Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 12151

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'
Century: 1850-1899
Date: Between 28 Feb 1880 and 27 Feb 1881
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: city: Bideford
county: Devon
   
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:Arthur Symons
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 28 Feb 1865
Socio-economic group: Clergy (includes all denominations)
Occupation: Wesleyan preacher's son, later poet
Religion: Wesleyan, later none
Country of origin: England
Country of experience: England
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Title: Henry Esmond
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: borrowed (other)
borrowed from or given by Osborne

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 12151  
Source - Print  
  Author: Karl Beckson
  Editor: n/a
  Title: Arthur Symons: A Life
  Place of Publication: Oxford
  Date of Publication: 1987
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 11
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Karl Beckson, Arthur Symons: A Life (Oxford, 1987), p. 11, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=12151, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

[Quotations from three undated letters to Osborne, held at Princeton's Symons archive]

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)