Listings for Reader:
Elizabeth Bowen
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George Macdonald : [probably] Princess and Curdie, The
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy : Scarlet Pimpernel, The
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Edith Nesbit : [probably] Five Children and It
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [Works]
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : She
'In a BBC talk of 1947 about the book that had most influenced her early years, she chose to talk about Rider Haggard's "She"; she came upon it at the age of twelve, "when I was finding the world too small". The descriptions of Kor, the great derelict city, caught her imagination. She "saw" Kor before she ever saw London: "Inevitably, the Thames Embankment was a disappointment".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
[unknown] : [detective stories]
'The only above-board children's stories for grown-ups, she thought, were detective stories, and those she read for pure pleasure all her life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
[n/a] : Encyclopaedia
'Elizabeth worked hard for the lessons she liked, and instead of preparation for the ones she didn't like she read poetry, the Bible, and checked out the facts of life in the encyclopaedia'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
[n/a] : Bible
'Elizabeth worked hard for the lessons she liked, and instead of preparation for the ones she didn't like she read poetry, the Bible, and checked out the facts of life in the encyclopaedia'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Stendhal [pseud.] : De l'amour
'In the early thirties she had read a lot of French, starting with Stendhal: and a chunk of his "De l'amour", in the French, found its way into "To the North". In 1932 she was reading for the first time Flaubert's "L'education sentimentale", and told Lady Ottoline: "What perfect writing, and what a clear powerful mind, and what a perfect picture of an enchantment he can produce. And what compass he has: this picture of colour and movement compared with the sad immobility of poor Bovary." A few months later she began translating it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Gustave Flaubert : L'Education Sentimentale
'In the early thirties she had read a lot of French, starting with Stendhal: and a chunk of his "De l'amour", in the French, found its way into "To the North". In 1932 she was reading for the first time Flaubert's "L'education sentimentale", and told Lady Ottoline: "What perfect writing, and what a clear powerful mind, and what a perfect picture of an enchantment he can produce. And what compass he has: this picture of colour and movement compared with the sad immobility of poor Bovary." A few months later she began translating it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Henry Millon de Montherlant : [unknown]
'In 1937 she was having "a heavenly time" reading Montherlant, and writing a piece on him for the "New Statesman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Guy de Maupassant : 'Yvette' [and other short stories]
'Maupassant never meant as much to her as Flaubert, or as Proust. She was reading collections of Maupassant's stories in mid-winter at Bowen's Court when she wrote to Virginia Woolf: "I suppose he had sharp sense but really rather a boring mind. You soon get to know his formula, but there is always the fascination: it's like watching someone do the same card trick over and over again. I did feel the fascination so strongly that I wondered if I were getting brutalised myself. There is a particularly preposterous story called 'Yvette'...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Marcel Proust : [unknown]
'Maupassant never meant as much to her as Flaubert, or as Proust. She was reading collections of Maupassant's stories in mid-winter at Bowen's Court when she wrote to Virginia Woolf: "I suppose he had sharp sense but really rather a boring mind. You soon get to know his formula, but there is always the fascination: it's like watching someone do the same card trick over and over again. I did feel the fascination so strongly that I wondered if I were getting brutalised myself. There is a particularly preposterous story called 'Yvette'...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
E.M. Forster : Celestial Omnibus, The
'the short stories she did know, from Downe days, were Richard Middleton's colection "The Ghost Ship" and E.M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Richard Middleton : Ghost Ship, The
'the short stories she did know, from Downe days, were Richard Middleton's colection "The Ghost Ship" and E.M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus".'
