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

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Listings for Author:  

Ethel Stevens

 

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Ethel C. Stevens : [letter to XII Book Club]

'A letter from Miss Ethel C. Stevens offering to entertain the Book Club for the Sept meeting was read'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin      Manuscript: Letter

  

Ethel C. Stevens : [an account of Kelmscott Manor]

Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934

F. E. Pollard in the chair

1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.


[...]

4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.

5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.

6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.

7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel C. Stevens      Manuscript: Unknown

  

Ethel Stevens : [On Chelsea, Carlyle, Tennyson, J. S. Mill, et. al.]

'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.

Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair

1. Minutes of last read and approved.

2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with enjoyment. [...]


[...]

6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings to to a variety of causes.


[...]

7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.


[...]

8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.


[...]

9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.


10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital, Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas More.


11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel C. Stevens      

 

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