'the diverse collection of literature that Christopher Thomson, a sometime shipwright, actor and housepainter, worked his way through [...] included adventure stories such as "Robinson Crusoe" and the imitative "Philip Quarll", books of travel, such as Boyle's "Travels", some un-named religious tracts, a number of "classics" including Milton and Shakespeare, some radical newspapers, particularly Cobbett's "Register" and Wooller's "Black Dwarf", mechanics' magazines, and some occasional items of contemporary literature, including the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
David Vincent notes how it was in the poetry of Burns and Byron that the nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley (whose jobs included winding bobbins and working as a 'piecer' in a textile factory) first experienced the sense of the transcendent and uplifting inspiration that had been missing from school Bible study.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Unknown
The nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley would recall in his 1886 memoir having read the poetry of Byron and Burns whilst on '"solitary walks on summer evenings"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 20 August 1814: 'Lord Rosslyn read to us "Lara," Lord Byron's new tale. It strongly marks his manner of thinking and writing. It is a sort of continuation of the "Corsair."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Alexander, second Earl of Rosslyn Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 30 August 1817, from Genoa: 'Mr. Wishaw leaves to-morrow for Florence. I showed him a sketch of the beginning for "The Life of Lady Russell," which he much approved of [...] then during the evening he read to us the list of the MSS. of poor Horner, and some pieces of a journal of Lord Byron's in Switzerland, put down [italics]au coin de son etrange esprit[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wishaw Manuscript: Unknown
'Saturday Sept. 17th [...] Dine at 1/2 past six [...] Shelley reads aloud the Curse of Kehama.
They [i.e. P. B. Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin] go to Bed at ten. Sit up till [...] one
writing [...] Read the Lara of Lord Byron.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Wednesday Jany -- 5th. [...] Read Mazeppa.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, c. November 1817:
'I have been reading Lord Byrons Corsair &c how foolish I have been not to read them before they did not entertain me much as I have perused the extracts and the reviews on them [...] I
think many of the passages exquisitely beautiful the parting of Conrad and Medora & the
intercessory between the hero and Gulnare are in my humble opinion two of the MOST
beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, c. November 1817:
'I have been reading Lord Byrons Corsair &c how foolish I have been not to read them before
they did not entertain me much as I have perused the extracts and the reviews on them [...] I
think many of the passages exquisitely beautiful the parting of Conrad and Medora & the
intercessory between the hero and Gulnare are in my humble opinion two of the MOST
beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, November 1818:
'I have read "Douglas on the Modern Greeks." I think it a most amusing book ... I have not
yet finished "Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations." An admirable work
indeed ... I do not admire "Madame de Sevigne's letters," though the French is excellent [...]
yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so
entirely FRENCH, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure -- the
last Canto of "Childe Harold" (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more
than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that
I ever read [...] All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in those lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1837:
'I am sure I ought to be proud of my verses ["Victoria's Tears," about Queen Victoria's
weeping during the Accession Proclamation on 21 June] finding their way into a Belford Regis
newspaper! The young Queen is very interesting to me -- & those tears [...] are beautiful &
touching to think upon. Do you remember Lord Byron's bitter lines [...]
'"Enough of human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men's feelings when their own are jests?"
'They have never past from my memory since I read them. There is something hardening, I
fear, in power [...] But our young Queen wears still a very tender heart! and long may its
natural emotions lie warm within it!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon to Elizabeth Barrett, 18 June 1843:
'My dear Child is varying but no cough -- What a dear sweet girl! [...] We go to Harrow today
to see Byrons Tombstone [i.e. his favourite spot in the local churchyard] & autograph -- & to
amuse her, as she reads him with such interest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Mordwinoff Haydon Print: Book
Saturday 18 February 1922: 'According to the papers, the cost of living is now I dont know how much lower than last year [...] You cant question Nelly [Woolf's cook] much without rubbing a sore. She threatens at once to send up a cheap meal [...] Not a very grievous itch; & quelled by the sight of the new Byron letters just come from Mudie's [library].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Tuesday 7 July 1931: 'I am reading Don Juan; & dispatch a biography every two days.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902:
'[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902:
'[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'[Alfred Tennyson's] grandmother, the sister of the Reverend Samuel Turner, would assert: "Alfred's poetry all comes from me." My father remembered her reading to him, when a boy, "The Prisoner of Chillon" very tenderly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Turner Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 18 September 1816:
'I have read with great pleasure the poem you lent me [Childe Harold III]. It is written with
great vigour, and the descriptive part is peculiarly to my taste, for I am fond of realities, even
to the extent of being fond of localities. A spot of ground a yard square, a rock, a hillock, on
which some great achievement has been performed, or to which any recollections of interest
attach, excite my feelings more than all the monuments of art [...] But I did not read with
equal pleasure a note or two which reflects [sic] on the Bourbon family. What has a poet who
writes for immortality, to do with the little temporary passions of political parties? [...] I wish
you could persuade Lord Byron to leave out these two or three lines of prose, which will make
thousands dissatisfied with his glorious poetry [comments further in defence of French royal
family] [...] pray use your influence on this point. As to the poem itself, except a word or two
suggested by Mr. Giffard, I do not think anything can be altered for the better.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker to the Rev. George Croly, 28 November 1816:
'Though I have little time to read poetry,and notwithstanding all the charms of fashion, I read
more of Pope and Dryden than I do of even Scott and Byron; that is to say, I do not return to
Scott and Byron with the same regular appetite that I do to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 15 September 1819:
'Thank you for the perusal of the letter; it is not very good, but it will vex these old women of
British critics, which is perhaps all the author intended. I told you from the first moment that I
read "Don Juan," that your fears had exaggerated its danger. I say nothing about what might
have been suppressed; but if you had published "Don Juan" without hesitation or asterisks,
nobody would ever have thought worse of it than as a larger Beppo, gay and lively and a little
loose. Some persons would have seen a strain of satire running beneath the gay surface, and
might have been vexed or pleased according to their temper; but there would have been no
outcry against the publisher or author.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 18 July 1819:
'I am agreeably disappointed by finding "Don Juan" very little offensive. It is by no means
worse than "Childe Harold," which it resembles as comedy does tragedy. There is a prodigious
power of versification in it, and a great deal of very good pleasantry. There is also some
magnificent poetry, and the shipwreck, though too long, and in parts very disgusting, is on the
whole finely described [...] on the score of morality, I confess it seems a more innocent
production than "Childe Harold." What "Don Juan" may become by-and-bye I cannot foresee,
but at present I had rather a son of mine were Don Juan than, I think, any other of Lord
Byron's heroes. Heaven grant he may never resemble any of them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
