings compared their impressions & the rest
of us caught something of Morris’s desire to present a different world from the unpleasant one he
lived in, and also of the joy we have in praising great men and how we turn their stories over. The
contribution of Morris, we gathered, was not so much the foregoing of life in order to live in some
deeper sense, but the happier if less heroic creation of a life in some considerable accordance with
his own ideals.
8. Howard Smith then talked to us of William Morris’s Prose Romances and read us extracts from
them. These romances were turned off, we were told, during his leisure evenings in a thoroughly
matter of fact manner reminding us perhaps of Trollope. But they were crammed full of the fanciful
& even the fantastic. Not only did the author draw upon his imagination for quaint names like
Utterhay, Evilshore, Bindalone: he also freely indulged his fancy for archaic expressions — hard by,
whilom, Child (with capital C), dight, gayass[?], hight (for named) are a few examples.
9. Finally we heard from Reginald Robson an extract from “News from Nowhere.” In this ideal world
of the poet’s dreaming there was no meanness and no money, no jarring jangle of train or tram
with rolling smoke or strident screech, nothing more disturbing than the quiet plash of the oar upon
the tranquil surface of the Thames. It may be that the the rowing boat was once itself anathema to
the aesthetes of an earlier age, but for Morris its very antiquity had hallowed its shapely curves. Is
it as well that he did not live to see the vermillion sports car [...]?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, Glebe Road: 15. V. 34.
Reginald H. Robson in the chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. And so we turned, a little wistfully maybe, to Charles Stansfield reading from the “Earthy
Paradise”, & its rather pathetic refrain “The idle singer of an empty day”. The word pictures of the
Greek and Norse myths came vividly before our minds, and their beauty drew us very pleasantly.
7. Frank Pollard then gave us a general survey of Morris and his work, & Mary Pollard read a short
poem. Those who had some familiarity with Morris’s writings compared their impressions & the rest
of us caught something of Morris’s desire to present a different world from the unpleasant one he
lived in, and also of the joy we have in praising great men and how we turn their stories over. The
contribution of Morris, we gathered, was not so much the foregoing of life in order to live in some
deeper sense, but the happier if less heroic creation of a life in some considerable accordance with
his own ideals.
8. Howard Smith then talked to us of William Morris’s Prose Romances and read us extracts from
them. These romances were turned off, we were told, during his leisure evenings in a thoroughly
matter of fact manner reminding us perhaps of Trollope. But they were crammed full of the fanciful
& even the fantastic. Not only did the author draw upon his imagination for quaint names like
Utterhay, Evilshore, Bindalone: he also freely indulged his fancy for archaic expressions — hard by,
whilom, Child (with capital C), dight, gayass[?], hight (for named) are a few examples.
9. Finally we heard from Reginald Robson an extract from “News from Nowhere.” In this ideal world
of the poet’s dreaming there was no meanness and no money, no jarring jangle of train or tram
with rolling smoke or strident screech, nothing more disturbing than the quiet plash of the oar upon
the tranquil surface of the Thames. It may be that the the rowing boat was once itself anathema to
the aesthetes of an earlier age, but for Morris its very antiquity had hallowed its shapely curves. Is
it as well that he did not live to see the vermillion sports car [...]?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
'9. Charles Stansfield then read his paper on Charles Lamb. He gave us a clear picture of Lamb
in his family relationships, beginning with a delightful study of Lamb’s father under the name
of Lovell of the Old Benchers, continuing with the tragedy of his mother’s death and the twenty
nine gallant years of Charles’s companionship with his sister, and concluding with a most
graceful tribute to her “as an incomparable old maid, the result of her upbringing in the
spacious closet of reading. And it gave us, too, an introduction to the man and the author, the
width of his reading as exemplified in his quotations and allusions, his whimsical humour, the
pathetic weakness that proved too strong for him, and yet with it the natural dignity of the
scholar and an innocent & delightful merriment in circumstances which might well have bred
coarseness and cynicism.
We may indeed say of these paragraphs of Charles Stansfield’s as he himself says of the
Essays that “they reveal Lamb and endear him to us.”
10. Dorothy Brain read an extract from “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” showing Lamb’s
pride in his old school.
[...]
12. Mary Pollard read from “Dream Children”, an essay that made some of us wonder whether
it is reflected in Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”
13. Edith Goadby read from “Two Races of Men”, another theme which will not readily be
bettered.
14. Victor Alexander then read from “My Relations[”]
15. Howard Smith read from Odds and Ends with much enjoyable good humour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
'9. Charles Stansfield then read his paper on Charles Lamb. He gave us a clear picture of Lamb
in his family relationships, beginning with a delightful study of Lamb’s father under the name
of Lovell of the Old Benchers, continuing with the tragedy of his mother’s death and the twenty
nine gallant years of Charles’s companionship with his sister, and concluding with a most
graceful tribute to her “as an incomparable old maid, the result of her upbringing in the
spacious closet of reading. And it gave us, too, an introduction to the man and the author, the
width of his reading as exemplified in his quotations and allusions, his whimsical humour, the
pathetic weakness that proved too strong for him, and yet with it the natural dignity of the
scholar and an innocent & delightful merriment in circumstances which might well have bred
coarseness and cynicism.
We may indeed say of these paragraphs of Charles Stansfield’s as he himself says of the
Essays that “they reveal Lamb and endear him to us.”
10. Dorothy Brain read an extract from “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” showing Lamb’s
pride in his old school.
[...]
12. Mary Pollard read from “Dream Children”, an essay that made some of us wonder whether
it is reflected in Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”
13. Edith Goadby read from “Two Races of Men”, another theme which will not readily be
bettered.
14. Victor Alexander then read from “My Relations[”]
15. Howard Smith read from Odds and Ends with much enjoyable good humour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Unknown
'9. Charles Stansfield then read his paper on Charles Lamb. He gave us a clear picture of Lamb
in his family relationships, beginning with a delightful study of Lamb’s father under the name
of Lovell of the Old Benchers, continuing with the tragedy of his mother’s death and the twenty
nine gallant years of Charles’s companionship with his sister, and concluding with a most
graceful tribute to her “as an incomparable old maid, the result of her upbringing in the
spacious closet of reading. And it gave us, too, an introduction to the man and the author, the
width of his reading as exemplified in his quotations and allusions, his whimsical humour, the
pathetic weakness that proved too strong for him, and yet with it the natural dignity of the
scholar and an innocent & delightful merriment in circumstances which might well have bred
coarseness and cynicism.
We may indeed say of these paragraphs of Charles Stansfield’s as he himself says of the
Essays that “they reveal Lamb and endear him to us.”
10. Dorothy Brain read an extract from “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” showing Lamb’s
pride in his old school.
[...]
12. Mary Pollard read from “Dream Children”, an essay that made some of us wonder whether
it is reflected in Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”
13. Edith Goadby read from “Two Races of Men”, another theme which will not readily be
bettered.
14. Victor Alexander then read from “My Relations[”]
15. Howard Smith read from Odds and Ends with much enjoyable good humour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
'9. Charles Stansfield then read his paper on Charles Lamb. He gave us a clear picture of Lamb
in his family relationships, beginning with a delightful study of Lamb’s father under the name
of Lovell of the Old Benchers, continuing with the tragedy of his mother’s death and the twenty
nine gallant years of Charles’s companionship with his sister, and concluding with a most
graceful tribute to her “as an incomparable old maid, the result of her upbringing in the
spacious closet of reading. And it gave us, too, an introduction to the man and the author, the
width of his reading as exemplified in his quotations and allusions, his whimsical humour, the
pathetic weakness that proved too strong for him, and yet with it the natural dignity of the
scholar and an innocent & delightful merriment in circumstances which might well have bred
coarseness and cynicism.
We may indeed say of these paragraphs of Charles Stansfield’s as he himself says of the
Essays that “they reveal Lamb and endear him to us.”
10. Dorothy Brain read an extract from “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” showing Lamb’s
pride in his old school.
[...]
12. Mary Pollard read from “Dream Children”, an essay that made some of us wonder whether
it is reflected in Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”
13. Edith Goadby read from “Two Races of Men”, another theme which will not readily be
bettered.
14. Victor Alexander then read from “My Relations[”]
15. Howard Smith read from Odds and Ends with much enjoyable good humour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Goadby Manuscript: Unknown
'9. Charles Stansfield then read his paper on Charles Lamb. He gave us a clear picture of Lamb
in his family relationships, beginning with a delightful study of Lamb’s father under the name
of Lovell of the Old Benchers, continuing with the tragedy of his mother’s death and the twenty
nine gallant years of Charles’s companionship with his sister, and concluding with a most
graceful tribute to her “as an incomparable old maid, the result of her upbringing in the
spacious closet of reading. And it gave us, too, an introduction to the man and the author, the
width of his reading as exemplified in his quotations and allusions, his whimsical humour, the
pathetic weakness that proved too strong for him, and yet with it the natural dignity of the
scholar and an innocent & delightful merriment in circumstances which might well have bred
coarseness and cynicism.
We may indeed say of these paragraphs of Charles Stansfield’s as he himself says of the
Essays that “they reveal Lamb and endear him to us.”
10. Dorothy Brain read an extract from “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” showing Lamb’s
pride in his old school.
[...]
12. Mary Pollard read from “Dream Children”, an essay that made some of us wonder whether
it is reflected in Barrie’s “Dear Brutus”
13. Edith Goadby read from “Two Races of Men”, another theme which will not readily be
bettered.
14. Victor Alexander then read from “My Relations[”]
15. Howard Smith read from Odds and Ends with much enjoyable good humour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Print: Book
'Tom Sawyer’s ingenious antics are at present my principal book and bible. I have also found a red 6/- novel called “Impertinent Reflections”, which might fill up any odd minutes — if any.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
‘One afternoon a sentry of ours was hit in the head and killed while he stood quite out of observation. I was in my tiny dugout reading Mr. Masefield’s “Good Friday” when I heard that shot, which at once told me that a man had gone west.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
'I strongly recommend ''The Life of Henrietta Kerr'' — a nun ... The book is very entertaining as well as interesting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Victoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel V. Bracher
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Victoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield
'I [...] reflected that at battalion headquarters the charms of our library — O. Henry, the “Field Service Pocket Book” and “Spoon River” — were now rather withered.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
'Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue
19. II. 1935
Ethel Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read (by F. E. Pollard in the regretted absence of the Secretary), heard with
wonder and admiration, & approved.
[...]
4. Edgar B. Castle, passing over the the Garden of Eden owing to a dislike of snakes, the Roman
Empire from an unwillingness to feed the lions, & other intervening ages by reason of other
prejudices, took us to Reading in 2000 A.D. Our eyes opened & our mouths watered as we heard
of the beautiful, free, sober & happy borough to be, its advent due to the efforts of Mr Lloyd
George & the Old Boys of Leighton Park. [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book
Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with
enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary
insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings
to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the
acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the
apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round
of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital,
Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the
kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s
manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas
More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge,
and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book
Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with
enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary
insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings
to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the
acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the
apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round
of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital,
Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the
kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s
manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas
More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge,
and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis
'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman — the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman -- the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
'After a less than frugal luncheon (no ice aboard) I made an attempt to read "The Egoist" (a tattered copy of which lay on the desk) but gave it up and lay, practically for the rest of the voyage, a high heaved and higher-heaving log of uncomplaining misery.[...] In more conscious moments contrived almost to finish the unique "Egoist" (last read at Cambridge): near the end it approaches a high tragic Vaudeville, and [De] Craye's wit does not wear well; but how direct and simple the whole effect, and how much easier and more compelling than Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Rose 7.15 and seem to have spent day writing, going on with Henry James's "Ambassadors", finishing "Britling", but most of all sleeping.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Bed 10.30, nearing end of wonderful "Ambassadors".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'But having time to write up this, with a letter or so, to fifnish the amazing "Ambassadors", as well as "Embarrassments" (I and III especially good) the unusual "Other House" and a volume of Leslie Stephen (a little diffuse), and eaten very little with never a threat of nausea, I have suffered from nothing beyond irritation at the abnormal dalay,with faint boredom at the meals.[...] Read also five Sonnets every morning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'But having time to write up this, with a letter or so, to finish the amazing "Ambassadors", as well as "Embarrassments" (I and III especially good) the unusual "Other House" and a volume of Leslie Stephen (a little diffuse), and eaten very little with never a threat of nausea, I have suffered from nothing beyond irritation at the abnormal delay,with faint boredom at the meals.[...] Read also five Sonnets every morning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'In the morning a little "Inferno". James's "Washington Square" (his first, American manner) and Turgeneff's [sic] "Fumée"; but Russian books are always a slight effort to me, I suppose by reason of the leakage of style in translation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'For my own War reading I found, as the popularity of "The Times Broadsheets" proved, that the essential was, remoteness from actuality. Henry James, by his sublime irrelevance to the general agony, provided escape, civilisation — almost intelligence. [Entry continues as diary or letter extract inserted into text]. My greatest acquisition is some realisation of his extraordinary greatness. Since Desdemona dropped her handkerchief, no one has managed to extract such thrills out of the apparently unimportant. My other refuge is William Blake — the first or the second childhood (it doesn't matter which) of William Shakespeare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Strong breeze and weather agreeable so far from Karachi. Green's "History", Macaulay, Ruskin, "Oxford Book [?of English Verse]" and Horace every day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
''Finished "[The] Rose and Ring" (how satisfying) and turned over the "Assemblies of al-Hariri", which confirms my old opinion that there is but one book in Arabic and that is the "Arabian Nights". The Admiralty Handbook of Mesopotamia, a compilation of the first order, and invaluable to me. Bed 10, and again cold (72°).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Wrote, and read "Persian Gulf Gazetteer", a unique and monumental compilation, and a political history of the Middle East beyond compare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Weak and tired and inclined as always when out of action and interest, to go to pieces. Read, after twenty years, Merriman's miserable "[The] Sowers", Psalms and John iii in Arabic, some Tennyson and Swinburne, and the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Read Freeman on race and language, which holds well to date, especially in his negation of Austria and Turkey as possible empires. John v Arabic and Homer's "Odyssey" xix.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Read Freeman on race and language, which holds well to date, especially in his negation of Austria and Turkey as possible empires. John v Arabic and Homer's "Odyssey" xix.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'The others slept while I wrote and read again with pleasure and admiration "Sinister Street, [Vol] II". A glorious promise if only that youth is not murdered in the Aegean.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Meeting held at Hillsborough, 4 Glebe Road: 3.3.36
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
[...]
6. Celia Burrow read The Flowers.
7. H. R. Smith read a criticism from The Listener by Edwin Muir. [...]
8. R. H. Robson read “Tods’[sic] Amendment.”
9. Rosamund Wallis read “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat”, from The 2nd Jungle Book.
10. H. R. Smith read “My Sunday at Home” from The Day’s Work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Serial / periodical
'Read Kipling's "Diversities", Steevens' "India", Wells "War [?of the Worlds]" "Dynamiter" and a little Graham Wallas and Metchnikhoff, but with fatigue and unease.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Anecdotish dinner; bed about 10, where read Milton's "P[aradise] L[ost] and Watson's "Jerusalem".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'I am reading nothing but snatches of "Paradise Lost" while waiting for the bath to fill.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene 22. II 1937
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read (by F.E.P. in regretted absence of the Secretary) & approved.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith introduced Browning with a biographical sketch.
5. F. E. Pollard read The Italian in England.
6. S. A. Reynolds read a paper by H. M. Wallis on ‘The Bishop orders his Tomb’; & Rosamund
Wallis read the poem.
7. F. E. Pollard commented on various aspects of Browning’s works, & at intervals the following
were read:-
‘The Patriot’ by E. B. Castle.
Parts of ‘By the fireside’ & ‘Holy Cross Day’ by R. H. Robson.
Part of ‘Rabbi ben Ezra’, by C. E. Stansfield.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'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: Sylvanus A. Reynolds 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: Celia Burrow Print: Book
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel C. Stevens Print: Book
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read
by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was
read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary
parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Un-named members of the XI Book Club Print: Book
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
[...]
6. The evening was completed by the reading of extracts from the works of various authors who
had recently been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. In the interests of truth it should
perhaps be mentioned that the reading from French and Russian authors were given from English
translations.
R. H. Robson read from Dodsworth by Sinclair S. Lewis
Mary S. W. Pollard [read from] The Village [by] Ivan Bunin
L. Dorothea Taylor [read from] All God’s Chillun Got Wings [by] Eugene E. O'Neill
H. R. Smith [read from] Les Thibault by Roger M. du Gard
S. A Reynolds [read from] White Monkey [by] J. Galsworthy
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Print: Book
'Meeting held at Cintra Avenue
22.IV.1938
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
The following essays were read:-
authors
Mrs Stevens His Good Turn – read by Elizabeth Alexander
Miss Stevens Anne Thackeray’s Chapter from Memory read by Muriel Stevens
Mrs Dilks The Gardener [read by] H. R. Smith
H. M. Wallis Some New Thing [read by] F. E. Pollard
H. R. Smith The Cotswolds [read by] A. B. Dilks
R. H. Robson Rupert Brooke [read by] Mary S. W. Pollard
A. B. Dilks The Spacious Firmament [read by] Mary E. Robson
The essays were then successfully identified'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Manuscript: Unknown
'I am very much interested in Morley's ''Life of Rousseau'' ... Morley does not gloss over any of his crimes or odiousness.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'Lunched with Ralph [Milbanke]. He has decided at last to publish the great Byron secret, and has drawn up the case against Byron and Mrs. Leigh in the form of a book called "Astarte." This is very ably done, but to my mind is marred by an introduction violently attacking Murray, the publisher, with whom he has quarrelled over Murray's recent edition of Byron's Works. I shall endeavour to get him to modify this; indeed, I think the whole thing might without much injustice to Lady Byron's memory be let to sleep. It is an ugly story, however told.''
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Manuscript: Unknown
'I am wading through Emerson, as I really wanted to know what transcendentalism means, and I think that it is that intuition is before reason (or facts). It certainly does not suit Wedgwoods, who never have any intuitions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
'I am reading ''Paradise Regained'' (sandwiched with Rousseau's ''Confessions'') out of compliment to Mr Bright, who used to read it through every Sunday.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'I am reading Brimley's ''Essay on Tennyson'',and I really think it will set me on reading some of his poems.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'Our ''stiff'' book is H. James' stories and our ''light'' one Leslie Stephen's ''Hours in a Library'' 3rd series. He is so pleasant after all that subtlety.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
'I have read Maxime; but mark you further — I have never read anything else ... By the way, I have read Maxime du Camp.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'He read — Sterne, Sydney Smith's letters, Canning's speeches, and two thrillers: A. E. W. Mason's Konigsmarch and Michael Innes's Lament for a Maker ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'He read — Sterne, Sydney Smith's letters, Canning's speeches, and two thrillers: A. E. W. Mason's Konigsmarch and Michael Innes's Lament for a Maker ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'His reading in 1938 and 1939 had been mainly of memoirs and biographies: Boswell, Greville, Logan Pearsall Smith's Unforgotten Years, Siegfried Sassoon's The Old Century, Somerset Maugham's The Summing-Up ("a very honest confession of faith").'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'His reading in 1938 and 1939 had been mainly of memoirs and biographies: Boswell, Greville, Logan Pearsall Smith's Unforgotten Years, Siegfried Sassoon's The Old Century, Somerset Maugham's The Summing-Up ("a very honest confession of faith").'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'B[reakfast] Herring, bread & butter, tea. Read "The Amazing Duke".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Read "Barbe of Grand Bayon". Wound dressed. Head finished. Bath, read, cut dressings. Read "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Read ... "Barlash [sic] of the Guard". Dressed & sat by the fire. Dominoes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Read - book "Gallipoli" from Rev. Robt. Overton by post. Parcel cake from Mrs Scales. Wrote Reg ... Crib[bage] & read "Tales of Two People".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Read "Gallipoli" (John Masefield).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Have you read Meredith's "Love in the Valley"? It got me, I wept; I remembered that poetry existed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'Meeting held at 7, Marlborough Avenue. 15th Jan, 1944
A. G. Joselin in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed
[...]
5. Howard Smith opened the evening on Shelley with a biographical sketch. [...]
6. We adjourned for refreshment[.]
7. F. E. Pollard read “Ode to the West Wind”
8. Margaret Dilks gave brief appreciation of Shelley’s poetry. This started a general
discussion in which nearly all took part — whether he influenced or was influenced by
his contempor[ar]ies , & what effect he had, if any, on future poets. On these
questions opinion varied, but all agreed with F. E. Pollard that Shelley’s verse is
supremely ‘poetical’.
9. To illustrate Shelley’s passion for liberty and reform Bruce Dilks read from “The
Masque of Anarchy” which was inspired by the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.
10. Rosamund Wallis read some stanzas from “Adonais”. F. E. Pollard read a short
poem entitled “A Lament”[.] Thus, our thoughts being with the departed, the meeting
ended on a lighter note. One member quoted a touching little verse from the
Berkshire Chronicle In Memoriam notices, which another capped by some lines written
by a school-boy on the relative merits of perpetual roasting and eternal hymn-singing.
Lines which gained the boy a severe reprimand from his head-master, and a ‘Fiver’
from his father.
[signed as a true record by] S A Reynolds 14/2/44'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isabel Taylor Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Knight Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Oakdene”, Northcourt Avenue. 14.2.44
S. A. Reynolds in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment we turned our thoughts to the Study of the Life and Works of André Maurois, which proved to be a subject of absorbing
interest. Rosamund Wallis was his Biographer up to the time of the outbreak of this war — her chief source of information being Maurois’ autobiography “Call no
man happy” from which she read several extracts. She revealed to us the child Emil Hertzog, born an Alsatian Jew & brought up in the sheltered atmosphere of
French family life. Brilliantly successful at school, in business, as a soldier and under the name of André Maurois as a writer. Success was his easily and
immediately for allied to his native genius was an infinite capacity for hard work.
6. Readings from Maurois’s works were given as follows:-
Howard Smith from ‘The Silence of Colonel Bramble’
Isabel Taylor [from] Ariel
F. E. Pollard [from] Disraeli
Frank Knight [from] Byron
Knox Taylor [from] History of England
Maurois has been very fortunate in his translators and all the readings were much enjoyed. Colonel Bramble was his first book & remains the most widely read &
generally acclaimed of them all. ‘Ariel’ his life of Shelley gained him a reputation for writing ‘Romanticized Biography’ which he resented and tried to counteract
in his lives of Byron and Disraeli. The general opinion of the Book Club was that he writes always with more charm and wit than accuracy & Knox Taylor’s
criticism of the ‘History of England[’] was that in trying to give a general impression without much detail, Maurois has picked out the wrong details and therefore
gives the wrong impression.
7. Kenneth Nicholson then continued the story of Maurois’ life up to the present day, when he is living in America with his wife, while their children remain in
France.
[signed as a true record by] J. Knox Taylor 13/3/44.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Knox Taylor Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House. 13th March 1944
J. Knox Taylor in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. The chairman informed us that the committee had decided that Kenneth
Nicholson’s discourse on ‘The Novel’ was likely to be sufficiently provocative, with
interruptions and comments, to occupy the whole evening. They had therefore
arranged a few readings from novels but no other 5 minute essays or speeches.
5. Kenneth Nicholson, protesting that he had most unwillingly, had this greatness
thrust upon him, proceeded to expound the most interesting theory that the novel,
as a form of literature, had been born in the middle of the 18th Century, flourished
through the C19th and declined in the C20th. He held that although a great number
of novels are still being written, they are of little worth and are being read less
and less by persons of culture & discernment. For the rising generation, the
wireless and the cinema have taken the place of the novel in providing such
entertainment, & what reading they do, is of a much less serious nature.
A lively discussion took place both during and after Kenneth Nicholson’s discourse,
in which many members both criticised and opposed his theories.
6. Frank Knight read from Wm. de Morgan’s “Alice for Short”. Although this book
was written in 1907 the reading was much enjoyed, & many members confessed to
a great liking for De Morgan’s novels.
7. Elsie Harrod read from “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier – an even more recent
publication — and again our interest was caught and held.
8. It was getting late, and asked to cho[o]se, for the last reading, between “How
Green was my Valley”, “Precious Bane” and “The ordeal of Richard Feverel”
members chose the latter. By request, Knox Taylor read the well known love
scene entitled ‘Ferdinand and Miranda’. This novel was written in 1859 when the
art of novel-writing was (according to the theory laid down this evening) at its
height. But somehow it touched our sense of humour instead of our deeper
emotions, and Knox Taylor finding himself unable to finish the chapter, the
meeting dissolved amid general laughter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Knight Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at School House. 13th March 1944
J. Knox Taylor in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. The chairman informed us that the committee had decided that Kenneth
Nicholson’s discourse on ‘The Novel’ was likely to be sufficiently provocative, with
interruptions and comments, to occupy the whole evening. They had therefore
arranged a few readings from novels but no other 5 minute essays or speeches.
5. Kenneth Nicholson, protesting that he had most unwillingly, had this greatness
thrust upon him, proceeded to expound the most interesting theory that the novel,
as a form of literature, had been born in the middle of the 18th Century, flourished
through the C19th and declined in the C20th. He held that although a great number
of novels are still being written, they are of little worth and are being read less
and less by persons of culture & discernment. For the rising generation, the
wireless and the cinema have taken the place of the novel in providing such
entertainment, & what reading they do, is of a much less serious nature.
A lively discussion took place both during and after Kenneth Nicholson’s discourse,
in which many members both criticised and opposed his theories.
6. Frank Knight read from Wm. de Morgan’s “Alice for Short”. Although this book
was written in 1907 the reading was much enjoyed, & many members confessed to
a great liking for De Morgan’s novels.
7. Elsie Harrod read from “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier – an even more recent
publication — and again our interest was caught and held.
8. It was getting late, and asked to cho[o]se, for the last reading, between “How
Green was my Valley”, “Precious Bane” and “The ordeal of Richard Feverel”
members chose the latter. By request, Knox Taylor read the well known love
scene entitled ‘Ferdinand and Miranda’. This novel was written in 1859 when the
art of novel-writing was (according to the theory laid down this evening) at its
height. But somehow it touched our sense of humour instead of our deeper
emotions, and Knox Taylor finding himself unable to finish the chapter, the
meeting dissolved amid general laughter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elsie Harrod Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House. 13th March 1944
J. Knox Taylor in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. The chairman informed us that the committee had decided that Kenneth
Nicholson’s discourse on ‘The Novel’ was likely to be sufficiently provocative, with
interruptions and comments, to occupy the whole evening. They had therefore
arranged a few readings from novels but no other 5 minute essays or speeches.
5. Kenneth Nicholson, protesting that he had most unwillingly, had this greatness
thrust upon him, proceeded to expound the most interesting theory that the novel,
as a form of literature, had been born in the middle of the 18th Century, flourished
through the C19th and declined in the C20th. He held that although a great number
of novels are still being written, they are of little worth and are being read less
and less by persons of culture & discernment. For the rising generation, the
wireless and the cinema have taken the place of the novel in providing such
entertainment, & what reading they do, is of a much less serious nature.
A lively discussion took place both during and after Kenneth Nicholson’s discourse,
in which many members both criticised and opposed his theories.
6. Frank Knight read from Wm. de Morgan’s “Alice for Short”. Although this book
was written in 1907 the reading was much enjoyed, & many members confessed to
a great liking for De Morgan’s novels.
7. Elsie Harrod read from “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier – an even more recent
publication — and again our interest was caught and held.
8. It was getting late, and asked to cho[o]se, for the last reading, between “How
Green was my Valley”, “Precious Bane” and “The ordeal of Richard Feverel”
members chose the latter. By request, Knox Taylor read the well known love
scene entitled ‘Ferdinand and Miranda’. This novel was written in 1859 when the
art of novel-writing was (according to the theory laid down this evening) at its
height. But somehow it touched our sense of humour instead of our deeper
emotions, and Knox Taylor finding himself unable to finish the chapter, the
meeting dissolved amid general laughter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Knox Taylor Print: Book
Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue, 21st June 1944
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. Minutes of last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
3. Howard Smith introduced G. K. Chesterton by giving us a very full and interesting account of his life. Essayist, critic, novelist and poet;
always interesting, sometimes brilliant; inaccurate in factual detail yet showing quite extraordinary understanding of the great men of
whom he wrote.
4. F. E. Pollard read from Chesterton’s biography of Robert Browning
5. We adjourned for refreshment.
6. Margaret Dilks read from “Orthodoxy”.
7. Rosamund Wallis read an essay “French and English” which was of particular interest in view of the present day political situation, and
the difficulty statesmen of the two countries experience in understanding each other.
8. Isabel Taylor read “The Blue Cross” a thrilling and amusing detective story from “The innocence of Father Brown.”
9. Kenneth Nicholson read some of Chesterton’s poems: The Pessimist, F. E. Smith [i.e. ‘Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An
Ode’] & King’s Cross [Station].
10. It was too late to hear the readings from Chesterton’s biography of Charles Dickens, and it was suggested that this might well prove
an interesting subject for a future evening.
[signed as a true record by] Howard R. Smith 8/7/44'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Muriel Stevens Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothea Taylor Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Ruth Beck Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Basil Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Frensham” 8th July 1944
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
[...]
7. “Love Came In” by Beatrice Saxon-Snell was read with the following cast:-
Thomas Curtis — F. E. Pollard
Anne Curtis — Isabel Taylor
Sandra — Elsie Harrod
Joe Coale — Bruce Dilks
James Naylor — Howard Smith
Before the reading Howard Smith briefly recounted the historical events leading up
to the time at which the action takes place. which explains the very strained
relations between George Fox & James Naylor. It was agreed that when the copies
were returned to Beatrice Saxon-Snell she should be warmly thanked for lending
them to us, & told how very much the club appreciated the play.
8. “The Dear Departed” by Stanley Houghton a play of a much more frivolous
nature, was read with the following cast:-
Henry Slater — Bruce Dilks
Amelia Slater — Muriel Stevens
Ben Jordan — Howard Smith
Elizabeth Jordan — Rosamund Wallis
Victoria Slater — Margaret Dilks
Abel Merryweather — F. E. Pollard
9. It being still quite early we decided to read another short play & chose quite at
random from the books available “The Man who wouldn't go to Heaven” by F.
Sladen-Smith. Read from sight and cast quite haphazardly this proved most
entertaining. F. E. Pollard as the recording angel, Basil Smith as the Free Church
Minister (with a voice pregnant with unxious non-conformity), Rosamund Wallis as
a string minded woman calling loudly for her dog & indeed every character was
most aptly portrayed. The full cast was as follows:
Thariel — F. E. Pollard
Margaret — Margaret Dilks
Richard Alton — Bruce Dilks
Bobbie Nightingale — Howard Smith
Eliza Muggins — Muriel Stevens
Sister Mary Teresa — Dorothea Taylor
Mrs Cuthbert Bagshawe — Ruth Beck
Harriet Rebecca Strenham — Rosamund Wallis
Rev John McNulty — Basil Smith
Timothy Toto Newbiggin — Sylvanus Reynolds
Derrick Bradley — Elsie Harrod
[signed as a true record by] AB Dilks 18/9/44'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Elsie Harrod Print: Book
'Meeting held at Grove House. 16th October 1944
J. Knox Taylor in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. The subject of the evening was Charles Dickens and we were once again indebted to Howard Smith for a biography. In a
skilfully condensed account of the chief events of his life, we heard of the hardships Dickens underwent in childhood, of his
sudden & quite early achievement of success & financial ease. His marriage, his many children & the unhappy atmosphere
of his home life in later years. His visits to America and his sudden death at the age of 58.
6. Muriel Stevens read from David Copperfield the account of his arrival at the house of his Aunt Betsey Trotwood.
Humphrey Hare gave us the benefit of his local knowledge and described Peggotty’s Cottage at Great Yarmouth as seen by
his Father, and also Blundestone Rookery as it is today.
7. F. E. Pollard told us something of Chestertons book on Dickens and read a number of extracts showing his appreciation
of a number some of the lesser characters. Among these were Mrs. Nickleby, Mantalini, Dick Swiveller, Mr.
Stiggins, the Rev. Septimus Crisparkle and Toots.
8. We heard with interest that a recent census of boys’ reading at Leighton Park revealed Dickens even now as the third
most popular author.
9. Arnold Joselin read from Martin Chuzzlewit the chapter where Mrs. Gamp instals herself as night-nurse.
10. Knox Taylor read from The Pickwick Papers the account of the visit to Eatanswill parliamentary election.
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin 21 Nov. 1944'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 7 Marlborough Avenue, 21.XI.44
A. G. Joselin in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read and after considerable discussion &
some alteration, signed.
5. After adjourning for refreshment we listened with very great interest to some
letters from Ralph Smith and also one from a repatriated Prisoner of War giving
first hand news of him.
6. Knox Taylor opened our evening of controversial subjects by a defence of
‘Vice’. He maintained that drinking and gambling in moderation were
harmless in themselves when dissociated from their social evils. In the discussion
which followed members seemed on the whole to favour a life of virtue, being
unwilling thus to separate cause from effect.
7. Elsie Harrod spoke on the housing question and after putting forward the many
problems which must be considered by those responsible for building the houses
for this generation, she proposed that the only way of meeting all requirements
was to pass a law that no house should be built to last for more than 10 years.
The chief argument which was put forward against this was that if the house was
guaranteed to decay in 10 years what would it be like in the 2 or 3 years
preceding this limit.
8. In a vehement and convincing discourse F. E. Pollard defended Reason against
this Age of Unreason. A lively discussion which followed showed that the speaker
had largely carried his audience with him along the path of Reason, although some
of us were unwilling to part with our sub-conscious minds.
[signed as a true record by] Muriel M. Stevens 16-12-44'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [unnamed member[s] of the XII Book Club] Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage 16th December 1944
Muriel Stevens in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
6. The treasurer presented his report and the accounts though not audited, were
approved.
[...]
10. To conclude the evening Howard Smith read from Christmas Garland by Max
Beerbohm, a parody of G. K. Chesterton.
[signed as a true record by] S A Reynolds 27/1/45'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 28th May 1945
Elsie D. Harrod in the chair.
[...]
4. The subject of the evening was John Ruskin, and Faith Miller gave us a most
comprehensive and absorbingly interesting account of his life, his writings and his
ideals. So complete was this survey, of a man who wrote so much & lived such a
long and full life, that your secretary finds it difficult, in writing this minute, to
maintain her reputation for being brief and to the point! But suffice it to say that
Faith Miller’s discourse drew forth one of those spontaneous burst of applause only
accorded on rare occasions for contributions of outstanding worth.
5. Cyril Langford then read a passage from “On the Nature of Gothic” setting forth
Ruskin’s principle that the working creature is either a man or a tool – he cannot
be both. He followed this with part of a modern commentary on Ruskin by R. H
Wilenski which stated quite simply that Ruskin could not write because his mind
had been drugged from birth onward by the emotive language of the Bible. This
heterodox statement aroused strong opposition but it also had some support and a
lively argument ensued, and indeed it seemed that Diplomatic relations between
members were in danger of being broken off, when came in a timely invitation to
supper from our hostess and we were united once more in our appreciation of the
excellent refreshments provided.
6. Muriel Stevens then revealed to us Ruskin’s theories on Art & Artists & we hope
she did not feel discouraged by the fact that members were apparently far more
interested in the reproductions she passed round than in what Ruskin had to say
about them. She also read from Picasso on “Cubism”, but this was a realm into
which few, if any of us, could follow her.
7. Bruce Dilks then spoke of Ruskin’s ideas on political economy & social reform.
We heard how he advocated a system of national education and attacked a state
whose system of economics was based solely on the acquisition of wealth.
8. Finally Francis Pollard read a passage from “Sesame and Lilies”, skilfully
selected to prove once & for all that Ruskin could write & that in a clear,
forceful manner readily understood by anyone of even average intellect.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Faith Miller Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 64, Northcourt Avenue. 24th. Sept. 1945.
Rosamund Wallis in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
4. Arnold Joselin outlined very briefly the History of Science. He divided the
subject into three parts. The origins of knowledge in very early days, The
beginnings of scientific development from the 15th to the 19th centuries and
Modern Science. He mentioned many of the outstanding figures in the Scientific
world, and the discoveries for which they were famous. He ended by suggesting as
a subject for a future Book Club meeting “The Unity of Science and Religion”.
5. Austin Miller then expounded the theory of Scientific Method, as applied, not
only in the normal way, to scientific research, but also to the Arts and indeed to
every sphere of life. He defined Scientific Method in a word as
‘objectivity’ — or the elimination of opinion and the substitution of
evidence. In the discussion which followed, most us found ourselves too much in
agreement with Dr. Miller to provide an effective opposition, but F. E. Pollard
considered that Scientists were guilty of an act of Faith rather than one of proved
truth, in supposing that natural laws which have always been obeyed in the past,
will continue to be obeyed in the future.
6. Bruce Dilks explained that he had intended to conclude the evening by talking to
us on scale, size and measurement. Unfortunately all his notes and diagrams had
been left on the Isle of Wight, so instead he offered to answer questions on
popular fallacies. [...]
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin 22 Oct. 1945. [at the club meeting
held at 7, Marlborough Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 43.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: A. Austin Miller Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 7 Marlborough Avenue 22/10/45
Arnold G. Joselin in the chair
1. The minutes of the previous meeting were read & signed.
[...]
3. Dr Taylor read from Kingdon Ward’s Modern Exploration giving us some idea of
the History of Exploration. Early man was immobile. Exploration has kept step
with Civilization. Exploration of the Earths surface is nearly finished, now we go
either up or down.
4. We adjourned for refreshment.
5. H. R. Smith read Smythe’s account of his singlehanded assault on the Everest
on the Everest summit.
6. Elsie Harrod from Gino Watkins by J M Scott first the description of suitable diet
for Greenland and second an account of travel over the Greenland Icecap. Very
Vivid.
7. Cyril Langford read from Hanno [half-emended, correctly, to ‘Hanno’] by J.
Leslie Mitchell on the ideas of what the earth is like deep beneath our feet. We got
a picture of a vast Hollow echoing caverns & great underground seas.
8. Thos Hopkins read extracts from Richard Bird [sic] in the Antarctic all alone
being slowly poisoned by Carbon Monoxide the fumes from his stove slowly
escaping a very introspective depressing story. Taking the evening as a whole it
was perhaps felt that there was rather a lot of physchology [sic] stirred into the
adventures.
[signed as a true record by] A. Austin Miller 28.XI.45 [at the club meeting held at
67 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 44.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at 7 Marlborough Avenue 22/10/45
Arnold G. Joselin in the chair
1. The minutes of the previous meeting were read & signed.
[...]
3. Dr Taylor read from Kingdon Ward’s Modern Exploration giving us some idea of
the History of Exploration. Early man was immobile. Exploration has kept step
with Civilization. Exploration of the Earths surface is nearly finished, now we go
either up or down.
4. We adjourned for refreshment.
5. H. R. Smith read Smythe’s account of his singlehanded assault on the Everest
on the Everest summit.
6. Elsie Harrod from Gino Watkins by J M Scott first the description of suitable diet
for Greenland and second an account of travel over the Greenland Icecap. Very
Vivid.
7. Cyril Langford read from Hanno [half-emended, correctly, to ‘Hanno’] by J.
Leslie Mitchell on the ideas of what the earth is like deep beneath our feet. We got
a picture of a vast Hollow echoing caverns & great underground seas.
8. Thos Hopkins read extracts from Richard Bird [sic] in the Antarctic all alone
being slowly poisoned by Carbon Monoxide the fumes from his stove slowly
escaping a very introspective depressing story. Taking the evening as a whole it
was perhaps felt that there was rather a lot of physchology [sic] stirred into the
adventures.
[signed as a true record by] A. Austin Miller 28.XI.45 [at the club meeting held at
67 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 44.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Cyril Langford Print: Book
'Meeting held at 67 Eastern Avenue, 28th. Nov. 1945.
A. Austin Miller in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
3. While we were discussing possible books for the coming year, the Treasurer
was dispatched to fetch from his home the Club account books in order that we
might be able to review our finances. He was later able to assure us that we have
a balance in hand of about £7.
[...]
7. X = 0 by John Drinkwater was read with the following cast: —
Pronax — F. E. Pollard
Salvius — A B Dilks
Ilus — T. Hopkins
Capys — Austin Miller
Stage directions, passing sentinels & noises off — Hilda Hopkins
We then had three readings each of a national character. For the first of these
representing England Dora Langford read from “Nicholas Married” a sequel to
Nicholas Nickleby of doubtful authorship. Both the age of the book and its
illustrations were extremely interesting. Scotland was represented by an extract
from ‘A Window in Thrums’ by J. M. Barrie read by Muriel Stevens. And Wales by
readings by Stella Hopkins from “An Englishman looks at Wales by R. W.
Thompson”
[signed as a true record by] C.J. Langford [on 10 January 1946, at the club meeting
held at 44 Hamilton Rd.: see Minute Book, p. 48.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Hopkins Print: Book
'Minutes of Meeting held at School House. 3rd April 1943
R. D. L. Moore in the Chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
4. Roger Moore introduced the subject of ‘Ballads’. He spoke of their origin, which
is very obscure since anonymity belongs to their very nature. They were never
meant to be ‘literature’, since they were not written but have come down to us
orally until Bishop Percy in 1765 started making his collection. He quoted Quiller-
Couch in saying that almost all the places most celebrated in ballad poetry lie in
the Border country between two lines, one drawn from the Firth of Forth to the
Clyde & the other from Newcastle-on-Tyne to St Bee’s Head. Quiller-Couch also
draws two chronological lines — at the years 1350 and 1550 & holds that the Ballad rose, flourished & declined within that period.
5. Illustrations of Ballads were given as follows:
Tam Lin read by Elsie Harrod
The Two Magicians sung by A. B. Dilks
Sir Patrick Spens read by Kenneth Nicholson
The Suffolk Miracle [read by] Margaret Dilks
Chevy Chase [read by] Knox Taylor
Some Berkshire Ballads —
Archbishop Laud
Mollie Mog
The Lay of the Hunted Pig
Cupid’s Garden ——— read by Howard Smith
John Barleycorn — read by Isabel Taylor
Edward — [read by] Bruce Dilks.
[signed as a true record by] Muriel M. Stevens
8 - 5 - 43. [at the club meeting held at Gower Cottage: see Minute Book, p. 153.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage. 8th May ’43
Muriel Stevens in the Chair
1. Minutes of last meeting read & signed
[...]
3. Knox Taylor opened our study of Johnson & his Circle by giving us a most
comprehensive picture of the background of this period.
4. Howard Smith told us of Johnson’s life and publications.
5. Isabel Taylor read Johnson’s famous letter to Lord Chesterfield.
6. Roger Moore read ‘The Wedding Day’ by Boswell & an account of his first
meeting with Johnson.
7. F. E. Pollard described Johnson’s Circle. He spoke of Garrick, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Burke, Godlsmith, Boswell, Richardson, Fielding, Mrs. Thrale and her
daughter Hester & others and A. B Dilks read from Johnson’s “Vanity of Human
Wishes.”
8. Mention must be made of the excellent refreshments provided by our hostess
and the Secretary regrets that owing to lack of time, she has in these minutes
done Scant justice to a most thoughtfully prepared & extremely interesting
evening.
[signed as a true record by] Howard R Smith
22/6/43 [at the club meeting held at Frensham: see Minute Book, p. 155: ‘We
adjourned indoors & the minutes of the last meeting were read, corrected and
signed.’]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 4th September 1943
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
[...]
6. Edith Smith opened the evening of miscellaneous readings by reading part of a
short story “The Man with No Face” by Dorothy Sayers. She left the murder
mystery tantalizingly unsolved, but gave us a clever and amusing picture of the
occupants rightful and encroaching of a 1st-class railway carriage.
7. Mary Stansfield read from a collection of letters written by Freya Stark entitled
“Letters from Syria”. These were written some years ago in an atmosphere of
peace & tranquility. A particularly beautiful description of the writer’s first sight of
the Greek Islands recalled to F. E. Pollard his voyage there with Charles
Stansfield, about which he gave us some interesting and amusing reminiscences.
8. Arnold Joselin Read Boswells account of his first meeting with Johnson and then
“My Streatham Visit” by Frances Burney in which she describes meeting Johnson at
Thrale Hall and records some of the conversation at the dinner table.
9. [...] we listened to F. E. Pollard reading about “The Functional Alternative” from
a pamphlet published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs entitled “A
Working Peace System” by David Mitrany. The author suggests that in Post-War
Europe we should pursue a line of action similar to that adopted by President
Roosevelt in America in 1932/33. This started a lively discussion during which it
became apparent that federal union does not function in the Pollard family.
10. Reverting to more tranquil times Howard Smith read from André Maurois’ “Life
of Disraeli”. This led to the suggestion that Parliamentary speeches of today might
be improved if they contained more personal venom & we were assured that
Eleanor Rathbone is doing her best to liven things up.
11. Muriel Stevens read from The Autobiography of a Chinese Girl” by Hsieh Ping-
Ying. This proved to be a suitably soothing and uncontroversial ending to a most
varied and interesting evening.
[signed as a true record by] Howard R. Smith
6/10/1943 [at the club meeting held at Frensham: see Minute Book, p. 161]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 4th September 1943
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
[...]
6. Edith Smith opened the evening of miscellaneous readings by reading part of a
short story “The Man with No Face” by Dorothy Sayers. She left the murder
mystery tantalizingly unsolved, but gave us a clever and amusing picture of the
occupants rightful and encroaching of a 1st-class railway carriage.
7. Mary Stansfield read from a collection of letters written by Freya Stark entitled
“Letters from Syria”. These were written some years ago in an atmosphere of
peace & tranquility. A particularly beautiful description of the writer’s first sight of
the Greek Islands recalled to F. E. Pollard his voyage there with Charles
Stansfield, about which he gave us some interesting and amusing reminiscences.
8. Arnold Joselin Read Boswells account of his first meeting with Johnson and then
“My Streatham Visit” by Frances Burney in which she describes meeting Johnson at
Thrale Hall and records some of the conversation at the dinner table.
9. [...] we listened to F. E. Pollard reading about “The Functional Alternative” from
a pamphlet published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs entitled “A
Working Peace System” by David Mitrany. The author suggests that in Post-War
Europe we should pursue a line of action similar to that adopted by President
Roosevelt in America in 1932/33. This started a lively discussion during which it
became apparent that federal union does not function in the Pollard family.
10. Reverting to more tranquil times Howard Smith read from André Maurois’ “Life
of Disraeli”. This led to the suggestion that Parliamentary speeches of today might
be improved if they contained more personal venom & we were assured that
Eleanor Rathbone is doing her best to liven things up.
11. Muriel Stevens read from The Autobiography of a Chinese Girl” by Hsieh Ping-
Ying. This proved to be a suitably soothing and uncontroversial ending to a most
varied and interesting evening.
[signed as a true record by] Howard R. Smith
6/10/1943 [at the club meeting held at Frensham: see Minute Book, p. 161]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kenneth F. Nicholson
'Meeting held at Frensham. 6th Oct. 1943
Howard R. Smith in the chair.
1. Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved.
[...]
5. Kenneth Nicholson discoursed to us on ‘Style’. He confessed that the more he
had gone into the subject the further he had got out of his depth, but this fact was
not apparent, for what he said was most interesting and illuminating. He gave as
his four essentials for good style: Clarity, Rhythm, Sincerity and the Emergence of
Personality. Kenneth Nicholson illustrated these qualities by quotations from such
varied sources as: The Telephone Directory; an advertisement for Sanitas powder;
the Dean of Harvard; Charles Morgan; Walter Pater; C. E. Montague; G. K
Chesterton; H. G. Wells; T. E. Lawrence; a Leighton Park boy and a Press
reporter. In the discussion which followed, some members thought that good style
could be achieved without sincerity, and reference was made to the regrettable
absence of clarity in legal documents and official forms.
6. F. E. Pollard then read 7 examples of prose writing and we were asked to write
down the authors. It was only to be expected that Kenneth Nicholson, who had
been studying the subject, should come out top with 5 right answers. [...]
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
8.11.43. [at the club meeting held at 39 Eastern Avenue: see Minute Book, p. 165]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kenneth F. Nicholson Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue. 8th Nov. 1943
A. Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read. Frank Knight immediately proved
what an asset he is to the club, by pointing out that minute 3 reported the election
of a committee, but did not make it at all clear what functions this committee was
to fulfil. The matter was adjusted & the minutes signed.
[...]
3. The evening was devoted to a study of English Music. Margaret Dilks explained
that the choice of programme had been influenced partly by the gramophone
records that were available, and the hope that in this choice everyone would find
at least something which pleased and interested them. Those who liked to take it
as a mild protest against the Russian invasion of our concert programs were at
liberty to do so. As the meeting was held on the 60th anniversary of the birthday
of Sir Arnold Bax, the Master of the King’s Musick, it seemed a most appropriate
choice. First, Margaret Dilks outlined the development of music in England from
the 4th Century to the present day. She told of its earliest beginnings, its rise to
pre-eminence in the Tudor period when English composers and executive
musicians led the world, its decline during the 19th Century, and its renaissance in
recent times.
4. [...] Before the Butterworth records were played Kenneth Nicholson told us
something of the Shropshire Lad poems & A. E. Houseman
[signed as a true record by] Muriel M. Stevens
2.12.43. [at the club meeting held at Gower Cottage: see Minute Book, p. 168]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kenneth F. Nicholson Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park. Jan 27th 1942
J. Knox Taylor in the Chair.
1. In the absence of the Secretary the minutes of the last meeting were read by
Alice Joselin.
2. With reference to Minute 6 of the last meeting, i.e. the selection of books for
reading this year, it was decided that as two of the selected books could not be
procured, Margaret Dilks and Mary S. W. Pollard should be asked to select two
alternatives from the last list. The minutes were then approved and signed.
4. After partaking of coffee, the excellence of which & the enjoyment thereof,
being in no way impaired by the introduction of powdered milk, (despite our host’s
perturbation at this war-time inclusion!) we settled down with eager expectations
and interest to the main business of the evening.
5. The subject was a provocative one “Modern Poetry” & we very gladly welcomed
Kenneth Nicholson into our midst, as he had kindly consented to come & talk to us
about modern poetry & to lead us into the strange regions of this somewhat
unknown world.
6. Gerard Manley Hopkins & W. B. Yeats were apparently the leaders in breaking
away from the old traditions of poetry-making, & of setting up a new form, even
expressing a new spirit. We then listened to poems of T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen &
W. Auden, & saw how this new way progressed & was elaborated.
We were bewildered, astounded & intrigued by turns! Through the intracacies [sic]
of “sprung rhythm”, down the “arterial roads” of poetical imagery of the early
1920’s to the more apparently intelligible sombreness of recent poetry, we were
led gently but inexorably, by our persuasive speaker, to see & realise that
however strangely we might regard this literature of our age, we must
acknowledge the urgency & sincerity of what the modern poet had to say.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [a member of the XII Book Club – one of Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, or F. E. Pollard] Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park. Jan 27th 1942
J. Knox Taylor in the Chair.
[...]
5. The subject was a provocative one “Modern Poetry” & we very gladly welcomed
Kenneth Nicholson into our midst, as he had kindly consented to come & talk to us
about modern poetry & to lead us into the strange regions of this somewhat
unknown world.
6. Gerard Manley Hopkins & W. B. Yeats were apparently the leaders in breaking
away from the old traditions of poetry-making, & of setting up a new form, even
expressing a new spirit. We then listened to poems of T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen &
W. Auden, & saw how this new way progressed & was elaborated.
We were bewildered, astounded & intrigued by turns! Through the intracacies [sic]
of “sprung rhythm”, down the “arterial roads” of poetical imagery of the early
1920’s to the more apparently intelligible sombreness of recent poetry, we were
led gently but inexorably, by our persuasive speaker, to see & realise that
however strangely we might regard this literature of our age, we must
acknowledge the urgency & sincerity of what the modern poet had to say.
7. Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, and F. E. Pollard all
contributed readings, some from the poets already mentioned, others from the
poetry of Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, McNeice & Dylan Thomas. Some pleased,
others perplexed; we capitulated before such a phrase as “As a madman shakes a
dead geranium”, but again were revived with what appeared to us as more lucid
poems. One which pleased us with its clarity, evoked the remark from F. E.
Pollard “that the only thing wrong with it was what was the
matter with that except that it was immediately intelligible”!
Such was our introduction to “Modern Poetry,” whether or not we appreciated its
“difference,” we were deeply grateful to K. Nicholson for inspiring us with the
desire to read more.
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin
23/2/42. [at the club meeting held at 72 Shinfield Road: see XII Book Club Minute
Book, p. 113]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [a member of the XII Book Club – one of Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, or F. E. Pollard] Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park. Jan 27th 1942
J. Knox Taylor in the Chair.
[...]
5. The subject was a provocative one “Modern Poetry” & we very gladly welcomed
Kenneth Nicholson into our midst, as he had kindly consented to come & talk to us
about modern poetry & to lead us into the strange regions of this somewhat
unknown world.
6. Gerard Manley Hopkins & W. B. Yeats were apparently the leaders in breaking
away from the old traditions of poetry-making, & of setting up a new form, even
expressing a new spirit. We then listened to poems of T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen &
W. Auden, & saw how this new way progressed & was elaborated.
We were bewildered, astounded & intrigued by turns! Through the intracacies [sic]
of “sprung rhythm”, down the “arterial roads” of poetical imagery of the early
1920’s to the more apparently intelligible sombreness of recent poetry, we were
led gently but inexorably, by our persuasive speaker, to see & realise that
however strangely we might regard this literature of our age, we must
acknowledge the urgency & sincerity of what the modern poet had to say.
7. Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, and F. E. Pollard all
contributed readings, some from the poets already mentioned, others from the
poetry of Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, McNeice & Dylan Thomas. Some pleased,
others perplexed; we capitulated before such a phrase as “As a madman shakes a
dead geranium”, but again were revived with what appeared to us as more lucid
poems. One which pleased us with its clarity, evoked the remark from F. E.
Pollard “that the only thing wrong with it was what was the
matter with that except that it was immediately intelligible”!
Such was our introduction to “Modern Poetry,” whether or not we appreciated its
“difference,” we were deeply grateful to K. Nicholson for inspiring us with the
desire to read more.
[signed as a true record by] Arnold G. Joselin
23/2/42. [at the club meeting held at 72 Shinfield Road: see XII Book Club Minute
Book, p. 113]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: [a member of the XII Book Club – one of Isabel Taylor, Roger Moore, Margaret Dilks, A. G. Joselin, or F. E. Pollard] Print: Book
'Evening wrote to Billy[.] Mammy read to us a very amusing book called "The little savage".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Bell Print: Book
'Afternoon stopped at home and finished "Cuckoo Clock"[...].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'This morning we have read and talked — it's very wet so we haven't been out. I have been reading Mr Morley's "Walpole" which Sir Lewis [?Louis] Mallet says is supreme — it is most brilliant and interesting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'I am sending you a play of Sudermann's, "Heimat", which I have just read and which I must say I thought tremendous. I fancy it will suit Mr Hyde's taste and I wonder if Dr Jekyll could not make something out of it. It would be better for a little cutting and pulling together — 3 acts instead of 4 perhaps — but that is just what Dr Jekyll does so well. Do write and tell me what you think of it; the last act so carried me away that I can't help suspecting I must be exaggerating its value. Anyhow the fact remains that it has had the desired effect upon one person at least. I believe it has been acted in Berlin, but with what success I don't know.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Started at 11 from Victoria. [...]. Very prosperous journey — smooth, fine. I read "Francis Cludde" which is most exciting and interesting. Reached Paris at 7.30.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Read "Esther Waters" which I though excellent — so direct and simple — and "La Seconde Vie de Michel Teissier" which interested me. Prosperous journey — lunched in the train after the tunnel we read our diaries aloud; got into mists which hid the view.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Left at 12.30 and reached Munich at 9, but the journey didn't seem at all long. Read Morelli and "La Cousine Bette". Stopped at the Hotel Belle Vue, supper and so to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Read till Dejeuner; sat opposite the Espieux. Afterwards finished the "Cathédral[e]" and talked to M. de Rival. Played chess with the bearded gentleman, finished "Paris", talked to the Belgian missionary. Had a conversation about beliefs with the Commandant. Temp 92. Began the "Recherche de l'Absolu". The Captain took me to see the little Ourang Outang — horrible. There is a baby very ill on board. It nearly died today. After dinner piquet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Up pretty late. Breakfasted with M. de P. who told me travellers' tales. Long talk with him afterwards. He then gave me "Mireille" which I proceeded to read. '
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Wrote and read till lunch. Merry lunch, we 3 after which I read Whymper's book and account of the 1st ascension of the Ecrins. Prince Louis of Orleans passed with Faure and went up to the refuge. I left at 4.45 and got to the [Refuge] Carrelet at 5.50.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'After lunch I went to the Borghese Villa. Aren't the gardens a dream! I had my Morelli with me and spent a long peaceful time looking at the pictures with the help of his essay on them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Dined on soup and chicken at 5. Read Whymper's book. Cold and mist all round. Decide on an easy day tomorrow as I rather feel the effects of the first day's gymnastics. Most successful and pleasant day, the only drawback being the extreme cold of the ascent [of the Aiguille du Géant].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Lovely fine day — sat out wrapped up and read Freeman and did Italian with Hugo till he felt uncomfy and went down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Perfectly fine and calm again. Father read us the finished article [on Trade Unions] to our great admiration. Then we did Italian and I read Sicilian history and a little Arabic. We saw a little land in the morning — it was the Portuguese coast just south of Finisterre. Mr Waugh brought me a note for 100 piastres issued by Gordon in Khartoum in April 1884 which I interpreted. I caught a stuffy cold in the morning sitting out in the wind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Finished the "Birth Stories" and began "La Mort des D....." which seems excellent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Read Mrs Gascoyne's [sic] book on Burmah, Kipling and Murray and wrote letters. Very steamy day. Read Mrs Cotes' "Delightful Americans" after dinner and thought it only tolerably good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Read Mrs Gascoyne's [sic] book on Burmah, Kipling and Murray and wrote letters. Very steamy day. Read Mrs Cotes' "Delightful Americans" after dinner and thought it only tolerably good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Jolted back to Nyaungu and got in soon after tea. Had tea, read and finished La Mort des Dieux and wrote to Uncle George.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'And woke at 7 [she had been sleeping on deck] — no nonsense about swabbing down the decks here! Very hot and steaming and the smell downstairs appalling. Read the Java book and a "Voyage of Consolation". Got to Port Swettenham at 12.30 '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The coast of Sumatra is very low — we could see it as a belt of trees on the water. Felt very slack before dinner and went to sleep. It got hot again. Read some of Sir F. [Frank] Swettenham's "Unaddressed Letters" which are curious and rather good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'In parenthesis, I hope you'll like Mrs Sara Jeannette [Duncan]. I thought her charming and she was so kind to us [in Calcutta]. She longs to know you. Read "A Voyage of Consolation" and "A Social Departure". The latter is autobiographical.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Lovely hot day. Read Oppenheim and played Bridge after lunch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'After dinner it was warmer and I sat on deck and read "Les Cosaques". I finished Putnam Neale's [sic] "Indiscreet Letters from Peking" in the afternoon, a curious book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The ... grandiloquent "education programme" we were able to satisfy sufficiently. A number of the "boys" were barely literate and Miss Nettleton could deal with the three R's. Some of them were not at all too old to sit around her on the floor like children while she read them Treasure Island or The Wind in the Willows: this could be counted as an hour of "English".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Irene Nettleton Print: Book
'There travels with them an agreeable man called Pontremoli, who wrote an excellent book on the temple of Apollo Didymus. I've just read the book and I shall see the temple shortly so it has been interesting talking to him about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The sandstone all riven and broken, without water to smooth it. Great purposeless ruined gashes running up into the hills. We found our dulul here and camped on account of the trees. Read "[Richard] Feverel" and walked over the broken tells.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'I'm still in hospital but I've made a very rapid cure (I was pretty bad when I came) and I hope they will let me go back to Basrah in a day or two. I've been quite extraordinarily comfortable and the kindness of everyone is past belief. It really was very pleasant to find oneself here with all the trouble of looking after one's own self lifted off one's shoulders. I've done little or nothing but eat and sleep and read novels, of which I found plenty here. Oh yes and I've read all Gilbert Murray's translation of Greek plays — glorious they are — which I also found,[...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'As for Mother I'm as usual lost in amazement at the amount she gets through without turning a hair. The "Cat and the Fiddle book" I thought a masterpiece — she would have been pleased to see me giggling over it. Fortunately just as I had decided that I was ill there came an excellent batch of books including "Vera" and "Mr Waddington of Wyck" — how clever both of them in their way!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'As for Mother I'm as usual lost in amazement at the amount she gets through without turning a hair. The "Cat and the Fiddle book" I thought a masterpiece — she would have been pleased to see me giggling over it. Fortunately just as I had decided that I was ill there came an excellent batch of books including "Vera" and "Mr Waddington of Wyck" — how clever both of them in their way!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'As for Mother I'm as usual lost in amazement at the amount she gets through without turning a hair. The "Cat and the Fiddle book" I thought a masterpiece — she would have been pleased to see me giggling over it. Fortunately just as I had decided that I was ill there came an excellent batch of books including "Vera" and "Mr Waddington of Wyck" — how clever both of them in their way!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'As for Mother I'm as usual lost in amazement at the amount she gets through without turning a hair. The "Cat and the Fiddle book" I thought a masterpiece — she would have been pleased to see me giggling over it. Fortunately just as I had decided that I was ill there came an excellent batch of books including "Vera" and "Mr Waddington of Wyck" — how clever both of them in their way!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'The books you sent me lasted beautifully. I read the two Lucases (which I loved) and the Hutchinson (mediocre) in the train and am now deep in "Ariel" which is delightful. After that I can get books on board.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
' I wish I had seen S.T. [Sybil Thorndike] in "Gruach" — I read it and thought it so fine. And I like all your talk about plays like Mr Pepys.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: playscript
'I have been reading a bunch of modern plays published by Benn. Some of them seem to me to be very good and to strike a very real and human note. What do you think of the "Fanatics"? It took me by the throat as an expression of what, in general terms, I also think. I'm not sure that it is a play, in the sense that it would be good on the stage. I have sent for two new plays by O'Neill — if there's anything else you think remarkable, you might tell me. One is apt to miss even outstanding things when one is guided only by reviews.
I read when I come home after lunch. I've had 6 steady hours of work and I'm tired, and besides it's too hot to do much. So I read myself to sleep, if I can, for an hour and then go on reading till it's time to swim.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'But this is specially to thank you for the two books — the "Adding Machine" and "Men and Masses". Modern literature is very queer isn't it, but it's also extremely interesting. One has to get oneself accustomed to entirely new forms — that which they embody is as old as the world because it is variant of the human story. I thought both those books — I can't call them plays — very striking and I'm so grateful because that is just the kind of thing I miss, not knowing about them. Yes, I've read "St Joan", this week. I thought it was wonderful; I wish I had seen it on the stage. It's so clever of him to have made her a bluff — not to say rough — country girl. Of course so she was, with the mysticism threaded separately through her.
I'll tell you a novel I thought extremely clever — "God's Step Children"; have you read it? by Millin. I've been chiefly absorbed however by a new book on Mohammadan architecture by a man I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of, namens Briggs. It's admirable, but unfortunately deals only with Egypt and Syria which is all he knows. So I've written to him and invited him to come here and study our monuments — without which he can't really (but I didn't tell him so) write a history of that kind at all. He makes a lot of mistakes when he alludes to them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Sister Edith remains and kindly helped me wind pink wool at night Read "what I found out" so long that I could not read any more!! so May hunted up wool for me to knit.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Went to Library[.] Finished "What I found out".'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'May brought back from the Library Home of the Blizzard.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Finished Blizzard Land.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Read fairy tales by George MacDonald.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] still has a high temp. — 104.1 in aft. Began to give Citrated milk. She enjoyed me reading to her "The man at the gate" and The Impregnable City.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Ellen Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] still has a high temp. — 104.1 in aft. Began to give Citrated milk. She enjoyed me reading to her "The man at the gate" and The Impregnable City.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Ellen Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] enjoys being read to in the aft. I have read to her "The Impregnable City" and "The Diamond Ship".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] enjoys being read to in the aft. I have read to her "The Impregnable City" and "The Diamond Ship".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] enjoys being read to in the aft. I have read to her "The Impregnable City" and "The Diamond Ship".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Ellen Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'M. [Marjorie Cook, A. R. Cook's daughter] enjoys being read to in the aft. I have read to her "The Impregnable City" and "The Diamond Ship".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Ellen Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'I am enjoying Moule's "Veni Creator".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Telegraph cable
'Read Exper: of Sister of Mercy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Each night I hurried into my best second-hand suit of clothes, hurried down my tea and then hurried off to evening class to learn English grammar and literature. And what a revelation it was ... The study of style and the composition of poetry were especially fascinating, and I used to go to bed with Addison or Macaulay flashing in my mind and with my emotions stirred by the Ode to the Nightingale.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'By the time I was seventeen, my passion for reading had become so intense that a few hours [study in the public library] in the evenings seemed totally insufficient ... I started to spend odd shillings in second-hand bookshops and to keep my pockets stuffed with a volume or two for the purpose of reading when I should have been working. Chief among these first purchases were the volumes of the Everyman's Library ... A handy size for the pocket, they introduced me to Emerson's essays, Marcus Aurelius, Coleridge's Biographica Literaria, Carlyle, and to other writers.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'[Books read] May [1914]. Alice Ottley Memoir.
Pennell 10/6 Memoirs. at last!
Neve Kashmir
A woman in the antipodes & far east
by Mary Hall F.R.G.S.
Anatomy of Xtianity of Truth
Car of destiny
Garden of Resurrection.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'[Books read] May [1914]. Alice Ottley Memoir.
Pennell 10/6 Memoirs. at last!
Neve Kashmir
A woman in the antipodes & far east
by Mary Hall F.R.G.S.
Anatomy of Xtianity of Truth
Car of destiny
Garden of Resurrection.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'[Books read] August [1914:] By waters of Germany.
Queenie's whim.
Timothy's quest.
Basil Lyndhurst.
Highway of Fate.
Lamp Lighter
Book on Birds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'[Books read] August [1914:] By waters of Germany.
Queenie's whim.
Timothy's Guest.
Basil Lyndhurst.
Highway of Fate.
Lamp Lighter
Book on Birds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'Off at 5.15 am. Sea smooth. Read 60 pp. of Surgical Diagnosis.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Beira all day — am getting on with Surgical Diagnosis, & Tropical Diseases by Stitt.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Letter, telegram
'Finished Surgical Diagnosis by Martin 750 pp.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Letter, telegram
'Finished Abdominal Injuries.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Letter, telegram
'Enjoyed Bees in Amber.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: BookManuscript: Letter, telegram
'"Been across before?" I asked him, condescendingly.
"Once or twice," he answered with a grin. "Have you?"
"A few times," I admitted largely; and I proceeded to entertain him with an account of various remarkable journeys I had made across the Irish Sea, the descriptive matter of these accounts being looted from Lever and other sources. When he apparently swallowed it all with nothing more than a faint grin, I grew more adventurous. I recounted a voyage I had made down the Portuguese coast (Peter Simple) and the Mediterranean (Midshipman Easy) ... I filled in the background of my Australian adventures with local colour from Robbery Under Arms and penetrated Darkest Africa with Stanley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Desmond Malone Print: Book
'"Been across before?" I asked him, condescendingly.
"Once or twice," he answered with a grin. "Have you?"
"A few times," I admitted largely; and I proceeded to entertain him with an account of various remarkable journeys I had made across the Irish Sea, the descriptive matter of these accounts being looted from Lever and other sources. When he apparently swallowed it all with nothing more than a faint grin, I grew more adventurous. I recounted a voyage I had made down the Portuguese coast (Peter Simple) and the Mediterranean (Midshipman Easy) ... I filled in the background of my Australian adventures with local colour from Robbery Under Arms and penetrated Darkest Africa with Stanley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Desmond Malone Print: Book
'Books specially studied during furlough. 1917–1918.
The World & the Gospel. J. H. Oldham. S.V.M.U.
The Valley of Decision. Burroughs. Longmans.
Ordeal by Battle. F. S. Oliver. Macmillan.
Ecclesiastes. Devine. Macmillan
The Jesus of History. Glover.
In Christ. A. J. Gordon. Hodder & Stoughton.
The Manhood of the Master. Fosdick S.C.M.
The Meaning of Prayer. Fosdick. S.C.M.
The Creed of a Churchman. Various Longmans
The Problem of Pain. MacFadyen.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Books specially studied during furlough. 1917–1918.
The World & the Gospel. J. H. Oldham. S.V.M.U.
The Valley of Decision. Burroughs. Longmans.
Ordeal by Battle. F. S. Oliver. Macmillan.
Ecclesiastes. Devine. Macmillan
The Jesus of History. Glover.
In Christ. A. J. Gordon. Hodder & Stoughton.
The Manhood of the Master. Fosdick S.C.M.
The Meaning of Prayer. Fosdick. S.C.M.
The Creed of a Churchman. Various Longmans
The Problem of Pain. MacFadyen.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
Surgical Diagnosis – Martin
Tropical Diseases – Stitt
Abdominal Injuries – Morison & R.
Household Pests & remedies.
Injuries to Joints – Jones
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Modern Treatment of Fractures – Hey Groves
Clinical Medicine – Savile.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
Surgical Diagnosis – Martin
Tropical Diseases – Stitt
Abdominal Injuries – Morison & R.
Household Pests & remedies.
Injuries to Joints – Jones
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Modern Treatment of Fractures – Hey Groves
Clinical Medicine – Savile.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
A. Medical.
[...]
Minor Horrors of present war.
Staying the Plague – Harman
Military Orthopedics – Jones
Medical Hints – Squire
Wounds in War – Power
Injuries to Head – Rawlings
Cerebro-Sp. Fever – Horder
Diagnosis of Nervous D – Purves Stewart
Refraction of eye – Thorington.
Tropical Diseases – Manson.
Diseases of Male Urethra – Kidd
Diagnosis & Treatment of Diseases of Heart – MacKenzie
Surgical After-Treatment – Todd.
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Shell-Shock – Elliott Smith
War Shock – Eder
Neurasthenia – Hartenberg
Practitioner. July '18 – June '19
Tuberculosis – Jex Blake
Minor Maladies – 1918
Psycho-neuroses of War – L'hermitte
Internal Secretions. Vol. 1.
Internal Secretions. Vol 2.
Brookbank's Treatment & Diagnosis of Heart Diseases
Gerrish's Anatomy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
[...]
B. General.
Hist.y of our own Times. '85–11. Gooch
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Felix Holt – [George Eliot]
A Mill on the Floss – [George Eliot]
Men, Women & Guns – Sapper
A Student in Arms – Hankey.
Great Texts of the Bible – Psalms
Battles of the 19th Cent.y – Ency. Brit
The Real Kaiser –
In a German Prince's house
Life of Stanley – Autobiography
Political Hist.y of the World – Innes.
The Practice of Xt.s Presence – Fullerton
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Bible Prophecies of the present war.
Where are we?
The lost tribes.
The Marne & after
Nelson's Hist.y of the War. XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.
A strange story. 1 & 2.
The eyes of His glory – Harrington Lees
The Practice of Christ's Presence
I.R.M. Jan — Dec 1917. Jan — July 1918.
Advent Testimony.
The King's Highway
The Vision Splendid
All's Well.
Bunyan's Characters. White. Vols. 1 & 3
Lichnowsky.
Prophetic Outlook — Cachemaile
Rhymes of a Red Cross man
Kipling – 20 poems
In Christ – Gordon
Scenes of Clerical Life. George Eliot
Sense & Sensibility – J. Austen.
Nicholas Nickleby – Dickens.
Dombey & Son "
Silvia's Lovers. Mrs Gaskell.
Emma. Jane Austen
Agnes Grey. Ann Bronte
Thirsting for the Springs. Jowett
Germany at Bay. Major MacFall
Sir Nigel Loring. Conan Doyle'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
[...]
B. General.
Hist.y of our own Times. '85–11. Gooch
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Felix Holt – [George Eliot]
A Mill on the Floss – [George Eliot]
Men, Women & Guns – Sapper
A Student in Arms – Hankey.
Great Texts of the Bible – Psalms
Battles of the 19th Cent.y – Ency. Brit
The Real Kaiser –
In a German Prince's house
Life of Stanley – Autobiography
Political Hist.y of the World – Innes.
The Practice of Xt.s Presence – Fullerton
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Bible Prophecies of the present war.
Where are we?
The lost tribes.
The Marne & after
Nelson's Hist.y of the War. XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.
A strange story. 1 & 2.
The eyes of His glory – Harrington Lees
The Practice of Christ's Presence
I.R.M. Jan — Dec 1917. Jan — July 1918.
Advent Testimony.
The King's Highway
The Vision Splendid
All's Well.
Bunyan's Characters. White. Vols. 1 & 3
Lichnowsky.
Prophetic Outlook — Cachemaile
Rhymes of a Red Cross man
Kipling – 20 poems
In Christ – Gordon
Scenes of Clerical Life. George Eliot
Sense & Sensibility – J. Austen.
Nicholas Nickleby – Dickens.
Dombey & Son "
Silvia's Lovers. Mrs Gaskell.
Emma. Jane Austen
Agnes Grey. Ann Bronte
Thirsting for the Springs. Jowett
Germany at Bay. Major MacFall
Sir Nigel Loring. Conan Doyle'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Read on furlough. 1917–1918.
[...]
B. General.
Hist.y of our own Times. '85–11. Gooch
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Felix Holt – [George Eliot]
A Mill on the Floss – [George Eliot]
Men, Women & Guns – Sapper
A Student in Arms – Hankey.
Great Texts of the Bible – Psalms
Battles of the 19th Cent.y – Ency. Brit
The Real Kaiser –
In a German Prince's house
Life of Stanley – Autobiography
Political Hist.y of the World – Innes.
The Practice of Xt.s Presence – Fullerton
Malarial Work in Macedonia. – Willoughby & Cassidy
Bible Prophecies of the present war.
Where are we?
The lost tribes.
The Marne & after
Nelson's Hist.y of the War. XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.
A strange story. 1 & 2.
The eyes of His glory – Harrington Lees
The Practice of Christ's Presence
I.R.M. Jan — Dec 1917. Jan — July 1918.
Advent Testimony.
The King's Highway
The Vision Splendid
All's Well.
Bunyan's Characters. White. Vols. 1 & 3
Lichnowsky.
Prophetic Outlook — Cachemaile
Rhymes of a Red Cross man
Kipling – 20 poems
In Christ – Gordon
Scenes of Clerical Life. George Eliot
Sense & Sensibility – J. Austen.
Nicholas Nickleby – Dickens.
Dombey & Son "
Silvia's Lovers. Mrs Gaskell.
Emma. Jane Austen
Agnes Grey. Ann Bronte
Thirsting for the Springs. Jowett
Germany at Bay. Major MacFall
Sir Nigel Loring. Conan Doyle'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Ruskin Cook Print: Book
'Alan taught himself to read in about thee weeks from a book called Reading without Tears.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alan Mathison Turing Print: Book
'Thanks so much for your letter & the little Book. (The Vision Splendid by John Oxenham) That was a ripping little poem wasn't it? I guess it's just about right!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Guy Mainwaring Knocker Print: Book
'Read in afternoon and then clipped all the border for Dad. Pretty tiring work ... Bed at 12. Finished book "The Pendulum" — rather poor. Pretty tired.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Guy Mainwaring Knocker Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage 4th. May 1942.
M. Stevens in the chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read, pronounced rather more accurate
than usual, and signed.
[...]
4. First we had the telegram which was from the Alexanders, regretting that a
chicken pox epidemic among the children prevented their parents from
contributing to our evenings entertainment.
5. Next an essay entitled “An Autumn Ramble” was read by A. G. Joselin and the
author was later identified as S. A. Reynolds, who told us that it had been written
some 50 years ago.
[...]
7. Roger Moore read an essay entitled “Langdale, Easter 1942” and casting among
our members for a rock-climber we soon realized that the author was Knox
Taylor. [...]
8. Rosamund Wallis read “Samuel Butler at the Book Club” which was recognised
at once as being written by the secretary. She had rather let herself go in an
account of an imaginary meeting which explained the unusual brevity and accuracy
of this months minutes.
9. “Three Weeks in Kerry” was the title of a most interesting essay read by F. E.
Pollard. We had some difficulty in identifying this as being written by his wife –
perhaps because although we were told it had been written many years ago in the
author’s ‘comparative youth’ our imaginations failed to picture Mrs. Pollard on a
perilous journey in an Irish car, holding up an umbrella with one hand and and
peeling a hard-boiled egg with the other. [...]
10. A. B. Dilks read a dissertation in which the author wrote for some four or five
pages on the difficulty of deciding what to write about. Roger Fry, food, gardens
and cats were among the subjects he considered but for one reason or another,
laid aside. As members of the Book Club are so noted for beating around the bush
we had considerable difficulty in spotting this particular beater — but it proved to
be Roger Moore.
[...]
[Signature of] A. B. Dilks 6th June 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue. 17th Sept. 1942
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. A card of greetings was read from Janet Rawlings, Beth and Victor
Alexander.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. Howard Smith introduced the subject of Coleridge by telling us something of his
life and character. It was a sad story of real genius & ability frustrated &
unfulfilled by an entire lack of the powers of application and concentration, of a
brilliant conversationalist, a nature generous & affectionate, and a man extremely
fortunate in his friends.
F. E Pollard spoke briefly of Coleridge’s poetical importance & of some of the
sources of his ideas and images – sources not always acknowledge[d]. And
readings from his poetry were then given as follows:-
Parts of The Ancient Mariner read by AB. Dilks
Part I of Christabel [read by] J. K. Taylor
Kubla Khan [read by] Margaret Dilks
The Devils Thoughts [read by] Isabel Taylor
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny [read by] S. A. Reynolds
[signed at the meeting held 17 September 1942 by] L Dorothea Taylor'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-long friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-lon friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-lon friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-lon friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-lon friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elsie Harrod Print: Book
'Meeting held at 219, Kings Road. 15th October 1942.
Dorothea Taylor in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
2. The secretary read a card from Mr Dyson regretting that he is completely
unqualified to address us on Russian Literature
[...]
3. The question of new members was again raised and the secretary reported that
she had written to Mr. & Mrs. Fawcett extending our renewed invitation to them to
join the Club. & their reply, regretting that they are unable to accept, was read.
[...]
[...]
5. After some excellent refreshments, we devoted the rest of the evening to the
study of Charles Lamb. Roger Moore first gave us the story of his life – how he
was educated at Christ’s Hospital where he met and formed a life-lon friendship
with S. T. Coleridge, then of his appointment in the East India House. We heard of
the curse of madness which hung over the Lamb family & how in 1796 his Mother
was killed by his sister Mary in a fit of insanity. Lamb was magnificent in this
tragedy & devoted the rest of his life to the care of his sister who remained
subject to periodic seizures. Lamb wrote essays, poetry, letters & with his sister
he wrote Tales from Shakespeare. He was also one of the first literary & dramatic
critics.
6. F. E. Pollard read some of Lambs letters, illustrating his great love of London –
professed abhorrence of the Lake District – also his love of good food and in
particular of Cambridge Brawn.
7. S. A Reynolds read an extract from one of Lamb’s last essays, also two of his
sonnets one of which he contrasted with an amended version by Coleridge.
8. Elsie Harrod read Lamb’s essay on his visit to MACKERY END in Hertfordshire of
which he had childish memories & family associations.
9. Arnold Joselin read part of the Essay on Christ’s Hospital & as an Old Blue he
was able to enlarge on & explain some details & also to reassure us that certain
ancient practices are now discontinued. [...]
[signature of] Arnold G. Joselin
14 Nov. 1942'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Joselin Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 10.3.41
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
3. Violet Clough read an exceedingly interesting paper on “Children’s Literature”
showing the was it has developed from the “Moral Tales” of Maria Edgeworth
published at the beginning of the 19th. Century, to the delightful tales by Beatrix
Potter & A. A. Milne which are read today. The one retrogressive step she thought
was in the binding of the books, which today seem to come to pieces almost at
once. All the mothers present agreed with this, so it is no reflection on the Clough
children in particular although it may be on the modern child in general.
4. Readings from children’s literature were then given as follows:
Labour Lost from the Rollo Books. Selected by S. A. Reynolds & read by A. B.
Dilks.
“The Fairchild Family” by Mrs. Sherwood read by Mrs. Pollard – this was
particularly gruesome.
“Little Women” by Louisa Alcott read by Mary Stansfield.
Divers examples of children[’]s poetry read by Rosamund Wallis, which included
an impromptu recitation by Howard Smith of one of Hillair[e] Belloc’s Cautionary
Tales.
“Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carrol[l] read by F. E. Pollard.
“Samuel Whiskers” by Beatrix Potter read by Muriel Stevens.
“The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo” a Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling, read by
Howard Smith.
“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame read by Margaret Dilks.
“The House at Pooh Corner” by A. A. Milne, read by A. B. Dilks.
5. Bruce Dilks sang two of Fraser-Simsons settings of A. A. Milne’s Poems.
“Christopher Robin Alone in the Dark” and “Happiness”.
[Signed as a true record of the meeting by] S. A. Reynolds
April 7th / 41'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 10.3.41
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
3. Violet Clough read an exceedingly interesting paper on “Children’s Literature”
showing the was it has developed from the “Moral Tales” of Maria Edgeworth
published at the beginning of the 19th. Century, to the delightful tales by Beatrix
Potter & A. A. Milne which are read today. The one retrogressive step she thought
was in the binding of the books, which today seem to come to pieces almost at
once. All the mothers present agreed with this, so it is no reflection on the Clough
children in particular although it may be on the modern child in general.
4. Readings from children’s literature were then given as follows:
Labour Lost from the Rollo Books. Selected by S. A. Reynolds & read by A. B.
Dilks.
“The Fairchild Family” by Mrs. Sherwood read by Mrs. Pollard – this was
particularly gruesome.
“Little Women” by Louisa Alcott read by Mary Stansfield.
Divers examples of children[’]s poetry read by Rosamund Wallis, which included
an impromptu recitation by Howard Smith of one of Hillair[e] Belloc’s Cautionary
Tales.
“Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carrol[l] read by F. E. Pollard.
“Samuel Whiskers” by Beatrix Potter read by Muriel Stevens.
“The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo” a Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling, read by
Howard Smith.
“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame read by Margaret Dilks.
“The House at Pooh Corner” by A. A. Milne, read by A. B. Dilks.
5. Bruce Dilks sang two of Fraser-Simsons settings of A. A. Milne’s Poems.
“Christopher Robin Alone in the Dark” and “Happiness”.
[Signed as a true record of the meeting by] S. A. Reynolds
April 7th / 41'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue 10.3.41
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
[...]
3. Violet Clough read an exceedingly interesting paper on “Children’s Literature”
showing the was it has developed from the “Moral Tales” of Maria Edgeworth
published at the beginning of the 19th. Century, to the delightful tales by Beatrix
Potter & A. A. Milne which are read today. The one retrogressive step she thought
was in the binding of the books, which today seem to come to pieces almost at
once. All the mothers present agreed with this, so it is no reflection on the Clough
children in particular although it may be on the modern child in general.
4. Readings from children’s literature were then given as follows:
Labour Lost from the Rollo Books. Selected by S. A. Reynolds & read by A. B.
Dilks.
“The Fairchild Family” by Mrs. Sherwood read by Mrs. Pollard – this was
particularly gruesome.
“Little Women” by Louisa Alcott read by Mary Stansfield.
Divers examples of children[’]s poetry read by Rosamund Wallis, which included
an impromptu recitation by Howard Smith of one of Hillair[e] Belloc’s Cautionary
Tales.
“Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carrol[l] read by F. E. Pollard.
“Samuel Whiskers” by Beatrix Potter read by Muriel Stevens.
“The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo” a Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling, read by
Howard Smith.
“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame read by Margaret Dilks.
“The House at Pooh Corner” by A. A. Milne, read by A. B. Dilks.
5. Bruce Dilks sang two of Fraser-Simsons settings of A. A. Milne’s Poems.
“Christopher Robin Alone in the Dark” and “Happiness”.
[Signed as a true record of the meeting by] S. A. Reynolds
April 7th / 41'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Clough Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House 31st May 1941
R. D. L. Moore in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
[...]
3. The Chairman read a letter of greetings and regret for her absence from Janet
Rawlings in which she suggested “Modern Poetry” as a possible subject for one of
our meetings.
[...]
5. The Subject of the meeting was “Autobiography” & it proved a very varied and
interesting one. Readings were given as follows:
1) My Life of Music by Sir Henry J. Wood
read by A. B. Dilks
2) My days of strength by Dr. Anne Fearn
read by S. A. Reynolds
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill
read by F. E. Pollard
Vanished Pomps of Yesterday by Lord Frederick Hamilton
read by Rosamund Wallis
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
read by Arnold Joselin.
A Great Experiment by Lord Robert Cecil
read by J. Knox Taylor.
[signed as a true record] AB Dilks'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
'Meeting held at School House 31st May 1941
R. D. L. Moore in the chair
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
[...]
3. The Chairman read a letter of greetings and regret for her absence from Janet
Rawlings in which she suggested “Modern Poetry” as a possible subject for one of
our meetings.
[...]
5. The Subject of the meeting was “Autobiography” & it proved a very varied and
interesting one. Readings were given as follows:
1) My Life of Music by Sir Henry J. Wood
read by A. B. Dilks
2) My days of strength by Dr. Anne Fearn
read by S. A. Reynolds
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill
read by F. E. Pollard
Vanished Pomps of Yesterday by Lord Frederick Hamilton
read by Rosamund Wallis
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
read by Arnold Joselin.
A Great Experiment by Lord Robert Cecil
read by J. Knox Taylor.
[signed as a true record] AB Dilks'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue, 16th December 1941
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
Before beginning our meeting the Chairman referred to the loss the Club has
sustained through the death of Henry Marriage Wallis. [...]
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
2. The Treasurer reported on the Club’s financial position showing a balance in
hand of 16s. 8d. After a searching enquirey [sic] into the payment of
subscriptions, Janet Rawlings was revealed as the sole defaulter, and with the
extraction from her of a promise to make good, the accounts were passed as
correct.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment, Howard Smith read us a most interesting
account of how a section of the Friends Ambulance Unit came to be left behind in
Greece and what happened to them there. Also some letters from Ralph Smith
written from Salonika, and also from a prison camp in Germany to which he was
later transferred.
[signed as a correct record:] J. Knox Taylor
27/1/42'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue, 16th December 1941
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
Before beginning our meeting the Chairman referred to the loss the Club has
sustained through the death of Henry Marriage Wallis. [...]
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
2. The Treasurer reported on the Club’s financial position showing a balance in
hand of 16s. 8d. After a searching enquirey [sic] into the payment of
subscriptions, Janet Rawlings was revealed as the sole defaulter, and with the
extraction from her of a promise to make good, the accounts were passed as
correct.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment, Howard Smith read us a most interesting
account of how a section of the Friends Ambulance Unit came to be left behind in
Greece and what happened to them there. Also some letters from Ralph Smith
written from Salonika, and also from a prison camp in Germany to which he was
later transferred.
[signed as a correct record:] J. Knox Taylor
27/1/42'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue, 16th December 1941
F. E. Pollard in the Chair.
Before beginning our meeting the Chairman referred to the loss the Club has
sustained through the death of Henry Marriage Wallis. [...]
1. The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed.
2. The Treasurer reported on the Club’s financial position showing a balance in
hand of 16s. 8d. After a searching enquirey [sic] into the payment of
subscriptions, Janet Rawlings was revealed as the sole defaulter, and with the
extraction from her of a promise to make good, the accounts were passed as
correct.
[...]
5. After an interval for refreshment, Howard Smith read us a most interesting
account of how a section of the Friends Ambulance Unit came to be left behind in
Greece and what happened to them there. Also some letters from Ralph Smith
written from Salonika, and also from a prison camp in Germany to which he was
later transferred.
[signed as a correct record:] J. Knox Taylor
27/1/42'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at Hilliers, Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40Meeting held at Hilliers,
Northcourt Avenue. 26. ii. 40.
Rosamund Walis in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read + approved
2. Minute 7 of 19th Dec. – relating to the accounts – was continued
[...]
5. The subject of letters was introduced by Roger Moore, and led to a desultory but
amusing discussion ranging from the Pastons to modern family letters and
scurrilous blackmailing letters.
[...]
7. Margaret Dilkes read from Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son.
8. Ethel Stevens read letters which she had cut out of the papers from time to
time, notably one from a child of thirteen to John Ruskin.
9. H. R. Smith read some four or five short letters from E. V. Lucas, “The Second
Post.”
10. Mary Pollard read Pliny’s account of the Eruption of Vesuvius.
11. Roger Moore read some of Keats’s letters which were much enjoyed, and a
Keats evening was suggested for some future meeting.
[signed as a true record:] S A Reynolds
18/3/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Moore Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 17. IV 40.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. As an introduction to our subject of Modern English Humourists, R. H. Robson
read a passage analysing the nature of Humour. Discussion followed on the
distinction, if any, between wit & humour, & various alleged examples were
forthcoming.
6. A. B. Dilks read from Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody; many entries appealed to
members as characteristic of themselves or their friends.
7. In the regretted absence of C. E. Stansfield, F. E. Pollard read T. Thompson’s
Blitzkrieg, from the Manchester Guardian, in what purported to be the Lancashire
dialect.
8 Howard R. Smith read from A. A. Milne: the reader shared fully in the mirth of
the hearers.
9. M. Dilks gave us a passage from Macdonnell’s ‘England, their England’, which
must have been salutary for any suffering from insular complacency.
10. Rosamund Wallis’ contribution was from P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Carry on, Jeeves’;
certain methods of being off with the old love & on with the new were
characteristically indicated by the writer, effectively rendered by the reader, &
clearly appreciated by the company.
11. R. H. Robson’s Saki story supplied further satire on English standards – in this
case of music, & the services likely to secure a title.
12. The chapter from Barrie’s ‘Window in Thrums’, read by F. E. Pollard, told how
Gavin Birse did his best to be off with the old love, but failed.
13. The idea of a Barrie evening was mooted.
[signed as a true record:] M. Stevens
18-7-40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 17. IV 40.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. As an introduction to our subject of Modern English Humourists, R. H. Robson
read a passage analysing the nature of Humour. Discussion followed on the
distinction, if any, between wit & humour, & various alleged examples were
forthcoming.
6. A. B. Dilks read from Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody; many entries appealed to
members as characteristic of themselves or their friends.
7. In the regretted absence of C. E. Stansfield, F. E. Pollard read T. Thompson’s
Blitzkrieg, from the Manchester Guardian, in what purported to be the Lancashire
dialect.
8 Howard R. Smith read from A. A. Milne: the reader shared fully in the mirth of
the hearers.
9. M. Dilks gave us a passage from Macdonnell’s ‘England, their England’, which
must have been salutary for any suffering from insular complacency.
10. Rosamund Wallis’ contribution was from P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Carry on, Jeeves’;
certain methods of being off with the old love & on with the new were
characteristically indicated by the writer, effectively rendered by the reader, &
clearly appreciated by the company.
11. R. H. Robson’s Saki story supplied further satire on English standards – in this
case of music, & the services likely to secure a title.
12. The chapter from Barrie’s ‘Window in Thrums’, read by F. E. Pollard, told how
Gavin Birse did his best to be off with the old love, but failed.
13. The idea of a Barrie evening was mooted.
[signed as a true record:] M. Stevens
18-7-40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Newspaper
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 17. IV 40.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. As an introduction to our subject of Modern English Humourists, R. H. Robson
read a passage analysing the nature of Humour. Discussion followed on the
distinction, if any, between wit & humour, & various alleged examples were
forthcoming.
6. A. B. Dilks read from Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody; many entries appealed to
members as characteristic of themselves or their friends.
7. In the regretted absence of C. E. Stansfield, F. E. Pollard read T. Thompson’s
Blitzkrieg, from the Manchester Guardian, in what purported to be the Lancashire
dialect.
8 Howard R. Smith read from A. A. Milne: the reader shared fully in the mirth of
the hearers.
9. M. Dilks gave us a passage from Macdonnell’s ‘England, their England’, which
must have been salutary for any suffering from insular complacency.
10. Rosamund Wallis’ contribution was from P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Carry on, Jeeves’;
certain methods of being off with the old love & on with the new were
characteristically indicated by the writer, effectively rendered by the reader, &
clearly appreciated by the company.
11. R. H. Robson’s Saki story supplied further satire on English standards – in this
case of music, & the services likely to secure a title.
12. The chapter from Barrie’s ‘Window in Thrums’, read by F. E. Pollard, told how
Gavin Birse did his best to be off with the old love, but failed.
13. The idea of a Barrie evening was mooted.
[signed as a true record:] M. Stevens
18-7-40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue: 17. IV 40.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. As an introduction to our subject of Modern English Humourists, R. H. Robson
read a passage analysing the nature of Humour. Discussion followed on the
distinction, if any, between wit & humour, & various alleged examples were
forthcoming.
6. A. B. Dilks read from Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody; many entries appealed to
members as characteristic of themselves or their friends.
7. In the regretted absence of C. E. Stansfield, F. E. Pollard read T. Thompson’s
Blitzkrieg, from the Manchester Guardian, in what purported to be the Lancashire
dialect.
8 Howard R. Smith read from A. A. Milne: the reader shared fully in the mirth of
the hearers.
9. M. Dilks gave us a passage from Macdonnell’s ‘England, their England’, which
must have been salutary for any suffering from insular complacency.
10. Rosamund Wallis’ contribution was from P. G. Wodehouse’s ‘Carry on, Jeeves’;
certain methods of being off with the old love & on with the new were
characteristically indicated by the writer, effectively rendered by the reader, &
clearly appreciated by the company.
11. R. H. Robson’s Saki story supplied further satire on English standards – in this
case of music, & the services likely to secure a title.
12. The chapter from Barrie’s ‘Window in Thrums’, read by F. E. Pollard, told how
Gavin Birse did his best to be off with the old love, but failed.
13. The idea of a Barrie evening was mooted.
[signed as a true record:] M. Stevens
18-7-40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, Elm Road.
18–7–40
M Stevens in the chair.
1. Minutes of last were read and signed.
[...]
3. The Treasurer (V. W. Alexander) gave a statement of accounts up to the end of
1939, which showed the astonishingly large balance of £4/10/2. The statement was
accepted.
4. The Secretary (also V. W. Alexander) reported having received a letter of
resignation from Howard and Elsie Sikes who are no longer able to attend our
meetings. We are sorry to lose them.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a letter of resignation from Victor W. and Elizabeth
Alexander, who are leaving Reading. A telegram had been received from Elizabeth
Alexander during the day, wishing the Club “goodbye & good luck, with thanks for
many merry meetings.” Howard Smith expressed our gratitude for the very
valuable services of V. W. Alexander & his wife as Secretary and Treasurer, &
afterwards drafted a letter of thanks & good wishes to Elizabeth Alexander, which
was signed by all present.
6. As his last duty for us, V. W. Alexander wrote a letter of affectionate greeting
to Charles Stansfield who has been ill for many weeks. This was signed by all.
7. M. Stevens was asked to write minutes for this time.
[signed as a true record by] A. B. Dilks
20 Aug 40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Manuscript: Letter
'Meeting held at Frensham, Northcourt Avenue. 13th Sept. 1940
Howard R. Smith in the Chair.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard commenced the main business of the evening. This was to consist
of readings of passages from books we had read during the year. F. E. was sorry
but he was afraid he had read nothing recently which was intellectually suitable for
the Club. (Cheers) He would however read from The Mill on the Floss. This proved
to be a diverting dissertation on the Commercial Traveller who seems to have
altered little since George Eliot’s day except in the article for sale for vacuum
cleaners were conspicuous by their absence.
8. “The Seven Chars of Chelsea” by Celia Fremlin was the choice of Dorothea
Taylor who warned us that it was an impalatable book. She must have read from
the more tasty portions for we were entertained by the Margretian Charic
conversation conversation which took place among the other six when the author
joined their ranks and by the description of a very tasty cup of tea. Dr Taylor
finished with a more serious passage on the difficulty of mistress and maid
belonging to two completely different worlds.
9. Muriel Stevens read us a descriptive passage from “The Countryman”. We found
that one should live in Corsica to appreciate the punctuality of our G.P.O.
10. Our adventurous evening took an astronomical turn while we heard from
Howard Smith of the Herschels at Slough, their 40 foot telescope and the
discovery of the planet Uranus. This was from Cecil Robert’s book “And so to
Bath.”
11. Violet Clough then brought us nearer home by way of China in several extracts
from “Four Part Setting” by Ann Bridges.
12. A. B. Dilks recommended us to read some or all of The Bases of Modern
Science by J. W. W. Sullivan, published in the Pelican Series at 6d.
13. Rosamund Wallis found her bookmark more interesting than her book and read
us an entertaining but pathetic letter from a refugee now in New York. His subject
was the interesting one of the R[h]ythm of Glass Washing in [an] American Hotel.
[signed by:] R. D. L. Moore
Oct. 18. 1940.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothea Taylor Print: Book
'Meeting held at Frensham, Northcourt Avenue. 13th Sept. 1940
Howard R. Smith in the Chair.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard commenced the main business of the evening. This was to consist
of readings of passages from books we had read during the year. F. E. was sorry
but he was afraid he had read nothing recently which was intellectually suitable for
the Club. (Cheers) He would however read from The Mill on the Floss. This proved
to be a diverting dissertation on the Commercial Traveller who seems to have
altered little since George Eliot’s day except in the article for sale for vacuum
cleaners were conspicuous by their absence.
8. “The Seven Chars of Chelsea” by Celia Fremlin was the choice of Dorothea
Taylor who warned us that it was an impalatable book. She must have read from
the more tasty portions for we were entertained by the Margretian Charic
conversation conversation which took place among the other six when the author
joined their ranks and by the description of a very tasty cup of tea. Dr Taylor
finished with a more serious passage on the difficulty of mistress and maid
belonging to two completely different worlds.
9. Muriel Stevens read us a descriptive passage from “The Countryman”. We found
that one should live in Corsica to appreciate the punctuality of our G.P.O.
10. Our adventurous evening took an astronomical turn while we heard from
Howard Smith of the Herschels at Slough, their 40 foot telescope and the
discovery of the planet Uranus. This was from Cecil Robert’s book “And so to
Bath.”
11. Violet Clough then brought us nearer home by way of China in several extracts
from “Four Part Setting” by Ann Bridges.
12. A. B. Dilks recommended us to read some or all of The Bases of Modern
Science by J. W. W. Sullivan, published in the Pelican Series at 6d.
13. Rosamund Wallis found her bookmark more interesting than her book and read
us an entertaining but pathetic letter from a refugee now in New York. His subject
was the interesting one of the R[h]ythm of Glass Washing in an American Hotel.
[signed by:] R. D. L. Moore
Oct. 18. 1940.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothea Taylor Print: Book
'Meeting held at “Hilliers”, Northcourt Avenue. 18.XI.40
Rosamund Wallis in the chair.
[...]
4. Roger Moore gave us a biographical sketch of John Keats chiefly as revealed
through his letters. To him Keats was memorable as much for the man he was as
for what he wrote. We heard of Keats’ ideals, his religion as revealed in his letters
in spite of his professed unbelief, of his family and circle of close friends and of
his tragic & untimely death. In conclusion Roger Moore asked whether anyone
could set his mind at rest with regard to Ruth in tears amid the alien corn. His
knowledge of the Scriptures led him to suppose that Ruth was extremely happy in
her exile, in which case Keats himself would have been the first to admit that an
idea lacking truth could not be beautiful. This led to some discussion on Ruth and
exiles in general and Howard Smith suggested that it was strange that Keats had
selected Ruth when there had been so many famous exiles through whose
really sad hearts the self-same song might have found a path. He
thought Iphigenia would have been a better choice, but it was generally felt that
the sadness of her exile was somewhat outweighed by the length of her name.
[...]
[signed] Howard R. Smith
13/12/40'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Manuscript: Unknown
'Meeting held at Gower Cottage, 20.II.’39
R. D. L. Moore, & subsequently H. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. R. H. Robson told of The Stately Homes of Thames, + we heard of Bisham
Abbey, Mapledurham, Ufton Court, of Jesuits hunted by Walsingham, of the
incident of The Rape of the Lock, of Lovelace, Lady Place, Hurley, and Soames
Forsyte.
6. H. R. Smith, dealing with the Story of the River, + passing lightly over the
Danish incursions upstream, spoke of the thousand years in which the Thames had
been in bounds. Weirs had been made by millers, navigation had been slow and
perilous, the modern lock was a matter of the last hundred + fifty years. Twenty-
six mills were named in Domesday Book[.] The Thames Conservancy had brought
order out of chaos.
[...]
8. S. A. Reynolds read from Mortimer Menpes of warehouses + houseboats, the
boat race + Henley Regatta, Kingfishers + quick backwaters, fishing + the
vagaries of the towpath.
9. R. D. L. Moore gave us Literary Gleanings, touching on Spenser and Shelley,
quoting from The Scholar Gypsy + Thyrsis, + reading Soames Forsyte’s thoughts
in the early morning on the river, Kipling’s The River’s Tale, + Virginia Woolf’s
astonishing account in Orlando of the great frost, when a girl dissolved into
powder + fish were frozen twenty fathoms deep!
[...]
11. Muriel Stevens read a friend’s notes on Deptford + its river scenes.
12. A. B. Dilkes from Three Men in a Boat.
[Signed] S A Reynolds
27/3/93 [i.e. 27/3/39]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks Print: Book
'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
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks
'This morning we made for Bécourt Wood. In a sand-bag shelter in the wood I found two novels—"Exton Manor" by Archibald Marshall and "Justice" by Galsworthy, which I have annexed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Book
'Am reading "Snow Upon the Desert", by Miss Macnaughten, rather a jolly tale. Very good concert party here tonight, from the Canadian Corps.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Book
'Since my letter to Emma I have read again Medwin's conversations of Byron...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi Print: Book
'I am reading Madame de Maintenon's letters, and though I have neither respect nor admiration for her character, I find so many sentiments and feelings that I have myself experienced...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wedgwood
'Out round waggon lines to fix new places to park amm. waggons and then round dump in morning. In after luncheon—Gibbs out. Read Morley's Robespierre—those times nearly as mad as these.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ludovic Heathcoat-Amory Print: Book, Unknown
'Got a large packet of letters by my cyclist orderly, including a charming little edition of the Imitation of Christ from Sonia.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Gerard Alexander Hamilton Print: Book
'I have just received my dear Mackintosh's 'History of the Revolution' ... I cannot read it with quiet nerves.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi Print: Book
'I think Anne's 'Tales' particularly interesting ... I prefer the first, there is greater purity and far greater truth. 'The Admiral's Daughter' is deficient in both these qualities...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi 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
'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
'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
'Writing in the seventh number (April 1924) of his new magazine Criterion, Eliot declared that the late "militarist by faith" T. E. Hulme "appears as the forerunner of a new attitude of mind, which should be the twentieth-century mind, if the twentieth-century is to have a mind of its own. Hulme is classical, reactionary, and evolutionary; he is the antipodes of the eclectic, tolerant, and democratic mind of the end of the last century."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'80th day of imprisonment ... Friday. Slept well. Played cards sick of it ... 4 pcs from Joe and Ed. James. Started reading "Mystery of Hover Heath" by Bertram Mitford.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Sunday. Rainy day. Met at 11am for Church Service which was cancelled. Walked about. Read The Broken Road by Mason.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Monday. Lovely day frosty. Received 6 PCs ... Walked a good deal. Read Spanish Gold by Geo A. Birmingham ... Bridge ... Dolly home from S. Africa. Caught with light on after 10pm. Row?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Friday. Cold + wet under foot. Frenchman fainted after bath. Bridge. Still losing. Fr. + read The Fighting Chance by RW Chambers.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Paxton has a bet of a dinner that war will be over by 1st July. So Bridge. Read Under Two Flags by Ouida.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Fri[.] Lovely day. As usual. Tired of it all. Read "Three Men on a bummel" by Jerome K Jerome.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'I am reading Sismondi's French History and I am glad to find it is very interesting and pleasant reading...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen Print: Book
'We are near the end of Macauley's 'History', and it is very entertaining reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen Print: Book
'I have been reading and enjoying Sydney Smith's 'Moral Philosophy', which Mrs Smith sent me this winter, and I find it a delightful book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen Print: Book
'There is a new edition of Mme Sevigne, 12 octavo vols. of which I read every one,
and with delight...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi
'Fri. Nil [i.e., no post]. Read The Vultures by Merriman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Mme de Simiane's letters are worth reading, but in hers one perceives the contrast of the 'bel
esprit' of the Province and one of the Capital.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi
'Mon. Nil [i.e., no post]. Sent a PC home. Read "The Witness for the Defence" by AEW Mason.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'There is no real objection to marrying a woman with a fortune but there is to marrying a fortune with a woman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Parcels from home and Bess. Read "Letters from a Self Made Merchant to His Son" by George Horace Lorimer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'... I was too severe on Newman ... There are many striking, wise and good things in the first part
of his book, so that the latter falls on you with the shock of a shower-bath, and disposes one to say
hard things...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jessie Sismondi Print: Book
'Read Count Hannibal by Stanley Weyman ... Aft. Rugger. Officers 4 Men 3.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Thurs. Letter from Bess. Sent PC home. Read "Bad Times" Ireland by George A. Birmingham. Game of rounders.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Letter from home May 5th. Roullette -5. Read Slave of Lamp by Merriman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Sat. Nil. Read "Courtship of Morris ——" by AEW Mason.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Tues. Parcel from Pemb. ... Read The Ashes of Vengeance by Sommerville.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Fri. Read America the War by Hugo Münsterberg. Roulette +1.50 for Sat.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Mon. Very few letters. None for me. All well. Read Naval Occasions by Bartimeus. V Good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Mrs Sydney Smith is affectionate and kind as it is possible to be. She gives me all her husband's papers and correspondence to look over and read...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen
'... I have been idle, but rather too busy to write, our leisure hours being taken up with reading Sydney's "Memoirs".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen Print: Book
'...what do you think Mitford's 'Greece' has made me begin, the 'Iliad' by Cowper which we were talking of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
'I am also reading an English translation of Mme de Sevigne and like it very much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
'I perceive you mention "Looking Backwards". I write to save your life.
Don't DON'T DON'T read that most ... [ellipsis in original] of
shockers. I bought it at Truro coming up on the [Great Western Railway] lately
and before I got to Plymouth it had retired out the window. It isn't a shocker
— it's a dreary fraud ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Dowson Print: Book
Among the writers who deserve attention the first is Rudyard Kipling (his last book ,”The Day’s
Work”, a novel). J.M. Barrie—a Scotsman. His last book “Sentimental Tommy” (last year).[...]
George Moore has published the novel “Evelyn Innes”—un succès d’estime. He is supposed to
belong to the naturalistic school and Zola is his prophet. Tout ça, c’est très vieux jeu. A certain
Mr.T Watts-Dunton published the novel “Aylwin” a curiosity success, as this Watts-Dunton( who
is also a barrister) is apparently a friend of different celebrities in the world of Fine Arts
(especially in the pre-Raphaelite School). He has crammed them all into his book. H.G. Wells
published this year “The War of the Worlds” and “The Invisible Man”. He is a very original writer,
romancier du fantastique, with a very individualist judgement in all things and an astonishing
imagination.’
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The last words unveiling the mystery of the Erebus and Terror expedition were brought home
and disclosed to the world by Sir Leopold M’Clintock in his book "The Voyage of the Fox in the
Arctic Seas". It is a little book but it records with manly simplicity the tragic ending of a great
tale. It so happened that I was born in the year of its publication. Therefore I may be excused
for not getting hold of it till ten years afterwards. I can only account for it falling into my hands
by the fact that the fate of Sir John Franklin was a matter of European interest, and that Sir
Leopold M’Clintock’s book was translated I believe into every language of the white races. My
copy was probably in French. But I have read the work many times since. I have now on my
shelves a copy of a popular edition got up exactly as I remember my first one. It contains the
touching facsimile of a printed form filled in with a summary record of the two ships, with the
name of “Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition” and written in ink, and the pathetic
underlined entry “All well”.[...]. There can hardly have been imagined a better book to let in the
breath of the stern romance of Polar exploration into the existence of a boy[...]
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am at present engaged in reading Newman's poems; do you know them at all? They are very,
very delicate and pretty, and are like nothing more than one of those valuable painted Chinese
vases which a touch would destroy. I must except from this criticism the "Dream of Gerontius",
which is very strongly written. but the rest are almost too delicate for my taste: it is a kind of
beauty that I can't very much appreciate.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'In Greek, I have started to read Homer's Iliad, of which, of course, you must have heard.
Although you don't know Greek & don't care for poetry, I cannot resist the temptation of telling
you how stirring it is. Those fine, simple, euphonious lines, as they roll on with a roar like that of
the ocean, strike a chord in one's mind that no modern literature approaches. Better or worse it
may be; but different it is for certain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'...your criticism of the"Well". I quite see your point, and, of course, agree that the interests
of
the tale reach their climax in the great scene at the World's End: my reply is that the interest
of
the journey home is of quite a different nature. it is pleasant to pick up all the familiar
places....The Battle-piece at the end is very fine....The only part that I found really tedious
was
Roger's historical survey of the Burg & the Scaur. In fact, Roger was only a lay-figure brought
in
to conduct the Ladye's machinations with Ralph, and why he was not allowed to drop into
oblivion when they were over, I cannot imagine.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'Merriman is a far cry from the Brontes. Both of course are good, but while they should be
sipped with luxurious slowness in the winter evening, he may be read in a cheap copy on top
of a tram. And yet I don't know: of course his novels are melodrama, but then they are the
best melodrama ever written, while passages like the "Storm" or the "Wreck" in the Grey
Lady, or the Reconciliation between the hero and his father in "Edged Tools", are as good
things as English prose contains.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I have nearly finished The Morte D'arthur. I am more pleased at having bought it every day,
as it has opened up a new world to me. I had no idea that the Arthurian legends were so fine
(The name is against them, isn't it??) Malory is really not a great author, but he has two
excellent gifts, (1) that of lively narrative and (2) the power of getting you to know characters
by gradual association. What I mean is, that, although he never sits down - as moderns do -
to describe a man's character, yet, by the end of the first volume Launcelot & Tristan, Balin &
Pellinore, Morgan le Fay & Isoud are all just as much real, live people as Paul Emanuel or Mme
Beck. The very names of the chapters, as they spring to meet the eye, bear with them a
fresh, sweet breath from the old-time faery world, wherein the author moves. Who can read
"How Launcelot in the Chapel Perilous gat a cloth from a Dead corpse"... and not hasten to
find out what it's all about?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'"The Roots of the Mountains" is the chief cause of my silence. It is not, however, in spite of
this,
nearly as good as the first volume of "The Well at the World's End", although the interest is
better sustained throughout. To begin with , I was desperately disappointed to find that there
is
nothing supernatural....It is still utterly different from any novel you ever read. Apart from the
quaint and beautiful old English, which means so much to me, the supernatural... yet hovers
on
the margin all the time.... Another thing I like about it is that the characters are not mediaeval
knights but Norse mountain tribes.... well worth reading, I don't know if it's really worth
buying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'In Greek we have begun Demosthenes. Of course oratory is not a sort of literature that I
appreciate or understand in any language, so that I am hardly qualified to express an opinion on
our friend with the mouthful of pebbles. However, compared with Cicero, he strikes me as a man
with something to say, intent only upon saying it clearly and shortly. One misses the beautiful
roll of the Ciceronian period, but on the other hand, he is not such a - blether.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'And while we are on the subject of the war, I am sure you have noticed the excellent blank
verse poem in this week's "Punch" entitled "Killed in Action". I read it with great pleasure, and
thought at the time that it would appeal to you.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Serial / periodical
'I have been reading again "The Well at the World's End", and it has completely ravished me.
There is something awfully nice about reading a book again, with all the half-unconscious
memories it brings back. "The Well" always brings to mind our lovely hill-walk in the frost and
fog - you remember - because I was reading it then. The very names of chapters and places
make me happy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'There has also been from the London Library a book called "Springs of Helicon" by Mackail —
you know, Professor of Poetry at Oxford and the man on William Morris. This is a study on
Chaucer, Spenser and Milton and I enjoyed it immensely. He has quite infected me with his
enthusiasm for the former, whom I must begin to read. He talks of other works, "The Legend of
Good Women", "Troilus and Cresseide" as being better than the tales.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'There is also a "Greek Literature" by Gilbert Murray, the bad verse-translator, which I have read
with dire anger, as he degrades Homer from a poet into a "question" and prefers that snivelling
metaphysician Euripides to Aeschylus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I have had a great literary experience this week. I have discovered yet another author to add
to our circle — our very own set: never since I first read "The well at the world's end" have I
enjoyed a book so much — and indeed I think my new "find" is quite as good as Malory or
Morris himself. The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald's "Faerie Romance",
Phantastes, which I picked up by hazard in a rather tired everyman copy — by the way isn't it
funny, they cost 1/1d. now — on our station bookstall last Saturday.... you simply MUST get
this at once.... of course it is quite hopeless for me to try to describe it, but when you have
followed the hero Anodos along that little stream to the faery wood, have heard about the
terrible ash tree and how the shadow of his gnarled, knotted hand falls upon the book the hero
is reading... I know that you will quite agree with me.... There are one or two poems in the
tale — as in the Morris tales you know — which, with one or two exceptions, are shockingly
bad,
so don't TRY to appreciate them: it is just a sign, isn't it, that some geniuses can't work in
metrical forms.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I am very glad to hear that you are getting to like Jason: I agree with you that the whole
description of Medea — glorious character — going out by night, and of her sorceries in the wood
is absolutely wonderful, and there are other bits later on, such as the description of the "Winter
by the Northern River" and the garden of the Hesperides, which I think quite as good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'This week's new purchase consisted of Milton's "Paradise Lost" — in the same edition as
my Mandeville.... Don't you love the Leopard witches? How you will love Milton some day!' (2)
'I don't think I should advise Milton: while there are lots of things in him you would love - the
descriptions of Satan's flight down through the stars, on the other hand his classical allusions,
his rather crooked style of English, and his long speeches might be tedious. Besides it is
written in blank verse (without rhymes) and people who are beginning to read poetry don't
usually care for that.' (3) '[I] have read over the 1st Book of Paradise Lost again. I think I
shall go through the whole poem this term.' (4) 'I am now through the first two Books of
Paradise L. and really love Milton better every time I come back to him.' (5) 'I have finished
"Paradise Lost" again, enjoying it even more than before.... He is as voluptuous as Keats, as
romantic as Morris, as grand as Wagner, as weird as Poe, and a better lover of nature than
even the Brontes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I should advise you to get the 2/6 volume containing Milton's minor poems, which I am now
reading.... I am at "Comus", which is an absolute dream of delight. I am sure you would love it:
it is like a play written on an episode from the Faerie Queene, all magic and distressed ladies
and haunted woods.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I have also re-read for the thousandth time "Rapunzel" and some other favourite bits of
Morris...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'I have been reading again the second volume of Malory, especially the part of the
"Sangreal" which I had forgotten. With all its faults, in small doses this book is tip-top: those
mystic parts are very good to read late at night when you are drowsy and tired and get into a
sort of "exalted" mood. Do you know what I mean?' (2) 'It was unfortunate that I should
choose a word like "exaltation" which is so often used in connection with religion and so give
you a wrong impression of my meaning. I will try to explain again: have you ever sat over the
fire late, late at night.... Everything seems like a dream, you are absolutely contented, and
"out of the world".... It is in this sort of mood that the quaint, old mystical parts of Malory are
exactly suitable...' (3) '...the "Morte" which I have now read from the beginning of the Quest
of the Grael to the end, thus finishing the whole thing. I certainly enjoyed it much better than
before, and wished that I had the first volume here as well.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) '... through reading Maeterlinck, to improve my French, too late at night, I have developed
a penchant for mystical philosophy' (2) 'My other reading — in French — has been
Maeterlinck's "Oiseau Bleu": of course I have read it before in English and seen it on the
stage, as you know, but I am absolutely delighted to read it again. Now that I have the
original I wish you would adopt my English version, which is yours forever for the taking
whenever you care to walk up to my room at home and find it on the little open bookcase.... I
don't know why you have never read this glorious book before, but please do as I suggest &
(though it is always dangerous, as we know, to recommend) I think you will have some real
joy out of it. The scenes in the Temple of Night and in the Kingdom of the Future are exactly in
our line.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'Your verdict upon Macdonald's tale was worthy of so shrewd and serious a gentleman as
yourself...' (2) 'And talking about books I am surprised that you don't say more of "The Golden
Key": to me it was absolute heaven from the moment when Tangle ran into the woods to the
glorious end in those mysterious caves. What a lovely idea "The country from which the shadows
fall"!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I was passionately fond of poetry, being led to its study by accidentally meeting with Milton's
minor poems, when about fourteen years of age. Though so young, I was instantly charmed with
"Comus", and read it so much, that I could repeat it nearly all by heart. I still think it one of the
most beautiful poems in the language.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Leatherland Print: Book
(1) '... you simply must read this book of Maeterlinck's on death. It is full of the most interesting
stuff, and even when you don't believe his theories they always have a sort of romantic interest.
One case he tells of reminds me of "John Silence", it is so weird: but I mustn't spoil it by
outline.' (2) 'By the way Maeterlinck's book on Death is in the usual horrid, expensive continental
paper back - still this gives you the exciting task of getting it bound.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'Just before supper I finished the 2nd volume of Mackail's "Life of W.M." There is nothing
nicer than to lay aside a book with a certain satisfaction at getting it settled with and yet
having enjoyed it thoroughly, is there? I certainly know Morris better than I did before, tho' in
a way his character is a disappointment. You can't really think there's any resemblance
between him and me? Of course I would give mine eyes to be like him in some ways, but I
don't honestly think my temper is quite so bad.' (2) 'I am sorry you don't like Mackail's second
volume. I suppose I am a bundle of contradictions, but I must say socialism does interest me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'I have now made a good start on my second volume of Macaulay, which is admirable. What
a nice man James must have been!' (2) 'I am nearly through Macaulay Vol. II, which I have
enjoyed immensely, especially the part about Oxford.' (3) '...having finished Macaulay (an
admirable book, tho' of course the writer is too much of a whig and puritan for my taste: the old
cavaliers were at any rate gentlemen)....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
(1) 'I am reading such a splendid book in German, by a man called Chamisso "Peter
Schlemihl's Wundersame Geschichte" (The Amazing Adventures of Peter Schlemihl). It is about
a man (modern) who sells his shadow to a wizard: his subsequent adventures are treated
chiefly in the absurd "Alice" style but there is a sort of core of horror lurking in it all the time,
that is to me very attractive.' (2) 'Good night old fool: have finished P. Schlemihl.' (3) '"Peter
Schlemihl" is the name of that German "admirable" book about the man who sold his shadow.
I am very pleased to have read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
‘Well, here I am, and a soldier … to go to Northampton on Monday for the First
Reserve … Tonight I have been reading the Georgian Poetry Book, and it is
this that made me write to you … I found myself remembering old things, old
times together as I read “Biography” and it brought you very near.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
'I hope you are well, and are finding some solace in your duties. You must
find it hard to console aliens in England. They probably love England, and
now they are aliens indeed. There was a letter in the Northcliffe Times not
long ago from a lady who would make Bach an alien, a difficult job … You
spoke of the Jewish persecution by the Russians. The English papers are
allowed to speak of it now; at least there was a strong condemnation in a
book-review in the Daily News … The Times published a special supplement
of War-Poems on Monday. Did you see it? I think Hardy’s poem [“Song of
the Soldiers”) is most likely to survive. It stirs me much more than it first
did. On route marches now to occupy my mind, I am learning Wordsworth’s
Sonnetts and the first lines of Paradise Lost, for which I can find no praise.
It is too colossal. Too Bach-like.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Have you read "Harry Richmond" lately? I like the first part of the book
immensely, but skipped afterwards—copiously and vigorously. On the
whole, "Evan Harrington" pleased me more … "War and Peace" will always
hold me in its thrall. But next time I skip the chunks of History, and read
about Pierre and Natasha. As for "Return of the Native", God seems to have
arranged with Hardy to do his cunning-worst. But how rich are the country
scenes! … I am glad to say that my health goes on improving, but slowly.
Still, now I know what neurasthenia is; I realise and fight it—a great step …
Is D’Annunzio worth reading, if I could collar a book of his?’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Have you read "Harry Richmond" lately? I like the first part of the book
immensely, but skipped afterwards—copiously and vigorously. On the
whole, "Evan Harrington" pleased me more … "War and Peace" will always
hold me in its thrall. But next time I skip the chunks of History, and read
about Pierre and Natasha. As for "Return of the Native", God seems to have
arranged with Hardy to do his cunning-worst. But how rich are the country
scenes! … I am glad to say that my health goes on improving, but slowly.
Still, now I know what neurasthenia is; I realise and fight it—a great step …
Is D’Annunzio worth reading, if I could collar a book of his?’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘There is an excellent article in this week Saturday Westminster, a paper of
which I am very fond. It is a review by Walter de la Mare, and is that poet’s
confession of Faith … My leave starts on Thursday—5 whole days … Do you
not like Laurence Binyon’s verses in the Times Supplement? Those and
Hardy’s and Kipling’s are the best of the bunch. Though I like Watson
Grenfell and Noyes. Hardy’s grows on one. Did you ever read his last book
of Short Stories—"The Changed Man"? … Have you read any of D F
Lawrence? I have just finished an extraordinary book called "The White
Peacock", full of arresting studies of character and most essentially
breathing of earth and clouds and flowers—though not a pleasant book …
we had Zeps here about a fortnight ago. Two bombs were dropped on
Chelmsford itself, both on or near the Glosters billeting area. The damage
was perhaps 5£ worth. It cured an old lady of muscular rheumatism, indeed
it made an athlete, a sprinter of her—she went down the street in her
nightgown like a comet or some gravity-defying ghost.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Newspaper
‘Someone has lent me two of Tchekof’s [Chekhov]'s plays—"The Sea-gull"
and "The Cherry Orchard". The first I have read twice and am very struck
with it—for its truth and its well drawn characters. I must read the other
again before I decide, but it will probably not please me so much …
Hauptmann’s "Sunken Bell" is good, but not very good, I think … We are
expecting Zeps tonight as there is a rumour of four somewhere about. But
Chelmsford is a straggly place and probably not easy to spot.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Carlyle has not put it too strongly in Heroes. It is chiefly a matter of
environment with the really great men what shape they take in their
power; but with smaller men, such as Wordsworth, I am not quite sure …
What made me more sensitive to this is that I have just bought
Wordsworth’s life in Jack’s 6d Home Series, and his colossal complacency
makes one anxious. What a crowd they must have been—Wordsworth,
Dorothy and Coleridge!’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Well … our gallant regiment … have been in it a damn sight more than ever
they expected, by the Lord. We are hardened veterans, fed up to the neck,
muddy to the eyes, for the weather is execrable. And like Justice Shallow
we have had our losses. Two of the nicest chaps in the whole crowd killed.
And of our very best Lieutenants more gone than I like. So it goes with us
… Have you seen "Child Lovers", W. H. D.’s new book? It has some good
stuff in it—but he would do well to shut up shop … Mrs Abercrombie has
sent me [Lascelle Abercrombie’s] "Deborah", which I like immensely, except
the "Gabriel Hounds", which are poor tykes not worthy of poetic license.
And the blank verse, also very fine, is hardly often enough simple. It is too
skilled, too educated … But how good the storm is! And the marsh! And
Barnaby! … One thing that runs continually in my head out here is L.
Binyon’s “To the Fallen” which delights me ever more and more. Did you see
Bridges’ Sonnett on Kitcher? That was fine too … I would not believe the
news at first—it sounded so like the obvious rumour. Oh, but it’s raining like
the blazes!’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘ [ … ] it was nice … to get the "Evening Standard" packed up with the rest
[of the parcel]. I do adore newspapers in certain moods. For frivolling time
away they are incomparable … Why was the "Daily Telegraph" one page
sent? For the College awards? Or for the review of Colles’ latest book? … I
asked for a book to be sent in the parcel. That means any sort of book. A
twopenny box in London would give me acute joy, but if you are debarred
from such, Nelson’s 6d Classics would be more than excellent. What a
washout most of the "Golden Treasury" is! As for the period of Pope, the
selection is simply lamentable. Only the Elizabethan and Wordsworth period
have much real stuff in them. Could you steal and small dirty copy of Shelley
or Keats and sent it me? I have tried to get these in the penny Poets, but
they must be out of print. The Everymans are too big, or my pack too small.
"Macbeth" is with me, but there is too much real tragedy about to find it
pleasant. Milton I can read (and have) particularly the Ode on Time which is
terrific … Palgrave makes me feel what a lot of good stuff I miss by reading
anthologies.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Your parcels have arrived … You have my deepest assurances that the
pleasure caused by your kindness has been considerable…. The reason I
dared to ask for all these things is—we have been so busy and so much in
the trenches, that it has been impossible to get these things ourselves, in
the towns and villages. As for our canteen, the only one is certain of
getting, is bootpolish … But now—the books. Shelley was very nice to get.
Keats I haven’t touched yet. But O—Walt Whitman! I never dreamed he
was so good … it has annoyed me to find so much in so tiny a book. I will
go as far as to say that no present has very given me so much pleasure …
Pip is a jolly book, and full of good descriptions of sport (O, what would a
clean hit for four feel like now?) But there is [no] need to send me such …
One can only read them once, then hand them on. True, a lot of men see
them. But Walt Whitman—why he has after some fashion renewed me.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘We are on a long march and I’m writing this on the chance of getting it off;
so you should know I received your papers and also your letter … The
Poetry Review you sent is good—the articles are too breathless, and want
more packing, I think. The poems by the soldier are vigorous but, I feel a bit
commonplace. I did not like Rupert Brooke’s begloried sonnets for the same
reason. What I mean is second hand phrases “lambent fires” etc takes from
its reality and strength. It should be approached in a colder way, more
abstract, with less of the million feelings everybody feels … Walt Whitman in
“Beat, drums, beat”, has said the noblest thing on war.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘Your Georgian B. has arrived at last; many many thanks. I pounced on King
Lear’s Wife, and though it was not more than I expected, it was not less.
The only fault I can find is the diction. It has the aspect of talking to
children, in some places. Goneril is marvellously drawn. Lear is a bit
shadowy, perhaps, but altogether as a poetic drama, it is of the very
highest kind … Rupert Brooke’s poem on Clouds is marvellous; his style
offends me; it is gaudy and reminiscent … I also received your packet of
papers which I’ve had no time yet to look into.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘Your Lucretius arrived in all its beauty of type and cover. It is a noble poem
and I wish it were printed in a more compressed form so that one could
have it in the pocket and read it more. It does now sound like a translation
the words seem so natural to the thought … I can say no more than that I
got deep pleasure from it and thank you very much. I’m reading some
Shakespeare—Sturge Moore, G. Bottomley H. G. Wells—Sturge Moore
delights me—they are only small things I mean as number of words go,—
but he is after my own heart. You know what I think of G. B. And that old
hawker of immortality how glad one feels, he is not a witness of these
terrible times—he would only have been flung into this terrible destruction,
like the rest of us. Anyway we all hope it’ll all end well.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘Your Lucretius arrived in all its beauty of type and cover. It is a noble poem
and I wish it were printed in a more compressed form so that one could
have it in the pocket and read it more. It does now sound like a translation
the words seem so natural to the thought … I can say no more than that I
got deep pleasure from it and thank you very much. I’m reading some
Shakespeare—Sturge Moore, G. Bottomley H. G. Wells—Sturge Moore
delights me—they are only small things I mean as number of words go,—
but he is after my own heart. You know what I think of G. B. And that old
hawker of immortality how glad one feels, he is not a witness of these
terrible times—he would only have been flung into this terrible destruction,
like the rest of us. Anyway we all hope it’ll all end well.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
‘I have been in topsy turveydom since I last saw you and have not been
able to write. Even now it is in the extremest difficulties that I’m writing
this. I wanted to talk about the Georgian Book which I had sent over to me
but have not had time to more than glance through. I liked J. C. Squire’s
poem about the “House” enormously and all his other poems. [W. J.]
Turner’s are very beautiful and Sassoon has power. Masefield seemed
rather commonplace, but please don’t take my jud[ge]ment at anything
because I have hardly looked at them. I am back in the trenches which are
terrible now. We spend most of our time pulling each other out of the mud.
I am not fit at all now and am more in the way than any use. You see I
appear in excellent health and a doctor will make no distinction between
health and strength. I am not strong.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Rosenberg Print: Book
'George Moores Gospel according to George and Mary
Hunter is a very tiresome book just like any
rewritten Gospel and most "historical" novels.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Maurice Baring Print: Book
‘We make another sally today … I have the parcel, and the letters and J.
Oxenham’s books … "The V.[Vision] Splendid" contains several real poems:
those indeed which you [i.e., Owen’s mother] have marked. But the
majority of the things have no poetic value at all. The “Cross Roads” is very
very good. Otherwise the book has little Pacific Value, if you understand me
… "Barbe of Grand Bayou" seems a little too idyllic so far. Oxenham’s aim
seems to be to unsophisticate the reader. It is very pleasant to be
reminded of Brittany, which seems not to be of this continent at all … The
book is at the opposite pole from the O. Henry books which Leslie sent me.
Impossible to read them together … At the same time I am at p. 50 of A. &
E. Castle’s recent book: "The Hope of the House", which promises well, and
which I can recommend … I am in haste to pack … I crave Travel and shall
be pleased like any infant to get into a puff-puff again.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘We make another sally today … I have the parcel, and the letters and J.
Oxenham’s books … "The V.[Vision] Splendid" contains several real poems:
those indeed which you [i.e., Owen’s mother] have marked. But the
majority of the things have no poetic value at all. The “Cross Roads” is very
very good. Otherwise the book has little Pacific Value, if you understand me
… "Barbe of Grand Bayou" seems a little too idyllic so far. Oxenham’s aim
seems to be to unsophisticate the reader. It is very pleasant to be
reminded of Brittany, which seems not to be of this continent at all … The
book is at the opposite pole from the O. Henry books which Leslie sent me.
Impossible to read them together … At the same time I am at p. 50 of A. &
E. Castle’s recent book: "The Hope of the House", which promises well, and
which I can recommend … I am in haste to pack … I crave Travel and shall
be pleased like any infant to get into a puff-puff again.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘We make another sally today … I have the parcel, and the letters and J.
Oxenham’s books … "The V.[Vision] Splendid" contains several real poems:
those indeed which you [i.e., Owen’s mother] have marked. But the
majority of the things have no poetic value at all. The “Cross Roads” is very
very good. Otherwise the book has little Pacific Value, if you understand me
… "Barbe of Grand Bayou" seems a little too idyllic so far. Oxenham’s aim
seems to be to unsophisticate the reader. It is very pleasant to be
reminded of Brittany, which seems not to be of this continent at all … The
book is at the opposite pole from the O. Henry books which Leslie sent me.
Impossible to read them together … At the same time I am at p. 50 of A. &
E. Castle’s recent book: "The Hope of the House", which promises well, and
which I can recommend … I am in haste to pack … I crave Travel and shall
be pleased like any infant to get into a puff-puff again.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘I’ve been reading Wells’ "What is coming …" Hazlitt’s Essays, and a glorious
book of critical essays by [J.] A. K. Thompson, called "The Greek Tradition". I
read no fiction. Wells’ "Wife of Sir Eric Harman" which I’ve just finished isn’t
fiction.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
‘I have only just arrived here: the last ten days having been occupied in
reading "The Egoist" in the Orderly Room at Moore [Barracks, Shorncliffe]. It
was my sad fate to be left in charge of the Details after rejoining from
Hythe: to wait on and hand over barracks to the Canadians. The Canadians
were a week overdue, when at last they poured in in the small hours of
Monday morning … [?8 March]. I am going to take a course of Meredith
before going out [to France]. In a job like this it should act as Eno’s Fruit
Salt to the constipated brains.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Hamilton Sorley Print: Book
‘I have finished and laid by "The Egoist". I see now that Meredith belongs
to that class of novelists with whom I do not usually get on so well (e.g.
Dickens), who create and people worlds of their own so that one
approaches the characters with amusement, admiration or contempt, not
with liking or pity, as with Hardy’s people, into whom the author does not
inject his own exaggerated characteristics … It is as though he saw the
world through field-glasses.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Hamilton Sorley Print: Book
‘I am in a condition such as demands amusement as a
cure: that is, I am an invalid—though not a
despondent one. I have been struggling with …
bronchitis for more than a week … Don’t imagine that
I desire or deserve a scrap of condolence—I rather
look for envy: An excellent little servant to attend
to my every need: a Scotch cook … a stove … an easy
chair—a dressing-gown and Meredith at his best (in
One of our Conquerors)—and all this in my
fashionably furnished “studio” …’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Edward Read Print: Book
'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,
and I'm feeling quite Browningesque. I haven't got
my movement orders yet, but I've been posted to
the 10th Battn., so my address will be: 10th
Yorshire Regiment, B.E.F., France ... I have just
finished Esther Waters by George Moore. Did
you ever read it? I've always had an instinctive
prejudice against Moore, but I must admit power
and beauty here. It's a study of a simple soul,
and illustrates one of those purely feminine
beauties that fill decent men with wonderment ...
I've now got hold of Evelyn Innes, by the
same author.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Edward Read Print: Book
‘Many thanks for your letter which greeted me on our weekly return to our
old farmhouse behind the lines … I’m sending herewith—it strikes me it may
interest you—a copy of "The Imitation of Christ" in Flemish. Two days ago
we blew up an old half-ruined estaminet just in front of our trenches … In
consolidating the position and digging it in, I found among other things this
book in the cellar … on the top of a barrel still half-full of beer … with some
French recipes inside … Anyhow, there was a—well, decomposed body in
that estaminet, who may have written this recipe and read his Thomas a
Kempis with diligence daily. Or more likely ‘twas a German body; and the
canny publican and his wife had fled at the first approach of the Germans,
leaving their Imitation and—much more wonderful—their recipes behind
them. In any case it will answer for my contribution to the reigning passion
for souvenirs; and your professional opinion may agree that it is quite a
nice binding—for Belgium! … I do not insist that you should read this book
I’m sending.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Hamilton Sorley Print: Book
'Mr P was in bed reading the Newspaper, P. Walker was
a little better this morn then I went to see the old
Peter who is also a little better. After breakfast
Peter came up & we played several games of Draughts
then he read a sermon by Talmage then I went down
with him & stayed all the evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Bennetts Williams Print: Unknown
'Walked Clausin with Herr Byng. Read "A Midsummer
Day's Dream". Wire from Mrs Henderson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather Print: Book
'After lunch sat in study read paper and "The
Sowers."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather Print: Book
'Took Sommy's watch to Asprey's after lunch. Finished
"The Wages of Sin."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather Print: Book
'Read "Alice for Short". Stayed in all day'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather Print: Book
'Read "Abbess of Vlaye" to Babs in the garden after
tea.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Pennefather Print: Book
'Worked at nightdress and wrote some letters. Read
"Abbess of Vlaye" to Babs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Pennefather Print: Book
'Babs home for lunch. Finished "Abbess of Vlaye" to
him after lunch. Cut out and stuffed a pillow for
the cot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Pennefather Print: Book
'I am just now (when at home) reading 'Cosmos', a sketch of a physical description of the universe.
Parts of it are very interesting, but others of too deeply scientific character for my limited capacity
to comprehend; still I hope to gather a good deal of curious and useful information from it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'I have just been reading a second time Dr. Mantell's 'Medals of Creation', and do so admire the
spirit in which it is written exceedingly; this, and his 'Wonders of Geology', are two of the most
interesting works I have read on the subject.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'I have just been reading a second time Dr. Mantell's 'Medals of Creation', and do so admire the
spirit in which it is written exceedingly; this, and his 'Wonders of Geology', are two of the most
interesting works I have read on the subject.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'I have just finished Hugh Miller's 'First Impressions of England and its people'. His argument at the
conclusion of the seventeenth chapter is excellent; he concludes by saying - "The Christian has
nothing to fear, the infidel nothing to hope from the great truths of Geology; it is assuredly not
through any enlargement of man's little apprehension of the Infinite and the Eternal that his faith in
the scheme of salvation by a Redeemer need be shaken"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'At the time I received thy letter, I was reading Carlyle's 'Life of Cromwell'. I was unable to procure
the second volume immediately, and while waiting for it, I have been reading attentively his 'Past
and Present'. I have been extremely pleased with it, and deeply interested in his views of the
present state of society, or rather of the corruption of its state.. [extensive commentary follows]
Often while I have been reading it I have thought of thee, and wished I could read it with thee.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
'Stayed up reading H. V. Morton's Women of the Bible. Loved the chapter on 'Ruth, Martha and
Mary'. Always inclined to Martha myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Just read the life of Grand Duke Cyril. He was in the flagship at Port Arthur sunk by the Japs years
ago. He seems to have lived well until the Revolution. But no one can have sunshine all the time.
It has been good for the Russian aristocracy to do their own charring for a bit.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Took a book on Father Damien into the Park.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'A controversial book by H. V. Morton, called: I, James Blunt, is dedicated to Wishful Thinkers who
believe Britain is still an island, and that Russia will win the war for us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'At Radlett over the week-end. Read some of Maurois' The Fall of France. I remember poor Maurois
making his way to England and giving that last despairing broadcast. He asked us to send our last
plane and last gun to France. A nice mess we should have been in if we had.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Restful week-end. Read a biography of Dick Sheppard. I never heard him preach. Astounded he
was so unhappy at school.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except
those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily
together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every
imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the
Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold,
Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham,
Palmerston, Parnell,the late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir
of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of
Thomas Cromwell. He could suddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord
Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except
those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily
together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every
imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the
Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold,
Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham,
Palmerston, Parnell,the late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir
of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of
Thomas Cromwell. He could suddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord
Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'To-day I ... prepare myself for leaving England.
I read, whilst [here] the "Ingoldsby Legends"
entire, Second Part "King Henry IV," and more
cursorily "Midsummer Nights Dream" over again, and
First Part "King Henry IV." I enjoyed myself very
much. But now to fresh fields and pastures. I take
over in books: Shakespeare, Tennyson (to 156),
"Canterbury Tales" (Skeat, Oxford edition),
Vergil, "Aeneid" (I-VI), "Wilhelm Tell," "Golden
Treasury," "Pickwick," "Collected Verse" of
Rudyard Kipling, et alia; French, German, and
English Dictionaries; map (Daily
Telegraph). I hope at Folkestone to secure a
small Horace, an Iliad-let (Macmillan's Pocket
Edition), and "Don Quixote de la Mancha," I also
have my old Harvard Italian grammar, and "England
in the Middle Ages" by a Manchester woman, B.A.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wainwight Merrill Print: Book
'I have spoken of his affection for Dickens. Trollope he liked. Thackeray I
think not over much, though he had a due regard for such creations as Major
Pendennis. Meredith's characters were to him "seven feet high," and his style
too inflated. He admired Hardy's poetry. He always spoke with appreciation
of Howells, especially of the admirable "Rise of Silas Lapham". His
affectionate admiration for Stephen Crane we know from his introduction to
Thomas Beer's biography of that gifted writer. Henry James in his middle
period--the Henry James of "Daisy Miller", "The Madonna of the Future",
"Greville Fane", "The Real Thing", "The Pension Beaurepas"--was precious to
him. But of his feeling for that delicate master, for Anatole France, de
Maupassant, Daudet, and Turgenev, he has written in his "Notes on Life and
Letters". I remember too that he had a great liking for those two very
different writers, Balzac and Mérimée. Of philosophy he had read a good
deal, but on the whole spoke little. Schopenhauer used to give him
satisfaction twenty years and more ago, and he liked both the personality
and the writings of William James.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Mr Joseph Conrad, the author, writes: I don’t remember any child’s book. I
don’t think I ever read any; the first book I remember distinctly is Hugo’s
"Travailleurs de la Mer" which I read at the age of seven. But within the last
two years I’ve participated in my son’s (age 5) course of reading, and I share
his tastes – in prose, Grimm and Andersen; in verse, Lear.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'You will find in his pages ["Quiet Days in Spain"] the humours of starving workers of
the soil, the vision among the mountains of an exulting ad spirit in a mighty body, and
many other visions worthy of attention.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I have spent the day mostly in reading
Wellington's Army, by Oman, one of the most
interesting books I have read. I am awfully bucked
with it. The day has passed uneventfully, and there
is no news ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Dunlop Smith Print: Book
'No change, every bit as bad as yesterday, nothing
but rain and mist ... I wrote the rest of the
morning in my tent, and in the afternoon continued
reading Wellington's Army, and after tea I
had a talk with Sabira Magre ... Later I again
visited the kitchen, to learn how to make scones
... The evening has been spent in reading
Wellington's Army and various things in the
Oxford Book of Verse. I should have said
that either Kipling or Newbolt would have made a
better National Poet than Bridges, for, though
doubtless his verse is more faultless than theirs,
and is not the doggerel that much of their is, yet
it seems to lack life and spontaneity, and the
true spirit of a poet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Dunlop Smith Print: Book
'In the evenings we have cosy suppers in the
drawing-room, with little tables in front of the
fire. Sometimes we work, sometimes read and talk.
The other night Mrs. [McKendrick] read to us Like
English Gentlemen, the story of Scott's
expedition as told to his little son. Last Sunday we
had a great evening with Newbolt's poems, which I
introduced them to. They seem finer every time one
reads them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Dunlop Smith Print: Book
'Since leaving Oxford I have had quite a little
opportunity for reading and have read all kinds of
things, some of the better books being: Conan
Doyle's "Micah Clarke" and part of "Martin
Chuzzlewit", one or two of Alexander Dumas' tales,
two humorous books by George Birmingham about small
Irish villages, and one or two of Bernard Shaw's
plays. I am still doing dual control on B.E. 2b
machines which are quite out of date for military
purpose and were obsolete even before the war ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roderick Ward Maclennan Print: Book
'Since leaving Oxford I have had quite a little
opportunity for reading and have read all kinds of
things, some of the better books being: Conan
Doyle's "Micah Clarke" and part of "Martin
Chuzzlewit", one or two of Alexander Dumas' tales,
two humorous books by George Birmingham about small
Irish villages, and one or two of Bernard Shaw's
plays. I am still doing dual control on B.E. 2b
machines which are quite out of date for military
purpose and were obsolete even before the war ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roderick Ward Maclennan Print: Book
'As we sat waiting for dinner and discussing
religion, our first hostile impressions were
gradually smoothed away. I recited the opening
chapter of the Quran and proved myself less
ignorant than had been supposed: a translation of
the Lord's Prayer established the essential unity
of religion, to the satisfaction even of the thin
little Mirza from Medina: and a short discussion
on history produced out of the bottom of a chest a
Persian translation of Sir John Malcolm's 'History
of Persia', which the Agha studies on winter
evenings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'The Mansab came this morning, and brought a very
precious possession, a manuscript copied by his
grandfather from earlier histories, a sort of
commonplace book of all that was thought worth
preserving at the time. It has the fascination of
old and treasured things, gathered for someone's
private joy. Among a great deal of religion, there
is a medieval chronicle, which as far as I can
tell is more or less unknown: so I have been
sitting on my terrace, copying it out, after the
Mansab's departure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Manuscript: Codex, Arabic commonplace book
'When the sun had set and I was in bed again, the
Mansab's brother, the Qadhi, came to help with
explanatory notes for the names of places in the
manuscript. We discussed Maqrizi, who says the
Se'ar tribe can change themselves into wolves. The
Se'ar have stolen forty-two camels and are
probably going to be bombed by the R.A.F., so that
it might be a useful accomplishment just now."It
is not true, however", said the Qadhi seriously.
"It is a pure fairy tale of Maqrizi's. But it is
quite true of the Beni Shabib near Qatn."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Manuscript: Codex, Arabic commonplace book
'The first section of my own manuscript is copied
out now and has given useful information, such as
the date of the restoration and final ruin, in
A.D. 1298, of al-'Urr by the Arabs. In the
afternoon, before the sunset prayer, the Qadhi
comes to locate for me names of places and tribes
which no one in Europe would know. He sits,
turning over with his delicate fingers the pages
written by his grandfather and treasured above all
the books they have [...] The Qadhi loves these
hours. He has in him a pure passion for learning,
a small flame with little enough to feed it, that
burns for itself alone.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ali Qadhi of Shibam Manuscript: Codex, Arabic commonplace book
Harold and I are the subject of song in Hureidha
at present. Old Abdulla the watch-mender came some
evenings ago to present me with an ode in my
honour. He had it on a piece of grubby paper and
his wife and daughter came too, to hear. I had
gone to bed, but it would have hurt the old man's
feelings to be turned back; so they all sat by my
bedside; and it was charming to see him playing
with his song, singing every verse over with
modulations and variations, making us observe
every delicacy of rhythm, while his daughter
looked at him with all the admiration of her heart
[...] the father and daughter are the real
companions in this craft, and presently they began
to sing together, recalling one qasida after
another.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Manuscript: Sheet
I can remember at the age of fourteen the
tranquillity which a first reading of the Phaedon,
the death of Socrates, gave me - a widening of the
bounds of life which even then I felt to be
essential.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'You may as well say, which is a truth, that I do read bi[o]graphy and memoirs.
History has a fascination for me. Naval, military, political'. [The following was deleted
by Conrad in proof]. 'For instance, favorite books of his are Wallace's "Malay
Archipelago," Darwin's "Voyage of a Naturalist," Whymper's "High Andes", the sea
yarns of Cooper and Marryat and the novels of Dickens.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'With his first wages Conrad bought a volume of Shakespeare, and at sea he also read
Mill's "Principles of Political Economy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Polishness which I took from Mickiewicz and Slowacki. My father read "Pan Tadeusz"
aloud to me and made me read it aloud. Not just once or twice. I used to prefer
"Konrad Wallenrod", "Grazyna". Later I liked Slowacki better.You know why Slowacki? Il
est l'âme de toute la Pologne, lui.' [Interview in Polish (and French): original text not
easily available.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Polishness which I took from Mickiewicz and Slowacki. My father read "Pan Tadeusz"
aloud to me and made me read it aloud. Not just once or twice. I used to prefer
"Konrad Wallenrod", "Grazyna". Later I liked Slowacki better.You know why Slowacki? Il
est l'âme de toute la Pologne, lui.' [Interview in Polish (and French) original text not
easily available.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Polishness which I took from Mickiewicz and Slowacki. My father read "Pan Tadeusz"
aloud to me and made me read it aloud. Not just once or twice. I used to prefer
"Konrad Wallenrod", "Grazyna". Later I liked Slowacki better.You know why Slowacki? Il
est l'âme de toute la Pologne, lui.' [Interview in Polish (and French) original text not
easily available.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thanks ever so much for the book ["Father Archangel of Scotland, and Other
Essays"]. I have read it once so far. The more I read you the more I admire. This is a
strong word but not a bit too strong for the sensation it is supposed to describe.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'My humble apology for not thanking you before for the volume of verses. I share your
opinion of Maupassant.The man is a great artist who sees the essential in everything.
He is not a great poet,—perhaps no poet at all, yet I like his verses, I like them
immensely'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
He [M. Besse] took me and Mrs Ingrams for a
longish walk yesterday, over the crater edge and
down to the sea...M. Besse and I bathed
regardless of the sharks, of which he denies the
existence in these particular bays, though there
seem to be two opinions about it. It was
delicious in the buoyant water, just cool enough
to be pleasant, with the sun sinking into it over
the spires of Little Aden. Then we came back and
he read Monna Vanna out to us and so to bed, and
this morning, alas, I am packing.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonin Besse Print: Book
He [M. Besse] took me and Mrs Ingrams for a
longish walk yesterday, over the crater edge and
down to the sea...M. Besse and I bathed
regardless of the sharks, of which he denies the
existence in these particular bays, though there
seem to be two opinions about it. It was
delicious in the buoyant water, just cool enough
to be pleasant, with the sun sinking into it over
the spires of Little Aden. Then we came back and
he read Monna Vanna out to us and so to bed, and
this morning, alas, I am packing.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'On the last day of my thirtieth year on earth I
am writing a few lines. Have moved a mile or so
and am now in a nice little village, the name of
which I must not say ... Last week I was given a
book to read, and smiled to myself when I saw the
name of it "Miss Vaughan". Strange to say, one of
the first characters in it was named "Gladys". I
did not care much for it. "Miss Vaughan" turned
out to be a man.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Wainwright Print: Book
'Somebody sent me a little book called "Aunt Sarah
and the War" the other day. Many thanks and jolly
good—whoever it was! Send me the "Times"
every now and again—will you?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Oscar Hornung Print: Book
Diary entry, August 22, 1831: "And then we read merely the Greek of a passage in the poem
next to my favorite poem; and then Mr. Boyd gave me Meleager’s ode to Spring, to read, while
he “stretched his legs” in the garden. Very very happy! – Meleager’s ode is beautiful tho'
monotonous: but the monotony is much less felt in the concluding lines. Nota Bene Ba! Buy
Wakefield’s Bion, & Moschus & Meleager”
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Diary entry. June 16th, 1831: "I heard Stormy & Georgie read Homer & Xenophon — as usual, —
tho’ I have not yet commemorated them here"
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Diary entry. July 9th, 1831: "After breakfast, heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon"
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Diary entry. August 8th, 1831: "I have written a letter to Papa, read the first vol: of the Last
man, which Mrs. Martin has sent me at last —& read the whole of the 8th book of Marcus
Antoninus, -& prepared some of the Seven Chiefs for Mr. Boyd, —besides hearing Storm &
George read out of Homer & Zenophon. I feel nervous all over in my hands & feet —& cant write
a word more."
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Hudson recalled how, preoccupied with the prospect
of his mother's death and it effect on him: 'Then
one day, with my mind in this troubled state, in
reading George Combe's "Physiology" [probably
actually Combes' book on phrenology, see additional
comments below] I came upon a passage in which the
question of the desire for immortality is discussed,
is contention beng that it is not universal and as a
proof of this he affirms that he himself had no such
desire.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
‘...in my Sophocles I fail’d, chiefly from being put on in a misprinted passage – for the play
was one I had studied with more than common attention. In Virgil I stumbled from mere
confusion; the passage I had read, and that too carefully – fifty times at least. In Pindar I was
not very far amiss; in the O-dyssee alone I have real cause for shame, for to tell the truth, I
took it up for a make-weight, in the expectation of not being put on it at all. My Illiad,
Euripides, Aeschylus, and Horace, were given me on paper.’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: written and oral examinations
'I was seriously alarmed at the beginning of this
enquiry [into the memory of smells] by reading in
McCosh: "When the organs of taste and smell,
supposed by Ferrier to be at the back of the head,
are diseased or out of order, the reproduction of the
corresponding sensations may be indistinct"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'Seebohm has nothing about this chucking cry or call
[of a species of snipe], nor has Shaw in his book on the snipe in the Fur and Feather
series. I doubt if any of the books will enlighten you about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'About "The Crown of Life", It is almost the only
one of G. G. [George Gissing]'s books I haven’t read.
It didn’t appeal to me—it was not a good Gissing
book. Just now I have been reading "Will
Warburton", recently published Constable, and
though it can’t compare with the strong bitter
work of earlier years it is very readable.
"Veranilda" I did not like so it remained unread
here on my table until a friend carried it off to
read a few days ago. I do not read many books—
many books set to me by good friends are left
unread and I blame them for wasting books on me—
unless it is poetry. Your poetry I always read
with rare pleasure and for the good verse you have
given the world. I for one am deeply grateful to
you.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'Thank you very much for sending the Fortnightly
Leaflet with your history of the robin. It is a
charming paper—written charmingly and very
interesting.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson
‘Talking of this, my Sara, what d’ye think / (To ask the question is but waste of Ink) / Of
Harriet Martineau’s political novels? / Fine food, forsooth, for starving paupers’ hovels - / No
doubt, ’twould much improve the poor’s behaviour, / And make them happy in their low
conditions / To teach them all to disbelieve their Saviour / And make them infidel
Arithmeticians. / Were I woman, I should blush for shame / That such a thing should bear a
woman’s name. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘... [William] Roscoe’s “Butterfly's Ball” and Mrs. [Sarah] Trimmer’s “Flapsy and Pecksey” (which
I am glad to see so kindly mentioned in the Doctor [by Robert Southey]) are exactly the sort of
Beast stories which I think the wee ’uns may be the better for reading.’
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘...But I cannot agree with Mitford that the pronunciation of the Modern Greeks is even a clue to
that of the ancient occupants of the same country. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘I have been reading Von Raumer’s England. He speaks highly of the Table talk and of my father,
though some of the sentiments are at variance with his own.’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
'I should like to have three more copies of the
poem, if you will kindly send them. I give
sparingly—to those only who are able to
appreciate good poetry, and you give us the best
to be had these days. That imagination of the poet
which can bring back to us—can smite is—with
a memory of past scenes and experiences vivid as
reality itself, is a thing I never cease to wonder
at [...]. I get many thrills in your St. Thomas and
greatly admire that Dante-like ghostly
facetiousness of the Captain in his account of
India.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'Humourous [sic] & Pathetic. Worth reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Charming'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'March at S. Martin's Lodge Scarborough'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'June (-July with Winnie and Edith)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Our Village'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Colonel Enderby's Wife'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Les Femmes Savantes'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Diary of a Pilgrimage'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Essays on Pitt, E. [sic] of Chatham'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Church Lessons or Gladius Ecclesiae'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Gold Else'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Essay on Addison'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
'Mrs Molesworth, Christmas Tree Land'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
But when the morning came and we rode on, and the
beautiful land spread its high places, its secret
pastoral solitudes about us, and I sat by a spring
and ate my eggs and bread and cheese, and read
William of Tyre and watched the poor old thin
horse grazing.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
The tourist class in the 'Athenia' was a
distraction of wailing children and howling
winds. I dislike the sea anyway when it is
anything other than something blue that wraps
itself round islands. Yet as I lay in my bunk
between distasteful meals I read the Odyssey for
the first time in Butcher and Lang's translation;
and the roar and hiss of the waves was a part of
its music. I was so transported with delight that
I leapt up at intervals to walk about the narrow
cabin floor, in an ecstasy that had to be
expressed somehow, or choke me.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
Except Shakespeare, who grew from childhood as
part of myself, nearly every classic has come with
this same shock of almost intolerable enthusiasm:
Virgil, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Dante, Chaucer
and Milton and Goethe, Leopardi and Racine, Plato
and Pascal and St Augustine, they have appeared,
widely scattered through the years, every one like
a 'rock in a thirsty land', that makes the world
look different in its shadow.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Unknown
One can say of the more reticent British that, as
you come to know them, some are discovered and
some are found out. My father was of those who
are discovered. 'The Times' came to him
regularly, and he had a small shelf of books
which he read over and over, admitting a newcomer
now and then, after much deliberation. The whole
of George Borrow and of Charles Darwin, Hodson of
Hodson's Horse, Buckle's 'History of
Civilization', White's 'Selborne', Benvenuto
Cellini, and Sismondi's Italian Republics are
what I remember.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Stark Print: Book
There is a cold air coming off Labrador, but not
so bad as Syria. The sea is grey, exactly the
colour of the seagulls with the white under their
wings...I have the joy of the 'Odyssey': it made
me forget even the roll of the waves, such is the
triumph of beautiful words. It is a revelation; to
think that I reached 35 without reading it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
'dear hemingway, (i have cut off the top of thumb with a sickle and so cannot put down the capital
stop) thank you very much for the book on bull rings i have been absorbing instruction from it
ever since last night when I got it and shall shortly be able to talk like an aficionado'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have just seen the Pound pamphlet though Farrar & Rinehart never took the trouble to send
me a copy. I think it looks fine and is a tribute not only to Mr. Pound but to the generosity of its
writers.' Did I, by the bye, ever express to you my admiration for your HAMLET? It is really a
very great book, and my admiration is equally great. If you would tell your publishers to send
me copies of your works it would give me great pleasure and I might possibly be of use to them.
I ought to buy them myself but I never hear of them in Toulon so I can't.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have now had your manuscript for some days and have read it with a great deal of interest.'
Thence follows a page and a half of constructive and gentle criticism to this unidentified writer, and
an invitation to visit if on holiday in France.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Manuscript: Unknown
'I read both of your novels with pleasure and admiration for the handling—particularly the one
about the castle which I have lent to an appreciative American so that I can't remember—oh yes,
THEY CAME TO THE CASTLE. That seemed to me to be extremely skilfully worked out.' Thence
follow a few lines of comment on Bertram's subject matter.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have now read—but indeed I did a week or so ago—"Men Adrift" with a great deal of pleasure
—pleasure because it was fun reading it and being able to think that you have found a form that
is really suited to you and have managed your subject with a great deal of skill. It is certainly a
great advance on anything else you have ever done and I really congratulate you. The book is
full of good things, moving steadily forward altogether—and, if that progression of effect doesn't
end in final illumination that is, I suppose, because there is no illumination to be found in the
state of being adrift.' Hence follows a page of constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
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: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'This weeke after a long restraint, God was pleased to sett mee at liberty againe; I went abroad
now commonly againe to any of my friends & neighbours houses; in my restraint I read over
Meads [sic] "Clavis Apocalyptica".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Josselin Print: Book
'Every child was given a little volume called King
Edward's Realm, bound in imitation crimson
leather, which I found slow going. The fate of
books is strange. Perhaps it would be hard to get
a copy of it now though an immense number must
have been distributed through infant Britain. As
for reading, there was Little Folks, the Boy's Own
Paper, The Children of the New Forest, Fighting
the Flames, and plenty besides; but the book
appetite grew later.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
