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

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Listings for Author:  

Thomas More

 

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Thomas More : Utopia

'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes      Print: Book

  

Thomas More : Utopia

The seventeenth-century waterman-poet John Taylor had read More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Montaigne, and Cervantes in translation, but he never mastered a foreign language and he relentlessly satirised latinate prose: I ne'er used Accidence so much as now, Nor all these Latin words here interlaced I do not know if they with sense are placed, I in the book did find them".'

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor      Print: Book

  

Thomas More : Utopia

'Slept all morning, then read quite a lot of "Utopia" in afternoon, & really it is very interesting (once you get over the spelling), & he had some very advanced ideas.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding      Print: Book

  

Thomas More : Utopia

'Settled down to 3 hours solid slogging at "Utopia", & got it read & notes begun. Spent evening finishing "England their England", which I loved - it's most clever & interesting.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding      Print: Book

  

Thomas More : Utopia

'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper      Print: Book

  

Thomas Morely : A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke

'and then up and to my chamber with a good fire and there spent an hour on Morly's "Introduction to Music", a very good but inmethodical book.'

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys      Print: Book

  

Thomas More : Libellus vere aureus de optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia

'Read the Utopia - Write - S reads Henry VI aloud'

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

  

Thomas More : Libellus vere aureus de optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia

'Finish the Utopia'

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

  

Thomas Morer : Short Account of Scotland

'I had lent him "An Account of Scotland, in 1702," written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. "It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's "Account of the Hebrides" is written, A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do better".'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson      Print: Book

  

Sir Thomas More : [unknown]

'Read Sir T. More in evening'

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

 

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