Evidence: | Aaron Hill to Samuel Richardson, 29 December 1740:
'We have a lively little boy in the family [...] quite unfriended, and born to no prospect. He is the son of an honest, poor soldier [...] the boy [...] is so pretty, so gentle, and gay-spirited, that we have made him, and designed him, our own, ever since he could totter and aim at words [...] He is an hourly foundation for laughter [...] ever since my first reading of Pamela, he puts in for a right to be one of her hearers; and, having got half her sayings by heart, talks in no other language but hers; and what really surprises, and has charmed me into a certain foretaste of her influence, he is, at once, become fond of his books, which (before) he could never be brought to attend to -- that he may read Pamela, he says, without stopping. The first discovery we made of this power, over so unripe and unfixed an attention, was one evening, when I was reading her reflections at the pond to some company. The little rampant intruder [...] had crept under my chair, and was sitting before me on the carpet [...] on a sudden we heard a succession of heart-wrenching sobs, which, while he strove to conceal from our notice, his little sides swelled as though they would burst [...] All the ladies in the company were ready to devour him with kisses, and he has since become doubly a favourite, and is, perhaps, the youngest of Pamela's conquests.' |
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Century: | 1700-1799 | ||||||||||
Date: | Between 17 Sep 1740 and 29 Dec 1740 | ||||||||||
Country: | n/a | ||||||||||
Time: | evening | ||||||||||
Place: | n/a | ||||||||||
Type of Experience (Reader): |
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Type of Experience (Listener): |
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Reader: | Aaron Hill |
Age | Adult (18-100+) |
Gender | Male |
Date of Birth | n/a |
Socio-economic group: | Professional / academic / merchant / farmer |
Occupation: | Writer |
Religion: | n/a |
Country of origin: | n/a |
Country of experience: | n/a |
Listeners present if any: (e.g. family, servants,
friends, workmates) |
Included Harry Campbell (aged c. 6 years old), and 'ladies.' |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Author: | Samuel Richardson |
Title: | Pamela |
Genre: | Fiction |
Form of Text: | Print: Book |
Publication details: | n/a |
Provenance: | unknown |
Record ID: | 28010 | |
Source - | ||
Author: | n/a | |
Editor: | Anna Laetitia Barbauld | |
Title: | The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson [...] Selected from the Original Manuscripts Bequeathed by him to his Family | |
Place of Publication: | London | |
Date of Publication: | 1804 | |
Vol: | 1 | |
Page: | 56-58 | |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Citation: | Anna Laetitia Barbauld (ed.), The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson [...] Selected from the Original Manuscripts Bequeathed by him to his Family (London, 1804), 1, p. 56-58, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=28010, accessed: 17 April 2024 |
Child listener named at p.63 and 71 in source. |
Reading Experience Database version 2.0. Page updated: 27th Apr 2016 3:15pm (GMT)