Read some passages from Shelley?s Revolt of Islam before I was up. He is a great poet; but we acknowledge him to be a great poet as we acknowledge Spenser to be so, & do not love him for it. He resembles Spenser in one thing, & one thing only, that his poetry is too immaterial for our sympathies to enclasp it firmly. It reverses the lot of human plants: its roots are in the air, not earth! ? But as I read him on, I may reverse this opinion.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'As a circuit preacher Pyke introduced farm people to Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoy. His own reading ranged from Shakespeare and Boswell to Shelley's poems and George Henry Lewes's History of Philosophy. He was even prepared to acknowledge the "genius" of Jude the Obscure, though he would have preferred a happy ending'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Pyke Print: Book
'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
'Garratt escaped [from factory life] to an evening course in English literature, where he felt "like a child that becomes ecstatic with a fireworks display". Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson "swamped the trivialities of life and gave my ego a fulness and strength in the lustre of which noble conceptions were born and flourished'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
'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 Lambb. 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: Unknown
'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
'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
'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: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White 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, 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
'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
Byron to P. B. Shelley, 26 April 1821: 'I read [The] Cenci ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
'Daughter of the editor father, [Rose Macaulay] was given a copy of the complete works of Tennyson when she was eight and remembers knowing it "practically by heart"... Shelley, too, she found "an intoxicant". A complete works of Shelley joined her Tennyson a year later, starting a fascination with the poet which she remembers in a letter to Gilbert Murray in January 1945: "I, like you, read Shelley's Prometheus very young... I was entirely carried away by it; as I was, indeed, by all Shelley... Of course, I didn't understand all Prometheus; but enough to be fascinated".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay 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
'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: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton 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
Alice Meynell recalls childhood reading: 'In quite early childhood I lived upon Wordsworth ... When I was about twelve I fell in love with Tennyson, and cared for nothing else until, at fifteen, I discovered Keats and then Shelley.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance...with Shelley, whose 'Queen Mab' at first repelled me from the threshold of his ediface."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse 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
'No national commentator sympathised with working-class culture so well as Wilfred Pickles, BBC newsreader and stonemason's son. But even he admitted that the hours he spent in the public library, reading Shelley, Keats, Shaw and Galsworthy, represented a desperate breakout from the stultifying provincialism of his native Halifax.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Pickles Print: Book
'We think he is mistaken in every respect. His work does not teach the human heart, but insults it...His precepts are conveyed in the cries of Bedlam; and the outrage of a wretched old maniac, long passed the years of appetite, perpetrated on the person of his miserable child, under motives that are inconsistent with reason, and circumstances impossible in fact, is presented to us as a mirror in which we may contemplate a portion, of least, of our common nature! How far this disposition to rake in the lazar-house of humanity for examples of human life and action, is consistent with a spirit of for the real faults and infirmities of human nature, on which Mr Shelly [sic] lays so much stress, we may discover in one of his own absurd allusions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Scott 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
'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
'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
"'On first reading Shelley", he writes, "I told myself that this was a new kind of verse, such as I had not known existed." Now it was the VERSE, not the argument, which had an effect upon Masefield which he describes as "electric and ecstatic", and he tells how excited he was by the CONSTRUCTION of "The Revolt of Islam"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'my mother arrived in England with a great respect for culture, and eager to learn all she could. We find her struggling to read Browning and Tennyson and Shelley; battering her way with pride and tenacity through "La Petite Fadette"... But with all her respect for education...learning was never her strong point'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maud du Puy Print: Unknown
'We are reading Carlyle's "Cromwell" and "Aurora Leigh" again in the evenings. I am still in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", with Shelley's Poems and snatches of "Natural History".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) 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
'Hookham calls here & Shelley reads his romance to him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Shelley is very unwell - he reads one canto of Queen Mab to me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown, owned by author
'I read part of Alexy. I repeated one of my own poems.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Zastrozzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir 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
'read Shelley's pamphlet.'
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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'S. finishes reading his poem aloud. - read from the German theatre'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Copy S's critique on Rhododaphne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Finish the Aminta - Read Livy - Transcribe the Symposium - Read the Revolt of Islam'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Friday Sept. 16th. Rise at nine -- Breakfast -- Read Rasselas -- & De l'origine de l'inegalite
[d]es Hommes' [...] Voisey at tea [...] Departs about 1/2 past ten -- Mary retires Shelley is
writing to Papa & I am readin[g] the notes to Queen Mab when we hear Stones at the Window --
Look out & there is Charles.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'Monday Oct -- 10th. Read Political Justice [...] sit up till twelve [...] Read through Zastrozzi --
by Shelley.'
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
'Sunday Oct 31st [...] Get up at nine. Breakfast. Read a Canto of Queen Mab & Louvet's
Memoirs. I am much interested in Louvet -- but like all French men he is so intolerably full of
himself & never lets the reader find out the merit he may possess [goes on to discuss this text
further, before recording activities later in day] [...] Sit up till eleven reading Louvet's
Memoirs. I never remember be more interested in any book [sic]. So many fine instances of
individual republican spirits displayed -- so many generous Women -- such constancy in
misfortune.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - The Revolt of Islam - 1st Canto of Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Copy S's Eclogue - Read Horace'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Saturday Nov. 11th. [...] Read the 1st. Act of Prometheus unbound.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read Livy - write out Shelley's poem'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'[Tuesday] July 24th. Shelley comes to breakfast. Read Adonais.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'Sunday June [...] 19th. [...] Read the Revolt of Islam with M.G. [i.e. friend Chretien-Hermann
Gambs]'.
[readings from this text also recorded in journal entries for 20 and 26 June; 3, 6, 7, 10, 11,
17, 24 July; 4, 7, 18, 28, 29 August; 3, 4 September 1825, some in
company with Gambs].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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
'Copy S's Tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Copy Shelleys Prometheus - work - read Beaumont & Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Read Horace - work - finish copying Peter Bell which is sent'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning to William Johnson Fox, ?28 March 1833:
'You must not think me too incroaching, if I make the getting back [of] "Rosalind & Helen" an
excuse for calling on you some evening -- the said R. & H has I observe been well thumbed &
sedulously marked by an acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of
love.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Muratori - Greek - Queen's Letter - K.[ing] Swellfoot'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'Read Prometheus Unbound - papers - & Indicators'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
'Copy the Witch of Atlas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Septimus Moulton-Barrett, 6 February 1840:
''Tell [Papa] too what I forgot to tell, that I have finished Shelley's volumes which, if it were not for the here & there defilement of his atrocious opinions [...] would have very deeply
delighted me. As it is there are traces of my pencil "[italics]in a passion[end italics]" as dear
Georgie [brother] would say. [goes on to criticise Shelley's translations from Plato in
particular]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'copy for S. - he reads to me the tale of a Tub'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
'read S's Adonais.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Unknown, editors mention that it was the poem printed on its own
'he does not like any poetry except Percy's Ancient ballads and Shelley's translation of Homer's Hymn to mercury and the Cyclops - but he likes romances any marvellous tales & is a great story teller'
[letter to Maria Gisborne; subject is Percy Shelley junior]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley Print: Book
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844:
'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man
who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are
poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the
"Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the
eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844:
'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man
who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are
poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the
"Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the
eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844:
'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man
who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are
poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the
"Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the
eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844:
'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man
who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are
poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the
"Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the
eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood 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
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
'Talking of books, we have lately had a literary Sun shine forth upon us here, before whom our former luminaries must hide their diminished heads - a Mr Shelley, of University College, who lives upon arsenic, aqua-fortis, half-an-hour's sleep in the night, and is desperately in love with the memory of Margaret Nicholson. He hath published, what he terms, the Posthumous Poems, printed for the benefit of Mr Peter Finnerty; which, I am grieved to say, though stuffed full of treason, are extremely dull; but the author is a great genius, and, if he be not clapped up in Bedlam or hanged, will certainly prove one of the sweetest swans on the tuneful margin of the Charwell'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Print: Book, Unknown
Tuesday 28 February 1939: 'I have just read [Shelley's] Mont Blanc, but cant make it "compose": clouds perpetually over lapping [sic]. If a new poem, what should I say? I think a great idea somewhere; but the language so nebulous, or rather words overlapping, like ripples, each effacing the other, partly: & a general confusion results.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 22 June 1940: 'On the down at Bugdean I found some green glass tubes [...] And I read my Shelley at night. How delicate & pure & musical & uncorrupt he & Coleridge read, after the left wing group [...] how they compact; & fuse, & deepen.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 19 September 1845:
'I began to write last saturday to thank you for all the delight, I had in Shelley [...] Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not in my copy & were, so, quite new to me. "Marianne's Dream" I had been curious about to no end -- I only know it now.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 19 September 1845:
'I began to write last saturday to thank you for all the delight, I had in Shelley [...] Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not in my copy & were, so, quite new to me. "Marianne's Dream" I had been curious about to no end -- I only know it now.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 1 October 1845:
'I have read to the last line of your Rosicrucian; & my scepticism grew & grew through Hume's process of doubtful doubts, & at last rose to the full stature of incredulity .. for I never could believe Shelley capable of such a book, (call it a book!) not even with a flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution. Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date of the book, & to get up & travel to the other end of the room to confront it with other dates in the "Letters from Abroad" [...] & on comparing these dates in these two volumes before my eyes, I find that your Rosicrucian was "printed for Stockdale" in [italics]1822[end italics], & that Shelley [italics]died in the July of the same year[end italics]!! And unless the "Rosicrucian" went into more editions than one, & dates here from a latter one [...] the innocence of the great poet stands proved -- now does'nt it? For nobody will say that he published such a book in the last year of his life, in the maturity of his genius, & that Godwin's daughter helped him in it!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett [sister], 16-19 December 1850, on 18 December:
'We have been reading together Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in the evenings. Most beautiful and pathetic. I read aloud, Robert looking over the page -- & we talked & admired & criticised every separate stanza. Now, we are going in like manner through Shelley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
'His letters [PB Shelley's in relation to his desertion of his wife] were really curious. A more singular display of the total want of all moral feeling under the guise of liberality and enlightened sentiment I should suppose had never before been exhibited. The Cause was heard in the Chancellor's private room out of compassion to Mr Shelley and his family. The account which appeared in the papers must have been written by himself, or his friend Mr Hunt of the "Examiner" who was present, and they went so far that the Chancellor intimated that he would have a rehearing of the cause in public and they immediately became silent'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly
'During Preparation one wild autumn evening in St Monica's gymnasium, when the wind shook the unsubstantial walls and a tiny crescent of moon, glimpsed through a skylight in the roof, scudded in and out of the flying clouds, I first read Shelley's "Adonais", which taught me in the most startling and impressive fashion of my childhood's experience to perceive beauty embodied in literature, and made me finally determine to become the writer that I had dreamed of being ever since I was seven years old.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
'He became especially interested in Shelley [and felt he could hear his 'music' in the Dunsden area] The "music" which he heard must have been that of "The Revolt of Islam", for he discovered in January 1912 from a biography of Shelley that "The Revolt" had been composed in a boat "under the beech groves" not far away. This poem was to remain in his mind for the rest of his life, providing him with the theme and title of 'Strange Meeting' in 1918'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Owen seems to have started reading Swinburne in earnest in 1916. When he returned to the front in 1918, knowing that he would kill and probably be killed, he took volumes of both Shelley and Swinburne with him, but after he had been in action he sent the Shelley back to Shrewsbury, keeping only Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads", the one book of poetry still in his kit at his death'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
This book has marginal marks and dried acanthus leaves, with the MS note: "Acanthus leaves from Shelley's grave. Rome. Nov 21 1886".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
'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 Print: Book
'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: Members of the XII book Club 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 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
‘Bosch put heavies into the camp now and then. I was busy in a small way most of the day, in the afternoon read Shelley, and Wells’ “[The] Country of the Blind” with equal pleasure [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
'Meeting held at 68 Northcourt Avenue
20th III 1935
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting were read & approved
[...]
4. The Program of anonymous readings was then proceeded with[;] members reading in the
order in which they sat round the room. An interval of about 2 minutes at the end of each
piece was allowed for cogitation at the end of which the reader anounced the authors name &
the work from which he had read. Identification proved unexpectedly dificult[.] No one reading
was identified by everyone & the highest scorer only guessed eight authors & 4 & ½ works
Reader Author Work
E. B. Castle Plato Phaedo
M. S. W. Pollard R. Browning Pictures in Florence
E. Goadby Saml. Butler Notes
M. E. Robson Flecker Hassan
R. H. Robson Belloc Eyewitness
E. C. Stevens M. Arnold Self dependance
E. D. Brain B. Shaw Pre. to Back to Methuselah
M. Castle T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus
A. Rawlings R. Browning Pheidippides
J. Rawlings G. Eliot Middlemarch
E. B. Smith Lewis Carroll Phantasmagoria
F. E. Reynolds Tennyson Locksley Hall
S. A. Reynolds E. B. Browning Lady Geraldine’s Courtship
H. R. Smith Chas. Kingsley Westward Ho
F. E. Pollard Shelley Prometheus Unbound'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of
Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given
by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of
Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given
by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of
Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given
by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth T. Alexander
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of
Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given
by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis
'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'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard
'With Shelley I shared the sadness of human frailty. Except for some of his shorter poems, Browning was too involved for me, while I restricted my reading of Shakespeare to his Sonnets. But the most ravishing of all was Keats. While others gave stimulus to mind and emotion, Keats was like champagne to the senses and kept the joyous bubbles winking at the brim.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt 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]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore
'... I read seriously only on week-ends.... "Comus" being finished, its place was taken by
Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" which I got half through. It is an amazing work. I don't know
how to describe it to you; it is more wild & out of the world than any poem I ever read, and
contains more wonderful descriptions. Shelley had a great genius, but his carelessness about
rhymes, metre, choice of words etc, just prevents him being as good as he might be. To me,
when you're in the middle of a fine passage and come to a "cockney" rhyme like "ruin" and
"pursuing", it spoils the whole thing - makes it vulgar and grotesque. However some parts are
so splendid that I could forgive him anything. I am now, through the week, reading Scott's
"Antiquary".... I am very pleased with it...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis 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
‘Shelley is a wash out here, as a general thing. I will try Keats next. But W. W.
and R. B. really are the two. Please don’t send me any more for a bit. And then
s’il vous plait, and by your leave, don’t you think 1 vol of Pepys Diary a good
idea? But you must guess at my gratitude for all these gifts.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
