'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
'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 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
'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
'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
'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
[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
'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
'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
'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
" ... 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
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
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
'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
'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
'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
'This evening read again Macaulay's Introduction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] 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
'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
'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 - 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
'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
'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
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
'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
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, 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
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
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
'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
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
'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?
'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
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
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
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
'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
'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
(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
'June (-July with Winnie and Edith)'
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
'Essay on Addison'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
