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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Record Number: 1329


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

unknown

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown


Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Philip Inman

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1892

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

poor background, became a Labour MP

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:

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Title:

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

Genre:

Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

cheap reprint edition

Provenance

owned


Source Information:

Record ID:

1329

Source:

Print

Author:

Jonathan Rose

Editor:

n/a

Title:

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Place of Publication:

New Haven

Date of Publication:

2001

Vol:

n/a

Page:

49

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 49, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=1329, accessed: 28 March 2024


Additional Comments:

See Philip Inman, 'No Going Back' (London, 1952) pp.35-47

   
   
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