'Weeton's reading becomes important in communication with friends, but also a point of conflict: when she visits her brother and his wife, they complain that she spends all her time reading, though she insists that she read very little ("only... Gil Blas, now and then a newspaper, two or three of Lady M. W. Montagu's letters, and few pages in a magazine'), and only because her hosts rose so late. Since her literacy is important as a sign of status, she repeatedly presents herself not as a reader of low status texts like novels but of travels, education works, memoirs and letters, including Boswell's "Tour of the Hebrides", the Travels of Mungo Park, and Mme de Genlis' work. She approves some novels, like Hamilton's "The Cottagers of Glenburnie", but generally finds them a "dangerous, facinating kind of amusement" which "destroy all relish for useful, instructive studies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Home past 9 almost starv'd to death...Read 'Gill Blas'. Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Home near 11. 'Gil Blass'. Bed past 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Made an end of 'Gil Blas'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked ... I read all Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked." (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 3 p.372).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'On 19 Aug. 1810, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] told W[ordsworth] that she was "reading Malkin's Gil Blas - and it is a beautiful Book as to printing etc but I think the Translation vulgar."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
On Frances Burney d'Arblay's married life in France: 'With affection and friendship, the pleaseures of attending the theater and reading works of French literature such as "Gil Blas" aloud at home, life was more than bearable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: D'Arblay family Print: Book
"William Carleton got the perusal of Gil Blas from a 'pedlar, who carried books about for sale, with a variety of other goods'."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Carleton Print: Book
'I spent the evening and slept at the Old Tree, a very poor inn in which I was forced to sleep in a double bedded room with a stranger. For my amusement during this journey I took the novel of "Vanillo Gonzales".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
'After Muster read "Gil Blas" for a while, then played "Bezique" with Polly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening read "Gil Blas"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening I was very lazily inclined & sat over "Gil Blas" for some time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Mustered in the afternoon & read "Gil Blas" till tea was ready. After tea went to "the Yorick", read for a while & chatted a little, then came away home'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'The weather was very wet all the evening so I was not able to go out & contented myself with reading Gil Blas till nearly bed-time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'In the evening I stayed at home & read "Gil Blas" till it was time to go to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'then returned home & amused myself for an hour reading "Gil Blas".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I believe it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels. It is very likely. My acquatance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
