Record Number: 6155

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Anna Larpent's diary mentions over 440 titles, including forty-six English novels (She preferred those by women or works of sentimental fiction); twenty-two French works of fiction, including Rousseau, Marivaux, Marmontel and Voltaire; Italian imaginative literature, especially Goldoni and Netastasio; thirty-six French plays, notably those of Corneille; thirty-eight English plays, especially Shakespeare; more than sixty works on history, biography and social science, including Gibbon, Hume, Raynall, Rollin, Giucciardini, Adam Smith, Monboddo and Ferguson; sixteen books of natural philosophy, notably Fontenelle, Smellie, Goldsmith and the entire literature of the South Sea voyages; belles-lettres and criticism to the tune of forty-five volumes, among them Pope, Johnson, Boileau, Du Bos, Swift and Chesterfield; twenty-seven works of classics in translation, with Plutarch, Seneca, Virgil and Cicero as special favourites; a baker's dozen of advice books; forty-six collections of sermons and works of piety chiefly from latitudinarian divines but also from high churchmen and papists; the English poetic classics Spenser, Milton, Gay, Pope, Thomson, Young and Gray - as well as a smaller body of travel literature and miscellaneous work that is difficult to identify.'

Century:

1700-1799, 1800-1849

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:

Anna Larpent

Age:

Unknown

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

1758

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Diplomat's daugher and civil servant's wife

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

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:

various

Title:

various

Genre:

Sermon, Other religious, Fiction, Drama, Essays / Criticism, History, Poetry, Social Science, Biography, Geography / Travel, Politics, Philosophy, Conduct books, Science, Natural history, Reference / General works, Over 400 titles in every conceivable genre

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

6155

Source:

Print

Author:

John Brewer

Editor:

James Raven

Title:

The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, essay entitled 'Reconstructing the reader'

Place of Publication:

Cambridge

Date of Publication:

1996

Vol:

n/a

Page:

229

Additional Comments:

James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor editors. April 1792.

Citation:

John Brewer, James Raven (ed.), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, essay entitled 'Reconstructing the reader' (Cambridge, 1996), p. 229, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/RED/record_details.php?id=6155, accessed: 27 April 2024

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Additional Comments:

Brewer gets his information from Larpent's diary, Huntington Museum, HM 31201. The diaries describe her reading from 1773 to 1828.