Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 21992

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
Lord Dufferin to Alfred Tennyson [1858]: 'For the first 20 years of my life I not only did not care for poetry, but to the despair of my friends absolutely disliked it, at least so much of it as until that time had fallen in my way. In vain my mother read to me Dryden, Pope, Byron, Young, Cowper and all the standard classics of the day, each seemed to me as distasteful as I had from early infancy found Virgil, and I shall never forget her dismay when at a literary dinner I was cross-examined as to my tastes, and blushingly confessed before an Olympus of poets that I rather disliked poetry than otherwise. 'Soon afterwards I fell in with a volume of yours, and suddenly felt such a sensation of delight as I never experienced before. A new world seemed to open to me, and from that day, by a constant study of your works, I gradually worked my way to a gradual appreciation of what is good in all kinds of authors.'
Century: 1800-1849, 1850-1899
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

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Female
Date of Birth n/a
Socio-economic group: Royalty / aristocracy
Occupation: Wife of 4th Baron Dufferin and Clanboye
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: n/a
Country of experience: n/a
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (reader's son)
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Cowper
Title: n/a
Genre: Poetry
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 21992  
Source - Print  
  Author: Hallam Tennyson
  Editor: n/a
  Title: Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1897
  Vol: 1
  Page: 427
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son (London, 1897), 1, p. 427, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=21992, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

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