Switch to English Switch to French

The Open University  |   Study at the OU  |   About the OU  |   Research at the OU  |   Search the OU

Listen to this page  |   Accessibility

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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Ernest Renan

  

Click check box to select all entries on this page:

 


  

Ernest Renan : Life of Jesus

'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

  

Joseph Ernest Renan : unknown

" ... [Henry James] would [after 1872] be a close reader of Renan ... whom he later met."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : ?tudes d?histoire religieuse

'In the evening read Renan "Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse" aloud to G.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud]      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : Histoire g?n?rale et syst?me compar? des langues s?mitiques

'Reading Renan's Histoire des Langues Semitiques. Ticknor's Spanish Literature'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.]      Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

  

Ernest Renan : Averroes et l'Averroisme

'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

  

Ernest Renan : Cahiers de Jeunesse

Virginia Stephen to Violet Dickinson, 25 December 1906: 'I am reading now a book by Renan called his Memories of Childhood [Cahiers de Jeunesse, 1906]: O my word it is beautiful -- like the chime of silver bells [...] I think it a virtue in the French language that it submits to prose, whereas English curls and knots and breaks off in short spasms of rage. Also I am reading my dear Christina Rossetti [...] the first of our English poetesses [...] Then I am reading your Keats, with the pleasure of one handling great luminous stones. I rise and shout in ecstacy, and my eyes brim with such pleasure that I must drop the book and gaze from the window. It is a beautiful edition.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : St Paul

Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 8 January 1935: 'We had a children's party and I judged the clothes. All the mothers gazed, and I felt like -- who's the man in the bible --? Which by the way, I have bought and am reading. And Renan. And the New Testament; so don't call me heathen in future.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : St Paul

Tuesday 1 January 1935: 'I had a lovely old years walk yesterday [...] & then in to Lewes to take the car to Martins [garage], & then home, & read St Paul & the papers [...] I am reading the Acts of the Apostles. At last I am illuminating that dark spot in my reading.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse

'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen      Print: Book

  

Joseph Ernest Renan : Vie de Jesus

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

  

Joseph Ernest Renan : The Apostles

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

  

Ernest Renan : St Paul

'Took up Renan's "St Paul" as I was dressing, and read a little. A piece of epistle in smaller type caught my eye as I was closing the book: "Graces a Dieu pour son ineffable don."'

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

  

Ernest Renan : Histoire du Peuple d'Israel

'[...]the Old Testament (Psalms almost by heart] and Renan's "Histoire du Peuple d'Israel" was the sum of my knowledge of Jewry until the year 1917, an ignorance which Providence was pleased to mitigate for me in middle life.'

[In a footnote Storrs adds 'I read him [Renan] again in Jerusalem: a little out of date but very stimulating ...]'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : unknown

'I am reading the Renan book and am fascinated with it. It is really a beautiful book. I daresay I shall finish it before I get to London and will post it back to you. You ought to read it — it's a comfort to come across anything so distinguished.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell      Print: Book

  

Ernest Renan : Histoire du peuple d'Israël

'Perfectly delicious bright warm day. Sat on deck in a hot sun, pitching our tents near the L[amont]s with whom we are making friends. Began Renan's "History of the Jews". Gertrude Bell then read this work over a period of two and a half weeks until 2 February 1898 after which she makes no further reference to it in her diary,

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell      Print: Book

  

Click check box to select all entries on this page:

 

   
   
Green Turtle Web Design