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

Reading Experience Database UK

Historical image of readers

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√	Century of Experience	Evidence	Name of Reader / Listener / Reading Group	Author of Text	Title of Text	Form of Text

	1850-1899	A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of 'Robinson' read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up t...	anon	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1850-1899	A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he heard a chapter of 'Robinson' read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up t...	anon	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1850-1899	'Robinson Crusoe an English book -- and only the English could have accepted it as adult literature: comforted by feeling that the life of adventure could be led by a man...	Edward Morgan Forster	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1850-1899	'I have been reading "Robinson Crusoe". It is a splendid story. But I think Robinson need not have stayed so long on the island. He made a boat and hoisted a sail, and I ...	Andrew J.C.	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1850-1899	'I tell you it [Robinson Crusoe] is a grand book . . . I am reading it a second time, and I think I like it better than I did at first. Every boy should get it. You know ...		Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'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 a...	Philip Inman	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Ro...	Patricia Beer	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'[Robinson Crusoe] was Thomas Jordan's favorite book, read through in one sitting at age eleven. The promise of "faraway places fired my imagination" and ultimately inspi...	Thomas Jordan	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, Th...	Daphne du Maurier	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'every day Spike Mays ran to his East Anglia school, where he studied "Robinson Crusoe", "Gulliver's Travels" and "Tales from Shakespeare".'	Spike Mays	Daniel Defoe	"Robinson Crusoe"	Print: Book
	1900-1945	[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled pai...	questionaire respondent	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'W.J. Brown was introduced to literature by "Robinson Crusoe", "She", "The Last of the Mohicans", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", and he never moved far beyond tha...	William John Brown	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'Until then, all the books I possessed had been children's annuals and the like. Except for "Robinson Crusoe", very few of the children's classics had come my way. I had ...	Norman Nicholson	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'[report by Mrs Ward of the library at her Passmore Edwards Settlement] boys were sitting hunched up over "Masterman Ready", or the ever-adored "Robinson Crusoe"; girls w...	boys at the Passmore Edwards Settlement	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'Robinson Crusoe an English book -- and only the English could have accepted it as adult literature: comforted by feeling that the life of adventure could be led by a man...	Edward Morgan Forster	Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book
	1900-1945	'One young man, a collier . . . was seen reading the war news to a group of men just up out of the pit. The newspaper had been passed on by a friend in the incoming shift...		Daniel Defoe	Robinson Crusoe	Print: Book

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