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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
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Listings for Reader:  

Norman Nicholson

 

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John Ruskin : King of the Golden River

'Yet learn to read I did, for when I was ill in bed at the age of seven, our doctor lent me Ruskin's "King of the Golden River", and I most certainly read that. It is, in fact, the first book I can actually remember having read at all and John Ruskin, of all people, is the first author to have written his name on my mind.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[unknown] : History of the World War

'On incident stays clear in my mind. It was on one of the rare days, other than Christmas and New Year, when my grandmother and I went into the sitting room above the shop. The time was late afternoon, just before tea, and I was standing near the window, looking through one of the volumes of a garish and expensive "History of the World War" which my father had bought from a door-to-door salesman who had persuaded him that "it would be very useful for the little boy's education". Some illustration in the book -a photograph or drawing of a battleship or aeroplane or shell-burst or trench warfare - must have caught my fancy, and, as I noticed that John Slater was looking out from his window on the opposite side of the street, I held up my picture against the glass so that he might see it. The street was narrow enough for anyone with good eyesight even to read the caption if it were printed in large enough letters. John nodded and promptly held up a picture in a book he was reading. I turned over a page or two and then held up another picture. John responded. And soon we found ourselves caught up in a competition...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

H.G. Wells : Kipps

'When, in my schooldays, I read H.G. Wells's "Kipps", I recognised it as in some ways a portrait of my father.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'When, a year or two later, we read "Julius Caesar" at school, I recognised the scene immediately... I did not find it very funny, but I recognised its authenticity. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about: he had met people like my Uncle Tom.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Daniel Defoe : Robinson Crusoe

'Until then, all the books I possessed had been children's annuals and the like. Except for "Robinson Crusoe", very few of the children's classics had come my way. I had read no Kipling nor "The Wind in the Willows" nor "Alice".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop

'We had met Dickens before, but only "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "The Chimes", both of which, in their mean little school editions, were enough to sour a boy against the novels for the rest of his life.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : The Chimes

'We had met Dickens before, but only "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "The Chimes", both of which, in their mean little school editions, were enough to sour a boy against the novels for the rest of his life.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers

'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : Barnaby Rudge

'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son

'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [discusses at length the realism he found in the Phiz illustrations for "Dombey and Son": 'I would pick up my book sometimes and try to read by the glow from the coals, and the world I entered seemed not too far removed from the world I left. It was no more walking from one room into the next.']

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby

'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : Great Expectations

'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

D.H. Lawrence : Lady Chatterley's Lover

'When, years later, I first read "Lady Chatterley's Lover", I did not feel that I was being liberated into a new frankness of manhood: I felt that I was returning to baby-talk'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : The Sketch

'The beautiful and disturbing feminine shapes which I sometimes saw in the photographic section of "The Sketch" and "The Tatler", turning over the pages furtively in the Public Library, did not immediately strike me as being what might lie beneath a gymslip.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

[n/a] : The Tatler

'The beautiful and disturbing feminine shapes which I sometimes saw in the photographic section of "The Sketch" and "The Tatler", turning over the pages furtively in the Public Library, did not immediately strike me as being what might lie beneath a gymslip.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

Charles Dickens : David Copperfield

'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Thomas Hardy : Under the Greenwood Tree

'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : The Woman's Weekly

'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

John Keats : [unknown]

'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Maud [and other poems?]

'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Edgar Allan Poe : [Tales]

'Tom... introduced me to Poe's "Tales", to my first detective stories and to the early novels of H.G. Wells.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[unknown] : [detective stories]

'Tom... introduced me to Poe's "Tales", to my first detective stories and to the early novels of H.G. Wells.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

H.G. Wells : [early novels]

'Tom... introduced me to Poe's "Tales", to my first detective stories and to the early novels of H.G. Wells.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

H.G. Wells : Kipps

'After the examination, when we were expected to feel free as hares, we all flopped with reaction. There seemed just nothing that we wanted to do. There were no lessons, and we spent most of the time reading whatever we liked. It happened that my father had picked up at the stationer's a sixpenny copy of Wells's "Kipps" and I began to chuckle over this, as we sat in class.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Kenneth Grahame : The Wind in the Willows

'I had not heard of "Wind in the Willows" until I read it during the summer holiday of my seventeenth year!'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : The Encyclopedia Britannica

'The [reference room of the public library] was almost airless, catarrhal from the fumes of the coke-stove, musty and dusty from the half-mouldering, out-of-date sets of "The Encyclopedia Britannica" and the "Dictionary of National Biography". We took down pages and pages of what, in the end, proved to be quite useless notes on the lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : Dictionary of National Biography

'The [reference room of the public library] was almost airless, catarrhal from the fumes of the coke-stove, musty and dusty from the half-mouldering, out-of-date sets of "The Encyclopedia Britannica" and the "Dictionary of National Biography". We took down pages and pages of what, in the end, proved to be quite useless notes on the lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

John Milton : [unknown works]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

John Keats : [unknown works]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Geoffery Chaucer : [unknown works]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Richard Brinsley Sheridan : [unknown works]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Charles Lamb : [unknown works]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Sir Walter Scott : Old Mortality

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : The Golden Treasury

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [poems extracts]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Percy Bysshe Shelley : [poems extracts]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems extracts]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

William Wordsworth : [poems extracts]

'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Thomas Hardy : [nature and the countryside]

'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Hudson : [unknown]

'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Jefferies : [unknown]

'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Gilbert White : [natural history]

'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

[unknown] : [books on birds, animals, snakes, trees]

'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

 

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