Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 18643

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I have read The Inferno. It is wonderful, the most awful study of on-coming madness one could think of, and the strange thing is, it is entirely a writer's madness. I mean no one but a writer or artist of some sort would find significance in such small things.'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: Between 28 Jul 1914 and 31 Dec 1914
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: city: Harrogate
county: Yorkshire
specific address: Park House, 21 Park Gate
   
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:Edith Sitwell
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Female
Date of Birth 17 Sep 1887
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Poet
Religion: Christian
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: August Strindberg
Title: The Inferno
Genre: Autobiog / Diary
Form of Text: Unknown
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 18643  
Source - Print  
  Author: Edith Sitwell
  Editor: Richard Greene
  Title: Selected letters of Edith Sitwell
  Place of Publication: London ( Virago Press)
  Date of Publication: 1998
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 18
  Additional comments: Letter to her brother Osbert Sitwell 1914. No date of the month given but a Thursday likely to be sometime after 28th July, the date of the previous letter in this collection. Osbert was serving as a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards and was sent to France in December 1914 In this letter Edith expresses her fervent hope that he will not 'have to go'.Edith was staying with Inez Chandos-Pole who was married to a cousin. She also laments the condition of her mother, Lady Ida Sitwell,who between 1913 and 1915 was embroiled in a series of law suits. The letter is generally one of lament.

Citation: Edith Sitwell, Richard Greene (ed.), Selected letters of Edith Sitwell (London ( Virago Press), 1998), p. 18, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=18643, accessed: 18 April 2024

Additional comments:

Note. This is not Dante's Inferno. The Editor's notes indicate that the text referred to is an autobiographical work by August Strindberg. This appears to express a genuine instinctive response to the text rather than representing an extract from any critical review of the text.

 

 

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