Listings for Reader:
Gwen Raverat
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Walter Scott : [novels]
'it was many, many years before any of us was able to look with unprejudiced eyes at anything Scotch again. Always excepting Scott's novels, which we loved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
William Shakespeare : King Lear
'There were some problems which I never solved in all my youth. For instance, there was Gloucester's Natural Son in King Lear. For if bad Edmund was a Natural Son, presumably Good Edgar must have been an Un-natural son; and what on earth could that be?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'David Copperfield was puzzling, too. He was a 'posthumous child' and was born with a 'caul'. The French dictionary, the only one I had, gave posthumous; posthume, which did not help me much; but for caul it gave fillet, and of course a fillet was a string bag. How very odd. Then someone gave me a present of Esmond; but my mother said I was not to read it, because parts of it were "not very nice". Of course I wanted to find out what was not nice about it; so, by a quibble, I decided that I might read all that I could manage without cutting the pages. With industry and perseverance this meant practically all of it, though the pages were not cut for many a long year. But I could never discover what was wrong with it'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond
'David Copperfield was puzzling, too. He was a 'posthumous child' and was born with a 'caul'. The French dictionary, the only one I had, gave posthumous; posthume, which did not help me much; but for caul it gave fillet, and of course a fillet was a string bag. How very odd. Then someone gave me a present of Esmond; but my mother said I was not to read it, because parts of it were 'not very nice'. Of course I wanted to find out what was not nice about it; so, by a quibble, I decided that I might read all that I could manage without cutting the pages. With industry and perseverance this meant practically all of it, though the pages were not cut for many a long year. But I could never discover what was wrong with it'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Jane Austen : Emma
'Every time I re-read "Emma" I see more clearly that we must be somehow related to the Knightleys of Donwell Abbey; both dear Mr Knightley and Mr John Knightley seem so familiar and cousinly. Surely no-one, who had not Darwin or Wedgwood blood in their veins, could be as cross as Mr John Knightley... it is obvious, too, that there is some strain of the Woodhouses of Hartfield in us...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Thomas Bewick :
'It was here, at No. 31, that I discovered Bewick, one afternoon while Aunt Etty was having her rest. I remember lying on the sofa between the dining-room windows with the peacock blue serge curtains, and wishing passionately that I could have been Mrs Bewick.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
William Wordsworth : Excursion, The
'One would be called upon to read aloud, say, Wordsworth's "Excursion" with her - Wordsworth was her religion - but one was never able to read more than two or three consecutive lines without stopping to discuss exactly what the words meant; or, alternatively, for her to give messages to Janet.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'I have only now realised that the reason Blind Pew in "Treasure Island" frightened me so extremely was that I gave him the face of our own Blind Man' [seen regularly in Cambridge and looking "most evil"]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge : The Daisy Chain
'I could read "The Daisy Chain" or "The Wide Wide World", and just take the religion as the queer habits of those sorts of people, exactly as if I were reading a story about Mohammedans or Chinese'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Susan Warner : The Wide Wide World
'I could read "The Daisy Chain" or "The Wide Wide World", and just take the religion as the queer habits of those sorts of people, exactly as if I were reading a story about Mohammedans or Chinese'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Robert Browning : Saul
'I learnt with interest all about David and read Browning's "Saul" with "an intelligent scripture mistess".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
: Bible, The
'I learnt with interest all about David and read Browning's "Saul" with "an intelligent scripture mistess".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf to Gwen Raverat, 11 March 1925: 'I don't think you would believe how it moves me that you and Jacques should have been reading Mrs Dalloway, and liking it. I'm awfully vain I know; and I was on pins and needles about sending it to Jacques; and now I feel exquisitely relieved; not flattered: but one does want that side of one to be acceptable'.
