Record Number: 19667

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902: '[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 15 Jun 1902 and 13 Jul 1902

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

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

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Leonard Woolf

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

25 Nov 1880

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Undergraduate student

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Title:

'Turkish Tales'

Genre:

Fiction, Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

19667

Source:

Print

Author:

n/a

Editor:

Frederic Spotts

Title:

Letters of Leonard Woolf

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1990

Vol:

n/a

Page:

24-25; 24

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Frederic Spotts (ed.), Letters of Leonard Woolf, (London, 1990), p. 24-25; 24, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=19667, accessed: 26 April 2025

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Additional Comments:

Source ed. notes, 'In a competition for a university essay prize, LW had begun a study of Byron' (p.24 n.3).