The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader raange of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
'I've nearly finished "World's End" by Sinclair Lewis. It's a grand book. I started it because I enjoyed 'Between Two Worlds' so much. I enjoy a good novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Thursday 3rd June
?Our Mr Wrenn? (Sinclair Lewis)
I feel crushed with the amount of spare time work I have on hand but life is nothing without the fight.
I feel I am slipping too much into cricket, and taking life too easily.
Mr Milligan has asked me again to organise a Peace Week meeting on the 19th !!!'
[Sinclair Lewis, the son of a doctor, was born in Minnesota in 1885. He entered Yale University in 1903 but left three years later to join Englewood, the socialist colony founded by the writer Upton Sinclair. In 1908 Lewis moved to New York where he became a freelance writer. His first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane was published in 1912 ? He died in Rome in 1951].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Friday 4th June
?Martin Arrowsmith? (Sinclair Lewis).
How many of my own questionings, disillusionments and hungerings are illustrated in this book. It has given me one of the worst fits of depression I ever suffered from. With the certainty I feel of being equal to big things, my inability to fight the circumstances that prevent me studying and preparing myself, makes me ache. Economics, literature, drama, social reform are only so many words to me, and yet I know that I could, with courage, make myself both an educated man and a social teacher. Well, I will try again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'The book which I had ordered had arrived and gives me the same exciting feeling when I glance into it - I have told you before how I want you to read ?Dodsworth?, and now you will be able to as I am sending it to you ? I daren?t get too enthusiastic about it in case you don?t like it. ???. I have been reading ?Mutiny on the Bounty?, but it seems tame after the film. ?? . I now have two books to read out of the library, ?Daughter to Philip? by Beatrice Kean Seymour, and ?Jake?, by Naomi Royde-Smith, which I have heard about somewhere, and is I think the story of a musician.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lesley Edna Moore Print: Book
'I am well into ?Dodsworth? and am liking it. It is very interesting though I find that Lewis has rather a ?green?, a youthful way of talking about Europe which makes the book read rather like a first novel. The American touch, of course. It is rather painful to read, though. Fran is altogether too infuriating, too cold-bloodedly dishonoured. For she doesn?t believe her own talk however Lewis may be eager at odd moments to think her rather a poor little thing.
It is great reading, though. Why does he not put in a little more about the contrasting women, the real, honest, dignified, courageous person that some women do manage to be ? ???.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'I still like ?Dodsworth?, and now am a little sorry for Mrs.
She certainly does seem to lose herself and he is something of a dunderhead though he is so honest and well meaning. If she were more honest with herself, and had more of his normal sort of simplicity she would do better for herself and perhaps get more out of him. She has him scared stiff.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard
introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us
several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
[...]
6. The evening was completed by the reading of extracts from the works of various authors who
had recently been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. In the interests of truth it should
perhaps be mentioned that the reading from French and Russian authors were given from English
translations.
R. H. Robson read from Dodsworth by Sinclair S. Lewis
Mary S. W. Pollard [read from] The Village [by] Ivan Bunin
L. Dorothea Taylor [read from] All God’s Chillun Got Wings [by] Eugene E. O'Neill
H. R. Smith [read from] Les Thibault by Roger M. du Gard
S. A Reynolds [read from] White Monkey [by] J. Galsworthy
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
'Meeting held at 39, Eastern Avenue: 24. 11. 39.
A Bruce Dilks in the chair.
1. Minutes of last [two meetings] read & approved.
[...]
7. F. E. Pollard gave a brief introduction to American literature, introducing a large
number of names including Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, Tom Paine,
Washington Irving, Fennimore Cooper, the poet Bryant, the historians Bancroft,
Prescott and Motley, Louisa M. Alcott, Emerson, Longfellow & Whittier, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Hermann Dick, J. R. Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry Hames, Winston
Churchill, O. Henry, & Mark Twain. He attempted very briefly to assess the place
of these & some others.
8. C. E. Stansfield read from the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table an extract in
praise of Meerschaums, Violins & Poems. We felt from the caressing tones of his
voice that like the Autocrat he gave pride of place to the Meerschaums.
9. A. B. Dilks, after a brief reference to the career and mystical experience of
Walt Whitman read from his Poems on the Sea.
10. R. D. L. Moore read a dramatic passage from the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey[’],
describing the last hours of Brother Juniper.
11 We were, finally, introduced to Babbitt – those of us who had not previously
met him — by R. H. Robson. We were suitably amused at the manner in which
St.Clair Lewis makes his hero rise and shave.
[signed] R. D. L. Moore
19.XII.39'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
