'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis 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: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Henry James to Thomas Seregant Perry, 25 November 1883: "I shall thank you for the Senilia -- though I have been reading them all in German ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'(I am tempted, by the way, to say that 'On the Eve' is the finest novel I have ever read. I must lend it you. Its subtlety and restraint prevent it from ever being really popular.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell!
Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I have just read Turgenev?s Smoke. Man, we have more to learn in mere technique from Turgenev than from any other soul. He is simply unspeakable. I will ram this statement down your throat when I see you, with the book in front of us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
"'On the Eve' is more than a nice novel; it is a great novel. I think that if I could read it in Russian I should set it down as the greatest within my knowledge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Turgenev has forestalled you. & a bit to spare, in ?A Sportsman?s Sketches?, which you shall take home with you next time you come to London. These sketches are obviously records of things seen & heard by the author during his sporting tours, records devoid of literary artfulness, but chocked full of the art of observation, I know that you will be both delighted & edified by them, I read some of them a few years ago, & thought they were tame and lacked form. Now I know better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
His reading this summer included much Browning, Turgenev's Smoke and Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age ('which surely is the most beautiful book published for many years').
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'I wanted to thank you for the volume you've sent me. The preface is jolly good let me tell you. It is wonderfully good--and true. Thanks to you both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Have you seen the last vol of Mrs Garnett's Turgeniev? There's a story there. "Three Portraits" really fine. Also "Enough" worth reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical
'Did you ever read Turgenev's "Letters of a Sportsman?" If you never did, do so at once: they are the finest things that were ever written.
I would rather have written "Bielshin Prairie" than have done anything else in the realm of human achievements'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871):
'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871):
'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'I have an idea dear Jack that any comment on your work can be nothing by now but ( in the words of the Pole in "[A] Lear of the Steppes"), "perfectly superfluous chatter". '
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'The truth of the matter is that it is you who have opened my eyes to the value and quality of Turgeniev. As a boy I remember reading "Smoke" in a Polish translation (a feuilleton of some newspaper) and the "Gentlefolks" in French.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: newspaper supplement/magazine ('feuilleton')
'The truth of the matter is that it is you who have opened my eyes to the value and quality of Turgeniev. As a boy I remember reading "Smoke" in a Polish translation (a feuilleton of some newspaper) and the "Gentlefolks" in French.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'In the vol entitled "Lear of the Steppes" only the first story is really worth reading. The other two ["Acia" and "Faust"] Turg[enev] wrote in French I believe first and they are not good specimens of his art.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I ordered a Russian grammar from home. For some reason nearly all the translations of Russian writers in those days, at least in the Windlestone library [at Windlestone Hall, Durham, the Eden family's country seat], were into French. The single exception was Constance Garnett's brilliant translations of Turgenev. In my last visits to Windlestone and encouraged by my father, I had broken into the Russian novelists who soon proved a joyous revelation to me. It was then that I made up my mind to read them in their own language. Even an adjutant could find time heavy on his hands in winter in Flanders. My plan was to snatch at least an hour's study every day and in addition to learn by heart some grammar exercise every morning while shaving. I persevered for many weeks but then had to accept disappointment at my slow rate of progress.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Anthony Eden Print: Book
'Most army hospitals acquired a varied collection of
books and this ward was no exception. With plenty of
time to pass in bed I naturally spent a lot of it
reading, and browsed on a literary diet ranging from
Le Queux and Edgar Wallace, to Emily Brontë and
Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Geoffrey Ratcliff Husbands Print: Book
Ford on recalling when at the age of seven he met Turgenev at his grandfather Ford Madox Brown's
studio: 'I was conscious simply of a singular, compassionate smile that still seems to me to look up
out of the pages of his books when—as I constantly do, and always with a sense of amazement—I
re-read them.' Ford also also wrote that he re-read him when he was depressed—perhaps precisely
because his personality still felt like an antidote to intimidation [...]'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
