Listings for Reader:
Edmund Gosse
Click here to select all entries:
: Lesson
'...in December 1918 ... [Sir Anthony] Deane organized at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, a memorial service for authors killed in the war, at which Edmund Gosse read the lesson. Afterwards Deane invited a miscellany of authors attending the service, [Charles] Garvice among them, to take tea at his home ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar
"It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, The Tempest, in a school edition, prepared I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed The Merchant of Venice, read Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Much Ado about Nothing
" It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, The Tempest, in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces... This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed The Merchant of Venice, read Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
: Bible
" It [the school's peity] proceeded no further than the practice of reading the Bible aloud, each boy in successive order one verse,in the early morning before breakfast. There was no selection and no exposition; where the last boy sat, there the day's reading ended, even if it were in the middle of a sentence, and there it began next morning."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [poems]
" But, if I chose to walk six or seven miles along the coast... I might spend as pocket-money the railway fare I thus saved. Such considerable sums I fostered in order to buy with them editions of the poets. These were not in those days, as they are now, at the beck and call of every purse, and the attainment of each little masterpiece was a separate triumph. In particular I shall never forget the excitement of teaching at last the exorbitant price the bookseller asked for the only, although imperfect, edition of the poems of S.T.Coleridge. At last I could meet his demand, and my friend and I went down to consummate the solemn purchase. Comimg away with our treasure, we read aloud from the oranged-coloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at last we sat down on the bulging foot of an elm-tree in a secluded lane. Here we stayed, in a sort of poetical nirvana, reading, forgetting the passage of time, until the hour of our neglected mid-day meal was! a long while past, and we had to hurry home to bread and chees and a scolding."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Ben Jonson :
" But, when I was nearly sixteen, I made a purchase which brought me into sad trouble, and was the cause of a permanent wound to my self- respect. I had long coveted in the book-shop window a volume in which the poetical works of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were said to be combined. This I bought at length, and I carried it with me to devour as I trod the desolate road that brought me along the edge of the cliff on Saturday afternoons. Ben Jonson I could make nothing of..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander
" But, when I was nearly sixteen, I made a purchase which brought me into sad trouble, and was the cause of a permanent wound to myself-respect. I had long coveted in the book-shop window a volume in which the poetical works of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were said to be combined.This I bought at length, and I carried it with me to devour as I trod the desolate road that brought me along the edge of the cliff on Saturday afternoons. Ben Jonson I could make nothing of, but when I turned to 'Hero and Leander' I was lifted to a heaven of passion and music. It was a marvellous revelation of romantic beauty to me, and as paced along that lonely and exquisite highway, with its immense command of the sea, and its peeps ever now and then, through slanting thickets, far down to the snow-white shingle, I lifted up my voice, singing the verses, as I strolled along..[quote]so it wenton, and I thought I had never read anything so lovely...[quote]it all seemed to my fancy intoxicating beyond anything I had ever even dreamed of, since I had not yet become aquainted with any of the modern romanticists."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander
" When I reached home, tired out with enthusiasm and exercise, I must needs, so soon as I had eaten, search out my stepmother that she might be a partner in my joys. It is remarkable to me now, and a disconcerting proof of my still almost infantile innocence, that, having induced her to settle to her knitting, I began, without hesitation, to read Marlowe's voluptuous poem aloud to that blameless Christian gentlewoman. We got on very well in the opening, but at the episode of Cupid's pining, my stepmother's needles began nervously to clash, and when we launched on the description of Leander's person, she interruptedme by saying, rather sharply, 'give me that book, please, I should like to read the rest to myself.' I resigned the reading in amazement, and was stupefied to see her take the volume, shut it with a snap and hide it under her needlework. Nor could I extract from her another word on the subject." [Gosse goes on to tell how his Father told him off, and burned the book]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare :
" But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions. Shakespeare now passed into my possession entire, in the shape of a reprint more hideous and more offensive to the eyesight than would in these days appear conceivable..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
John Keats :
" But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance with Keats, who entirely captivated me."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance...with Shelley, whose 'Queen Mab' at first repelled me from the threshold of his ediface."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Wordsworth :
" But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance... with Wordsworth, for the exercise of whose magic I was still far too young."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Robert Southey : Works (poetical?)
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...My Father presented me with the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me 'The Golden Treasury' in which almost everything seemed exquisite."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
F.T Palgrave : The Golden Treasury
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curios directions...My Father presented me with the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found it impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me 'The Golden Treasury' in which almost everything seemed exquisite."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
: Greek New Testament
" He [Father] presented to me a copy of Dean Alford's edition of the Greek New Testament, in four great volumes, and these he had so magnificently bound in full morocco that the work shone only poor [on my] shelf of sixpenny poets like a duchess among dairy-maids. He extracted from me a written promise that I would translate and meditate upon a portion of the Greek text every morning before I started for business. This promise I presently failed to keep, my good intentions being undermined by an invincible ennui."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle :
"Yet I could not but observe the difference with zeal with which I snatched at a volume of Carlyle or Ruskin- since these magicians were now first revealing themselves to me- and the increasing languor with which I took up Alford for my daily 'passage' [i.e.of Bible study]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
John Ruskin :
"Yet I could not but observe the difference between the zeal with which I snatched at a volume of Carlyle or Ruskin -since these magicians were now first revealing themselves to me -and the increasing languor with which I took up Alford formy daily 'passage' [i.e of Bible study]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
[unknown] : [sensational novel]
'...the inside of the lid of it was lined with sheets of what I now know to have been a sensational novel. It was of course a fragment, but I read it, kneeling on the bare floor, with indescribable rapture.' [and more for a paragraph..]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'And with that, dismissing the subject, I dived again into the unplumbed depths of the "Penny Cyclopaedia"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Serial / periodical
[n/a] : Bible
'I read the Bible everyday, and at much length; also, -with what I cannot but think some praiseworthy patience, - a book of incommunicable dreariness, called Newton's "Thoughts onthe Apocalypse".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Benjamin Wills Newton : Thoughts on the Apocalypse
'I read the Bible everyday, and at much length; also, - with what I cannot but think some praiseworthy patience, - a book of incommunicable dreariness, called Newton's "Thoughts on the Apocalypse".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
James Hyslop : The Cameronian's Dream
'I came across a piece of verse which exercised a lasting influence on my taste. It was called "The Cameronian's Dream" and it had been written by a certain James Hyslop...' [ more for 2 paras]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Andrew John Jukes : The law of the offerings in Leviticus
'There was, for instance, a writer on prophecy called Jukes, of whose works each of my parents was inordinately fond, and I was early set to read Jukes aloud to them. I did it glibly , like a machine, but the sight of Jukes's volumes became an abomination to me, and I never formed the outline of a notion what they were about.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'Later on, a publication called the "Penny Cyclopaedia" became my daily, and for a long time almost my sole study...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Bishop Edward Elliott : Horae Apocalypticae
'During those melancholy weeks at Pimlico, I read aloud another work of the same nature as those of Habershon and Jukes, the "Horae Apocalypticae" of a Mr. Elliott. This was written, I think in a less disagreeable style, and certainly it was less opaquely obscure to me...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'At other times, I dragged a folio volume of the "Penny Cyclopaedia" up to the studywith me, and sat there reading successive articles on such subjects as Parrots, Parthians, Passion-flowers, Passover and Pastry, without any invidious preferences, all information being equally welcome, and equally fugitive.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'When in years to come, I read "Dombey and Son", certain features of Mrs Pipchin did irresistibly remind me of my excellent past governess.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
[unknown] : [Latin Grammar]
'...and we now started Latin, in a little eighteenth-century reading book, out of which my Grandfather had been taught. It consisted of strings of works, and of grim arrangements of conjunction and declension, presented in a manner appallingly unattractive. I used to be set down in the study, under my Father's eye, to learn a solid page of this compilation, while he wrote or painted...It was almost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holding up to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheep-skin cover that smelt of mildewed paste.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Michael Scott : Tom Cringle's Log
'climbing to the top of a bookcase, [he] brought down a thick volume and presented it to me. "You'll find all about the Antilles there", he said, and left me with "Tom Cringle's Log" in my possession. [explains mother's attitude to fiction and why he'd never read any till now] So little did I understand what was allowable in the way of literary invention that I had began the story without a doubt that it was true, and I think it was my Father himself who, in answer to an inquiry, explained to me that it was "all made up". He advised me to read the descriptions of the sea, and of the mountains of Jamaica, and "skip" the pages which gave imaginary adventures and conversations. But I did not take his counsel; these latter were the flower of the book to me.' [more account on pp.143-4]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Merchant of Venice
'Accordingly, it was announced that the reading of Shakespeare would be one of our lessons, and on the following afternoon we began "The Merchant of Venice". There was one large volume, and it was handed about the class; I was permitted to read the part of Bassanio, and I set forth, with ecstatic pipe ... I was in the seventh heaven of delight, but alas! We had only reached the second act of the play, when the readings mysteriously stopped. I never knew the cause, but I suspect it was at my Father's desire. He prided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
'...but she procured for me a copy of "Pickwick", by which I was instantly and gloriously enslaved. My shouts of laughing at the richer passages were almost scandalous, and led to my being reproved for disturbing my Father while engaged, in an upper room, in the study of God's Word. I must have expended months on the perusal of "Pickwick", for I used to rush through a chapter, and then read it over again very slowly, word for word, and then shut my eyes to realise the figures and the action...[more..]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Dr. Edward Young : The Last Day
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'I think that the rhetoric and vigorous advance of Young's verse were pleasant to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Robert Blair : The Grave
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'It was Blair's "Grave" that really delighted me, and I frightened myself with its melodious doleful images in earnest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Bishop Beilby Porteus : Death
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'Beilby Porteus I discarded from the first as impenetrable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Samuel Boyse : The Deity
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'In the "Deity" I took a kind of persistant penitential pleasure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
[unknown] : [volume of engravings]
'My mother then received from her earlier home certain volumes, among which was a gaudy gift-book of some kind, containing a few steel engravings of statues. These attracted me violently, and here for the first time I gazed upon Apollo with his proud gesture, Venus in her undulations, the kirtled shape of Diana, and Jupiter voluminously bearded...In private I returned to examine my steel engravings of the statues, and I reflected that they were too beautiful to be so wicked as my Father thought they were."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Samuel Boyse : The Deity
'On the day in question, I was unable to endure the drawing-room meeting to its close, but, clutching my volume of the Funeral Poets, I made a dash for the garden...Then I opened my book for consolation, and read a great block of pompous verse out of "The Deity", in the midst of which exercise, yielding to the softness of the hot and aromatic air, I fell fast asleep.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Bailey (ed.) : Etymological Dictionary
'My Father possessed a copy of Bailey's "Etymological Dictionary", a book published early in the eighteenth century. Over this I would pore for hours, playing with the words in a fashion which I can no longer reconstruct, and delighting in the savour of the rich, old-fashioned country phrases. My Father finding me thus employed, fell to wondering at the nature of my persuit, and I could offer him, indeed, no very intelligible explanation of it. He urged me to give up such idleness, and to make practical use of language.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : The Tempest
'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces. This I read through and through, not disdaining the help of the notes, and revelling in the glossary. I studied "The Tempest" as I had hitherto studied no classic work, and it filled my whole being with music and romance. This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice
'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and there. I completed "The Merchant of Venice", read "Cymbeline", "Julius Caesar", and "Much Ado"; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Cymbeline
'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume there. I completed "The Merchant of Venice", read "Cymbeline", "Julius Caesar", and "Much Ado"; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise.'
