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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Record Number: 959


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Farell Lee Bevan's Peep of Day (759,000 copies in print by 1888) supplied him with the frame of a totalistic religious ideology: "It was from these pages that I got my first idea of the moral foundations of the universe, was handed the first key with which to unlock the mysteries of the world in which I found myself. These little books served the purpose of an index or filing system; a framework of iron dogma, if you like, providing an orderly arrangement of the world and its history for the young mind, under two main categories, Good and Evil". But Jones also attended a board school, where he found "salvation" in an old cupboard of books presented by the local MP. They were mainly volumes of voyages and natural history, "which took a Rhymney boy away into the realms of wonder over the seas to the Malay Archipelago, to Abyssinia, to the sources of the Nile and the Albert Nyanza, to the curiosities of natural history, piloted by James Bruce, Samuel Baker and Frank Buckland".'

Century:

1850-1899

Date:

unknown

Country:

Wales

Time

n/a

Place:

specific address: School

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:

Thomas Jones

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1870

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

labourer at ironworks when grown up

Religion:

Nonconformist

Country of Origin:

Wales

Country of Experience:

Wales

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

n/a


Additional Comments:

n/a



Text Being Read:

Author:

Samuel Baker

Title:

[Probably] 'The Albert N'yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, and Explorations of the Nile Sources'

Genre:

Geography / Travel

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

borrowed (institution library)
school library


Source Information:

Record ID:

959

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:

33

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 33, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=959, accessed: 12 October 2024


Additional Comments:

See Thomas Jones, 'Rhymney Memories' (Llandysul, 1970)

   
   
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