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

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Listings for Author:  

Matthew Arnold

 

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Matthew Arnold : 

'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Review of Objections to Literature and Dogma

"And that reminds me that the last Contemporary is worth looking at, not only for Gladstone's twaddle about Ritualism, wh. has sold ten editions of the number, twaddle though it is, but for an article of Mat Arnold's wh. amuses me."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Serial / periodical

  

Matthew Arnold : Literature and Dogma (possibly)

"Rather vexatiously Mat Arnold has sent in an article wh. I must read before it goes in because it is supposed to be heterodox & I can't get it back till tomorrow night."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Manuscript: proofs of article

  

Matthew Arnold : 

"S[ain]te Beuve & Mat. Arnold (in a smaller way) are the only modern critics wh. seem to me worth reading - perhaps, too, Lowell."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Letters of Matthew Arnold: 1848-1888

?Have you read Mat Arnold?s letters? Some, I see, are addressed to you? I can imagine old Carlyle taking himself to be a prophet, as indeed he was; but Mat Arnold, I should have thought, was too much of a critic even of himself to wear his robes so gravely.?

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : poetry

Joan Evans, "Prelude and Fugue: An Autobiography" (1964): 'One of my few conscious naughtinesses after I had attained the age of perception was to steal into the drawing-room, when I knew my parents were safe in London, open the [book]case, and take deep delicious draughts of verse. Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were all the sweeter for being read in secret' (p.17).'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joan Evans      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : The Forsaken Merman

'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : New Poems

Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from Cambridge, Mass., 20 September 1867: "In English I have read nothing new, except M. Arnold's New Poems, which of course you will see or have seen."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : [poems]

'The last few days I have been looking through Matthew Arnold's poems, and find his earlier ones very superior to the later'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud]      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'My Countrymen' (article in The Cornhill)

'Fan lent me the "Cornhill", with Matt's bit of sauciness... I tell Fan (we are always as plainspoken as can be) that I hope it may do more good than harm; but that it will do harm, - to himself at all events'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Serial / periodical

  

Matthew Arnold : Tristram and Iseult

'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : [selection of poems]

'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold

'He discussed books with me and gave me my first volume of poetry, Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold, marking his favourites.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Thyrsis

Sunday 29 December 1940: 'I detest the hardness of old age --I feel it. I rasp. I'm tart. 'The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotion new, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again. 'I actually opened Matthew Arnold & copied these lines [from "Thyrsis"]. While doing so, the idea came to me that why I dislike, & like, so many things idiosyncratically now, is because of my growing detachment from the hierarchy, the patriarchy [...] I am I; & must follow that furrow, not copy another. That is the only justification for my writing & living.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'The Sick King in Bokhara'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1849: 'We have had the sight of Clough & Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music .. but I am disappointed in the book as a whole. What I like infinitely better, is Clough's "Bothie of Topernafuosich" a "long-vacation pastoral" written in loose & more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour & freshness, & with whole passages & indeed whole scenes of great beauty & eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems [...] Oh, it strikes both Robert & me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, inartistic character. Arnold's volume has two good poems in it .. "The Sick King of Bokhara" [sic] & "The deserted Merman" [sic]. I liked them both -- But none of these writers are [italics]artists[end italics] whatever they may be in future days.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'The Forsaken Merman'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1849: 'We have had the sight of Clough & Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music .. but I am disappointed in the book as a whole. What I like infinitely better, is Clough's "Bothie of Topernafuosich" a "long-vacation pastoral" written in loose & more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour & freshness, & with whole passages & indeed whole scenes of great beauty & eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems [...] Oh, it strikes both Robert & me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, inartistic character. Arnold's volume has two good poems in it .. "The Sick King of Bokhara" [sic] & "The deserted Merman" [sic]. I liked them both -- But none of these writers are [italics]artists[end italics] whatever they may be in future days.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 12 August 1910: 'Do you get any time for reading? I am taking huge chunks of Mat Arnold. he's not as good as he thinks, but better than I thought. His central fault is prudishness -- I don't use the word in its narrow sense, but as implying a general dislike to all warmth. He thinks warmth either vulgar or hysterical.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'on Tolstoi'

From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Unknown

  

Matthew Arnold : Essays in Criticism

'[from Mary Arnold, later Ward's diary] "Read Uncle Matt's [Matthew Arnold's] Essay on Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment. Compares the religious feeling of Pompei and Theocritus with the religious feeling of St Francis and the German Reformation. Contrasts the religion of sorrow as he is pleased to call Christianity with the religion of sense, giving to the former for the sake of propriety a slight pre-eminence over the latter". She does not like the famous "Preface" at all. "The 'Preface' is rich and has the fault which the author professes to avoid, that of being amusing. as for the seductiveness of Oxford, its moonlight charms and Romeo and Juliet character, I think Uncle Matt is slightly inclined to ride the high horse whenever he approaches the subject".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Arnold      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Adelaide Morland      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Burgess      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'Rugby Chapel'

'The following readings were also given: The Forsaken Merman by Mrs Reynolds Rugby Chapel by Miss Pollard & Dover Beach by Mr Hawkins'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Bertha Pollard      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'Dover Beach'

'The following readings were also given: The Forsaken Merman by Mrs Reynolds Rugby Chapel by Miss Pollard & Dover Beach by Mr Hawkins'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Luther Hawkins      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 'Forsaken Merman, The'

'The following readings were also given: The Forsaken Merman by Mrs Reynolds Rugby Chapel by Miss Pollard & Dover Beach by Mr Hawkins'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Hawkins      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : unknown

'This morning I have been reading Matthew Arnold, for my Anthology, in an easy chair in the sun. This afternoon I shall do some gardening. I have a garden-bed, under my window, which is my own but the whole surrounding the house must be got ready for the reception of Ceres. My chief and most regular exercise is wood-chopping, which I do in honour of Ares.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Poems

Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : 

'F.J. Edminson read a paper on Matthew Arnold with special reference to Literature & Dogma. Readings from both the prose & poetical works of Matthew Arnold were given by various members.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club     Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : Literature and Dogma

'F.J. Edminson read a paper on Matthew Arnold with special reference to Literature & Dogma. Readings from both the prose & poetical works of Matthew Arnold were given by various members.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson      Print: Book

  

Matthew Arnold : The Scholar Gipsy

Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933

C. E. Stansfield in the chair


1 Minutes of last read and approved


2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee


[...]


4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.


Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.


C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.


H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"


F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"


M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"


Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.


E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow      

  

Matthew Arnold : Thyrsis

Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933

C. E. Stansfield in the chair


1 Minutes of last read and approved


2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee


[...]


4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.


Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.


C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.


H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"


F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"


M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"


Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.


E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow      

 

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