Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 26717

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
Transcript of interview: 'I don’t think there was anything that I wasn’t allowed to read. It was only when I went to school to boarding school and all my friends were reading Gone with the Wind, and my mother decided she would rather I didn’t read Gone with the Wind because of a very racy chapter where Melanie gives birth to a baby and she didn’t think that was suitable for me. I was thirteen or fourteen and I didn’t read it but I did read Vicky Baum’s Hotel Berlin which had a much worse scene where a woman gave birth in a rowing boat… I can’t think of anything that was actually banned at all. I read lots and lots of my father’s books and this was a book that I loved - Palgrave’s Golden Treasury [shows book]. My mother gave me this [shows book]. This is the one I learned to read on. This is the Water Babies. I remember sitting up in bed reading Mrs Be Done By As You Did and shouting out “I can read, I can read”! I was six. I didn’t learn to read until quite late.'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: Between 4 Sep 1933 and 4 Sep 1934
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: city: Darlington
   
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:Hilary Spalding
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Female
Date of Birth 4 Sep 1927
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: child
Religion: Church of England
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 Kingsley
Title: The Water Babies
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 26717  
Source - Manuscript Other
  Author: Transcript of interview with Mrs Hilary Adams, aged 81 (2008) carried out by RED research fellow. For further information and permission to quote this material, contact the Reading Experience Database (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/contacts.php),

Citation: Transcript of interview with Mrs Hilary Adams, aged 81 (2008) carried out by RED research fellow. For further information and permission to quote this material, contact the Reading Experience Database (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/contacts.php), http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=26717, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

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