I have finished Dr. Clark?s Discourse. It is very clever: but as all metaphysical discourses on scriptural subjects, must be, - seeking only to convince the human reason, it is unconvincing. At least this is true of one or two material parts, where even I have detected fallacies. Dr. Card?s sermon on the Athanasian creed, is bound up in the same volume; & I have read it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'When young, Frederick Rogers read not only the Bible as a thriller ("the men and women of the sacred books were as familiar to me as the men and women of Alexander Dumas"), but also Pilgrim's Progress: "There is a dark street yet in East London along which I have run with beating heart lest I should meet any of the evil things Bunyan so vividly described".'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'At 12 Marianna and I went upstairs. She sat sewing and I reading aloud to her the first 3 or 4 pages of the M.S. Lectures on physiology Dr Scudamore lent me 10 days ago. The writing so bad we could not get on very fast. Both of us uninterested.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Manuscript: Sheet
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
'George Scott left school and the boys' weeklies behind at fifteen: in barely a year he had absorbed enough Shaw, Wells, Dos Passos and (secondhand) Marx to lecture his parents on the evils of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Scott Print: Book
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
'["In A Nursery in the Nineties" (1935)] Eleanor Farjeon (b.1881) ... recreates her identificatory enthusiam as she read "The Three Musketeers", which enabled her to step outside the bounds even of male, let alone female, notions of propriety.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Farjeon Print: Book
'Robert Boyle being made to "read the state adventures of Amadis de Gaulle and other fabulous stories" which met a "restless fancy, then made more susceptible of any impressions by an unemployed pensiveness" and accustomed his thoughts to such a habitude of roving, that he [had] scarce ever been their quiet master since.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Boyle Print: Unknown
'She rejects even "good" books if she finds them tedious or ling-winded, finding unreadable Hooker's "extremely good" Laws of ecclesiastical polity and the "very profound learning" of "Dr Shuckford's Connection".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'[Charlie] Lahr lent [Bonar] Thompson Andre Gide and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". "It was wonderful for me to feel that I belonged to the elect who had read these giants of the future", wrote Thompson, who credited Lahr with introducing him to "writers of whom I should not otherwised have heard until years later". The difficulty was that "As soon as authors did become well known, Charlie had done with them. He felt, I suppose, that they had been bought over, or had taken to writing for the mob, else why were they popular with the wrong kind of readers?".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bonar Thompson Print: Book
[Smith describes evening activities while working as the private printer of Dr D.]
'By the middle of March 1831, I had completed the first volume, amounting to above four hundred pages, of the Doctor's book. So far as I was capable of finding, it was an admirable work, profound in thought, simple in style, and full of matter, though somewhat disfigured by virulent remarks upon Methodism and Dissent in all forms.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Manby Smith Manuscript: manuscript of book
Henry James to William Dean Howells, 13 January 1875: "I have been staying at Mrs. Owen Wister's and having Fanny Kemble read Calderon for me tete a tete of a morning."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]:
'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Read "The Count of Monte Cristo" (abridged) which is simply superb. Bought "Song of Bernadette" at last.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry James to Sarah Butler Wister, 21 December 1902: ' [...] as for the "Morgesons" and "Two Men," I read them long years ago (the first in queer green paper covers) when they originally appeared [...] I seem to remember even having "noticed" the second (probably in the "Nation" and very badly).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Henry James to Sarah Butler Wister, 21 December 1902: ' [...] as for the "Morgesons" and "Two Men," I read them long years ago (the first in queer green paper covers) when they originally appeared [...] I seem to remember even having "noticed" the second (probably in the "Nation" and very badly).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
[at Englefield Green] 'I have finished Pulci there, and read aloud the "Chateau D'If" to G.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'Read Dr Sandford's lecture on Good Friday.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole
'Many thanks for the cuttings on higher criticism. I can't help thinking that this movement is larely the result of trying to reduce (as I tried to do a few days ago!) Christianity to a comprehensible, logical system of ethics, rather than trying to realize that wonderful communion with God which must always be its source of faith, hope, love, and strength.
'Religion would cease to be divine if it were capable of being compressed into the narrow limits of human comprehension; isn't that right?
'I am afraid I greatly prefer Dr Dale's book to Bishop Westcott's. It is so much easier to understand. Westcott is very well for Sundays, but rather exacting for a tired week-day brain!
'The Bishop has returned from the Seychelles and is acting as our chaplin. He is a peculiar man, but I believe he is a very good one.
'I am, your affectionate son.
'P.S. I find I have got a copy of Gore's Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, with your name in it. May I stick to it? I like it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'Reading a book by Alexr Dumas fils called "Antonine", a stupid book in my opinion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'I have omitted, of late, to set down the titles of - for want of a better name I must call them - books, that I have been reading these past months; chiefly because they are of such utter offal that there is no use in remembering so much as their names. Madame Pichler's "Siege of Vienna" ...; a life of Walter Scott, by one Allen, advocate, ... In truth the book is very presumptuous and very stupid; yet it is far excelled in both these respects by another I am reading now, a life of Cowper, by Dr Memes (bookseller's hack literator of that name). Not that the writer is without genius; for he has succeeded in making a book as repulsive as it is possible for a book giving anything like a narrative of Cowper's life to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'My sole solaces have been Dumas, & Nolan?s delightful companionship at Brussels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I have read Bragelonne'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I am particularly glad to have, from you, your new book, with its inscription. I thank you very much. For years I have known a number of your friends, and of course I have been reading your books for a long time; so that I feel that somehow we ought to have been acquainted before this. What pleases me particularly in a book like "The New Pretexts" (I had already read a great deal of it in reviews etc.) is the proof it offers that an artist is interesting himself in the daily guerrilla of literature.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Many thanks for your letter and the book. I read the book at once, d?un trait. This is praise, I think! It reminds me of "Dominique".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'Sunday Jan. 2nd. 1820 Florence Read a little Spanish -- Los Cabellos de [...] Absalon de Calderon de la Barca.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Jany 6. [...] Finish reading los Cabellos de Absalon of Calderon. Read the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday Jany. 7th. [...] Read -- the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon. Finish the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Jany. 8th. Read the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon -- Begin the Life of Romulus [...] Work in the Evening while Shelley reads the Gospel of Mathew [sic] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday Feb. 11th. [...] Begin La Cisma de Ingalaterra de Calderon della Barca [...] In the Evening read [...] the second part of Paine's Rights of Man [goes on to comment on this].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Feb. 12th. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra de Calderon de la Barca. Finish the second part of Paine's Rights of Man [goes on to comment on this].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Feb. 16th. [...] Read a little of La Cisma de Ingalaterra.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Feb. 19th. Read 1 Scene in the Cisma de Ingalaterra. Begin Davanzati's Tacitus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Feb. 23rd. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra -- in which the Queen Catterine tells
Henry that [...] Jane Seymour can sing, Ana Bolena dance and the Infanta Maria knows the
elements of Moral Philosophy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Thursday Feb. 24th. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra [...] Also a little of Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday May 6th. [...] Read a little of De la Virgen del Sagrario de Don Pedro Calderon de la
Barca [quotes three lines from Act I]'
[readings from this text also recorded on 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 May 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Jany 10th. [...] Read Sintram by Baron de la Motte Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Friday May [...] 27th. [...] After dinner read Die Cypressenkranze de la Baronne la Motte
Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Sunday Nov. [...] 20th. [...] Read to John Nine days' wonder. Begin reading Segur upon
women.'
[also records reading latter text in journal entries for 23 November 1825].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here]
'Greek
The Greek Tragedians
Homers Iliad and Odyssey
Plato's Republic
Several of Plutarch's lives
The Memorabilia of Xenophon
Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise
Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Madam, Having understood from a friend that you wished to obtain the words of "The Bann of the Church of the German Empire," I take the liberty of sending them to you [...] You will find it in "Les Anecdotes Germaniques," page 151, and as I have experienced so much pleasure from the perusal and representation of your beautiful tragedies, I shall have great satisfaction in being of the smallest use to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G.E. Lynch Cotton Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844:
'With regard to "La Confession Generale," I am in just your case, -- having read only the first
volume, & failed of the others [i.e. not been able to obtain them from library], -- there are
three: & I was the more provoked because I was interested in the denouement [...] Do you
know "Fernande" by Dumas? It was sent to me instead of "Un homme serieux", last night __ &
I rather like the opening. But Dumas is a second-class writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant
esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too
close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I
was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was
interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story
of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le
Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s
Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a
mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847:
'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des
Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant
esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too
close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I
was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was
interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story
of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by
the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le
Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s
Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a
mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 April 1847:
'At Pisa, Robert read to me while I was ill [following miscarriage], & partly by being read to &
partly by reading I got through a good deal of amusing French book-work, & among the rest,
two volumes of Bernard's new ["]Gentilhomme Campagnard." Rather dull I thought it, but
clever of course -- dull for Bernard. Then we read "Le Speronare" by Dumas -- a delightful
book of travels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 1 February 1940:
'Reading Burke. Reading Gide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I am reading Gide's memoirs, very disappointing I think, so far; I have found hardly anything that pleased me except the marble that had been dropped into the hole in the door. I read Jesting Pilate and liked it. I have tried Arabia Deserta for the fiftieth time, but can't manage it. Yet no doubt it is a more monumental work than Jesting Pilate.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of stratling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 2 October 1934:
'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]:
Sh[akespea]re. Troilus.
Pericles.
Taming of Shrew.
Cymbeline.
Maupassant.
de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS]
St Simon.
Gide.
Library books: Powys
Wells
Lady Brooke.
Prose. Dobree.
Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 28 July 1939: 'Reading Gide's diaries, recommended by poor death mask Eddie [Sackville-West]. An interesting knotted book. Its queer that diaries now pullulate. No one can settle to a work of art. Comment only.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 20 January 1941: 'Reading Gide. La Porte Etroite [1909] feeble, slaty, sentimental.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 January 1845:
'Did I say anything to you of "Fernande" -- Dumases --? I fancy I did, during the reading of the first seven pages. Beware of it, I tell you now -- If Mr Lovejoy ordered it for his library, he will be taken to be disorderly by "prude Angleterre." As Schlegel said of the "Sad shepherdess," that it was "unchaste praise of chastity", so we might reverse the saying for "Fernande." At least -- the heroine is a courtezan [sic] by profession -- but you wd not guess it, except by her talking too much of modesty [...] for the rest, she is a Grace, a muse, a saint & martyr. No virtuous woman could have half her fascinations -- (& that's the moral of the whole!) [...] M. Dumas's "Fernande" will make some of your country gentlemen open their eyes, be certain, if Mr Lovejoy introduces her into Berkshire -- I advise you to advise against it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 1 October 1849:
'We have had much quiet enjoyment here [...] read some amusing books, (Dumas & Sue! -- shake your head!) & seen our child grow fuller of roses & understanding day by day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850:
'I am finishing the "Memoires d'un medecin"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914:
'I am not a Pro-German [...] I have read the White Paper, and Cramb, and some Bernhardi, and I am sure we could not have kept out of this war.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915:
'I have not read Platen yet [...] German's a labour. I liked Holderlin's Hyperion -- I wish someone would translate it. Have you read The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence? If not, do not, because you cannot, but read one chapter in it called A poem of friendship, which is most beautiful. The whole book is the queerest product of subconsciousness that I have yet struck -- he has not a glimmering from first to last of what he's up to.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
'La Silence de la Mer by "Vercors" (Schlumberger?) was given me by Raymond Mortimer yesterday and read without much admiration though with plenty of sympathy: published secretly under the Nazis in France. Read also too slow a story by Giono of the coming of Pan: it quickens at the end where human beings and animals dance together, with regrettable results [...] Read too in Illusions Perdues [...] and in Gide's Journal [...] Gide aroused my envy by reading, reading, but if I kept a journal I too should appear to have read, read a lot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Unknown
'Early in 1852 my father and mother went on a visit to one of his old College friends, Mr Rashdall the clergyman of Malvern [...] While they were there my father read Dr Wordsworth's Apocalypse to my mother.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'On Saturday, April 4, I drank tea with Johnson at Dr. Taylor's, where he had dined. He entertained us with an account of a tragedy written by a Dr. Kennedy (not the Lisbon physician). "The catastrophe of it (said he) was, that a King, who was jealous of his Queen with his prime-minister, castrated himself. This tragedy was actually shewn about in manuscript to several people, and, amongst others, to Mr.
Fitzherbert, who repeated to me two lines of the Prologue :
" Our hero's fate we have but gently touch'd ;
The fair might blame us, if it were less couch'd"."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Fitzherbert Manuscript: Unknown
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, "A Hymne to our Creator" by Dr Dillingham.
Unknown
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson:
'On Monday the 10th [October, 1892], Miss Marryat, daughter of the celebrated novelist, secured for me a copy of the Times, wherein I read the brief and touching account by Dr Dabbs of the passing away of Tennyson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Newspaper
'The ladies did not retire till after eleven & then I laid myself down on the sofa & tried to sleep. The mosquitoes however would'ent allow anything of the kind & so after kicking about & turning over several scores of times I got up again, raised the gas & went on reading Dumas' "Memoirs of a Physician".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening I played a game of bagatelle with Dotty & a game of Bezique with Sissy & with that & "Monte Christo" managed to get through the evening until Polly went to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Have you read 'The Pretty Lady'? It was while reading 'Isabelle' that the form of this novel suddenly presented itself to me, and I began to write it at once. Yet nothing could be less like calm 'Isabelle' than this feverish novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Your book on Dostoevsky (for which many thanks) has made a very considerable impression upon me. And yet you say almost nothing about his technique, which interests me considerably . . . (If he had any technique!)
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, December 1795, 'I read the two languages [Spanish and Portuguese] with facility, & am now abridging the Angelica of Lope de Vega & extracting from it — the same with a most curious Portuguese poem — all this you will see if I escape that horrible Bay of Biscay. in the interim take these two fables from the Spanish of Yriarte'. [here follow some verses beginning 'Judge gentle reader as you will...']
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'Read ".'Dame aux Camelias"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
I have read a lot of 'The Vatican Swindle' and also 'The School of Women'.
I see in the course of a year a large number of American translations, and I have not yet seen one which was not extremely inferior to Madame Bussy’s translation of you.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I have read a lot of 'The Vatican Swindle' and also 'The School of Women'.
I see in the course of a year a large number of American translations, and I have not yet seen one which was not extremely inferior to Madame Bussy’s translation of you.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
I wish I could write short novels like your completely admirable 'L’Ecole des Femmes'. But I can’t.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I admit, then, that I read and admired "The Immoralist" all of two years ago. Davray gave it to me. I have not said anything but someone has filched my copy; and I wanted to get the book from you. As to the volume of criticism, all I can tell you is that I am so much in accord with the sentiment of this book that the sympathy--permit me to say affection-- that I felt for you from the first moment is infinitely increased.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I admit, then, that I read and admired "The Immoralist" all of two years ago. Davray gave it to me. I have not said anything but someone has filched my copy; and I wanted to get the book from you. As to the volume of criticism, all I can tell you is that I am so much in accord with the sentiment of this book that the sympathy--permit me to say affection-- that I felt for you from the first moment is infinitely increased.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am proud to learn that there is one [a phrase in "Lord Jim"] worthy to serve as an epigraph to one of the books of "Les Caves du Vatican". What a beautiful start! What things you have put in the so characteristic and interesting pages of this fine beginning!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: see additional information
'I keep the two books a little longer. "Shakespeare" is good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Four one act plays were then read:
"Windows by J. Galsworthy, "the Dear Departed" by Stanley Houghton, "The Boy Comes Home" by A. A. Milne, "Fame & the Poet" by Lord Dunsany & a delightful evening was spent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 3 September 1766:]
'Little puss is sitting by me on a huge folio of popish saints, on which I have wasted many a half hour lately. -- It is a translation of Ribadeneira, lent me by Dr Hawkesworth, whom I like mightily, and his wife likewise.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
'I only hope that its appalling details of profligacy are exaggerated'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Book
'Do you know Doven's and Hagen's Hist. of German Poetry? I have seen it in the Edinr College Library, but read only a few pages of it.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 20 September 1849:
'I read with pleasure "Friends in Council," and with very great pleasure "The Thoughts and Opinions of a Statesman." It is the record of what may with truth be termed a beautiful mind — serene, harmonious, elevated and pure; it bespeaks, too, a heart full of kindness and sympathy. I like it much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'Many thanks indeed for your good letter and for the little book ["La Symphonie Pastorale"] whose precious pages I will cut tonight "in the silence of my study" in a peaceful house where everyone has gone to bed.[...] For me that is the moment for friends' books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'A few days ago in fact I re-read "Les Caves du Vatican", with the same interest but with an admiration that grows on each new reading. The infinity of things you put into that book, where the hand is so light and the thought so deep, is truly marvellous.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Thank you, my dearest for all the books you have presented me with, in particular for Fredro, qui m'a donné un plaisir extrème à lire et à regarder les images.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Forgive me for not thanking you sooner for the book ["Incidences"]. It's my gouty wrist I can barely hold a pen. But I don't need to tell you that I find your pages always congenial beyond measure. In the volume you so kindly sent to me there are some pages that I know. I did not know the Prefaces. I read them with delight — and also the reflections on mythology.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'Have you ever read Olympe de Cleves? If not, remember, it must be read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'Read "Famous Modern Battles" by [ ]. Ev. Bridge.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Since leaving Oxford I have had quite a little
opportunity for reading and have read all kinds of
things, some of the better books being: Conan
Doyle's "Micah Clarke" and part of "Martin
Chuzzlewit", one or two of Alexander Dumas' tales,
two humorous books by George Birmingham about small
Irish villages, and one or two of Bernard Shaw's
plays. I am still doing dual control on B.E. 2b
machines which are quite out of date for military
purpose and were obsolete even before the war ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roderick Ward Maclennan Print: Book
