'At age thirteen John Clare was shown The Seasons by a Methodist weaver and though he had no real experience of poetry, he was immediately enthralled by Thomson's evocation of spring'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Byron thanks J. Thomson (unidentified) for volume of poems, 27 September 1813: 'I have derived considerable pleasure from ye. perusal of parts of the book - to the whole I have not yet had time to do justice by more than a slight inspection.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
'[J.M. Dent's] reading was marked by the autodidact's characteristic enthusiasm and spottiness. He knew Pilgrim's Progress, Milton, Cowper, Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts; but...did not read Shakespeare seriously until he was nearly thirty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hutchinson
'Dr Scudamore, recommended and has just sent me to look at Thomsons Conspectus of the Pharmacopeias, a nice little 42mo. Price 5/-, 5th edition.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Dr Scudamore, recommended and has just sent me to look at Thomsons Conspectus of the Pharmacopeias, a nice little 42 mo. Price 5/-, 5th edition
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
[opinion of Thomson's Edward and Elinora, entered in diary]: 'A most affecting tale, pleasingly tender - fraught with virtuous sentiments.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent
[Marginalia]: a few pencil marginal marks (in form of bracketed lines of text eg p 79 has lines 203-7 bracketed), plus some ms notes in ink on binding page. The ink notes read 'Envy-Love 78'; 'Hope - Grief 78'; 'The Deluge 79'; 'Effects of changing weather 80'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
[Maud Montgomery] 'wrote her first poem after reading "Seasons", a book of poems by James Thomson, written in blank verse. Maud was so enraptured by them that she had to sit down at once to write one of her own.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I pursued each of them with much interest, but especially the "Seasons". I found this to be just the book I had wanted. It commended itself to my warmest approbation, immediately on my perceiving its character and design...'[continues to describe impact of the book at length]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'It was about this time that I first read that very beautiful poem, "The Pleasures of Hope". I also repersued a large portion of Cowper's Poems; and, in spite of the unfavourable accounts of it given by critics, resolved upon reading Thomson's "Liberty". This resolution I carried into effect, to my very considerable amusement, if not instruction. As to its poetical merits, I did not venture to sit in judgement upon them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Thomas Carter [a nineteenth-century Colchester and London tailor] wrote of "The Seasons" that, "With the exception of the Bible, I know not that I ever read any other book so attentively and regularly. Its beautiful descriptions of nature were delightful to my imagination, while its fine moral reflections [...] were, as I believe, greatly instrumental in promoting my best interests"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'In the evening read aloud Bright's 4th speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the spectator some interesting facts about loss of memory, and "double life". In the Revue des Cours a lecture by Sir W. Thomson of Edinburgh on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Serial / periodical
'Mary, William and Emma commenced their readings of Thomson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, William and Emma Cole Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'Began to read Thomson's "Seasons".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'To Fortune' 'I care not fortune what you deny me, ... J. Thompson'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Beanlands group
'Lookd into Thompsons Winter there is a freshness about it I think superior to the others [...] the following minute descriptions are great favourites of mine [...] [he misquotes ll 104-5, 130-31]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'I read today an English Tragedy by Thomson that pleased me much and made me like that author's works'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'I received about a month ago the Revd Willm Thomson of Ochiltree's new translation of the Testament. Of course I am no judge of his 'new renderings'; but the stile both of writing & thinking displayed in those parts which I have looked at, is dull & sluggish as the clay itself. He brags of having altered the expressions of the old translation - every body I suppose will readily admit this - and be ready to wish him joy of all the honour than [that] can arise from such alterations...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Reader makes 4 references to the work V.1 pp 61,64; V.2 pp 4, 251. Eg. p. 61 'The sun shone on our social repast, but when we set out, Eolus did not perform the task Thomson assigns him in the opening of spring'; p.64 'I am reformed, and amended, but cannot fatigue myself or you with the description of this day; you will find it in Thomson ?Deceitful, vain, and void, passes the day.?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Mrs Macintosh September 9 1797 'The cheerfulness of our work-people, and the soft serenity of the air, during these tepid gleams that Thomson speaks of so feelingly, have almost made us this autumn ?Taste the rural life in all its joy,? and elegance'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee Macvicar] Print: Book
Sunday 14 October 1934: 'I cant write. When will my brain revive? in 10 days I think. And it can read admirably. I began [Thomson's] The Seasons last night; after Eddie [Sackville-West]'s ridiculous rhodomontade -- or so I judge it [...] a vast book called The Sun in Capricorn: a worthless book I think [...] No. I don't like him. Trash & tarnish; and this morbid silliness.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Will you remember us kindly to Mr Dumont, and tell him that I have received his letter; and, that since I wrote to him, I have found No 1 and 2 of Thompson's "Annals of Philosophy" - the Report of the Committee of the H of commons on Transportation to Botany Bay (July 10 12)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Serial / periodical
'On Thursday, July 28, we again supped in private at the Turk's Head coffee-house. Johnson. "Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether "The Tale of a Tub" be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner."
"Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Letter
'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter
'Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels, who compiled Cibber's "Lives of the Poets", was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked,-Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the highest admiration. Well, Sir, (said I,) I have omitted every other line".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be
Fed & defended by the fearless Cock.
whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.-
Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"Tell me thou Soul of her I love" - Thomson', beginning 'Tell me thou Soul of her I love’.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Friday, 28 March 1828:
'Read Tales of an Antiquary, one of the chime of bells which I have some hand in setting a ringing. He really is entitled to the name of an Antiquary. But he has too much description in proportion to the action. There is a capital wardrope [sic] of properties but the performers do not act up to their character.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
‘I’ve been reading Wells’ "What is coming …" Hazlitt’s Essays, and a glorious
book of critical essays by [J.] A. K. Thompson, called "The Greek Tradition". I
read no fiction. Wells’ "Wife of Sir Eric Harman" which I’ve just finished isn’t
fiction.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
