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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Edmund Spenser

  

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Edmund Spenser : Fairy Queen, The

Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 18 February 1815: 'It is 11 o'clock. William has been reading the Fairy Queen - he has laid aside his Book and Mary has set about putting her nightcap.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Thomas Thompson, from a family of Lancashire weavers, grew up with tales of Robin Hood and the Black Hole of Calctta, as well as an abridged Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress. So when a clergyman asked him why he read the Bible, he innocently replied "that I liked the battle scenes". That answer got him in serious trouble'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 16 November 1801: '... [William] is now, at 7 o'clock, reading Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 18 November 1801: 'We sate in the house in the morning reading Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family     Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 24 November 1801: 'After tea Wm. read Spenser, now and then a little aloud to us.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene (Canto I)

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 6 December 1801: 'In the afternoon we sate by the fire: I read Chaucer aloud, and Mary read the first canto of The Fairy Queen.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hutchinson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 16 March 1802: 'After dinner I read him [William Wordsworth] to sleep. I read Spenser while he leaned upon my shoulder.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Prothalamium

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 25 April 1802: We spent the morning in the orchard -- read the Prothalamium of Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth     Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene (Canto I)

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 16 June 1802, 'I read the first Canto of the Fairy Queen to William.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 1 July 1802, 'In the evening ... we had a nice walk, and afterwards sate by a nice snug fire, and William read Spenser, and I read As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aenied, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

'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

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Mr Rishton read "The Faerie Queene" to Frances Burney and her sisters, "in which he is extremely delicate, omitting whatever, to the poet's great disgrace, has crept in that is improper for a woman's ear".'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Rishton      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading: "'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks. "'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen. "'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer. "'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Moll Neville      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

" ... Abraham Cowley ... found that reading Spenser in his mother's parlor 'made [him] a Poet as immediately as a Child is made an Eunuch.'"

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Abraham Cowley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

'I don't wonder that you are in such raptures with Spenser! What an imagination! What an invention! What painting! What colouring displayed throughout the works of that admirable author! and yet, for want of time, or opportunity, I have not read his "Fairy Queen" through in series, or at a heat, as I may call it'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Highmore      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

'I don't wonder that you are in such raptures with Spenser! What an imagination! What an invention! What painting! What colouring displayed throughout the works of that admirable author! and yet, for want of time, or opportunity, I have not read his "Fairy Queen" through in series, or at a heat, as I may call it'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Felicia Hemans to ?H. F. Chorley, 24 June 1830, describing visit to Wordsworth's home Rydal Mount: 'The whole of this morning, he [Wordsworth] kindly passed in reading to me a great deal from Spenser, and afterwards his own "Laodamia," my favourite "Tintern Abbey," and many of those noble sonnets which you, like myself, enjoy so much.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : unknown

'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.

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

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'She read enormously, finding time and energy we wonder how. A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though she did include some novels - Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's sensation-making "Vathek", in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold". "Childe Harold's" only rival in her poetic reading was "The Faerie Queene". That was a reckless undertaking for the height of the London season; she may not, like so many of us, have quite finished "The Faerie Queene".'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Fairie Queene, The

'Shelley reads the Fairy Queen aloud'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faery Queene

'This preoccupation with the sensuous form I experienced most obviously and acutely when I read with mounting excitement Spenser's "Faery Queen".'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'Construe ovid (117) & read a some cantos of Spenser - Shelley reads Seneca'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'Read Spenser (End of 9th canto) Shelley reads Seneca (143)'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Quene?]

'Read Spenser (End of 9th canto)'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Quene?]

'construe ovid - after dinner construe Ovid 100 lines - Finish 11 book of Spenser and read 2 Canto's of the third - Shelley reads seneca every day & all day (308)'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'After dinner read Spenser - read over the ovid to Jefferson & construe about ten lines more - read Spenser (10 Canto of 4 book)'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : [unknown]

'After tea S. reads Spencer aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'read Pliny and walk. S. reads a canto of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'S. reads Spencer aloud & finishes the first & begins the second book.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'Read Apuleius. S. reads Spencer aloud'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'S. reads Hist. de la philosophie Moderne. and Spencer aloud'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Shepheardes Calendar, The

'S. reads aloud 6 eclogues from the Shepherds Calender[sic]'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Shepheardes Calendar, The

'S. reads a part of the Shepherds Calender [sic] aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Fowre Hymnes

'Read Hymns - Epithalamion &c of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Epithalamion

'Read Hymns - Epithalamion &c of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 'Virgil's Gnat'

'S. reads to me Spencer's Virgil's Gnat'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 'Hymn of Heavenly Beautie'

'Till lately I have never read Spenser, and therefore was not personally acquainted with his beauties. Neither do I mean to say now that I have read his "Fairie Queen"; but having accidentally met with an extract from his "Hymn of Heavenly Love", a long poem, I went to Papa's study and read the whole poem, which is most exquisitely beautiful, and is perhaps equal to anything Milton ever wrote. [...] I was so much delighted with it that I read another, his "Hymne of Heavenly Beautie", Which in point of poetic excellence perhaps exceeds the other. [...] Papa's copy of his poems is a very old edition, prinnted in the time of Queen Elizabeth, to whom it is dedicated. The illuminations are very curious, and the engravings most laughable; the print is small, and the old words make it rather difficult to read.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Shore      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 'Mother Hubbard's Tale'

'This evening I read Spenser's poem called 'Mother Hubbard's Tale', a very long one. It is evidently a satire on the court and clergy, and a very bitter one too.' [Editors note: 'Then follow three pages of extracts from the above named poem, very accurately done'].

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Shore      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'I must own that Virgil's "Envy" and Spenser's "Cave of Error" are my aversion, as well as some other most exquisitely disgusting allegories. Our own Milton, I think, always keeps clear of this fault, and I cannot believe, in spite of Mr. Maturin, and Mr. Wilson, and Lord Byron, that it is true taste which tolerates it.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'I read Spenser these some mornings, while eating my breakfast. He is a dainty little fellow, as ever you saw: I propose that you and he shall be closely acquainted by and by.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Wednesday 23 January 1935: 'I am reading the Faery Queen [sic] -- with delight. I shall write about it.'

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

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Just now I opened Spencer, and the first Lines I saw were these.- "The noble Heart that harbors vertuous thought, And is with Child of glorious great intent, Can never rest, until it forth have brought Th' eternal Brood of Glory excellent -"

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'He was certainly a keen student of literature, as can be seen from some 1907-8 exercise books which show him working on the "Faerie Queene", at least ten Shakespeare plays and many other texts that were to be of use to him later'.

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

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'[James Mathias was on summer vacation and] when he came back my Father asked him what Books he had read - I read says he a strange Account of a Beast which however is dead, & I believe there are no more of them in England, it was a horrible one though with a long Tail, & was of the Serpent kind I think; he eat people up and [italics] churned [end italics] them into [italics] Gobbets [end italics] the Book says, - what the Devil Beast could this be says my Father? what was its name Jemmy? The [italics] Blatant Beast [end italics]. as I remember replied Mathias - he had been reading Spenser's Fairy Queen'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: James Mathias      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Shepheardes Calendar, The

'Nobody reads Spenser's Pastorals, and they are exquisitely pretty; the Story in his February of the Oak and the Breere, and the other in his May of the Fox and the Kid are admirable'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Robert Southey to Thomas Phillips Lamb, c. 26 September 1792: 'I have been attempting Euclid but without a master I could make no progress — perhaps disgust at the dry study contributed but I did not want perseverance — my brain was so confused with parallels horizontals triangles parallellograms & all the jargon of mathematical precision that after a fortnights hard study I fairly laid it on the shelf & took up my constant study Spenser.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Poems

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

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'Read a little "Faery Queene" also, but it is heavy, though with sweet lines occasionally.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser [?] : [unknown]

'Read some of Spencer in the morning, and learned it, then some of Hooker.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'C.E. Stansfield read a paper on Ed. Spenser & his times & the Faerie Queene. Readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson & H.M. Wallis'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'C.E. Stansfield read a paper on Ed. Spenser & his times & the Faerie Queene. Readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson & H.M. Wallis'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'C.E. Stansfield read a paper on Ed. Spenser & his times & the Faerie Queene. Readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson & H.M. Wallis'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'C.E. Stansfield read a paper on Ed. Spenser & his times & the Faerie Queene. Readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson & H.M. Wallis'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'She [Anne Isabella Milbanke] read enormously [...] A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though it did include some novels -- Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's [sic] sensation-making Vathek, in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, "Lord Byron's Childe Harold." Childe Harold's only rival in her poetic reading was The Faerie Queene.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : ?The Works of Mr Edmund Spenser

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1751:] 'I never was master of any edition of Spenser but Rowe's, which, upon my first reading it, appeared to be published in a very hasty and careless manner: a very great number of faults I could discover and correct, without comparing with any other edition. Some time since I borrowed the folio of 1609; but it was not till lately that I could get a sight of the first quarto of 1590, which was published in Spenser's lifetime: and I proposed this summer, if I should have life and health, to collate the three together, -- as indeed I have begun to do [discusses this editorial project and related issues further]'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1751: 'I never was master of any edition of Spenser but Rowe's, which, upon my first reading it, appeared to be published in a very hasty and careless manner: a very great number of faults I could discover and correct, without comparing with any other edition. Some time since I borrowed the folio of 1609; but it was not till lately that I could get a sight of the first quarto of 1590, which was published in Spenser's lifetime: and I proposed this summer, if I should have life and health, to collate the three together, -- as indeed I have begun to do [discusses this editorial project and related issues further]'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1751:] 'I never was master of any edition of Spenser but Rowe's, which, upon my first reading it, appeared to be published in a very hasty and careless manner: a very great number of faults I could discover and correct, without comparing with any other edition. Some time since I borrowed the folio of 1609; but it was not till lately that I could get a sight of the first quarto of 1590, which was published in Spenser's lifetime: and I proposed this summer, if I should have life and health, to collate the three together, -- as indeed I have begun to do [discusses this editorial project and related issues further]'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : 

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 8 May 1751:] 'All this while I have been hard at work upon [an edition of] Spenser; but to what purpose except my own private satisfaction? There, however, it will repay me: for every time I read I find new beauties in him; such fine moral sentiments, such height of colouring in his descriptions, such a tenderness when he touches any of the humane passions! -- Were but his language better understood, he must be admired by every one who has a a [italics]heart[end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : Sonnets

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 18 July 1754, on his practice of writing sonnets:] 'The reading of Spenser's Sonnets was the first occasion of my writing that species of little poems, and my first six were written in the same sort of stanza as all his and Shakespeare's are. But after that Mr Wray brought me acquainted with the Italian authors, who are the originals of that sort of poetry, and whose measures have more variety and harmony in them, -- ever since, I wrote in that stanza; drawing from the same fountain as Milton drew from'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : ?Prothalamion

'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      

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'I have been reading the "Faerie Queene" in Everymans both here and at home ever since I left you.... of course it has dull and even childish passages, but on the whole I am charmed [...] I am still busy with my "heavy winged Pegasus" as you call Spenser, and still find him delightful. He is a very lotus land, a garden of Proserpine to people who like pure romance and the "stretched metre of an antique song." [...] 'I am still at the Faerie Queene.... I now think it far too good a book to get in ordinary Everyman's...' [...] 'I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last" I almost wish he had lived to write six more books as he had hoped to do - so much have I enjoyed it. The two cantos of "Mutabilitie" with which it ends are perhaps the finest thing in it.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis      Print: Book

  

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Edmund Spenser, The Faery Queen'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good      Print: Book

  

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