Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 2364

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'"The words I didn't understand I just skipped over, yet managed to get a good idea of what the story was about", wrote James Murray, the son of a Scottish shoemaker. "By the time I was ten or eleven years old I did not need to skip any words in any books because by then I had a good grounding in roots and derivations". Crusoe so aroused his appetite for literature that, when his schoolteacher asked the class to list all the books they had read, Murray rattled off titles by Ballantyne, Kingston and Dickens until "I realised the eyes of everyone in the room were on me..."'
Century: 1850-1899, 1900-1945
Date: Between 1 Jan 1894 and 31 Dec 1905
Country: Scotland
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:James Murray
Age Unknown
Gender Male
Date of Birth 1894
Socio-economic group: Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder
Occupation: shoemaker's son
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: Scotland
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Robert Michael Ballantyne
Title: [novels]
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 2364  
Source - Print  
  Author: Jonathan Rose
  Editor: n/a
  Title: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
  Place of Publication: New Haven
  Date of Publication: 2001
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 109
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 109, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=2364, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

See James Murray, "To Pashendaele and Back" - no further ref traceable.

 

 

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