Record Number: 28618

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

Algernon Charles Swinburne to Sir T. Wemyss Reid, in letter responding to Reid's Charlotte Bronte: A Monograph, 24 September 1877:

'The only reference [...] in your book which seemed to indicate a different point of view from my own was the passage in which you seem to deprecate the tone of, of not to depreciate the merit, of "Wuthering Heights." Many years ago I lent a copy of that book to a lady of the class described in it — daughter of a Westmoreland "statesman" or small gentleman-farmer living on his own land — warning her that though I liked it very much I knew that people in general called it "horrible," &c &c. She returned it to me, after reading it through, with the remark that [...] she had known wilder instances of lawless and law-defying passion and tyranny, far more horrible than any cruelty of Heathcliff's, in her own immediate neighbourhood. One of them, which even the Titaness Emily Bronte would have shrunk from telling in print, was the Cenci story done over again by a "statesman," who having bullied his wife to death was left alone in the farm with a beautiful daughter, whom he used with horrible brutality [i.e. raped] — and his character was such that all the neighbours said it was monstrous that the wretched girl should be left alone in the house with him — but nobody would come forward and "bell the cat" — and the end of it was that she was seen late one evening flying out of the house, with all her clothes disordered [...] evidently raving mad, towards the river Eden [...] and was fished out dead next morning. And I knew one of the women who for charity's sake went to nurse or sit up with the horrible old father — and said "she never could have imagined anything so unutterably dreadful as that deathbed" — and, if I remember rightly, that he raved for three days and nights before death came to release him and rid the world of him. Now, seeing that Emily Bronte was a tragic poet, and reared in the same degree of latitude which bred this humble version of the "Cenci," I cannot think that anything in her book is at all excessive or unjustifiable.'

Century:

1800-1849, 1850-1899

Date:

unknown

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

county: Cumbria

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:

anon

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

n/a

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

n/a

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

n/a

Country of Experience:

n/a

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Emily Brontë

Title:

Wuthering Heights

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

1848

Provenance

borrowed (other)

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Source Information:

Record ID:

28618

Source:

Print

Author:

n/a

Editor:

Thomas James Wise and John Alexander Symington

Title:

The Brontes: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence

Place of Publication:

Oxford

Date of Publication:

1980

Vol:

1:2

Page:

279-280

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Thomas James Wise and John Alexander Symington (ed.), The Brontes: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence, (Oxford, 1980), 1:2, p. 279-280, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=28618, accessed: 21 May 2025

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Additional Comments:

None