Record Number: 4131
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader range of literature'.
Century:1900-1945
Date:unknown
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:city: London
Type of Experience(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:24 May 1932
Socio-Economic Group:Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation:son of tailor's machinists, later playwright
Religion:Atheist
Country of Origin:England
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
n/a
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:n/a
Genre:Fiction
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication Detailsn/a
Provenanceowned
Source Information:
Record ID:4131
Source:Jonathan Rose
Editor:n/a
Title:The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Place of Publication:New Haven
Date of Publication:2001
Vol:n/a
Page:228
Additional Comments:
n/a
Citation:
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 228, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=4131, accessed: 12 October 2024
Additional Comments:
See Arnold Wesker in Goldman, 'Breakthrough', pp.176-9. No further reference traceable in Rose.
