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

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Record Number: 3310


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1891 and 31 Dec 1918

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Sheffield

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown


Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

questionaire respondent

Age:

Unknown

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1891

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

engine tenter

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

n/a

Country of Experience:

England

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a


Additional Comments:

n/a



Text Being Read:

Author:

George Bernard Shaw

Title:

Socialism and Superior Brains

Genre:

Politics

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

owned


Source Information:

Record ID:

3310

Source:

Print

Author:

Jonathan Rose

Editor:

n/a

Title:

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Place of Publication:

New Haven

Date of Publication:

2001

Vol:

n/a

Page:

191-2

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 191-2, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/RED/record_details.php?id=3310, accessed: 28 March 2024


Additional Comments:

See [Arnold Freeman], 'The Equipment of the Workers' (London, 1919)

   
   
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