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

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Listings for Reader:  

Flora THompson

 

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Samuel Richardson : Pamela

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora THompson      Print: Book

  

Walter Scott : Waverley Novels

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora THompson      Print: Book

  

Elizabeth Gaskell : Cranford

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

William Shakespeare : 

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Jane Austen : 

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Charles Dickens : 

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Anthony Trollope : 

[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

 : Royal Reader

'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

 : [history reader]

'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Giovanni Battista Belzoni : Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, &c.

'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

[Brothers] Grimm : [Fairy Tales]

'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Jonathan Swift : Gulliver's Travels

'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Joan O'Neill : The Daisy Chain

'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

M.L. Molesworth : Cuckoo Clock

'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

M.L. Molesworth : Carrots

'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : Bow Bells

'In her spare time she was a great reader of novelettes and out of her four shillings subscribed to "Bow Bells" and the "Family Herald". Once when Laura, coming home from school, happened to overtake her, she enlivened the rest of the journey with the synopsis of a serial she was reading, called "His Ice Queen"'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

[n/a] : Family Herald

'In her spare time she was a great reader of novelettes and out of her four shillings subscribed to "Bow Bells" and the "Family Herald". Once when Laura, coming home from school, happened to overtake her, she enlivened the rest of the journey with the synopsis of a serial she was reading, called "His Ice Queen"'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

[unknown] : His Ice Queen

'In her spare time she was a great reader of novelettes and out of her four shillings subscribed to "Bow Bells" and the "Family Herald". Once when Laura, coming home from school, happened to overtake her, she enlivened the rest of the journey with the synopsis of a serial she was reading, called "His Ice Queen"'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

Giovanni Battista Belzoni : Travels

'Laura's greatest find was a battered old copy of Belzoni's "Travels" propping open somebody's pantry window. When she asked for the loan of it, it was generously given to her, and she had the intense pleasure of exploring the burial chambers of the pyramids with her author.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

 : Bible

'His lesson consisted of Bible reading, turn and turn round the class, of reciting from memory the names of the kings of Israel and repeating the Church Catechism.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Queen Victoria  : Leaves from Her Majesty's Life in the Highlands

'Laura was lucky enough to be given a bound volume of "Good Words" - or was it "Home Words"? - in which the Queen's own journal, "Leaves From Her Majesty's Life in the Highlands", ran as a serial. She galloped through all these instalements immediately to pick out the places mentioned by her dear Sir Walter Scott. Afterwards the journal was re-read many times, as everything was re-read in that home of few books.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

Sir Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor

'"The Bride of Lammermoor" was one of the first books that Laura read with absorbed interest. She adored the Master of Ravenswood, his dark haughty beauty, his flowing cloak and his sword, his ruined castle, set high on its crag by the sea, and his faithful servant Caleb and the amusing shifts he made to conceal his master's poverty. She read and re-read "The Bride"'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Elizabeth Gaskell : Cranford

''A grand old book, "The Pilgrim's Progress"! But I've something here you'll like better. "Cranford". Ever heard of it Laura? No, I thought not. Well you've got a treat in store.' They sampled "Cranford" that afternoon.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Maria Charlesworth : Ministering Children

'... and the spare hour or two was passed pleasantly enough over "Ministering Children", or "Queechy" or "The Wide Wide World".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Elizabeth Wetherell : Queechy

'... and the spare hour or two was passed pleasantly enough over "Ministering Children", or "Queechy" or "The Wide Wide World".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

Elizabeth Wetherell : The Wide, Wide World

'... and the spare hour or two was passed pleasantly enough over "Ministering Children", or "Queechy" or "The Wide, Wide World".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

  

George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan

'She was shocked by some of the hero's adventures but more often thrilled. Laura learned quite a lot by reading "Don Juan".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

 

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