Record Number: 32433

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Italian quite comes up to K's promises about its easiness and on Sunday I read the first 200 lines of Dante with much success. By the end of term I should be able to read it as easily as French.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 4 Feb 1917 and 19 Mar 1917

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

Great Bookham
Surrey
'Gastons'

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

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Clive Staples Lewis

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

29 Nov 1898

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Student

Religion:

Church of England

Country of Origin:

Northern Ireland

Country of Experience:

England

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

This was part of Lewis's studies, so I think Mr Kirkpatrick was with him and guiding his reading.

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Dante Alighieri

Title:

Divine Comedy

Genre:

Other religious, History, Poetry, Autobiog / Diary, Politics, Philosophy, Epic poem written in the Italian vernacular, popular culture, classical tradition

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

In the original Italian

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

32433

Source:

Print

Author:

C. S. Lewis

Editor:

Walter Hooper

Title:

C. S. Lewis Collected Letters

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

2000

Vol:

1

Page:

275

Additional Comments:

From a letter to his father, 8 February 1917. 'K' is his tutor, William Kirkpatrick. Hooper explains in a note (p.264): 'It was further decided, as Jack mentioned in the letter to his father of 8 February, that if all his ideas about Oxford "fell through", he would try for the Foreign Office. For this reason Mr Kirkpatrick planned for him to learn Italian, German and Spanish.'

Citation:

C. S. Lewis, Walter Hooper (ed.), C. S. Lewis Collected Letters, (London, 2000), 1, p. 275, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=32433, accessed: 03 May 2024

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Additional Comments:

The date range begins precisely with the 4th February, which was a Sunday in 1917. It ends with Lewis's final day in Great Bookham. The book may have belonged to either of them, or it may have been borrowed from a library. I have marked the provenance 'unknown', but I think ownership the more likely option. I would expect an edition with critical apparatus - but not with an English translation, because of a comment Lewis makes later to Arthur Greeves: '... I am reading Dante's "Purgatorio" in the Temple Classics edition with a crib on the opposite page. So 'ave the mighty fallen.' (Letter to Greeves, 6? October 1918, v.1, p.403)