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

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Christopher Marlowe

  

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Christopher Marlowe : Edward II

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander

" 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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander

" 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

  

Christopher Marlowe : 

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : [unknown]

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Jew of Malta, The

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : 

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus

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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus

[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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Tambourlaine

[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

  

Christopher Marlowe : [unknown]

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : unknown

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus

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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Edward II

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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Edward II

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : 

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Complete Works

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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus

'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

  

Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus

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     

  

Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus

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      

  

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