Record Number: 12545
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'My pal was a typical Cockney recidivist who sold fruit on a coster's barrow between convictions and went crook when sales dwindled to vanishing point... I was attracted to him in the first place by his amazing knowledge of Dickens. He spent every moment of leisure reading Dickens and had, in the course of a dozen or more years in prison, read little else. There was no single scrap of Dickens' work that he hadn't read, not once, or twice, but many times. Mention any character you liked and little B- would give you a verbal picture of him and his setting in the story in which he appeared. More than once at exercise he has walked behind me spouting whole pages dealing with his favourite characters, accompanying his copious quotations with a running commentary on their virtues and failings in a vein so humorous that I have more than once had to fall out to avoid startling the whole exercise by going off into peals of laughter.'
Century:1900-1945
Date:unknown
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:other location: in prison
Type of Experience(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Adult (18-100+)
Gender:Male
Date of Birth:n/a
Socio-Economic Group:Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation:costermonger and prisoner
Religion:n/a
Country of Origin:England
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
n/a
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:[works]
Genre:Fiction
Form of Text:Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Publication Detailsn/a
Provenanceborrowed (institution library)
presumably from prison library
Source Information:
Record ID:12545
Source:Stuart Wood
Editor:n/a
Title:Shades of the Prison House
Place of Publication:London
Date of Publication:1932
Vol:n/a
Page:395
Additional Comments:
n/a
Citation:
Stuart Wood, Shades of the Prison House, (London, 1932), p. 395, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=12545, accessed: 28 April 2025
Additional Comments:
None