'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'Years of reading had made [Ruth Slate] tired of squabbling between competing religious sects, and it was Tolstoy's Resurrection that finally gave her the courage to plow her own furrow: "I must be different, or the best in me will die!"... With an evangelical zeal freed from the moorings of dogma, Ruth plunged into the post-Victorian 'sex question'. She heard lectures on eugenics and women's diseases and read Auguste Forel's Sexual Ethics, though she could hardly bear to glance through The Great Scourge, where Christabel Pankhurst insisted that the vast majority of men were infected with venereal disease. She was intrigued when a woman argued in the avant-garde New Age that the temple prostitutes of the East were a much better arrangement than the "unsanitary" way of ordering these things in the West. She gravitated to Francoise Lafitte and the Freewoman magazine, which agitated for the sexual emancipation of women'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ruth Slate Print: Book
The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader range of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
'Once a month when [Jack Jones's] duties took him to Cardiff, he would exchange twelve to twenty books and take them home in an old suitcase. He read Tolstoy and Gork, and raced through most of Dostoevsky in a month. He was guided by a librarian who, like a university tutor, demanded an intelligent critique of everything he read'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Jones Print: Book
'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
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ectsasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 21 August 1913: 'I have been reading over Tolstoi's interminable "Peace and War" [sic] and am struck by the fact that I now protest as much as I admire.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 14 October 1913: 'I have just been re-reading over Tolstoi'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'I sat in a seat in the square, my neighbours were mainly old men wrapped in dowdy overcoats and growling spasmodically to each other. I continued to read "War and Peace" which I had started at breakfast time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Saturday 13th October 1928.
After dinner went with Mme. and George to Romainville to hear Georges Pioch on Tolsto?. [...] Queerly enough, though Pioch himself is a Tolstoyan and though his speech showed the bias, it seemed to strengthen the instinctive dislike, which I feel for Tolstoy the man. I can admire and be troubled by his theories. I can find his works wonderful, and yet I dislike Tolstoy. His personal arrogance, his obvious sense of superiority to all the individuals with whom he comes in contact does not square with his humility in face of that which are abstractions ? the People. Again, he is too much the propagandist. He squares the circle too perfectly. He seems drunk with logic in his propagandist books. These things always make me suspicious. I do not believe that life can be simplified like that, that it can be governed by half a dozen rules of conduct. I believe that life is essentially a thing of endless complication, endless contradiction, a machinery of compromises, a picture composed of endlessly varied halftones. It is probable that I do not properly appreciate the Tolstoyan argument, but so far as my comprehension permits and my own knowledge, I am no Tolstoyan.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 8 January 1929:
'I've been reading Balzac, and Tolstoy. Practically every scene in Anna Karenina is branded on
me, though I've not read it for 15 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 8 January 1929:
'I've been reading Balzac, and Tolstoy. Practically every scene in Anna Karenina is branded on
me, though I've not read it for 15 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 6 January 1918: 'Gerald [Shove] read Tolstoy the other day, & determined to give up
tobacco, but now argues that Tolstoy's commands were for men of looser life than he, so that
he may smoke cigarettes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Shove Print: Book
Wednesday 24 March 1926: 'These disjointed reflections I scribble on a divine, if gusty, day; being about, after reading Anna Karenina, to dine at a pot-house with Rose Macaulay -- not a cheerful entertainment; but an experience perhaps.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Monday 8 March 1937: 'What I noticed on the walk to Cockfosters [on 6 March] were: [records various observations] [...] then the tramps [...] The middle aged woman was trying to make a fire: a man in townish clothes was lying on his side in the grass [...] When we [Woolf and husband Leonard] came back after an hour the woman had got the fire to burn [...] She was cutting a slice of bread off a loaf, but there was no butter. At night it became very cold, & as we sat down to our duck L. said he wondered how they [s]pent the night. I said probably they go to the workhouse. This fitted in well with What shall we do then, wh. I read in the train. But incidentally I'm not so much impressed as I expected by it. Vivid, but rather wordy so far.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 22 March 1940: 'I read Tolstoy at Breakfast -- Goldenweiser, that I translated with Kot in 1923 & have almost forgotten. Always the same reality -- like touching an exposed electric wire. Even so imperfectly conveyed -- his rugged short cut mind -- to me the most, not sympathetic, but inspiring, rousing, genius in the raw [...] I remember that was my feeling about W. & Peace, read in bed at Twickenham. Old [Sir George] Savage [doctor] picked it up. "Splendid stuff!" & Jean [Thomas, owner of nursing home] tried to admire what was a revelation to me. Its directness, its reality. Yet he's against photographic realism.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
'Remenber me faithfully to your wife whose translation of "Karenina" is splendid. Of the thing itself I think but little, so that her merit shines with the greater lustre.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I am re-reading "Anna Karenina" with great pleasure and only wish I could attempt a book on a scale like that. So many groups of distinct, yet intertwining lives, all so broad yet so sharp in detail.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'I had hoped to have a clear head here - to get on with German, Italian, etc. and to read some history. But I have been so heavy and tired all the time that I can only manage snatches of [italics] War and Peace [end italics] and [italics] Sherlock Holmes [end italics]. I am supposed to have done a detailed criticism of Emily's book - I have skimmed through it but that is all.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Roberta Rubenstein, 14 December 1968:
'What is your evidence for saying that Virginia had never read a Russian novel until she read Crime and Punishment in 1912? The translations of Turgenev by Constance Garnett were published 1894 to 1899. I certainly read some of these at Cambridge in 1901 [...] Anna Karenina in Garnett's translation appeared in 1901 and I certainly read this at Cambridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
I have been re-reading 'Du Côté.' Well, it is marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Anna Karenina'. Well, it is more marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Les Frères'. Well, it is most marvellous. Das ist das.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'[...] the gratuitous atrocity of, say, "Ivan Illyitch"[sic] or the monstrous stupidity of such a thing as "The Kreutzer Sonata" for instance; where an obvious degenerate not worth looking at twice, totally unfitted not only for married life but for any sort of life is presented as a sympathetic victim of some sort of sacred truth that is supposed to live within him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ridges Print: Book
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The subject of Tolstoy & his works was then taken. R. H. Robson gave a brief outline of his life. T. C. Elliott gave a reading from Faussett's "Inner Drama of Tolstoy". R. B. Graham gave an account of "Anna Karenina" with some short readings. After Refreshments Mrs Robson read a parable from "Master & Man" & Geo Burrow read from "The Cossacks". F. E. pollard read an essay of Tolstoy on the Russian Famine. Some general discussion of Tolstoy & his work but more especially of the man himself closed the evening'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R. B. Graham Print: Book
'The subject of Tolstoy & his works was then taken. R. H. Robson gave a brief outline of his life. T. C. Elliott gave a reading from Faussett's "Inner Drama of Tolstoy". R. B. Graham gave an account of "Anna Karenina" with some short readings. After Refreshments Mrs Robson read a parable from "Master & Man" & Geo Burrow read from "The Cossacks". F. E. pollard read an essay of Tolstoy on the Russian Famine. Some general discussion of Tolstoy & his work but more especially of the man himself closed the evening'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The subject of Tolstoy & his works was then taken. R. H. Robson gave a brief outline of his life. T. C. Elliott gave a reading from Faussett's "Inner Drama of Tolstoy". R. B. Graham gave an account of "Anna Karenina" with some short readings. After Refreshments Mrs Robson read a parable from "Master & Man" & Geo Burrow read from "The Cossacks". F. E. pollard read an essay of Tolstoy on the Russian Famine. Some general discussion of Tolstoy & his work but more especially of the man himself closed the evening'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
'The subject of Tolstoy & his works was then taken. R. H. Robson gave a brief outline of his life. T. C. Elliott gave a reading from Faussett's "Inner Drama of Tolstoy". R. B. Graham gave an account of "Anna Karenina" with some short readings. After Refreshments Mrs Robson read a parable from "Master & Man" & Geo Burrow read from "The Cossacks". F. E. Pollard read an essay of Tolstoy on the Russian Famine. Some general discussion of Tolstoy & his work but more especially of the man himself closed the evening'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'The subject of Tolstoy & his works was then taken. R. H. Robson gave a brief outline of his life. T. C. Elliott gave a reading from Faussett's "Inner Drama of Tolstoy". R. B. Graham gave an account of "Anna Karenina" with some short readings. After Refreshments Mrs Robson read a parable from "Master & Man" & Geo Burrow read from "The Cossacks". F. E. Pollard read an essay of Tolstoy on the Russian Famine. Some general discussion of Tolstoy & his work but more especially of the man himself closed the evening'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R. B. Graham Print: Book
'Long long evening — the children played Corelli's sonatas, I read "Guerre et Paix", felt dreadfully depressed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
‘Have you read "Harry Richmond" lately? I like the first part of the book
immensely, but skipped afterwards—copiously and vigorously. On the
whole, "Evan Harrington" pleased me more … "War and Peace" will always
hold me in its thrall. But next time I skip the chunks of History, and read
about Pierre and Natasha. As for "Return of the Native", God seems to have
arranged with Hardy to do his cunning-worst. But how rich are the country
scenes! … I am glad to say that my health goes on improving, but slowly.
Still, now I know what neurasthenia is; I realise and fight it—a great step …
Is D’Annunzio worth reading, if I could collar a book of his?’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘Of all the written words of Man that help one submit to Destiny I know
nothing more persuasive than that part of "War and Peace" which tells of
Pierre’s captivity and his peasant friend. It is near the end, the first half of the
last volume, I think—stamped with genius and a high loftiness, Bach-like and
as true as his Preludes and Fugues.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
‘I think we are quite near [departure for] the front—the fighting line, but at
least I have control enough of my mind to think very little of this. The only
thought that disturbs me ever, is that all my continual striving and
endeavour to become a fit and full man (“full man” is Shakespeare [Antony
& Cleopatra]) may be ended by a German bullet or bayonet. But then my
belief in our destiny rises clear and strong and in spite of my sick mind, and
by the help of the last volume or so of "War and Peace" I am calm again.
Read it, boy, read it … "War and Peace" & Shakespeare & Whitman & St
Matthew & Wordsworth & Plutarch is a pretty complete diet—mental
pabulum.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ivor Bertie Gurney Print: Book
