'[Garratt] spent his free evenings in Birmingham's Central Free Library reading Homer, Epitectus, Longius and Plato's Dialogues, a classical education which further undemined his confidence in the status quo: "I began to wonder in what way we had advanced from the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome". In the First World War, he took Palgrave's Golden Treasury with him to France and wrote his own verses in the trenches'..
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
'In 1955 Manny Shinwell - who read all of Palgrave's Golden Treasury to his children, and had consoled himself in prison with Keats and Tennyson - regretted that that poetic heritage had been surrendered to the cinema and radio: "In the early days of the [socialist] movement it was common practice of speakers to recite poetry...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel (Manny) Shinwell Print: Book
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
'Fortunately, the casualties were not very heavy and we varied the time by hunting rats and watching the mice playing about in the dug-outs. My own favourite practice was to lie in the sombre light of a candle reading the Golden Treasury, or else scribbling verses of my own composition.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'... when evening came I sought the isolation of a disused hut at the bottom of a garden and revelled in poetic creations by candlelight as a solace to my distraught mind. And as the Palgrave's Treasury became more battered so it became more of a blessing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
‘This morning that extraordinarily unequal collection "The Golden Treasury"
came out of its hiding place, and served to astonish me once more with its
lasting wonders of the “Intimations” Ode. But what I really want is a
Marcus Aurelius, a small cheap one. Would you send it me? The Gospels
annoy me by their emptiness, and the eloquence of St Paul though good
enough in some place is mere argumentative theology only too often … As
for news, you in England are far more fortunate than we. My self I love
newspapers when my brain is watery, and none I have seen that is not a
week old. In reserve however I was a hardened but often puzzled reader
of "Le Telegramme", "Le Journal", "Le Petit Parisien", "Le Matin".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘ [ … ] it was nice … to get the "Evening Standard" packed up with the rest
[of the parcel]. I do adore newspapers in certain moods. For frivolling time
away they are incomparable … Why was the "Daily Telegraph" one page
sent? For the College awards? Or for the review of Colles’ latest book? … I
asked for a book to be sent in the parcel. That means any sort of book. A
twopenny box in London would give me acute joy, but if you are debarred
from such, Nelson’s 6d Classics would be more than excellent. What a
washout most of the "Golden Treasury" is! As for the period of Pope, the
selection is simply lamentable. Only the Elizabethan and Wordsworth period
have much real stuff in them. Could you steal and small dirty copy of Shelley
or Keats and sent it me? I have tried to get these in the penny Poets, but
they must be out of print. The Everymans are too big, or my pack too small.
"Macbeth" is with me, but there is too much real tragedy about to find it
pleasant. Milton I can read (and have) particularly the Ode on Time which is
terrific … Palgrave makes me feel what a lot of good stuff I miss by reading
anthologies.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
