Record Number: 34025

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Do you read H. G. Wells's vaticinations which are somewhat faliderol [sic] in the "Daily Mail"? Well there' some—a good deal of truth in them,and the reading classes in England will have to pull themselves together—or what? [...] These are uncomfortable subjects but I've nothing literary to write about. I wasn't well enough to go and see my literary and journal friends on Tuesday as usual, and so feel out of what's doing. "[In] Cotton Wool" is on the table and my sick wife who has not read a book these nine months, has taken it up and, I see, is halfway through it. She says she doesn't like it but something compels her to go on reading it. I may be able to read it in some future time: just now I'm writing, not reading and am turning out a few articles.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 May 1912 and 16 May 1912

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

city: London
specific address: 40 St. Luke's Road, West London

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:

William Henry Hudson

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

4 Aug 1841

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Field naturalist and author

Religion:

Protestant (Anglican) in childhood only

Country of Origin:

Argentina

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

H. G. Wells

Title:

[articles in the Daily Mail]

Genre:

Essays / Criticism, Politics

Form of Text:

Print: Newspaper

Publication Details

Daily Mail (May and June 1912) articles subsequently repr. as "What the Worker Wants: The Daily Mail Enquiry," Wells and others. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

34025

Source:

Print

Author:

William Henry Hudson

Editor:

Denis Shrubsall

Title:

The Unpublished Letters of W. H. Hudson, the First Literary Environmentalist, 1841-1922

Place of Publication:

Lewiston, N.Y.

Date of Publication:

2006

Vol:

2

Page:

464

Additional Comments:

Letter from Hudson to Margaret Brooke, Dowager Ranee of Sarawak, Sunday, 16 May 1912, 40 St. Luke's Road, W. London

Citation:

William Henry Hudson, Denis Shrubsall (ed.), The Unpublished Letters of W. H. Hudson, the First Literary Environmentalist, 1841-1922, (Lewiston, N.Y., 2006), 2, p. 464, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=34025, accessed: 04 May 2024

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Additional Comments:

Because this piece of evidence includes reading, non-reading, intention to read, and observation of another's reading, it is cited here in detail so as to be recoverable. The novel would presumably be "In Cotton Wool"(1912) by William Babington Maxwell (1866-1938), a son of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and himself a satirical novelist, and was possibly sent on by Margaret Brooke, who shared many books with Hudson. The missed Tuesday meeting would have been with the publisher's reader Edward Garnett whose literary lunches at the Mont Blanc restaurant in Soho,attented by Galsworthy Conrad and others, were where shared reading and work in progress were discussed.