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

Click check box to select all entries on this page:

H. Rider Haggard : She

"'More even than with the contemptible inexpressiveness of the whole thing,' Henry James wrote after reading She ... 'I am struck with the beastly bloodiness of it ...'"

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

H. Rider Haggard : [unknown]

'It is equally possible for the same reader to adopt different frames for the same story, relishing it on one level while seeing through the claptrap on another. In his youth Aneurin Bevan enjoyed the Magnet and Gem surreptitiously (his father forbade them) and devoured H. Rider Haggard at the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library. But during the 'Phoney War' he lambasted the government's stupidly optimistic predictions in precisely the same terms: "Immediately on the outbreak of war, England was given over to the mental level of the Boys' Own Paper and the Magnet..." In 1944 Bevan freely admitted that "William le Queux, John Buchan and Phillips Oppenheim have always been favourites of ours in our off-moments. Part of their charm lies in their juvenile attitude".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin Bevan      Print: Book

H. Rider Haggard : King Solomon's Mines

Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 August 1886: "Since I saw you [on Sunday 1 August] I have finished Solomon and read half of 'She' ... It isn't nice that anything so vulgarly brutal should be the thing that succeeds most with the English of today [goes on to complain further of violence and racism in this novel]."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

H. Rider Haggard : She

Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 August 1886: "Since I saw you [on Sunday 1 August] I have finished Solomon and read half of 'She' ... It isn't nice that anything so vulgarly brutal should be the thing that succeeds most with the English of today [goes on to complain further of violence and racism in this novel]."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

H. Rider Haggard : The Pearl Maiden

'Read Pearl Maiden.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather      Print: Book

Click check box to select all entries on this page: