Record Number: 5203

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

" ... the surviving volumes owned by the seventeenth-century yeoman-famer William Dowsing ... reveal a scrupulously methodical reader. Dowsing evidently began a book by jotting down and completing all of the biblical citations ... As John Morrill summarizes, Dowsing 'frequently ... added to the title pages of books and sermons an index of items that were of particular interest to him; frequently he scored the margin with varying degrees of emphasis; and less usually he summarized a passage in the margin or engaged in argument with the author' ... Dowsing ... also wrote his name on his books' title pages ... along with the dates of purchase and reading ..."

Century:

1600-1699

Date:

unknown

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

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

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

William Dowsing

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

n/a

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Yeoman farmer

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

n/a

Country of Experience:

n/a

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Title:

sermons

Genre:

Sermon

Form of Text:

Print: Unknown

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

owned

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Source Information:

Record ID:

5203

Source:

Print

Author:

Stephen B. Dobranski

Editor:

n/a

Title:

Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England

Place of Publication:

Cambridge

Date of Publication:

2005

Vol:

n/a

Page:

61

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Stephen B. Dobranski, Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), p. 61, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/RED/record_details.php?id=5203, accessed: 23 April 2024

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Additional Comments:

Quotation from John Morrill, "William Dowsing, the Bureaucratic Puritan," in Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf (Oxford, 1993) 173-203; 182-83.