Listings for Reader:
Muir
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: Great Thoughts
'It was filled with a high but vague nonconformity, and tried to combine the ideals of revivalist Christianity and great literature. There were articles on 'aspects' of Ruskin, Carlyle, Browning, and other uplifting Victorians, and a great number of quotations, mainly "thoughts" from their works.... For some time this paper coloured my attitude to literature. I acquired a passion for "thoughts" and "thinkers", and demanded from literature a moral inspiration which would improve my character.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
John Keats : 'Ode to a Nightingale'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Alfred Lord Tennyson : 'The Lotus Eaters'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Ode to the West Wind'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Algernon Charles Swinburne : 'Atalanta in Calydon'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Wiliam Wordsworth : 'The Solitary Reaper'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
C. Maurice Bowra : The Heritage of Symbolism
'[Muir] wrote to Stephen Spender in the summer of 1944 that Bowra's book had made him realise that he had been writing symbolist poetry himself for years without realising it. He added: "He inspired me to write one deliberately, which I enclose".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
The Bible :
'[Muir] recalls... that his father conducted a little service in the farmhouse each week: "Every Sunday night he gathered us together to read a chapter of the Bible and kneel down in prayer. These Sunday nights are among my happiest memories; there was a feeling of complete security and union among us as we sat reading about David and Elijah".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
: [study of David Hume]
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe :
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
George Crabbe :
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Henri Bergson :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[probably] Georges-Eugene Sorel :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Havelock Ellis :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
John Galsworthy :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Joseph Conrad :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
James Joyce :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Ezra Pound : article in The New Age
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
Friedrich Nietzsche : The Twilight of the Idols
[Muir undertook 'intense study of Nietzsche'] "I tried, when I came to Nietzsche's last works, 'The Twilight of the Idols' and 'Ecce Homo', to ignore the fact that they were tinged with madness... I adopted the watchword of 'intellectual honesty', and in its name committed every conceivable sin against honesty of feeling and honesty in the mere perception of the world... my Nietzscheanism was what psychologists call a 'compensation'. I ccould not face my life as it was, and so I took refuge in the fantasy of the Superman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : Ecce Homo
[Muir undertook 'intense study of Nietzsche'] "I tried, when I came to Nietzsche's last works, 'The Twilight of the Idols' and 'Ecce Homo', to ignore the fact that they were tinged with madness... I adopted the watchword of 'intellectual honesty', and in its name committed every conceivable sin against honesty of feeling and honesty in the mere perception of the world... my Nietzscheanism was what psychologists call a 'compensation'. I ccould not face my life as it was, and so I took refuge in the fantasy of the Superman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[n/a] : The Christian World
'There were numbers of a paper called, I think, "The Christian World", dating from several years back. They contained nothing but accounts of meetings and conferences, announcements of appointments to ministries, and obituary notices; yet I read them from beginning to end.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[unknown] : [volume about theological debate]
'There was also a thick volume bound in calf and containing a verbatim report of a controversy between a Protestant divine and a Roman Catholic priest some time about the middle of last century, with a long argument on transubstantiation and many references to the Douai Bible which greatly puzzled me, for I did not know what the Douai Bible was.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Jane Austen : Sense and Sensibility
'There was a novel about young women, which I think now must have been "Sense and Sensibility": I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
John Howie : The Scots Worthies
'And the monthly parts of "The Scots Worthies" which my father had carried with him from Sanday, and which were now in hopeless confusion, I went over carefully, arranging and repairing them until the book assumed consecutive form. My father was so touched by this act of piety - for he regarded the book as almost a sacred one - that he had it handsomely bound in leather for me: a big tome of a thousand pages. All this passed through my mind; it was poor stuff without a vestige of nourishment, and it did not leave a trace behind.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical, bound by father into a volume
[unknown] : [school books]
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[n/a] : The People's Journal
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[n/a] : The People's Friend
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[n/a] : The Christian Herald
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[unknown] : Sunday Stories
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[unknown] : [novels]
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[n/a] : The Penny Magazine
''I read all my new school books as soon as I got them; I read "The People's Journal", "The People's Friend", and "The Christian Herald". I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at that time called "Sunday Stories". I read novels illustrating the dangers of intemperance and the values of thrift. I read a new periodical called "The Penny Magazine" which my brother Willie got: it was modelled on "Tit-bits", and contained all sorts of useless information. But I had no children's books and no fairy-tales: my father's witch stories made up for that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[unknown] : [story]
'Out of all that reading only one memory survives now. The story itself I have forgotten but the scene was laid in Italy, and there was a chapter in which a beggar arrived at a cottage carrying a heavy sack, which he left in a corner while he went, as he said, to the barn to get some sleep. The woman of the house, who lived by herself, happened to touch the sack, felt it moving, and knew at once that there was a man in it who had come to murder her... When I read "Treasure Island" a few years later the horrible figure of the blind seaman Pew brought back again the terrors of that dream.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'Out of all that reading only one memory survives now. The story itself I have forgotten but the scene was laid in Italy, and there was a chapter in which a beggar arrived at a cottage carrying a heavy sack, which he left in a corner while he went, as he said, to the barn to get some sleep. The woman of the house, who lived by herself, happened to touch the sack, felt it moving, and knew at once that there was a man in it who had come to murder her... When I read "Treasure Island" a few years later the horrible figure of the blind seaman Pew brought back again the terrors of that dream.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[n/a] : The Police News
'There was another impression, almost as horrible, but this time it was caused by an illustration, not a story. Sutherland sometimes had sent to him by a cousin in Leith a weekly paper called, I think, "The Police News", a record of brutal crimes. He left it lying in the kitchen one day, and with my usual hypnotised interest I went across to take it up. On the cover was a picture of a powerful man standing in his shirt sleeves with an axe raised above his head... My father snatched up the paper as soon as I put my hand out for it, crammed it into his pocket, and said sternly, "That's no for thee!"'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Newspaper
[n/a] : The Boy's Own Paper
'I do not know whether it was a benefit of a calamity when my brother Willie, out of pure kindness, began taking "Chums" for me. "Chums" was at that time a chief rival of "The Boy's Own Paper", which I did not see until years later, when it bored me with its stories of public-school life, filled with incomprehensible snobbery. The line of "Chums" was adventure stories in savage lands.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[n/a] : Chums
'I do not know whether it was a benefit of a calamity when my brother Willie, out of pure kindness, began taking "Chums" for me. "Chums" was at that time a chief rival of "The Boy's Own Paper", which I did not see until years later, when it bored me with its stories of public-school life, filled with incomprehensible snobbery. The line of "Chums" was adventure stories in savage lands.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
[n/a] : [School history book]
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Felicia Dorothea Hemans : Casabianca
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Thomas Campbell : Lord Ullin's Daughter
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Excelsior
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
William Wordsworth : The Excursion
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
John Keats : The Eve of Saint Agnes
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonais: An elegy on the death of John Keats
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Pied Piper of Hamelin
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Matthew Arnold : Tristram and Iseult
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Matthew Arnold : [selection of poems]
'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
William Shakespeare : As You Like It
'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
William Morris : The Earthly Paradise
'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[unknown] : [book on Wallace and Bruce]
'One day I saw a life of Carlyle in a bookshop window in Kirkwall and begged a shilling from my mother to buy it; but I found it was a shilling and threepence and I had to return dejectedly with a book on Wallace and Bruce instead. It was not a good book, and all I remember of it is a few lines quoted from Burns...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Notre Dame de Paris
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Nathaniel Hawthorne : The Scarlet Letter
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Thomas Carlyle : French Revolution
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[unknown] : [story about the origin of Orkney and Shetland Islands]
'Curiously enough the story I remember best is a grotesque and rather silly one which appeared in an annual almanac issues by "The Orkney Herald". It was an account of the origin of the Orkney and Shetland Islands...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical, almanac
[n/a] : The Bible
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
John Bunyan : Pilgrim's Progress
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Jonathan Swift : Gulliver's Travels
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : Hudson Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'but I was reading "Les Miserables", and consoled myself with the thought that I was too capable of loving noble things.'
