Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 12644

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I am not ashamed to confess that during those weeks of imprisonment I too wept both by day and by night; not loudly or clamorously, but silently and with an intensity of misery that wasted my strength and filled my brain with hideous thoughts. The first library book issued to me was "David Copperfield"; and with the incipient ego-centrism of the budding criminal I imagined I could detect similarities between Dickens's early experiences and my own. For many nights I cried myself to sleep with "David Copperfield" hugged close, as if in him I had found a fellow sufferer.'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: Between 1 Sep 1901 and 30 Sep 1901
Country: England
Time: evening
Place: city: Reading
county: Berkshire
specific address: Reading County Gaol
other location: in his prison cell
   
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:Stuart Wood [pseud?]
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 27 Feb 1885
Socio-economic group: Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation: son of master craftsman, but habitual criminal
Religion: family Methodist but becomes athiest
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: Charles Dickens
Title: David Copperfield
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: borrowed (institution library)
prison library

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 12644  
Source - Print  
  Author: Stuart Wood
  Editor: n/a
  Title: Shades of the prison house: A personal memoir
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1932
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 32
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Stuart Wood, Shades of the prison house: A personal memoir (London, 1932), p. 32, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=12644, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

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