'Mr de Regis read us "Semiramis" a fine trajedy of Voltaire what gave me great pleasure'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] de Regis Print: Unknown
'But the most extraordinary production of any, I have seen these many days, is "La Pucelle d'Orleans" an Epic by Voltaire. This Mock-Heroic illustrates several things -First that the French held Voltaire a sort of demigod - secondly (and consequently) that they were wrong in so doing - and thirdly that the said Voltaire is the most impudent, blaspheming, libidinous blackgaurd [sic] that ever lived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'after dinner read l'esprit des nations 132 Shelley read[s] Italian - read 15 lines of Ovids metamo[r]phosis with Hogg - [italics to indicate Shelley's hand] The Assassins - Gibbon Chap. LXIV - all that can be known of the assassins is to be found in Memoires of the Acad[e]my of Inscriptions tom. xvii p127-170'.[end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read Ovid with Hogg (fin. 2nd fable). Shelley reads Gibbon and pastor fido with Clary - in the evening read Esprit des Nations (72). S. reads Pastor Fido (102) and Gibbon (vol 12 - 364) and the story of Myrrha in Ovid'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read Voltaire before breakfast (87)'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'After tea read Ovid 83 lines - Shelley two or three cantos of Ariosto with Clary and plays a game of chess with her Read Voltaire's Essay on the Spirit of Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'[italics to denote Shelley's hand] S. reads Ovid - Medea and the description of the Plague - After tea M. reads Ovid 90 lines - S & C. read Ariosto - 7th Canto. M. reads Voltaire p. 126.'[end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Shelley reads Voltaire Essai sur des Nations'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Jefferson reads Don Quixote - C. reads Gibbon - S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso - Read Voltaire's Essay on Nations (203)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin 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 - again, 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
'S. reads "France" - read Romans de Voltaire - Hume'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Electra and Ajax. Read the 8th Canto of Ariosto and the 4th Act of Phormio - Finish the Mille et une nuits. Read the Zaire and the Alzire of Voltaire'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Electra and Ajax. Read the 8th Canto of Ariosto and the 4th Act of Phormio - Finish the Mille et une nuits. Read the Zaire and the Alzire of Voltaire'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 10th Canto of Ariosto - the Mahomet of Voltaire'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 11th Canto of Ariosto & Merope & Simiramis [sic] of Voltaire'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 11th Canto of Ariosto & Merope & Simiramis [sic] of Voltaire'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 12 Canto of Ariosto - & L'orphelin de Chine & Tancrede of Voltaire'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read 12 Canto of Ariosto - & L'orphelin de Chine & Tancrede of Voltaire'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'[Shelley] Reads & I also Voltaires memoires by himself'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'[Shelley] Reads & I also Voltaires memoires by himself'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Greek - Voltaire's Tales'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Affectation is never more tiresome and ridiculous than in a letter. Madame de Sevigne was the best letter-writer that ever existed. I would rank Swift and Lord Chesterfield next. Voltaire to me is charming; but then I suspect he studied his epistles, as Lord Orford certainly did, and so had little merit. Heloise wrote beautifully in the old time; but we are very poor, both in England and Scotland, as to such matters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
'This Tale ["Rasselas"], with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shews us that this stage of our being is full of "vanity and vexation of spirit". [Boswell comments on its value] Voltaire's "Candide", written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's "Rasselas"; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say, that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only by wanton profanness to obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending Providence: Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'This Tale ["Rasselas"], with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shews us that this stage of our being is full of "vanity and vexation of spirit". [Boswell comments on its value] Voltaire's "Candide", written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's "Rasselas"; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say, that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only by wanton profanness to obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending Providence: Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
'On board the steamer between Marseilles and Malta, besides reading "Hypatia", which was "too highly coloured" for his taste, and re-reading "Tancred", and writing "more than half the preface" to his lectures, he found time to send home a long letter'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Print: Book
'Find invaluable passage of Voltaire on Lucifer and Liberty; article in dictionary on "Abus des mots". The Lucifer is invaluable to me, because the devil being called Lucifer is such a prophetic intimation of Science!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'The subject of Voltaire was then taken. H. R. Smith gave an outline of his life. Mrs Robson read the Hermits Tale from Zadig. After refreshments F. E. Pollard gave us an idea of Voltaire's thought & influence Mrs Evans read from Letters From England & Mrs T. C. Eliott gave us some conception of his place in French literature some discussion closing an interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The subject of Voltaire was then taken. H. R. Smith gave an outline of his life. Mrs Robson read the Hermits Tale from Zadig. After refreshments F. E. Pollard gave us an idea of Voltaire's thought & influence Mrs Evans read from Letters From England & Mrs T. C. Eliott gave us some conception of his place in French literature some discussion closing an interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'The subject of Voltaire was then taken. H. R. Smith gave an outline of his life. Mrs Robson read the Hermits Tale from Zadig. After refreshments F. E. Pollard gave us an idea of Voltaire's thought & influence Mrs Evans read from Letters From England & Mrs T. C. Eliott gave us some conception of his place in French literature some discussion closing an interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
'The subject of Voltaire was then taken. H. R. Smith gave an outline of his life. Mrs Robson read the Hermits Tale from Zadig. After refreshments F. E. Pollard gave us an idea of Voltaire's thought & influence Mrs Evans read from Letters From England & Mrs T. C. Eliott gave us some conception of his place in French literature some discussion closing an interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Book
