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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Record Number: 5732


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.

Century:

1850-1899

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1870 and 31 Dec 1876

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Bolton
county: Lancashire

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:

Allen Clarke

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1863

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

textile worker's son, later journalist

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



Text Being Read:

Author:

Oliver Goldsmith

Title:

[unknown]

Genre:

Drama, History, Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

borrowed (public library)
from Bolton public library


Source Information:

Record ID:

5732

Source:

Print

Author:

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:

419-20

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 419-20, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=5732, accessed: 14 October 2024


Additional Comments:

See Allen Clarke, "The 'Good Old Days' When Children were Bred for the Factories" and other articles in the Liverpool Weekly Post (from April-July 1934)

   
   
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