Tuesday 19 January 1915:
'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me
to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary
people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the
likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also
reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday
in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman
in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 14 February 1915: 'I am now reading a later volume of Michelet, which is superb, &
the only tolerable history.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 21 September 1940: 'I have forced myself to overcome my rage at being beaten at Bowls & my fulminations against Nessa [for issuing invitation to Igor and Helen Anrep] by reading Michelet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 26 October 1940: '"The complete Insider" -- I have just coined this title to express my feeling towards George Trevelyan; who has just been made Master of Trinity: whose history of England I began after tea (throwing aside Michelet vol.15) with a glorious sense of my own free & easiness in writing now) [...] I like outsiders better. Insiders write a colourless English. They are turned out by the University machine.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution with much interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
MS notes including various dates of reading from Feb 16, 1899 - March 25 1901. Final volume summarised as: "A fine, compact story; disfigured by a delight in the loathsome such as I have never known in any other great and grave writer. It amounts to monomania."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book