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

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John Locke

 

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John Locke : 

'Byron had intoxicated him "with the freedom of his style of writing, with the fervour or passionateness of his feelings and with the dark and terrible pictures which he seemed to take pleasure in painting". The general effect of reading Milton, Hobbes, Locke and Newton had been "to make me resolve to be free. I saw that it was impossible for the soul of man to answer the end for which it was created, while tramelled by human authority, or fettered with human creeds. I saw that if I was to do justice to truth, to God, or to my own soul, I must break loose from all creeds and laws of men's devising, and live in full and unrestricted liberty..."'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker      Print: Book

  

John Locke : 

The whole or nearly the whole of the eight months when I was not employed was not lost. I read many volumes in history, voyages, and travels, politics, law and Philosophy. Adam Smith and Locke and especially Humes Essays and Treatises, these latter I read two or three times over, this reading was of great service to me, it caused me to turn in upon myself and examine myself in a way which I should not otherwise have done. It was this which laid the solid foundation of my future prosperity, and completed the desire I had always had to acquire knowledge.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place      Print: Book

  

John Locke : unknown

Byron to Annabella Milbanke, 15 February 1814: 'In my letter of ye. 12th in answer to your last I omitted to say that I have not for several years looked into the tract of Locke's which you mention -- but I have redde it formerly though I fear to little purpose since it is forgotten.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron      Print: Book

  

John Locke : 

[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton      Print: Book

  

John Locke : 

'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

"At home, after leaving school in 1857 ... [Louisa Martindale's] reading was, at first, chiefly the Bible. On 16 September she started to take Fraser's Magazine, and her diary becomes full of references to this, and to articles in the Times on subjects as diverse as Fortification and The War in New Zealand. She read, and was charmed by, Symington on architecture, sculpture, and painting ... Further books which she read included Froude's History of England ... The Bible and Modern Thought, Butler's Analogy, Memorials of Fox, Bancroft's American Revolution, Rollin's Ancient History, Waddington's Church History, the Works of Paley, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Mrs Jameson's Characteristics of Women."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Martindale      Print: Book

  

John Locke : [unknown]

'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's Life and Literature, and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

William Blake, in copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Works (1798) vol I: " '... I read Burkes Treatise [on the Sublime and Beautiful] when very Young at the same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancmt [sic] of Learning on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions & on looking them over find that my Notes on Reynolds in this Book are exactly Similar. I felt the Same Comtempt & Abhorrence then; that I do now.'"

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essay on human understanding

'I returned home and read four chapters of Winn's abridgement of Lock[e] on the human understanding. The transition from such a dissipate scene [a party she has left] to the deep reflection of my study [...] was easier than I expected: how much more was I pleased with myself whilst thus exercising the faculties of a reasonable mind, in endeavouring to discover the sources of those faculties, to form them properly; to improve them, than when I was dipping a curtsey to one, forcing a smile for another, hearing nonsense from a 3rd or what is worse talking nonsense to a fourth.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An essay concerning human understanding

'Read part of Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding", which I find to be a very abstruse book.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Treatise on the Reasonableness of Christianity

[Letter from Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Feb 15 1814]. 'In my letter of ye 12th in answer to your last I omitted to say that I have not for several years looked into the tract of Locke's which you mention - but I have redde it formerly, though I fear to little purpose since it is forgotten. - & have always understod that and Butler's Analogy to be the best treatises of the kind... Of the Scriptures themselves I have ever been a reader and admirer as compositions, particularly the Arab-Job - and parts of Isaiah - and the Song of Deborah'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essays

5 Feb 1836 Mary Birch To John Birch (son) 'How kind it was in you to copy that appropriate passage in Locke; and I, with the assistance of my good and intelligent governess [companion Lilie] to help me, looked for it in my two volumes of Locke's Essays, but our eyes have not hit on it yet'...

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Birch      Print: Book

  

John Locke : [unknown]

'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?]      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essay concerning Human Understanding

'Read the first Book of Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding",--in refutation of the doctrine of innate principles...'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green      Print: Book

  

John Locke : [Works]

'I am reading Locke in my old age never having read him in my youth, a fine satisfactory sort of fellow but very long winded'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith      Print: Book

  

John Locke : unknown

[John Locke] "says it [is the] same faculty that invents judges".

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An

[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here] 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'Shelley reads Locke.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'in the evening Shelley read[s] 2nd book of Paradise Lost. S. reads Locke'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'write - read Locke and Curt. S. reads Plutarch and Locke. He reads Paradise Lost - aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'write - read Locke and Curt. S. reads Plutarch and Locke. He reads Paradise Lost - aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'Finish 1st book of Locke - read Curt - & work - Shelley reads Locke, Plutarch, & Paradise Lost aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'Read Locke - Shelley reads Locke and Curt - & Pamela aloud in the evening'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'Read Locke - Shelley reads Locke and Curt - & Pamela aloud in the evening'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'read Locke and the Edinburgh review and two odes of Horace - S. reads Political Justice & Shakespeare and the 23rd Chap. of Gibbon'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essay concerning Humane Understanding

'Drawing Lesson - write - read Locke - & walk - Shelley reads Roscoe's life of Lorenzo de Medicis - Read Lucian and work in the evening. Read severy [for several)] odes of Horace'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Sunday Feb. 13th. Begin Locke's essay on the Understanding'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Thursday Feb. 17th. [...] Read 1st Chapter of Locke's Essay. [...] Finish the 2nd part of Paine's Age of Reason.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Friday Feb. 18th. [...] Read Locke [goes on to make detailed notes].'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Monday Feb. 21st. Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra. Also a little of Davanzati's Tacitus [...] Read Locke.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Thursday Feb. 24th. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra [...] Also a little of Locke.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

'Friday April 14th. [...] Begin Locke's on the Understanding.' ['Read Locke' subsequently recorded in entries for 15, 17, 18, 22, 29 April].

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont      Print: Book

  

John Locke : unknown

'At twelve I enjoyed a literary life in all its pleasures. Metaphysics were my highest delights and after having read a page from Locke my mind not only felt edified but exalted.'

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

  

John Locke : [unknown]

'Read Macchiavelli Hist. of Castruccio Castracani - Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza]. S. reads a part of 4th B. of the Aenied aloud - read Condorcet's life of Voltaire - S. reads Locke.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

John Locke : Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, An

'[Rev Charles Burney's] Abridgement of Pearson's Exposition of the Creed, is printed, though not yet published. He gave to my father & me each a Copy. His Motto, I think a most happy one, taken from some work of the great Bentley's - "The most excellent Bishop Pearson - the very dust of whose writings is gold". - I have read above half the volume; it is all fudge to call it a book for the use of [underlined] young persons [end underlining] - Unless they are such Young Persons as Moll, who reads Lock on Human Understanding in two days, & says it is easy, & fancies she understands it - And the same farce she played regarding Butler's Analogy, the toughest book (allowed by learned men) in the English language, which she spoke of with the familiar partiality I would speak of Tom Hickerthrift, & bamboozled me into trying to read - and, Good Lord! when I had pored over a dozen pages & shook my ears, and asked myself - "Well, Sal, how dost like it? Dost understand one word?" "O, yes; all the [underlined] words [end underlining], but not one of their meanings when put together." "Why, then, Sal; put the book away; and say nothing about it; but say thy prayers in peace, & leave the reasons [underlined] why [end underlining] thou art impelled to say them, and all the [underlined] fatras [end underlining] of analyzation, to those who have more logical brains, or more leisure to read what they do not comprehend". But, however, a great part of Dr Charles's abridgement, I flatter myself I [underlined] do [end underlining] understand; and what is too deep for me, Moll may explain. He has retained a heap of hard words, which send me to Dr Johnson's dictionary continually - Some of them, are expressive, & worth reviving, others, we have happier substitutes for, and it was ungraceful to admit them, and shewed a false and pedantic taste'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Marianne Francis      Print: Book

  

John Locke : 

[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged] 'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles     Print: Book

  

John Locke : Some Thoughts Concerning Education

'We had a quiet comfortable meeting at Mr. Dilly's; nobody there but ourselves. Mr. Dilly mentioned somebody having wished that Milton's "Tractate on Education" should be printed along with his Poems in the edition of "The English Poets" then going on. JOHNSON. "It would be breaking in upon the plan; but would be of no great consequence. So far as it would be any thing, it would be wrong. Education in England has been in danger of being hurt by two of its greatest men, Milton and Locke. Milton's plan is impracticable, and I suppose has never been tried. Locke's, I fancy, has been tried often enough, but is very imperfect; it gives too much to one side, and too little to the other; it gives too little to literature.--I shall do what I can for Dr. Watts; but my materials are very scanty. His poems are by no means his best works; I cannot praise his poetry itself highly; but I can praise its design".'

Century:      Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson      Print: Unknown

  

John Locke : 

George Grote to G. C. Lewis, September 1840: 'Since you departed from London, I have been reading some of Kant's "Kritik der reinen Vernunft," a book which always leads me into very instructive trains of metaphysical thought, and which I value exceedingly, though I am far from agreeing in all he lays down. I have also been looking into Plato's "Timaeus" and "Parmenides," and some of Locke, and have been writing down some of the thoughts generated in my mind by this philosophical melange.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote      Print: Book

  

John Locke : 

'... at about half past two walking up Oxford Street I saw Bumpus's, the famous bookshop. There was an exhibition on there free of charge, the library and papers of John Locke, the famous English philosopher. So I went in and had a look. There were the books that the sage used, his desk, his manuscripts, his private notebooks ... One of the notebooks was open and I read a note to the effect that a man told him how at a certain place in France five miles from such and such a spot was "a spring which was cold in summer and hot in winter." "This," added Locke, in a touch which I appreciated, "he told me he knew from his own observation."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Cyril Lionel Robert James      Manuscript: Manuscript notebook.

 

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