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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Record Number: 11354


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'

Century:

1850-1899, 1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1898 and 31 Dec 1901

Country:

Scotland

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Garth

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown


Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Edwin Muir

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

15 May 1887

Socio-Economic Group:

Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder

Occupation:

farmer's son, later poet

Religion:

Protestant

Country of Origin:

Scotland

Country of Experience:

Scotland

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a


Additional Comments:

n/a



Text Being Read:

Author:

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Title:

The Scarlet Letter

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown


Source Information:

Record ID:

11354

Source:

Print

Author:

Edwin Muir

Editor:

n/a

Title:

The story and the fable: An autobiography

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1940

Vol:

n/a

Page:

90-91

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Edwin Muir, The story and the fable: An autobiography, (London, 1940), p. 90-91, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=11354, accessed: 06 October 2024


Additional Comments:

None

   
   
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