'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 23 February, 1802: 'Darkish when we reached home [from walk] ... William now reading in Bishop Hall ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Before breakfast + afterwards, from 11 to 1, making minutes + extracts from Hall's travels in France (it must go to the library today...He is an arrant republican in politics + would perhaps, style himself a philosopher in religion. Consequently, his sentiments + mine on these subjects who as a limited monarchist + a ProtestantChristian according to the established Church of England, are opposite almost as the poles. However, there is some information useful to a tourist.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Newspaper
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'Margaret Wharton's parents were highly literate, and with their encouragement she entered a teaching training college in 1936, but they taught her nothing about sex: "Though we read books like 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and 'Hatter's Castle' both dealing with defloration of innocence and an ultimate baby, we drew no parallels and made no application to ourselves. I even read Radclyffe Hall's classic story of lesbianism, The Well of Loneliness, without having the faintest idea of what it was about'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
'Attending Oxford on a Cassel scholarship, John Allaway found that his WEA training, far from fitting him into a university mold, enabled him to criticize the conventional curriculum. Assigned the orthodox economics texts of Alfred Marshall, he read them "with deep suspicion" and made a point of going beyond the set books to study J.A. Hobson, Henry George, Hugh Dalton, and John Maynard Keynes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Allaway Print: Book
'I went to the Library; read Bramhall against Hobbes'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Byrom Print: Book
" ... [Edmond] Halley's paper on the causes of the Noachian deluge was finally printed in the Philosophical Transactions some thirty years after being read at the [Royal] Society ..."
Unknown
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Royal Society
Adrian Johns discusses John Flamsteed's (disapproving) reading of Edmond Halley, Catalogus Stellarum Australium.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Flamsteed Print: Book
[Marginalia]: marginal marks (x, }, |) plus occasional comments, either single words or short notes eg: p. 74 after the text 'His wit seemed to be incorporated with his very turn of thinking and manner of viewing arguments and objects' is followed by the ms note 'This I can aver; which dis...[?] one often. I love instantaneous wit! not wit, like forced asparagus at Christmas!'; p. 167 after the text 'A person, it seems, was carrying, from the east coast of Fife, an hundred rabbits, to occupy a warren in the West Highlands' is the ms note 'a very drole adventure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Pitts Print: Book
'Read Hallam on the study of Roman law in the Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'In the Evening we had Mrs. Lambert, who brought us a Tale, called Edwy & Edilda by the sentimental Clergyman Mr. Whaley, ? & [ital.] unreadably [ital.] soft & tender & senseless is it!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'began Hallam's Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, 14 December, 1798: 'During my illness I have finished the 2nd vol. of Wraxhall which I had just begun at Brandsby, and which I like better and better the farther I go. I have consulted, too, one of his authorities for many things in the age of Henry the Third, Montaigne's Essays, a very curious and an [italics]astonishing[end italics] book, considering the times in which it was written, and which one never consults without entertainment. I have re-read, too, Condorcet's book, and compared his ideas and arguments on the subject of population with those of the Essay [by Malthus] we have been reading, and certainly the Essay has not only the best of the argument [...] but is absolute [italics]conviction[end italics]on the subject of the different ratios in which population, and the means of subsisting that population, increase'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry to a friend, 14 December, 1798: 'During my illness I have finished the 2nd vol. of Wraxhall which I had just begun at Brandsby, and which I like better and better the farther I go. I have consulted, too, one of his authorities for many things in the age of Henry the Third, Montaigne's Essays, a very curious and an [italics]astonishing[end italics] book, considering the times in which it was written, and which one never consults without entertainment. I have re-read, too, Condorcet's book, and compared his ideas and arguments on the subject of population with those of the Essay [by Malthus] we have been reading, and certainly the Essay has not only the best of the argument [...] but is absolute [italics]conviction[end italics]on the subject of the different ratios in which population, and the means of subsisting that population, increase'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, April 7 1794
'I am very rich in German books right now for Dr Randolph, who has a great many, has given me his entire library, to take whatever I like. I have got your friend Kliest, which I think delightful; Hallen's poems; and Zimmerman's "Einsamkert", which pleases me more that [sic] almost any book I ever read... There are some ideas in Zimmerman's upon a future state very like your book [Essay on the happiness of the life to come].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 December 1837: 'Read some of Hall in afternoon, till time to dress for ball.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Unknown
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'transcript of passages from chapter 4 under the commonplce book heading "non jurors"'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Fortescue Aland
'I am reading Hall's book, but will read it through before I say a word about it, for I find my opinion changes so much between the first and third volume of a book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Have you read Hall's America? If you have, I hope you dislike it as much as I do. It is amusing but very unjust and unfair. It will make his fortune at the Admiralty. Then he temporizes about the Slave Trade; with which no man should ever hold parley, but speak of it with abhorrence, as the greatest of all human abominations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I recommend you to read Hall, Palmer, Fearon and Bradburys Travels in America, particularly "Fearon". There is nothing to me so curious and intersting as the rapidity with which they are spreading themselves over that vast continent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Hallam's style does not appear to me so bad as it has been represented; indeed I am ashamed to say I rather think it a good style. He is a bold man and great names do not deter him from finding fault; he began with Pindar, and who has any right to complain after that? The characteristic excellencies of the work seem to be fidelity, accuracy, good sense, a love of Virtue and a zeal for Liberty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I did not write one syllable of Hall's book. When first he showed me his manuscript, I told him it would not do; it ws too witty and brilliant. He then wrote it over again, and I told him it would do very well indeed; and it [italics] has [end italics] done very well. He is a very painstaking person'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Read voyage to Corea'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I think Mrs Hall's book beautiful, but am not in love with her dedicatory letter [to Mary Russell Mitford]. It is meagre.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Hofland Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Benjamin Robert Haydon, 21 April 1843:
'Mrs S. C. Hall is an agreeable & graceful writer, & I am one of her many readers [...] From
her husband I had one or two kind notes once, when he had the editorship of Colburn's
magazine & I was a contributor to the same.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
'I have been out reading Hallam in the garden ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'With this parcel we return Messrs Marshall and Young. some Observations from the former I lay by as matters to be inquired into but have taken nothing by way of Extract, so that all you intend to take may be put in the proper Place in your work, without Danger of Repetition'
[Crabbe is alluding to his work on the 'Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir', a collaboration with John Nichols]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'This "new direction" [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
'[Boswell having expressed doubt about the power of prayer, Johnson] mentioned Dr. Clarke and Bishop Bramhall on "Liberty and Necessity", and bid me read South's "Sermons on Prayer"; but avoided the question which has excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
'Mr. Allen, the printer, brought a book on agriculture, which was printed, and was soon to be published. It was a very strange performance, the authour having mixed in it his own thoughts upon various topicks, along with his remarks on ploughing, sowing, and other farming operations. He seemed to be an absurd profane fellow, and had introduced in his book many sneers at religion, with equal ignorance and conceit. Dr. Johnson permitted me to read some passages aloud.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Aubrey De Vere, on how he 'first made acquaintance with Alfred Tennyson's poetry':
'Lord Houghton, then Richard Monckton Milnes, a Cambridge friend of my eldest brother's, drove up to the door of our house at Curragh Chase one night in 1832 [...] He had brought with him the first number of a new magazine entitled The Englishman containing Arthur Hallam's essay on Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The day on which I first took the slender volume into my hands was with me a memorable one. Arthur Hallam's essay had contrasted two different schools of modern poetry, calling one of these classes Poets of Reflection, and the other class Poets of Sensation, the latter represented by Shelley and Keats. Of Keats I knew nothing, and of Shelley very little; but the new poet seemed to me, while he had a touch of both the classes thus characterized, to have little in common with either. He was eminently original, and about that originality there was for me a wild, inexplicable magic and a deep pathos [goes on to discuss further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey De Vere Print: Serial / periodical
'[I was] not constant in meditation, I was loath to begin, but if I once began I found it so sweet that I could scarce leave of[f]; I read Mr Baxter's Rest about meditation, and was much affected with his way; I perused Bishop Hall's book, and that pleased mee; but I found diversions, and I could not fixe my thoughts long upon one subject . . . '
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
'September 2. I had bin grievously and causlessly defamed by one from whom I deserved it not; this day he came to quarrell with mee, and I used bitter expressions to him . . . but see a providence to humble mee! I had lent a booke which was newly come home; before I sett it up I opened it up by chance . . . and found the beginning of Bishop Hall's sermon upon Ephesians 4:30, who tooke notice that by the connexion of the text 'twas evident that sinns of the tongue did unkindly grieve God's spirit. This struck me with griefe, and shame, resolving to be more watchfull heerafter, which God grant!'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Robert Southey to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 28 June 1796: 'THE story of the Mysterious Mother is of an earlier date than the noble author imagined: it may be found in a work of bishop Hall entitled Resolutions and Decisions of divers Practical Cases of Conscience, in continual Use amongst Men; of which the second edition, dated 1650, is now lying before me. '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'At a meeting held at Grove House on Feb. 17 a discussion on the Soul of a People was opened by a paper by C. E. Stansfield. The comparison suggested by Fielding in his book of Christianity & Buddhism necessitated impartiality between the religions on the part of critic [sic]. The role of philosophic doubter assumed for the time by the writer added greatly to the interest of the paper & the discussion which followed. Mrs Ridges afterwards read from the Light of Asia & Mrs Stansfield from Dhammapada'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'I told Forster that I was prepared to stand absolutely for both the merits and the decency of the book.' [The Well of Loneliness]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
On the conclusion of the 'Well of Loneliness' case, I propose to devote an article to it in the Evening Standard. I need not tell you that I am anti-police.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, from The Hague (June 1824):
'What a pretty book Captain Hall's is [...] George's verses gave me the greatest pleasure. I prefer the first, which I think beautiful. The last are full of soul and subject; but I think there is a little confusion dans la marche.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, from The Hague (June 1824):
'What a pretty book Captain Hall's is [...] George's verses gave me the greatest pleasure. I prefer the first, which I think beautiful. The last are full of soul and subject; but I think there is a little confusion dans la marche.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Wednesday, 13 April 1831:
'My nap [same afternoon] was a very short one and was agreeably replaced by Basil Hall's Fragments of Voyages. Every thing about the i[n]side of a vessell is interesting and my friend has the great sense to know this is the case.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Mr Lockhart to John Murray, 24 September 1839:
'Morritt has just finished "Hallam's Literature." He is in raptures with it, and says such a book,
forty years ago, would have been beyond all price for the direction of his studies. He is going to
interleave his copy and annotate largely.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Morritt Print: Book
'November brought a peculiar police-court case, which made literary history, after Radclyffe Hall's novel, "The Well of Loneliness", had been suppressed for impropriety.
I had reviewed this earnest and harmless story on publication, and now joined the thirty-nine "expert" witnesses who appeared before the Bow Street magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
'Was much instructed in the duty of believing by reading Marshall's Gospel mystery of Sanctification. I have great cause to be daily thankful for the discovery of a free saviour so inimitably delineated in this book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Davies Print: Book
'[Books read] May [1914]. Alice Ottley Memoir.
Pennell 10/6 Memoirs. at last!
Neve Kashmir
A woman in the antipodes & far east
by Mary Hall F.R.G.S.
Anatomy of Xtianity of Truth
Car of destiny
Garden of Resurrection.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Bickersteth Cook Print: Book
'This morning we made for Bécourt Wood. In a sand-bag shelter in the wood I found two novels—"Exton Manor" by Archibald Marshall and "Justice" by Galsworthy, which I have annexed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Book
