'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
'Their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation an not to murmur at the dispensations of providence... those kinds of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to convince me of my errors for instance there was [Hannah More's] the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain... the Farmers fireside and the discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I could see their design'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
'[Thomas De Quincey] got round to reading ... [Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife] only in late June or early July [1809], when "I read about 40 pages in the 1st. vol: such trash I really never did read."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey Print: Book
'Lamb read ... [Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife] at around ... [June-July 1809] ... on 7 June he told C[oleridge] that "it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels with the drawback of dull religion in it."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Book
'In [Ashington Mechanics' Institute] library [Chester Armstrong] discovered a "new world", a "larger environment" in Defoe, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and Jules Verne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
"Read Lorna Doone in the evening and helped Mother in to bed."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Much interested in Lorna Doone. It is a truly romantic book."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Finished reading Lorna Doone and like it very much."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
"Read aloud to Maude from Lorna Doone. Very much taken with this little bit - 'the valley into which I gazed was fair with early promise, having shelter from the wind and taking all the sunshine. The willow bushes hung over the stream as if they were angling with tasseled floats of gold & silver, bursting like a bean-pod. Between them came the water laughing like a maid at her own dancing, and spread with that young blue which never lies beyond the April. And on either bank, the meadow ruffled as the breeze came by, opening (through new tufts of green) daisy-bud or celandine, or a shy glimpse now & then of a love-lorn primrose.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
'At 12 Marianna and I went upstairs. She sat sewing and I reading aloud to her the first 3 or 4 pages of the M.S. Lectures on physiology Dr Scudamore lent me 10 days ago. The writing so bad we could not get on very fast. Both of us uninterested.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Manuscript: Sheet
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
??the work of Mrs Hannah More called Coelebs in search of a wife, as not knowing well where to class it. It is too pure and too profound to be ranked with novels, and too sprightly and entertaining to be wholly given up to philosophy, theology or dialectics. Mrs More?s works form a class of themselves; it is enough, perhaps, to say Coelebs is one of them.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
The seventeenth-century waterman-poet John Taylor had read More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Montaigne, and Cervantes in translation, but he never mastered a foreign language and he relentlessly satirised latinate prose:
I ne'er used Accidence so much as now,
Nor all these Latin words here interlaced
I do not know if they with sense are placed,
I in the book did find them".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor Print: Book
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
[Burney was] 'not impressed by Samuel James Arnold's "The Creole", Lady Morgan's "The Missionary", Edgeworth's "Patronage", which she found "dull and heavy" or Hannah More's "Coelebs", which she found "monotonously without interest of ANY kind", despite her approval of its politics.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'The story of Percy is simple, pathetic, distressing, this worked up to the most moving height of distress; the power of virtue on the mind is well contrasted with the mad way of passion, Elwina's is an almost perfect character... A pure love of virtue appearing throughout and filling the virtuous heart with glowing pleasure... the struggle in Elwina's mind between love and duty is fine, the triumph of the latter nobly painted. There is a charming delicacy, and elevation of sentiment.' [opinion of More's "Percy" entered in diary].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'Read "Lorna Doone" and loved it. Must try to get it next hols.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Slept all morning, then read quite a lot of "Utopia" in afternoon, & really it is very interesting (once you get over the spelling), & he had some very advanced ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Settled down to 3 hours solid slogging at "Utopia", & got it read & notes begun. Spent evening finishing "England their England", which I loved - it's most clever & interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to Convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbooks
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to Convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbook
'at this time there was a great many tracks Come out and their Contents were Chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence for we had not so much punishment as our sins deserved and in fact there was but little else to be heard from the pulpit or the press and those kind of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to convince me of my errors. for instance there was the Sheperd of Salsbury Plain ... the Farmers fireside and discontented Pendulum and many others which drove me almost into despair for I Could see their design.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book, chapbook
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
'I now thank you very much for your able inauguration essay on Architecture and live in expectation of its successors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 2 April 1799: 'In the many hours I have spent alone this week, I have been able, though by very little bits at a time, to go entirely through Hannah More [whose "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education" she writes of receiving on 21 March 1799], and Mrs. Woolstonecroft [sic] immediately after her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 10 July 1789: 'I enclose a most beautiful copy of verses which Miss H[annah]. More wrote very lately when she was with [the Bishop of London] ...] at Fulham, on his opening a walk to a bench called Bonner's. Mrs. Boscawen showed them to me, and I insisted on printing them. Only 200 copies are taken off, half for her and half for the printer, and you have one of the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Manuscript: Unknown
'I return to my Letter writing from calling on Miss Harriot Webb [...] She appears well pleased with her new Home - & they are all reaidng with delight Mrs H. More's recent publication.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriot Webb Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'I have been frightened from taking up Hannah More's last book which Fanny lent me, by the dread that it would more than ever convince me what a worthless wretch I am without giving me the virtue and courage to become better. But last night, wanting to compose my wayward spirit, I ventured to open it, and read the first chapter on Internal Christianity- And was agreeably suprised to find myself much pleased with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah H. Burney Print: Book
'Brought Wolstonecraft's "View of the French Revolution", from the Chapel Library, for Miss Haynes to read. Read in Miss Hannah More's "Sacred Drama", David & Goliath, I was much pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'We might mention the Rambler, the Guardian, and Shakespeare, as her favourites among older writers; and, among modern works, Hannah More's writings, memorials of a Departed friend, Private Life and others. From such books she was in the habit, with a sound judgement and a ready pen, of making extracts. Some of which have been collected and preserved...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Birch Print: Book
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
'Mrs Hannah More's "Practical piety" is a very useful book I think, perhaps you have read it if you think of any [underlined] you wish me to read my dear Susan please to name them [...] I am much favor'd with books which the kindness of friends supply, but while drinking with pleasure of some streams, I find the water of life only [underlined] in the Fountain [underlined]! I need not say I mean the Bible.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marshall Print: Book
'So home to supper, and then to read a little in Moore's "Antidote against Atheisme", a pretty book; and so to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'and then up and to my chamber with a good fire and there spent an hour on Morly's "Introduction to Music", a very good but inmethodical book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Read the Utopia - Write - S reads Henry VI aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish the Utopia'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have been frightened from taking up Hannah More's last book which fanny lent me, by the dread that it would more than ever convince me what a worthless wretch I am without giving me the courage and virtue to become better. But last night, wanting to compose my wayward spirit, I ventured to open it, and read the first Chapter on Internal Christianity - And was agreeably surprised to find myself much peased with it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'I am also reading with great veneration, but some degree of despondency, Practical Piety. The Chapter on "Comparatively small Faults and Virtues" merits to be written in letters of gold, and comes home to the feelings with an aptness and force not to be resisted or described. All she says on Prayer, though but a new modification of her former sentiments delivered on this subject, is touching and beautiful: - in short, the first volume, which I have just finished, edifies and charms me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
29 July: 'I'm paralysed by the task of describing a week end at Garsington. I suppose we
spoke some million words between us [...] There was Gertler; Shearman & Dallas for tea;
Brett, Ottoline, 3 children & Philip. The string which united everything together was Philip's
attack on Murry in The Nation for his review of Sassoon [...] to prove his case Philip read
Murry's article, his letter, & his letter to Murry, three times over, so I thought, emphasising
his points, & lifting his finger to make us attend. And there was Sassoon's letter of gratitude
too. I think Ott. was a little bored.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell
'I am reading on Sundays "Morehead's Discourses on the Principle of Religious Belief", which are greatly admired, though I canot say I think there is either much strength or novelty in them. It seems to me as if he had taken some of the most striking passages in scripture and [italics] beat them out [end italics], and worked them up, as a [italics] cunning artificer [end italics] does a bit of pure gold'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
'I have recieved Maga with the inclosures safe to night but have only as yet got her looked over. For one thing I percieve that Mr More's hymn to the Evening star is perfectly beautiful and I think the masterpiece of all he has yet written'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I have to thank you for Morel's pamphlet which reached me from L'pool a few days ago.There can be no doubt that his presentation of the commercial policy and the administrative methods of the Congo State is absolutely true. It is a most brazen breach of faith as to Europe. It is in every aspect an enormous and atrocious lie in action.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
'I meant to inform you, that besides those books already mentioned, I sent for Bishop Horne's Sermons, 4 vols. Carr's Sermons, Blairs Sermons, 5vols. Scott's Christian Life, 5vols. several leaned and sensible expositions of the Bible; Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, with the Fragments; Josephus' Works, Prideaux's Connections, 4vols. Mrs H. More's Works, and various other excellent Works. For some time one sermon was read on every Sunday, but soon Mrs L. began to like them, and then two or three were read in the course of the week; at last one at least was ready every day, and very often part of some other book in divinity, as Mrs. L said that she preferred such kind of reading far beyond the reading of novels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'What philosophy suggests to us on this topick [the possibility of life after death] is probable: what Scripture tells us is certain. Dr. Henry More has carried it as far as philosophy can. You may buy both his theological and philosophical works in two volumes folio, for about eight shillings'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
[Aubrey De Vere writes] 'In 1854 I went [...] to Farringford, where the poet [Tennyson] then made abode with his wife and two children [...] in the afternoon we sometimes read aloud in the open air, or rather we listened to the Poet's reading [...] On one occasion our book, which we agreed in greatly admiring, was Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House, then recent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and Aubrey De Vere Print: Book
'I had lent him "An Account of Scotland, in 1702," written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. "It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an
elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's "Account of the Hebrides" is written, A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do better".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Miss Hannah More has admirably described a [italics] Blue-stocking Club [end italics], in her "Bas Bleu", a poem in which many of the persons who were most conspicuous there are mentioned.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'I get "Lorna Doone". It is a good book so far.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Mrs Hannah More says in her "Essay on Saint Paul," that he had the loftiness of Isaiah, the devotion of David, the pathos of Jeremiah, the vehemence of Ezekiel, the didactic gravity of Moses...' etc. Various other parts of the Essay are transcribed in the next 3 pages.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon]
'Read Sir T. More in evening'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Friday, 10 March 1826:
'Breakfasted with me Mr. Francks [...] and Captain Longmore of the Royal Staff. He has written
a book of poetry, Tales of Chivalry and Romance, far from bad yet wants spirit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of lines by Hannah More (“Mrs H. More”) beginning “Since trifles make the sum of human things”.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“A Search after Happiness H. More” beginning “Expect not perfect happiness below…’
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 18 July 1754:]
'The verses from my fair [italics]Pupil[end italics], as she does me the honour to call herself, did indeed a little alarm me. To chide me in a sonnet for writing of sonnets, was doing as a physician did by me the other day, -- who at the very time he was taking a pinch out of my box reproved me for taking snuff.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
'... doubly read Cristowell by Blackmore.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'Left at 12.30 and reached Munich at 9, but the journey didn't seem at all long. Read Morelli and "La Cousine Bette". Stopped at the Hotel Belle Vue, supper and so to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'After lunch I went to the Borghese Villa. Aren't the gardens a dream! I had my Morelli with me and spent a long peaceful time looking at the pictures with the help of his essay on them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Books read from Feby 16th/18
King Richard II Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream do.
Henry the Eighth do.
As You Like It do.
Ziska Marie Corelli
Lorna Doone R. D. Blackmore
Don Quixote de la mancha Vol II
(Miguel de Cervantes Savedra)
Food of the Gods H. G. Wells
Odette's Marriage Albert Delpit
A Walking Gentleman James Prior
The Making of a Marchioness F. H. Burnett
Vixen Mrs. Braddon
The Magnetic North Eliz. Robins
A Roman Singer Marion Crawford
In the Reign of Terror G. A. Henty
Songs of a Sourdough R. W. Service
Forest Folk James Prior
John Henry Hugh McHugh
The Inviolable Sanctuary G. A. Birmingham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Henry Jones Print: Book