Switch to English Switch to French

The Open University  |   Study at the OU  |   About the OU  |   Research at the OU  |   Search the OU

Listen to this page  |   Accessibility

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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
  RED International Logo

RED Australia logo


RED Canada logo
RED Netherlands logo
RED New Zealand logo

Listings for Reader:  

Amelia Opie

 

Click here to select all entries:

 


  

 : 

'I heard, at that blessed City Mission meeting, which I attended the other evening, that our county is reckoned one of the worst for crime and ignorance. ? (note written summer 1850) Mrs Opie, latterly, took a somewhat morbid view of the existing state of things, supposing that instead if improving they would become worse. She read the daily papers, in which the same crime is repeatedly brought to notice, week after week, and became possessed with the idea that murders and horrors were multiplied in proportion to the publicity given them.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Newspaper

  

Mary Dudley : 

7/1/1827 ? ?Then read the first part of Mary Dudley?s Life; felt true unity with her experience when first called to the ministry. What a bright course was hers! ?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Hugh Twyford : The Grounds of Holy Life

7/1/1827 ? ?Read about eighty pages of a book lent to me by Dr Ash, called ?The grounds of a Holy life?. Believe the author to be a friend in principle, if not in profession. Read Paul?s fine address to Agrippa to the servants; hope they understood it; it explains the nature of grace, and clearly.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

M R Milford : 

8/1/1827 ? ?Finished M. R. Milford?s pretty book, and write out my new fable.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Apostle Paul : Address to Agrippa

7/1/1827 ? ?Read about eighty pages of a book lent to me by Dr Ash, called ?The grounds of a Holy life?. Believe the author to be a friend in principle, if not in profession. Read Paul?s fine address to Agrippa to the servants; hope they understood it; it explains the nature of grace, and clearly.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

John Galt : The Life and administration of Cardinal Wolsey

14/1/1827 ? 'I read "Galt?s Life of Wolsey" with interest. To be thankful, and rather better, could only read a psalm to the servants.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

unknown : Life of Sarah Martin

19/6/1847 ? 'I have been reading the life of Sarah Martin; it made me shed many tears, from the sense of her superior virtue, and my own inferiority. What an example she was?. W Allan?s admirable life I have read quite through, with delight, and I hope, instruction.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Louise Philippe Segur : Memoirs and Recollections

21/8/1829 ? 'The General gave us an account of the early years of the [French] revolution, the other gentlemen assisting. The evening ended only too soon, but I read in my own room the M?moirs of S?gur, and with a curious feeling lay down, knowing I should see Lafayette next day!'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Stephen Crisp : Sermons

'27/1/1833 - In the evening read some pages of S. Crisp's "Sermons" - admirable! Read Newton's "Cardiphonia" and in the Acts; an edifying evening, still to bed discouraged, though much enabled to pray during day.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

John Newton : Cardiphonia

'27/1/1833 - In the evening read some pages of S. Crisp's "Sermons" - admirable! Read Newton's "Cardiphonia" and in the Acts; an edifying evening, still to bed discouraged, though much enabled to pray during day.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

John Carne : Letters from the East

'27/1/1833 ? Read Carne?s "letters from the East", which, though not new to me, were most pleasing; so absorbed with his accounts of the Holy Land, I could scarcely quit them to go to bed.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

William Hayley : 

?Here Hayley kept his books and manuscripts and the choicest pieces of his famous collection of Chinese porcelain. The walls were adorned with prints and drawings, and here also hung many paintings by Hayley?s friend George Romney. In this quiet room Mr Hayley and Mrs Opie would spend some hours together reading aloud, sometimes from a manuscript of Hayley?s or sometimes from one of Amelia?s tales.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Manuscript: Plays

  

Amelia Opie : [her own works]

?Mrs Opie?s was essentially a happy temperament and with such adaptability as she possessed, quiet home evenings were not without their charms; even when her husband sat there deep in his books or prints. He liked novels also: had the ? virtue of appreciating her own: when she read her latest work to him in the dramatic manner that made Martineaus weep over her pathos in manuscript and wonder at the lesser charm of the printed page, if her audience was so much smaller than at Norwich literary gatherings, it was an indulgent one.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Manuscript: Unknown

  

Amelia Opie : her own works as they are published

?As usual all the good I saw in my work, before it was printed, is now vanished from my sight and I remember only its faults. All the authors of both sexes, and artists too, that are not too ignorant or full of conceit to be capable of alarm tell me they have had the same feeling when about to receive judgement from the public. Besides, whatever I read appears to me so superior to my own productions, that I am in a state of most unenviable humility.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Various : Journal des Debats

'6/11/1830 - I have just read the speeches of our Parliament in the Journal des Debats. How entirely I agree with Lord Grey; but the bare possibility of war with France is insupportable ... Brougham does not mention such a possibility, and I think his opinion nearly as good as Lord Grey's'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Serial / periodical

  

James Harris : Diaries

"4/2/1845 - I have read two volumes (the last two, I think) of Lord Malmesbury's Diaries, and with intense interest. I knew so many of the men he writes about, and lived on the spot where they acted."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Thomas Carlyle : History of the French Revolution

"4/2/1845 - I am also reading Carlyle's History of the French Revolution - full of genius, pathos, and pictures; with all its faults (and it has great ones) still, I can hardly lay it down."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

 : Bible and other religious texts

"During the whole time of his [her father's] illness, Mrs Opie assiduously attended him; she had later joined the Quakers, and read to him much in the Bible and other religious books, and his views, on religious subjects, appear to have undergone an entire change. Mr J J Gurney was very frequently with them both."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

unknown : [moral tales]

'I believe simple moral tales the very best mode of instructing the young and the poor ? else why do the pious of all sects and beliefs spread tracts in stories over the world - ? My own books (which friends never read, and know nothing about), are, in my belief, moral rules.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

 : Scriptures

'No dissipation has yet had power to make me neglect to read the Scriptures every day or fail to take advantage of every opportunity that has offered itself of religious conversation with a view to instruction.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

William Hayley : 

?At home, she read with her mother, from Madame de Genlis and from William Hayley.?

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Mme de Genlis : 

?At home, she read with her mother, from Madame de Genlis and from William Hayley.?

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : [novels]

'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Walter Scott : [novels]

'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

George Borrow : unknown

'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

  

Amelia Opie : Temper, or Domestic Scenes: A Tale

'I [Harriet Martineau] remember my mother and sister coming home with swollen eyes and tender spirits after spending an evening with Miss Opie, to hear "Temper," which she read in a most overpowering way. When they saw it in print, they could scarcely believe it was the same story.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Manuscript: Unknown

  

[n/a] : Psalm

14/1/1827 ? 'I read "Galt?s Life of Wolsey" with interest. To be thankful, and rather better, could only read a psalm to the servants.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie      Print: Book

 

Click here to select all entries:

 

   
   
Green Turtle Web Design