Record Number: 32346
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'After breakfast & a short walk we start work on Thucydides — a desperately dull and tedious Greek historian.'
Century:1900-1945
Date:Between 10 Sep 1915 and 17 Mar 1917
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:Great Bookham
Surrey
'Gastons'
(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Child (0-17)
Gender:Male
Date of Birth:29 Nov 1898
Socio-Economic Group:Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation:Student
Religion:Church of England
Country of Origin:Northern Ireland
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
n/a
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:History of the Peloponnesian War
Genre:Classics, History
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication Detailsin the original Greek, almost certainly with scholarly apparatus
Provenanceowned
Source Information:
Record ID:32346
Source:Clive Staples Lewis
Editor:Walter Hooper
Title:C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters
Place of Publication:London
Date of Publication:2000
Vol:1
Page:145
Additional Comments:
From a letter to Arthur Greeves, 12 October 1915. 'We' refers to his tutor, William Kirkpatrick.
Citation:
Clive Staples Lewis, Walter Hooper (ed.), C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters, (London, 2000), 1, p. 145, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=32346, accessed: 19 May 2024
Additional Comments:
This is the only experience of reading Thucydides recorded in Lewis's vast correspondence, but he refers to him occasionally, e.g. 'a bit Thucydidean in construction' (letter to Owen Barfield, August 1942, v.2., p. 528), so I think he found him more interesting than Cicero or Demosthenes. I have extended the date range to the end of his time with Mr Kirkpatrick, on the assumption that this study continued throughout.
