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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Francois Rabelais

  

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Francois Rabelais : The Works of Francis Rabelais

[Marginalia]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : Gargantua and Pantagruel

'Allen Clark, the son of Bolton textile workers, found physiology books in the public library incomprehensible. A newspaper reference to Rabelais motivated him to borrow Gargantua and Pantagruel, which was no more helpful: "the love passages in the tales were meaningless and boring and I skipped them".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : 

'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : [unknown]

'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : unknown

'Although he read Rabelais and several other French authors in the original, it is unlikely that [Gabriel] Harvey's mastery of this language approached that of Italian'.

Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : [unknown]

'And have I read no books, then, save bad ones? That I have. Amongst those sent to me from home is an old Dublin copy of Rabelais, in four volumes, imprinted by Philip Crampton, of Dame Street - and has kept me in good wholesome laughter for a fortnight - laughter of the sort that agitates the shoulders, and shakes the diaphragm, and makes the blood tingle; than which no medicine can be more cordial to me - I have read the cause of his effects in Galen.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel      Print: Book

  

Francois Rabelais : 

'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys)     Print: Book

  

François Rabelais  : [unknown]

'Although Mrs Craigie carried out her "duties" as a Roman Catholic, she took her religion lightly, and from her writings it was easy to read that she did not mind jests about the saints ... She told me that her conversion was entirely due to her reading Rabelais, which at the time I believed literally'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie      Print: Book

  

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