Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 25769

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'At one time I knew entire pages of "Madame Bovary" by heart. But if "Madame Bovary" is a masterpiece "Salammbô" is close to a miracle. I well remember that when I was writing "[The]N[igger]of [the] N[arcissus]", "Salammbô" was my morning book.While taking coffee I would read a page or two at random--and there is hardly a page that isn't marvellous.'
Century: 1850-1899
Date: From: 1879
Country: unknown
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:Joseph Conrad
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 3 Dec 1857
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Master mariner
Religion: originally Polish Catholic, by now agnostic/atheist
Country of origin: Poland
Country of experience: unknown
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Gustave Flaubert
Title: Madame Bovary
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: first published Paris: Charpentier, 1857. The specific French edition read by Conrad unidentified
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 25769  
Source - Print  
  Author: Joseph Conrad
  Editor: Karl Frederick R. and Laurence Davies
  Title: The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad Volume 4 1908-1911
  Place of Publication: Cambridge
  Date of Publication: 1990
  Vol: 4
  Page: 310
  Additional comments: Trans. of letter in French from Joseph Conrad to Robert d'Humières dated 23 December 1909, Aldington.

Citation: Joseph Conrad, Karl Frederick R. and Laurence Davies (ed.), The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad Volume 4 1908-1911 (Cambridge, 1990), 4, p. 310, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=25769, accessed: 23 April 2024

Additional comments:

Robert d'Humières (1868-1915), translated "The Nigger of the Narcissus" (1910). Conrad's debt to Flaubert is well documented (see Yves Hervouet, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

 

 

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