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Edgar Allan Poe :
'At sixteen I discovered the work of Edgar Allan Poe. I happened to read first his biography, and the sadness of his life made a great impression on me. I felt an enormous pity for him, because in spite of his talent he had never been happy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Funeral Ode
'That time Lord Tennyson was delightful - kind and friendly and full of stories, talking a great deal, and in the best of humours. He read the Funeral Ode to us afterwards, and one or two shorter poems (Blow, Bugles, Blow); and I was so glad and thankful that Cecco should see him so, and have such a bright recollection of him to carry through his life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Lord Tennyson Print: Book
Francis Lathom : Midnight Bell, a German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life
'My father is now reading the Midnight Bell, which he has got from the library, and mother sitting by the fire.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Austen Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'I am working at Richardson now, and will send you the paper by the end of the week. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess that, tedious as he often is, I feel less difficulty in getting through him than in reading Fielding, and that as a matter of taste I actually prefer Lovelace to Tom Jones! I suppose that is one of the differences between men and women which even Ladies' Colleges will not set to rights.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Jenkins : Ginx's Baby
'I sympathise most warmly in a great deal that is said in the 'Ginx's Baby' book, and do actually express my own sentiments in what I say about it. And I admire immensely the "Peasant Life".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
George Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'If your old contributors had to yield the pas to such writers only as the author of the "Battle of Dorking" we should have little to complain of. It is wonderfully fine and powerful. Is it Laurence Oliphant? I can't think of anybody else with such a power of realism and wonderful command of the subject. It is vivid as Defoe.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Alexander William Kinglake : Eothen
'Pray tell him [Mr Kinglake] that I have been an admirer of his for - Heaven knows how long! - since the days when I was shocked and delighted by "Eothen." I remember being very much amused by the opening out of two old neighbours of mine at Ealing, after a discussion of his first volume. In the enthusiasm created by it one of them, an old Peninsular officer, instructed me carefully how to make a pontoon bridge and get my (!) troops over it; while the other, Admiral Collinson, burst forth into naval experiences.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Major Lockhart : [verses]
'By the bye, how good and clever his (Major Lockhart's) verses are which you sent me...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant
Alexander Allardyce : City of Sunshine
'There is a novel not very long published by a Mr Allardyce called the "City of Sunshine", entirely about Indian (not Anglo-Indian) life, which gives a very fine picture of an old Mohammedan officer in the old sepoy army. It is a very clever book. I don't know if it would interest you, who have the real thing under your eyes, as much as it interests us, or I would put it into the next box that is sent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : Mrs Arthur
'I went to one of my clubs to have some tea, and look - but with little hope - for a novel really attractive to me after having finished "Mrs Arthur", and then - a happy surprise, for I had never been prepared for it by any advertisement - I found awaiting me "Carita"! As far as I have gone I like it immensely.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : Carita
'I went to one of my clubs to have some tea, and look - but with little hope - for a novel really attractive to me after having finished "Mrs Arthur", and then - a happy surprise, for I had never been prepared for it by any advertisement - I found awaiting me "Carita"! As far as I have gone I like it immensely.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : De l'Allemagne
'I have just been reading Heine's "De l'Allemagne", a very amusing book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Romano (Cecco) Oliphant Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [novels]
'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Regina Maria Roche : [novels]
'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : [novels]
'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : Female Quixote, The
'She enjoyed comic didactic novels, with Lennox's "The Female Quixote" and Barrett's "The Heroine" being especially admired..., both satires on female misreading which shaped her fullest treatment of the subject in "Northanger Abey".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [novels]
'Thomas Moore regularly read to his wife for two hours after dinner, at one point "going through Miss Edgeworth's works".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems]
'Princess Charlotte wrote of reading as a "great passion"; in a poignant attempt to construct bourgeois domestic intimacy in the dysfunctional household of the divorced Prince Regent she discussed and exchanged books with her friend Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, including memoirs and recent history, Byron's poems, and novels including Gothic fiction and works by Anne Plumptre and Jane Austen. (The perceptive Charlotte especially enjoyed "Sense and Sensibility" because she discerned in herself"the same imprudence" as Marianne's).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Charlotte Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'Weeton's reading becomes important in communication with friends, but also a point of conflict: when she visits her brother and his wife, they complain that she spends all her time reading, though she insists that she read very little ("only... Gil Blas, now and then a newspaper, two or three of Lady M. W. Montagu's letters, and few pages in a magazine'), and only because her hosts rose so late. Since her literacy is important as a sign of status, she repeatedly presents herself not as a reader of low status texts like novels but of travels, education works, memoirs and letters, including Boswell's "Tour of the Hebrides", the Travels of Mungo Park, and Mme de Genlis' work. She approves some novels, like Hamilton's "The Cottagers of Glenburnie", but generally finds them a "dangerous, facinating kind of amusement" which "destroy all relish for useful, instructive studies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Mary Wortley Montagu : [Letters]
'Weeton's reading becomes important in communication with friends, but also a point of conflict: when she visits her brother and his wife, they complain that she spends all her time reading, though she insists that she read very little ("only... Gil Blas, now and then a newspaper, two or three of Lady M. W. Montagu's letters, and few pages in a magazine'), and only because her hosts rose so late. Since her literacy is important as a sign of status, she repeatedly presents herself not as a reader of low status texts like novels but of travels, education works, memoirs and letters, including Boswell's "Tour of the Hebrides", the Travels of Mungo Park, and Mme de Genlis' work. She approves some novels, like Hamilton's "The Cottagers of Glenburnie", but generally finds them a "dangerous, facinating kind of amusement" which "destroy all relish for useful, instructive studies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Hilaire Belloc : 'The Dons', 'The Poor of London'
'Yesterday my Elizabeth and I went to the most remarkable poets' Reading I have ever attended. It was held at Lord Byron's beautiful house in Piccadilly... I was moved by Mr de la Mare reading five poems of great beauty. Elizabeth was thrilled at seeing for the first time W.H. Davies, a strange tiny poet. He read "Love's Silent Hour" and three others. Hilary [Hilaire Belloc] read "The Poor of London" and "the Dons". He got a big reception'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilaire Belloc
Walter de la Mare : [five poems]
'Yesterday my Elizabeth and I went to the most remarkable poets' Reading I have ever attended. It was held at Lord Byron's beautiful house in Piccadilly... I was moved by Mr de la Mare reading five poems of great beauty. Elizabeth was thrilled at seeing for the first time W.H. Davies, a strange tiny poet. He read "Love's Silent Hour" and three others. Hilary [Hilaire Belloc] read "The Poor of London" and "the Dons". He got a big reception'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter de la Mare
William Henry Davies : 'Love's Silent Hour' and three other poems
'Yesterday my Elizabeth and I went to the most remarkable poets' Reading I have ever attended. It was held at Lord Byron's beautiful house in Piccadilly... I was moved by Mr de la Mare reading five poems of great beauty. Elizabeth was thrilled at seeing for the first time W.H. Davies, a strange tiny poet. He read "Love's Silent Hour" and three others. Hilary [Hilaire Belloc] read "The Poor of London" and "the Dons". He got a big reception'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies
Alfred Tennyson : More d'Arthur
'Communication between these poets and myself was instantaneous. I saw with delighted amazement that all poetry had been written specially for me. Although I spoke - in my back street urchin accents - of La Belly Dame Sans Murky, yet in Keats's chill little poem I seemed to sense some essence of the eternal ritual of romantic love. And Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" bowled me over. I read it again and again until I fairly lived in a world of "armies that clash by night" and stately weeping Queens. So the poets helped me escape the demands of communal living which now, at thirteen, were beginning to be intolerable to me'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Burnham Print: Unknown
Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
In the year 1650, as I well remember, I was onenight reading in my bed (as it was my custom then to do, in some book or other) in the Anatomy of Melancholy: and coming to this passage of the author, that I have just now cited, viz of his having Jupiter in the sixth house, which made him a physician,I was really non-plust, and Planet-struck for that bout, and forced to lay aside my book, being unwilling to read what I could not understand. I then endeavoured to go to my rest, but in vain, my active genius was watchful, and constantly solicited me,even in my dreams, to enquire, and discover if I could, what Jupiter in the Sixth house meant. . . .I had then. . . some small acquaintance with the learned Dr. Nicholas Fisk. . .who presently gave me such satisfaction in the Point as I was thencapable of receiving.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gadbury Print: Book
follower of Joanna Southcott :
'Proselytised by a follower of the mystic Joanna Southcott, he read some of his propaganda but found "Some things that did not Correspond with the bible and also that it was a trick to get money so I declined his religion and bid him adue".''
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Unknown
Robert Nelson : Life of Dr. George Bull
Last night sleep departed, I read almost all night Nelsons life of Bp Bull James Clre
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clegg Print: Book
Richard Baxter : The Saints Everlasting Rest.
At night I read some of the lives and characters of of the Ejected ministers in Dr Calamys account and was much affected with their piety, Zeal and steadiness[...] concluded with reading Mr Baxters Saints. Rest and prayer as usual.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clegg Print: Book
Richard Carlile :
'he was receptive to the radical anticlericalism of William Cobbett, T.J. Wooler and Richard Carlile... "These books seemed to be founded upon Scripture and Condemned all the sins of oppression in all those that had supremacy over the lower order of people and when I Compared this with the preceptive part of the word of God I began to Conclude that most if not all professors of religion did it only for a Cloake to draw money out of the pockets of the Credulous..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
Richard Baxter : An abridgement of Mr Baxter's life and times. With
At night I read some of the lives and characters of the Ejected ministers in Dr Calamys account and was much affected with their piety, Zeal and steadiness[...] concluded with reading Mr Baxters Saints. Rest and prayer as usual.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clegg Print: Book
Richard Sibbes : The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax
May 3. I found a case putt in Mr A's Vindiciae Pietatis, about a violent inclination from natural temper (which suits mee), wherin he sayeth there is to be a disowning, and resisting ... Soon after in Dr Sibbs his Bruised Reed, I found that resisting sin was one degree of victory, so that if I cannot root out ill thoughts, I will resi[s]t them...
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Richard Alleine : Vindiciae Pietatis; or, a Vindication of Godliness
May 3. I found a case putt in Mr A's Vindiciae Pietatis, about a violent inclination from natural temper (which suits mee), wherin he sayeth there is to be a disowning, and resisting ... Soon after in Dr Sibbs his Bruised Reed, I found that resisting sin was one degree of victory, so that if I cannot root out ill thoughts, I will resi[s]t them...
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Robert Bloomfield : The Farmers Boy
'Sufferings of the post-horse... from Bloomfields 'the Farmers Boy'...Poplar 7th May 1832. T.W.M.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: T.W.M.
Bernard Barton : To Mary
transcript of the poem headed 'to mary'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Bernard Barton : Winter
transcript of the poem headed 'winter / bernard barton'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Bernard Barton : The Joy /addressed to a young friend
transcript of the poem headed 'the joy / addressed to a young friend / by bernard barton'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Felicia Dorothea Hemans : Coeur De Lion At The Bier Of His Father
'coeurde lion at the bier of his father / new monthly magazine' [includes prose note] [transcription of poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom Print: Serial / periodical
Professor Gellert : The Life of Professor Gellert; with a course of ...
Transcription of part of text: 'From Professor Gellerts Moral Lessons / 'Faith in God, the sublime thought...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Robert Pollok : The course of time
''extract from the course of time' transcribes from 'true happiness had no localities...' to 'where happiness descending, sat and smiled.' signed 'aunt a.' 'quarry bank july 1830'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan
Alexander Pope : The Rape of the Lock
'Of Pope's Rape of the Lock, Macaulay says: "Admirable indeed! The fight towards the beginning of the last book is very extravagant and foolish. It is the blemish of a poem which, but for this blemish, would be as near perfection in its own class as any work in the world." '
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Bernard Barton : 'Lines written in the first leaf of a friends Albu
'Lines written in the first leaf of a friends Album' 'Bernard Barton' 'The Warrior is[pleased?] when the war is won ....'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Dugdale
Bernard Barton : Remember Me!
'Remember Me! By Bernard Barton Esq' ' "Remember me!" However brief / Those simple words... [transcribes text]'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Dugdale
Bernard Barton : Farewell
'Farewell' 'Nay [shy] not from the word "Farewell"! / As if twer friendships knell ...' 'Bernard Barton' [transcribes text]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Dugdale
Reginald Herber : Narrative of a journey through the upper Provinces
'If thou wast by mys side my love...' [transcript of poem] 'Hebers Journal'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Robert Hartley Cromek : Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song: with histo
'My Ain Fire Side' 'O I hae seen great ones...'[transcript of text] 'from the Nithsdale and Galloway Songs'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable R.B. Sheridan
'Extract from Byron's Monody on the death of Sheridan' [transcript of text]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Lord George Gordon Byron : 'Sonnet on Chillon'
'Sonnet on Chillon' [transcript of text]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
'Autumn departs- but still his mantles fold...' [transcript of text] 'Introduction to the Lord of the Isles'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
'Stranger! if e'er thine ardent...' [transcript of text] 'Lord of the Isles 14th Canto'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Charles Swain : Song of the Bells
'Song of the Bells by Charles Swain'... 'Soft upon the summer air /...'[transcript of text] [NB there was a poet called Charles Swain who published from 1828-1850s].
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Bowly
Robert Burns : Winter: A Dirge
'A Dirge- Burn' 'The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast [transcribes alll of poem from l.10.]'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Robert Burns : Despondency
'Despondency---Burn' 'Oppress'd with grief, oppress'd with care...' [transcribes poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Robert Burns : Prayer Under the Pressure of Violent Anguish
'A Prayer by Burn' 'O thou great Being! What thou art, /...' [transcribes poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Robert Burns : The Chevalier's Lament
'Burn. May 1812' 'The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning /...' [transcribes poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Cuthbert Shaw : Monody to the Memory of a Young Lady Who Died in C
'Shaw's Monody' 'I who the tedious absence of a day /...' [transcribes poem from line 11]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
Henry Kirke White : On Disapointment
'Ode on Disapointment' 'Come, Disapointment, come! /...' [No author given]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
George Crabbe : The Church
''Affecting picture of Constancy and Love' 'Yes! There are real mourners- I have seen /...' [transcription of 'The Church' from l.170 - 'While visions please her, and while woes destroy']
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Rev. John Moultrie : Forget Thee?
'"Forget Thee?" By the Rev John Moultrie [transcript of poem].
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Felicia Dorothea Hemans : Fairy Favours
'Fairy Favours' [transcript of poem] 'Mrs Hemans'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Bernard Barton : The Heaven was Cloudless
'The Heaven was Cloudless' [transcript of poem, no author given]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Alaric A. Watts : Sketch From Real Life
'Sketch from Real Life / Alaric A. Watts' [transcript of poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
William Robert Spencer : To The Lady Anne Hamilton
'Verses / Spencer' 'Too late I staid, forgive the crime; /...' [transcript of poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Bernard Barton : Violets. A Sonnet
'Violets. a Sonnet / Bernard Barton' 'Beautiful are you in your lowliness/...[transcript of poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom
Edgar Allan Poe : Tales Arabesque and Grotesque
'When I came home from the office where I worked, I went straight to my room, took out the cheap edition of "Tales Grotesque and Arabesque", and began to read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
Baroness Anne Loiuse Germaine De Stael-Holstein : Germany
Read with much delight and instruction the Baroness De Stael's Germany
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : The Murders in the Rue Morgue
'I still remember my feelings when I finished "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". I was afraid, but this fear made me discover something I've never forgotten since: fear, you see, is an emotion people like to feel when they know they are safe.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History of the Egyptians
Continue the perusal of Rollins Ancient History- this work reflects great light upon the sacred volume.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book
Robert Southey : Life of Wesley
Read Southey's Life of Wesley and ingenious but by no means faithful production
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book
Marie Corelli : The Sorrows of Satan
[Spoto states that Hitchcock read Marie Corelli's "The Sorrows of Satan" in 1920/21 in preparation for helping to make a film of it which was afterwards abandoned.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
Charles Tomlinson : Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy
"I have been reading lately "Natural Philosophy" by Tomlinson and Sir John Herschel, and am now reading the "Chemistry of Creation" by Dr Ellis."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Robert Ellis : The Chemistry of Creation: being an outline of the
"I have been reading lately 'Natural Philosophy' by Tomlinson and Sir John Herschel, and am now reading the 'Chemistry of Creation' by Dr Ellis."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Charles and Mary Lamb :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
George Eliot :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Unknown
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall
'My eldest brother was one day making disparaging remarks about Tennyson. My mother, all agitated in defence of her idol, fetched his poems from the shelf, and with a "Listen now, children" began to declaim "Locksley Hall". When she reached "I to herd with narrow foreheads" she burst out, flinging down the book, "What awful rubbish this is!"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Thomas Print: Book
Daniel (Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham) Finch : The Answer of the Earl of Nottingham to Mr Whiston
I find by the news papers this morning that dr wild and you are deputed by the clergy assembled at the late visitation at Beaconsfield to wait upon my lord Nottingham [to give] their thanks for his book agst Mr Whiston. Which book i do also much approve of and accordingly Did return my own thanks to his lordship in the House of Lords as soon as it was published
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Lincoln Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson :
'Charles was reading Hans Andersen: I wanted the book, asked for it, fussed for it, and finally broke into tears.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Thomas Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Did not go to church. Read a funeral sermon of Dr Stanhope's.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Richard Baker : A Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Time
No rest for me in bed, therefore rise 1/2 past 4... summerhouse till 1/2 past 7 read Baker's Chronicles
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Richard Baker : A Chronicle of the Kings of England
I left the old woman with mother as soon as supper was done. Read Baker's Chronicles 1 1/2 hours. Bed at 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Eliza Fowler Haywood : The Perplex'd Dutchess: Or, Treachery Rewarded...
Sup'd alone. Read 'The Perplex'd Duches' a novell. Bed 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Afternoon read a sermon of Dr Stanhope's. of Prayers not being granted immediately.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Read one sermon and part of another of Dr Stanhope's of Death and Judgement, and of the sufficiency of the scriptures. I think he is a better orator than casuist: his argument is not so clear a stile.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
After dinner, garden 1 1/2 hours feeding the foul. Drank coffee. Made an end of the sermon.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Read 2 sermons of Dr Stanhope's, one to sea men, the other on the 5th November.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
I sat in the Parlor; drank coffee and read a sermon of Dr Stanhope's...
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
With mother to Clapham Common. Read to her 'Agnes de Castro' by Mrs Behn. Home before 8. Read one hour of the book before supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
Read part of 'Fair Gilt' by Mrs Behn.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
Read part of 'Oroonoko' after supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
Had a fire in my own Room. Mother sup'd with me there. Read 'The Lucky Mistake' - Mrs Behn.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Charles Sedley : The Mulberry Garden or The Works...In Two Volumes
Writt from 6 to 9. Sup'd alone. Read 'The Mulberry Garden', a pretty play. Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
Home past 8 a fier in the Parlor. Read Mrs Behn's novels, a book of Abraham's [cut by editor].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
With mother to Clapham Common. Read to her 'Agnes de Castro' by Mrs Behn. Home before 8. Read one hour of the book before supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Aphra Behn : All the Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious
Made an end of the Novell [the Fair Jilt].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : Travels of Cyrus
Mary read to me a little before dinner, (which she does tolerable); 'Cyrus' a Romance. I wound silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : ['Cyrus'] OR Travels of Cyrus
Lay till near 11. Mary read 'cyrus', I winding silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Charles Beckingham : The Life of Mr Richard Savage
Supper alone. Read life of Mr Savage.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
(Sir) John Denham : The Sophy OR Poems and Translations
Sup'd alone. Read 'The Sophy', a play of Sir J Deham's.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Martin Luther :
None went to Church. Read a book of Luther's.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Read 'The travells of Cyrus' after supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
(Sir) John Vanbrugh : A Journey to London, being part of a comedy...
Din'd in own room alone... Read 'A Journy to London', Sir J Vanburg's -part of what is made 'The Provoked Husband' by Cibber, vastly mended by him I think.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Home past 9. Supper alone, Read 'Cyrus', Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Rise at 10. Mary read 'Cyrus'. Knited [knitted] till 7.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Took Phisick. Rise at 10. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Took phisick. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Edward Young : A Vindication of Providence; Or, a True Estimate o
Read 'A True Estemate of Human Life' by Mr Young, a Sermon preach'd in St George's Church upon the King's death. Extreordinary stile. Poeticall, exceeding entertaining.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Edward Young : A Vindication of Providence; Or, a True Estimate o
Aunt had the coach at 5 to visit. I drank tea and read Mr Young's sermon. Mrs D'Enly went when the coach came back with Aunt near 10.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
(Sir) Richard Steele : The Conscious Lovers. A Comedy.
Went into the park...Back to our dinner at 2. Spent the afternoon walking and sitting, and I read 3 Acts of 'The Conscious Lovers'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Edward Young : The Universal Passion
Read the 'Universal Passion'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Edward Young : The Universal Passion
Made an end of 'The Unniversall Passion'... 'Tis exceeding seveer, 'tis all satir[e] but mighty pretty and too just. He is grown a favouritt Author of mine. I am not content with once reading it, but design to bye it.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
'B.L' OR 'A Lady' : Two Letters: one from a Lady to a friend who had m
Afternoon read Lady's Letter to a Popish Gentleman etc.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Samuel Clarke Clarke : A Paraphrase on the Four Evangelists
Afternoon went to the chaple. Home. Coffee. Read Clarke's 'Parraphras on the Evangellists'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Anon OR 'Ma. A' [Madame A] : The Prude. A Novel... By a Young Lady.
Home near 9. Read 'The Prude' comfortably by a fire.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Anon OR 'M. A.' [Madame A] : The Prude. A Novel... By a Young Lady.
Read 'The Prude'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Vindication
Description of Marginalia by Macaulay on Edward Gibbon's 'Vindication' - the marginalia responds to the passage 'Fame is the motive, it is the reward, of our labours: nor can I easily comprehend how it is possible that we should remain cold and indifferent with regard to the attempts which are made to deprive us of the most valuable object of our possessions, or at least, of our hopes.' Macaulay writes: 'But what if you are confident that these attempts will be vain, and that your book will fix its own place?'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Anon OR 'Ma. A' [Madame A] : The Prude. A Novel... By a Young Lady.
Tent till dark. Read the 3rd part of 'The Prude', and the 'The Beautifull Pyrate'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Jean Regnauld de Segrais : Three Novels; viz I. The Beautiful Pyrate.... OR F
Read... "The Beautifull Pyrate".
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Jean Regnauld de Segrais : Three Novels; viz I. The Beautiful Pyrate.... OR F
Tent all day light. Read Ugania [?] and Bajesett. Bed past 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Christian Church
[Marginalia by Macaulay on Conyers Middleton's 'Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Christian Church']: 'I do not at all admire this letter. Indeed Middleton should have counted the cost before he took his part. He never appears to so little advantage as when he complains in this way of the calumnies and invectives of the orthodox.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Eliza Fowler Haywood : The City Widow; or, Love in a Butt. A Novel.
After supper read 'The City Widow' and part of the 'Adventures of Abdella' - 2 new books got tonight. Bed past 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : The History and Adventures of Gil Blas...
Home past 9 almost starv'd to death...Read 'Gill Blas'. Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : The History and Adventures of Gil Blas...
Home near 11. 'Gil Blass'. Bed past 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Eliza Fowler Haywood : The Perplex'd Dutchess; or, Treachery Rewarded...A
News. Writt. After supper read 'The Perplex'd Dutches'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : The History and Adventures of Gil Blas...
Made an end of 'Gil Blas'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George (Duke of Buckingham) Villiers : The Rehearsal
Read 4 acts of 'The Rehearsall'. Bed 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George (Duke of Buckingham) Villiers : The Rehearsal
Read an act of 'The Rehearsall' and one of 'All for Love'. Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Andrew Michael Ramsay : The Travels of Cyrus
Read 'travells of Cyrus' alone 2 1/2 hours. A fine book. Bed near 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : The Guardian: A Comedy Acted before Prince Charles
Read 2 plays after supper - 'The Guardian' and 'The Devil of a Wife'. Bed 1.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Read part of a sermon of Dr Stanhope's.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
George Stanhope : Twelve Sermons
Read a sermon of Dr Stanhope's to the sons of the clergy. Bed past 11.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : The Economy of Human Life
I took up the Economy of Human Life, and was much pleased with the simplicity, ease and elegance of its style. The Biographical Sketch of Dodsley is drawn with much beauty and taste.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book
Walter Scott : Peveril of the Peak
Wholesome dinners produce haviness and ill humour commenced Peveril of the Peak.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book
Walter Scott : Peveril of the Peak
Finished Peveril of the Peak.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : The Lover and his Lass
'My dear Mrs Oliphant, - I cannot help venturing to express the admiration with which I have been reading the "Lover and his Lass." It is by your powerful, truth-seeing imagination, and not by what pedants are prone to describe as "analysis" of character, that you enchant us [...] I "pitied myself," as they say in Cumberland, when I got to the end of the book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Kinglake Print: Book
George MacDonald : David Elginbrod
[Editorial commentary by Annie Coghill, Mrs Oliphant's cousin] 'George Macdonald's first book, or at any rate his first successful book, "David Elginbrod", had been published many years before by Messrs Hurst & Blackett, at Mrs Oliphant's warm recommendation. She always spoke of it as a work of genius, and quoted it as one of the instances of publishers' blunders, for when the MS. came to her it came enveloped in wrappings that showed how many refusals it had already suffered.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: MS of a book
Laurence Oliphant : Land of Gilead, The
'Laurence Oliphant's sketches of the Druse villages are delightful, but his philosophy is something too tremendous. I am making the most prodigious effort to understand his book, but I have to catch hold of the furniture after a few pages to keep myself from turning round and round, and yet the absorption of such a man of the world as he is in a religious idea has something very fine in it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : Makers of Venice
'The first opinion I have heard of it [the "Makers of Venice"] is Mr Gladstone's, to whom Mr Macmillan sent it, and who sent back to him at once a letter of four pages saying, first, that he was not going to Venice, as had been reported; and next, that he must contradict himself, and say that he had been in Venice, the book having quite given him that feeling; after which he enters into a question of Venetian political history about Bajamonte, whose very name, I should think, was unknown to most readers, but with whom this amazing old man seems intimately acquainted.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : The Duke's Daughter
Dear Mrs Oliphant, - It is with ceaseless admiration that I have read 'The Duke's Daughter'. My remembrance of what you had told me respecting the origin of your inclination to undertake the narrative put me into the mood for studying it, if so one may speak, instead of too placidly 'reading' your delightful pages, and the effect of this special care was such as to make me think more - more even than ever before - of what - distinguished from 'fancy' - I should call that sound, healthy, that strong Imagination of yours which tells you, and lets you tell others, the very, very truth.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book, Unknown
Margaret Oliphant : In Trust
Some little time since, I had the good fortune to find that there was at least one [one in italics] of your delightful books which I had missed - I mean 'In Trust' - and I am only now towards the end of the second volume. I am greatly interested, and more than ever admiring the way in which your powerful yet truth-loving imagination proves able to deal with the mazes of Human Nature.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book, Unknown
Margaret Oliphant : Jerusalem: Its History and Hope
I have begun the perusal, and I very much hope, and cannot doubt, that your living portraitures of Scripture characters will impress upon many minds an important portion of those evidences of the sacred volume which are so much higher than the "higher criticism", and which have a range of flight beyond its reach.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book, Unknown
Andrew Lang : Life of Lockhart
Mr Lang sent me several chapters to read in the early summer, which I thought were rather dull - tell it not in Gath - with much virtuous indignation about 'Maga's' personalities.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodicalManuscript: MS chapters of a book
Marie Corelli :
I suppose there was no man who had a greater command of the public in his day [than Bulwer Lytton]. To be sure, one might say the same of Miss Marie Corelli, who, by the way in the only book of hers I can read, seems to be founded upon Bulwer
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Mark Noble : A Genealogical History of the Present Royal Famili
I drew out of a book entitled 'a genealogical History of the Present Royal Families of Europe' the pedigree of several of them.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Ainsworth : Robert Ainsworth's Dictionary
Looked at Ainsworth's dictionary for the derivation of all the Christian names; Joseph is derived from the Hebrew of I will multiply ...
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Richard Westall : A Day in Spring, and Other Poems
Have you seen a little volume of Westall's Poems containing a DAY in SPRING, and other detached pieces, with four lovely engravings from his own designs? One of them representing ayouthful Spenser, dreaming about knights, and squires, & Dames of high degree, and Fairies, & other entertaining whimsies. And all these visionary personages are dancing around him in the prettiest groupes you can imagine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Marie-Emilie, Comtesse de Flahaut Adelaide : Eugenie et Mathilde
Let us talk of Eugenie and Mathilde. It saddened but did not make me cry. I foresaw it would end like a Turk, nay I am not sure I did not peep, for I cannot bear to be graduallyworked up into an agony by these dismal stories... I shall not desire to look into it again...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson
I wanted to have sent you a translation of the Epigram Flahaut has introduced in her book. It is Johnson's, and inserted in Piozzi's anecdotes - but my father has lent, & lost (often synomymous terms) his copy of that work, & I cannot immediately think of anybody to apply to. There are no bookish people here - on the contrary, they seem to me to look with an evil eye on every reader of every production save a newspaper.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Marquis of Chatele, Paul Hay : The Politics of France
Volume annotated in Dawson's own hand. Includes correction to Preface and a contents list.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Dawson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rokeby
'From Rokeby' 'The tear that down childhood's cheek...' [4lines]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
Arthur Murphy : The Grecian Daughter
'Extract from Murphy's Grecian Daughter' 'Filial Affection'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: member of Carey/Maingay group
Mary Masters : To Marinda at Parting
May heavenly Angels their soft wings display And guide you safe thro' ev'ry dangerous way In every step may you most happy be And tho far distant often think of me [some differences from the original]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophia
Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert : Allgemeine Naturgeschichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling : Zeitschrift fur speculative Physik
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert : Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Historical Romances of the Author of Waverley
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert : Die Symbolik des Traumes
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Novels and Romances of the Author of Waverley
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Scougal : The Life of God in the Soul of Man OR The Nature a
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Scudamore : A Chemical and Medical Report of the Properties of
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Augustus Zwick : Calmuc Tartary
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Pietro Metastasio : Opere
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Reliquiae Baxteriana
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Leighton : The Genuine Works of R Leighton, D.D. Archbishop o
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Herder : Verstand und Erfahrung
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee : The Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers, a
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Samouelle : The Entomologist's Useful Compendium
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Oliver Cromwell : His Highnesse the Lord Protector's speeches to the Parliament in the Painted Chamber
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee : The Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Rachel Baker : Remarkable Sermons of Rachel Baker and pious ejaculations
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Holty : Gedichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Thomas Stanley Hornby : Childhood (?)
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Rimius : A Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhunters
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : The History of the Reformation of the Church of En
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Peter Brougham : A Speech on the Present State of the Law of the Country
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung in das Neue Testament
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung in das Neue Testament
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Commentarius in Apocalypsin Joannis
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Commentarius in Apocalypsin Joannis
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christopher Harvey : The Synagogue, or, the Shadow of the Temple
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christopher Harvey : The Synagogue, or, the Shadow of the Temple
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Herbert : The Temple and sacred poems and private ejaculations
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Herbert : The Temple and sacred poems and private ejaculations
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Dallison : The Royalist's Defence
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Bowker Ash : Adbaston: or Days of Youth
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter : Palingenesien von Jean Paul
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter : Museum von Jean Paul
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Martin Luther : Samptliche Schrifften
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christoph Friedrich Nicolai : Ueber meine gelehrte Bildung
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus : Ueber die Grunde der menschlichen Erkentniss und der nat?rlichen Religion
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Kasper Lodewijk Valckenaer : Diatribe de Aristobulo Judaeo
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Henry Vane the Younger : A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Vaughan : The Life and Opinions of John de Wycliffe, D.D.
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francois Rabelais : The Works of Francis Rabelais
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Walter Raleigh : The History of the World
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire : A Treatise on Toleration
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gerardus Joannes Vossius : Poeticarum Institutionum, libri tres
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Gibbon Wakefield : A letter from Sydney, the principal town of Australia
[Marginalia]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter : Jean Pauls Geist oder Chrestomathie der vorzuglich
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter : Das Kampaner Thal oder uber die Unsterblichkeit de
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Carl Von Savigny : Of the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gilbert White : The Works, in Natural History
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Darlegung des wahren Verhaltnisses der Naturphilosphe
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Comische Erzahlungen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Denkmal der Schrift von den gottlichen Dingen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Einleitung zu seinem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Philosophie und Religion
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Anderson : The Works of the British Poets
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Anderson : The Works of the British Poets
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Karl Leonhard Reinhold : Versuch einer neueren Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsverm?
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Wielands Neueste Gedichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Publius Virgilius Maro : Georgica Publii Virgilii Maronis Hexaglotta
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Berkeley : Siris: a chain of philosophical reflexions
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Walter Birch : A Sermon on the Prevalence of Infidelity and Enthusiasm
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Dyer : Academic Unity
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Dyer : Poems
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Abraham Parsons : Travels in Asia and Africa
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Caspar Suicerus : Joh. Caspari Suiceri...Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christian Franz Paullini : Christiani Francisci Paullini disquisitio curiosa
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Percival : An Account of the Island of Ceylon
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) : Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alaric Alexander Watts : Poetical Sketches
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Lord Alfred Tennyson : Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Saint Teresa : Works
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir John Pringle : Observations on the Diseases of the Army
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Bryan Waller Procter : Dramatic Scenes and Other Poems
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : The Worthy Communicant, a discourse on the nature, effects and blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lord's supper
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : The Worthy Communicant, a discourse on the nature, effects and blessings consquent to the worthy receiving of the Lord's supper
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Proclus Proclus : The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Tennyson : Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces, by Charles Tennyson
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Aulus Persius Flaccus : Auli Persi Flacci Satirarum liber
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Marcus Antoninus :
At breakfast, my parcel of books from Eaton came up the road. Fresh from the carrier. Unpacked it eagerly, & read the title pages of Barnes?s Euripides, Marcus Antoninus, Callimachus, the Anthologia, Epictetus, Isocrates, & Da Vinci?s Painting. The last I had sent for, for Eliza Cliffe, but the externals are so shabby that I have a mind to send it back again. Finished my dream about Udolpho; - & began Destiny, a novel by the author of the Inheritance [Susan Ferrier] which Miss Peyton lent me. I liked the Inheritance so much that my desires respecting this book were ?all alive?. I forgot to say that I don?t like the conclusion of the Mysteries. It is ?long drawn out? & not ?in linked sweetness?. Read some of the Alcestis. Mr. Boyd wishes me to read it; & I wished so too.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Leonardo Da Vinci : [Painting]
At breakfast, my parcel of books from Eaton came up the road. Fresh from the carrier. Unpacked it eagerly, & read the title pages of Barnes?s Euripides, Marcus Antoninus, Callimachus, the Anthologia, Epictetus, Isocrates, & Da Vinci?s Painting. The last I had sent for, for Eliza Cliffe, but the externals are so shabby that I have a mind to send it back again. Finished my dream about Udolpho; - & began Destiny, a novel by the author of the Inheritance [Susan Ferrier] which Miss Peyton lent me. I liked the Inheritance so much that my desires respecting this book were ?all alive?. I forgot to say that I don?t like the conclusion of the Mysteries. It is ?long drawn out? & not ?in linked sweetness?. Read some of the Alcestis. Mr. Boyd wishes me to read it; & I wished so too.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Brooke : The Fool of Quality; or, the History of Henry Earl of Moreland
"On 7 March 1796 D[orothy] W[ordsworth] remarked that 'I am now reading the Fool of Quality which amuses me exceedingly.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Marcus Antoninus :
I read half the 6th book of Antoninus today ? so I can?t say, after all, perdidi diem [I have lost a day].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : Tales
[Permitted Sunday reading for the children of the family].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Marcus Antoninus :
I read the other half of Antoninus?s sixth book, - & half his seventh, besides. What a creature I am ? to spend my time in this way, between philosophy & folly. Anoninus wd. not be well pleased, if he could know whom he has for a reader!
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Marcus Antoninus :
On Wednesday before breakfast, I read the beginning of Antoninus?s 10th. book, & I went on with it today, but not the end. My energies felt dead within me: & how could I do anything without them? Nothing but reading the 3d. vol: of Mrs. Shelley, which I despatched in two hours ? (which did come at last!! - ) No going out today. Marcus Antoninus after Mrs. Shelly [sic], and drinking tea after Marcus.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Shelley : The Last Man
On Wednesday before breakfast, I read the beginning of Antoninus?s 10th. book, & I went on with it today, but not the end. My energies felt dead within me: & how could I do anything without them? Nothing but reading the 3d. vol: of Mrs. Shelley, which I despatched in two hours ? (which did come at last!! - ) No going out today. Marcus Antoninus after Mrs. Shelly [sic], and drinking tea after Marcus.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Marcus Antoninus :
On Wednesday before breakfast, I read the beginning of Antoninus?s 10th. book, & I went on with it today, but not the end. My energies felt dead within me: & how could I do anything without them? Nothing but reading the 3d. vol: of Mrs. Shelley, which I despatched in two hours ? (which did come at last!! - ) No going out today. Marcus Antoninus after Mrs. Shelly [sic], and drinking tea after Marcus.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Revolt of Islam
Read some passages from Shelley?s Revolt of Islam before I was up. He is a great poet; but we acknowledge him to be a great poet as we acknowledge Spenser to be so, & do not love him for it. He resembles Spenser in one thing, & one thing only, that his poetry is too immaterial for our sympathies to enclasp it firmly. It reverses the lot of human plants: its roots are in the air, not earth! ? But as I read him on, I may reverse this opinion.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Self Control
Comparing scripture with scripture. Reading besides Self control [by Mary Brunton] which Henrietta has borrowed from Mrs. Martin. It is formed on the model of Clarissa Harlowe; but the heroine is more immaculate than even Clarissa, & more happy finally! ? The book is well-written & interesting. A combination of fortitude & delicacy always interests me in a particular manner.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Dr Card : Discourse
I have finished Dr. Clark?s Discourse. It is very clever: but as all metaphysical discourses on scriptural subjects, must be, - seeking only to convince the human reason, it is unconvincing. At least this is true of one or two material parts, where even I have detected fallacies. Dr. Card?s sermon on the Athanasian creed, is bound up in the same volume; & I have read it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Harris Barham : The Ingoldsby Legends
'After tea...[on a Sunday, my father]...liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Molly Vivian Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'After tea...[on a Sunday, my father]...liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
'After tea...[on a Sunday, my father]...liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book, Unknown
Robert Michael Ballantyne : The Iron Horse
'Surely no book was ever read and re-read and talked over as that first new volume, although we went on to buy many more.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Friedrich Klopstock : Messiah
'The mother of Joseph Wright, the millworker-philologist, did not learn to read until age forty-eight, and then apparently never ventured beyond the New Testament, Pilgrim's Progress and a translation of Klopstock's Messiah'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: mother of Joseph Wright Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'One winter evening I was sitting over the fire engrossed in "Jane Eyre"...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
Laurence Sterne :
'Christopher Thomson was a "zealous" Methodist until he discovered Shakespeare, Miilton, Sterne and Dr Johnson at a circulating library. When his absence from Sunday chapel was noticed, "I was called to account for it; by way of defence I pleaded my desire for, and indulgence in, reading. This appeared rather to aggravate than serve my cause. It was evidently their opinion, that all books, except such as they deemed religious, ones ought not be read by young men. I ventured somewhat timidly to hint, that it was possible for a young man to read novels, and other works of fiction, and still keep his mind free from irreligion and vice...".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith :
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'Shakespeare incited his appetitie for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
George Gordon Byron :
'Byron had intoxicated him "with the freedom of his style of writing, with the fervour or passionateness of his feelings and with the dark and terrible pictures which he seemed to take pleasure in painting". The general effect of reading Milton, Hobbes, Locke and Newton had been "to make me resolve to be free. I saw that it was impossible for the soul of man to answer the end for which it was created, while tramelled by human authority, or fettered with human creeds. I saw that if I was to do justice to truth, to God, or to my own soul, I must break loose from all creeds and laws of men's devising, and live in full and unrestricted liberty..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
Farell Lee Bevan : Peep of Day
'Farell Lee Bevan's Peep of Day (759,000 copies in print by 1888) supplied him with the frame of a totalistic religious ideology: "It was from these pages that I got my first idea of the moral foundations of the universe, was handed the first key with which to unlock the mysteries of the world in which I found myself. These little books served the purpose of an index or filing system; a framework of iron dogma, if you like, providing an orderly arrangement of the world and its history for the young mind, under two main categories, Good and Evil". But Jones also attended a board school, where he found "salvation" in an old cupboard of books presented by the local MP. They were mainly volumes of voyages and natural history, "which took a Rhymney boy away into the realms of wonder over the seas to the Malay Archipelago, to Abyssinia, to the sources of the Nile and the Albert Nyanza, to the curiosities of natural history, piloted by James Bruce, Samuel Baker and Frank Buckland".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
Frank Buckland :
'Farell Lee Bevan's Peep of Day (759,000 copies in print by 1888) supplied him with the frame of a totalistic religious ideology: "It was from these pages that I got my first idea of the moral foundations of the universe, was handed the first key with which to unlock the mysteries of the world in which I found myself. These little books served the purpose of an index or filing system; a framework of iron dogma, if you like, providing an orderly arrangement of the world and its history for the young mind, under two main categories, Good and Evil". But Jones also attended a board school, where he found "salvation" in an old cupboard of books presented by the local MP. They were mainly volumes of voyages and natural history, "which took a Rhymney boy away into the realms of wonder over the seas to the Malay Archipelago, to Abyssinia, to the sources of the Nile and the Albert Nyanza, to the curiosities of natural history, piloted by James Bruce, Samuel Baker and Frank Buckland".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of England
'While he read little but the Bible and religious periodicals, his son was working his way through the Rhymney Workmen's Institute Library and Cassell's National Library of 3d paperbacks. MacAulay's essays, Goldsmith's History of England, Far from the Madding Crowd, Self-Help, Josephus, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Pepys, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and The Sorrows of Young Werther were among the books Jones read, often on his employer's time. (He hid them under the ledger at the Rhymney Iron Works, where he worked a thirteen-hour day as a timekeeper for 9s. a week.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : Principles of Political Economy
'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Book
Alfred Marshall : Principles of Economics
'The Primitive Methodists may have been the most anti-intellectual of the Wesleyans, yet miners' MP John Johnson "found their teaching the strongest possible incentive to trying to improve myself, not only morally, but mentally, and towards the latter end I took to serious and systematic study." He read deeply in history and philosophy, as well as such this-worldly tracts as The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Johnson Print: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [poems]
'As a circuit preacher Pyke introduced farm people to Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoy. His own reading ranged from Shakespeare and Boswell to Shelley's poems and George Henry Lewes's History of Philosophy. He was even prepared to acknowledge the "genius" of Jude the Obscure, though he would have preferred a happy ending'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Pyke Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : History of Philosophy
'As a circuit preacher Pyke introduced farm people to Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoy. His own reading ranged from Shakespeare and Boswell to Shelley's poems and George Henry Lewes's History of Philosophy. He was even prepared to acknowledge the "genius" of Jude the Obscure, though he would have preferred a happy ending'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Pyke Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [poetry]
'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost... to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Frost Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [poetry]
'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost... to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Frost Print: Book
Charles de Secondat, Baron Montesquieu : The Persian Letters
'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Frost Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : A Tour through Siciliy and Malta in a Series of Letters to William Beckford
"Within the last month I have read Tristram Shandy, Brydone's Sicily and Malta, and Moore's Travels in France," D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote in March 1796."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
"Within the last month I have read Tristram Shandy, Brydone's Sicily and Malta, and Moore's Travels in France," D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote in March 1796."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked ... I read all Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked." (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 3 p.372).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked ... I read all Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked." (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 3 p.372).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Osorio
"In June 1797, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote to Mary Hutchinson, telling her that, as soon as [S. T.] C[oleridge] arrived at Racedown Lodge, 'he repeated to us two acts and a half of his tragedy Osorio.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Enrico Caterina Davila : Historia delle Guerre Civili di Francia ... nella quale si contegnono le operationi di quattro re, Francesco II., Carlo IX., Henrico III. e Henrico IV. cognominato il Grande
"On 21 March 1796, [Wordsworth] told [William] Mathews that D[orothy] W[ordsworth] 'has already gone through half of Davila.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Bryan Edwards : The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
"As [S. T. Coleridge] recalled in the Friend, 'I had [when composing The Three Graves in 1798] been reading Bryan Edwards's account of the effects of the Oby Witchcraft on the Negroes in the West Indies, and Hearne's deeply interesting Anecdotes of similar workings on the imagination of the Copper Indians ...'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
John Bernard Farish :
"W[ordsworth]'s note to Guilt and Sorrow 81 acknowledges a borrowing 'From a short MS. poem read to me when an under-graduate, by my schoolfellow and friend Charles Farish, long since deceased. The verses were by a brother of his [John Bernard Farish], a man of promising genius, who died young.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Manuscript: Unknown
John Bernard Farish :
"W[ordsworth]'s note to Guilt and Sorrow 81 acknowledges a borrowing 'From a short MS. poem read to me when an under-graduate, by my schoolfellow and friend Charles Farish, long since deceased. The verses were by a brother of his [John Bernard Farish], a man of promising genius, who died young.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Farish Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Heron : Observations Made in a Journey through the Western Countries of Scotland
"in spring 1800 ... [Heron] provided one of the first entries in [Wordsworth's] Commonplace Book ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Homer :
'Milton established a habit of serious reading, which brought Bamford to Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, the great poets, classic histories and voyages, and ultimately William Cobbett's Political Register'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Virgil :
'Milton established a habit of serious reading, which brought Bamford to Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, the great poets, classic histories and voyages, and ultimately William Cobbett's Political Register'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
[the great poets] :
'Milton established a habit of serious reading, which brought Bamford to Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, the great poets, classic histories and voyages, and ultimately William Cobbett's Political Register'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Unknown
Elinor Glyn : The Career of Catherine Bush
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus Rotterdamus :
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'Garratt escaped [from factory life] to an evening course in English literature, where he felt "like a child that becomes ecstatic with a fireworks display". Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson "swamped the trivialities of life and gave my ego a fulness and strength in the lustre of which noble conceptions were born and flourished'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'Garratt escaped [from factory life] to an evening course in English literature, where he felt "like a child that becomes ecstatic with a fireworks display". Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson "swamped the trivialities of life and gave my ego a fulness and strength in the lustre of which noble conceptions were born and flourished'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
Homer :
'[Garratt] spent his free evenings in Birmingham's Central Free Library reading Homer, Epitectus, Longius and Plato's Dialogues, a classical education which further undermined his confidence in the status quo: "I began to wonder in what way we had advanced from the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome". In the First World War, he took Palgrave's Golden Treasury with him to France and wrote his own verses in the trenches'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
Francis Turner Palgrave (ed.) : The Golden Treasury
'[Garratt] spent his free evenings in Birmingham's Central Free Library reading Homer, Epitectus, Longius and Plato's Dialogues, a classical education which further undemined his confidence in the status quo: "I began to wonder in what way we had advanced from the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome". In the First World War, he took Palgrave's Golden Treasury with him to France and wrote his own verses in the trenches'..
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: V.W. Garratt Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith :
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth and beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says, Thus let me live unseen, unknown Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world and not a stone Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Richard Steele :
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth and beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says, Thus let me live unseen, unknown Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world and not a stone Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Alexander Pope : 'Ode on Solitude'
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth an beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says, Thus let me live unseen, unknown Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world and not a stone Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
George Payne : Elements of Mental and Moral Science
'by age twenty [Mary Smith] had read and understood George Payne's Elements of Mental and Moral Science, Thomas Brown's Moral Philosophy, and Richard Whateley's Logic. But two authors in paticular offered magnificent revelations. First there was Emerson on Nature; and later, as a governess for a Scotby leatherworks owner, she discovered Thomas Carlyle: "Emerson and he henceforth became my two great masters of thought for the rest of my life. Carlyle's gospel of Work and exposure of Shams, and his universal onslaught on the nothings and appearances of society, gave strength and life to my vague but true enthusiasm. They proved a new Bible of blessedness to my eager soul, as they did thousands beside, who had become weary of much of the vapid literature of the time".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Richard Whateley : Logic
'by age twenty [Mary Smith] had read and understood George Payne's Elements of Mental and Moral Science, Thomas Brown's Moral Philosophy, and Richard Whateley's Logic. But two authors in paticular offered magnificent revelations. First there was Emerson on Nature; and later, as a governess for a Scotby leatherworks owner, she discovered Thomas Carlyle: "Emerson and he henceforth became my two great masters of thought for the rest of my life. Carlyle's gospel of Work and exposure of Shams, and his universal onslaught on the nothings and appearances of society, gave strength and life to my vague but true enthusiasm. They proved a new Bible of blessedness to my eager soul, as they did thousands beside, who had become weary of much of the vapid literature of the time".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'by age twenty [Mary Smith] had read and understood George Payne's Elements of Mental and Moral Science, Thomas Brown's Moral Philosophy, and Richard Whateley's Logic. But two authors in paticular offered magnificent revelations. First there was Emerson on Nature; and later, as a governess for a Scotby leatherworks owner, she discovered Thomas Carlyle: "Emerson and he henceforth became my two great masters of thought for the rest of my life. Carlyle's gospel of Work and exposure of Shams, and his universal onslaught on the nothings and appearances of society, gave strength and life to my vague but true enthusiasm. They proved a new Bible of blessedness to my eager soul, as they did thousands beside, who had become weary of much of the vapid literature of the time".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller :
'like the great man [Carlyle] himself, [Mary Smith] studied Fichte, Schiller and Goethe'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Sir John Fielding :
Witness statement in trial for highway robbery: William Masters: "some time on the 26th of December, we received a handbill from Sir John Fielding, describing this watch to have been stolen by a single highwayman on the 24th, with a reward of ten guineas over and above the reward allowed by act of parliament; between four and five that afternoon my apprentice came to me in the parlour, and brought me this watch and the handbill..."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Masters Print: Handbill
Sir John Fielding :
Witness statement in trial for highway robbery: John Brooks: "the handbill came from Sir John Fielding's on the 26th of December; I saw it in the shop between three and four, and the prisoner came in the evening... he told me he wanted ten guineas upon this watch... I seeing it answered the description in the handbill, I took that and the bill into the parlour to my master..."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Brooks Print: Handbill
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock : [odes]
"On 21 Sept 1798, Klopstock read to W[ordsworth] and C[oleridge] 'some passages from his odes in which he has adopted the latin measures' (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 1, p.91).
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
George Redpath : The Border History of England and Scotland
"In 1843, W[ordsworth] recalled his research for The Borderers: ' ... having a wish to colour the manners in some degree from local history more than my knowledge enabled me to do I read Redpath's history of the Borders but found there nothing to my purpose.'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Marie Jeanne Roland de la Platiere : An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizeness Roland
"[Thomas] Poole read the Appeal in March 1796; writing to Henrietta Warwick on 2 April, he revealed that 'I have lately perused with much delight La Citoyenne Roland.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Poole Print: Book
Marie Jeanne Roland de la Platiere : An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, by Citizeness Roland
" ... in March 1796 D[orothy] W[ordsworth] reported that 'I have also read lately Madame Roland's Memoirs, Louvet and some other french things - very entertaining.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : The Robbers
"[S. T.] C[oleridge] stayed up until one o'clock in the morning to read Tytler's translation of The Robbers ... "
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc
'Southey, W[ordsworth] told [William] Mathews in Oct. 1795, "is about publishing an epic poem on the subject of the Maid of orleans. From the specimens I have seen I am inclined to think it will have many beauties."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Lawrence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'In his letter to [William] Mathews of 3 Aug. 1791, W[ordsworth] somewhat effacingly claims only to have read "in our language three volumes of Tristram Shandy, and two or three papers of the Spectator."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Richard Payne Knight : An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste
'I have just begun to read Mr Knight's Book, which you were very kind in sending.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Francis Wrangham : Human Laws best supported by the Gospel
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'I have read your sermon [Human Laws best supported by the Gospel] (which I lately received from Longman) with much pleasure. I only gave it a cursory perusal, for since it arrived my family has been in great confusion, we having removed to another House, in which we are not yet half settled. The Appendix I had received before in a frank, and of that I feel more entitled to speak, because I had read it more at leisure [goes on to discuss this in detail].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Walter Scott : Marmion
William Wordsworth to Walter Scott: 'Thank you for Marmion which I have read with lively pleasure ... '
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Andrew Bell : Experiment in Education made at the Asylum of Madras, An
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'Since I wrote to you I have read Dr Bell's Book upon Education ... it is a most interesting work and entitles him to the fervent gratitude of all good men: but I cannot say [?it has made] any material change in my views ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Gilbert White : Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
'I remember reading White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborn[e] with great pleasure when a Boy at school ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Francis Wrangham : Gospel best promulgated in National Schools, The
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham: 'Your sermon [The Gospel best promulgated by National Schools] did not reach me till the night before last. I believe we all have read it, and are much pleased with it.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
Don Pedro Cevallos : Exposition of the Arts and Machinations which led to the Usurpation of the Crown of Spain ...
'I have read Cevallos; also I have read Miss Smith's Translation of Klopstock's and Mrs. K's letters [goes on to express preference for Mrs Klopstock's letters over those of her husband].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
'I ... found Miss [Sara] Hutchinson reading Coleridge's Christabel to Johnny [Wordsworth] - She was tired, so I read the greater part of it: he was excessively interested especially with the first part ... '
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson and Dorothy Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
'Mr. Wilson came to us on Saturday morning and stayed till Sunday afternoon - William [Wordsworth] read the White Doe; and Coleridge's Christabel to him, with both of which he was much delighted.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Arthur Penryn Stanley : Life of Thomas Arnold D.D, Headmaster of Rugby
As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few books, and know nothing of what is stirring in the literary world. I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who was a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke, which do not add to, or detract from, what I knew and liked in him before. I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps this winter. . .
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Letters
I have been reading in my Boat?Virgil, Juvenal, and Wesley?s Journal. Do you know the last? one of the most interesting Books, I think, in the Language. It is curious to think of his Diary extending over nearly the same time as Walpole?s Letters, which, you know, are a sort of Diary. What two different Lives, Pursuits, and Topics!
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Charles Knight : Half Hours with the Best Authors
'Some one by chance read out to me the other day at the seaside your account of poor old Naseby Village from Cromwell, quoted in Knight?s "Half Hours, etc." It is now twelve years ago, at this very season, I was ransacking for you; you promising to come down, and never coming. I hope very much you are soon going to give us something: else Jerrold and Tupper carry all before them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Print: Book
Edward Lloyd : [various titles published by Lloyd]
Henry Mayhew interviews 'educated' costermongers who read fiction aloud to groups of costermongers in the courts they inhabit; long account of the comments made by illiterate costermongers when cheap serials are read to them, comments on the story lines they like, characters and illustrations; reading of G.W.M. Reynolds's "Mysteries" and Edward Lloyd's penny bloods
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Serial / periodical
Oliver Goldsmith : Edwin and Angelina
Henry Mayhew interviews a street author or street poet: "I was very fond of reading poems in my youth, as soon as I could read and understand almost. Yes, very likely sir; perhaps it was that put it into my head to write them afterwards... I was very fond of Goldsmith's poetry always. I can repeat 'Edwin and Emma' now. No sir; I never read the 'Vicar of Wakefield'. I found 'Edwin and Emma' in a book called the 'Speaker'. I often thought of it in travelling through some parts of the country." + recites some of his own poetry to Mayhew
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Henry Mayhew interviews a 'vagrant' of 18 years of age: "Of a night ...we'd read stories about Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin, and all through that set. They were large thick books, borrowed from the library. They told how they used to break open the houses, and get out of Newgate, and how Dick got away to York. We used to think Jack and them very fine fellows. I wished I could be like Jack (I did then), about the blankets in his escape, and that old house in West-street -it is a ruin still."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood
Henry Mayhew interviews a 'vagrant' of 18 years of age: "Of a night ...we'd read stories about Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin, and all through that set. They were large thick books, borrowed from the library. They told how they used to break open the houses, and get out of Newgate, and how Dick got away to York. We used to think Jack and them very fine fellows. I wished I could be like Jack (I did then), about the blankets in his escape, and that old house in West-street -it is a ruin still."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Windsor Castle
Henry Mayhew interviews a boy of 16, a vagrant and inmate of a casual ward of a London workhouse: "My father had no books but religious books; they were all of a religious turn, and what people might think dull. But they never made me dull. I read Wesley's and Watt's hymns, and religious magazines of different connexions. I had a natural inclination for the sae, and would like to get to it now. I've read a good deal about it since -Clark's 'Lives of Pirates', 'Tales of Shipwrecks', and other things in penny numbers (Clark's I got out of the library though). I was what people called a deep boy for a book; and am still. Whenever I had a penny, after I got a bellyful of victuals, it went for a book, but I haven't bought many lately. I did buy one yesterday -the 'Family Herald' -one I often read when I can get it. There's good reading in it; it elevates your mind -anybody that has a mind for studying. It has good tales in it... I've read "Windsor Castle" and "The Tower", -they're by the same man. I Liked "Windsor Castle" and all about Henry VIII and Herne and Hunter. It's a book that's connected with history, and that's a good thing. I like adventurous tales."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical, unsure if penny numbers or book
William Harrison Ainsworth : The Tower of London
Henry Mayhew interviews a boy of 16, a vagrant and inmate of a casual ward of a London workhouse: "My father had no books but religious books; they were all of a religious turn, and what people might think dull. But they never made me dull. I read Wesley's and Watt's hymns, and religious magazines of different connexions. I had a natural inclination for the sae, and would like to get to it now. I've read a good deal about it since -Clark's 'Lives of Pirates', 'Tales of Shipwrecks', and other things in penny numbers (Clark's I got out of the library though). I was what people called a deep boy for a book; and am still. Whenever I had a penny, after I got a bellyful of victuals, it went for a book, but I haven't bought many lately. I did buy one yesterday -the 'Family Herald' -one I often read when I can get it. There's good reading in it; it elevates your mind -anybody that has a mind for studying. It has good tales in it... I've read "Windsor Castle" and "The Tower", -they're by the same man. I Liked "Windsor Castle" and all about Henry VIII and Herne and Hunter. It's a book that's connected with history, and that's a good thing. I like adventurous tales."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical, unsure if penny numbers or book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Henry Mayhew interviews a boy of 17, an inmate of a London workhouse: "I've read 'Jack Sheppard' through, in three volumes; and I used to tell stories out of that sometimes."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Henry Mayhew interviews a 'London sneak or common thief': "On Sunday evenings the only books read were such as 'Jack Sheppard', 'Dick Turpin' and the 'Newgate Calendar', they got out of the neighbouring libraries by depositing 1s. These were read with much interest; the lodgers would sooner have these than any other books."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood
Henry Mayhew interviews a 'London sneak or common thief': "On Sunday evenings the only books read were such as 'Jack Sheppard', 'Dick Turpin' and the 'Newgate Calendar', they got out of the neighbouring libraries by depositing 1s. These were read with much interest; the lodgers would sooner have these than any other books."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
George Jacob Holyoake :
Henry Mayhew interviews a former London pickpocket, turned patterer; grew up in Shropshire, father a Wesleyan minister: "...I have read Paine, and Valney, and Holyoake, those infidel writers, and have also read the works of Bulwer, Dickens and numbers of others..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton :
Henry Mayhew interviews a former London pickpocket, turned patterer; grew up in Shropshire, father a Wesleyan minister: "...I have read Paine, and Valney, and Holyoake, those infidel writers, and have also read the works of Bulwer, Dickens and numbers of others..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens :
Henry Mayhew interviews a former London pickpocket, turned patterer; grew up in Shropshire, father a Wesleyan minister: "...I have read Paine, and Valney, and Holyoake, those infidel writers, and have also read the works of Bulwer, Dickens and numbers of others..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Alfred Lord Tennyson : 'The Lotus Eaters'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Ode to the West Wind'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
Algernon Charles Swinburne : 'Atalanta in Calydon'
'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Henry Mayhew holds meeting with a group of the lowest class of male juvenile thieves and vagabonds; during the meeting they tell him what they have read/ read regularly and Mayhew records this: "Respecting their education, according to the popular meaning of the term, 63 of the 150 were able to read and write, and they were principally thieves. Fifty of this number said they had read 'Jack Sheppard' and the lines of Dick Turpin, Claude du Val, and all the other popular thieves' novels, as well as the Newgate Calendar and Lives of Robbers and Pirates. Those who could not read themselves, said they'd had 'Jack Sheppard' read to them at the lodging houses. Numbers avowed that they had been induced to resort to an abandoned course of life from reading the lives of notorious thieves and novels about highway robbers."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical, either in penny numbers or as volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood
Henry Mayhew holds meeting with a group of the lowest class of male juvenile thieves and vagabonds; during the meeting they tell him what they have read/ read regularly and Mayhew records this: "Respecting their education, according to the popular meaning of the term, 63 of the 150 were able to read and write, and they were principally thieves. Fifty of this number said they had read 'Jack Sheppard' and the lines of Dick Turpin, Claude du Val, and all the other popular thieves' novels, as well as the Newgate Calendar and Lives of Robbers and Pirates. Those who could not read themselves, said they'd had 'Jack Sheppard' read to them at the lodging houses. Numbers avowed that they had been induced to resort to an abandoned course of life from reading the lives of notorious thieves and novels about highway robbers."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical, either in penny numbers or as volume
C. Maurice Bowra : The Heritage of Symbolism
'[Muir] wrote to Stephen Spender in the summer of 1944 that Bowra's book had made him realise that he had been writing symbolist poetry himself for years without realising it. He added: "He inspired me to write one deliberately, which I enclose".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Henry Mayhew holds meeting with a group of the lowest class of male juvenile thieves and vagabonds; during the meeting they tell him what they have read/ read regularly and Mayhew records this: "Respecting their education, according to the popular meaning of the term, 63 of the 150 were able to read and write, and they were principally thieves. Fifty of this number said they had read 'Jack Sheppard' and the lines of Dick Turpin, Claude du Val, and all the other popular thieves' novels, as well as the Newgate Calendar and Lives of Robbers and Pirates. Those who could not read themselves, said they'd had 'Jack Sheppard' read to them at the lodging houses. Numbers avowed that they had been induced to resort to an abandoned course of life from reading the lives of notorious thieves and novels about highway robbers."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: group of London thieves Print: Book, Serial / periodical, either as penny numbers or in volume
Ralph Waldo Emerson : [Essays]
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Essays of Elia
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Francis Turner Palgrave : Golden Treasury (ed.)
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Richard Payne Knight : Progress of Civil Society, A Didactic Poem, The
'A 28-line transcription in Wordsworth's hand appears in the Alfoxden Notebook (Dove Cottage MS 14) of a quotation from Richard Payne Knight's The Progress of Civil Society.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Robert Heron : Observations Made in a Journey through the Western Countries of Scotland
'[Heron] provided one of the first entries in [Wordsworth's] Commonplace Book ... '
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'[Philip Inman] loved everything by Charlotte Bronte, partly for what she had to say about the class system: "Characters like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe were humble individuals in the eyes of the world, with only their dogged determination and lack of 'frills' as weapons against the dash and arrogance of those haughty and wealthy rivals among whom their lot was cast". Yet he admired Jane Austen for an equal but opposite reason: "The world of which she wrote, in which elegant gentlemen of fortune courted gentle, punctilliously correct ladies in refined drawing rooms, was a remote fairy-tale country to me. Some day, I thought, perhaps I would get to know a world in which voices were always soft and modulated and in which lively and witty conversation was more important than 'brass'."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'[Philip Inman] loved everything by Charlotte Bronte, partly for what she had to say about the class system: "Characters like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe were humble individuals in the eyes of the world, with only their dogged determination and lack of 'frills' as weapons against the dash and arrogance of those haughty and wealthy rivals among whom their lot was cast". Yet he admired Jane Austen for an equal but opposite reason: "The world of which she wrote, in which elegant gentlemen of fortune courted gentle, punctilliously correct ladies in refined drawing rooms, was a remote fairy-tale country to me. Some day, I thought, perhaps I would get to know a world in which voices were always soft and modulated and in which lively and witty conversation was more important than 'brass'."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Edward II
'At the front of D[ove] C[ottage] MS 16, in use during 1798, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] copied Marlowe's Edward II V.v.55-108, with some omissions ... The extract was copied from Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lambb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Unknown
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Francis Bacon :
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'Percy Wall, jailed for defying draft notices in the First World War, was inspired in part by a copy of Queen Mab owned by his father, a Marxist railway worker. But neither father nor son applied ideological tests to literature. In the prison library - with some guidance from a fellow conscientious objector who happened to be an important publishing executive - Percy discovered Emerson, Macaulay, Bacon, Shakespeare and Lamb. It was their style rather than their politics he found liberating: from them "I learned self-expression and acquired or strengthened standards of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : The World Set Free
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
George Sandys : Relation of a Journey Begun 1610. Foure Bookes. Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of AEgypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote Parts of Italy and Ilands Adjoyning
'[Thomas] Bowman [Wordsworth's schoolmaster] recalled that W[ordsworth] read [George Sandys, Relation of a Journey Begun 1610] in the Hawkshead Grammar School Library.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
George Shelvocke : Voyage Round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea, Performed in the Years 1719-1722
'As W[ordsworth] recalled in the Fenwick Note to We are Seven ... his reading of Shelvocke's Voyages inspired the killing of the albatross in C[oleridge]'s Ancient Mariner. W[ordsworth] dates this reading "a day or two before" the walking tour to Lynton - which would make it c.11-12 November 1797.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
John Richard Green :
'[Emrys Hughes] read the social history of Macaulay, Froude, and J.R. Green; Thorold Rogers's Six Centuries of Work and Wages particularly appealed to him because it offered "not the history of kings and queens, but of the way ordinary people ha struggled to live throughout the centuries..." Hughes was one of those agitators who found a virtual Marxism in Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution inspired the hope that a popular revolt somewhere would end the war...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Thorold Rogers : Six Centuries of Work and Wages
'[Emrys Hughes] read the social history of Macaulay, Froude, and J.R. Green; Thorold Rogers's Six Centuries of Work and Wages particularly appealed to him because it offered "not the history of kings and queens, but of the way ordinary people ha struggled to live throughout the centuries..." Hughes was one of those agitators who found a virtual Marxism in Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution inspired the hope that a popular revolt somewhere would end the war...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : [sonnets (two)]
'On the rear flyleaf of his copy of [Charlotte Smith's] Elegiac Sonnets [5th edn, 1789]... W[ordsworth] copied two more of Smith's compositions, both of which were first published in her novel, Celestina (1791), and reprinted as XLIX and LI in Elegiac Sonnets (6th edn, 1792) ... W[ordsworth]'s copies vary from both texts as published.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Christoph Martin Wieland : Oberon
'"I am translating the Oberon of Wieland," C[oleridge] told [Thomas] Poole, 20 Nov 1797.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Francis Wrangham : Brutoniad
'[Francis] Wrangham was ... in the habit of reading MS verses to his friends: C[oleridge] heard his "Brutoniad" in Sept. 1794.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Wrangham Manuscript: Unknown
Christopher Wordsworth : Ecclesiastical Biography, or Lives of Eminent Men connected with the History of Religion in England
Dorothy Wordsworth to Jane Marshall, [c.19 February 1810] (letter fragmentary): 'Have you seen my Brother Christopher's publication? Lives of eminent men connected with Religion from the Reformation to the Revolution? I am reading it with great inter[est]. The lives of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More are delightful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Friend, A Literary, Moral and Political Weekly Paper
Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, 28 February [1810], on departure of Sara Hutchinson after four years with Wordsworths: 'Coleridge most of all will miss her, as she has transcribed almost every Paper of the Friend for the press.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson Manuscript: Unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Canterbury Tales
Dorothy Wordsworth, on visit to Catherine Clarkson at Bury St Edmunds, to William Wordsworth and Sara Hutchinson, 14 August 1810: 'In the afternoon we looked over half the drawings from Chaucer, and read as much of the prologue ... the next day looked over the rest of the drawings to my great delight, and read the Knight's Tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
Extract of letter from Thomas De Quincey to Mary Wordsworth, given in 30 December 1810 letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson: '"W. Scott's last novel, the Lady of the Lake, is the grand subject of prattle and chatter hereabouts. I have read it aloud to oblige my Mother, and a more disgusting Task I never had. I verily think that it is the completest magazine of all forms of the Falsetto in feeling and diction that now exists ... I have given great offence to some of Walter's idolaters ... in particular, by calling it a novel (which indeed it is; only a very dull one)."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey
Walter Scott :
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson... would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Charles Reade :
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson ...would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
George Eliot :
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte :
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
John Richard Green :
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : [The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?]
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : The Rise of the Dutch Republic
'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Karl Marx :
'At Ruskin College he was exposed to Marx, but he found a more compelling Utopian prophet when he read Lewis Carroll to his daughters: "Then one could look at life and affairs from the proper angle, for was not all our work to this end - that little children should live in their Wonderland, and mothers and fathers be heartful of the good of life because they were".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
Karl Marx :
[Alice Foley] read some Morris and less Marx, but for her a liberal education for the proletariat was not merely a means of achieving socialism: it was socialism in fact. At night school she staged a personal revolution by writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet and thriling to the "new romantic world" of Jane Eyre. She joined a Socialist Sunday School where 'Hiawatha' was recited for its "prophetic idealism", and a foundry hammerman intoned Keats's 'Eve of St Agnes and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[Alice Foley] read some Morris and less Marx, but for her a liberal education for the proletariat was not merely a means of achieving socialism: it was socialism in fact. At night school she staged a personal revolution by writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet and thriling to the "new romantic world" of Jane Eyre. She joined a Socialist Sunday School where 'Hiawatha' was recited for its "prophetic idealism", and a foundry hammerman intoned Keats's 'Eve of St Agnes and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Hiawatha
[Alice Foley] read some Morris and less Marx, but for her a liberal education for the proletariat was not merely a means of achieving socialism: it was socialism in fact. At night school she staged a personal revolution by writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet and thriling to the "new romantic world" of Jane Eyre. She joined a Socialist Sunday School where 'Hiawatha' was recited for its "prophetic idealism", and a foundry hammerman intoned Keats's 'Eve of St Agnes and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Bishop Blougram's Apology'
'Her first WEA summer scool at the end of the First World War, was "a new and undreamt-of experience... We argued over Wilson's Fourteen Points and in literary sessions read and explored Browning's poems. It was a strange joy to browse overthe niceties of Bishop Blougram's Apology or to delve into the intricacies of The Ring and the Book... It was a month of almost complete happiness; a pinnacle of joy never to be quite reached again".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'The Ring and the Book'
'Her first WEA summer school at the end of the First World War, was "a new and undreamt-of experience... We argued over Wilson's Fourteen Points and in literary sessions read and explored Browning's poems. It was a strange joy to browse overthe niceties of Bishop Blougram's Apology or to delve into the intricacies of The Ring and the Book... It was a month of almost complete happiness; a pinnacle of joy never to be quite reached again".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Robert Herrick :
'[Chaim Lewis] enthusiastically embraced the literature of an alien culture - "the daffodils of Herrick and Wordsworth... the whimsey of Lamb and the stirring rhythmic tales of the Ballads" and, yes, "the wry eloquence of Shylock".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'[Chaim Lewis] enthusiastically embraced the literature of an alien culture - "the daffodils of Herrick and Wordsworth... the whimsey of Lamb and the stirring rhythmic tales of the Ballads" and, yes, "the wry eloquence of Shylock".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
Alexander Pushkin :
'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Man and Superman
'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Even before [Chaim Lewis] discovered the English novelists, he was introduced to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin by a Russian revolutionary rag merchant who studied Dickens in the Whitechapel Public Library and read aloud from Man and Superman. Another friend - the son of a widowed mother, who left school at fourteen - exposed him to Egyptology, Greek architecture, Scott, Smollett, the British Musuem and Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: a revolutionary Russian rag merchant Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes :
'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius : [Meditations]?
'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
Charles Monroe Sheldon : The Crucifixion of Philip Strong
'George Gregory offers a case study in the importance of Self-Help. His father was an illiterate Somerset miner, his mother a servant who read nothing but the Bible... Gregory only had a few school prizes - Jack and the Ostrich, a children's story; The Crucifixion of Philip Strong, a gripping tale of labor unrest; and the verses of Cornish poet, John Harries - and the family read a weekly serial, Strongdold the Gladiator. Having left school at twelve to work in the mines, Gregory had no access to serious reading matter until mid-adolescence, when a clerk introduced him to Self-Help. That book, he recalled in old age, "has lived with me, and in me, for more than sixty years... I was impressed by its quality for I had never touched a book of such high quality; and the impression deepened and became vivid as I took it home, read the stories of men who had helped themselves, struggled against enormous difficulties, suffered privations...but went on to rise phoenix-like from the ruins of their plans... I realised that my lack of education was not decisive of what I might become, so I commenced to reach out into the future".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gregory Print: Book
Captain Charles Pasley : An Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire
William Wordsworth to Captain Charles Pasley, 28 March 1811: 'Now for your book. I had expected it with great impatience, and desired a Friend to send it down to me immediately on its appearance, which he neglected to do. On this account, I did not see it till a few days ago. I have read it through twice, with great care, and many parts three or four times over.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Southey : Chronicle of the Cid, The
Dorothy Wordsworth to William and Mary Wordsworth, 3 May [1812]: 'I am reading the Cid.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Southey : Life of Nelson
Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 4 October [1813]: 'My whole summer's reading has been a part of two volumes of Mrs Grant's American Lady, which Southey lent to be speedily returned, and a dip or two in Southey's Nelson - with snatches at the Newspaper and Sunday's readings with the Bairns.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : Egbert, or, The Suicide
William Wordsworth to R. P.Gillies, 23 November 1814: 'I have to thank you ... for Egbert, which is pleasingly and vigorously written, and proves that with a due sacrifice of exertion, you will be capable of performing things that will have a strong claim on the regards of posterity. But keep, I pray you, to the great models; there is in some parts of this tale, particuarly page fourth, too much of a bad writer - Lord Byron ... towards the conclusion, the intervention of the peasant is not only unnecessary, but injurious to the tale ... '
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
R. P. Gillies : Ruminator, The
William Wordsworth to R. P.Gillies, 23 November 1814: 'I have peeped into the Ruminator, and turned to your first letter, which is well executed, and seizes the attention very agreeably. Your longer poem I have barely looked into ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : Childe Alarique, a poet's reverie with other poems
William Wordsworth to R. P.Gillies, 23 November 1814: 'Your longer poem I have barely looked into ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : Exile, The
William Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies, 22 December 1814: 'When your Letter arrived I was in the act of reading to Mrs W[ordsworth] your Exile, which pleased me more, I think, than anything that I have read of yours ... I was particularly charmed with the seventeenth stanza, first part ... which I shall often repeat to myself ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : The Ruminator
William Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies, 22 December 1814: 'I have read the Ruminator, and I fear that I do not like it quite as much as you would wish. It wants depth and strength, yet it is pleasingly and elegantly written, and contains everywhere the sentiments of a liberal spirit.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Anna Maria Porter : Recluse of Norway, The
Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 18 February 1815: 'Mary is deep in the 2nd volume of the "Recluse of Norway" by Miss Porter - there is a wonderful cleverness in this book, and notwithstanding the badness of the style the 1st vol is very interesting. I began the 2nd last night but could do no more than skim it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wordsworth Print: Book
Anna Maria Porter : Recluse of Norway, The
Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 18 February 1815: 'Mary is deep in the 2nd volume of the "Recluse of Norway" by Miss Porter - there is a wonderful cleverness in this book, and notwithstanding the badness of the style the 1st vol is very interesting. I began the 2nd last night but could do no more than skim it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Christopher Wordsworth : sermons
Dorothy Wordsworth to Priscilla Wordsworth, 27 February 1815: 'The day before yesterday Miss Alne dined with us, and from her we learned that Chris[topher Wordsworth]'s sermons were just arrived at Brathay, so William walked to B. with Miss A. and borrowed one volume - It is the second. William and Mary have read several of the sermons and are very much delighted with them ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Christopher Wordsworth : sermons
Dorothy Wordsworth to Priscilla Wordsworth, 27 February 1815: 'The day before yesterday Miss Alne dined with us, and from her we learned that Chris[topher Wordsworth]'s sermons were just arrived at Brathay, so William walked to B. with Miss A. and borrowed one volume - It is the second. William and Mary have read several of the sermons and are very much delighted with them ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wordsworth Print: Book
Christopher Wordsworth : sermons
Dorothy Wordsworth to Priscilla Wordsworth, 27 February 1815: 'The day before yesterday Miss Alne dined with us, and from her we learned that Chris[topher Wordsworth]'s sermons were just arrived at Brathay, so William walked to B. with Miss A. and borrowed one volume - It is the second. William and Mary have read several of the sermons and are very much delighted with them - I have not yet had leisure when the book has been at liberty and have only snatched a look at the subjects and the mode of treating them which appear to me to be very interesting. Pleased I was to greet that discourse upon Paul and Festus which I heard my Brother preach at Binfield ... I have not read any part of the sermon on Paul and Festus; but on looking it over it seems to me as if it had been shortened ... The only sermon on which I can say I have read any part is that upon National Education and an excellent discourse it appears to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
William Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies, 25 April 1815: 'You mentioned Guy Mannering in your last. I have read it. I cannot say that I was disappointed, for there is very considerable talent displayed ... But the adventures I think are not well chosen or well executed ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Southey : [Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo, The]
William Wordsworth to John Scott, 25 February 1816, on own and contemporaries' endeavours to celebrate victory at Waterloo in verse: 'Southey is a Fellow labourer. I have seen but little of his performance, but that little gave me great pleasure.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Christopher Wordsworth : A sermon preached in the Chapel of Lambeth at the Consecration of the Hon. and Right Rev. Henry Ryder, Lord Bishop of Gloucester, 1815
William Wordsworth to Christopher Wordsworth: 'We thank you for your Consecration Sermon, which we received free of expense. We have read it with much pleasure, and unite in thinking it excellently adapted to the occasion. For my own part, I liked it still better upon the second than the first reading.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Christopher Wordsworth : A sermon preached in the Chapel of Lambeth at the Consecration of the Hon. and Right Rev. Henry Ryder, Lord Bishop of Gloucester, 1815
William Wordsworth to Christopher Wordsworth: "We thank you for your Consecration Sermon, which we received free of expense. We have read it with much pleasure, and unite in thinking it excellently adapted to the occasion."
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
R. P. Gillies : Illustrations of a Poetical Character, in six Tales, with other Poems
William Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies (postmarked 9 April 1816): 'Your obliging Present [new book of poems] reached me yesterday ... I read the volume through immediately: and paid particular attention to the parts that were new to me.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : Rinaldo, a desultory Poem
William Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies: " ... your poem [Rinaldo] I have read with considerable attention."
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Catherine Clarkson :
Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 10 January 1817, re visit to Mrs Threlkeld (very fond of C. Clarkson) at Halifax: 'I read her your last letter adding a few words for you, which were not there, of remembrance of her and her Daughter ... I hope my little trick ... was at the least an innocent one, and I flatter myself that, in the spirit ... what I made you say was just and true - indeed if I had not felt it to be so I should have been wounded instead of pleased by the pleasure which the dear good old lady expressed in hearing that she was remembered by you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I have been twice in prison. I was only in Liverpool two days. I came from Manchester to the races; I had no work. I have been at all the theatres... I have robbed my parents to satisfy my desire to go to the theatres; ...I have seen 'Jack Sheppard' performed; I think it will be the means of inducing boys to copy his tricks. I have read his life; many boys have it."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: H.T. Print: Book, Serial / periodical, read as numbers or volume?
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I have been five times in prison. I have been as the Sanspareil and at all the theatres... I am sure had I never known the theatres I should have been quite a different character at this day. I have heard 'Jack Sheppard' performed; I was very fond of it; I had his life, but some boy took it from me; most boys have his life."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: T.A Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I came from Manchester to the races. I was taken into custody when I had only been in Liverpool two days. I was taken up for attempting to pick pockets... Theatres are very exciting. I never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed; I have read his history; I have seen many boys buy his history; I borrowed mine from another boy."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G.G. Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I have been three times in prison and once discharged. I have been at the Sanspareil and Amphitheatre; I have also been at the penny hop... I am sure the theatres would bring any youngster to ruin: they don't care where they get their money, so that they do but get it to join their companions. I was very fond of seeing 'Jack Sheppard' performed. I have read his life; I bought it."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.M. Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I was never in prison before. I have been twice discharged, and am now waiting for trial... I have heard the 'Life of Jack Sheppard' read; it did not lead me to think of anything good, but I am sure it would lead young folks to do everything bad. The man I heard read it lived in a house in Gore-street, and sold penny-beer, asnd other things: it is a house where men and boys meet"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of a juvenile offender: "I have been nine times in prison and once discharged, and am now waiting trial... I never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed. I have read his life and heard a great deal about him. I think that those who read his life are not likely to reap any good, or those that see the play performed, I am sure will get no good."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: T.E. Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I have been six times in prison and four times discharged, and am now waiting trial... I have been to all the theatres... I never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed. I have often heard and read about him: they all seem to say he was a great man and a great prison breaker; and when he was at liberty like a gentleman."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: M.F. Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I have been twice in prison and am now waiting trial... I have seen 'Jack Sheppard' performed; have read part of his life; I thought the play was very interesting; I am sure it did not create in me any bad thoughts, nor increase my desire to follow bad pratices..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: A.L. Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not sure if penny parts or volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I have been six times in prison, and four times discharged... Never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed; have read his life and often heard speak of him; he was very clever."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.F. Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not sure if penny parts or volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I have been four times in prison and twice discharged... I never saw Jack Sheppard performed; I have heard boys talk of him, and have heard my father read his life"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not sure if penny parts or volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I never was in prison before. I have been at the Sanspareil, and at all the other theatres, except the Queen's. I never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed. I have heard the prisoners speak about it many times: some would speak well of the play, others would say it was most of it false. I have read his Life; I think myself it is mostly false; there may have been such a man, but I think he could not go through all the exploits that is spoken of."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: E.B. Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not sure if penny parts or volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I never was in prison before. I was taken into custody for attempting to rob my master... I never saw 'Jack Sheppard' performed; I have read part of his life; I think he was a clever man; I don't know that reading his life created any difference in my mind."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.H. Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not sure if penny parts or volume
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "I thought this 'Jack Sheppard' was a clever fellow for making his escape and robbing his master. If I could get out of gaol I think I should be as clever as him; but after all his exploits he got done at last. I have had the book out of a library at Dale Field. I paid 2d a book for three volumes. I also got 'Richard Turpin' in two volumes and paid the same."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.L. Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
Statement of juvenile offender: "When I left school I went to Mr Banks, bookseller, two years. I had good opportunities of reading then, voyages and such; read the Life of Jack Sheppard. I borrowed it from another boy... I read 'Jack Sheppard' about five months before I began the robberies."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.H. Print: Book
R. P. Gillies : Oswald, A Metrical Tale
'I have read your Poem. I like it better than any of the preceding ones.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Lord Lonsdale :
William Wordsworth to Lord Lonsdale, 13 Feb 1818: 'I dined at the Wakefields yesterday. Mr John W. senior broke out on the dependent and enslaved State of the County etc. I said that I had accepted his Son's invitation, to testify my respect for his family, and my personal regard for his Son ... I begged to state that as to the fact of the county being represented by two of the Family of Lowther no person lamented it more than your Lordship. I then read part of that sentence in your Letter where you speak of it as a misfortune ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter
Henry Brougham : A Letter to Sir Samuel Romilly upon the Abuse of Charities
William Wordsworth to Viscount Lowther, 22 September 1818: 'Your two interesting Letters, the Pamphlet, and Sun and Chronicle, have been duly received ... The Pamphlet I have carefully read ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Francis Wrangham : translation of Virgil, Eclogues
William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham, 19 February 1819: 'I ought to have thanked you before for your versions of Virgil's Eclogues, which reached me at last. I have lately compared it line for line with the original, and think it very well done ... I think I mentioned to you that these Poems of Virgil have always delighted me much; there is frequently in them an elegance and a happiness that no translation can hope to equal. In point of fidelity your translation is very good indeed.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
[A Westmorland Inhabitant and Freeholder] Anon : unknown
William Wordsworth to Viscount Lowther, 31 December 1819: 'In the last Kendal Chronicle appeared a most malignant misrepresentation of the words you used upon the searching for arms Bill ... I was requested to animadvert upon this Letter, which indeed I had felt some disposition to do when I first read it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Newspaper
Helen Maria Williams : The Charter; addressed to my nephew Athanase C. L. Coquerel, on his wedding day, 1819
William Wordsworth (visiting Paris) to Helen Maria Williams, [15 October 1820], 'I had the honour of receiving your letter yesterday Evening, together with the several copies of your tender and beautiful Verses ... Allow me this opportunity of expressing the pleasure I shall have in possessing this little tribute from yourself - as also, the gratification which the perusal of both the Poems [including 'The Charter'] has afforded me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Allestree : Ladies Calling, The
'On 2 May 1812 M[ary] W[ordsworth] wrote to her husband from Hindwell: "I have read the 'Ladies calling' - one of thy books - which pleased me much ... "
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Bloomfield : Farmer's Boy, The
S. T. Coleridge to James Tobin, 17 Sept 1800: 'What Wordsworth & I have seen of the Farmer's Boy (only a few short extracts) pleased us very much.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Robert Bloomfield : Farmer's Boy, The
S. T. Coleridge to James Tobin, 17 Sept 1800: 'What Wordsworth & I have seen of the Farmer's Boy (only a few short extracts) pleased us very much.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Henry Brougham : review of Byron, Hours of Idleness
'[Samuel] Rogers reported W[ordsworth]'s reaction to Brougham's harsh review of Byron's first volume: "Wordsworth was spending an evening at Charles Lamb's, when he saw the said critique, which had just appeared. He read it through, and remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, such an attack was abominable ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Brougham : review of Byron, Hours of Idleness
Henry Crabb Robinson on Wordsworth's reading of Henry Brougham's review of Byron, Hours of Idleness: 'I was sitting with Charles Lamb when Wordsworth came in, with fume on his countenance, and the Edinburgh Review in his hand. "I have no patience with these reviewers," he said, "here is a young man, a lord, and a minor ... and these fellows attack him, as if no one may write poetry unless he lives in a garret."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Frederika Brun : Chamouny beym Sonnenaufgange
'[In Germany] C[oleridge] read [Frederika] Brun's Chamouny beym Sonnenaufgange, which provided the inspiration for his Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
George Buchanan : [poems]
'C[oleridge] read [George Buchanan] at Cambridge.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Dr Currie : Life of Burns
'"I well remember the acute sorrow with which, by my own fire-side, I first perused Dr. Currie's Narrative, and some of the letters, particularly of those composed in the latter part of the poet's life," W[ordsworth] wrote in the Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816) ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Burns : letters
'"I well remember the acute sorrow with which, by my own fire-side, I first perused Dr. Currie's Narrative, and some of the letters, particularly of those composed in the latter part of the poet's life," W[ordsworth] wrote in the Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816) ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
'De Quincey ... in a letter to the Wordsworths of 27 May 1809 said that he had read ... [Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers] "some weeks - or perhaps months - ago: but it is so deplorably dull and silly that I never thought of mentioning it before.'''
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas De Quincey Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I and II
'On 17-18 May 1812 W[ordsworth] wrote to M[ary] W[ordsworth]: "Yesterday I dined alone with Lady B. - and we read Lord Byron's new poem whch is not destitute of merit; though ill-planned, and often unpleasing in the sentiments, and almost always perplexed in the construction."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I and II
'On 17-18 May 1812 W[ordsworth] wrote to M[ary] W[ordsworth]: "Yesterday I dined alone with Lady B. - and we read Lord Byron's new poem whch is not destitute of merit; though ill-planned, and often unpleasing in the sentiments, and almost always perplexed in the construction."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Beaumont Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara
'Writing to D[orothy] W[ordsworth] on 19 Aug. 1814, W[ordsworth] describes an incident in a Perth bookshop: "I stepped yesterday evening into a Bookseller's shop with a sneaking hope that I might hear something about the Excursion ... on the contrary, inquiry of the Bookseller what a poetical parcel he was then opening consisted of, he said that it was a new Poem, called Lara ... supposed to be written by Lord Byron ... I took the book in my hand, and saw Jacqueline in the same column with Lara ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
George Carleton : Memoirs of Captain George Carleton, The
'C[oleridge] read ... [George Carleton, Memoirs] in April [1809] ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gabriello Chiabrera : Delle Opere di Gabriello Chiabrera
'W[ordsworth] translated ten epitaphs from Chiabrera's Opere ... probably ...between 26 Oct. and 4 Nov. 1809.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Charles Cotton : Winter
Wu notes that Charles Lamb copied stanzas 20-53 of Charles Cotton, Winter, in letter to Wordsworth of 5 March 1803.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb
Rene Descartes : unknown
'W[ordsworth copied quotations from Descartes into D[ove] C[ottage] MS 31, leaves 71-2, c. Feb 1801.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Maria Edgeworth : unknown
'On 30 May 1812 W[ordsworth] observed [regarding Maria Edgeworth] that "I had read but few of her works" ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Motte Guyon : Life of Lady Guion, The
'[Mark L.] Reed judges that W[ordsworth] and D[orothy] W[ordsworth] copied extracts from the Life [of Lady Guion] into the Wordsworth Commonplace Book ... by 29 Sept 1800.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
George Herbert : [poems]
'C[oleridge] was reading Herbert in July-Sept 1809 ... during his residence at Allan Bank ... He was apparently reading his copy of The Temple ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Herbert : Temple, The
'C[oleridge] was reading Herbert in ... Mar. 1810, during his residence at Allan Bank ... He was apparently reading his copy of The Temple ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Heron : Observations Made in a Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland
'[Mark L.] Reed judges that a passage on pedlars from Heron was entered in the Wordsworth Commonplace Book ... by 5 April 1800 ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
Francis Jeffrey : review of Thalaba
'[Wordsworth's] first mention of ... [Francis Jeffrey, review of Robert Southey, Thalaba, in the Edinburgh Review 1 (Oct 1802)] comes in a letter of Jan. 1804 to [John] Thelwall ... "That review of Thalaba I never read entirely, having only seen it in a Country Bookseller's shop, who would not permit me to cut open the Leaves, as he only had it upon trial."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Anne Lamb : Dialogue Between a Mother and Child
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, Dialogue Between a Mother and Child] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Anne Lamb : Lady Blanch, regardless of her lovers' fears
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, The Lady Blanch, regardless of her lovers' fears] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Anne Lamb : Virgin and Child
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, "Virgin and Child"] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Anne Lamb : On the Same (Virgin and Child)
'Charles Lamb copied ... [Mary Anne Lamb, "On the Same" ("Virgin and Child")] for D[orothy] W[ordsworth] in a letter of 2 June 1804.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Savage Landor : Simoneida
Wordsworth to Walter Savage Landor, 20 April 1822: 'In your Simoneida, which I saw some years ago at Mr Southey's, I was pleased to find rather an out-of-the-way image, in which the present hour is compared to the shade on the dial.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Harriet Lee : German's Tale, The
'De Quincey recalled the time ... when he persuaded W[ordsworth] to read [Harriet] Lee's The German's Tale: 'This most splendid tale I put into the hands of Wordsworth; and, for once, having, I suppose, nothing else to read, he condescended to run through it. I shall not report his opinion, which, in fact, was no opinion ... "'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Alain Rene Le Sage : Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, The
'On 19 Aug. 1810, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] told W[ordsworth] that she was "reading Malkin's Gil Blas - and it is a beautiful Book as to printing etc but I think the Translation vulgar."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Thomas Robert Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population, An
'C[oleridge] had read the Essay [on the Principle of Population] shortly after its first appearance in 1798.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Martin Martin : Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, A
'In late 1808 S[ara] H[utchinson] copied the description of the gawlin from [Martin] Martin, pp.71-2, into C[oleridge]'s notebook ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : On a Drop of Dew
'C[oleridge]'s letter to S[ara] H[utchinson] of May 1807 contained a transcription of Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew".'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Andrew Marvell : Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, An
'Prelude MS W [Dove Cottage MS 38)] contains a transcription of Marvell's Horatian Ode dating from late 1802.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters
'"In reading Lady Mary W Montagu's letters, whi[ch] we have had lately, I continually felt a want - I had not the least affection for her" D[orothy] W[ordsworth] to Lady Beaumont, 11 April 1805).'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
Charles Lyell : Principles of Geology
'In his isolated rural community Gregory never imagined that he might aspire to a higher profession. Now he returned to his old school for evening classes in chemistry, arithmetic, and mining engineering, where he won a prize book of world history and was introduced to Lyell's Principles of Geology. These two volumes taught him to think in evolutionary terms, and he began to read widely on the historicity of religion and the development of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gregory Print: Book
Frederick Marryat :
'In [Ashington Mechanics' Institute] library [Chester Armstrong] discovered a "new world", a "larger environment" in Defoe, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and Jules Verne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'In [Ashington Mechanics' Institute] library [Chester Armstrong] discovered a "new world", a "larger environment" in Defoe, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and Jules Verne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Charles Darwin :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Thomas Henry Huxley :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Henrik Johan Ibsen :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
George Meredith :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Oscar Wilde :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Arnold Bennett :
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : 'Break, break, break'
'[Through the Women's Co-operative Guild, Deborah Smith] began reading poetry and, at age fifty one, discovered her own spiritual longings in Tennyson: Break, break, break on thy cold grey stones, oh sea, Oh would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Deborah Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley Novels
[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora THompson Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan
[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
[According to Flora Thompson], "Modern writers who speak of the booklessness of the poor at that time must mean books as possessions...there were always books to borrow"... One could borrow Pamela and the Waverley novels from a neighbour, Christies Old Organ from the Sunday School library. Her uncle, a shoemaker, had once carted home from a country-house auction a large collection of books that no-one would buy: novels, poetry, sermons, histories, dictionaries. She read him Cranford while he worked in his shop... Later she could borrow from her employer (the village postmistress) Shakespeare and Byron's Don Juan, as well as Jane Austen, Dickens and Trollope from the Mechanics' Institute library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Arthur Conan Doyle :
'[the father of Harry Burton] 'an irregularly employed housepainter, liked a "stirring novel" but nothing more challenging than Conan Doyle: "He had no use whatever for anything remotely approaching the spiritual in art, literature or music...", and yet the whole family rea and, on some level, took pleasure in sharing and discussing their reading. His mother recited serials from the Family Reader and analyzed them at length with grandma over a cup of tea. Every few minutes his father would offer up a snippet from the Daily Chronicle or Lloyd's Weekly News. The children were not discouraged from reading aloud, perhaps from Jules Verne: "I can smell to this day the Journey to the Centre of the Earth", Burton recalled. The whole family made use of the public library and enjoyed together children's magazines like Chips and The Butterfly'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Homer : the Iliad
'As a boy, stonemason Hugh Miller first learned to appreciate the pleasures of literature in the "most delightful of all narratives - the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before! I actually found out for myself that the art of reading is the art of finding stories in books, and from that moment reading became one of the most delightful of my amusements". Once Miller had learned to read Scripture as a story, he soon found similar and equally gripping tales in chapbooks of Jack the Giant Killer, Sinbad the Sailor, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. And then, he recalled, from fairy tales "I passed on, without being conscious of break or line of division, to books on which the learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations, but which I found to be quite as nice children's books as any of the others": Pope's Iliad and Odyssey. "With what power, and at how early an age, true genius impresses!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
'As a boy, stonemason Hugh Miller first learned to appreciate the pleasures of literature in the "most delightful of all narratives - the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before! I actually found out for myself that the art of reading is the art of finding stories in books, and from that moment reading became one of the most delightful of my amusements". Once Miller had learned to read Scripture as a story, he soon found similar and equally gripping tales in chapbooks of Jack the Giant Killer, Sinbad the Sailor, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. And then, he recalled, from fairy tales "I passed on, without being conscious of break or line of division, to books on which the learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations, but which I found to be quite as nice children's books as any of the others": Pope's Iliad and Odyssey. "With what power, and at how early an age, true genius impresses!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
Ambrose Philips : Collection of Old Ballads, A
'D[orothy] W[ordsworth] made copies of extracts or complete texts from Philips' Collection in the Wordsworth Commonplace Book ... some time between 10 July 1807 and c.5 June 1808. The ballads were: Eighth Henry Ruling in this land; A Princely Song of the Six Queens that were married to Henry the 8th; Fitte of the Ballad of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford Dudley; The Lady Arabella and Lord Seymour; The Suffolk Miracle; and the Lamentable Complaint of Queen Mary for the Unkind Departure of King Philip.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds
"On 20 July 1804 W[ordsworth] wrote to Sir George Beaumont: "'A few days ago I received from Mr Southey your very acceptable present of Sir Joshua Reynolds works, which with the life I have nearly read through. Several of the discourses I had read before though never regularly together: they have very much added to the high opinion which I before entertained of Sir Joshua Reynolds.' "W[ordsworth's first comprehensive reading of Reynolds' works can be dated to four or five days in the middle of July 1804."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : Discourses
"On 20 July 1804 W[ordsworth] wrote to Sir George Beaumont: "'A few days ago I received from Mr Southey your very acceptable present of Sir Joshua Reynolds works, which with the life I have nearly read through. Several of the discourses I had read before though never regularly together: they have very much added to the high opinion which I before entertained of Sir Joshua Reynolds.' "W[ordsworth]'s first comprehensive reading of Reynolds' works can be dated to four or five days in the middle of July 1804. He had, of course, referred to the Discourses in the 1798 Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : The Death of Wallenstein
'On 16 March 1840 W[ordsworth] told [Henry Crabb] Robinson that "C[oleridge]. translated the 2nd part of Wallenstein under my roof at Grasmere from MSS ..."'
UnknownCentury: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'C[oleridge] was a reader of ... [The Lady of the Lake]: he read Southey's copy in Sept. 1810 ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alaric Watts : Souvenir
'On 6 Feb. 1827 W[ordsworth] told Sotheby: "I was gratified the other day by meeting in Mr Alaric Watt's Souvenir with a very old acquaintance, a Sonnet of yours, whch I had read with no little pleasure more than 30 years ago. "I knew a gentle Maid".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Southey : Madoc
' ... James Losh reported in his diary for 4 Sept 1800 that Madoc "is ready for publication ... Southey showed me about two years ago two books of this poem which I admired but thought deficient in dignity of sentiment and style."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Losh Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : History of Brazil
'In early Oct. 1810 C[oleridge] wrote to W[ordsworth]: "I send the Brazil which has entertained & instructed me."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Jeremy Taylor : Dissuasive from Popery to the People of Ireland, A
'On 13 May 1812 [Henry Crabb] Robinson recorded in his diary: "William Wordsworth was more afraid of the liberal than the methodistic party on the bench of bishops, and read a beautiful passage from Jeremy Taylor on the progress of religious dissensions from his Dissuasive against Popery."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Constantin Francois de Chasseboeuf comte de Volney : Travels through Syria and Egypt, in the years 1783, 1784, and 1785
Wu notes extracts from vol 1 of Volney, "Travels Through Syria and Egypt", in Dove Cottage MS 28.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Henry Kirke White : To the Herb Rosemary
Duncan Wu identifies poem transcribed in Wordsworth Commonplace Book and opening 'Sweet scented flow'r! who'rt wont to bloom / On January's front severe ... ' as Henry Kirke White, "To the herb Rosemary".
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Kirke White : ["literary remains"]
Southey describes arrival of 'literary remains' of Henry Kirke White at Greta Hall in his preface to The Remains of Kirke White, of Nottingham (2 vols, 1807): 'Mr. Coleridge was present when I opened them, and was, as well as myself, equally affected and astonished at the proofs of industry which they displayed ... There were papers upon law, upon electricity, upon chemistry, upon the Latin and Greek languages ... upon history, chronology, divinity, the fathers, &c ... His poems were numerous.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Kirke White : ["literary remains"]
Southey describes arrival of "literary remains" of Henry Kirke White at Greta Hall in his preface to The Remains of Kirke White, of Nottingham (2 vols, 1807): 'Mr. Coleridge was present when I opened them, and was, as well as myself, equally affected and astonished at the proofs of industry which they displayed ... There were papers upon law, upon electricity, upon chemistry, upon the Latin and Greek languages ... upon history, chronology, divinity, the fathers, &c ... His poems were numerous.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Wrangham : [poem]
'Writing to [Francis] Wrangham in late Feb. 1801, W[ordsworth] remarked: "I read with great pleasure a very elegant and tender poem of yours in the 2nd Vol: of the [Annual] Anthology."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Poems on Various Occasions
Byron to William J. Bankes, on having received 'two Critical opinions, from Edinburgh' (of Lord Woodhouselee and Henry Mackenzie) in praise of his Poems on Various Occasions: 'I am not personally acquainted with either of these Gentlemen ... their praise is voluntary, and transmitted through the Medium, of a Friend, at whose house, they read the productions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Poems on Various Occasions
Byron to William J. Bankes, on having received 'two Critical opinions, from Edinburgh' (of Lord Woodhouselee and Henry Mackenzie) in praise of his Poems on Various Occasions: 'I am not personally acquainted with either of these Gentlemen ... their praise is voluntary, and transmitted through the Medium, of a Friend, at whose house, they read the productions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Mackenzie Print: Book
Robert Charles Dallas : unknown
Byron to Robert Charles Dallas, 21 January 1808: 'Whenever Leisure and Inclination permit me the pleasure of a visit, I shall feel truly gratified in a personal acquaintance with one, whose mind has long been known to me in his Writings.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Byron to Robert Charles Dallas, 21 January 1808: 'As for my reading, I believe I may aver without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department, so that few nations exist or have existed with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted from Herodotus down to Gibbon.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Henry Brougham : review of Byron, Hours of Idleness
' ... a most violent attack is preparing for me in the the next number of the Edinburgh Review, this I have from the authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript of the Critique ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: proofManuscript: Unknown
Henry Brougham : [speech]
Byron to Edward Ellice, 4 July 1810: 'I hear your friend Brougham is in the lower house mouthing at the ministry ... you remember he would not believe that I had written my pestilent Satire [English Bards and Scotch Reviewers], now that was very cruel and unlike me, for the moment I read his speech, I believed it to be his entire from Exordium to Peroration.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Richard Johnson : The History of The Seven Champions
'When radical weaver Samuel Bamford first discovered Pilgrim's Progress, it impressed him as a thrilling illustrated romance: woodcuts of Christian's fight with Apollyon and his escape from Giant Despair encouraged "the exercise of my feeling and my imagination". Then The New Testament became "my story book and I read it all through and through, but more for the interest the marvellous passages excited, than from any religious impression which they created". At a bookshop he picked up stories about witches, Robin Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, St George and the Dragon and the History of the Seven Champions, all with the same deliciously garish woodcuts he had found in Bunyan. Since these stories followed the same narrative conventions, there was no reason to doubt them. "For my part I implicitly believed them all, and when told by my father or others that they were 'trash' or 'nonsense', and 'could not be true', I, innocently enough contrasted their probability with that of other wondrous things which I had read in books that 'it were a sin to disbelieve'."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
'V.S. Pritchett had an uncle, an atheist cabinet-maker, who taught himself to read from The Anatomy of Melancholy, even acquiring a few Latin and Greek words from the notes. "Look it up in Burton, lad", became his inevitable response to any question. "Burton was Uncle Arthur's emancipation", wrote Pritchett, "it set him free from the tyranny of the Bible in chapel-going circles". Whenever his pious relatives quoted Scripture at each other, he could trump them with something from The Anatomy of Melancholy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Thomas Jones recalled that his mother, a Rhymney straw-hat maker, "was fifty before she read a novel and to her dying day she had not completely grasped the nature of fiction or of drama". When she read Tom Jones, "she believed every word of it and could not conceive how a man could sit down and invent the story of Squire Allworthy and Sophia and Tom out of his head".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas :
'When young, Frederick Rogers read not only the Bible as a thriller ("the men and women of the sacred books were as familiar to me as the men and women of Alexander Dumas"), but also Pilgrim's Progress: "There is a dark street yet in East London along which I have run with beating heart lest I should meet any of the evil things Bunyan so vividly described".'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book
Harry Blyth : [Sexton Blake stories]
'"I made no distinction between Thackeray's Barry Lyndon and Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel - or between Pilgrim's Progress and Sexton Blake", recalled upholsterer's son Herbert Hodge. "All four were simply exciting stories".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Francis Hodgson : [translation of Juvenal]
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 9 September 1811: 'Dear Hodgson, - I have been a good deal in your company lately, for I have been reading Juvenal & Lady Jane &ca for the first time since my return.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Unknown
Francis Hodgson : Lady Jane Grey, a Tale; and Other Poems
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 9 September 1811: 'Dear Hodgson, - I have been a good deal in your company lately, for I have been reading Juvenal & Lady Jane &ca for the first time since my return.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Carl Jung :
'At age ten Harry West, the son of a circus escape artist, read Pilgrim's Progress merely as "A great heroic adventure". Only later did he appreciate it as a religious allegory, and still later - after his exposure to Freud and Jung - he came to "discover it as one of the greatest, most potent works on practical psychology extant".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry West Print: Book
Richard Watson : Apology for Christianity, in a Series of Letters to Edward Gibbon, Esq.
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 4 December 1811: 'I have read Watson to Gibbon. He proves nothing, so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Sir William Drummond : Aedipus Judaicus
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 8 December 1811: 'I have gotten a book by Sir William Drummond (printed, but not published), entitled Oedipus Judaicus, in which he attempts to prove the greater part of the Old Testament an allegory, particularly Genesis and Joshua. He professes himself a theist in the preface, and handles the literal interpretation very roughly. I wish I could see it. Mr Ward has lent it me, and I confess it is worth fifty Watsons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Sir William Drummond : Aedipus Judaicus
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 15 December 1811: 'I have been living quietly, reading Sir W. Drummond's book on the bible ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Bernard Barton : unknown
Byron to Bernard Barton, 1 June 1812: 'Some weeks ago my friend Mr Rogers showed me some of the stanzas [of Barton's] in M.S. & I then expressed my opinion of their merit which a further perusal of the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Bernard Barton : Metrical Effusions
Byron to Bernard Barton, 1 June 1812: 'Some weeks ago my friend Mr Rogers showed me some of the stanzas [of Barton's] in M.S. & I then expressed my opinion of their merit which a further perusal of the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa (vol 2)
Byron to Edward Daniel Clarke, 26 June 1812: 'My dear Sir, - Will you accept my very sincere congratulations on your second volume wherein I have retraced some of my old paths adorned by you so beautifully that they give me double delight. The part which pleases me best is the preface ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Lord Brooke : [untitled manuscript]
Byron to John Murray, 22 November 1812: 'I have in charge a curious and very long MS. poem written by Lord Brooke (the friend of Sir Philip Sidney) (which I wish to submit to the inspection of Mr. Gifford with the following queries ... whether it has ever been published & secondly (if not) whether it is worth publication? - It is from Ld. Oxford's library & must have escaped or been overlooked amongst the M.SS. of the Harleian Miscellany. The writing is Ld. Brooke's except a different hand towards the close, it is ... in the six line stanza ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
James and Horace Smith : Horace in London; consisting of Imitations of the First Two Books of the Odes of Horace
Byron to John Murray, 20 January 1813; 'In "Horace in London" I perceive some stanzas on Ld. E[lgin] - in which ... I heartily concur. - I wish I had the pleasure of Mr. S[mith]'s acquaintance ... What I have read of this work seems admirably done ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Lord Thurlow : "When Rogers ... "
In letter from Byron to Thomas Moore: 'When Byron read these verses aloud to Moore and Rogers, they all three broke down with laughter.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Madame Germaine de Stael-Holstein : De l'Allemagne
In postscript to letter written by Byron to John Murray, 3 am [29 November 1813]: 'I have got out of my bed (in which however I could not sleep ... ) & so Good Morning - I am trying whether De L'Allemagne will act as an opiate - but I doubt it.-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Madame Germaine de Stael-Holstein : De L'Allemagne
Byron to Madame de Stael, 30 November 1813, in praise of her De L'Allemagne: 'few days have passed since its publication without my perusal of many of its pages ... I should be sorry for my own sake to fix the period when I should not recur to it with pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Friedrich Melchoir Grimm : Correspondance Litteraire
Byron to Thomas Moore, 8 December 1813: 'I have met with an odd reflection in Grimm ... "Many people have the reputation of being wicked, with whom we should be too happy to pass our lives." I need not add it is a woman's saying - a Mademoisele de Sommery's.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Francis Place : Autobiography
On my having read some portion of the preceding narrative to Mr Fenn Bookseller at Charing Cross he related circumstances respecting some families in the Strand and its neighbourhood which were similar to those I have related.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Manuscript: unpublished memoirs
George Gordon, Lord Byron : unknown
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814): 'I never in my life read a composition [of his own], save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently ... '
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Madame Germaine de Stael-Holstein : unknown
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814): '... [Madame de Stael] writes octavos, and talks folios. I have read her books - like most of them, and delight in the last ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Robert Burns : unknown
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814): 'Read Burns to-day.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
Tobias George Smollett :
...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
Sir Egerton Brydges : The Ruminator: containing a series of moral, critical and sentimental Essays
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 23 November 1813: "Redde the Ruminator - a collection of Essays, by a strange, but able, old man (Sir E[gerton] B[rydges], and a half-wild young one, author of a Poem on the Highlands, called Childe Alarique. The word 'sensibility' (always my aversion) occurs a thousand times in these Essays ... This young man can know nothing of life ... "
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster : letter with poem
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 26 November 1813: "Two letters, one from **** [Lady Frances Webster] ... **** [Lady Frances]'s contained also a very pretty lyric on 'concealed griefs' - of not her own, then very like her."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
George Frederick Cooke : Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke, late of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813, on pleasure at learning of his works' popularity in the USA: "The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind, was from an extract, in Cooke the actor's life, from his journal, saying that in the reading-room of Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813, on pleasure at learning of his works' popularity in the USA: "The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind, was from an extract, in Cooke the actor's life, from his journal, saying that in the reading-room of Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Frederick Cooke Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
In extract from journal of George Frederick Cooke in W. Dunlap, Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke: "Read English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, by Lord Byron. It is well written, His Lordship is rather severe ... on Walter Scott ... "
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Frederick Cooke Print: Book
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on the punishment for adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Galt Manuscript: Letter
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on punishment of adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Fox, third Lord Holland Manuscript: Letter
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on punishment for adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Gregory Lewis Manuscript: Letter
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on punishment of adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Manuscript: Letter
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on punishment of adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers Manuscript: Letter
Lord Sligo (2nd marquis of) : [letter on the punishment of adultery in Turkey]
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 Deecmber 1813: 'I showed ... [John Galt] Sligo's letter on the reports of the Turkish girl's aventure [ie punishment for adultery that became source of Byron's The Giaour] at Athens soon after it happened. He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Melbourne Manuscript: Letter
Madame Germaine de Stael-Holstein : unknown
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 5 December 1813, on Madame De Stael: 'I read her again and again ... I cannot be mistaken (except in taste) in a book I read and lay down, and take up again ... '
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Lord Glenbervie : Prospectus for Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie,
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 6 Decmber 1813: 'Saw Lord Glenbervie and his Prospectus, at Murray's, of a new Treatise on Timber. Now here is a man more useful than all the hiistorians and rhymers ever planted. For by oreserving our woods and forests, he furnishes material for all the history of Britain worth reading, and all the odes worth nothing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Advertisement
Matthew Gregory Lewis : The Monk
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 6 December 1813: "Redde a good deal, but desultorily ... It is odd that when I do read, I can only bear the chicken broth of - any thing but Novels. It is many a year since I looked into one, (though they are sometimes ordered, by way of experiment, but never taken) till I looked yesterday at the worst parts of the Monk. These descriptions .. are forced - the philtred ideas of a jaded voluptuary."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Johann Christoph von Schiller : The Robbers
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 20 February 1814: ' ... redde the Robbers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Leonard Simonde de Sismondi : unknown
Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814), 20 March 1814: 'Redde Machiavel, parts of Chardin, and Sismondi, and Bandello - by starts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
John Herman Merivale : Orlando in Roncesvalles
Byron to John Herman Merivale, [January 1814]: 'I have redde Roncesvaux with very great pleasure ... You have written a very noble poem ... your measure is uncommonly well chosen & wielded [goes on to advise March publication].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
Byron in postscript to letter to John Murray, [11 January 1814]: 'I have redde "Patronage" it is full of praises of Lord Ellenborough!!! from which I infer near & dear relations at the bar ... the tone of her book is as vulgar as her father ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Frances Burney : The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties
Byron to Lady Melbourne, 30 March 1814, on Frances Burney, The Wanderer (which contains episode recalling his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb's attempt to stab herself at a party) : 'I have turned over ye. book at least ye. part of it. -- & think the coincidence unlucky for many reasons ... '
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Francis Jeffrey : review of Byron, The Corsair and The Bride of Abydos
Byron to Lady Melbourne, 30 March 1814: 'I have seen the E[dinburgh] R[eview] and the compliment -- which Rogers says -- "Scott and Campbell won't like" kind Soul!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
Stratford Canning : Bonaparte
Byron to John Murray, 26 April 1814, on work (about abdication of Napoleon) sent to him to read: 'I have no guess at your Author but it is a noble poem ... I suppose I may keep this copy -- after reading it I really regret having written my own ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Waverley
Byron to John Murray, 24 July 1814: 'Waverley is the best & most interesting novel I have redde since -- I don't know when -- I like it as much as I hate Patronage and Wanderer -- & O'donnel and all the feminine trash of the last four months ... '
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Robert Charles Dallas [?] : [poem]
Byron to unknown female correspondent (mother of author of poem sent for Byron's consideration), 17 August 1814: 'The poem from which you have done me the honour to enlose some extracts --I saw in M.S. last year at the hands of Mr. Murray and expressed my wonder that he did not publish it ...'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Porson : Letters to Archdeacon Travis
Byron in letter to Annabella Milbanke of 7 September 1814 praises Richard Porson's Letters to Archdeacon Travis (alluded to by Milbanke in a previous letter) but notes that 'years have elapsed since I saw it.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara; Jacqueline
Byron to Thomas Moore, 15 September 1814: 'I believe I told you of Larry and Jacquy [ie Lara and Jacqueline, poems by Byron and Samuel Rogers respectively, published together]. A friend of mine was reading -- or at least a friend of his was reading -- said Larry and Jacquy in a Brighton coach. A passenger took up the book and queried as to the author. The proprietor said "there were two" -- to which the answer of the unknown was, "Ay, ay, a joint concern, I suppose, summot like Sternhold and Hopkins [publishers in 1547 of versified Psalms, which went into many editions]." 'Is not this excellent?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Sir John Trevor : [untitled]
His words were not manie, yet he read all he sayd to us, a thing very unbecoming the chaire, and which I never before did see.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Trevor Manuscript: Sheet
Sir Nicholas Hyde : [untitled]
as I find reported by Sir Nicholas Hyde, the Lord Justice of the K.B., which I with my hand transcribed, and have by me
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bramston Manuscript: Sheet
Henry De Vere Stacpoole : The Blue Lagoon
When we were at the Grammar School, the English master's daughter, who was in the same class as Sheila, told us that her father had read 'The Blue Lagoon' and thought it very beautiful. We were greatly impressed. It seemed the height of sophistication to get beyond the excitement of reading a description of sexual intercourse -this we knew was the point of the ban, though Betty Martin informed us that it only said 'locked in each other's arms' -and to be able to use the calm Olympian word 'beautiful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Henry De Vere Stacpoole : The Blue Lagoon
When we were at the Grammar School, the English master's daughter, who was in the same class as Sheila, told us that her father had read 'The Blue Lagoon' and thought it very beautiful. We were greatly impressed. It seemed the height of sophistication to get beyond the excitement of reading a description of sexual intercourse -this we knew was the point of the ban, though Betty Martin informed us that it only said 'locked in each other's arms' -and to be able to use the calm Olympian word 'beautiful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Betty Martin Print: Book
Charles Robert Maturin : Bertram
Byron to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin, 21 December 1815, regarding submission of MS [Bertram] to Drury Lane Theatre: 'Sir -- Mr. Lamb -- (one of my colleagues in the S[ub] Committee) & myself have read your tragedy: -- he agrees with me in thinking it a very extraordinary production ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Robert Maturin : Bertram
Byron to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin, 21 December 1815, regarding submission of MS [Bertram] to Drury Lane Theatre: 'Sir -- Mr. Lamb -- (one of my colleagues in the S[ub] Committee) & myself have read your tragedy: -- he agrees with me in thinking it a very extraordinary production ...'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Baroness Emmuska Orczy : The Scarlet Pimpernel
in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' there was the key line, 'That demmed elusive Pimpernel'; and, of course, 'demmed' would never do, so Mother substituted 'awful'. I think she deliberately chose a word which did not scan and which obviously was not the original one... 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', incidentally, was another great favourite of Mother's...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Beer Print: Book
Lady Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
Byron to Samuel Rogers, 29 July 1816: 'I have read "Glenarvon" ... & have also seen Ben. Constant's Adolphe ... a work which leaves an unpleasant impression ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Margaret de Thomas : epitaph to Edmund Ludlow
Byron to Augusta Leigh, 17 September 1816 ("Alpine Journal"), on General Ludlow's monument at Vevey: 'black marble -- long inscription -- Latin -- but simple -- particularly the latter part -- in which his wife (Margaret de Thomas) records her long -- her tried -- and unshaken affection ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: tombstone epitaph
Johann Christoph von Schiller : unknown
Byron to Augusta Leigh, 20 September 1816 ("Alpine Journal"), on evening arrival at inn: 'nine o clock -- going to bed ... women gabbling below -- read a French translation of Schiller ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto III
'Murray had written to Byron on September 12 [1816] that he had carried the manuscript of the third canto of Childe Harold to [William] Gifford [his literary advisor]... Although Gifford was suffering from jaundice, he sat up until he had finished the whole of it ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Homer
My companions at the breakfast-table through this summer were many of our popular English Classics. Among these may be enumerated "The Death of Abel" which I read emphatically aloud. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Pope's Homer, Cicero's Letters, Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia, Dr Johnson's Rasselas, with many other works of established reputation.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Lucretia de Borgia : [unknown]
Byron to Augusta Leigh, 15 October 1816, from Milan: 'What has delighted me most is a manuscript collection (preserved in the Ambrosian library), of original love-letters and verses of Lucretia de Borgia & Cardinal Bembo ... the letters are so beautiful that I have done nothing but pore over them, & have made the librarian promise me a copy of them ... The verses are Spanish -- the letters Italian ... all in hr own hand-writing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Cardinal; Lucretia Bembo; de Borgia : letters
Byron to Thomas Moore, 6 November 1816: 'Among many things at Milan, one pleased me particularly, viz. the correspondence ... of Lucretia Borgia wth Cardinal Bembo ... I ... wished sorely to get a copy of one or two of the letters, but is was prohibited ... so I only got some of them by heart. They are kept in the Ambrosian Library, which I often visited to look them over ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter, Unknown
Aaron Hill : Zara
During this Spring read Shakspeare [sic] regularly through, and studied the characters of Hamlet, Douglas, Osman in 'Zara', Sir Charles Racket &c and purchased & read a great number of pieces of dramatic biography, and theatrical criticisms.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : The Duenna
During this Spring read Shakspeare [sic] regularly through, and studied the characters of Hamlet, Douglas, Osman in 'Zara', Sir Charles Racket &c and purchased & read a great number of pieces of dramatic biography, and theatrical criticisms.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Lady Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
Byron to Thomas Moore, 17 November 1816: 'By the way, I suppose you have seen "Glenarvon". Madame de Stael lent it to me to read from Copet last autumn. It seems to me that if the authoress had written the truth ... the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George MacDonald : Alec Forbes of Howglen
"Read my birthday book from Walter. 'Alec Forbes of Howglen' by Mac Donald."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
George MacDonald : Alec Forbes of Howglen
"Had a long morning to read 'Alec Forbes of Howglen'".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
R.D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone
"Read Lorna Doone in the evening and helped Mother in to bed."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
R.D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone
"Much interested in Lorna Doone. It is a truly romantic book."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
R.D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone
"Finished reading Lorna Doone and like it very much."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
R.D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone
"Read aloud to Maude from Lorna Doone. Very much taken with this little bit - 'the valley into which I gazed was fair with early promise, having shelter from the wind and taking all the sunshine. The willow bushes hung over the stream as if they were angling with tasseled floats of gold & silver, bursting like a bean-pod. Between them came the water laughing like a maid at her own dancing, and spread with that young blue which never lies beyond the April. And on either bank, the meadow ruffled as the breeze came by, opening (through new tufts of green) daisy-bud or celandine, or a shy glimpse now & then of a love-lorn primrose.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Agnes Blanche Hemming Print: Book
Leonardo Da Vinci : A Treatise of Painting
[Marginalia]: pp.31-61 are heavily annotated - the only clue to the identity of the annotator is in the ink - it is the colour used by Will. Baillie (see section 1.5). The annotations are in the form of underlinings and marginalia. The marginalia involve detailed comments on the text and and make references to ideas of Sir Joshua Reynolds, therefore dating the comments later in the eighteenth century than the publication date of the book.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Will Baillie Print: Book
Walter Scott : Review of Byron, Childe Harold Canto III and The Prisoner of Chillon, a Dream, and other Poems
Byron to John Murray, 3 March 1817, on review of his work in Quarterly Review received two days previously: '... I ... flatter myself that the writer ... will not regret that the perusal of this has given me as much gratification -- as any composition of that nature could give -- & more than any other ever has given ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
George Gordon Lord Byron : travel journal
Byron to Thomas Moore, 25 March 1817, on Alpine travels in 1816: 'I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, which she copied and let Murray see.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Manuscript: Codex
George Gordon Lord Byron : travel journal
Byron to Thomas Moore, 25 March 1817, on Alpine travels in 1816: 'I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, which she copied and let Murray see.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Codex
R.M. Milnes :
One of my many visitors this summer, - R.M. Milnes, made earnest enquiry for you. I do hope you like his poetry almost as much as he likes yours. I keep a vol. of his always beside me, - & find some things there almost too beautiful. How wonderful, - almost miraculous is his sympathy, - his understanding of Evil in all its forms, - in combination with his robust cheerfulness of spirits & manners! I know it is the fashion among London people who despise speculative men to dislike Milnes. I cordially honour & like him.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Zanoni
Have you read 'Zanoni'? And do you relish the gathering up of dropped (or strewed) Platonisms, & forming them into such a crown of glory, - of holy radiance, as the moral of that book? Nothing wd. beforehand have persuaded me that such an allegory as that wd. be given us in our day, - though I had caught glimpses in Bulwer's mind of higher powers & better thoughts than he had been used to give out. But this book is such a spring above all his former efforts - such a soaring - as has surprised me: - & others, to judge by the pertinacity of some people in declaring that he cd. not have meant the allegory we hold between our hands; - a thing they might as well say of the maker of a clock, or a county map.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Johan Christoph von Schiller : Geisterseher
Byron to John Murray, 2 April 1817, having observed upon preservation of black veil over Falieri's picture, and the staircase on which he was beheaded at the Doge's Palace, Venice: 'This was the thing that first struck my imagination in Venice ... more ... than Schiller's "Armenian" -- a novel which took great hold of me when a boy -- it is also called the "Ghost Seer" ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Lord Holland : Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio
Byron to Samuel Rogers, 4 April 1817: 'Will you remember me to Ld. and Lady Holland -- I have to thank the former for a book which I have not yet received -- but expect to reperuse with great pleasure on my return -- viz -- the 2d. Edition of Lope de Vega.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Prisoner of Chillon
Byron to John Murray, 9 April 1817: 'I will tell you something about [The Prisoner of] Chillon. -- A Mr. De Luc ninety years old -- a Swiss -- had it read to him & is pleased with it -- so my Sister writes. -- He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon -- & that the description is perfectly correct ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Andre de Luc Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
Byron to John Murray, 9 May 1817: 'The "Tales of my Landlord" I have read with great pleasure ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Charles Robert Maturin : Manuel
Byron to John Murray, 15 July 1817: 'I lent [M. G.] Lewis who is at Venice ... your extracts from Lalla Rookh -- & Manuel -- out of contradiction it may be -- he likes the last -- & is not much taken with the first of these performances.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Gregory Lewis
Alexander Pope : [poems]
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817, on what he perceives to be inferiority of contemporary authors to Pope: 'I am the more confirmed in this - by having lately gone over some of our Classics - particularly Pope ... I took Moore's poems & my own & some others - & went over them side by side with Pope's - and I was really astonished ... and mortified - at the ineffable distance in point of sense - harmony - effect - & even Imagination Passion - & Invention - between the little Queen Anne's Man - & us of the lower Empire ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
George Gordon Lord Byron : [poems]
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817, on what he perceives to be inferiority of contemporary authors to Pope: 'I am the more confirmed in this - by having lately gone over some of our Classics - particularly Pope ... I took Moore's poems & my own & some others - & went over them side by side with Pope's - and I was really astonished ... and mortified - at the ineffable distance in point of sense - harmony - effect - & even Imagination Passion - & Invention - between the little Queen Anne's Man - & us of the lower Empire ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Biographia Literaria
Byron to John Murray, 12 October 1817: 'In Coleridge's life I perceive an attack upon the then Committee of D[rury] L[ane] Theatre - for acting Bertram ... this is not very grateful nor graceful of the worthy auto-biographer [whom Byron had championed] ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Richard Belgrave Hoppner : Elegy
Byron to Richard Belgrave Hoppner, 15 December 1817: 'I think your Elegy a remarkably good one ... I do not know whether you wished me to retain the copy, but I shall retain it till you tell me otherwise; and am very much obliged by the perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho!
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : The Water Babies
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson : The Little Mermaid
Once or twice some description of physical pain broke through my detachment: the detailed account of the binding of a young girl's feet in a missionary book about China, or the evocation of the agony, like walking on a thousand knives, endured by the mermaid who was given human legs. The story of 'The Little Mermaid' was in fact one which did make me feel and understand. The hopelessness of a relationship between two people born in different elements was somehow an emotion which I could grasp to the point of distress and one which came back to me in adult life with a sense of complete continuity. But this understanding was almost an aberration.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson : The Ugly Duckling
In 'The Ugly Duckling' the meaning was something that in my own way I thought about much of the time: I was destined for a higher sphere and would be appreciated when I achieved it; and yet I did not see it in the story or make the connection at all. In fact I interpretted it in the most banal and inaccurate fashion as saying that the plain would become pretty.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Mrs O.F. Walton : Christie's Old Organ; or, Home Sweet Home
Upon the age of ten or eleven I moved in a world evoked by a series of volumes published by the Religious Tract Society in the Edwardian period. The outstanding authors on the Society's list were Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy Le Feuvre. I knew nearly all their books, but three of them stood out, and I remember them most vividly to this day: 'Little Meg's Children', 'Jessica's First Prayer', and Christie's Old Organ'. Most of the titles, incidentally, were phrased possessively.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Rev. William Beloe : The Sexagenarian, or Recollections of a Literary Life
Byron to John Murray, 20 February 1818, thanking him for parcel of books: 'The books I have read, or rather am reading -- pray who may be the Sexagenarian -- whose gossip is very amusing ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
William Stewart Rose : The Court and Parliament of Beasts, freely translated from the Animali Parlanti of Casti
Byron to John Murray, 25 March 1818: 'Rose's Animali I never saw till a few days ago ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
Byron to John Murray, 17 July 1818: 'I have seen one or two late English publications -- which are no great things --except Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Charles Robert Maturin : Bertram
Byron to Charles, 8th Lord Kinnaird, 15 May 1819: 'Three years & some months ago when you were reding [sic] "Bertram" at your brother's -- on my exclaiming in the words of Parson Adams to his Son -- "Lege Dick -- Lege" (on occasion of some interruption ... ) ... you replied ... "my name is not Richard -- my Lord" ... This was a hint to me to address you in future with all Aristocratical decorum ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles 8th Lord Kinnaird
Francis Hodgson : The Friends: a Poem
Byron to John Murray, 18 May 1819: 'I have read Parson Hodgson's "Friends" in which he seems to display his knowledge of the Subject by a covert Attack or two on Some of his own.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Count Vittorio Alfieri : [marginalia]
Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 3 June 1819, from Ferrara: 'In looking over the M.S. of Ariosto today -- I found at the bottom of the page after the last stanza of Canto 44, Orlando Furioso ending with the line "Mi serbo a farsi udie ne l'altro Canto" the follow[ing] autograph in pencil of Alfieri's "Vittorio Alfieri vide e venero" / 8 Giugno 1783. --'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown, marginal note in MS of Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Madame Germaine de Stael-Holstein : Corinne
Byron to Countess Teresa Guiccioli, 23 August 1819, about her copy of Italian translation of Corinne: 'I have read this book in your garden ... you were absent -- or I could not have read it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Zanoni
'This book has helped me incalculably in surmounting coterie-notions of the nature of another life, as well as of the objects of this.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Zanoni
'I do not defend the bad construction of his story. I lament it, & can only wonder what bewitches us all, - us story-makers, - that we cannot make a story, - Boz, Bulwer, myself & others - while some excel in that particular art whom we do not at all envy in other respects.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Caroline Clive : The Great Drought
["The Great Drought"] is 'full of a truth like that of Defoe... that story might be bound up with the History of the Great Plague.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Serial / periodical
Caroline Clive : The Queen's Ball: A Poem
'I am quite sure that you felt impelled to write these striking verses - that they would be written, that they, so to say, wrote themselves - & I rejoice at it since by non-exercise it is certainly a faculty that deserts us, & you are too truly a poetess to be lost to literature even through great domestic happiness...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Henri Balzac : La Recherche de L'Absolu
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Henri Balzac : Eugenie Grandet
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Henri Balzac : Modeste Mignon
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Dr Kitto : holy verses
'[Balzac's] short works although not new are exquisite - La Recherche de L'Absolu- Eugenie Grandet- Modeste Mignon- The last good cheap English books that I remember were the holy verses by Dr. Kitto, & Duffy's Irish Songs & Ballads- For my own part I have been reading 21 volumes of Mirabeau & about as long of Memoires of that great statesman... What a story- & what a man! If you never read Lucas Montigny's Memoires from Mirabeau sa famille & ses ecrits. Do I conjure you. It is the most graphic book in that language of graphic memoires...Macaulay's book is very able- but one wished to find a greater sympathy especially with misfortune - He really likes nobody except that odious Dutchman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [novels]
'"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 Reader/Listener/Group: James Murray Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : [novels]
'"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 Reader/Listener/Group: James Murray Print: Book
William Henry Giles Kingston : [novels]
'"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 Reader/Listener/Group: James Murray Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'George Acorn, growing up in extreme poverty in London's East End, scraped together 31/2 d to buy a used copy of David Copperfield. His parents punished him when they learned he had wasted so much money on a book, but later he read it to them: "And how we all loved it, and eventually, when we got to 'Little Em'ly', how we all cried together at poor old Peggotty's distress. The tears united us, deep in misery as we were ourselves".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Acorn Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist
'As a boy V.S. Pritchett read Oliver Twist "in a state of hot horror, It seized me because it was about London and the fears of the London streets. There were big boys at school who could grow up to be the Artful Dodger; many of us could have been Oliver...". Pritchett read Thackeray for escape, "a taste of the gentler life of better-off people", but in Dickens "I saw myself and my life in London".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [novels]
'At age sixteen, Neville Cardus (whose parents were launderers in turn of the century Manchester) read in the Athenaeum that no one was reading Dickens anymore: he trudged from one public library to another, only to be told that every copy of his novels had been loaned out. His discovery of Dickens in shilling Harmsworth editions did more than erase the boundary between fiction and life: "It was scarcely a case of reading at all; it was almost an experience of a world more alive and dimensional than this world".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson : The Snow Queen
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Old St Paul's
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Bleak House
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : Mr Midshipman Easy
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
George Eliot : The Mill on the Floss
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : The Picture of Dorian Gray
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey(sic), Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey(sic), Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Christmas Carol
'In the depressed steelworks town of Merthyr Tydfil between the world wars, schoolboys were baffled by A Christmas Carol: "for one thing, we never could understand why it was considered that Bob Cratchit was hard done by - a good job, we all thought he had".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Welsh schoolboys Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie : Chronicles of Scotland
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Burns : [poetry]
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Fergusson : [poems]
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'Pope happened to be the first English poet that [Robert] Story discovered, so he provided the template from which the herd-boy minted pastorals "delightfully free from everything connected with rural life".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Story Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel
'When he was finally exposed to Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, [Robert Story] reeled from the shock of the new. Pope may have been too refined, but this, Story insisted, was "uncontrolled barbarism", poetic anarchy, "harsh, puerile and fantastic".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Story Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'[Hugh Miller's] literary style was out of date: in 1834 he alluded to "my having kept company with the older English writers - the Addisons, Popes and Robertsons of the last century at a time when I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the authors of the present time". Growing up in Cromarty, Miller had access to the substantial personal libraries of a carpenter and a retired clerk, as well as his father (sixty volumes), his uncles (150 volumes) and a cabinet-maker poet (upwards of 100 volumes). These collections offered a broad selection of English essayists and poets - of the Queen Anne period.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
Countess Teresa Guiccioli : [letter]
Byron to Countess Teresa Guiccioli, '[After Feb 7, 1820?]' (translated from Italian) : 'I have read the "few lines" of your note with all due attention ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter
[probably William] Robertson :
'[Hugh Miller's] literary style was out of date: in 1834 he alluded to "my having kept company with the older English writers - the Addisons, Popes and Robertsons of the last century at a time when I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the authors of the present time". Growing up in Cromarty, Miller had access to the substantial personal libraries of a carpenter and a retired clerk, as well as his father (sixty volumes), his uncles (150 volumes) and a cabinet-maker poet (upwards of 100 volumes). These collections offered a broad selection of English essayists and poets - of the Queen Anne period.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
Byron to William Bankes, 26 February 1820: 'I have more of Scott's novels (for surely they are Scott's) since we met, and am more and more delighted. I think that I even prefer them to his poetry, which ... I redde for the first time in my life in your rooms in Trinity College.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Walter Scott : [poems]
Byron to William Bankes, 26 February 1820: 'I have more of Scott's novels (for surely they are Scott's) since we met, and am more and more delighted. I think that I even prefer them to his poetry, which ... I redde for the first time in my life in your rooms in Trinity College.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
Byron to John Murray, 3 March 1820: 'Pray send me Walter Scott's new novels ... I read some of his former ones at least once a day for an hour or so. The last are too hurried -- he forgets Ravenswood's name ... and he don't make enough of Montrose -- but Dalgetty is excellent ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Walter Scott : A Legend of Montrose
Byron to John Murray, 3 March 1820: 'Pray send me Walter Scott's new novels ... I read some of his former ones at least once a day for an hour or so. The last are too hurried -- he forgets Ravenswood's name ... and he don't make enough of Montrose -- but Dalgetty is excellent ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Marino Sanuto : "Italian history of the Doges of Venice"
Byron to John Murray, 17 July 1820, on books used in research for Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: 'I have consulted Sanuto -- Sandi -- Navagero -- & an anonymous Siege of Zara -- besides the histories of Laugier Daru -- Sismondi &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Pierre Antoine Daru : unknown
Byron to John Murray, 17 July 1820, on books used in research for Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: 'I have consulted Sanuto -- Sandi -- Navagero -- & an anonymous Siege of Zara -- besides the histories of Laugier Daru -- Sismondi &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Jean Charles Sismondi : History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages
Byron to John Murray, 17 July 1820, on books used in research for Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: 'I have consulted Sanuto -- Sandi -- Navagero -- & an anonymous Siege of Zara -- besides the histories of Laugier Daru -- Sismondi &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'In the 1920s Janet Hitchman acquired her literary education among the derelict bookshelves of an orphanage, which included a huge collection of "drunken father deathbed conversion" stories (Christie's Old Organ, 'The Little Match Girl', A Peep behind the Scenes), as well as everything by Dickens, old volumes of Punch and the Spectator and The Life of Ruskin. "My undigested reading made me look at the world with mid-Victorian eyes", she recalled'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hitchman Print: Book
Henry Matthews : Diary of an Invalid
Byron to John Murray, 22 July 1820, about books received: 'the diary of an Invalid good and true bating a few mistakes about "Serventismo" which no foreigner can understand ... without residing years in the country. -- I read that part (translated that is) to some of the Ladies in the way of knowing how far it was accurate and they laughed particularly at the part where he says that "they must not have children by their lover" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson : The Little Match Girl
'In the 1920s Janet Hitchman acquired her literary education among the derelict bookshlves of an orphanage, which included a huge collection of "drunken father deathbed conversion" stories (Christie's Old Organ, 'The Little Match Girl', A Peep behind the Scenes), as well as everything by Dickens, old volumes of Punch and the Spectator and The Life of Ruskin. "My undigested reading made me look at the world with mid-Victorian eyes", she recalled'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hitchman Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richarson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richarson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] 'Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Jerome K. Jerome : Three Men in a Boat
'[Joseph Keating's] initiation into modern literature came when his brother introduced him to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat: "I had thought that only Smollett and Dickens could make a reader laugh; and I was surprised to find that a man who was actually living could write in such a genuinely humorous way'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'From a classroom library of perhaps two dozen volumes [Richard Hillyer] borrowed one by Tennyson, simply because it had 'Poet Laureate' printed on the title page: the coloured words flashed out and entranced my fancy... my dormant imagination opened like a flower in the sun".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Hillyer Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'orphanage boy Thomas Burke... devoured books until "my mind became a lumber room". Inevitably, "criticism was beyond me; the hungry man has no time for the fastidiousness of the epicure. I was hypnotised by the word Poet. A poem by Keats (some trifle never meant for print) was a poem by Keats. Pope, Cowper and Kirke White and Mrs Hemans and Samuel Rogers were Poets. That was enough."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burke Print: Unknown
Kirke White :
'orphanage boy Thomas Burke... devoured books until "my mind became a lumber room". Inevitably, "criticism was beyond me; the hungry man has no time for the fastidiousness of the epicure. I was hypnotised by the word Poet. A poem by Keats (some trifle never meant for print) was a poem by Keats. Pope, Cowper and Kirke White and Mrs Hemans and Samuel Rogers were Poets. That was enough."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burke Print: Unknown
Aristotle : Ethics
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : William Tell
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Lamb : unknown
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
George Eliot : unknown
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
'As one participant recalled, "Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book
Harriette Cheape : Tea at the Mains
'Is it right to ask who was the author of a very short contribution called I think Tea at the farm, or some such name? ["Tea at the Mains", by Harriette Cheape] It was exceedingly good and true.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Louis Stevenson : Wrecker
'I should like to say my mind about Louis Stevenson's Wrecker and the Naulakhka - both of which are striking instances of the evils of collaboration.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Naulakha
'I should like to say my mind about Louis Stevenson's Wrecker and the Naulakhka - both of which are striking instances of the evils of collaboration.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Sarah Grand : Singularly Deluded
'May I say that the new story in the Magazine begins very well? - the incident is striking and I think quite original, though the name of the story might have been better chosen.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
Graham Travers : Mona Maclean: Medical Student
'As for Mona Maclean I am afraid I could not say more than that it is a cleverish very youthful book, the author of which if she comes to anything will probably much regret having published it some years back. Marion Crawford's last novel is clever of course as are all his, but not pleasant and very long and dreary I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'The manager here Mr. Simpson hearing what I said of it [George Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking"] took a proof home at night and while he was still wrapt up in it was startled by his mother a most acute old lady (who had picked up the sheets as he let them fall) exclaiming "Surely George the Germans never were in England"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [?George] Simpson Manuscript: Sheet, Proofs of aricle
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'The manager here Mr. Simpson hearing what I said of it [George Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking"] took a proof home at night and while he was still wrapt up in it was startled by his mother a most acute old lady (who had picked up the sheets as he let them fall) exclaiming "Surely George the Germans never were in England"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Old Mrs Simpson Manuscript: Sheet, Proofs of article
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'I am much mistaken if the appearance of the article 'The Battle of Dorking' does not mark an epoch in the history of the Magazine. Nothing so good has appeared for years. In your place, I should print it as a pamphlet, and circulate it everywhere.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G.C. Swayne Print: Serial / periodical
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'My dear Blackwood, I have just read the opening article of Maga, and I cannot go to sleep, or make an attempt thereat, till I write to tell you how deeply the article has impressed me, - I feel the picture will be with me day & night for a good while to come. The country owes you thanks: but we won't take warning, & may go down any day like Carthage & Venice. I presume the article is by Hamley. Compared with the momentousness of the theme & the noble spirit in which it is treated, I can hardly bring myself to speak of its exceeding excellence as a literary work, - but in truth, I don't think even De Foe could have beat it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: R.H. Patterson Print: Serial / periodical
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'My dear Willie, I am glad the Pall Mall has noticed the article & I approve of the Advert... We dined at Mount Melville last night. Col. Moncrieff & his wife - He was raving about the Battle of Dorking & never read anything in his life so good or like the reality...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Colonel Moncrieff Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord (3rd series)
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 5 January 1821: 'Read the conclusion, for the fifitieth time (I have read all W. Scott's novels at least fifty times) of the third series of "Tales of my Landlord" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'I went down & saw Old Gleig who was on the same subject [the success of the "Battle of Dorking"]. He said too he had been reading lately the Review of Lothair & did not know which to admire most the review or the review of the reviewers. The reperusal [sic] had nearly put him into fits.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: "Old" Gleig Print: Serial / periodical
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'My dear Sir, I have just read "The Battle of Dorking". It is undeniably clever - but mischievous. [...] Panic assays a great mistake [...]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Brougham Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Bacon : "apophthegms"
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 5 January 1821: 'Ordered Fletcher (at four o'clock this afternoon) to copy out 7 or 8 apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such blunders as a school-boy might detect rather than commit. Such are the sages! What must they be, when such as I can stumble on their mistakes or misstatements?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown, Copied by William Fletcher (reader's valet).
George T Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'"The Battle of Dorking" is written so well that I wd. gladly have written it, supposing that I had the knowledge. This I scarcely ever feel about anything I see in print.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Doddridge Blackmore Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Bacon : "apophthegms"
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 5 January 1821: 'Ordered Fletcher (at four o'clock this afternoon) to copy out 7 or 8 apophthegms of Bacon, in whiich I have detected such blunders as a school-boy might detect rather than commit. Such are the sages! What must they be, when such as I can stumble on their mistakes or misstatements?'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Fletcher
Francis Bacon : "apophthegms"
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 6 January 1821: 'Read Spence's Anecdotes ... Corrected blunders in nine apophthegms of Bacon -- all historical -- and read Mitford's Greece.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown, Copied by William Fletcher (reader's valet).
George T Chesney : The Private Secretary
'My dear Blackwood [...] "The Private Secretary" picks itself up this month. I thought one or two of the recent numbers even scarcely up to mark."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Theodore Martin Print: Serial / periodical
Pierre Louis Ginguene : Histoire Litteraire de l'Italie
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 6 January 1821: 'Turned to a passage in Guinguene [sic] -- ditto in Lord Holland's Lope de Vega.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Lord Holland : Lope de Vega
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 6 January 1821: 'Turned to a passage in Guinguene [sic] -- ditto in Lord Holland's Lope de Vega.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George T Chesney : The Private Secretary
'Gentlemen. I am the fourth generation of my family that have taken in Blackwood's Magazine; the back numbers bound form a handsome library of themselves. I regret most sincerely that in consequence of the story called "The Private Secretary" I am compelled to give it up. I never read such disgusting filth before, and am very sorry that such a high class (formerly) Magazine should have admitted such garbage into its columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Philips Print: Serial / periodical
George T Chesney : The Private Secretary
'As for the Private Secretary, I can sympathize with both you & Chesney. As Editor, I should have [?] to print it as it is; as Author, - if I had written it, - I am shy of writing anything in that style - I should have been very proud of it. The fact is, though risque it is devilish well done; & the merit & the objections to it are that it is so sensuously suggestive as to be [??] than far harder language.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alex Innes Shand Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord (2nd series)
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 7 January 1821: 'Read the 4th. vol of W. Scott's second series of "Tales of my Landlord".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George T Chesney : The Private Secretary
We have been much interested all along in The Private Secretary.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Laszowska Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 8 January 1821: 'Came home [from ?Guicciolis', where visited at 8pm] -- read History of Greece -- beore dinner had read Walter Scott's Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Alexander Pope : unknown
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 10 January 1821: 'Midnight. I have been turning over different Lives of the Poets. I rarely read their works, unless an occasional flight over the classical ones, Pope, Dryden, Johnson, Gray, and those who approach them nearest ...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Franz Grillparzer : Sappho
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 12 January 1821: 'Midnight. Read the Italian translation by Guido Sorelli of the German Grillparzer ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : unknown
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 12 January 1821: 'I have read ... much less of Goethe, and Schiller, and Wieland, than I could wish. I only know them through the medium of English, French, and Italian translations.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Diodorus Siculus : unknown
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 14 January 1821: 'Read Diodorus Siculus -- turned over Seneca, and some other books.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth : Memoirs
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 19 January 1821: 'I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Friedrich Melchior Grimm : Correspondence Litteraire
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 20 January 1821: 'Rode -- fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. Dined ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Friedrich Melchior Grimm : Correspondence Litteraire
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 21 January 1821: 'Dined -- visited -- came home -- read. Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm's Correspondence ... [reproduces part of text of vol. VI]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel : History of Literature
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 28 January 1821 entry: 'Past Midnight. One o' the clock. I have been reading W[ilhelm]. F[riedrich]. S[chlegel] ... till now, and I can make out nothing ... [two paragraphs later] Continuing to read Mr. F[rederick] S[chlegel]. He is not such a fool as I took him for ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel : History of Literature
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 29 January 1821 entry: 'Read S[chlegel].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Friedrich Melchior Grimm : Correspondence Litteraire
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 31 January 1821 entry: 'Midnight. I have been reading Grimm's Correspondence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth : Memoirs
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 2 February 1821, on tendency to attacks of thirst: 'I read in Edgeworth's Memoirs of something similar ... in the case of Sir F. B. Delaval ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 16 February 1821: 'At nine [pm] went out -- at eleven returned ... Read "Tales of my Landlord" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Friedrich Melchior Grimm : Correspondence Litteraire
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 18 February 1821: 'In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Laplander ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Martin Luther : Commentary on the Galations
'God... did cast into my hand, one day, a book of "Martin Luther", his comment on the "Galathians", so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece, if I did but turn it over... I found my condition in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart... I do prefer this book of Mr "Luther" upon the 'Galathians' (excepting the Holy Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bunyan Print: Book
Walter Scott : [various novels]
Byron to John Murray, 1 March 1821: 'Give my love to Sir W. Scott -- & tell him to write more novels; -- pray send out Waverley and the Guy M[annering] -- and the Antiquary -- It is five years since I have had a copy -- -- I have read all the others forty times.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Cenci
Byron to P. B. Shelley, 26 April 1821: 'I read [The] Cenci ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Francis Hodgson : Childe Harold's Monitor, or Lines occasioned by the Last Canto of Childe Harold, including Hints to other Contemporaries
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 12 May 1821; ' ... your two poems [critical of Byron] have been sent. I have read them over (with the notes) with great pleasure. I receive your compliments kindly and your censures temperately ...'
UnknownCentury: Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Francis Hodgson : Saeculo Mastix, or the Lash of the Age we live in
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 12 May 1821; ' ... your two poems [critical of Byron] have been sent. I have read them over (with the notes) with great pleasure. I receive your compliments kindly and your censures temperately ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Francis Hodgson : Notes to (?) Childe Harold's Monitor, or Lines Occasioned by the Last Canto of Childe Harold, including Hints to other Contemporaries
Byron to Francis Hodgson, 12 May 1821; 'Two hours after the "Ave Maria", the Italian date of twilight ... I have ... dined, and turned over yr. notes.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan (Cantos I and II)
Byron to John Murray, 6 July 1821: 'At the particular request of the Countess G[uiccioli] I have promised not to continue Don Juan ... She had read the two first [cantos] in the French translation -- & never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Countess Teresa Guiccioli Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Ford Madox Ford : English Review
Our first lessons were from Ford Madox Ford's 'English Review' which was publishing some of the best young writers of the time. We discussed Bridges and Masefield... For myself the suger-bag blue of the 'English Review' was decisive. One had thought literature was in books written by dead people who had been oppressively over-educated. Here was writing by people who were alive and probably writing at this moment...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book, Serial / periodical
James Russell Lowell : The Vision of Sir Launfal
Bartlett dug out one of James Russell Lowell's poems, 'The Vision of Sir Launfal', though why he chose that dim poem I do not know: we went on to Tennyson, never learning by heart.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
Bartlett dug out one of James Russell Lowell's poems, 'The Vision of Sir Launfal', though why he chose that dim poem I do not know: we went on to Tennyson, never learning by heart.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Richard Tully : Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence at the Court of Tripoli
Byron to John Murray, 23 August 1821, on sources for descriptions in Don Juan Canto III: 'much of the description of the furniture in Canto 3d. is taken from Tully's Tripoli ... and the rest from my own observation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Monody on Garrick
Byron's "Detached Thoughts" (15 October 1821-18 May 1822), on R. B. Sheridan, 15 October 1821: 'One day I saw him take up his own "Monody
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Henry Fielding : unknown
Byron's "Detached Thoughts" (15 October 1821-18 May 1822), 5 November 1821: 'I have lately been reading Fielding over again.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
Byron to John Murray, 24 November 1821, regarding his MS Memoirs: 'Is there anything in the M.S.S. that could be personally obnoxious to himself [John Cam Hobhouse]? ... Mr. Kinnaird & others had read them at Paris and noticed none such.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Kinnaird Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : letter
Byron to the editor of The Courier, 5 February 1822: 'Sir / -- I have read in your Journal some remarks of Mr. Southey ... which he is pleased to entitle a reply to "a note relating to himself." appending to [Byron's ] the "two Foscari".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Newspaper
Francis Jeffrey : unknown
Byron to Thomas Moore, 8 June 1822: 'I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful transcription of the impartial Galignani.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Newspaper
Harriet Lee : The German's Tale
Byron to Augusta Leigh, 12 December 1822, on the inspiration for his play Werner: 'The Story "the German's tale" [in Sophia and Harriet Lee's Canterbury Tales] from which I took it [ha]d a strange effect upon me when I read it as a boy -- and it has haunted me ever since -- from some singular conformity between it & my ideas.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Antoine Francois Sergent-Marceau : Notices Historiques sur le General Marceau
Byron to Madame Sergent-Marceau, 5 May 1823 (translated from Italian): 'no present you might give me would be more welcome than the short work in which the actions of your Brother [General Marceau], whose memory I revere, are so well described. I have read this work with the greatest pleasure ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Henri Beyle : Rome
Byron to Henri Beyle (who later wrote under the name Stendhal), 29 May 1823: 'Of your works I have seen only "Rome", etc., the Lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the brochure on Racine and Shakespeare.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Henri Beyle : Life of Haydn
Byron to Henri Beyle (who later wrote under the name Stendhal), 29 May 1823: 'Of your works I have seen only "Rome", etc., the Lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the brochure on Racine and Shakespeare.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Henri Beyle : Life of Mozart
Byron to Henri Beyle (who later wrote under the name Stendhal), 29 May 1823: 'Of your works I have seen only "Rome", etc., the Lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the brochure on Racine and Shakespeare.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Henri Beyle : essay on Racine and Shakespeare
Byron to Henri Beyle (who later wrote under the name Stendhal), 29 May 1823: 'Of your works I have seen only "Rome", etc., the Lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the brochure on Racine and Shakespeare.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Maria Edgeworth : 'The Purple Jar' in Every Child's Stories
'Rose Macaulay's inner life was fostered from the start by parents who made her earliest years rich with stories and make-believe. "read much aloud to the children", Grace Macaulay records in her diary of 19 November 1887... "(all 5 listening in rapt atention), 'Rosamond and the Purple Jar', Leila or the Island and 'The Wave and the Battlefield' - also 'Holiday House'."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Ann Fraser Tytler : Leila: or, The Island
'Rose Macaulay's inner life was fostered from the start by parents who made her earliest years rich with stories and make-believe. "read much aloud to the children", Grace Macaulay records in her diary of 19 November 1887... "(all 5 listening in rapt atention), 'Rosamond and the Purple Jar', 'Leila or the Island' and 'The Wave and the Battlefield' - also 'Holiday House'."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Catherine Sinclair : Holiday House
'Rose Macaulay's inner life was fostered from the start by parents who made her earliest years rich with stories and make-believe. "read much aloud to the children", Grace Macaulay records in her diary of 19 November 1887... "(all 5 listening in rapt atention), 'Rosamond and the Purple Jar', 'Leila or the Island' and 'The Wave and the Battlefield' - also 'Holiday House'."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Mary Louisa Molesworth : The Cuckoo Clock
'In September and October [Grace Macaulay] is reading aloud to Margaret (ill with scarlet fever) Mrs Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and Charlotte M. Yonge's Chaplet of Pearls and The Heir of Redclyffe'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Chaplet of Pearls
'In September and October [Grace Macaulay] is reading aloud to Margaret (ill with scarlet fever) Mrs Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and Charlotte M. Yonge's Chaplet of Pearls and The Heir of Redclyffe'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Heir of Redclyffe
'In September and October [Grace Macaulay] is reading aloud to Margaret (ill with scarlet fever) Mrs Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and Charlotte M. Yonge's Chaplet of Pearls and The Heir of Redclyffe'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : The Settlers in Canada
'[Grace Macaulay's diary] entry for 2 March 1890 records that she "read the boys parts of Settlers at Home and Otto Spectere (sic), all of which Will as well as Aulay much enjoyed".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
George Eliot : The Mill on the Floss
'On 12 May [1890 Grace Macaulay] recalls that she "read part of Mill on Floss to children in aft, to their delight".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Grace Macaulay Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
George Meredith :
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : The Three Musketeers
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Origin of Species
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : Masterman Ready
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Talisman
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : Coral Island
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgoue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : The Murders in the Rue Morgue
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge : The Prince and the Page
'When old enough to read for herself, Rose Macaulay entered into other realms of fictitious brave adventure. She devoured Masterman Ready, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Coral Island, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Prince and the Page'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'Daughter of the editor father, [Rose Macaulay] was given a copy of the complete works of Tennyson when she was eight and remembers knowing it "practically by heart"... Shelley, too, she found "an intoxicant". A coplete works of Shelley joined her Tennyson a year later, starting a fascination with the poet which she remembers in a letter to Gilbert Murray in January 1945: "I, like you, read Shelley's Prometheus very young... I was entirely carried away by it; as I was, indeed, by all Shelley... Of course, I didn't understand all Prometheus; but enough to be fascinated".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
'Daughter of the editor father, [Rose Macaulay] was given a copy of the complete works of Tennyson when she was eight and remembers knowing it "practically by heart"... Shelley, too, she found "an intoxicant". A complete works of Shelley joined her Tennyson a year later, starting a fascination with the poet which she remembers in a letter to Gilbert Murray in January 1945: "I, like you, read Shelley's Prometheus very young... I was entirely carried away by it; as I was, indeed, by all Shelley... Of course, I didn't understand all Prometheus; but enough to be fascinated".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
George Sand : La Mare au Diable
'The neighbours and we have set up a book-club since the beginning of the year, & I want to beg you to tell me of some [italics] booklings [end italics] for it. We have got Macaulay and Layard, and the "Monasteries of the Levant," and other big books, but I want some moderately moral French novel, or some very amusing two and sixpence or five-shilling English book to keep the thing going. Such a book as "La Mare au Diable", or "La Chasse au Roman," would be the thing, or Murray's "Life of Conde", or his "Memoirs of a Missionary." Can you kindly recommend some?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Clive Print: Book
Lord Mahon : The Life of Louis, Prince of Conde, Surnamed the Great
'The neighbours and we have set up a book-club since the beginning of the year, & I want to beg you to tell me of some [italics] booklings [end italics] for it. We have got Macaulay and Layard, and the "Monasteries of the Levant," and other big books, but I want some moderately moral French novel, or some very amusing two and sixpence or five-shilling English book to keep the thing going. Such a book as "La Mare au Diable", or "La Chasse au Roman," would be the thing, or Murray's "Life of Conde", or his "Memoirs of a Missionary." Can you kindly recommend some?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Clive Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Lady Geraldine
'Nearly the best thing she has written is L[ady] Geraldine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Clive Print: Book
Robert Browning : Bells and Pomegranates
[Robert Browning] 'published a sort of poem called Bells & Pomegranates in wh. there is no meaning at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Clive Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
[Thackeray] 'Cd not endure Bulwer - no nature - nor Dickens - yet mentioned with greatest praise the Chap: before death of little Dombey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton :
[Thackeray] 'Cd not endure Bulwer - no nature - nor Dickens - yet mentioned with greatest praise the Chap: before death of little Dombey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
Caroline Clive : Paul Ferroll
'I breakfasted with Lord Lansdowne a few days ago, & we talked much about you. He recollected having met you at our house & said that he shd be very glad to do so again... He puts Paul Ferroll very high indeed among modern novels, & the Poems, not only high but at the Top of modern poetry...Lord Lansdowne's opinion is of so much value, that I thought I ought to write...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lansdowne Print: Book
Caroline Clive : poems (unspecified)
'I breakfasted with Lord Lansdowne a few days ago, & we talked much about you. He recollected having met you at our house & said that he shd be very glad to do so again... He puts Paul Ferroll very high indeed among modern novels, & the Poems, not only high but at the Top of modern poetry...Lord Lansdowne's opinion is of so much value, that I thought I ought to write...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lansdowne Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : probably 'On Liberty'
'She read Renan's Life of Jesus, which had proved so critical to George Eliot's subsitution of Duty for God. As a corollary text, Rose discovered the rousing, hopeful words of Mill, who argued for the sacredness of her larger duty to herself'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Ernest Renan : Life of Jesus
'She read Renan's Life of Jesus, which had proved so critical to George Eliot's subsitution of Duty for God. As a corollary text, Rose discovered the rousing, hopeful words of Mill, who argued for the sacredness of her larger duty to herself'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'[T.A.] Jackson's tastes had been formed by the old books in his parents' home: "A fine set of Pope, an odd volume or two of the Spectator, a Robinson Crusoe, Pope's translation of Homer, and a copy of Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Henry Gally Knight : Alashtar, an Arabian Tale
Byron to Henry Gally Knight, 4 April 1815: 'Dear Knight -- I have read "Alashtar" with attention and great pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Working class readers continued to enjoy Macaulay's drama and accessibility long after professional historians had declared him obsolete. Kathleen Woodward read Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Macaulay's History of England twice through over factory work, with such absorption she once injured a finger, leaving "an honourable scar".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Kathleen Woodward Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Leslie A. Marchand notes regarding 1812 letter in which Byron mentions sending a book (possibly Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) to Lady Caroline Lamb 'which [she] is not to look at till Mr. Lamb has first gone through it for there is one passage which I have doubts whether it would be proper for ladies to see': '... according to Caroline she had read a copy [of Childe Harold], loaned by [Samuel] Rogers, before she met Byron.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'[J.M. Dent's] reading was marked by the autodidact's characteristic enthusiasm and spottiness. He knew Pilgrim's Progress, Milton, Cowper, Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts; but...did not read Shakespeare seriously until he was nearly thirty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
Edward Bellamy : Looking Backward: 2000-1887
'James Murray, a Glasgow woodcarver, represented the kind of reader Dent and Rhys were trying to reach. He credited Everyman magazine with "opening up an entirely new set of ideas to which I had previously been a stranger. I became familiar with the names and works of all the truly great authors and poets, and was now throughly convinced I had been misplaced in my life's work". His reading ranged from Rasselas to Looking Backward'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Murray Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'[Philip Ballard] had no exposure to contemporary writers until the 1890s: "I gained a nodding acquaintance with the life and letters of Ancient Greece and Rome, and... I had read most of Dickens, much of Thackeray and some of Scott; but I had never read a line of Henry James, of Meredith or of Hardy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'[Philip Ballard] had no exposure to contemporary writers until the 1890s: "I gained a nodding acquaintance with the life and letters of Ancient Greece and Rome, and... I had read most of Dickens, much of Thackeray and some of Scott; but I had never read a line of Henry James, of Meredith or of Hardy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Book
Walter Pater :
'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Book, Unknown
George Meredith :
'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Book, Unknown
George Bernard Shaw :
'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
Richard Le Gallienne :
'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
Charles Lamb : Tales from Shakespeare
'every day Spike Mays ran to his East Anglia school, where he studied "Robinson Crusoe", "Gulliver's Travels" and "Tales from Shakespeare".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Spike Mays Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe :
'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'H.M. Tomlinson, a successful author and dockworker's son, credited his East End Board school with encouraging free expression in composition classes and giving him a solid literary footing in the Bible, Shakespeare and Scott'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H.M. Tomlinson Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood
'"In my childhood, I never met another who could not read", [H.M. Tomlinson] recalled. "Some of them could be so excited by the printed page that they passed on the fun they had found, and thus... I was introduced to Mayne Reid, and again to Harrison Ainsworth, with "The Headless Horseman" and "Rookwood"".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H.M. Tomlinson Print: Book
James George Frazer : "The Golden Bough"
'T.A. Jackson credited his Board school teachers with starting him on his career as a Marxist philosopher. They introduced him to Greek mythology, "which in time brought me to Frazer and the immensities and infinitudes of "The Golden Bough", and all that that implies".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
John Stuart Mill :
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's "The Decline of the West".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche :
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's "The Decline of the West".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
Beatrice and Sidney Webb :
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill, Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's "The Decline of the West".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : Essays in Scepticism
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's The Decline of the West'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler : The Decline of the West
'"One advantage of leaving school at an early age is that one can study subjects of your own choice", wrote Frank Argent, son of a Camberwell labourer. Taking advantage of the public library and early Penguins, he ranged all over the intellectual landscape: Freudian psychology, industrial administration, English literature, political history, Blake, Goethe, Mill,Nietzsche, The Webbs, Bertrand Russell's Essays in Scepticism, and Spengler's The Decline of the West'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Argent Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
'Lancashire weaver Elizabeth Blackburn... proceeded to an evening institute course in English literature and by the rhythm of the looms she memorised all of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy. She discovered the ancient Greeks at the home of a neighbour, a self-educated classicist with six children, and a Sunday school teacher introduced her to the plays of Bernard Shaw. While attending her looms she silently analysed the character of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, "sometimes to the detriment of my weaving".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Blackburn Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ode to the West Wind
'Lancashire weaver Elizabeth Blackburn... proceeded to an evening institute course in English literature and by the rhythm of the looms she memorised all of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy. She discovered the ancient Greeks at the home of a neighbour, a self-educated classicist with six children, and a Sunday school teacher introduced her to the plays of Bernard Shaw. While attending her looms she silently analysed the character of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, "sometimes to the detriment of my weaving".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Blackburn Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [plays]
'Lancashire weaver Elizabeth Blackburn... proceeded to an evening institute course in English literature and by the rhythm of the looms she memorised all of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy. She discovered the ancient Greeks at the home of a neighbour, a self-educated classicist with six children, and a Sunday school teacher introduced her to the plays of Bernard Shaw. While attending her looms she silently analysed the character of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, "sometimes to the detriment of my weaving".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Blackburn Print: Book
Richard Payne Knight : The Landscape: A Didactic Poem in Three Books
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 27 July 1800: 'In the morning, I read Mr. Knight's Landscape.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Friedrich von Schiller : Wallenstein (in translation by S. T. Coleridge)
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 20 August 1800: 'Read Wallenstein and sent it off ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 31 August 1800: 'At 11 o'clock [pm] Coleridge came ... We sate and chatted till 1/2-past three, W[illiam]. in his dressing-gown. Coleridge read us a part of Christabel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Charles Lamb : Pride's Cure
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 4 October 1800: 'A ... rather showery and gusty, morning ... Read a part of Lamb's play.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 5 October 1800: 'Coleridge read a 2nd time Christabel; we had increasing pleasure. A delicious morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey : Letters from Spain
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 14 October 1800: 'Wm. lay down after dinner -- I read Southey's Spain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 22 October 1800: 'Wm. read after supper, Ruth etc.; Coleridge Christabel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Henry Fielding : Amelia
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 7 November 1800: 'A cold rainy morning ... I working and reading Amelia.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 25 November 1800: 'Very ill ... better in the Evening -- read Tom Jones ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 24 November 1801: 'A rainy morning ... I read a little of Chaucer, prepared the goose for dinner, and then we all walked out.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Maunciple's Tale
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 2 December 1801: 'I read the Tale of Phoebus and the Crow ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 6 December 1801: 'In the afternoon we sate by the fire: I read Chaucer aloud, and Mary read the first canto of The Fairy Queen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Knight's Tale
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 9 December 1801: 'I read Palamon and Arcite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Prologues from the Canterbury Tales
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: 'When we were at Thomas Ashburner's on Sunday Peggy talked about the [drunken] Queen of Patterdale ... We sate snugly round the fire. I read to them the Tale of Custance and the Syrian monarch, also some of the Prologues. It is the Man of Lawe's tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Man of Law's Tale
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: 'When we were at Thomas Ashburner's on Sunday Peggy talked about the [drunken] Queen of Patterdale ... We sate snugly round the fire. I read to them the Tale of Custance and the Syrian monarch, also some of the Prologues. It is the Man of Lawe's tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Canterbury Tales
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 24 December 1801: 'We sate comfortably round the fire in the Evening, and read Chaucer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Miller's Tale
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 26 December 1801: 'After tea we sate by the fire comfortably. I read aloud The Miller's Tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Robert Anderson : Smollett's Life
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 4 February, 1802: 'Read Smollet's life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Fables
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 6 February, 1802: '... wrote ... after tea, and translated two or three of Lessing's Fables.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 8 February, 1802: 'It was very windy ... all the morning ... I read a little in Lessing and the grammar.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Fable
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 9 February, 1802: 'We did a little of Lessing. I attempted a fable, but my head ached ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Essay
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 25 February, 1802: 'I reached home [from walk] just before dark ... got tea, and fell to work at German. I read a good deal of Lessing's Essay.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 12 March 1802: ' ... I read the remainder of Lessing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : verses
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 4 May 1802, describing excursion to local river and waterfall: 'We [Dorothy and William Wordsworth, and S. T. Coleridge] ... rested upon a moss-covered rock, rising out of the bed of the river. There we lay ... and stayed there till about 4 o'clock. William and C[oleridge]. repeated and read verses.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Charles Churchill : The Rosciad
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 19 June 1802, 'I sate up a while after William ... I read Churchill's Rosciad.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 30 October 1802: '... [William Wordsworth and Stoddart] surprized us by their arrival at four o'clock in the afternoon ... after tea S[toddart]. read in Chaucer to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: ?John Stoddart Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Elegiac Sonnets
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea ... My beloved William is turning over the leaves of Charlotte Smith's sonnets ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 11 January 1803: 'Mary read the Prologue to Chaucer's tales to me in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wordsworth Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Knight's Tale
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 11 January 1803: 'Before tea I sate 2 hours in the parlour. Read part of The Knight's Tale with exquisite delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Theodore Hook : Sayings and Doings
' Tea at 8. Then read aloud to my aunt the first 74pp Vol I, "Sayings and Doings'."Excellent. Dont know when I have laughed so much or so heartily. We both laughed. Came up to bed at 9.35.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Henry Moore : Buxton and Casleton Guide Picturesque Excursions i
' Tea at 8. Read aloud to my aunt the first 31pp of Moore's Buxton and Castleton Guide.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Mme Marie-Sophie Cottin : Amelie Mansfield
' At 2.30 went out to the library [..]Subscribed for a month [...] Came up to bed at 9.35. Sat up reading the first 79pp and several pages at the end of Amelie Mansfield. The story interesting. How poor the language after that of Rousseau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Richard Polwhele : Sermons: a new volume
Read the psalms and lessons to myself. After tea, read aloud sermon 15 and ...My aunt read aloud 17, Polwhele
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Eugene Aram. A Tale by the Author of 'Pelham'
[Letter to Aunt dated 3 February 1832] I do not think any books so bad to read as a newspaper. [...]If you ever read novels, do send for Eugene Aram. Miss Hobart and I have just read it, and thought it well done. ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint: Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and
What matters it to me if Young was an ambitious man or not? He wrote what I feel; and tho' not his wishes, his words would often have been mine, if heaven had endowed me withsuch giant-powers of speech. Were ever lines more beautiful than the first five of the first night? Shakespeare might have written them. What a description of night! Less beautiful than Milton's so celebrated descrip- -tion of evening (book 4), but moresublime? [quotes from 'Night One'and 'Night two']... I wished I had marked all, or half, my favourite passages- they would shew you a mind fond of deep thought- a haughty spirit unyielding to the storms of time and circumstance - a heart when lulled in Friendship's lap. perhaps as warmly gentle as your own.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint: Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and
[Letter to Sibbella Maclean, dated August 18 1824] I should have marked, and doubtless, have done so in my little edition at home (got another directly), the very lines youmention. I have also marked the following, "Celestil happiness! Where e'er she stoops / To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds" [Night II, ll.516-17]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Grecian History
The Grecian History has pleased me much you know Mr Trant made a present of the Roman History, what a brave people the Greeks in general were.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Alexander Bower : An Account of the Life of James Beattie
My uncle has got the life of Doctor Beattie from the library [Halifax Subscription library?], I have not had time to read much of it yet, but I think he must have been a very clever man, and a great literary character.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Lister Print: Book
Alexander Hunter : Georgical Essays
My library is one of my greatest pleasures after a good ramble in the fields. I assure you I am very much pleased with the Georgical Essays, I have read a little of the first and third volumes, they are sure to be interesting to me throughout for they are very improving and at the same time entertaining.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
I was rather unwell for about an hour, but not very bad when I could go on reading The Vicar of Wakefield
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous Works
In the evening, between 8+9, read from pp 263-307, vol I, Gibbon's Miscellaneous works. He died in London [...] 16 January
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous Works
In the afternoon at 3.40, down the old bank to the library...No Miss Browne. I could have said, changing only the gender, (as Gibbons wrote toDeyverdum, vol. 604/703...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Colonel Francis Hall : Travels in France in 1818
Before breakfast + afterwards, from 11 to 1, making minutes + extracts from Hall's travels in France (it must go to the library today...He is an arrant republican in politics + would perhaps, style himself a philosopher in religion. Consequently, his sentiments + mine on these subjects who as a limited monarchist + a ProtestantChristian according to the established Church of England, are opposite almost as the poles. However, there is some information useful to a tourist.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Newspaper
Sir Walter Scott : The Monastery. A romance
I was on the amoroso till M- made me read aloud the first 126pp, vol 2, of Sir walter Scott's(he has just been made a baronet) last novel The Monastery, in 3 vols, 12 mo stupid enough. Tea at 7:30.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister
Richard Hakluyt : Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation
'[Rose Macaulay's] library comprised chiefly old tomes from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which she read and re-read with absorbed delight, from Hakluyt to Addison... Her most cherished books were the twelve volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary inherited from her father. As the daughter of a don and a lover of words, she added her own marginal annotations to those pencilled in by George Macaulay'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
August Fredrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue : Leontine de Blondheim
from 1 to 3, read the first 100pp. vol 3 Leontine de Blondheim...It is altogether a very interesting thing +have read it with a sort of melancholy feeling, the very germ of which I thought had died for ever. I cried a good deal over the second + more over the third this morning, + as soon as I was alone during supper.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown, poetry]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [unknown, poetry]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [unknown, poetry]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Victor-Marie Hugo : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Meredith : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Archibald Alison : Sermons
Spent the afternoon in mending some of my things for the wash. After tea, read aloud sermons 13+14 of Alison's.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Dr Scudamore : Lectures on physiology
'At 12 Marianna and I went upstairs. She sat sewing and I reading aloud to her the first 3 or 4 pages of the M.S. Lectures on physiology Dr Scudamore lent me 10 days ago. The writing so bad we could not get on very fast. Both of us uninterested.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Manuscript: Sheet
Charles Dickens : Little Dorrit
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Rev. Richard H. Barham : The Ingoldsby Legends
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : poems
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... I formed an early acquaintance with Dickens, weeping copiously over Little Dorrit and Little Nell, and I knew by heart many of the passages in the Ingoldsby Legends, a volume that had been given me ... when I was ten years old! ... I lost myself in a magical world while reading the poems of Scott. I think I read them all one summer holiday, in a special spot in our garden ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Henryk Sienkiewicz : Quo Vadis
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... Even before my teens my reading entered upon the romantic stage. I read Quo Vadis ... Rider Haggard's She ... Robert Ellesmere ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Rider Haggard : She
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... Even before my teens my reading entered upon the romantic stage. I read Quo Vadis ... Rider Haggard's She ... Robert Ellesmere ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Mrs Meek : Ellesmere
'Frances Stevenson, born in 1888, recollected [in The years that Are Past, 1967] that she "read greedily [pre-1914] ... Even before my teens my reading entered upon the romantic stage. I read Quo Vadis ... Rider Haggard's She ... Robert Ellesmere ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Edward Lear : Book of Nonsense
'[Max] Beerbohm ... [declared] to Will Rothenstein that he had read ... only Thackeray's The Four Georges (1860) and Lear's Book of Nonsense (1846), though lately he had sampled Wilde's Intentions (1891).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Max Beerbohm Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : Intentions
'[Max] Beerbohm ... [declared] to Will Rothenstein that he had read ... only Thackeray's The Four Georges (1860) and Lear's Book of Nonsense (1846), though lately he had sampled Wilde's Intentions (1891).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Max Beerbohm Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
George Eliot : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
Robert Browning : unknown
Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
In Scaffolding in the Sky (1938), C[harles]. H. Reilly remembered Saturday evenings when 'we all assembled round the fire to hear him [his father] read Dickens, generally, so it seems to me, scenes from Pickwick papers ... We had our favourite scenes and would beg for them time after time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles H. Reilly Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Richard Steele : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : unknown
'[William Robertson] Nicoll's boyhood reading included Scott, Disraeli, the Brontes, Bulwer Lytton, Shelley, Johnson, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow ...' [Nicoll's father a Scottish clergyman who amassed library of 17,000 volumes.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Charles Darwin : [unknown]
'The [1890s] dockers' leader Ben Tillett went hungry in order to buy books ... [and] thereby struggled through the literary classics, as well as works on evolution by Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley ... after his day's work in the warehouse.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Tillett Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : [unknown]
'The [1890s] dockers' leader Ben Tillett went hungry in order to buy books ... [and] thereby struggled through the literary classics, as well as works on evolution by Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley ... after his day's work in the warehouse.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Tillett Print: Book
Fergus Hume : The Mystery of the Hansom Cab
'In A Young Man's Passage (1950), Mark Tellar recalls "confessing to his prep-school teacher that during the holidays he had read Conway's 'Called Back', together with Fergus Hume's 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' (1887), and stories by Miss M. E. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Tellar Print: Unknown
Mary Braddon : [stories]
'In A Young Man's Passage (1950), Mark Tellar recalls "confessing to his prep-school teacher that during the holidays he had read Conway's 'Called Back', together with Fergus Hume's 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' (1887), and stories by Miss M. E. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Tellar Print: Unknown
Mrs Henry Wood : [unknown]
'In A Young Man's Passage (1950), Mark Tellar recalls "confessing to his prep-school teacher that during the holidays he had read Conway's 'Called Back', together with Fergus Hume's 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' (1887), and stories by Miss M. E. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Tellar Print: Unknown
Dr Langer : Roman History
'Gladstone's reading habits were described in "The Home Life of Mr. Gladstone," Young Man (January 1892): "He was most particular, it said, in mantaining variety in his reading and, during the previous summer, had on hand Dr Langer's Roman History (in German) for morning reading, Virgil for afternoon, and a novel in the evening."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Wiliam Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Robert Southey : Life of Nelson
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
Charlotte, Anne, Emily Bronte : novels
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : novels
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : unknown
"The son of a shipwright, [Hall] Caine had been largely dependent upon public sources [in particuarly the Free Library, Liverpool] to satisfy his appetite for knowledge ... in this way he encountered Coleridge, a formative influence."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
Charles Mackay (ed) : A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry
"[In Lark Rise to Candleford (1947)] Flora Thompson recollected young Willie, whose family were village carpenters, being fond of reading, including poetry: 'somehow he had got posession of an old shattered copy of an anthology called A Thousand and One Gems', which he read aloud with her, sitting under nut trees at the bottom of the garden, in the 1890s."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Willie anon Print: Book
Karl Marx : Das Kapital
"[George Bernard] Shaw had read Marx's Das Kapital (in French translation) and he was converted to socialism ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : unknown
Philip Gibbs in The Pageant of the Years (1946), on work as writer of series of articles under name "Self-Help" in early 1900s: "'All the reading I had done as a boy, all my youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy ... was a great source of supply now when I sat down to write aout great books ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gibbs Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Philip Gibbs in The Pageant of the Years (1946), on work as writer of series of articles under name "Self-Help" in early 1900s: "'All the reading I had done as a boy, all my youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy ... was a great source of supply now when I sat down to write aout great books ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gibbs Print: Book
George Eliot : unknown
Philip Gibbs in The Pageant of the Years (1946), on work as writer of series of articles under name "Self-Help" in early 1900s: "'All the reading I had done as a boy, all my youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy ... was a great source of supply now when I sat down to write aout great books ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gibbs Print: Book
Herman Melville : Typee
"As a teenager ... [Holbrook Jackson] had been transported from Merseyside to the South Sea Islands. The vessel that bore him was imagination in the form of a 'musty copy' of Herman Melville's Typee (1846), bought for 3d. from a second-hand bookstall by the Liverpool docks."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Holbrook Jackson Print: Book
David Henry Urquhart : Commentaries on classical learning
I shall turn for a while to Urquhart's comentaries on classical learning. O books! books! I owe you much. Ye are my spirits oil without which, its own friction against itself would wear out.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
In the afternoon, read aloud the first 30pp. glenarvon, vol.2. Miss Goodricke called and sat a little while with us. the girls introduced me. She thanked me for the book I had bought for Miss Morritt from Miss Emily Cholmley...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
By the author of valerius and Reginald Dalton : Some passages in the life of Mr Adam Blair
Came upstairs at 10 1/2 [...] musing melancholily over the fire till 11. From then till 3.10, read the whole of (M-sen t it to me Saturday 15 November) some passages in the life of Mr Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle-Wm Blackwood, Edinburgh + London, 1822.[...]It is a singularly interesting pathetic story, doubly so because told as truth + not improbable [...] I read and roared over this thing till my head ached [...]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Edward Young : The complaint, or night thoughts
From 8.30 to 9.10 walked on the terrace, occasionally reading Young's Night Thoughts. Coffee at 9.10.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
George Gordon Byron : Childe Harold
At 3 1/4 down the old bank to the library. Miss Maria Browne there. Came up to me to say her sister had so bad a cold [...] she could not possibly stir out today [...] I walked slowly up Royston Rd [...] went up, found Miss Browne, not perhaps quite so unwell as I expected, sitting on the sopha reading the last canto of Childe Harold. Would not let her send for her mother till I had sat 40 minutes tete-a-tete with herself.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Browne Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold
'finished my morning's work a few minutes before 2. Made an extract or 2 from Lord Byron's Childe Harold + the lyrics at the end of the book in readiness to take it back. Set off down the old bank a little before 4. Staid at the library above an hour looking out a couple of books with proper prints for the children to copy at Pye Nest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
Karl Marx : unknown
'[George] Saintsbury [who became a Tory journalist] read Marx as an undergraduate ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Saintsbury Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'Walt Whitman ... recalled in old age ... [having read The Heart of Midlothian] "a dozen times or more"'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walt Whitman Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'"I owe more to Scott than to any other writer," [William] Robertson Nicoll stated. "Every year even in the busiest times I have read over his best stories."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'[William] Robertson Nicoll ... reckoned he had read ... [Rob Roy] sixty times.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Robertson Nicoll Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'For Hugh Walpole ... Scott was a lifelong passion ... from a subscription library in Durham he proceeded to read all of Scott, who influenced his own first writings.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'However many times [Hugh] Walpole read Scott, he never ceased to be moved, as in 1918, when he "read a little Heart of Midlothian and actually wept, at my age too, over Jeanie's meeting with the Queen ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Walter Scott : Journal
'Whatever little agues beset [Hugh] Walpole, there was always a cure in Scott: a cold would send him to bed, where he would happily read the Abbotsford Correspondence or Scott's Journal (1890) ...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Walter Scott : Katherine Christian
'[Hugh] Walpole's last reading of Scott was in the month before his death, when he was endeavouring to finish Katherine Christian (1941).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley Novels (12)
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Valois cycle
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : D'Artagnan cycle
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Victor-Marie Hugo : Notre-Dame de Paris
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Victor-Marie Hugo : Les Miserables
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : [novels]
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Walter Scott : Wandering Willie's Tale (in Redgauntlet)
'In his Scrap Book in 1922 ... [George Saintsbury] recorded that he was 'reading for the hundredth time the Short Story of the World -- Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Saintsbury Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'... [Walter Scott's] books captivated ... [Andrew Lang] as a boy and 'grow better on every fresh reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Andrew Lang Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Bleak House
'In 1901 ... [Newman Flower] left his bed at four in the morning to travel from Croydon to watch the funeral procession of Queen Victoria. He joined the crowd, and, to pass hours of waiting, stood reading "Bleak House". A stir eventually made him look up from his book; alas, the royal section of the cortege had gone.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Newman Flower Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'It was in ... 1901 ... that Ernest Raymond as a teenager first took a Dickens from the shelf: "By the grace and favour of God, it was Pickwick Papers ... At some stage in the reading I knew with a happy breathless certainty that this was what I wanted to do with my life: to write books like this."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Raymond Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist
'... Oliver Twist (1838), the first Dickens that A. A. Milne was exposed to, at 9, gave him nightmares.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alan Alexander Milne Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
Andrew Lang, in Adventures Among Books, on being introduced to Dickens: 'I had minded my lessons, and satisfied my teachers -- I know I was reading Pinnock's "History of Rome" for pleasure -- till ... I felt a "call", and underwent a process which may be described as the opposite of "conversion". The call came from Dickens. Pickwick was brought into the house ... I read "Pickwick" in convulsions of mirth. I dropped Pinnock's "Rome" for good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Andrew Lang Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth :
My taste for light reading was diminished, yet works of fiction were not all abandoned. The beautiful productions of Miss Edgeworth's pen were fascinating, and there were some of the old-school novels I could not give up.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'The first imaginative work by an Englishman ... [Joseph Conrad] read was Nicholas Nickleby (1839).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'Devoted ... was the ritual of Gordon Hewart, who rose to become Lord Chief Justice: he read Dickens every night of his life.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gordon Hewart Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The History of England from the Earliest Times...
My father's large bookcase was stuffed with odd volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine and other miscellaneous matters. Anacharsis' 'travels in Greece', Robertson's 'America', Goldsmith's 'History of England', Adams' 'Rome', Wesley's sermons and Fletcher's controversial volumes. All these had been read by me, either for my own amusement, or aloud to my father, whose sight had been lost for years.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'Neville Cardus was born in 1889 in Rusholme, Manchester, the illegitimate son of a police constable's daughter and the first violinist of a visiting orchestra. He ... ended his formal education at 13 but, from this difficult childhood, he treasured one great moment: "I discovered Charles Dickens and went crazy. I borrowed Copperfield from the Municipal Library and the ordinary universe became unreal ... I read at meals, I read in the streets; at night I would read under the lamps ... I read in bed ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'Lady Cynthia Asquith, daughter of the eleventh Earl [of Elcho] ... regularly reread her favourite [Dickens] stories ...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Recorded in diary of Lady Cynthia Asquith, 15 January 1918: 'The Professor [of English Literature at Oxford, Sir Walter Raleigh] has just re-discovered Dickens -- having not touched him for years and approached him critically, he has now found himself caught up in a flame of love and admiration ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh Print: Book
Hester Ann Rogers : Spiritual Letters Or A Short Account of the Experi
I read Mrs Rogers' Life and Letters with great profit. ... The life and letters of Mrs Rogers here made a great blessing to me, also conversation with a person who enjoyed that blessing...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lutton Print: Book
Elinor Glyn : Halcyone
' ... [F. H. Bradley] appeared as the retired professor, Cheiron, in [Elinor] Glyn's Halcyone (1912), having assiduously read the manuscript, corrected her spelling, and supplied Greek quotations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Herbert Bradley Manuscript: Codex
Robert Browning : Sordello
'Sordello (1840) was undoubtedly the toughest assignment [of Browning's works]. When Douglas Jerrold venured on it while convalescing, he entered a state of panic that his illness had destroyed his reason; then, having passed the book from his bedside to a visiting friend, who also exhibited utter incomprehension, he collapsed relieved on his pillow with a cry of "Thank God!"!'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Jerrold Print: Book
Marie Corelli : The Soul of Lilith
Annette R. Federico notes anecdote in Kent Carr's 1901 biography of Marie Corelli, in which it is reported that New Zealand and Australian soliders in South Africa during the Boer War 'came across a stray copy of The Soul of Lilith on the veld and tore out each page after it was read to pass along to the next man in the troop.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: New Zealand and Australian soldiers Print: Book
Marie Corelli : The Sorrows of Satan
'[Kent] Carr cites a letter [Marie] Corelli received from a colors sergeant in the Boer War in May 1900: "Now to tell you about your delightful books which were invaluable to the troops during the siege; one, 'The Sorrows of Satan,' was read and re-read by me, and then handed round. As many as three would be wanting to read it, so where literature was scarce, you can imagine what a blessing it was to have a book like it.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Both ... [Elizabeth and Alice Thompson] were reading voraciously at that time [1854-57]. Their father, by reading "Jane Eyre" aloud to them (with omissions), had given them a fervent love for Charlotte Bronte ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'Both ... [Elizabeth and Alice Thompson] were reading voraciously at that time [1854-57] ... guided by ... [their father] they were ranging ... through the works of Dickens, Scott, Trollope, and Jane Austen. Much of what they read was advanced fare for children of nine and ten ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thompson Family Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : unknown
' ... [Elizabeth and Alice Thompson] used to go for picnics at Porto Fino, loaded with books of verse, and Mrs Thompson and Mr [Alfred] Strettell would read aloud to them from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Christiana Thompson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : unknown
' ... [Elizabeth and Alice Thompson] used to go for picnics at Porto Fino, loaded with books of verse, and Mrs Thompson and Mr [Alfred] Strettell would read aloud to them from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Baker Strettell Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels
June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : novels
June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson Print: Book
George Eliot : novels
June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : novels
June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : unknown
Alice Meynell recalls childhood reading: 'In quite early childhood I lived upon Wordsworth ... When I was about twelve I fell in love with Tennyson, and cared for nothing else until, at fifteen, I discovered Keats and then Shelley.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
Alice Meynell recalls childhood reading: 'In quite early childhood I lived upon Wordsworth ... When I was about twelve I fell in love with Tennyson, and cared for nothing else until, at fifteen, I discovered Keats and then Shelley.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Alfred Henty : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Richard Henry Dana : Two Years Before the Mast
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Fridtjof Nansen : [Travels - probably 'Farthest North']
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Falcon Scott : [Travels in the Antarctic]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Private in an infantry regiment, formerly a skilled painter, age eighteen. Spends evenings painting, reading, working on model airplanes. Has attended art school....Patronizes Free Library. Has read The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bulwer Lytton, Ballantyne, Henty, Robinson Crusoe, Quentin Dirward, Ivanhoe, Waverley, Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Two Years before the Mast, as well as the travels of David Livingstone, Fridtjof Nansen, Matthew Peary and Scott of the Antarctic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Christmas Carol
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Gilbert Keith Chesterton : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Major Barbara
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : John Bull's Other Island
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : The Doctor's Dilemma
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Man and Superman
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : The Devil's Disciple
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : You Never Can Tell
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Socialism and Superior Brains
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Fabian Essays
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : An Unsocial Socialist
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : The Irrational Knot
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Enoch Arnold Bennett : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris,, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The OLd Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superor Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Sidney and Beatrice Webb : Industrial Democracy
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Oliver Joseph Lodge : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Edward Carpenter : Towards Democracy
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Edward Carpenter : The Intermediate Sex
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Alfred Marshall : [unknown]
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Burns : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Ella Wheeler Wilcox : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machine file cutter, age twenty-five... Has read The Old Curiosity Shop, Innocents Abroad, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the Bible'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Mark Twain : The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machine file cutter, age twenty-five... Has read The Old Curiosity Shop, Innocents Abroad, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the Bible'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Emmusska, Baroness Orczy : The Scarlet Pimpernel
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machine file cutter, age twenty-five... Has read The Old Curiosity Shop, Innocents Abroad, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the Bible'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Richard Doddridge Blackmore : Lorna Doone
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Darwin : [probably 'The Voyage of the Beagle']
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Housewife, age twenty-eight... Has read "David Copperfield", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Lorna Doone", Louisa May Alcott and the travels of Livingstone and Darwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Cutlery worker, age seventy-two...Fond of Longfellow, Stevenson, Ruskin, William Morris and Charles Dickens'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Cutlery worker, age seventy-two...Fond of Longfellow, Stevenson, Ruskin, William Morris and Charles Dickens'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Cutlery worker, age seventy-two...Fond of Longfellow, Stevenson, Ruskin, William Morris and Charles Dickens'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
Francis Turner Palgrave : Golden Treasury of English Song and Lyrics
'In 1955 Manny Shinwell - who read all of Palgrave's Golden Treasury to his children, and had consoled himself in prison with Keats and Tennyson - regretted that that poetic heritage had been surrendered to the cinema and radio: "In the early days of the [socialist] movement it was common practice of speakers to recite poetry...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel (Manny) Shinwell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [unknown]
'In 1955 Manny Shinwell - who read all of Palgrave's Golden Treasury to his children, and had consoled himself in prison with Keats and Tennyson - regretted that that poetic heritage had been surrendered to the cinema and radio: "In the early days of the [socialist] movement it was common practice of speakers to recite poetry...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel (Manny) Shinwell, later Baron Shinwell Print: Book
Francois Rabelais : Gargantua and Pantagruel
'Allen Clark, the son of Bolton textile workers, found physiology books in the public library incomprehensible. A newspaper reference to Rabelais motivated him to borrow Gargantua and Pantagruel, which was no more helpful: "the love passages in the tales were meaningless and boring and I skipped them".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
George Moore : A Mummer's Wife
'Harry Dorrell read his brother's copy of George Moore's "A Mummer's Wife", but "I could not understand wny the lady who was undressed said to the man 'Bite me' and also got into bed with no clothes on. Mother always wore a nightdress in bed".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Dorrell Print: Book
Radclyffe Hall : The Well of Loneliness
'Margaret Wharton's parents were highly literate, and with their encouragement she entered a teaching training college in 1936, but they taught her nothing about sex: "Though we read books like 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and 'Hatter's Castle' both dealing with defloration of innocence and an ultimate baby, we drew no parallels and made no application to ourselves. I even read Radclyffe Hall's classic story of lesbianism, The Well of Loneliness, without having the faintest idea of what it was about'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
Bartlett's picture of the Hispaniola lying beached in the Caribbean, on the clean-swept sand, its poop, round house, mainsails and fore-tops easily identified, had grown out of the flat print words of Treasure Island. Bartlett was a good painter in water-colour. When we read Kidnapped he made us paint the Scottish moors. We laughed over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
Bartlett's picture of the Hispaniola lying beached in the Caribbean, on the clean-swept sand, its poop, round house, mainsails and fore-tops easily identified, had grown out of the flat print words of Treasure Island. Bartlett was a good painter in water-colour. When we read Kidnapped he made us paint the Scottish moors. We laughed over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Mark Twain : Tom Sawyer
Bartlett's picture of the Hispaniola lying beached in the Caribbean, on the clean-swept sand, its poop, round house, mainsails and fore-tops easily identified, had grown out of the flat print words of Treasure Island. Bartlett was a good painter in water-colour. When we read Kidnapped he made us paint the Scottish moors. We laughed over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Mark Twain : Huckleberry Finn
Bartlett's picture of the Hispaniola lying beached in the Caribbean, on the clean-swept sand, its poop, round house, mainsails and fore-tops easily identified, had grown out of the flat print words of Treasure Island. Bartlett was a good painter in water-colour. When we read Kidnapped he made us paint the Scottish moors. We laughed over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Fortunes of Nigel
'Just a little note of this night. I had been working very hard and came to my room very late and tired, but took up a book, the "Fortunes of Nigel" and read on and on till it was three o'clock in the morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius : The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
I had also read 'Paper Bag Cookery' -one of my father's fads -because I wanted to try it. Now I saw 'The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius' in leather: it defeated me. Wordsworth and Milton at least wrote in short lines with wide margins. I moved on to a book by Hall Caine called 'The Bondman'. It appeared to be about a marriage and I noticed that the men and women talked in the dangerous adult language which I associated with 'The bad girl of the family'. 'The Bondman' also suggested a doom -the sort of doom my mother sang about which was connected with Trinity Church and owing the rent.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Free Opinions
I moved to Marie Corelli and there I found a book of newspaper articles called 'Free Opinions'. The type was large. The words were easy, rather contemptibly so. I read and then stopped in anger. Marie Corelli had insulted me. She was against popular education, against schools, against Public libraries and said that common people like us made the books dirty because we never washed, and that we infected them with disease.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book, Newspaper
Marie Corelli : Master Christain
I had a look at 'In tune with the infinite'. I moved on to my father's single volume, India paper edition of 'Shakespeare's Complete Works' and started at the beginning with the 'Rape of Lucrece' and the sonnets and continued slowly through the plays during the coming year. For relief I took up Marie Corelli's 'Master Christain' which I found more moving than Shakespeare and more intelligible than 'Thanatopsis'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Trine : In Tune with the Infinite
I had a look at 'In tune with the infinite'. I moved on to my father's single volume, India paper edition of 'Shakespeare's Complete Works' and started at the beginning with the 'Rape of Lucrece' and the sonnets and continued slowly through the plays during the coming year. For relief I took up Marie Corelli's 'Master Christian' which I found more moving than Shakespeare and more intelligible than 'Thanatopsis'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Robert Browning : A Death in the Desert
In Retrospect of an Unimportant Life (1934), the Bishop of Durham Herbert Hensley Henson reminisced about Browning's "A Death in the Desert": 'Sixty years have passed since first I read it at Oxford, and then it seemed to me convincing and consoling ... To-day I find myself unable to discover any conclusion better fitted to satisfy Christian thought ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hensley Henson
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
'Newman Flower, born in 1879, was running from the classroom at Weymouth College to his housemaster's in a snowstorm when someone ... shouted: '"Tennyson's dead!" And in my pocket was a volume of Tennyson's poems, for we had been doing In Memoriam that afternoon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: school class at Weymouth College Print: Book
Theodore Watts-Dunton : poems
'A grim account of the menage [at Theodore Watts-Dunton's home The Pines, Putney, where the poet Swinburne went to live after his health failed] was given to the poet Wilfrid Blunt by his cousin George Wyndham, whose visit in 1891 had "ended in Watts reading out his own poems instead of letting Swinburne read his." [recorded in Blunt's diary for 7 August 1891]'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Theodore Watts-Dunton
George Meredith : Novels
'... Helena Swanwick recalled one exception from among the succession of inadequate domestic servants who passed through her household in the 1890s: "The best I had in those years was a young Welshwoman, who read the novels of Meredith ... and enjoyed them ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : poems
"'..[Lady Cynthia Asquith's] diary records several occasions when, in the family circle or with a romantic companion, [Rupert] Brooke's poems were read aloud; 12 June and 19 Sept. 1915.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Asquith Family Print: Book
Andrew Lang : Life, Letters and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote
'Your kind present of Andrew Lang's two volumes has just reached me, and from what I have gleaned by a glimpse of the plates wh. I have opened, I have an intellectual treat for store this evening & subsequent nights'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: S.P. Oliver Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Letters
'Reading Mrs Browning's published letters in 1900, Wilfrid Blunt was reminded of how much he admired her and her husband's poetry ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Blunt Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : McAndrew's Hymn
In her Writer's Recollections (1919; pp.325-26), Mrs Humphrey Ward would remember an occasion in Italy when, Paul Bourget having failed to translate Kipling's "McAndrew's Hymn" into French, Henry James 'straight away put it into "vigorous idiomatic French" ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
Robert Browning : Red Cotton Nightcap Country
"In the early 1870s Browning frequently dined at the Chelsea home of the newly married Sir Charles Dilke. In 1872 he read there Red Cotton Nightcap Country (1873) -- 'at his own request'"
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'Theodore Watts-Dunton remembers Algernon Swinburne's fondness for reading aloud during his last years at Watts-Dunton's home: "... he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade and Thackeray."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne Print: Unknown
Charles Lamb : [unknown]
'Theodore Watts-Dunton remembers Algernon Swinburne's fondness for reading aloud during his last years at Watts-Dunton's home: "... he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade and Thackeray."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne Print: Unknown
Charles Reade : [unknown]
'Theodore Watts-Dunton remembers Algernon Swinburne's fondness for reading aloud during his last years at Watts-Dunton's home: "... he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade and Thackeray."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne Print: Unknown
Algernon Swinburne : Les Noyades
"In 1862, as a 25-year-old rebel ... [Swinburne] took it on himself to scandalize a dinner party at Fryston. His target was not his host, Richard Monckton Milnes ... Nor was Swinburne particularly showing off for Thackeray, a fellow guest ... His aim was directed more at the rest of the table: Thackeray's two daughters and the new Archbishop of York, William Thomson ... Swinburne read Les Noyades'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne
Algernon Swinburne : unknown
'In 1864 George Du Maurier witnessed ... [a] bravura performance [by Swinburne] at a bachelor party in the studio of the artist Simeon Solomon ... "For three hours he spouted his poetry to us, and it was of a power, beauty and originality unequalled."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne
Alfred Tennyson : The Cup
'In 1880 Tennyson attempted to interest Henry Irving in his play "The Cup" ... [he] "read in a monotone, rumbling on a low note" until, for the female parts, "he changed his voice suddenly and climbed up into a key he could not sustain". This was Ellen Terry's description: she was present with her 11-year-old daughter, who found the performance irresistibly comical, as apparently did Irving ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Passing of Arthur
'In 1876 Aubrey de Vere aranged for Alice Thompson ... and her sister Elizabeth a visit to [Tennyson at] Aldworth ... Alice was ready with her selection when the offer to read was issued. It was "The Passing of Arthur", and it was a mistake. Tennyson "complied ... [but] was not pleased with her choice, which he thought should have fallen on his later work".'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
' ... [over] a weekend at Aldworth ... [Margot Tennant] told Tennyson how very handsome he was, and, after his after-dinner nap, asked him to read "Maud" ... read it he did ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
' ... in November 1876, when a guest of Gladstone at Hawarden, Tennyson read the whole of his new play, "Harold" (1877) ... The marathon session began at 11.30 and continued for two and a half hours, during which Gladstone nodded off and other minds turned to "such earthly things as luncheon".'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
George Gissing : New Grub Street
Thomas Burke on literary figures' responses to his requests, as a teenager, for advice on starting a career as a writer: '... they spoke of the stress and anxiety of the literary life, and its dolours, and advised me to read Gissing's "New Grub Street" (which I did) ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burke Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
'When the Duke of Argyll ... visited Farringford, Tennyson read his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Sir Edwin Arnold : The Light of Asia
'"Stilted prose" was the rapid and unhesitating reply to whether ... [George Meredith] reckoned "The Light of Asia" a very fine poem, to the dismay of his questioner, who had "read and re-read it with the greatest possible pleasure" ...'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Unknown
Peter Cunningham : Lives of the most Eminent Booksellers: Jacob Tonson
[Annotation NOT in Cunningham's hand (unidentified)]: above the sentence 'Jacob Tonson is the first bookseller of any note we can treat of': 'bio. Prin & Shepherd'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Manuscript: Pamphlet
Christina Rossetti : poems
'Writing to his sister on 11 January 1892 ... [Walter Raleigh] declared: "I have been reading Christina Rossetti -- three or four of her poems, like those of her brother, make a cheap fool of [Robert] Browning ... I think she is the best poet alive."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Raleigh Print: Book
Robert Bridges : Shorter Poems
'Arthur Benson ... when rereading the Shorter Poems [of Robert Bridges] in 1910, thought them thin, mere tricks of language ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Benson Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore : Poems from Gitanjali: Song Offerings
'[C. F.] Andrews was a missionary with the Cambridge Brotherhood and present at [William] Rothenstein's Hampstead home on 30 June 1912, when, before a select audience, including H. W. Nevinson, [Rabindranath] Tagore was introduced and Yeats gave readings from the "Gitanjali".'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Butler Yeats
Herbert Spencer : Autobiography
'Arnold Bennett, when reading [Herbert] Spencer's posthumously published Autobiography (1904), found the account "disappointingly deficient in emotion".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
various : A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent
'Dear Sir, Before saying any thing on the subject of my own prospects I wish to notice two trifling inaccuracies in the 'Handbook' in compliance with the invitation there given, for it is a sort of public duty to assist in rendering so useful and creditable a work as free as possible from even the slightest errors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gladstone Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Barabbas
The Duchess of Sutherland to Regy Brett: 'I have dinner on a tray [and], in between mouthfuls of fried sole and partridge, read [Ruskin's] Sesame and Lilies [1865] and [Marie Corelli's] Barabbas by turn.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Millicent Duchess of Sutherland Print: Book
George Meredith : Modern Love
'At one poetical evening [at Wilfrid Blunt's home Crabbet Park], when the guests included A. E. Housman and Desmond MacCarthy ... Wilfrid [Meynell] was requested to read George Meredith's Modern Love. This he did, with running commentary ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Meynell Print: Book
Mrs Brooke :
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
Catherine Hutton : The Welsh Mountaineer
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
Catherine Hutton : Oakwood Hall
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
Catherine Hutton : The Miser Married
'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance. I am not certain that I have read any of mine since the time of their publication; if I have it is so long since that I have forgotten it, and I was surprised to find in the first leaf of The Miser Married the critic's opinion'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Hutton Print: Book
George MacDonald : The Princess and the Goblin
'Elinor Glyn recalled "The Princess and the Goblin" (1872) being read to her as a child ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elinor Glyn Print: Book
George Sturt : The Bettesworth Book
It is amusing to find him writing to Sturt, in 1900, to persuade him that it would be a good idea to try to sell 'Bettesworth' to Pearson's (a firm for which he was not a reader and adviser)- he suggests that he himself write a preface for it, and that it be published under the title 'Talks with my Gardener: a study of the English peasant.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Arnold Bennett : The Man from the North
Lane's reader was John Buchan, who read 'A Man from the North' and liked it, although he said it would not be popular.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Manuscript: Sheet, proofs
Maria Edgeworth : Helen
Letter September 1857 ? 'I hope you know Miss Edgeworths ?Helen?'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Lord John Russell :
Letter, 25/11/1860 - 'The opening of the note enclosed from Mrs Browning refers to my having spoken of Lord John's last dispatch as giving me courage to write to her about Italy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Newspaper
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
Letter 8/2/1863 - "For, as far as I remember - my sayings to you have been very nearly limited to Goldsmith's model of a critical sentence on painter's work: "that it was very well - and would have been better if the painter had taken more pains."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
Letter 8/2/1863 - "I'm afraid to speak like the wicked girl in the fairy tale - who let - not pearls fall from her lips."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott :
Letter 16/8/1863 - Following a description of rural walk - "it was just like the beginning of a new novel of Sir Walter's. - Do you see what the French call him now: - (so truly! - the epithet being one of praise or contempt according to the feeling of the speaker) - 'l'enfantin Sir Walter'!"
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Horace Benedict de Saussure : Voyages dans les Alpes
Letter W 38 - Chamouni, 3/10/1863 - "I can't make out the run of some coal slates of the Col de Balme at their junction with what Saussure calls the 'poudingues de Valorsins'. Such a scramble as I've had after them today!"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Locksley Hall
'Occasionally the discussions became acrimonious. My eldest brother was one day making disparaging remarks about Tennyson, and my mother, all agitated in defence of her idol, fetched his poems from the shelf, and with a "Listen now, children" began to declaim "Locksley Hall". When she reached "I to herd with narroe foreheads" she burst out, flinging down the book, "What awful rubbish this is!"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Hughes Print: Book
Henry David Thoreau : unknown
Constance Smedley on readings in American literature: 'Thoreau ... opened the door to a philosophy of life when I was about fifteen ... in his train came Emerson and Lowell ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Smedley Print: Unknown
Ralph Waldo Emerson : unknown
Constance Smedley on readings in American literature: 'Thoreau ... opened the door to a philosophy of life when I was about fifteen ... in his train came Emerson and Lowell ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Smedley Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Emmeline
" Finished reading that Emmeline, a Trumpery novel in four volumes. If I can answer for myself I will never again undertake such a tiresome nonsensical piece of business."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
James Russell Lowell :
Constance Smedley on readings in American literature: "'Thoreau ... opened the door to a philosophy of life when I was about fifteen ... in his train came Emerson and Lowell ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Smedley Print: Unknown
Mrs Humphrey Ward : Canadian Born
"When ... [Mrs Humphrey Ward] read aloud from Canadian Born (1910) to the assembled guests at Lord Stanley's part at Alderley Park, the verdict was that 'it was terribly boring' [as Venetia Stanley wrote to Violet Asquith, 12 October 1910]."
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Humphrey Ward
A.R. Lesage : Gil Blas
Went again to the shrubbery-brought our books namely Gil Blas and Madame de Sevigne with us.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Pietro Metastasio : opera (16 Tom)
Listed under "Books read since April the first 1789"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Book
Henry James : What Maisie Knew
' ... in Egypt during the Great War [E. M.] Forster applied himself to read [Henry] James. Struggling with What Maisie Knew (1897), he rather thought that "she is my very limit ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
Not long ago I happened to call at the railway carter, and found the wife of the man engaged in reading George Eliots' 'Adam Bede'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
H. Rider Haggard : She
"'More even than with the contemptible inexpressiveness of the whole thing,' Henry James wrote after reading She ... 'I am struck with the beastly bloodiness of it ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Mrs Henry Wood : East Lynne
'Lady Cynthia Asquith's diary recorded about one January Sunday in 1917, "Stayed in bed until dinner. I read 'East Lynne' till my eyes ached."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith Print: Book
Mrs Henry Wood : East Lynne
'Annie Swan [from Leith] ... vividly recalled the occasion when her mother "surprised us all by retiring to her room for a whole day, abandoning everything. The mystery was explained by a copy of East Lynne, which had been brought surreptitiously into the [strictly Evangelical] house, and in which she became so engrossed that she ceased to care a han, as we expressed it, for anything or anybody".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Swan Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : unknown
"Mr. Gladstone left aside the cares of state by reading ... [Mary Elizabeth Braddon]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : The Doctor's Wife
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : unknown
'[George] Moore pinpointed his ... awakening interest in fiction to overhearing his parents discussing whether Lady Audley murdered her husband. Then aged 11, Moore "took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question [Lady Audley' s Secret]. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently," afterwards progressing to the rest of Braddon's fiction, including The Doctor's Wife, about "a lady who loved Shelley and Byron", which in turn led him to take up those poets ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Moore Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : unknown
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
Robert Burns : unknown
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
Jeffrey Farnol : The Amateur Gentleman
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
Florence L. Barclay : The Rosary
' ... at Stanway in 1916 for her sister's twenty-first birthday, Lady Cynthia [Asquith] entertained family and guests after dinner by [mockingly] reading from The Rosary [by Florence L. Barclay] ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti : The King's Tragedy
On visit to 50-year-old Dante Gabriel Rossetti, '[Hall] Caine, half his age, was treated to a reading of "The King's Tragedy" ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : [unknown]
'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
Aubrey Thomas de Vere :
Letter B 23 - Postmark 15/10/1858 - "Cease reading my books for the present - there are a thousand as good - and many better. Read Aubrey de Vere's if you like - there's plenty of enthusiasm in them of the kind you like."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Elizabeth Barrett Browining : Aurora Leigh
Letter B 28 - Postmark 27/10/1858 - "The fit you took about the slavery arose not only owing to Aurora Leigh, but from your not understanding the proper use of the word."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browining : Aurora Leigh
Letter B 28 - Postmark 27/10/1858 - "The fit you took about the slavery arose not only owing to Aurora Leigh, but from your not understanding the proper use of the word."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Blunden Print: Book
Robert Browning : Men and Women
Letter H 25 - Late November 1855 - "It is so off ... that we all should like that poem of the Arab physician best. - Fancy my endorsing the Athenaeum! Every word in the Athenaeum critique I agree with - for I am very stupid in making things out in poetry; and that Men & Women is to me simply a set of 50 Conundrums, of the most amazing & tormenting kind."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : Fairy legends and Tales
Letter H53, January 1857 "But I think if you read Anderson carefully, you will feel how pointed, neat and concise he is in comparison. How unexpected also are most of his turns. The conceit of the different personages is nearly all that is amusing here" (referring to one of Miss Heaton's tales)"and you will find Anderson has worked that point thoroughly in the 'darning needle' and the hen and the can in the ugly duck &c."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Robert Browning : Men and Women
The editor's footnote quotes a letter from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Ellen Heaton: 24/11/1855 - "Much of my time in Paris was spent with Mr and Mrs Browning, who send you their kind regards. What a glorious book "Men and Women" is!" (Letters written to Ellen Heaton; sold in 1969; whereabouts unknown.)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dante Gabriel Rossetti Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Destruction of Sennacherib
Letter H. 39 - (12/10/1856) - "I don't know when I read a poem, since a boy I first read "The Assyrian came down" - which has given me such intense pleasure as the "Burden of Nineveh" in No. 8 of Oxford & Cambridge."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
Letter H. 29 - (30/12/1855) - "and she is as proud as - Flora Mac Ivor."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti : The Burden of Nineveh
Letter H. 39 - 12/10/1856 - "-I don't know when I read a poem, since as a boy I first read "The Assyrian came down" - which has given me such intense pleasure as the "Burden of Nineveh" in No. 8 of Oxford & Cambridge - Pleasure of course - of a different kind but I am quite wild about it - That profound last stanza - the infinite power and ease of all!!!"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
Arnold Bennett : Anna of the Five Towns
. . . [George] Sturt, Bennett's supposedly 'aesthetic' critic, was not particularly admiring of 'Anna'[of the Five Towns]; he writes complaining that Bennett makes 'an inventory of the furniture in Anna's kitchen', that his characters don't come alive . . .
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Sturt Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes :
"I took in Mr Holmes' humorous poems & Davidson (a very jolly little friend of mine) another light work & we sat together with Romer in the furthest corner enjoying literature mixed with 'light conversation' after your style."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
W Hepworth Dixon : New America
"I have hardly read a book except for strictly professional purposes for 3 months & more. One of the few I have read is Dixon's New America. I should like to know what you think of it. It has been a great success here having already passed six editions & being undeniably amusing. My own opinion about it is perhaps coloured by my opinion of Dixon, wh. I further believe to be almost the universal opinion? I think him an offensive snob. ? I think that his book is flashy & written entirely for effect & would probably give to most people a highly incorrect notion. Especially I fancy that he absurdly exaggerates the numbers & importance of Shakers, Junkers, &c&c &c even of Mormons ? but most of all the Spiritualists. Also, though his facts may be right, I should guess the colouring to be wrong. You may tell me what you think if you take the trouble to read the book; but I believe it will give to most English readers the impression that nearly all Americans believe in Spirittrapping, that most of them are either disbelievers in matrimony & hell ? or practisers of polygamy and that a large number live in queer phalansteries or other Socialist contrivances.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Eliot : Felix Holt the Radical
'I have got two copies of "Felix Holt" - the last sent me by Mr Langford [...] I don't think I could say anything satisfactory about it. It leaves an impression on my mind as of "Hamlet" played by six sets of gravediggers. Of course it will be a successful book, but I think chiefly because "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner" went before it. Now that I have read it, I have given up the idea of reviewing it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Walter Scott : Journal
'What a wonderful record is that journal of Sir Walter's which dear Annie Ritchie has sent me - and with what love one watches everything he does. I have read over and over again what he says of his wife's death. It is so sober, so chastened, so true: "I wonder how I shall do with the thoughts which were hers for thirty years".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
R.T. Davison : Life of Archibald Campbell Tait
'I have found a little, not comfort, but fellowship in reading about Archbishop Tait. I did not like his book. I thought it too personal, too sacred for publication, but now brought down to the very dust, I turned to it with a sense of common suffering'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Robert Macpherson :
'Robert Macpherson came down with us to Civita Vecchia to see us off, and, I remember, read to me all the way there a story he had written, one of the stories flying about Rome of one of the great families, which he wanted me to polish up and get published for him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Macpherson Manuscript: Sheet
George Barnett Smith : The Works of Thackeray
"I think that Miss Thackeray and my wife have expressed to you their great pleasure in your article on their father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
George Barnett Smith : The Works of Thackeray
"I think that Miss Thackeray and my wife have expressed to you their great pleasure in your article on their father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ann Thackeray Print: Serial / periodical
James Russell Lowell : Agassiz
"I read with satisfaction Lowell's poem wh. you sent me. The only fault I find with him is that he occasionally lets his criticism get mixed up in his poetry, but it is thoroughly good solid work - 'solid' is not a happy epithet for poetry but I mean weighty & not finicking."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Louis Stevenson : Ordered South
"I have read with great interest your article on Victor Hugo & also that which appeared in the last number of Macmillan."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Frederick Denison Maurice :
"By an accidental combination of circumstances I only saw your article on my 'secularism' this afternoon. I have no complaints to make of it & no wish to carry on the controversy. But I do wish (for I value highly your good opinion on moral character & respect all your opinions) to acquit myself from one or two charges of unfairness to Mr Maurice."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Frederick Denison Maurice :
"Excuse all this; but though you may not easily give me credit I really admired Mr Maurice; I attended his lectures as a boy; I studied his books carefully & I should be sorry that you think of my errors as caused by carelessness or undue superciliousness. They are at least the outcome of a good deal of as conscientious thinking as I can give."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Robert Browning :
?I always have a profound impression that human beings have been much more like each other than we fancy since they got rid of their tails & that the great outbursts of speculation or art imply some special excitement more than a radical difference in people themselves. I have even a belief that if Browning had lived 200 years ago he would have been a small Shakespeare & perhaps Tennyson a second rate Milton ? though I agree that poor old Alfred has not quite the stuff in him.?
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
?I always have a profound impression that human beings have been much more like each other than we fancy since they got rid of their tails & that the great outbursts of speculation or art imply some special excitement more than a radical difference in people themselves. I have even a belief that if Browning had lived 200 years ago he would have been a small Shakespeare & perhaps Tennyson a second rate Milton ? though I agree that poor old Alfred has not quite the stuff in him.?
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : Passages in the Life of Margaret Maitland
'I was captivated by "Margaret Maitland" before the author came to [italic] bribe [end italic] me by the gift of a copy and a too flattering letter [...] Nothing half so true or so touching (in the delineation of Scottish character) has appeared since Galt published his "Annals of the Parish" - and this is purer and deeper than Galt, and even more absolutely and simply true.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Night and Morning
'Since seeing Captain Blackwood yesterday I have read over 'Night and Morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Caird : Sermons
'If you wish me to take up Mr Caird's Sermons I will be glad to do it. I think myself that there is a little want of human experience in them, - the troubles of this life - which one thinks the more of by a natural selfishness when one seems to have a double portion of them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
?Edward ?Bulwer Lytton : St Stephen's
'Thank you very much for the Magazine - I am charmed with "St Stephen's". It is Sir Edward's, of course.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
R.H. Story :
'I was extremely glad to get your MS [...] I have of course some small criticism to make, but none of importance [...] Is it necessary to mention distinctly Maurice and F.W. Robertson as leaders of the "Advance of Christian Thought"?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: Sheet, work in MS
Marie Corelli : Barabbas
'[Marie] Corelli's rendering of the Resurrection in Barabbas [1893] was read from the pulpit on Easter Sunday at Westminster Abbey by the Dean.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marie Corelli : novels
'The editor of the British Weekly, [William] Robertson Nicoll, wrote to [Marie] Corelli on 3 November 1920: "I always think of you in connexion with my old friend Dr Parker [chairman of the Congregational Union, d.1902], who liked nothing so much as to lie on his sofa and hear your books read to him."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Parker Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Holy Orders
'In Switzerland in 1908 Arnold Bennett met in his hotel an Anglo-Indian army major ... Bennett thought of engaging his opinions about Indian government reform until he noticed the book which the major was reading. It was Corelli's Holy Orders (1908), whereupon, Bennett recorded, "I then gave up hope".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Ardath
G. H. Hardy on Marie Corelli's Ardath: "'The most striking feature of the book ... is the colossal number of notes of exclamation -- I counted 39 in 3 pages.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. H. Hardy Print: Book
Marie Corelli : The Sorrows of Satan
"Rupert Brook [ironically] advised Geoffrey and Maynard Keynes against attempting The Sorrows of Satan, [Marie] Corelli's principal best-seller: 'It is the richest work of humour in the English (?) language: but the effects it produces upon the unwary reader ...! I am now a positive wreck.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rupert Brooke Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Vendetta
"[Gladstone's] daughter Mary and her husband, the Revd Harry Drew, read Vendetta together in 1887, noting 'goodish plot but rather rot otherwise'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry and Mary Drew Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Essays
'How delightful are Sir Edward's Essays. One seems to see his own special creation, the accomplished man of the world, not entirely worldly, a quintessence of social wisdom and experience, sweetened by imagination'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Marie Corelli : A Romance of Two Worlds
"... [Gladstone] ... read The Romance of Two Worlds [sic] before he met ... [Marie Corelli, in June 1889] and started on Ardath a couple of days afterwards, but when he returned to it after two months, he was doing no more than skimming it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Ardath
"... [Gladstone] ... read The Romance of Two Worlds [sic] before he met ... [Marie Corelli, in June 1889] and started on Ardath a couple of days afterwards, but when he returned to it after two months, he was doing no more than skimming it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Marie Corelli : ? The Sorrows of Satan
Arnold Bennett to George Sturt, 29 October 1895: "'I have just read Marie Corelli's new book -- my first of hers. I can now understand both her popularity and the critics' contempt.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Marie Corelli : novels
"...Edward [Prince of Wales] invited ... [Marie Corelli] to a luncheon which the future King George V [then Duke of York] also attended, and both told her that they had read all her books."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Prince of Wales Print: Book
Marie Corelli : novels
"...Edward [Prince of Wales] invited ... [Marie Corelli] to a luncheon which the future King George V [then Duke of York] also attended, and both told her that they had read all her books."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Duke of York Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
"In 1905 [Andrew] Lang ... recalled: 'The first book that ever made me cry, of which feat I was horribly ashamed, was 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', with the death of Eva ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Andrew Lang Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp
'The Queen [Victoria] ... read the sequel [to "Uncle Tom's Cabin"], "Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp" (1856), and considered it as good ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Queen Victoria Print: Book
Edward Morike : Erinerung - an C.N.
'It made me think of a poem that our german professor used to read us in class. Ja, das war zum letzenmal/ Das, wir beide, arm in arme/ unter einem Schirm gebogen. --/ Alles war zum letzenmal'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield
George Meredith : Lord Ormont and his Aminta
"[George] Meredtih's penultimate novel, Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), was, [Henry] James told Edmund Gosse [in letter of 22 August 1894], 'unspeakable' ... he could proceed only at 'the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'I don't dare to work any more tonight. That is why I asked for another Dickens; if I read him in bed he diverts my mind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Night and Day
'There is a trifling scene in Virginia's book where a charming young creature in a bright fantastic attitude plays the flute: it positively frightens me - to realise this utter coldness and indifference'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
George Meredith : The Egoist
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : [novel]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Meredith : Modern Love
"[Wilfrid Scawen] Blunt was a great admirer of [Meredith's] Modern Love and, though he only read it thirty years after its publication when Meredith sent him a copy in 1892, Blunt was accused of plagiarising it in his own Songs of Proteus (1884)."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Print: Book
Henry James : Confidence
'I bought a book by Henry James yesterday and read it, as they say, "until far into the night". It was not very interesting or very good, but I can wade through pages and pages of dull, turgid James for the sake of that sudden sweet shock, that violent throb of delight that he gives me at times. I don't doubt this is genius: only there is an extraordinary amount of pan and an amazingly raffine' flash - '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
George Meredith : The Egoist
"Lady Cynthia Asquith ... believed [as she recorded in her diary] that 'Meredith is very good for reading aloud.' On 10 March 1916 she tested this proposition by reading 'Mamma [Countess Wemyss] two chapters of The Egoist after dinner: she fell asleep'."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith Print: Book
George Meredith : poem
"... Lady Cynthia [Asquith] was gratified to learn that, found in his pocket when Billy Grenfell was killed in battle in 1915 was a Meredith poem, copied out for him by his mother, Lady Desborough."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Desborough
George Meredith : The Egoist
"At the age of 18 Violet Asquith ... tackled The Egoist, which 'I thought brilliant. The first 3 pages made me so angry by their obscureness ... that I nearly left off ... but I possessed myself with patience & loved the rest....'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Asquith Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth : Journal
' "A CALM IRRESISTIBLE WELL-BEING - ALMOST mystic in character, and yet doubtless connected with physical conditions" writes Dorothy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
Richard Quain : Dictionary of Medicine
'Britain was a mainly urban society...and soon an expanding range of sexual literature became available in the cities. Mark Grossek, the son of a Jewish immigrant tailor in Southwark, acquired his knowledge from grafitti, scandalous stories in the local press, 'Lloyd's Weekly News', 'Measure for Measure', the Song of Solomon, some old plays a fellow student had dug out of his father's library, General Booth's 'In Darkest England', Tobias Smollett, Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine', as well as Leviticus ("For myself, the most subtle aura of enticement was wafted from the verb 'begat' and the noun 'concubine'"). There was also Ovid, but unfortunately the popular translation published by Bohn "had left all the tasty chunks in Latin".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Grossek Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Jinne Moore was awfully good at elocution. Was she better than I? I could make the girls cry when I read Dickens in the sewing class, and she couldn't.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book
Edward Bliss Foote : Plain Home Talk and Cyclopaedia
'"This book [Dr Foote's Plain Home Talk and Cyclopaedia) made a great impression on me", wrote Glasgow foundryworker Thomas Bell "And I handed it round my workmates until it was as black as coal and the batters torn".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Bell Print: Book
Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth
'At age thirteen or fourteen John Edmonds, who was reading "The Cloister and the Hearth" with a lower-midddle-class girlfriend, asked her how Margaret had become pregnant. (He assumed pregnancy followed automatically from marriage and cohabitation). She laughed, told him he was silly, and offered a "surprisingly accurate" explanation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Edmonds Print: Book
Marie Stopes : [unknown]
'Even those who read widely about sex often learned very little. In the 1920s Jennie Lee won a psychology degree from the University of Edinburgh... She went beyond the syllabus to read Ellis and Freud. While her collier father could not bring himself to discuss the subject, he was progressive enough to leave a book by Marie Stopes where she was likely to find it. All the same, Jennie was still capable of chatting with a prostitute on Princes Street without realizing what was going on. Stopes on sex "was all a bit remote and unattractive", she found'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jennie Lee Print: Book
Christabel Pankhurst : The Great Scourge
'Years of reading had made [Ruth Slate] tired of squabbling between competing religious sects, and it was Tolstoy's Resurrection that finally gave her the courage to plow her own furrow: "I must be different, or the best in me will die!"... With an evangelical zeal freed from the moorings of dogma, Ruth plunged into the post-Victorian 'sex question'. She heard lectures on eugenics and women's diseases and read Auguste Forel's Sexual Ethics, though she could hardly bear to glance through The Great Scourge, where Christabel Pankhurst insisted that the vast majority of men were infected with venereal disease. She was intrigued when a woman argued in the avant-garde New Age that the temple prostitutes of the East were a much better arrangement than the "unsanitary" way of ordering these things in the West. She gravitated to Francoise Lafitte and the Freewoman magazine, which agitated for the sexual emancipation of women'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ruth Slate Print: Book
Edward Carpenter : Love's Coming of Age
'Jude the Obscure, Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did, H.G. Well's The New Machiavelli and Ann Veronica, as well as the examples of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Eliot all made Eva [Slawson] think furiously about free love.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eva Slawson Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : The New Machiavelli
'Jude the Obscure, Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did, H.G. Well's The New Machiavelli and Ann Veronica, as well as the examples of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Eliot all made Eva [Slawson] think furiously about free love.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eva Slawson Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : Ann Veronica
'Jude the Obscure, Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did, H.G. Well's The New Machiavelli and Ann Veronica, as well as the examples of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Eliot all made Eva [Slawson] think furiously about free love.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eva Slawson Print: Book
Marie Stopes : [book on birth control]
'when Gladys [Teal] took a job at a draper's shop around 1930, a female assistant gave her a Marie Stopes book on birth control , which she gratefully read'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gladys Teal Print: Book
Marie Stopes : [book on sex]
'Houseservant Margaret Powell was unusually daring: she left Marie Stopes, along with the Kama Sutra and Havelock Ellis, on the bedside table for her husband. (Eventually, she was forced to conclude that the books went unread, or at least unheeded).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Powell Print: Book
Bertrand Russell :
'An emancipated working woman like Elizabeth Ring was free to read the works of Freud, Havelock Ellis and Bertrand Russell in the late 1920s, but she was familiar with these books only because her schoolteachers had her exchange them at the Finsbury Public Library'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ring Print: Book
Honore de Balzac :
[Bennett] '. . .reread Balzac and de Maupassant and wondered whether he would be acccused of plagiarism.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh
Letter H 49 (late November 1856) ?Mrs Brownings poem is the finest in the English language ? poem I mean ? (not drama) ? but it is a noble drama too ? ?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh
From the editor?s footnote to a letter sent in November 1856: ?In a letter to Miss Heaton, Rossetti was no less enthusiastic: ?No doubt you are revelling, as I am, in Aurora Leigh ? by far the greatest work of its author surely, and almost beyond anything for exhaustless poetic resource.? (Heaton collection: letters written to Ellen Heaton; sold in 1969; whereabouts unknown.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dante Gabriel Rossetti Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Poems before Congress
Letter H 85 (Latter half of March 1860) ?Mrs Browning?s verse is capital, but would have been better in prose. It is spoiled for rhyme?s sake.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Poems before Congress
Letter H88 (?Mid-April 1860) ?Mrs B. is entirely good. In fact Magnificent (except her rhyme to Modena ? needlessly offensive and ?band plays?) ? Finest moral poetry ever written.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Rebecca Hey : The Moral of Flowers (1833) and The Spirit of the Woods (1837)
Letter of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, May 7 1846 ?Miss Heaton ? told me yesterday that the poetess proper of the city of Leeds was ?Mrs A.? ? as she lives in Leeds and write verses we call her our poetess! ? her ?Spirit of the Woods,? and of the ?Flowers? has been much admired I assure you.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Heaton Print: Book
Frederick Farrar : The Life of Christ
?And this reminds me by a further association of ideas that you would do well to look ? if you like to have your stomach turned ? at Farrar?s Life of Christ ? the gospels done into Daily Telegraphese & drowned in a torrent of flummery. Lord? what are we coming to? If I have time, I think I must give Farrar a rap over the knuckles; though he was an old college friend of mine & a clever fellow; but his damned nonsense is really sickening & gives matter for the sneers of the cynic. I could lay on the whip with pleasure, & I know the beggar feels it.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Miss Grant
"Payn showed me yesterday an article of yours upon a Miss Grant of whom I confess, I have heard for the first time; but I thought the whole really well written & feel that you will be able to command a market for such wares & in better periodicals (if I may say so) than London."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
James Russell Lowell : Pictures from Appledore
"I go off tomorrow to Cumberland where I shall climb the British Mt Blanc & forget for a short time that there are such things as books to be written. I take 2 or 3 to read for alas I can't now quite reduce myself to the animal state as I used to in former days. I looked at something of Lowell's the other day & was amused to find that you have got a Saddleback and a great Haystack in America as well as in Cumberland."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Omar Khayyam :
"I have read, too, or repeated, for I know him by heart, our old friend Omar Khyyam. He is grand in his way & if spiritualised a little, strikes a right note at times but he needs to be a little spiritualised. Yet honestly, literature & religion are rather empty. The only thing is living affection & of that I have had most touching experience."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'... King Kalakava [of Hawaii] ... was an avid reader of [R. L.] Stevenson's romances ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: King Kalakava Print: Unknown
Norman Angell : The Great Illusion
'[A. A.] Milne ... [became] a decided anti-militarist after reading Norman Angell's "The Great Illusion" (1910) ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alan Alexander Milne Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : lyric poetry
'[Robert] Bridges had spent eight months in Germany in the 1860s, after going down from Oxford; and Heine's lyrics, among his favourite reading, had influenced his own poetry.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Bridges Print: Unknown
Rudyard and C. R. L. Kipling and Fletcher : A School History of England
'In 1911 E. M. Forster read "with mingled joy and disgust" "A School History of England", which Kipling and C. R. L. Fletcher had just published ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : The Light that Failed
'[Walter] Besant told [William Robertson] Nicoll that no sooner had he read "The Light that Failed" (1891) on a long train journey than he started it again and read it through a second time.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Besant Print: Book
George Moore : Esther Waters
George Gissing, diary entry for 9 December 1894: 'Gloomy day. Read "Esther Waters". Some pathos and power in latter part, but miserable writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Rider Haggard : Eric Brighteyes
'Thomas Hardy, to whom [Rider] Haggard sent his Norse adventure "Eric Brighteyes" (1891), was roused by "a wild illustration" to start reading a chapter nearer the end than the beginning ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'When Florence Murray married in 1902, her husband, a Colne valley wool manufacturer, was a widower with a young son ... who was looked after by an aged housekeeper ['an extra particular Baptist'] ... one wet afternoon Florence "took "David Copperfield" from the bookshelf and boldly began to read it aloud to her while she knitted. She disapproved of novels, but I represented it as Dickens' life ... the old lady was greatly interested and amused ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Murray Print: Book
Henry James : The Saloon
'"Why do you want to break men's spirits for?" Shaw asked Henry James after reading his one-act play "The Saloon" in 1909.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Heir of Redclyffe
" ... tears filled ... [D. G. Rossetti's] eyes as he read about Guy Morville's death in The Heir of Redclyffe."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dante Gabriel Rossetti Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : Heartsease
" ... Charles Kingsley ... told ... [its] publisher that ... [Heartsease] was 'the most delightful and wholesome novel I ever read ... I found myself wiping my eyes a dozen times before I got through it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kingsley Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Heir of Redclyffe
"The Prime Minister's daughter Violet Asquith read ... [The Heir of Redclyffe] seven times 'from cover to cover -- never failing to cry at the end' ..."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Asquith Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Loss and Gain
'When Wilfrid Blunt ... reread "Loss and Gain" he was struck how "Newman's mind ... seems never to have faced the real issues of belief and unbelief, those which have to be fought out with materialism ..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Robert Elsmere
'The retired Governor of Madras Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, to whom Mrs [Humphry] Ward read extracts from "Robert Elsmere "before it was published, was arrested by the novel's passages of "extraordinary power"...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Humphry Ward
J. Henry Shorthouse : John Inglesant
'One of the privately printed copies [of "John Inglesant" was] ... read by Mrs Humphry Ward and her advocacy persuaded Macmillan's to give it general release.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward
J. Henry Shorthouse : John Inglesant
'Writing her memoirs in 1926, Janet Courtney went back to what she was like at 15, "when "John Inglesant" was published, spending the long summer holidays in the quiet of Barton, and for those six summer weeks of 1881 I lived in the book ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Courtney Print: Book
Mrs Humphry Ward : The History of David Grieve
' ... [Gladstone] was disappointed by ... "The History of David Grieve" (1892), though he read it all ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Mrs Humphry Ward :
' ... [Virginia Woolf] was liable to blame Mrs [Humphry] Ward for her own periods of sterility as a writer: "How I dislike writing straight after reading Mrs H. Ward! -- she is as great a menace to health of mind as influenza to the body".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
"It is very like Shirley except that there is no heather & the people are all of them of the Yorkshire kind as described by the Brontes."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Francois de La Rochefoucauld : Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales
"The longer you are married, the better you will like it & then I hope you will show proper gratitude to your adviser - not but that you will also heretically deny his influence in the matter. Man is ungrateful. If you doubt it read La Rochefoucauld & the other authors of reputation - I forget their names."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Poet at the Breakfast Table
We have all read, by the way, The Poet at the breakfast table & sent him our sincere compliments on his performance."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
"I think, for example, that Shirley is very superior to Dorothea Brooke. She has far more character & power, though she does not have such a young lady like admiration for Greek & Hebrew scholarship."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Eliot : Middlemarch
"I think, for example, that Shirley is very superior to Dorothea Brooke. She has far more character & power, though she does not have such a young lady like admiration for Greek & Hebrew scholarship."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve :
"S[ain]te Beuve & Mat. Arnold (in a smaller way) are the only modern critics wh. seem to me worth reading - perhaps, too, Lowell."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Sand : Les maitres Sonneurs
"If I were in the vein, I think I should exhort you above all to read George Sand, whose country stories seem to me perfect & have a certain affinity to yours. The last I read was the [Les] Maitres Sonneurs wh... I commend to you as wellnigh perfect. You could do something of the kind, though I won't flatter you by saying that I think you could equal her in her own line - I don't think anyone could. But the harmony & grace even if strictly inimitable are good to aim at."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Hospital Sonnets
"I may tell you that, although your Hospital Sonnets did not seem to attract much notice at the time, as, indeed, I always thought them rather wasted on a Magazine - yet I have heard them noticed since by more than one person in a way that would please you. A friend who called here two days ago appeared to have them by heart - at least he quoted the one about the two boys with great readiness of feeling."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
William Ernest Henley : Children: Private Ward
"I may tell you that, although your Hospital Sonnets did not seem to attract much notice at the time, as, indeed, I always thought them rather wasted on a Magazine - yet I have heard them noticed since by more than one person in a way that would please you. A friend who called here two days ago appeared to have them by heart - at least he quoted the one about the two boys with great readiness of feeling."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [poems]
" But, if I chose to walk six or seven miles along the coast... I might spend as pocket-money the railway fare I thus saved. Such considerable sums I fostered in order to buy with them editions of the poets. These were not in those days, as they are now, at the beck and call of every purse, and the attainment of each little masterpiece was a separate triumph. In particular I shall never forget the excitement of teaching at last the exorbitant price the bookseller asked for the only, although imperfect, edition of the poems of S.T.Coleridge. At last I could meet his demand, and my friend and I went down to consummate the solemn purchase. Comimg away with our treasure, we read aloud from the oranged-coloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at last we sat down on the bulging foot of an elm-tree in a secluded lane. Here we stayed, in a sort of poetical nirvana, reading, forgetting the passage of time, until the hour of our neglected mid-day meal was! a long while past, and we had to hurry home to bread and chees and a scolding."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander
" But, when I was nearly sixteen, I made a purchase which brought me into sad trouble, and was the cause of a permanent wound to myself-respect. I had long coveted in the book-shop window a volume in which the poetical works of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were said to be combined.This I bought at length, and I carried it with me to devour as I trod the desolate road that brought me along the edge of the cliff on Saturday afternoons. Ben Jonson I could make nothing of, but when I turned to 'Hero and Leander' I was lifted to a heaven of passion and music. It was a marvellous revelation of romantic beauty to me, and as paced along that lonely and exquisite highway, with its immense command of the sea, and its peeps ever now and then, through slanting thickets, far down to the snow-white shingle, I lifted up my voice, singing the verses, as I strolled along..[quote]so it wenton, and I thought I had never read anything so lovely...[quote]it all seemed to my fancy intoxicating beyond anything I had ever even dreamed of, since I had not yet become aquainted with any of the modern romanticists."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Hero and Leander
" When I reached home, tired out with enthusiasm and exercise, I must needs, so soon as I had eaten, search out my stepmother that she might be a partner in my joys. It is remarkable to me now, and a disconcerting proof of my still almost infantile innocence, that, having induced her to settle to her knitting, I began, without hesitation, to read Marlowe's voluptuous poem aloud to that blameless Christian gentlewoman. We got on very well in the opening, but at the episode of Cupid's pining, my stepmother's needles began nervously to clash, and when we launched on the description of Leander's person, she interruptedme by saying, rather sharply, 'give me that book, please, I should like to read the rest to myself.' I resigned the reading in amazement, and was stupefied to see her take the volume, shut it with a snap and hide it under her needlework. Nor could I extract from her another word on the subject." [Gosse goes on to tell how his Father told him off, and burned the book]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance...with Shelley, whose 'Queen Mab' at first repelled me from the threshold of his ediface."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Lucile
"I tried to read Lord Lytton's Lucile which is rot."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Robert Southey : Works (poetical?)
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...My Father presented me with the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me 'The Golden Treasury' in which almost everything seemed exquisite."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Robert Browning :
"I have been amusing myself down here with reading Browning - some of him for the first time; & I wonder more and more at his extraordinary power occasionally & at its waste in some directions. I think him marvellously good, when at his best."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In the Valley of the Cauteretz
"This bit of Tennyson sticks in my head; so I write it down: - 'All along the valley where the waters flow / I walked with one I loved two & thirty years ago / All along the valley while I walked today / The two & thirty years were a mist that rolled away / All along the valley by rock & wood & tree / The voice of the dead was a living voice to me'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Richard Watson Gilder : [poem]
'Now for yesterday. The proceedings were the 'exercises' of the P.B.K. society wh. = simply a gathering of old students of all ages. They begin by some distinguished person reading an 'oration' & another a poem in the theatre. After that there is a dinner - a 'cold collation' we should call it & a set of speeches intended to be witty & with no reporters present. The poet was a little man called Gilder, editor of the Century. His poem was good of its kind & he was a bright amiable little man with whom I talked about Magazine editing.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen
Richard Grant White : [on Copyright]
'Is not your countryman Grant White a terrible bore? The question is prompted by the fact of me having just read a review of him in the Saturday. But my opinion is not formed upon the review but upon his just having sent me two books of his, one on Copyright & one called Washington Adams. As he was polite to me 20 years ago I ought to have acknowledged them; but after reading, I found it quite impossible to say anything civil. He seemed to me to be both silly & impertinent. But you need not tell me anything of him; for I guess I know the animal sufficiently.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Richard Grant White : Washington Adams
'Is not your countryman Grant White a terrible bore? The question is prompted by the fact of me having just read a review of him in the Saturday. But my opinion is not formed upon the review but upon his just having sent me two books of his, one on Copyright & one called Washington Adams. As he was polite to me 20 years ago I ought to have acknowledged them; but after reading, I found it quite impossible to say anything civil. He seemed to me to be both silly & impertinent. But you need not tell me anything of him; for I guess I know the animal sufficiently.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Henry Sidgwick : Review of Leslie Stephen's The Science of Ethics
'I have ? read your criticism of my book. I will not say that you have given no twinges to my vanity; but I will say that I am in perfect charity with my critic. I should have preferred it if you had been a convert & admitted that every word I said was true. But I am quite satisfied to have a candid & generous critic & that you could not cease to be without ceasing to be yourself. Most of the points between us would require a treatise instead of a letter. As, for example, I can never understand what is meant to aversion & desire [to] expect anticipation of pain & pleasure. Therefore to me it is the same thing to say that conduct is determined by one or the other. But this implies a psychological difference not to be bridged over in a letter.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'The hero seems to me superior to the Rochester or the Louis Moore type, who are all rather lay-figures. Nor do I admire the sister?s work [Wuthering Heights] so much as you do. I see in it more violence than real strength & more rant than genuine passion. However all this is a matter of taste. I will remark, by the way, that I think there is some excuse for the charge of coarseness, as, e.g., the scene where Jane Eyre is half inclined to go to Rochester?s bedroom. I don?t mean coarseness in the sense of prurience; for I fully agree that Miss Bronte writes as a thoroughly pureminded woman; but she is more close to the physical side of passion than young ladies are expected to be?There is also some coarseness in the artistic sense in Jane Eyre. The mad wife is I fancy, unnecessarily bestial? I don?t think justice is generally done to C Bronte now & I shall be glad for that reason to insert your eloquent article.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'I prefer Villette to Shirley, on the whole.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'I prefer Villette to Shirley, on the whole.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
John Henry Newman : An essay in aid of a grammar of assent
'I finished old Newman?s book coming down & as the book is too metaphysical to give you pleasure I will tell you what it comes to, it is an elaborate apology for the morality of persuading yourself that a thing is absolutely certain when you really know that it is not certain at all? Why shouldn?t I say that such a creature is a liar & that I despise him? I do most heartily.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Sand : unknown
'To say the truth, much as I like reading them & specially Balzac and Sand, & little as I am given to overstrictness in my tastes, I do believe that the commonplace criticism is correct. I do think they are as a rule prurient & indecent & that they treat love affairs a good deal too much from the point of view of the whore and the whoremonger. They are very clever and very artistic; but I don?t think delicate either in the sense of art or morals? The books are put together with great skill to produce a given effect; but the effect is apt to border on the nasty & they are too anxious to keep everything in due harmony to give proper contrasts & variety of real life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : unknown
'To say the truth, much as I like reading them & specially Balzac and Sand, & little as I am given to overstrictness in my tastes, I do believe that the commonplace criticism is correct. I do think they are as a rule prurient & indecent & that they treat love affairs a good deal too much from the point of view of the whore and the whoremonger. They are very clever and very artistic; but I don?t think delicate either in the sense of art or morals? The books are put together with great skill to produce a given effect; but the effect is apt to border on the nasty & they are too anxious to keep everything in due harmony to give proper contrasts & variety of real life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Herbert Fisher : Studies in Napoleonic statesmanship: Germany
?I have received your book and in spite of your permission to abstain, have read it from first to last? My ignorance of the subject was pretty exhaustive but I knew just enough to have some kind of pegs to which new knowledge might adhere.?
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Eliot : Romola
"Then I promised Morley to contribute to a continuation of the 'Men of Letters' series a book upon George Eliot. I find it very hard to tell you the truth. I admire English country novels as much as I could wish; but later performances are not to my taste. Romola bores me and the 'poetry' - does not appear to be poetry."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Herbert Fisher : The Medieval Empire
?I have waited to thank you for your book till I had read it & write now ? before having quite finished ? because I can talk best with my pen & would rather anticipate tomorrow. I am, as you know, quite unable to criticize the substance. I am greatly ignorant of history & of that part of history beyond nearly all others. I can, however, see that you have got through an amount of work wh. amazes me? I thought well of you; but you have quite surpassed my expectations.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : Democracy and other addresses
?Meanwhile I have a book from you, wh. I ought to have acknowledged. I guess that Julia did my duty & I did it better than I should. But, though late, I will say thank you now. I admire your faculty of addressing but I should like an argument or two upon minor points.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Sir Alfred Lyall : Eastern Studies, The
'Do you know his [Sir Alfred Lyall's] books? The "Eastern Studies" is, I think, the most interesting work of the kind that I have ever read. It explains from actual observation how gods are born in India at the present day; how they get promotion, if they have luck in the miraculous line of business & so forth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Sir Alfred Lyall : Verses written in India
?His [Sir Alfred Lyall] little volume of poems too is very good in its way. When I came back from America last time, I made a reputation on board by reciting one of the poems ? Theology in Extremis ? at a sort of penny reading? I have never been the object of so many attentions before or since and gave my autograph to a dozen ladies. Independent of that, Lyall is a man worth knowing & unluckily so popular in society that I don?t often get a chance of seeing him.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Sir Alfred Lyall : Verses written in India
?His [Sir Alfred Lyall] little volume of poems too is very good in its way. When I came back from America last time, I made a reputation on board by reciting one of the poems ? Theology in Extremis ? at a sort of penny reading? I have never been the object of so many attentions before or since and gave my autograph to a dozen ladies. Independent of that, Lyall is a man worth knowing & unluckily so popular in society that I don?t often get a chance of seeing him.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
?Another book, by the way, worth a glance is a collection of old S. T. Coleridge?s letters. I have had to write the beggar?s life & have a rather morbid familiarity with his history wh. makes me appreciate better than some people his amazing wriggling & self-reproaches & astonishing pouring out of unctuous twaddlings. After all Carlyle?s portrait of him has done the thing unsurpassably well & it is impossible to add much to it. But there are some delicious bits in this.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
George Santayana : unknown
'I find distraction in writing, with a growing sense that it is not worth the trouble; but at 64 it is too late to learn a new trade. I read a bit too; though books have become dull of late. However, they amuse me at times. You sent me one the other day by a certain Santayana; who seems to be a bright & fresh sort of person. He irritated me a little by a rather meaningless philosophy; "nothing", he said, I remember, "is objectively impressive." How the devil should it be?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
John Robert Seeley : Ecce Homo: a survey of the life and work of Jesus Christ
?In your last ? letter you spoke very highly of Ecce Homo. To say the truth I don?t agree in your estimate ? partly because the book seemed to me to be feeble rhetorically, but partly, it may be, from another cause. I cannot look upon theological dogmas with the same kind of indifference that you do. ? Now ?Ecce Homo? may be amiable & enthusiastic & all that; but in a theological point of view, it is to me hateful. It is a feeble attempt to make sentimental oratory do the work of logic, & to supersede all criticism by a sort of a priori gush of enthusiasm.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : article on Victor Hugo
?I have read with great interest your article on Victor Hugo & also that which appeared in the last number of Macmillan. I shall be happy to accept Hugo & if I have been rather long in answering you, it is only because I wished to give a second reading to the article? I think very highly of the promise shown in your writing & therefore think it worth while to write more fully than I often do to contributors.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Serial / periodical
Victor Hugo :
?To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery & background wh. would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able ? I fairly confess ? to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why it is absent from Fielding & Richardson. Yet surely Hugo?s own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel.?
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
?To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery & background wh. would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able ? I fairly confess ? to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why it is absent from Fielding & Richardson. Yet surely Hugo?s own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel.?
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Margaret Veley : Marriage of Shadows and Other Poems
"I was thinking of Eliot [Norton] the other day. When he was here in the summer he came one day to see Miss Valey. She had a pleasant little talk with us & was pleased, I think, with his friendly admiration of her books... The poems, I think, showed a real talent but - well, not quite of the first order."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Memoirs
"... but I do send by a carman two volumes of Alfieri's Life and Kirwan's Essay on Happiness, and the ... edition of Parent's Assistant, which with your leave, I present to your servant Richard."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Germaine De Stael : Corinne
"I have read Corinne with my father, and I like it better than he does. In one word, I am dazzled by the genius, provoked by the absurdities, and in admiration of the taste and critical judgement of Italian literature displayed throughout the work. ... My father acknowledges he never read anything more pathetic."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Sir William Jones : Asiatic Miscellany. pieces and extracts from various publications consisting of translations, fugitive pieces
then pitied me [my father] for the ten-mile stage I had to go alone, but I did not pity myself, for I had Sir William Jones's and Sir William Chambers's Asiatic Miscellany. the metaphysical poetry of India, however, it is not to my taste."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : English Bards and Scotch Reviwers: a satire
'I do not like Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch reviewers, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong and worthy of Pope and the Dunciad! But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the 'paralytic muse' of the man who had been his guardian and is his relation and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither a great not good mind; and I feel dislike and disgust for his Lordship.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
?Her next obvious defect (we hesitate to call it a defect) is a total moral inability to paint the strongest passion that can distract the human heart or agitate human life. Miss Caroline Percy, to the best of our recollection, makes one strong speech about love in Patronage, and that is the first and last we hear of it in her words.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Belinda
?In Belinda, Lady Delacour offers the heroine ?a silver penny for her thoughts?, and so fond is Miss Edgeworth of this bright image that she repeats it again in her Comic Dramas. Where could she have heard this silly vulgarism??
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Comic Dramas
?In Belinda, Lady Delacour offers the heroine ?a silver penny for her thoughts?, and so fond is Miss Edgeworth of this bright image that she repeats it again in her Comic Dramas. Where could she have heard this silly vulgarism??
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Tales of Fashionable Life
?Miss Edgeworth?s incomparable description of Mrs Beaumont?s marriage in Manoeuvering, where the interesting, almost fainting, lady is lifted out of the arms of her anxious bridesmaids and supported up the aisle, with the marked gallantry of true tenderness by her happy bridegroom Sir John Hunter.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Female Quixote
?It would be necessary to notice here, when we profess to give a sketch of the progress of novel or romance writing, as indication of and connected with the state of manners, the few exceptions that occur to be our observations in the novels of Mrs Lennox, Mrs Sheridan and Cumberland. The Female Quixote of the former .. retains still a portion of its original interest.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : Arundel
?Cumberland attempted and failed to revive the classical English novel. We sit down in fact by Cumberlands? fireside and listen to his long dull stories as we would to the tales of a garrulous, good tempered, prosing old man, pleased with him sometimes for occasional amusement, and pleased with ourselves for our patience and charity.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Clara Reeve : The Old English Baron
?Walpole?s Catle of Otranto, though dramatized by Jephson, has few imitations. Clara Reeve?s English Baron was the best, but even she in vain beckoned authors to cross the magic threshold of Gothic romance. They paused on the verge, gazed with wistful romance, and forbore to enter its mysterious precincts.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Richard Lalor Sheil : The Apostate: a tragedy in five acts
?Upon the whole, this play with the powerful assistance of eminent actors and scenical illusion and burning palaces, and processions with towers of the Inquisition in perspective and Moors who preach the Gospel to Christians just as they are going to be burnt for not believing it and half mad, half poisoned heroines who visit their lovers in dungeons with wreaths of flowers on their heads, may produce an effect on the stage ? but what effect will it produce in the closet??
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
?In the works of Fielding our credulity is not taxed for superfluous admiration by any of those faultless monsters? Fielding?s chief excellence appears to lie in the delineation of his characters that combine simplicity, ignorance and benevolence. His Parson Adams and his Partridge will still induce us to tolerate even Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. His mind appeared incapable of concocting a character of real virtue. His Allworthy is a prosing, self sufficient moral pedant; in Joseph Andrews virtue is ridiculous; in Tom Jones vice is honourable. Nobody now reads either but the school boy, and one of the earliest signs of an improved taste, and an advancement in Christian morality, is the rejection of both.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : The Old Manor House
?The transition from the vapid sentimentality of the novel of fifty years ago to the goblin horrors of the last twenty is so strong that it almost puzzles us to find a connecting link? Perhaps Charlotte Smith?s novels might have been the connecting link between these different species. ?The Old Manor House has really a great deal to answer for? Her heroines have all the requisites of persecuted innocence? The rage for lumbering ruins, for mildewed manuscripts.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : The Monk
?The most extraordinary production of this period was the powerful and wicked romance of The Monk.?
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
?But Lord Byron ? he must write with great ease and rapidity.? ?That I don?t know. I could never finish the perusal of any of his long poems. There is something in them excessively at variance with my notions of poetry. He is too fond of the obsolete? It is a sort of a mixed mode, neither old nor new, but incessantly hovering between both.? ?What do you think of Childe Harold?? ?I do not know what to think of it; nor can I give you definitely my reasons for disliking his poems generally.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel and Other Poems
??Coleridge, who, en parenthesis, he disliked for a merciless attack on his tragedy. Which the ill success of the ?Remorse? had incited; and he had prepared a retaliation in the pages of ?Colburn?s Magazine? which I read in manuscript ? a review of ?Christabel?, but which I do not remember to have seen published.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
Charles-Louis Montesquieu : Causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence
?I have been reading a power of good books; Montesquieu Sur la grandeur and d?cadence des Romains, which I recommend to you as a book you will admire, because it furnishes so much food for thought, it shows how history may be studied for the advantage of mankind, not for the mere purpose of remembering facts and reporting them.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel : Riddle of the Universe
In the public library [Manny Shinwell] doggedly tackled volumes "whose contents I usually failed to understand": Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe, Herbert Spencer's Sociology, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Shinwell's whole intellectual career was an exciting but laborious exercise in decoding. All his life he used a dictionary to correct his pronunciation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel Shinwell (later Baron Shinwell) Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : The Study of Sociology
In the public library [Manny Shinwell] doggedly tackled volumes "whose contents I usually failed to understand": Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe, Herbert Spencer's Sociology, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Shinwell's whole intellectual career was an exciting but laborious exercise in decoding. All his life he used a dictionary to correct his pronunciation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel Shinwell (later Baron Shinwell) Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius : Meditations
In the public library [Manny Shinwell] doggedly tackled volumes "whose contents I usually failed to understand": Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe, Herbert Spencer's Sociology, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Shinwell's whole intellectual career was an exciting but laborious exercise in decoding. All his life he used a dictionary to correct his pronunciation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmanuel Shinwell (later Baron Shinwell) Print: Book
James Sheridan Knowles : Virginius
?In May 1820 Sheridan Knowles produced ?Virginius?. The extraordinary success of that play naturally excited Maturin?s curiosity, and he was impatient to read it. ? When ?Virginius? was first published, a friend of Maturin?s purchased a copy, with which he was so pleased that it always lay on his table and he constantly devoted hours of relaxation to its perusal.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : complete works to 1820
?Of Sir Walter Scott I have heard Maturin speak in terms of rapture. He considered his extraordinary productions the greatest efforts of human genius, and often said that in the poetry of universal nature he considered him equal to Shakespeare. So sensibly imbued was he with the characteristics of those magic fictions, that he apprehended the publication of an intentional imitation of Ivanhoe. I believe the public however never perceived any imitation beyond that into which every novelist falls who happens to write after Sir Walter.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
George Crabbe : poetic works
??And which of the living poets fulfils your ideal standard of excellence?? ?Crabbe. He is all nature without pomp or parade and exhibits at times deep pathos and feelings. His characters are certainly homely and his scenes rather unpoethical; but then he invests his object with so much tenderness and sweetness that you care not who are the actors, or in what situations they are placed.??
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis :
The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader raange of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
Honore de Balzac :
The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader range of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Francis Thompson :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Christina Rossetti :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti :
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Francis Turner Palgrave : Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Finn Print: Book
Friedrich von Nietzsche :
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
Henry David Thoreau :
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
Arthur Schopenhauer :
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
Karl Marx :
[Bill Naughton was hurt that when he applied for conscientious objector status the tribunal was suspicious of his elevated vocabulary] '"I couldn't help feeling hurt", Naughton recalled, "that they should deny one the right to use the English language". That hit both ethnic and class nerves: he had been born in County Mayo of peasant stock. At any rate, he was using the language to read Locke, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Marx and The Faerie Queene. They were not easy to decipher at first, but as he pieced together an understanding of what he was reading, he became more critical and less deferential...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Naughton Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
Karl Marx :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
John Stuart Mill :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
Alfred Marshall :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Fabian Essays
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
George Meredith :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies Print: Book
Charles Robert Dallas : History of the Maroons, from their origin to the establishment of their chief tribe at Sierra Leone...
?I have some idea of writing in the intervals of my severer studies for professional education, a comedy for my father?s birthday, but I shall do it up in my own room, and shall not produce it until it is finished. I found the first hint of it in the strangest place that anybody could invent, for it was in Dallas?s History of the Maroons, and you may read the book to find out, and ten to one you miss it. ? pray read the book, for it is extremely interesting and entertaining.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Minor Morals: interspersed with sketches of National history and historical anecdotes and original stories
?Have you seen Minor Morals by Mrs Smith ? There is in it a beautiful botanical poem called ?Calendar of Flora?.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Marie-Jeanne Philipon Roland de la Platiere : Memoirs
'You do not mention Madame Roland, therefore I am not sure whether you have read her; if you have only read her in the translation which talks of her uncle Bimont's dying of a fit of the gout translated to his chest, you have done her injustice. We think some of her Memoirs beautifully written and like Rousseau; she was a great woman and died heroically. I think if I had been Mons Roland I should not have shot myself for her sake.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Mary Dudley :
7/1/1827 ? ?Then read the first part of Mary Dudley?s Life; felt true unity with her experience when first called to the ministry. What a bright course was hers! ?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
M R Milford :
8/1/1827 ? ?Finished M. R. Milford?s pretty book, and write out my new fable.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith :
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan :
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richarson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Canterbury Tales
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : Ballad of Reading Gaol
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Deserted Village
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : The Charge of the Light Brigade
'When, during the 1926 miners' strike, [G.A.W. Tomlinson] read 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', an obvious political message "crashed into my mind, mixing together the soldiers of the poem and the men of the pits, I was terribly excited. Why hadn't all the clever people found this out?".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : presumably Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne :
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards Print: Book
George Meredith :
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'Percy Wall described his [colliery] institute as a "blatantly utilitarian" building with a "square cemented front" and a "drab, poorly lit" reading room, but it offered a wonderful escape from a dull Welsh village: "I could view the future through the words of H.G. Wells, participate in the elucidation of mysteries with Sherlock Holmes,... or penetrate darkest Africa with Rider Haggard as my guide. I could laugh at the comic frustrations of coaster seaman or bargee at the call of W.A. Jacobs. What a gloriously rich age it was for the storyteller!... When the stories palled there was always the illustrated weeklies with their pictures of people and conditions remote from my personal experience... I could laugh with Punch or Truth, although some of the humour was much too subtle for my limited education. Above all I could study the Review of Reviews and learn therein the complexities of foreign affairs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Arthur Conan Doyle : [Sherlock Holmes Stories]
'Percy Wall described his [colliery] institute as a "blatantly utilitarian" building with a "square cemented front" and a "drab, poorly lit" reading room, but it offered a wonderful escape from a dull Welsh village: "I could view the future through the words of H.G. Wells, participate in the elucidation of mysteries with Sherlock Holmes,... or penetrate darkest Africa with Rider Haggard as my guide. I could laugh at the comic frustrations of coaster seaman or bargee at the call of W.A. Jacobs. What a gloriously rich age it was for the storyteller!... When the stories palled there was always the illustrated weeklies with their pictures of people and conditions remote from my personal experience... I could laugh with Punch or Truth, although some of the humour was much too subtle for my limited education. Above all I could study the Review of Reviews and learn therein the complexities of foreign affairs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : [African stories]
'Percy Wall described his [colliery] institute as a "blatantly utilitarian" building with a "square cemented front" and a "drab, poorly lit" reading room, but it offered a wonderful escape from a dull Welsh village: "I could view the future through the words of H.G. Wells, participate in the elucidation of mysteries with Sherlock Holmes,... or penetrate darkest Africa with Rider Haggard as my guide. I could laugh at the comic frustrations of coaster seaman or bargee at the call of W.A. Jacobs. What a gloriously rich age it was for the storyteller!... When the stories palled there was always the illustrated weeklies with their pictures of people and conditions remote from my personal experience... I could laugh with Punch or Truth, although some of the humour was much too subtle for my limited education. Above all I could study the Review of Reviews and learn therein the complexities of foreign affairs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
William Wymark Jacobs :
'Percy Wall described his [colliery] institute as a "blatantly utilitarian" building with a "square cemented front" and a "drab, poorly lit" reading room, but it offered a wonderful escape from a dull Welsh village: "I could view the future through the words of H.G. Wells, participate in the elucidation of mysteries with Sherlock Holmes,... or penetrate darkest Africa with Rider Haggard as my guide. I could laugh at the comic frustrations of coaster seaman or bargee at the call of W.A. Jacobs. What a gloriously rich age it was for the storyteller!... When the stories palled there was always the illustrated weeklies with their pictures of people and conditions remote from my personal experience... I could laugh with Punch or Truth, although some of the humour was much too subtle for my limited education. Above all I could study the Review of Reviews and learn therein the complexities of foreign affairs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Karl Marx :
'[During the Great Depression] "Thousands used the Public Library for the first time", recalled itinerant labourer John Brown, who read Shaw, Marx, Engels, and classic literature until he exhausted his South Shields library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Brown Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
'[During the Great Depression] "Thousands used the Public Library for the first time", recalled itinerant labourer John Brown, who read Shaw, Marx, Engels, and classic literature until he exhausted his South Shields library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Brown Print: Book
Friedrich Engels :
'[During the Great Depression] "Thousands used the Public Library for the first time", recalled itinerant labourer John Brown, who read Shaw, Marx, Engels, and classic literature until he exhausted his South Shields library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Brown Print: Book
Karl Marx :
'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley Print: Book
Alfred Marshall :
'Attending Oxford on a Cassel scholarship, John Allaway found that his WEA training, far from fitting him into a university mold, enabled him to criticize the conventional curriculum. Assigned the orthodox economics texts of Alfred Marshall, he read them "with deep suspicion" and made a point of going beyond the set books to study J.A. Hobson, Henry George, Hugh Dalton, and John Maynard Keynes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Allaway Print: Book
Henry George :
'Attending Oxford on a Cassel scholarship, John Allaway found that his WEA training, far from fitting him into a university mold, enabled him to criticize the conventional curriculum. Assigned the orthodox economics texts of Alfred Marshall, he read them "with deep suspicion" and made a point of going beyond the set books to study J.A. Hobson, Henry George, Hugh Dalton, and John Maynard Keynes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Allaway Print: Book
John Maynard Keynes :
'Attending Oxford on a Cassel scholarship, John Allaway found that his WEA training, far from fitting him into a university mold, enabled him to criticize the conventional curriculum. Assigned the orthodox economics texts of Alfred Marshall, he read them "with deep suspicion" and made a point of going beyond the set books to study J.A. Hobson, Henry George, Hugh Dalton, and John Maynard Keynes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Allaway Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [novels]
'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
George Borrow : unknown
'The novels of Scott and Dickens had long been her favourite reading, but of late years she had become interested in the work of George Borrow, a Norfolk man who had recently gained a certain measure of fame.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book
Karl Marx : Das Kapital
'For Dunfermline housepainter James Clunie, Das Kapital and the Wealth of Nations both demonstrated that industrialism inevitably increased economic inequality, the exploitation of labour and class conflict. To this The Descent of Man added "the great idea of human freedom... It brought out the idea that whether our children were with or without shoes was due to poverty arising from the administration of society".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clunie Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Descent of Man
'For Dunfermline housepainter James Clunie, Das Kapital and the Wealth of Nations both demonstrated that industrialism inevitably increased economic inequality, the exploitation of labour and class conflict. To this The Descent of Man added "the great idea of human freedom... It brought out the idea that whether our children were with or without shoes was due to poverty arising from the administration of society".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Clunie Print: Book
Henri-Louis Bergson :
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out of work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche :
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Bertrand Russell :
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Herbert Spencer :
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Karl Marx :
'Taxi driver Herbert Hodge...knew that years on the dole only produced apathy, and that out-of-work men wanted practical help in dealing with the Board of Guardians far more than ideology. That experience plus his eclectic reading (Bergson, Nietzsche, William McDougall, Bertrand Russell, the new Testament, and Herbert Spencer as well as Marx) led him out of the [Communist] Party towards a socialism that would be brought about by individual volition...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
Robert Blatchford (ed.) : The Clarion
'[Harry] McShane began his education in Marxism by reading Justice and The Socialist, the respective organs of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist Labour Party. But the former, he found, preached a "narrow stupid Marxism",while the latter printed page after grey page on the materialist conception of history. Even with A.P. Hazell's penny pamphlet, A Summary of Marx's 'Capital', it took him a full week to master the labour theory of value. Like most working-class readers he preferred Blatchford's Clarion, where an unideological socialism was leavened with breezy articles on literature, freethought and science'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry McShane Print: Serial / periodical
Karl Marx : Das Kapital
'In 1925 Ifan Edwards was driven by unemployment to read Das Kapital in the public library. "It took him about four hundred pages of close print to come to the crux of his argument in the classic illustration of a labourer looking for a job in a factory, and, as he said, expecting nothing but a hiding", Edwards remembered. "This little aside appealed to me very much, as I had had one or two hidings myself".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ifan Edwards Print: Book
Robert Southey : letter to Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte to Robert Southey, 16 March 1837: 'At the first perusal of your letter I felt only shame, and regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you [with request for advice on starting literary career] ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Karl Marx : Das Kapital
[George Scott disliked the Communism of fellow journalist, Stan] 'He had read Das Kapital (or parts of it) and could talk slickly about dialectical materialism. His own dialectic was derived from Straight and Crooked Thinking, a guide to identifying faulty logic, but he "enjoyed it because it taught him how to twist truth to his own ends...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stan (acquaintance of George Scott) Print: Book
Robert and Charlotte Southey and Bronte : letters
Charlotte Bronte to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 26 August 1850, regarding possible publication of letters between herself and Robert Southey: 'I have now read them and feel that -- truly wise and kind as they are -- they ought to be published ...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Robert Southey : Life and Correspondence
Charlotte Bronte to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 26 August 1850: ' ... the perusal of his [Robert Southey's] "Life and Correspondence" arranged by yourself has much deepened the esteem and admiration with whch I previously regarded him.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Eugene Aram
Emily Bronte, diary paper for 26 June 1837: 'Monday evening June 26 1837 A bit past 4 o'clock Charolotte [sic] working in Aunts room Branwell reading "Eugene Aram" to her ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Branwell Bronte Print: Book
Charles Darwin : [all works]
'Ewan McColl remembered his father, a Communist ironfounder, as someone who was always giving him secondhand books. He "belonged to the generation who believed that books were tools that could open a lock which would free people..." At age eight McColl received the works of Darwin. By fifteen he had read Gogol, Dostoevsky and the entire Human Comedy: "They were a refuge from the horrors of the life around us... Unemployment in the 1930s was unbelievable, you really felt you'd never escape... So books for me were a kind of fantasy life... For me to go at the age of fourteen, to drop into the library and discover a book like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four-Sided Figure... the titles alone produced a kind of happiness in me... When I discovered Gogol in that abominable translation of Constance Garnett with those light blue bindings... I can remember the marvellous sensation of sitting in the library and opening the volume and going into that world of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin in The Overcoat or in The Nose, or The Madman's Diary. I thought I'd never read anything so marvellous, and through books I was living in many worlds simultaneously. I was living in St Petersburg and in Paris with Balzac... And I knew all the characters, Lucien de Rubempre and Rastignac as though they were my own friends".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ewan McColl Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Ewan McColl remembered his father, a Communist ironfounder, as someone who was always giving him secondhand books. He "belonged to the generation who believed that books were tools that could open a lock which would free people..." At age eight McColl received the works of Darwin. By fifteen he had read Gogol, Dostoevsky and the entire Human Comedy: "They were a refuge from the horrors of the life around us... Unemployment in the 1930s was unbelievable, you really felt you'd never escape... So books for me were a kind of fantasy life... For me to go at the age of fourteen, to drop into the library and discover a book like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four-Sided Figure... the titles alone produced a kind of happiness in me... When I discovered Gogol in that abominable translation of Constance Garnett with those light blue bindings... I can remember the marvellous sensation of sitting in the library and opening the volume and going into that world of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin in The Overcoat or in The Nose, or The Madman's Diary. I thought I'd never read anything so marvellous, and through books I was living in many worlds simultaneously. I was living in St Petersburg and in Paris with Balzac... And I knew all the characters, Lucien de Rubempre and Rastignac as though they were my own friends".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ewan McColl Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : The Human Comedy
'Ewan McColl remembered his father, a Communist ironfounder, as someone who was always giving him secondhand books. He "belonged to the generation who believed that books were tools that could open a lock which would free people..." At age eight McColl received the works of Darwin. By fifteen he had read Gogol, Dostoevsky and the entire Human Comedy: "They were a refuge from the horrors of the life around us... Unemployment in the 1930s was unbelievable, you really felt you'd never escape... So books for me were a kind of fantasy life... For me to go at the age of fourteen, to drop into the library and discover a book like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four-Sided Figure... the titles alone produced a kind of happiness in me... When I discovered Gogol in that abominable translation of Constance Garnett with those light blue bindings... I can remember the marvellous sensation of sitting in the library and opening the volume and going into that world of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin in The Overcoat or in The Nose, or The Madman's Diary. I thought I'd never read anything so marvellous, and through books I was living in many worlds simultaneously. I was living in St Petersburg and in Paris with Balzac... And I knew all the characters, Lucien de Rubempre and Rastignac as though they were my own friends".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ewan McColl Print: Book
Friedrich Engels : The Peasant War in Germany
'By [age fifteen] [Ewan] McColl had also read Engels's The Peasant War in Germany and The Origins of the Family'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ewan McColl Print: Book
Friedrich Engels : The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
'By [age fifteen] [Ewan] McColl had also read Engels's The Peasant War in Germany and The Origins of the Family'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ewan McColl Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : The Three Musketeers
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe :
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
Edward George Earl Bulwer Lytton : The Coming Race
'Next to Robinson Crusoe, Rider liked the Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Macaulay. His two favourite novels were Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and The Coming Race, a fantasy novel by Bulwer Lytton (the uncle of Sir Henry Bulwer, a Norfolk neighbour and friend of Squire Haggard who was to play a decisive part in Rider's life).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Rider Haggard Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Arnold Bennett :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Unknown
Henrik Ibsen : Ghosts
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : A Doll's House
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : The Princess
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
George Eliot :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
George (Amantine Lucille Aurore) Sand (Dupin) :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Charlotte /Emily/ Anne Bronte :
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Nore Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
George Smith, A Memoir (London, 1902): 'The MS. of "Jane Eyre" was read by Mr Wiliams ... he brought it to me on a Saturday, and said that he would like me to read it ... after breakfast on Sunday morning I took the MS. of "Jane Eyre" to my little study, and began to read it. The story quickly took me captive. Before twelve o'clock my horse came to the door, but I could not put the book down ... Presently the servant came to tell me that luncheon was ready; I asked him to bring me a sandwich and a glass of wine, and still went on with "Jane Eyre" ... before I went to bed that night I had finsihed reading the manuscript.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
George Smith, A Memoir (London, 1902): 'The MS. of "Jane Eyre" was read by Mr Wiliams ... he brought it to me on a Saturday, and said that he would like me to read it ... after breakfast on Sunday morning I took the MS. of "Jane Eyre" to my little study, and began to read it. The story quickly took me captive. Before twelve o'clock my horse came to the door, but I could not put the book down ... Presently the servant came to tell me that luncheon was ready; I asked him to being me a sandwich and a glass of wine, and still went on with "Jane Eyre" ... before I went to bed that night I had finsihed reading the manuscript.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Murray Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
W. M. Thackeray to William Smith Williams, 23 October 1847: 'I wish you had not sent me "Jane Eyre." It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it ... Some of the love passages made me cry, to the astonishment of John who came in with the coals ... Give my respect and thanks to the author, whose novel is the first English one (and the French are only romances now) that I've been able to read for many a day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : The Professor
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 14 December 1847: 'A few days since I looked over "The Professor." I found the beginning very feeble, the whole narrative deficient in incident and in general attractiveness; yet the middle and latter portion of the work ... is as good as I can write ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte :
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 18 December 1847: '"The Observer" has just reached me ... I always compel myself to read the Analysis [of her work] in every newspaper-notice.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Newspaper
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
J. G. Lockhart to a friend, 29 December 1847: 'I have finished the adventures of Miss Jane Eyre, and think her far the cleverest that was written since Austen and Edgeworth were in their prime.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gibson Lockhart Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 4 January 1848: '"Jane Eyre" has got down into Yorkshire; a copy has even penetrated into this neighbourhood: I saw an elderly clergyman reading it the other day, and had the satisfaction of hearing him exclaim "Why -- they have got ---- school, and Mr ---- here, I declare! and Miss ----" (naming the original of Lowood, Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Temple) ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : letter
Charlotte Bronte to G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848: 'What induced you to say that you would rather have written "Pride & Prejudice" or "Tom Jones" than any of the Waverley novels? I had not seen "Pride & Prejudice" till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a common-place face ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
Mary Taylor to Charlotte Bronte, 24 July 1848: 'About a month since I received and read "Jane Eyre".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Review of Charlotte Bronte, Shirley
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 10 January 1850: 'I have received and perused the "Edinburgh Review" [containing negative review of "Shirley" by her friend G. H. Lewes] -- it is very brutal and savage. I am not angry with Lewes -- but I wish in future he would let me alone -- and not write again what makes me feel so cold and sick as I am feeling just now --'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Serial / periodical
Maria Branwell : letters and papers
Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 16 February 1850: 'A few days since a little incident happened which curiously touched me. Papa put into my hands a little packet of letters and papers -- telling me that they were Mamma's and that I might read them -- I did read them in a frame of mind I cannot describe ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter, Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 19 January 1850: 'Mr Nicholls having finished "Jane Eyre" is now crying out for the 'other book' [Shirley] ...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Bell Nicholls Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 28 January 1850: 'Mr Nicholls has finished reading "Shirley" he is delighted with it -- John Brown's wife seriously thought he had gone wrong in the head as she heard him giving vent to roars of laughter as he sat alone -- clapping his hands and stamping on the floor.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Bell Nicholls Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 28 January 1850: 'Mr Nicholls has finished reading "Shirley" he is delighted with it -- John Brown's wife seriously thought he had gone wrong in the head as she heard him giving vent to roars of laughter as he sat alone -- clapping his hands and stamping on the floor. He would read all the scenes about the curates aloud to papa ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Bell Nicholls Print: Book
Thornton Hunt : Note
Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 16 March 1850: 'I return Mr Thornton Hunt's note after reading it carefully.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Robert Southey : Life
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 12 April 1850: 'The perusal of Southey's "Life" has lately afforded me much pleasure; the autobiography with which it commences is deeply interesting and the letters which follow are scarcely less so ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley (extracts)
Mary Taylor to Charlotte Bronte, c.29 April 1850: 'I have seen some extracts from "Shirley" in which you talk of women working.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
Mary Taylor to Charlotte Bronte, 13 August 1850: 'On Wednesday I began "Shirley" and continued in a curious confusion of mind till now ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Taylor Print: Book
Robert Knox : The Races of Men: A Fragment
Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 18 September 1850: 'You should be very thankful that books cannot "talk to each other as well as to their readers" ... Dr Knox alone, with his "Race, a Fragment" (a book which I read with combined interest, amusement and edification) would deliver the voice of a Stentor if any other book ventured to call in question his favourite dogmas.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Mrs Smith : Note to Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte to Mrs Smith (mother of her publisher George Smith), 17 April 1851: 'Before I received your note, I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year ... But Pride has its fall. I read your invitation and immediately felt a great wish to descend from my stilts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley : Life of Dr Arnold
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 6 November 1850: 'I have just finished reading the "Life of Dr Arnold", but now when I wish -- in accordance with your request -- to express what I think of it -- I do not find the task very easy -- proper terms seem wanting ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Harriet and H. G. Martineau and Atkinson : Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development
Charlotte Bronte to James Taylor, 1 February 1851: 'Have you yet read Miss Martineau's and Mr Atkinson's new work "Letters on the Nature and Development of Man?" ... It is the first exposition of avowed Atheism and Materialism I have ever read ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Harriet Taylor : Article on women's emancipation
Charlotte Bronte to Elizabeth Gaskell, 20 September 1851: 'Of all the articles respecting which you question me -- I have seen none except that notable one in the "Westminister" on the Emancipation of Women ... When I first read the paper -- I thought it the work of a powerful-minded -- clear-headed woman ... who longed for power and had never felt affection.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte : note to Ellen Nussey
Charlotte Bronte Nicholls to Ellen Nussey, 20 October 1854: "Arthur has just been glancing over this note -- He thinks I have written too freely ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Bell Nicholls Manuscript: Letter
Edward Gibbon : Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire
I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it. My perusal of the continuation - eight volumes, of history as it is called, by Tobias Smollett MD and others was a much harder and more unprofitable task. Next I read Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman empire - a work of immense research and splendid execution.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Mr. Erskine : [spiritual autobiography]
Joseph Croswell, journal of readings: "'In the evening realized some [spiritual] quickenings in reading the believer's journey to the heavenly Canaan, by Mr. Erskine.'"
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Croswell
Mr. Erskine :
Joseph Croswell, journal of readings: "'In the evening realized some [spiritual] quickenings in reading the believer's journey to the heavenly Canaan, by Mr. Erskine.'"
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Croswell
Henry Mackenzie : The Man of Feeling
I, who was the reader, had not seen it for several years, the rest did not know it at all. I am afraid I perceived a sad change in it, or myself ? which was worse; and the effect altogether failed. Nobody cried, and at some of the passages, the touches that I used to think so exquisite ? Oh Dear! They laughed.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Louisa Stuart Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : The Man of Feeling
I remember so well its first publication, my mother and sisters crying over it, dwelling upon it with rapture! And when I read it, as I was a girl of fourteen not yet versed in sentiment, I had a secret dread I should not cry enough to gain the credit of proper sensibility.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Louisa Stuart Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : [most works]
'Once a month when [Jack Jones's] duties took him to Cardiff, he would exchange twelve to twenty books and take them home in an old suitcase. He read Tolstoy and Gork, and raced through most of Dostoevsky in a month. He was guided by a librarian who, like a university tutor, demanded an intelligent critique of everything he read'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Jones Print: Book
Robert Burns : [poetry]
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : [unknown]
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Little Dorrit
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
Frank Richards : [stories in the Gem]
'London hatter Frederick Willis asserted that [Frank Richards's stories in the Gem and Magnet] taught him to be "very loyal" to the headmaster and teachers at his old Board school: "We were great readers of school stories, from which we learnt that boys of the higher class boarding schools were courageous, honourable, and chivalrous, and steeped in the traditions of the school and loyalty to the country. We tried to mould our lives according to this formula. Needless to say, we fell very short... Nevertheless, the constant effort did us a lot of good".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'London hatter Frederick Willis asserted that [Frank Richards' stories in the Gem and Magnet] 'taught him to be "very loyal" to the headmaster and teachers at his old Board school: "We were great readers of school stories, from which we learnt that boys of the higher class boarding schools were courageous, honourable, and chivalrous, and steeped in the traditions of the school and loyalty to the country. We tried to mould our lives according to this formula. Needless to say, we fell very short... Nevertheless, the constant effort did us a lot of good".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'Edward Ezard admitted that he and his friends read the Gem and Magnet for "the public school glamour". They thoroughly absorbed all the stock phrases and attitudes associated with Greyfriars, Frank Richards's mythical school.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Ezard Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Gem]
Edward Ezard admitted that he and his friends read the Gem and Magnet for "the public school glamour". They thoroughly absorbed all the stock phrases and attitudes associated with Greyfriars, Frank Richards's mythical school.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Ezard Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'For Paul Fletcher, a colliery winder's son in a Lancashire mining town, the Magnet's appeal lay precisely in that "code of schoolboy honour". "Although I never realised it at the time, it proved to influence me more about right or wrong than any other book", he recalled, "And that includes the Bible". After all, the Greyfriars code "was as well defined as the scriptures [were] nebulous".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Paul Fletcher Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'A.J. Mills, a charlady's son, recalled that his teachers made a pathetic attempt to teach an honour system but "the nearest any of us got to knowing about the honour system was to read the Magnet to find out how the other half lived".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: A.J. Mills Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
[Lionel Fraser dreamt unfulfilledly of Oxbridge]: 'Whatever resentment he may have felt was mollified by the Gem and Magnet, which "brought brightness into my rather humdrum existence, giving me an insight into the hitherto unknown life of upper-class children". Making sense of the school slang and rituals was not easy but Tom Merry and Harry Wharton "became my idols and I longed to be like them".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lionel Fraser Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Gem]
[Lionel Fraser dreamt unfulfilledly of Oxbridge]: 'Whatever resentment he may have felt was mollified by the Gem and Magnet, which "brought brightness into my rather humdrum existence, giving me an insight into the hitherto unknown life of upper-class children". Making sense of the school slang and rituals was not easy but Tom Merry and Harry Wharton "became my idols and I longed to be like them".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lionel Fraser Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Gem]
'Charwoman's son Bryan Forbes "devoured every word, believed every word" of the Magnet and Gem, "surrendering to a world I never expected to join". As an adult he appreciated that they rehashed the same plot week after week, all to buttress "our indestructible class system" [but he resented George Orwell critiquing them]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryan Forbes Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'Charwoman's son Bryan Forbes "devoured every word, believed every word" of the Magnet and Gem, "surrendering to a world I never expected to join". As an adult he appreciated that they rehashed the same plot week after week, all to buttress "our indestructible class system" [but he resented George Orwell critiquing them]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryan Forbes Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Magnet]
'Louis Battye, the spastic child of former millworkers, was at first utterly bewildered by the Gem and Magnet, because he was being educated at home and had no school experience of any kind... "But I persevered and eventually familiarised myself with the conventions of the form... I continued to read the Gem and Magnet religiously until I was fourteen or fifteen, and from them I received what might be called the Schoolboy's Code"... [which] enabled him to get along with other children when he was sent to Heswall Hospital'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Louis Battye Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [stories in the Gem]
'Louis Battye, the spastic child of former millworkers, was at first utterly bewildered by the Gem and Magnet, because he was being educated at home and had no school experience of any kind... "But I persevered and eventually familiarised myself with the conventions of the form... I continued to read the Gem and Magnet religiously until I was fourteen or fifteen, and from them I received what might be called the Schoolboy's Code"... [which] enabled him to get along with other children when he was sent to Heswall Hospital'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Louis Battye Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in the Gem]
'V.S. Pritchett furtively devoured the Gem and Magnet with a compositor's son: both adopted Greyfriars nicknames and slang. Pritchett's father eventually found them, burnt them in the fireplace and ordered the boy to read Ruskin, though there was no Ruskin in the house'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in the Magnet]
'V.S. Pritchett furtively devoured the Gem and Magnet with a compositor's son: both adopted Greyfriars nicknames and slang. Pritchett's father eventually found them, burnt them in the fireplace and ordered the boy to read Ruskin, though there was no Ruskin in the house'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in the Magnet]
'Amy Gomm, an electrician's daughter, discovered the erotics of the text in some old Gems and Magnets she found in a cupboard. "What a joy to share my bed with Tom Merry and his chums, and that other band of derring-doers, Harry Wharton & Co. My excitement knew no bounds. My indiscretion was equally boundlesss". When she told her parents about the papers, they naturally burned them'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Amy Gomm Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in the Gem]
'Amy Gomm, an electrician's daughter, discovered the erotics of the text in some old Gems and Magnets she found in a cupboard. "What a joy to share my bed with Tom Merry and his chums, and that other band of derring-doers, Harry Wharton & Co. My excitement knew no bounds. My indiscretion was equally boundlesss". When she told her parents about the papers, they naturally burned them'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Amy Gomm Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in the Magnet]
'After Dennis Marsden won an exhibition to St Catherine's College, Cambridge his parents, solid Labour supporters, "found supreme happiness sitting on the Backs looking over the river and towards King's college. For my father, Lord Maulever (of Billy Bunter and the Magnet) might have walked that lawn; Tom Brown must have been there, and the Fifth Form from St Dominic's. He had read The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green at Oxford, and saw that I had a "gyp" (as Verdant Green had a "scout"). He imagined how my gyp would shake his head and say (as Verdant Green's scout always said), "College Gents will do anything". All I could say... couldn't convince my parents that that powerful Cambridge image of my father's schoolboy reading wasn't my Cambridge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Serial / periodical
Pelham Grenville Wodehouse : [short school story]
'Walter Citrine won, as a Sunday School prize, a volume of school stories from the Captain, including one by P.G. Wodehouse. "The lady who gave this prize awakened in me a thirst for good literature", eventually leading to the works of Karl Marx and his followers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Citrine Print: Book
Karl Marx : [unknown]
'Walter Citrine won, as a Sunday School prize, a volume of school stories from the Captain, including one by P.G. Wodehouse. "The lady who gave this prize awakened in me a thirst for good literature", eventually leading to the works of Karl Marx and his followers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Citrine Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'George Scott left school and the boys' weeklies behind at fifteen: in barely a year he had absorbed enough Shaw, Wells, Dos Passos and (secondhand) Marx to lecture his parents on the evils of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Scott Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [unknown]
'George Scott left school and the boys' weeklies behind at fifteen: in barely a year he had absorbed enough Shaw, Wells, Dos Passos and (secondhand) Marx to lecture his parents on the evils of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Scott Print: Book
John Rodrigo Dos Passos : [unknown]
'George Scott left school and the boys' weeklies behind at fifteen: in barely a year he had absorbed enough Shaw, Wells, Dos Passos and (secondhand) Marx to lecture his parents on the evils of capitalism'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Scott Print: Book
Frank Richards : [school stories in The Magnet]
'Hymie Fagan, an East End Jewish Communist, picked up public school ethics from the Gem, the Magnet and the stories of Talbot Baines Reed. He once declined to run in an athletics event because "It seemed to me, under the influence of the boys' books I had read, that it was dishonourable to run for money".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hymie Fagan Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Richards : [school stories in The Gem]
'Hymie Fagan, an East End Jewish Communist, picked up public school ethics from the Gem, the Magnet and the stories of Talbot Baines Reed. He once declined to run in an athletics event because "It seemed to me, under the influence of the boys' books I had read, that it was dishonourable to run for money".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hymie Fagan Print: Serial / periodical
George Alfred Henty : [novels]
'As a boy Percy Wall adored the "Magnet", the "Boy's Own Paper", and G.A. Henty novels... [Later] While he read Henty for enjoyment, he studied the "Clarion", the "Freethinker", "The Struggle of the Bulgarians for Independence" and "The Philippine Martyrs" for their politics, and did not allow one body of literature to affect the other'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (pen name? in any case, not the 18th c playwright) : The Filipino Martyrs
'As a boy Percy Wall adored the "Magnet", the "Boy's Own Paper", and G.A. Henty novels... [Later] While he read Henty for enjoyment, he studied the "Clarion", the "Freethinker", "The Struggle of the Bulgarians for Independence" and "The Philippine Martyrs" for their politics, and did not allow one body of literature to affect the other'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Wall Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Works
Frances Burney to Esther Burney: 'Well I recollect your reading with our dear Mother all Pope's Works, & Pitt's "Aeneid".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Sleepe Burney and Esther Burney Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : A Sentimental Journey
Frances Burney at seventeen observes that she is about "to charm myself for the third time with poor Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey'."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Elizabeth and Richard Griffith : A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances
'In 1768, Burney read in rapid succession Elizabeth and Richard Griffith's "A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances" (1757) ... Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766); and Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" (1759).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
'In 1768, Burney read in rapid succession Elizabeth and Richard Griffith's "A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances" (1757) ... Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766); and Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" (1759).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Works
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Letters
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : Life of Cicero
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina; or, A Young Lady's Entrance into the World
Charles Burney on his first reading of Frances Burney, "Evelina": 'I perused the first Vol. with fear and trembling, not supposing she wd disgrace her parentage, but not having the least idea that without ... knowledge of the world, she cd write a book worth reading. The dedication to myself ... brought tears to my eyes, and [I] found so much good sense & good writing in the Letters of Mr. Villiers, that ... I hastn'd to tell her... that I had read part of the book with such pleasure, that instead of being angry, I congratulated her on being able to write so well ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Print: Book
Frances Burney : The Witlings
'On 2 August [1779], Charles Burney at Chessington read ... [The Witlings] aloud to a party which included [Samuel] Crisp, Crisp's sister Sophia Gast and the other Chessington ladies, and two of the Burney sisters [including Susanna].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : The Witlings
Susanna Burney describes Charles Burney's reading of The Witlings at Chessington on 2 August 1779, to Frances Burney: " 'Good' sd. Mr. Crisp ... the name of Codger occasion'd a general Grin ... [re the "Milliners Scene"] 'It's funny -- it's funny indeed' sd. Mr. C[risp] ... Charlotte laugh'd till she was almost black in the face at Codger's part, as I had done before her ... My Father's voice, sight, & lungs were tired ... & beng entirely unacquainted wth. what was coming ... he did not always give the Expression you meant to be given ... " ... the Serious part seem'd even to improve upon me by the 2d. hearing, & made me for to cry in 2 or 3 places ...'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : Cecilia
'Mrs. Thrale offered the kind of readings [of work in progress, ie Cecilia] Burney ... most valued, instant impressions before the whole novel had been read -- or finished.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress
'When he was writing ... "Things as They Are" (1794) ... [William] Godwin studied "Cecilia".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Godwin Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Mysterious Mother
' ... [The Mysterious Mother (1768)] was read aloud by Mr Smelt and Frances Burney in November 1786. Burney was horrified ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney and Leonard Smelt Print: Book
Anne-Louise-Germaine baronne de Stael-Holstein :
'[Frances] Burney's little diary of "Consolatory Extracts Daily collected or read in my extremity of Grief at the sudden & tragical loss of my beloved Susan on the instant of her liberation & safe arrival in England" ... [included] Extracts culled from the work of ... Mme. de Stael, Miss Talbot, Mrs. Chapone ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney
Catherine Talbot :
'[Frances] Burney's little diary of "Consolatory Extracts Daily collected or read in my extremity of Grief at the sudden & tragical loss of my beloved Susan on the instant of her liberation & safe arrival in England" ... [included] Extracts culled from the work of ... Mme. de Stael, Miss Talbot, Mrs. Chapone ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney
Hester Chapone :
'[Frances] Burney's little diary of "Consolatory Extracts Daily collected or read in my extremity of Grief at the sudden & tragical loss of my beloved Susan on the instant of her liberation & safe arrival in England" ... [included] Extracts culled from the work of ... Mme. de Stael, Miss Talbot, Mrs. Chapone ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney
Charles Burney : Memoirs
'Frances Burney had thought that Charles Burney had written his autobiography more completely than he had done. When she read his Memoirs, she found them incomplete, and she was sadly dispoointed at the quality of what was there ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : The Diary and Letters
'... Anne Thackeray ... discovered ... [Burney's Diary and Letters] in her father's library and felt inspired to become a diarist and novelist ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Thackeray Print: Book
H. Rider Haggard : [unknown]
'It is equally possible for the same reader to adopt different frames for the same story, relishing it on one level while seeing through the claptrap on another. In his youth Aneurin Bevan enjoyed the Magnet and Gem surreptitiously (his father forbade them) and devoured H. Rider Haggard at the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library. But during the 'Phoney War' he lambasted the government's stupidly optimistic predictions in precisely the same terms: "Immediately on the outbreak of war, England was given over to the mental level of the Boys' Own Paper and the Magnet..." In 1944 Bevan freely admitted that "William le Queux, John Buchan and Phillips Oppenheim have always been favourites of ours in our off-moments. Part of their charm lies in their juvenile attitude".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin Bevan Print: Book
Beatrix Potter : [unknown]
'The Bermant family arrived in Scotland when Chaim was eight: before his ninth birthday he had mastered enough English to read Beatrix Potter in the Mitchell Library. Her stories were not so alien to him as one might imagine: somehow the animal characters reminded him of the Latvian village from which he had come. Chaim soon became a fan of the Beano's Lord Snooty, an aristocrat who inexplicably consorted with a gang of working class kids: the strip fulfilled every schoolboy's fantasy of finding himself among wealthy people in a noble setting"...[as] young Bermant... followed the progress of the Second World War on the Glasgow Herald and the Manchester Guardian [he felt a strong sense of British identity]. The war, the school, the boys' weeklies were all "building up new obsessions to replace the old and drawing reassurance and pride from the Empire".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Bermant Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [unknown]
'No national commentator sympathised with working-class culture so well as Wilfred Pickles, BBC newsreader and stonemason's son. But even he admitted that the hours he spent in the public library, reading Shelley, Keats, Shaw and Galsworthy, represented a desperate breakout from the stultifying provincialism of his native Halifax.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Pickles Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'No national commentator sympathised with working-class culture so well as Wilfred Pickles, BBC newsreader and stonemason's son. But even he admitted that the hours he spent in the public library, reading Shelley, Keats, Shaw and Galsworthy, represented a desperate breakout from the stultifying provincialism of his native Halifax.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Pickles Print: Book
Mark Twain : [unknown]
'The father of Labour politician T. Dan Smith, a Wallsend miner, was facinated by travel books, Twain's Innocents Abroad, Chaliapin, Caruso, and European affairs. But hardly anyone in their neighbourhood ever ventured outside it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Gerhart Hauptmann : [unknown]
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Hermann Sudermann : [unknown]
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : [unknown]
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Eugenie Grandet
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev : Fathers and Sons
'James Hanley's workmates laughed when he taught himself French by reading the Mercure de France...Working the night shift at a railway station, Hanley withdrew into the work of Moliere, Hauptmann, Calderon, Sudermann, Ibsen, Lie and Strindberg until he grew quite cozy in his literary shell. His parents were appalled that he had no friends. But I've hundreds of friends he protested. "Bazarov and Rudin and Liza and Sancho Panza and Eugenie Grandet". His father countered with Squeers, Nickleby, Snodgrass and Little Nell: "And they're a healthy lot I might say, whereas all your friends have either got consumption, or are always in the dumps".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hanley Print: Book
Frederick W. Farrar : [St Winifred's School Stories]
[Harry Burton recalled' "we wallowed in Eric and St Winifred's and other school stories, especially Talbot Baines Reed's"...[Burton] like other working class children preferred Frank Richards to Empire Day, simply because the former was a more reliable guide to the reality he knew'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Burton Print: Book
Frank Richards : [School Stories in the Magnet and the Gem]
[Harry Burton recalled' "we wallowed in Eric and St Winifred's and other school stories, especially Talbot Baines Reed's"...[Burton] like other working class children preferred Frank Richards to Empire Day, simply because the former was a more reliable guide to the reality he knew'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Burton Print: Serial / periodical
George Anson : A Voyage Round the World
'Since they filled those gaps [in historical and geographical knowledge], classic travel books could produce the same kind of epiphanies as other classic literature. Anson's A Voyage Round the World performed that magic for Alexander Somerville and for the Scottish turnip hoers he read it to'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Somerville Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Joris Karl Huysmans : Les Soeurs Vatards
'A more recent influence was Huysmans' "Les Soeurs Vatards", a novel about artisan life in a lace-maker's atelier in Paris, which he read with great admiration in March 1907, and which he admired for its uncompromising realism . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Anson : A Voyage Round the World
'A Scottish flax dresser gained his "first or incipient idea of localities and distances" when he was assigned to read aloud at work from Anson, Cook, Bruce and Mungo Park'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: "Jacques", a flax dresser Print: Book
Richard Baxter : The Saints Everlasting Rest
... between sixteen and seventeen years of age, by the serious reading of the Book called _The Saints Everlasting Rest_, she was more throughly awakened, and brought to set her heart on God, and to seek salvation with her chiefest care: From that time forward she was a more constant, diligent, serious hearer of the ablest Ministers in London.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Baker Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : New Age
'And Bennett had now become a man of influence, largely through his "New Age" pieces. These articles, which he had begun in 1908, were widely read and admired . . . Ford Madox Ford, writing in 1918, described the readers of the "New Age" as "very numerous and from widely different classes . . . army officers . . . colonial governors . . . higher Civil Service officials, solicitors and members of the Bar. On the other hand, I have known it read regularly by board-school teachers, shop assistants, servants, artisans, and members of the poor generally. . . "'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Serial / periodical
Arnold Bennett : The Honeymoon
"He would read acts of 'The Honeymoon' aloud to the two women, conscious that he did not read well, but considering it as a good test, to see if his lines could withstand a bad rendering."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Richard Brinsley Sheridan :
'Pupils at Queen's College remembered the puritanical standards imposed by Owen Breen, English and Elocution Professor there in the 1890s. L. V. Hodson notes that when reading Sheridan in his classes, they first had to take a pencil and cross out all the expletives ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: English class, Queen's College Print: Book
Algernon Swinburne : Poems and Ballads
'Annabel Huth Jackson recalls the impact of a copy of Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads" at Cheltenham Ladies' College: "half the house went mad over it and we copied out most of the book because we could not afford to buy it."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Cheltenham Ladies' College Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler : The Farringdons
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Besant : To Call Her Mine
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Besant : Katherine Regina
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Besant : Self or Bearer
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Christmas Carol
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Cricket on the Hearth
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler : Concerning Isabel Carnaby
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mark Twain : The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charlotte Yonge :
Sybil Lubbock remembers ... the reading which prefaced Christmas: as she and her sister embroidered their father's slippers, or prepared things for the Hospital Box, 'our mother read aloud to us from Mrs Ewing or Miss Yonge, from "The Talisman" or "Quentin Durward".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Talisman
Sybil Lubbock remembers ... the reading which prefaced Christmas: as she and her sister embroidered their father's slippers, or prepared things for the Hospital Box, 'our mother read aloud to us from Mrs Ewing or Miss Yonge, from "The Talisman" or "Quentin Durward".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
Sybil Lubbock remembers ... the reading which prefaced Christmas: as she and her sister embroidered their father's slippers, or prepared things for the Hospital Box, 'our mother read aloud to us from Mrs Ewing or Miss Yonge, from "The Talisman" or Quentin Durward".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : Fairy Tales
'One of the daughters of Florence Barclay, a writer of popular fiction ... recounts how her mother used, in the 1880s, to read aloud to them a great deal: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, children's books like "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Little Duke" [as well as Scott] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Barclay Print: Book
Frances Hodgson Burnett : Little Lord Fauntleroy
'One of the daughters of Florence Barclay, a writer of popular fiction ... recounts how her mother used, in the 1880s, to read aloud to them a great deal: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, children's books like "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Little Duke" [as well as Scott] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Barclay Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge : The Little Duke
'One of the daughters of Florence Barclay, a writer of popular fiction ... recounts how her mother used, in the 1880s, to read aloud to them a great deal: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, children's books like "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Little Duke" [as well as Scott] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Barclay Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'One of the daughters of Florence Barclay, a writer of popular fiction ... recounts how her mother used, in the 1880s, to read aloud to them a great deal: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, children's books like "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Little Duke" [as well as Scott] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Barclay Print: Book
George Anson : Voyage Round the World
Elizabeth Sewell ... remembered her mother in the 1820s reading aloud Anson's "Voyages", Lempriere's "Tour to Morocco", and "the History of Montezuma".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
In "Yesterday's Child 1890-1909" (1937), Beryl Lee Booker remembered 'trying "Tom Jones", but abandoning it for "What Katy Did"' whilst a child (p.31).
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Beryl Lee Booker Print: Book
Monier Williams : work/s on Eastern religions
'When she was thirteen or fourteen, [Constance] Maynard's businessman father used to read Monier Williams on the religions of the East, William Law, and Jacob Boehme aloud to her.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Maynard Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poetry
' ... [13-to-14-year-old Constance Maynard's] most intimate contact with reading .. took place ... in a secluded corner of the garden, where she haphazardly consumed Milton's sonnets, Cowper, Irving's Orations, and Tennyson ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Maynard Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : The Three Musketeers
'["In A Nursery in the Nineties" (1935)] Eleanor Farjeon (b.1881) ... recreates her identificatory enthusiam as she read "The Three Musketeers", which enabled her to step outside the bounds even of male, let alone female, notions of propriety.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Farjeon Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Puck of Pook's Hill
'Margaret Cole shared with her brothers copies of "Puck", "Sexton Blake" and "the Magnet", as well as boys' school stories ...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Cole and brothers Print: Serial / periodical
Sarah Lewis : Woman's Mission
In ... [a] letter to Maria Lewis, of September 1840 ... [George Eliot] enthusiastically advised her to 'recommend to all your married friends "Woman's Mission" a 3/6d book and ... the most philosophical and masterly on the subject I ever read or glanced over' ...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Maria Charlesworth : Ministering Children
'As a child in the late 1860s and 1870s, the books ... [Florence White] used to read were "The Wide, Wide World", "Queechy", and "Ministering Children" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence White Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho!
'Lucy Lyttelton ... continued reading as avidly as ever after her marriage to Lord Frederick Cavendish, although she seems to have been happy that he should choose the books for their honeymoon: "Westward Ho!", Carlyle's "French Revolution", and Butler's "Analogy" ... A month after they left for their travels, they were still on "Westward Ho!".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Cavendish Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'Lucy Cavendish's diary, kept both before and after her marriage, provides one of the fullest accounts we have of the day-to-day reading of a Victorian girl and woman. It ranges from gift books ... bowdlerized Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Scott when she was still in the schoolroom, to the combination of religious debate, historical studies, and modern novels which characterised the literary consumption of her adult life.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Lyttelton Print: Unknown
Walter Scott :
'Lucy Cavendish's diary, kept both before and after her marriage, provides one of the fullest accounts we have of the day-to-day reading of a Victorian girl and woman. It ranges from gift books ... bowdlerized Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Scott when she was still in the schoolroom, to the combination of religious debate, historical studies, and modern novels which characterised the literary consumption of her adult life.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Lyttelton Print: Unknown
George Eliot :
'Mrs Benson, wife of the Headmaster of Wellington College, [scandalized] his friends by letting her children read George Eliot ...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benson family Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poetry
Joan Evans, "Prelude and Fugue: An Autobiography" (1964): 'One of my few conscious naughtinesses after I had attained the age of perception was to steal into the drawing-room, when I knew my parents were safe in London, open the [book]case, and take deep delicious draughts of verse. Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were all the sweeter for being read in secret' (p.17).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joan Evans Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels
'Mary Paley Marshall ... one of Newnham's first students, recalls her father in the 1860s reading aloud "The Arabian Nights", "Gulliver's Travels", the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", Shakespeare, and, above all, Scott's novels ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Paley Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Mary Paley Marshall, "What I Remember" (1947), on family ban on Dickens: 'I was grown up before I read "David Copperfield" and then it had to be in secret' (p.7).'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Paley Marshall Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
'[On grounds of propriety] Lucy Caroline Lyttelton's grandmother ... left out one chapter of ... [Adam Bede] ... when she was reading it aloud to her grandchildren ...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
' ... as late as the 1890s, Harriet Shaw Weaver's mother was shocked when she came upon her adolescent daughter reading "Adam Bede" ... the local vicar was asked to call in order to explain the book's unsuitability.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Shaw Weaver Print: Book
George Moore : A Mummer's Wife
'Yeats forbade his sisters to read George Moore's "A Mummer's Wife": a proscription which led Susan Mitchell, who lived with the family, to "gulp ... guilty pages of it" as she went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Mitchell Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh
'A letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabel Barrett tells of a sixty-year-old woman who believed that her morals had been injured by reading "Aurora Leigh" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
' ...[Lady Frances Balfour] was forbidden to read the second volume of ... [Uncle Tom's Cabin] "but human nature cannot be denied, and of course I read it" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Frances Balfour Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
"H. M. Swanwick, in the late 1870s, absorbed what she could from any available scientific books and medical journals, and puzzled over the Bible, Shakespeare, Chaucer, La Fontaine."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Bleak House
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti : poems including Jenny
"Forbidden David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Vicar of Wakefield ... [H. M. Swanwick] read them none the less ... When she was lent Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poems by a friend, 'Jenny' ... came as a welcome antidote [to Dickens's and Scott's treatments of fallen women]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poems including The Revenge
"Mary Stocks (b. 1891) recorded how her Aunt Tiddy made great efforts to preserve her and her siblings from 'indelicacy' [quotes from Stocks's account of how one of the poems read aloud by aunt included Tennyson, 'The Revenge', in her text of which the aunt covered the word 'womb' with a strip of paper] ..."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Tiddy Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poems including The Revenge
"Mary Stocks (b. 1891) recorded how her Aunt Tiddy made great efforts to preserve her and her siblings from 'indelicacy' [quotes from Stocks's account of how one of the poems read aloud by aunt included Tennyson, 'The Revenge', in her text of which the aunt covered the word 'womb' with a strip of paper]: 'My family still cherishes the tattered volume of Tennyson showing the marks from which the strip was surreptitiously removed by us to satify a curiosity very natural in the young.'"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stocks and siblings Print: Book
Robert Browning :
"Prior to ... [her] marriage [in 1911], [Marie Stopes's] only sexual knowledge came from reading Browning, Swinburne, and -- ignoring her mother's advice -- Shakespeare's sonnets and 'Venus and Adonis', with the addition of novels, and ... Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marie Stopes Print: Book
Algernon Swinburne :
"Prior to ... [her] marriage [in 1911], [Marie Stopes's] only sexual knowledge came from reading Browning, Swinburne, and -- ignoring her mother's advice -- Shakespeare's sonnets and 'Venus and Adonis', with the addition of novels, and ... Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marie Stopes Print: Book
Edward Carpenter : Love's Coming of Age
"Prior to ... [her] marriage [in 1911], [Marie Stopes's] only sexual knowledge came from reading Browning, Swinburne, and -- ignoring her mother's advice -- Shakespeare's sonnets and 'Venus and Adonis', with the addition of novels, and ... Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marie Stopes Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
"Vera Brittain's far from bookish home contained, in addition to the yellow-back novels which formed the main staple of her early reading, a volume entitled Household Medicine: 'the treatment of infectious diseases left me cold, but I was secretly excited at the prospect of menstruation; I also found the details of confinement quite enthralling.' She added the knowledge thus gained to other sources, recalling 'that intensive searching for obstetrical details through the Bible and such school-library novels as David Copperfield and Adam Bede which appears to have been customary almost everywhere among the adolescents of my generation.'"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
"Vera Brittain's far from bookish home contained, in addition to the yellow-back novels which formed the main staple of her early reading, a volume entitled Household Medicine: 'the treatment of infectious diseases left me cold, but I was secretly excited at the prospect of menstruation; I also found the details of confinement quite enthralling.' She added the knowledge thus gained to other sources, recalling 'that intensive searching for obstetrical details through the Bible and such school-library novels as David Copperfield and Adam Bede which appears to have been customary almost everywhere among the adolescents of my generation.'"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Edgar Allen Poe :
"Laura Knight, in 1899, was mystified by being forbidden Foxe's Books of Martyrs ... having been used to enjoying Edgar Allen Poe, the more gruesome parts of the Ingoldsby Legends, and the Boys' Own Paper, bought with her weekly penny for helping with the housework."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Laura Knight Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Milestones
'The play was finished after a long summer of hard work on 24 August: they sat in an arbour to read it with an audience of Marguerite Sheldon and Knoblock's agent Miss Kauser but as they both read badly they didn't give it a fair hearing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : unknown
'When it rained, Bennett stayed in the cabin and read Dostoevsky.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
" ... in the early 1870s, the ten-year-old Annabel Huth Jackson 'was terribly frightened by the episode of the mad woman tearing the wedding veil' in Jane Eyre, although the incidence of this incident alone was doubtless insufficient to explain Jackson's mother's horror when she learnt her daughter had read the book."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Annabel Huth Jackson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Works including The Tapestry Chamber
"Cicely Hamilton, who had read all of Scott by the time she was eleven, wrote that one of his short stories, 'The Tapestry Chamber': 'was a disturber of my rest for years. So too was an illustrated version of The Ingoldsby Legends ...'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Cicely Hamilton Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : Autobiography
Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985) noted as "especially interesting ... in its discussion of Webb's ... reading of autobiographies (such as John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, George Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Wordsworth's Prelude ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Autobiography
Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985) noted as "especially interesting ... in its discussion of Webb's ... reading of autobiographies (such as John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, George Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Wordsworth's Prelude ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
George Sand : Histoire de ma vie
Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985) noted as "especially interesting ... in its discussion of Webb's ... reading of autobiographies (such as John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, George Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Wordsworth's Prelude ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aenied, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Homer : The Iliad
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aenied, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aenied, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Virgil : The Aeneid
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Euripedes :
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Herodotus :
" ... it was whilst at a frivolous, rote-learning girls' school that ... [Frances Power Cobbe] developed her determined, methodical aproach [to reading] ... She read all the Faerie Queene, all of Milton's poetry, the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals, and in translation the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Pharsalia, and ... [nearly all] of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Sir William Jones : Institutes of Menu
"... [the young Frances Power Cobbe] ... read, in what translations were ... accessible, in Eastern sacred philosophy, such as Anquetil du Perron's Zend Avesta, and Sir William Jones's Institutes of Menu, and found out as much as she could about the Greek and Alexandrian philosophers from Diogenes Laertius and the old translators, as well as from a large Biographical Dictionary."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Edward Gibbon :
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Voltaire :
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius :
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
Plutarch : Moralia
"Deist" and "heathen" authors studied by the young Frances Power Cobbe: "Gibbon, Hume, Tindal, Collins, and Voltaire ... Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch's Moralia, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a little Plato."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
"... by August [1840] ... [Anne Jemima Clough admits in journal] doing 'one bad thing' (which turns out to be reading Byron's 'The Corsair') ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Jemima Clough Print: Book
Mrs Jameson : Characteristics of Women
"At home, after leaving school in 1857 ... [Louisa Martindale's] reading was, at first, chiefly the Bible. On 16 September she started to take Fraser's Magazine, and her diary becomes full of references to this, and to articles in the Times on subjects as diverse as Fortification and The War in New Zealand. She read, and was charmed by, Symington on architecture, sculpture, and painting ... Further books which she read included Froude's History of England ... The Bible and Modern Thought, Butler's Analogy, Memorials of Fox, Bancroft's American Revolution, Rollin's Ancient History, Waddington's Church History, the Works of Paley, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Mrs Jameson's Characteristics of Women."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Martindale Print: Book
Sir James George Frazer : The Golden Bough
Early reading of Joan Evans noted as having included Salomon Reinach, Orpheus: A History of Religions; Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, and Frazer, The Golden Bough.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joan Evans Print: Book
Walter Scott :
" ... Elizabeth Sewell's consumption of 'modern' works in the late 1820s and 1830s, she records [in her autobiography], specifically mentioning Scott and Byron, led to worry and 'hysteria' based on the feeling that it would be pleasant to have someone caring for her. She had not yet learnt, she claims, the joy that comes through caring for others."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron :
" ... Elizabeth Sewell's consumption of 'modern' works in the late 1820s and 1830s, she records [in her autobiography], specifically mentioning Scott and Byron, led to worry and 'hysteria' based on the feeling that it would be pleasant to have someone caring for her. She had not yet learnt, she claims, the joy that comes through caring for others."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Francis Thompson : The Hound of Heaven
"Enid Starkie claimed that reading Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' when she was ten made her feel as though she had been taken hold of and mastered, and determined that she should be a nun when she grew up."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Enid Starkie Print: Unknown
George Eliot : The Mill on the Floss
Jane Ellen Harrison, in Reminiscences of a Student's Life (1925) 11-12: "'Until I met Aunt Glegg in the Mill on the Floss, I never knew myself. I am Aunt Glegg; with all reverence I say it.'"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Ellen Harrison Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
"[in her autobiography Growing up Into Revolution (1949), Margaret Cole] conveys the combination of amusement and delight she and her companions experienced reading Shaw ..."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Cole and Girton contemporaries Print: Unknown
Ernst Haeckel :
"Ellen Wilkinson, brought up in Ardwick, Manchester, went with her father to lectures on theological and evolutionary subjects, and by the time she was fourteen was reading Haeckel, Huxley and Darwin with him."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Wilkinson and father Print: Book
Charles Darwin :
"Ellen Wilkinson, brought up in Ardwick, Manchester, went with her father to lectures on theological and evolutionary subjects, and by the time she was fourteen was reading Haeckel, Huxley and Darwin with him."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Wilkinson and father Print: Book
Charles Dickens : novels
"Alice Foley's father was an often drunk, sometimes violent Irish factory worker in Bolton, but when 'in sober mood, he read aloud to the family the novels of Dickens and George Eliot'."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
George Eliot : novels
"Alice Foley's father was an often drunk, sometimes violent Irish factory worker in Bolton, but when 'in sober mood, he read aloud to the family the novels of Dickens and George Eliot'."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'[Alice] Foley continued her education by attending night school after going to work full-time in the mill when she was thirteen. She remembers choosing "Jane Eyre" as a prize, attracted by its strange name: "I read the book avidly for it was an enchanting experience in a new romantic world ..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story
"As ... [Hannah Mitchell's] love of books became known locally: 'I made free of such libraries as the neighbours possessed, which led to my reading some curious and unsuitable matter, old-fashioned theological works, early Methodist magazines, cookery books and queer tales of murder and robbery. One such, entitled 'The Castle of Otranto', haunted my dreams for many a night'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Walter Besant : Children of Gibeon
"'At a critical juncture', as she put it [in her autobiography] ... [Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence] read a novel which appealed directly to her combined desires for independence, purpose, and social usefulness: Walter Besant's Children of Gibeon ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
"Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1858) emphasized the value of her childhood reading in forming her guiding principles. Uncle Tom's Cabin fused with talk of bazaars, relief funds, and subscriptions in her Manchester home to awaken first an admiration for fighting spirit and heroic sacrifice, and then an appreciation of a gentler, restorative spirit ... other favourite childhood books which remained a lifelong source of inspiration ... [were]: Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, the Odyssey, and Carlyle's French Revolution. Her interest in politics she traced to reading the paper aloud to her father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pankhurst Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
"Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1858) emphasized the value of her childhood reading in forming her guiding principles. Uncle Tom's Cabin fused with talk of bazaars, relief funds, and subscriptions in her Manchester home to awaken first an admiration for fighting spirit and heroic sacrifice, and then an appreciation of a gentler, restorative spirit ... other favourite childhood books which remained a lifelong source of inspiration ... [were]: Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, the Odyssey, and Carlyle's French Revolution. Her interest in politics she traced to reading the paper aloud to her father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pankhurst Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Roman History
Afternoon reading Rollin's History
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Roman History
Afternoon reading Rollin, wherein instruction may be learned. Indulge not in ease. It enfeebles the body and ,although one could afford luxury, it should not be indulged. It enervates the whole mind and by imperceptible steps overcomes the whole frame.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Roman History
Afternoon reading Rollin's history of Antiochus Epiphanus, who persecuted the Jews.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Roman History
Spent the evening reading Paulus Emillius's Campaign in Macedonia and the Overthrow of Perseus, the last king thereof.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Roman History
At even reading from Rollin the defeat of the Romans under Crassus, 54 BC, the history of Hieron, the good king of Syracuse and the siege of Suracuse by the Romans under Marcellus, when it was reduced by them.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering, or the Astrologer
Was engaged this forenoon sorting some lint yarn, and all the rest of my spare time reading [Guy] Mannering
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Walter Scott : Redgauntlet
I have been in the shop all day and during the intervals of business reading Scott's novel of Redgauntlet
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Abbot
I continue in the shop; am occupying my spare time reading Scott's novel of the Abbot. The subject is cheifly on the manner of Queen Mary's imprisonment in the Castle of Loch Leven, with her escape from that imprisonment and from Scotland
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Pirate
I have been engaged this day posting my shop books etc. during my spare time reading a novel- The Pirate [Scott]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
Reading Scott's Tales of My Landlord. Consists of the prosecutions and slaughters by the Military [of] Covenanters in Charles 2nd's time. Scene of the story lies in the County of Lanark
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Archibald Constable : Miscellany
Employed myself reading Constables Miscellany- voyages, mutinies and shipwrecks in the Southern Ocean
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book
Dr John Gregory : A Father's Legacy to his Daughters
"Doctor Gregory's Book was published at Edin [r] just two Days before I left that Place...I read it, tho butin the hurried Way which the Eve of Journey allowed of...I also think that the Publication of it, when one considers that the young Ladies to whom it is address'd are alive & unmarried, is liable to Objection..."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Mackenzie Print: Book
Robert Burns : [unknown]
'The celebrated singer Sir Harry Lauder, when he was still a mineworker, acquired a fair knowledge of American history: "George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ranked second only in my estimation to Robert Burns and Walter Scott. One of his ...favourite books was a popular biography of James Garfield, 'From Log Cabin to White House'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Lauder Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'The celebrated singer Sir Harry Lauder, when he was still a mineworker, acquired a fair knowledge of American history: "George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ranked second only in my estimation to Robert Burns and Walter Scott. One of his ...favourite books was a popular biography of James Garfield, 'From Log Cabin to White House'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Lauder Print: Book
Mark Twain : Tom Sawyer
'Mary Lakeman, a Cornish fisherman's daughter, confirmed what George Orwell had written in "Riding Down from Bangor": "Little Women", "Good Wives", "What Katy Did", "Avonlea", "Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn", and "The Last of the Mohicans" all created a romantic childhood vision of unlimited freedom and open space. "For me Jo, Beth and Laurie are right at the heart of a permanent unalterable American scene", she wrote, "and I can turn on Louisa M. Alcott and others so powerfully that Nixon and Watergate are completely blacked out".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lakeman Print: Book
Mark Twain : Huckleberry Finn
'Mary Lakeman, a Cornish fisherman's daughter, confirmed what George Orwell had written in "Riding Down from Bangor": "Little Women", "Good Wives", "What Katy Did", "Avonlea", "Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn", and "The Last of the Mohicans" all created a romantic childhood vision of unlimited freedom and open space. "For me Jo, Beth and Laurie are right at the heart of a permanent unalterable American scene", she wrote, "and I can turn on Louisa M. Alcott and others so powerfully that Nixon and Watergate are completely blacked out".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lakeman Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Last of the Mohicans
'Mary Lakeman, a Cornish fisherman's daughter, confirmed what George Orwell had written in "Riding Down from Bangor": "Little Women", "Good Wives", "What Katy Did", "Avonlea", "Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn", and "The Last of the Mohicans" all created a romantic childhood vision of unlimited freedom and open space. "For me Jo, Beth and Laurie are right at the heart of a permanent unalterable American scene", she wrote, "and I can turn on Louisa M. Alcott and others so powerfully that Nixon and Watergate are completely blacked out".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lakeman Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : [war poems]
'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
Wilfred Owen : [war poems]
'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
Ernest Hemingway : A Farewell to Arms
'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
Robert Graves : Goodbye to All That
'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope : Letters written by the Late Right Honourable Phili
'Books lately read' Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, 4 vols. It has been said of these letters... The first and 2nd vols appear to me unexceptionable. Of the others, I cannot say so much, there is a degree of libertinism expressed...
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
By the Editor of the Letters of Maria : Windermere. A Novel
Windermere: A Novel in 2 vols This is below Mediocrity; the title [title is underlined]induced me to read it; and with the title I am satisfied-and disappointed.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
R Morgan : Letters on Mythology
Letters on Mythology Addressed to a Lady by R. Morgan, 1 vol. A humourous and entertaining production, written in a light and easy style, to make it palatable to a lady's taste.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Anna Maria Porter : Lake of Killarney
Lake of Killarney, by A.M. Porter. 3 vols. Rose de Blaguere, a foundling, is the heroine of the tale. Mr Clermont the hero. Mr O'Neil and his maiden sister bring up Rose, whom they found left at their door and who eventually proves to be the daughter of the haughty Countess Dunallen by a first and private marriage... [Editor has not reproduced the rest].
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Robert Burns : [poems]
'Though miners' MP Robert Smillie surreptitiously gorged on Dick Turpin and Three Fingered Jack as a boy, they... "led to better things": by fourteen he had seen RIchard III, read some of the Sonnets, discovered Burns, Scott and Dickens.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Smillie Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'Though miners' MP Robert Smillie surreptitiously gorged on Dick Turpin and Three Fingered Jack as a boy, they... "led to better things": by fourteen he had seen RIchard III, read some of the Sonnets, discovered Burns, Scott and Dickens.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Smillie Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'Though miners' MP Robert Smillie surreptitiously gorged on Dick Turpin and Three Fingered Jack as a boy, they... "led to better things": by fourteen he had seen RIchard III, read some of the Sonnets, discovered Burns, Scott and Dickens.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Smillie Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
Walter Scott : [various works, abridged]
'Children's Papers could lead readers to great literature in more direct ways. As Willis noted, "Union Jack" serialised abridgements of Walter Scott novels, with more sensational titles, and the "Chatterbox Christmas Annual" for 1890 introduced him to Dr Johnson'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Serial / periodical
John Lothrop Motley : The Rise of the Dutch Republic
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, 'Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
John Richard Green : [history]
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, Motley's 'Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen : History of Rome
'Barber John Paton remembered that the "Boys' Friend" "ran a serial which was an enormously exciting tale of Alba's oppression of the Netherlands, and gave as its source, Motley's 'Rise of the Dutch Republic'". He borrowed it from the public library and, with guidance from a helpful adult, also read J.R. Green, Macaulay, Prescott, Grote, and even Mommsen's multi-volume History of Rome by age fourteen. "There must have been, of course, enormous gaps in my understanding of what I poured into the rag bag that was my mind, particularly from the bigger works," he conceded, "but at least I sensed the important thing, the immense sweep and variety and the continuity of the historical process".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Waverley Novels]
'East End socialist Walter Southgate remembered that Dick Turpin and Buffalo Bill stories "were condemned by our teachers (all from middle class backgrounds) who would confiscate them", but he appreciated the generic similarities to "Robinson Crusoe", the Waverley novels and "The Last of the Mohicans".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Southgate Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Last of the Mohicans
'East End socialist Walter Southgate remembered that Dick Turpin and Buffalo Bill stories "were condemned by our teachers (all from middle class backgrounds) who would confiscate them", but he appreciated the generic similarities to "Robinson Crusoe", the Waverley novels and "The Last of the Mohicans".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Southgate Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud] :
'As a boy George Acorn [an] East Londoner, read "all sorts and conditions of books from 'Penny Bloods' to George Eliot" with "some appreciation of style", enough to recognise the affinities of high and low literature. Thus he discerningly characterised "Treasure Island" as "the usual penny blood sort of story, with the halo of greatness about it".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Acorn Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'As a boy George Acorn [an] East Londoner, read "all sorts and conditions of books from 'Penny Bloods' to George Eliot" with "some appreciation of style", enough to recognise the affinities of high and low literature. Thus he discerningly characterised "Treasure Island" as "the usual penny blood sort of story, with the halo of greatness about it".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Acorn Print: Book
Francis Bacon :
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
Francois Rabelais :
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller :
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
George Alfred Henty :
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'Lancashire millworker Ben Brierley read penny fairy tales and horror stories as a boy, but they did not contribute to his work as a dialect poet: "I must confess that my soul did not feel much lifted by the only class of reading then within my reach. It was not until I joined the companionship of Burns and Byron that I felt 'the god within me'".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Brierley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'Lancashire millworker Ben Brierley read penny fairy tales and horror stories as a boy, but they did not contribute to his work as a dialect poet: "I must confess that my soul did not feel much lifted by the only class of reading then within my reach. It was not until I joined the companionship of Burns and Byron that I felt 'the god within me'".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Brierley Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History
'Methodist millworker Thomas Wood attended a school where there was only one book, the Bible, which was never read beyond the first chapter of St John. Therefore he later "read everythig I could lay hands on", which was precious little... He worked his way through most of the library at an independent Sunday school, and joined a mechanics' institute for 1 1/2d a week. His reading, though "very heterogenous" and undirected, could be quite intensive, as when he devoted almost a year to the six volumes of Rollin's Ancient History. That "left an impression on my mind which 40 years of wear and tear has not effaced".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Wood Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
Edward George, Earl Bulwer Lytton : [unknown]
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Growing up in Clapton during the Depression, Michael Stapleton needed a signature from his father (an Irish navvy) for a public library card, "but I asked him on the wrong evening and he merely shouted at me... So I... started examining every book in the house, ransacking forgotten cupboards and the hole under the stairs. I read everything I could understand, and begged twopenny bloods quite shamelessly from the boys at school who were fortunate enough to enjoy such things. I absorbed an immense amount of useless information, but occasionally a treasure came my way and I would strain my eyes under the twenty-watt bulb which lighted our kitchen. A month-old copy of the 'Wizard' would be succeeded by a handbook for vegetarians, and this in turn would be followed by 'Jane Eyre'. 'Tarzan and the Jewels of Ophir' was no sooner finished than I was deep in volumes three and four of a history of 'The Conquest of Peru' (the rest of the set was missing). I would go from that to 'Rip van Winkle' and straight on to a tattered copy of the Hotspur".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Michael Stapleton Print: Book
Edgar Rice Burroughs : Tarzan and the Jewels of Ophir
'Growing up in Clapton during the Depression, Michael Stapleton needed a signature from his father (an Irish navvy) for a public library card, "but I asked him on the wrong evening and he merely shouted at me... So I... started examining every book in the house, ransacking forgotten cupboards and the hole under the stairs. I read everything I could understand, and begged twopenny bloods quite shamelessly from the boys at school who were fortunate enough to enjoy such things. I absorbed an immense amount of useless information, but occasionally a treasure came my way and I would strain my eyes under the twenty-watt bulb which lighted our kitchen. A month-old copy of the 'Wizard' would be succeeded by a handbook for vegetarians, and this in turn would be followed by 'Jane Eyre'. 'Tarzan and the Jewels of Ophir' was no sooner finished than I was deep in volumes three and four of a history of 'The Conquest of Peru' (the rest of the set was missing). I would go from that to 'Rip van Winkle' and straight on to a tattered copy of the Hotspur".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Michael Stapleton Print: Book
George Alfred Henty :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Frederick Marryat :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Mark Twain :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Anne/Charlotte/Emily Bronte :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
George Eliot :
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales, The
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
Henry Torrens [Sir] : Field exercises and evolutions of the army
And here I am on a wet Sunday looking out of a damned large bow window at the rain as it falls into the puddles opposite, wondering when it will be dinner time, and cursing my folly in having put no books into my portmanteau. The only book I have seen here, is one which lies upon the sofa. It is entitled ?Field Exercises and Evolutions of the Army by Sir Henry Torrens.? I have read it through so often, that I am sure I could drill a hundred recruits from memory.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Book
Anne-Louise-Germaine de Stael : Considerations sur les Principaux Evenements de la
Scott probably knew de Stael, he was certainly acquainted with her work, friends, lifestyle etc. Here is a brief excerpt: '...the tendency of the last of her productions, which, as a posthumous work, connects itself most immedately with her memory, is for the most part as excellent as its execution is brilliant and masterly. To speak first of its style: we cannot refrain from noticing the rarer occurrence of that appearance of straining after eloquence and philosophy which defaced ....'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Scott Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Cenci
'We think he is mistaken in every respect. His work does not teach the human heart, but insults it...His precepts are conveyed in the cries of Bedlam; and the outrage of a wretched old maniac, long passed the years of appetite, perpetrated on the person of his miserable child, under motives that are inconsistent with reason, and circumstances impossible in fact, is presented to us as a mirror in which we may contemplate a portion, of least, of our common nature! How far this disposition to rake in the lazar-house of humanity for examples of human life and action, is consistent with a spirit of
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Scott Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Black Veil
I am glad you like The Black Veil. I think that the title is a good one, because it is uncommon, and does not impair the interest of the story by partially explaining its main feature.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Macrone Print: Unknown
Walter Scott :
Elizabeth Segel, in "'As the Twig is Bent ...': Gender and Childhood Reading," notes that Mary Ann Evans began reading Scott when aged seven.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ann Evans Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Deserted Village
'It must be labour that makes things valuable Princes & Lords may flourish and may fade But a bold Peasantry, the Country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.' [this is the first of a number of references to Goldsmith's poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
Charles Mills : The History of Chivalry; or Knighthood and Its Tim
'I have read over the "History of Chivalry", it really is true to the title page as nothing but Chivalry can befound in it. I cannot say that it is very amusing or instructive, altho' one sees a little more of its folly than is to be found in Walter Scott.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
Conradus Lagus : Methodica iuris traditio, seu ratio compendiaria, perveniendi ad veram solidamque iurisprud. mirifice ad omnes libros iuris: & DD. recte intelligendos vtilis, ex ore doctissimi, clarissimique iusrisconsulti D. Conradi Lagi annotata. ?
Evidence of engagement with the text: (1) occasional marginal notes; (2) marginal symbols throughout the text, crosses (ex. pp. 1,5,12), underlines (pp. 16, 520-1), score throughs (ex. p. 77) and pointing hands (ex. pp. 340, 348, 520).
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Jo. Halkerston Print: Book
Simon-Pierre Laplace : Exposition du systeme du monde
'I have done little since I wrote last but revised Leslie's conics, and read a part of Laplace's 'exposition du systeme du monde' not the mecanique celeste for I alas, am not one of the gifted half-dozen that can understand it - but the original of that book which Smeal once brought from Selkirk and lent to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Simon-Pierre Laplace : Exposition du systeme du monde
'I had read some little of Laplace when I saw you; & I continue to advance with a diminishing velocity. I turned aside into Leslie's conics - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Sir John Leslie : Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis, and Plane Trigonometry
'I had read some little of Laplace when I saw you; & I continue to advance with a diminishing velocity. I turned aside into Leslie's conics - & went thro' it, in search of two propositions, which when in your geometrical vein, you will find little difficulty in demonstrating'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Charles Bossut : Mecanique
'I likewise turned into Charles Bossut's Mecanique - to study his demonstration of pendulums, and his doctrine of forces. The text is often tediously explanatory - & in the notes, it is but a dim hallucination of the truth that I can obtain thro' the medium of integrals & differentials by which he communicates it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold (Canto IV)
'Moore's Lallah Rookh & Byron's Childe Harold canto fourth formed an odd mixture with these speculations. It was foolish, you may think, to exchange the truths of philosophy, for the airy nothings of these sweet singers: but I could not help it. Do not fear that I will spend some time in criticising the tulip-cheek.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Dr Chalmers : Title unknown
This is emphatic enough.- I need not speak of Dr Chalmers' boisterous treatise upon the causes & cure of pauperism in the last Edinr review. His reasoning (so they call it) is disjointed and absurd - & his language a barbarous jargon - agre[e]able neither to Gods nor men.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
George Eiiot : Adam Bede
Elizabeth Segel, "As the Twig is Bent: Gender and Childhood Reading": "When Lucy Lyttelton's grandmother began reading aloud Adam Bede ... it was 'duly bowdlerized for our young minds,' Lucy reported in her diary. She was eighteen at the time."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
Matthieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila : A general system of toxicology, or, a treatise on poisons, drawn from the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, considered as to their relations with physiology, pathology and medical jurisprudence by M.P. Orfila, translated from the French ?
3 pp of ms at the end of v.1 appear to be brief notes abstracted from details in the text. Each page is ruled and divided into 3 columns headed, 'Substance', 'Symptoms', 'Corrections' [ie remedy]. Example: 'Alkalies - Soda Ammonia Lime &-', 'Nearly the same [ie as the entry above for concentrated acids] -the ejected matter does not effervesse [?] with alkalies but with acids'. 'Vinegar or limejuice - a spoonful or two in a glass of water frequently - or simply warm [?] water'. There are 9 such entries.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Sibbald Print: Book
George Burder : Village sermons: or, fifty-two plain and short discourses on the principal doctrines of the gospel; intended for the use of families, Sunday schools, or companies assembled for religious instructions in country villages
A volume of sermons, marked with dates and what appears to be a system of initials - possibly some sort of reminder? Examples: "E.F.I. [?] April 24th -1853/Nov. 13th ..53" [p. 158 Sermon title "The value of the soul"]; "V.G. F.I. [?] Sept. 15th 1850/ Feby 27th 1853/ July 8th 1855" [Sermon title "The Lord's Prayer"]; "V.G.F.I. Augt 20th [?] 1854 F...[?]" [Sermon title "The lamb of god beheld by faith"]. In addition, passages of text are sometimes deleted or marked up. Examples: p. 159 the quote is scored through; On the first page of "The Lord's prayer", the sentence in para 2 "Not that we are tied down ..." has half square brackets around it.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Charles Mills : The History of Chivalry; or Knighthood and Its Times
'I have begun to read Hill's history of Chivalry, the author seems to be delighted with his subject, and I have no doubt but he treats it in a proper manner; - This is a glorious day'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book
Henry Kett : The flowers of wit, or a choice collection of bon
'Drove out to Ledbury with Commeline, Ann, C, and M.N Junior [...]Having read Kitt's [NB Kett's] Flowers of Wit I pronounce them to be mere daisies. Everywhere there are anachronisms and tales so silly that it is surprising a man of any literary repute would set his name to them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Henry Ryder : A charge delivered to the clergy of the Diocese
'Read bishop of Gloucester's Charge which I think excellent for its devotion, its liberality, its style and manner and think no harm would arrive to the church were all the bishops such Methodists as he appears in his charge.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Rev. Benjamin Newton
George Woods : An account of the past and present state of the Isle of Man
'I read Wood's Isle of Man because I knew nothing of it and he has said little from there being very little to say'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Sir Philip Sidney : The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
"According to [James] Johnstoun, his supplement [to Sidney's Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia] grew out of his affection for Sidney's romance. Having read the Arcadia over and over, he became inspired by the two pairs of lovers ..."
UnknownCentury: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: James Johnstoun
Sir Philip Sidney : The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
"According to one contemporary anecdote, when a would-be lover borrowed from the Arcadia to woo a lady, she immediately saw through his deception: she 'was so well versed in his author, as tacitely she traced him to the bottom of a leaf.'"
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: anon
R : Poems
"Henry Wotton recalled coming across Milton's A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle 'in the very close of the late R's Poems, Printed at Oxford' ..."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Wotton Print: Book
Lucretius : De rerum natura
" ... provocative omissions survive in ... [early modern manuscripts including] Lucy Hutchinson's ... translation of Lucretius' De rerum natura ..."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Hutchinson
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Jonathan Rose, "How Historians Study Reader Response: or, What did Jo Think of Bleak House?": "George Acorn recalled that, growing up in extreme poverty in London's East End, he scraped up 3 1/2d to buy a used copy of David Copperfield. His parents soundly thrashed him when they learned he had wasted so much money on a book, but later he read it to them: "'And how we all loved it ... how we all cried together at poor old Peggotty's distress!'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Acorn Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
Jonathan Rose, "How Historians Study Reader Response: or, What did Jo Think of Bleak House?": "Arthur Harding, a professional criminal who grew up in the East End slum known as 'the Jago,' was quite impressed by A Tale of Two Cities and Dombey and Son when he read them in prison ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Harding Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
Jonathan Rose, "How Historians Study Reader Response: or, What did Jo Think of Bleak House?": "Arthur Harding, a professional criminal who grew up in the East End slum known as 'the Jago,' was quite impressed by A Tale of Two Cities and Dombey and Son when he read them in prison ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Harding Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Christmas Carol
Jonathan Rose, "How Historians Study Reader Response: or, What did Jo Think of Bleak House?": " ... some of ... [Dickens's readers] found it difficult to share his anguish over the hardships of the clerkly classes. Growing up in the depressed steelworks town of Merthyr Tydfil between the world wars, some poor schoolboys were a bit baffled when their teacher read them A Christmas Carol: ' ... we never could understand why it was considered why Bob Cratchit was hard done by -- a good job, we all thought he had.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Finlay Cross : story
Catherine A. Judd, "Male Pseudonyms and Female Authority in Victorian England": "In 1877 [Mary Ann] Evans wrote to her future sister-in-law Mary Findlay Cross that 'I read your touching story aloud yesterday ...'"
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ann Evans
George Eliot : [unknown]
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
George Meredith : [unknown]
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
Henry James :
Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge Print: Unknown
George Eliot : [unknown]
'George Acorn read George Eliot at age nine, but "solely for the story. I used to skip the parts that moralized, or painted verbal scenery, a practice at which I became very dextrous".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Acorn Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson :
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
Charles Reade : Cloister and the Hearth, The
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
Homer : Iliad, the
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'There were few books at home when [Harry Burton] was a boy, but one of them was "Don Juan". He read it before he was eleven - through a prepubescent frame, of course. "I saw nothing in it but comic adventures, sunny shores, storms, Arabian interiors and words, words, words. Many of these words I did not understand, but I did not therefore jump to the conclusion that they were indecent. All of them - or nearly all - jogged happily through my unreceptive brain leaving vaguely pleasing sensations in their wake.... Genius speaks to all hearts and to all ages".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Burton Print: Book
Henryk Sienkiewicz : Quo Vadis
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : She
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence :
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
Elinor Glyn :
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Essays of Elia
'Growing up in Lyndhurst after the First World War, R.L. Wild regularly read aloud to his marginally literate grandmother and his completely illiterate grandfather - and it was his grandparents who selected the books... "I shall never understand how this choice was made. Until I started reading to them they had no more knowledge of English literature than a Malay Aborigine... I suppose it was their very lack of knowledge that made the choice, from "Quo Vadis" at eight, Rider Haggard's "She" at nine. By the time I was twelve they had come to know, intimately, a list of authors ranging from Shakespeare to D.H. Lawrence. All was grist to the mill (including Elinor Glyn). The classics, poetry, essays, belles lettres. We took them all in MY stride. At times we stumbled on gems that guided us to further riches. I well remember the Saturday night they brought home "The Essays of Elia". For months afterwards we used it as our roadmap...".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.L. Wild Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Robert Southey :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe :
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
George Crabbe :
'There was a lending library in town, but with no education or guidance in English literature, [Edwin Muir] wasted valuable reading time. Then there was opposition from his father, who made him return a study of "the Atheist" David Hume. And when his brother gave him 3d to spend, he was almost insulted to learn that the money had gone to purchase Penny Poets editions of "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise" and Matthew Arnold. At home there was nothing to read except [various items mentioned in a previous entry and], "Gulliver's Travels", an R.M. Ballantyne tale about Hudson's Bay...a large volume documenting a theological dispute between a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic priest, a novel that was probably "Sense and Sensibility" ("I could make nothing of it, but this did not keep me from reading it")... "I read a complete series of sentimental love tales very popular at the time, called Sunday Stories", as well as a raft of temperance novels. Consequently, when he stumbled across Christopher Marlowe or George Crabbe in that literary junkyard, "it was like an addition to a secret treasure; for no one knew of my passion, and there was none to whom I could speak of it".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Mark Twain : [unknown]
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Robert Browning : [unknown]
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Henry James : [unknown]
'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : Crime and Punishment
'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
George Woods : An account of the past and present state of the Isle of Man
'Wood's account of the Isle of Man details some laws for the regulation of servants [...] which prevailed till 1777, so absurd as scarcely to be credible if they had not been inscribed in their statute book. Read Lord Chesterfields [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Robert Ingersoll : [speeches on agnosticism]
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Philip Dorner Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield : Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son
'Read Lord Chesterfield's letters to his gidson in which I see nothing to admire but the gentle-manly style, but his lax morality is shocking to every serious thinking man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Self Reliance
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : [unknown]
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Mark Twain : [unknown]
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous works...with memoirs of his life
'Began Gibbon's account of his life; I think he is but a bad biographer having given little amiability to his own character, which is not increased by his noble commentator. [John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous works...with memoirs of his life
'I have now finished the morceau so highly reccomended by my nephew, the account of Gibbon's life and writings by himself and confess myself greatly disappointed, not indeed in the style which is like himself in the history, but I am disappointed in not being able to discover one single amiable trait. [continues at length]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous works...with memoirs of his life
'An account of a Bill having past for the suspension of the habeas Corpus Act [...] I cannot refrain from quoting from one of Gibbons letters to Lord Sheffield in 1792 [quotes]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Charles Montholon : Bonaparte's memorial in a letter
'Read Buonaparte's Memorial to Sir Hudson Lowe, a poor performance and utterly unworthy his fallen greatness'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Henri Bergson : Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Arthur Schopenhauer : The World as Will and Idea
'Charlie Chaplin was a classic autodidact, always struggling to make up for a dismally inadequate education, groping haphazardly for what he called "intellectual manna"... Chaplin could be found in his dressing room studying a Latin-English dictionary, Robert Ingersoll's secularist propaganda, Emerson's "Self- Reliance" ("I felt I had been handed a golden birthright"), Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Hazlitt, all five volumes of Plutarch's Lives, Plato, Locke, Kant, Freud's "Psychoneurosis", Lafcadio Hearn's "Life and Literature", and Henri Bergson - his essay on laughter, of course... Chaplin also spent forty years reading (if not finishing) the three volumes of "The World as Will and Idea" by Schopenhauer, whose musings on suicide are echoed in Monsieur Verdoux'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Spencer Chaplin Print: Book
Robert Walpole : Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey
'Read Walpole's Turkey and M'Cleod's Voyage of the Alceste to China'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
grandfather of Benjamin Newton : [sermon]
'Transcribed and altered a sermon of my grandfather's on the text "And if I be lifted up will draw all men to me" [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Manuscript: Sheet
Walter Scott : Rob Roy: By the author of Waverley
'Read Golownins Captivity in Japan, well told but he was a silly man, suspicious yet not cautious. Read Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Sir John Sinclair : The Code of Agriculture
'Snow and rain all day. Read Pegge on the English language, Sir J. Sinclair's Code of Agriculture, proceeded with notes on Bede. Mr Cline in his paper on breeding is quite decided that [...] but Mr Colling [...] is not of thatopinion. [NB Henry Cline - on the form of animals]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Richard Watson : Anecdotes of the life of Richard Watson [...] writ
'Bedale club. Sat next to Dr Scott who told wonderful stories of the effect which Bell's Mode of Education had caused at the charterhouse. [...] Some of Watson's life which I brought from Bedale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
[Erskine or T.E.] : Armata, a Fragment
'Read Armata, said to be Lord Erskine's, very unworthy of his name 'tho his politics are displayed which are pretty nearly my opinions and I should therefore be more inclined to judge favourably. The allegory [...] is not well kept up, but degennerates into matter of fact [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : Masterman Ready, or the Wreck in the Pacific
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Arthur Conan Doyle : Sir Nigel
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Richard Doddridge Blackmore : Lorna Doone
[imaginative role play] 'One chauffeur's daughter alternated effortlessly between heroes and heroines: "I have plotted against pirates along with Jim Hawkins and I have trembled with Jane Eyre as the first Mrs Rochester rent her bridal veil in maddened jealousy. I have been shipwrecked with Masterman Ready and on Pitcairn Island with Fletcher Christian. I have been a medieval page in Sir Nigel and Lorna Doone madly in love with 'girt Jan Ridd'".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Wharton Print: Book
Mrs Trimmer : New and Comprehensive Lessons, Containing a General Outline of the Roman HIstory
"Florence Nightingale's copy of Mrs. Trimmer's New and Comprehensive Lessons, Containing a General Outline of the Roman History (1818) has Nightingale's autograph in pencil on a flyleaf ... and pencilled marks -- an 'x' or an 'A' at the ends of chapters to show how far she had got with her reading."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
L. Margery Bazett : After-Death Communications
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorses many of the volumes in his collection of books about spiritualism and parapsychological experience with a signed note on the title page: of L. Margery Bazett's After-Death Communications (1918), for example, he says, 'A very useful little book with many good cases entirely beyond Criticism.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Print: Book
Gerhard Voss : Poeticarum Institutionum, libri tres
" ... [S. T. Coleridge] in a copy of Gerhard Voss's Poeticarum institutionum, libri tres (1647): 'I have looked thro' this book with some attention, April 21, 1803 --, and seldom indeed have I read a more thoroughly worthless one.'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc
" ... a large part of the manuscript for William Godwin's play Abbas, with Coleridge's commentary dating from 1801, has recently come to light ... there he ... adopted a set of symbols for common problems, 'false or intolerable English' ... 'common-place book Language,' and 'bad metre.' He did the same for a copy of Joan of Arc that he annotated in 1814."
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Richard Watson : A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury
H. J. Jackson notes, partially reproduces, and discusses lengthy annotations, including mock completion of title and close, argumentative marginal responses to text, made by contemporary reader of copy of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (1783).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus : Meditations
" ... to the coda of his copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 'depart, therefore, contented and in good humour ...' [Leigh] Hunt courteously adds, 'Thanks, and love to you, excellent Antoninus. L. H. Feb. 7th 1853. His second regular perusal.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Henry Leigh Hunt Print: Book
Pierre Bayle : Pensees diverses vol 1
"Mary Astell returned a borrowed copy of Pierre Bayle's Pensees diverses (4th ed., 1704) to the owner, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with the first volume profusely annotated. On the flyleaf she write a general impression, beginning [...] "I ask pardon for scribling in Y[ou]r La[dyshi]ps Book. The Author is so disingenuous & inconsistent yt no lover of Truth can read it without a just Indignation.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Astell Print: Book
Marco Polo : The Travels of Marco Polo
'Read Marco Polo's Travels which are amusing enough though containing a pretty large collection of absurdities [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Marco Polo : The Travels of Marco Polo
'Finished Marco Polo, a very curious book for the time in which it was written, wonderfully accurate in the account of the people bating his miracles [...] which was the fault of his age rather than himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Sermons [sermons preached at Lincolns Inn]
'Proceeded with Denham's "Physico-Theology". Read Hurd's sermon on "Every soul shall be salted with fire", an odd mode of preaching he seems to give two guesses at the meaning of the passage and tells his audience they may take which they like'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Archibald Campbell : A Voyage Round the World, from 1806-1812
'Finished Derham's "Physico Theology" and read Campbell's narrative of a Voyage round the world'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Gerald Massey : Lyrics of Love
"Take, for instance, his 'Lyrics of Love', so full of beauty and tenderness. Nor are his 'Songs of Progress' less full of poetic power and beauty."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
Gerald Massey : Songs of Progress
"Take, for instance, his 'Lyrics of Love', so full of beauty and tenderness. Nor are his 'Songs of Progress' less full of poetic power and beauty."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
"It was about this period that Mike, the dwarf waiter, fell ill. His mistress and others of her family being worn out by watching, the landlady appealed to me to take a turn. I at once consented, and the widow, much pleased, set about mixing me grog for the night. I asked to be allowed to glance over her library, and, from its contents, I selected "Young's Night Thoughts." This I managed to finish before morning, and never was book read to greater advantage. The moans, occasional ravings and wanderings of my poor little friend and former schoolfellow enabled me to realise beauties that I had failed to see in a previous perusal."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bedford Leno Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
"How much a book gains by the appropriate surroundings of the person reading it, was forcibly impressed upon me [by the circumstances described in RED ID 5432], and this fact was farther corroborated years after, when I read Scott's 'Lady of the Lake', during a walk from the Trosachs [sic] to Stirling."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bedford Leno Print: Book
Falcon Harmonic Society : Notice of a Burns Supper
"It so happened that a retired Scotch physician, who had settled in the town, chanced to read this notice, and, interested in all related to his gifted countryman [Burns], timidly asked if he would be allowed admission [to a Burns' Night supper organised by the Falcon Harmonic Society]."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: a Scotch physician Print: Poster
Thomas Frognall Dibdin : Bibliographical Decameron
'Read Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron this summer, & Davis's Second Tour round a Bibliomaniac's Library.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of...
'The book is one huge mass of entertainment from beginning to end - And written in such an unaffected spirit of Christian charity...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
John Horne Tooke : Epea Pteroenta, or the Diversions of Purley
'Horne Tooke is a dirty dog - he gives the derivation of such words! - There sits Mr Wilbraham two hours every morning in the library, sniggering and shaking his fat sides over such grave nastiness as is enough to make a modest soul like me blush or turn sick: and he always puts a little paper mark into the worst passages to show them to me when I go down. Was ever anything so impertinent & insulting! As if I loved dirt.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'I have been reading, and am enchanted with The Lady of the Lake. It has all the spirit of either of its predecessors, (have you read it?) and ten times the interest. When I had finished it, I remained with such a relish for Walter Scott, that I immediately borrowed and sat down to a second perusal of Marmion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion: a Tale of Flodden Field
'I immediately borrowed and sat down to a second perusal of Marmion. I like the brave villain much for being so wholly divested of sneakiness...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : Letters of Madame de Sevigne
'I have read some very delightful old books lately (for I now have just attained the wisdom to wish to make use of this ample library, and reject all borrowed or hired books) -Amongst others, two collections of letters, Sevigne's to her daughter, and Bussy Rabutin's to her and various others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy : Les Lettres de Messire Roger de Rabutin
'Rabutin de Bussy in his little way, is also delightful...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : Letters of Madame de Sevigne
'I have finished all dear old Sevigne's Letters...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Louis-Pierre Anquetil : Louis XIV, Sa Cour et le Regent
'I have finished all dear old Sevigne's Letters and since then read Anquetil's "Louis XIV Sa Cour et le Regent" - A most admirably entertaining work in four moderate little volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Tales of Fashionable Life
'[Has heard story of Wellington] Is not this like the Irish Nurse in Ennui [this word underlined]? Emma told me when I said so, that it had struck her directly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Mary Leadbetter and Maria Edgeworth : Cottage Dialogues Amongst the Irish Peasantry
'Have you seen the little book, 'Cottage Dialogues', by Mrs Leadbetter. Edgeworth's notes are lively and [nationally] characteristic as ever: but I own I am tired a little of the receipts to make cheap dishes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Essays
William Blake, in copy of Francis Bacon, Essays: "'Villain! Did Christ seek the Praise of the Rulers?'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
Francis Bacon : The Advancement of Learning
William Blake, in copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Works (1798) vol I: " '... I read Burkes Treatise [on the Sublime and Beautiful] when very Young at the same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancmt [sic] of Learning on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions & on looking them over find that my Notes on Reynolds in this Book are exactly Similar. I felt the Same Comtempt & Abhorrence then; that I do now.'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : Works
William Blake, in copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Works (1798) vol I: " '... I read Burkes Treatise [on the Sublime and Beautiful] when very Young at the same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancmt [sic] of Learning on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions & on looking them over find that my Notes on Reynolds in this Book are exactly Similar. I felt the Same Comtempt & Abhorrence then; that I do now.'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
" ... [S. T. Coleridge's] copy of Quentin Durward includes a note that reveals his sense of public duty as an annotator [Coleridge takes issue with Scott's narrator's suggestion that traders miss their customers when they travel abroad]."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Polemicall Discourses
"Coleridge's many notes to Jeremy Taylor's Polemicall Discourses include some addressed to the author directly ('A sophism, dearest Jeremy!'); some to the owner of the volume, Charles Lamb; and some to a hypothetical other reader ..."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D
"For [Sir James] Fellowes, a prospective biographer ... [Hester Lynch Piozzi] annotated books by and about herself: Nathaniel Wraxall's Historical Memoirs of My Own Time (1815), the Johnson Anecdotes and Letters, and her own Observations and Retrospection."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Retrospection: or A Review of the Most Striking and Important Events, Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the Last Eighteen Hundred Years have Presented to the View of Mankind
"For [Sir James] Fellowes, a prospective biographer ... [Hester Lynch Piozzi] annotated books by and about herself: Nathaniel Wraxall's Historical Memoirs of My Own Time (1815), the Johnson Anecdotes and Letters, and her own Observations and Retrospection."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Observations
"For [Sir James] Fellowes, a prospective biographer ... [Hester Lynch Piozzi] annotated books by and about herself: Nathaniel Wraxall's Historical Memoirs of My Own Time (1815), the Johnson Anecdotes and Letters, and her own Observations and Retrospection."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi Print: Book
Raymond Macdonald Alden : Introduction to Poetry for Students of English Literature
H. J. Jackson discusses Rupert Brooke's pencilled notes, "clearly made out on a single reading," in copy of Raymond Macdonald Alden, Introduction to Poetry for Students of English Literature (1909); notes that Brooke acquired the book when aged twenty-one.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rupert Brooke Print: Book
Alfred Adler : Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology
H. J. Jackson notes T. H. White's reading and annotating of C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1928); Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1923), and Alfred Adler, Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1924), conjecturing that White read these before 1932 (when aged 26).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: T. H. White Print: Book
Thomas Frognall Dibdin : Bibliographical Decameron
'On turning to my book, I find I have journalised only one day, during this summer vis [sic] July 29, when I walked after tea with Mrs Cole a new walk down Penny-black Lane, across Chapman's Common, & into the Scalby Road - a short way into the Whitby Road, & returned over the fields by the bleach yard on the Whitby Road - a delightful rural walk. Read in Dibdin's Decameron - Delany's Life of King David, & Gay's Choir.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Archdeacon Wranghan : Lines on the sea bathing infirmary at Scarborough
'On my return to Scarborough was busily employed in preparing for the season, & in editing the work called The Scarborough Album, and in soliciting contributions of a poetical description; these were of a good class, & abundantly bestowed. Archdeacon Wrangham wrote an original piece for the work 'Lines on the sea bathing infirmary at Scarborough'. The Mss of George Berret, the Younger, were freely offered to my use; & Hermione (Mrs Ballantyre, widow of the celebrated Publisher in Edinburgh) kindly controbuted. I also reprinted the celebrated pieces under the signature of Malvina, from The Scarborough Repository.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Unknown
George Berrett :
'On my return to Scarborough was busily employed in preparing for the season, & in editing the work called The Scarborough Album, and in soliciting contributions of a poetical description; these were of a good class, & abundantly bestowed. Archdeacon Wrangham wrote an original piece for the work 'Lines on the sea bathing infirmary at Scarborough'. The Mss of George Berret, the Younger, were freely offered to my use; & Hermione (Mrs Ballantyre, widow of the celebrated Publisher in Edinburgh) kindly controbuted. I also reprinted the celebrated pieces under the signature of Malvina, from The Scarborough Repository.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Unknown
Hermione Ballantyre :
'On my return to Scarborough was busily employed in preparing for the season, & in editing the work called The Scarborough Album, and in soliciting contributions of a poetical description; these were of a good class, & abundantly bestowed. Archdeacon Wrangham wrote an original piece for the work 'Lines on the sea bathing infirmary at Scarborough'. The Mss of George Berret, the Younger, were freely offered to my use; & Hermione (Mrs Ballantyre, widow of the celebrated Publisher in Edinburgh) kindly controbuted. I also reprinted the celebrated pieces under the signature of Malvina, from The Scarborough Repository.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Unknown
Somerset Maughan : Of Human Bondage
'I?m reading "Of Human Bondage" of Somerset Maugham & it?s terribly good ? some wonderful school stuff, & of course the whole thing, in his subtle way, is quite itching with queerness. Perhaps I?ll send you a copy to Chicago to read in bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Pears Print: Book
Gerard Manley Hopkins : [religious poems]
'I?m also doing a series of four-part songs for Peter & his Round-table singers to "first-perform" at the Aeolian Hall on November 24th. I?ve done four so far ? fairly extended, all to religious words by Gerald [sic] Manley Hopkins - & there?ll probably be two more.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
R J Yeatman : 1066 and all that
'- have you ever read a book called "1066 & all that" ?i t's very funny, & one of the authors is on board.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin : Boris Godonof
'One has no inclination at all to work or to read seriously ? so I?ve been dipping into an enormous range of stuff ? from Hans Anderson to Boris Godonof.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
Hans Christian Anderson :
?One has no inclination at all to work or to read seriously ? so I?ve been dipping into an enormous range of stuff ? from Hans Anderson to Boris Godonof.?
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Britten Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : De l'Allemagne
'I am glad you have read Madame de Stael?s "Allemagne". The book is a foolish one in some respects; but it abounds with information, and shows great mental power. She was certainly the first woman of her age; Miss Edgeworth, I think, the second; and Miss Austen the third.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Macaulay Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba
?Malden and I have read Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse of Kehama.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I have read the greater part of the History of James I and Mrs. Montagues?s essay on Shakespeare, and a great deal of Gibbon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Hebrew Melodies
'John Smith, Bob Hankinson, and I, went over the "Hebrew Melodies" together'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel
'He [Macaulay] was so fired up with reading Scott?s "Lay" and "Marmion", the former of which he got entirely, and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from his delight in reading them, that he determined on writing himself a poem in six cantos which he called the "Battle of Cheviot"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
'He [Macaulay] was so fired up with reading Scott?s "Lay" and "Marmion", the former of which he got entirely, and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from his delight in reading them, that he determined on writing himself a poem in six cantos which he called the "Battle of Cheviot?'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : annotations to Samuel Daniel's poetry
Charles Lamb's response to reading marginal comments by S. T. Coleridge in his copy of Samuel Daniel's Poetical Works, in letter to Coleridge: "'I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him ... Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them.'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: annotations in printed text
Richard Field : Of the Church
H. J. Jackson notes S. T. Coleridge's presentation of a copy of Richard Field, Of the Church, annotated by himself, to his son Derwent in 1819.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Barry Cornwall : Dramatic Scenes
H. J. Jackson notes S. T. Coleridge's annotations, at owners' requests, of copies of Barry Cornwall, Dramatic Scenes, and Charles Tennyson Turner, Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Tennyson Turner : Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces
H. J. Jackson notes S. T. Coleridge's annotations, at owners' requests, of copies of Barry Cornwall, Dramatic Scenes, and Charles Tennyson Turner, Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Gladwin : Dissertations on the rhetoric, prosody and rhyme of the Persians. By Francis Gladwin
[Marginalia]: copious marginal pencil annotations and text marks, some now fading to the point of illegibility. Contents are mainly comments on, or corrections to, the text, including detailed points of grammar e.g. Text = "It is a general rule that the Ghazel do not contain more than twelve distiche; * although some poets formerly made Ghazels of greater length", ms note = "or less than five"; p. 6 Text = "Mo-sum-mut", ms note = "Moosullis"; p. 70 Text = "This [mark] is a conjunction [underlined] occurring in the middle of an hemistich, * when it receives the accent of the preceding letter", [whole clause is underlined], ms note = "In summary it is removed & its accent is given to the preceding letter"; the note on p.19 is in Persian.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
Mrs Henry Sandford : Thomas Poole and His Friends
H. J. Jackson notes "extra illustration" ("prompted by the text") of a copy of Margaret Sandford, Thomas Poole and His Friends (1888), with inserts including letters and "a flower taken from Wordsworth's garden in 1844."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Richard Clark : Reminiscences of Handel, His Grace the Duke of Chandos, Powells the Harpers ... The Harmonious Blacksmith, and Others. With a List of the Anthems Composed at Commons, by Handel, for the Duke of Chandos. And an Appendix [containing wills]
H. J. Jackson discusses Richard Clark's annotations to Isabella Spence, How to be Rid of a Wife (1823), and his own pamphlet, Reminiscences of Handel (1836).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Clark
William Charles Macready : [diary]
'Rather like celibate life in Paris again. I dined at the club and read Macready's diary;. . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Pretty Lady, The
'Bonar Law told him that "his sister had been a very great admirer", but that since this book she had "done with" him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Law Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : article in the 'Daily News'
'...an article of his in the Daily News on 21 November, blaming Liberal leadership, produced from Asquith himself "a polite letter of self - justification"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Asquith Print: Newspaper
Robert Lowth : A short introduction to English grammar: with critical notes
[Marginalia]: ms notes on binding pages: (1) "an English verb has/ not above six or seven/ different ... /whereas a french has/ very often more than/forty"; (2) "The English language/ has the the [sic] advantage/ of the French in ... /to personification"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Erskine Print: Book
Henry Blunt : Sermons preached in Trinity Church, Upper Chelsea
[Marginalia]: ms annotations suggest they may be reminders of items used for sermon preparation e.g. p.22 Text = "Sermon II. Forgiveness a present mercy", ms note = "GFI [?] Nov 28th 1847/ April 30th 1848/ April 15 1854/ Oct 19th 1856"; p. 42 - some text has been deleted.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: clergyman Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Castle of Otranto
'If you like it try the "Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole. That is the best stilted romance style I know. "Well may the blood" says an expiring viscount to a peasant youth who has fallen in love with a countess and been recognised by a friar as his son, the friar thereupon proving himself a duke, and the detection of his son arising from a markt on the son's neck, which was being bared for execution, - "well may the blood which has so lately traced itself to its source boil over in the veins". (The boy had shown signs of annoyance.) I never saw anything like that before.The killing and stabbing and the wonderment produced as to why all the characters stay about the old castle, (most of them have no business there), when at least three quarters are searching for the blood of the other three quarters for monetary reasonsor for none! There are three discoveries, I think of long lost children and no end of supernaturalism; all produces a gorgeous effect.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
Arthur Helps : Realmah
'I read Helps's Realmah yesterday and the day before. [...] His essays are old-womanish. I have to "set a paper" on that book and am quite unprepared to ask a single question about it. The last generation of readers was so fond of what is elegant.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Black Arrow
'Last night I spent with Charles Strachey; we each had an arm chair with a chair between us to hold books as we passed judgment on them. I am sending you Stevenson's last book which came out a few days ago, which I bought and read this afternoon (I had a meddlesome red pencil with which I slightly disfigured it) and which I think spendidly spirited.' [followed by a judgment on the book]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
Elinor Glyn : [novels]
'When her novels were finished, she would take them up herself to Gerald Duckworth at 3, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. She was by this time on extremely cordial terms with her publisher and he encouraged her to read her books, or large portions of them, aloud to him. Her books, she maintained, were intended to be read aloud and lost their proper effect if they were read in silence. She herself was extremely proud of her reading voice;* she would read slowly with long dramatic pauses and Duckworth would meekly put aside all other work and listen, while Margot often waited patiently in the hansom outside.' * It was the mark of a gentlewoman to be able to read aloud beautifully. All her heroines had it, or acquired it painfully, and practice it frequently.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elinor Glyn Manuscript: Unknown
S. Clarke Hook : [Jack, Sam and Pete stories]
'C.H. Rolph... picked up [a message that "well-trained impis could outwit upper-class English duffers"] from S. Clarke Hook's stories of Jack, Sam and Pete in the Boys' Friend Threepenny Library. Jack and Sam were white boys and their friend Pete was a black superhero, "who was not only stronger than Samson but richer than Croesus".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: C.H. Rolph Print: Book
Mrs O.F. Walton : Christie's Old Organ
'Especially effective [at transmitting conservative values to the working classes] were the pious works of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton, and Amy Le Feuvre, stories with titles like "Little Meg's Children", "Jessica's First Prayer", "Christie's Old Organ", and "Froggy's Little Brother". In an Oxfordshire village in the 1880s, Flora Thompson recalled that children and mothers alike borrowed them from the Sunday School library and cried over them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: children and mothers Print: Book
Brenda New : Froggy's Little Brother
'Especially effective [at transmitting conservative values to the working classes] were the pious works of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton, and Amy Le Feuvre, stories with titles like Little Meg's Children, Jessica's First Prayer, Christie's Old Organ, and Froggy's Little Brother. In an Oxfordshire village in the 1880s, Flora Thompson recalled that children and mothers alike borrowed them from the Sunday School library and cried over them".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: children and mothers Print: Book
Mrs O.F. Walton : [pious novels]
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : [unknown]
'Marjory Todd read [the books of Hesba Stretton, Mrs O.F. Walton and Amy le Feuvre but felt later that] "I would not now willingly expose a child of mine to the morbid resignation of any of these books... yet I think that children, when their home life is secure and happy, can take a lot of that debilitating sentiment... We sharpened our teeth on this stuff and then went on to greater satisfaction elsewhere", including "Pride and Prejudice", "Jane Eyre", "Alice in Wonderland", Captain Marryat, Kenneth Grahame, and E. Nesbit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
Richard Ingalese : History and Power of Mind, The
'Elinor herself spent much time reading the publications, especially Richard Ingalese's "The History and Power of Mind"; it seemed to fit in, in so many ways, with her own instinctive beliefs and disbeliefs, and provided an authoritative explanation for many of the points which troubled her.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elinor Glyn
Oliver Goldsmith : History of England
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman:. "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of Rome
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman: "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Waste Land
'Coachman's daughter Anne Tibble was enraged by "The Waste Land", which she read as a scholarship student at a redbrick university: "Eliot's neurosis of disillusion was horrifying... almost utterly invalid...almost entirely without feeling for others. Eliot showed people as ugly, stupid, shabby, vulgarian, squalid, somehow indecent...the 'broken fingernails of dirty hands'...Weren't these my father's and my mother's hands?". The experience of reading it plunged her into depression, but in the late 1920s it was difficult to express her real feelings about one of the greatest living poets...Instead, she channelled her scholarly energies toward the poetry of John Clare, whose work affirmed the literacy of working people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Tibble Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Middlemarch
H. J. Jackson notes annotations in a copy of Middlemarch by a reader who, "initially repelled by the books, was gradually won over."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Alfred Russel Wallace : Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection
H. J. Jackson notes how annotations made in 1871 by Francis Palgrave in his copy of Alfred Russel Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870) show development of Palgrave's response (including objections) to the argument of the text.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Palgrave Print: Book
Edward Coke : The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England; or, A Commentary upon Littleton
H. J. Jackson notes annotations (including corrections and updatings to text and notes) by Francis Hargrave in copy of his own edition of Edward Coke's Commentary upon Littleton (1775).
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Hargrave Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : She
'W.J. Brown was introduced to literature by "Robinson Crusoe", "She", "The Last of the Mohicans", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", and he never moved far beyond that level. He tried "The Idiot" and "The Brothers Karamazov", but found them too depressing, perhaps because his life was anything but Dostoevskian'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Last of the Mohicans
'W.J. Brown was introduced to literature by "Robinson Crusoe", "She", "The Last of the Mohicans", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", and he never moved far beyond that level. He tried "The Idiot" and "The Brothers Karamazov", but found them too depressing, perhaps because his life was anything but Dostoevskian'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Idiot
'W.J. Brown was introduced to literature by "Robinson Crusoe", "She", "The Last of the Mohicans", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", and he never moved far beyond that level. He tried "The Idiot" and "The Brothers Karamazov", but found them too depressing, perhaps because his life was anything but Dostoevskian'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Brothers Karamazov
'W.J. Brown was introduced to literature by "Robinson Crusoe", "She", "The Last of the Mohicans", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", and he never moved far beyond that level. He tried "The Idiot" and "The Brothers Karamazov", but found them too depressing, perhaps because his life was anything but Dostoevskian'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Charles Darwin : [unknown]
'after tea [W.J. Brown] would enjoy "five glorious hours of freedom" reading Darwin, Huxley and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" at the Battersea Public Library'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Thomas Henry Huxley : [unknown]
'after tea [W.J. Brown] would enjoy "five glorious hours of freedom" reading Darwin, Huxley and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" at the Battersea Public Library'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : In Memoriam
'after tea [W.J. Brown] would enjoy "five glorious hours of freedom" reading Darwin, Huxley and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" at the Battersea Public Library'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William John Brown Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[Entry from Commonplace Book]: 'Christianity, diffusion of, assisted by the general scepticism of the pagan world combined with the necessity of some belief in the vulgar mind. Gibbon. Roman Empire, Vol 2, Ch 15, pp. 205-6'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Davy Harrop Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Thomas Henry Huxley : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [unknown]
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
Herodotus : Herodoti Halicarnassei Historiarum Libri IX
H. J. Jackson discusses expansive annotations made in ink by Edward Gibbon in copy of Herodotus, including corrections as well as lively critical commentary.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Gibbon Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
Karl Marx : Das Kapital
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. By Mr. Yorick
H. J. Jackson notes Edmund Ferrars's annotations to his copy of Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey: "A note on the title page indicates that Ferrars acquired this two-volume set in 1772. He annotated it very heavily, marking some passages, keeping an index on the flyleaves, introducing biographical and bibliographical information on the title page, and recording cross-references to works by Sterne and many other writers within the text."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Ferrars Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic Towrds the Close of the Eighteenth Century
"Horatio Nelson's copy of Helen Maria Williams's Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic Towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1801) ... has very little marking and only a few actual notes in it, but all his notes correct the author on matters of fact ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Horatio Nelson Print: Book
James Andrew Pettit : Anecdotes, &c Ancient and Modern
H. J. Jackson notes Hester Lynch Piozzi's notes to Pettit's Anecdotes (borrowed from her friend Edward Mangin in 1817), written by her onto separate sheets of paper, which were cut up and pasted into the relevant sections of the text by Mangin.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi Print: Book
Paracelsus :
"In Part I of the Religio [Medici] (i:30), [Thomas] Browne confesses himself a writer of marginalia, quoting a passage of Paracelsus that he declare 'I never could pass ... without an asterisk or annotation.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Browne Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Letters for Literary Ladies
H. J. Jackson notes John Horseman's annotation (including literary quotations and cross-references) of his copy of Maria Edgeworth, Letters for Literary Ladies (1799).
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horseman Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Robert Burns : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [unknown]
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
Henry James : [unknown]
'A.E. Coppard, a laundrywoman's son who grew up in dire poverty, left school at nine, ascended the ranks of clerkdom and became (at age forty) a professional author. At fourteen he was still enjoying "Deadeye Dick", by twenty he was reading Henry James...He secured a literary education at the Brighton Public Library, and as a professional runner he used prize money to buy Hardy's poems, Shakespeare, Mackail's translation of "The Odyssey", and William Morris's "The Earthly Paradise". In an undemanding job... he read on company time, though there was a row when his supervisor found "Jude the Obscure" on his desk'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [unknown]
'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : [unknown]
'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : The Dying Swan
'Masefield's early experience of literature came with the stories told or read to him by his nurse. The fare was what would be expected in a middle class Victorian home; even "Dick Whittington and his Cat" was introduced. Tennyson's "The Dying Swan" was one of the boy's earliest delights; and, having been taught to read before his sixth birthday, he read and committed to memory copious amounts of Longfellow, especially Hiawatha and Evangeline'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Evangeline
'Masefield's early experience of literature came with the stories told or read to him by his nurse. The fare was what would be expected in a middle class Victorian home; even "Dick Whittington and his Cat" was introduced. Tennyson's "The Dying Swan" was one of the boy's earliest delights; and, having been taught to read before his sixth birthday, he read and committed to memory copious amounts of Longfellow, especially Hiawatha and Evangeline'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Hiawatha
'Masefield's early experience of literature came with the stories told or read to him by his nurse. The fare was what would be expected in a middle class Victorian home; even "Dick Whittington and his Cat" was introduced. Tennyson's "The Dying Swan" was one of the boy's earliest delights; and, having been taught to read before his sixth birthday, he read and committed to memory copious amounts of Longfellow, especially Hiawatha and Evangeline'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'Masefield obtained his first copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" on the Conway and was soon enraptured by the possibility that such South Sea adventures might overtake him'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Parliament of Fowls
'Masefield habitually purchased a book each Friday evening and read it over the weekend. Among the first purchases was a seventy-five cent copy of Chaucer; and that evening, as he recalled, "I stretched myself on my bed, and began to read 'The Parliament of Fowls'; and with the first lines entered into a world of poetry until then unknown to me". As a result, Masefield's study of poetry deepened, and Chaucer, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats became his mentors. Shelley converted the impressionable youth to vegetarianism....Unfortunately [he] overdid vegetarianism by abjuring milk; and, weak from lack of protein, he finally gave up the regimen'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [unknown]
'Masefield habitually purchased a book each Friday evening and read it over the weekend. Among the first purchases was a seventy-five cent copy of Chaucer; and that evening, as he recalled, "I stretched myself on my bed, and began to read 'The Parliament of Fowls'; and with the first lines entered into a world of poetry until then unknown to me". As a result, Masefield's study of poetry deepened, and Chaucer, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats became his mentors. Shelley converted the impressionable youth to vegetarianism....Unfortunately [he] overdid vegetarianism by abjuring milk; and, weak from lack of protein, he finally gave up the regimen'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Richard Watson : A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury
H. J. Jackson discusses highly "adversarial" annotations made by anonymous reader in copy of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, "A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury" (1783).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Gerard Langbaine : An Account of the English Dramatic Poets
"One of the interleaved British Library copies of the 1691 edition [of Gerard Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets] graphically represents the circulation of annotated books in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, for it contains not only the notes of the current owner in 1813, John Haslemere, and those of his predecessor Richard Wright, but also notes transcribed from another copy that hd been annotated by George Steevens who had himself collected notes from yet another annotated by Thomas Percy and William Oldys."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Haslemere Print: Book
Gerard Langbaine : An Account of the English Dramatic Poets
"One of the interleaved British Library copies of the 1691 edition [of Gerard Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets] graphically represents the circulation of annotated books in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, for it contains not only the notes of the current owner in 1813, John Haslemere, and those of his predecessor Richard Wright, but also notes transcribed from another copy that hd been annotated by George Steevens who had himself collected notes from yet another annotated by Thomas Percy and William Oldys."
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Wright Print: Book
Gerard Langbaine : An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691)
"One of the interleaved British Library copies of the 1691 edition [of Gerard Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets] graphically represents the circulation of annotated books in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, for it contains not only the notes of the current owner in 1813, John Haslemere, and those of his predecessor Richard Wright, but also notes transcribed from another copy that had been annotated by George Steevens who had himself collected notes from yet another annotated by Thomas Percy and William Oldys."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Percy Print: Book
Gerard Langbaine : An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691)
"One of the interleaved British Library copies of the 1691 edition [of Gerard Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets] graphically represents the circulation of annotated books in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, for it contains not only the notes of the current owner in 1813, John Haslemere, and those of his predecessor Richard Wright, but also notes transcribed from another copy that had been annotated by George Steevens who had himself collected notes from yet another annotated by Thomas Percy and William Oldys."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Oldys Print: Book
Frontinus :
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": "[Gabriel] Harvey and Thomas Smith, Jr., read through the third decade [of Livy's Romanae historiae principis, in Harvey's copy], the story of Hannibal, in one week in 1570-71 ... Harvey records that they read along with Livy the military authors Vegetius and Frontinus, and that they did so critically ..."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Smith, Jr. Print: Book
Frontinus : Stratagems
Anthony Grafton, "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy": " ... when ... [Harvey] and [Philip] Sidney went through books 1-3 [of Livy's Romanae historiae], they compared them to Frontinus's Stratagems (first century A.D.) [notes copiousness of annotations in Harvey's copy of Frontinus at the Houghton Librrary, Havard]."
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey and Philip Sidney Print: Book
Lambert Daneau : Politicorum aphorismorum silva
Anthony Grafton, in "Discitur ut agatur: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," notes Harvey's reading of Lambert Daneau's Silva "of political aphorisms" (1583), "a now forgotten work by a Calvinist minister chiefly remembered for his unsuccesful attempts to impose a natural science based on the Bible on the Protestant curriculum, and a church order based on the 'Genevan Inquisition' on the liberal citizens and professors of Leiden." Continues: "Harvey's copy of Daneau has so far evaded discovery, but his references are so frequent and precise as to make it clear that thet were not conventional. He read the work as soon as it appeared, excitedly referring to its newness, and often praised it as a source of pungent and precise political axioms."
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
F. Sommer Merryweather : Lives and Anecdotes of Misers
'The conception of this particular novel ["Riceyman Steps"] was probably sparked off by the discovery, in an old Southampton bookshop, T. James and Co., of 34 Bernard Street, of a curious old book called "Lives and Anecdotes of Misers", by F. Sommer Merryweather (1850). Bennett bought it in 1921 on one of his yachting expeditions, read it and used it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Riceyman Steps
'While she was on board the yacht in August, the proofs of "Riceyman Steps" arrived; She read them tucked up under rugs in the deck house on a "wild grey day", and they made her weep.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pauline Smith Print: Book, proofs
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
'She was "surprised into tears" by "The Vicar of Wakefield", although she did not much like it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters
'[Mary Wortley] Montagu's Letters and accounts of the sexual freedom of Tahitian women were popular: Elizabeth Montagu and Anna Seward for instance, read both.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters
'[Mary Wortley] Montagu's Letters and accounts of the sexual freedom of Tahitian women were popular: Elizabeth Montagu and Anna Seward for instance, read both.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems]
'Anne Grant loved books, but felt guilty about literary pleasure: she enjoyed Byron's poems but worried about their morality, and was "fully convinced of the bad tendency" of the works of Peter Pindar because of "the amusement I derive from them".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Peter Pindar : [unknown]
'Anne Grant loved books, but felt guilty about literary pleasure: she enjoyed Byron's poems but worried about their morality, and was "fully convinced of the bad tendency" of the works of Peter Pindar because of "the amusement I derive from them".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Unknown
Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo : Amadis de Gaule
'Robert Boyle being made to "read the state adventures of Amadis de Gaulle and other fabulous stories" which met a "restless fancy, then made more susceptible of any impressions by an unemployed pensiveness" and accustomed his thoughts to such a habitude of roving, that he [had] scarce ever been their quiet master since.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Boyle Print: Unknown
Dr Shuckford : Dr Shuckford's Connection
'She rejects even "good" books if she finds them tedious or ling-winded, finding unreadable Hooker's "extremely good" Laws of ecclesiastical polity and the "very profound learning" of "Dr Shuckford's Connection".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Teresia Constantia Phillips : An apology for the conduct of Mrs Teresia Constantia Phillips
'She claims, for instance, a "charity to all kinds of books" which allows her to read sympathetically even the scandalous memoirs of Teresia Constantia Phillips.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim : An Ecclesiastical History, ancient and modern
'During these twelve months [in prison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a freethinker if I had not been one before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'During these twelve months [inprison] I read with deep interest and much profit Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's "History of England", and many other standard works- amongst others, Mosheims "Ecclesiastical History". The reading of that book would have made me a freethinker if I had not been one before.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Book
Richard Carlile : Republican
'It was in the autumn of 1818 that I first becam acquainted with politics and theology. Passing along Briggate one evening, I saw at the corner of Union Court a bill, which stated that the Radical Reformers held their meetings in a room in that court. Curiosity prompted me to go and hear what was going on. I found them reading Woller's Black Dwarf, Carlile's Republican, and Cobbett's Register. I remembered my mother being in the habit of reading Cobbett's Register, and saying she "wondered people spoke so much against it; she saw nothing bad in it, but she saw a great many good things in it." After hearing it read in the the meeting room, I was of my mother's opinion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Group of 'Radical Reformers', who regularly met in Leeds Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Alexander Pope : [unknown]
'Yesterday and today I have been reading the Bible and Pope, and looking at prints of Paris. Cholera is reported in Philadelphia...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [unknown]
'Yesterday... reading the Bible and Pope, and looking at prints of Paris. Cholera is reported in Philadelphia...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
Marie de Sevigne : letters
Burney's reading group reading two books - 'the last voyage of Captain Cook and the letters of Madame de Sevigne. She makes little progress with Cook because of her fascination with Sevigne, a 'siren' who 'seduces me from all other reading'; she feels such an intense response to the letters that it is as if Sevigne 'were alive and even now in my room and permitting me to run into her arms.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'[Burney was] 'not impressed by Samuel James Arnold's "The Creole", Lady Morgan's "The Missionary", Edgeworth's "Patronage", which she found "dull and heavy" or Hannah More's "Coelebs", which she found "monotonously without interest of ANY kind", despite her approval of its politics.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Agnes Maria Bennett : The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Tales of a Fashionable Life
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
Regina Maria Roche : The Children of the Abbey
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Joseph Andrews
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
Lawrence Sterne : A Sentimental Journey
'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook
Walter Scott :
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook
Robert Southey :
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook Print: Book
George Gascoigne : The Posies
[MARGINALIA]:'The discouerie of his mistress, a false diamant. His sicknes, & Jealosie did not help the matter, but did marre all. Woomen loue men: & care not for pore harts, that cannot bestead them. Especially at the returne of his ritual, her Secretarie; it imported him to empooue himself more, then before; & not to languish like a milkstop, or to play the pore snake vpon himself. Ladie Elinor woold haue liked the man and woold haue maintained his possession by force of armes, & with braue encounters beat his enimie owt of the field.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Lord Kames :
'Janet Schaw and her cousin, sailing from Scotland to the Caribbean, try to keep calm in a terrifying storm by reading Lord Kames ('like philosophers not Christians').'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw Print: Book
Mary Ann Hanway : Ellinor, or the World as it is (A Novel in Four Volumes)
'Ellinor, or the World as it is, by M.A.Hanway. 4 vols. An entertaining production written in a light, easy style [editor does not reproduce all of Weeton's comments] [The story] cannot have the slightest tendency to injure the morals of any reader,whether they have common sense or not, when it is considered that there was a continued series of suffering for 20 years from first to last.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord or Black Dwarf and old Mortal
'Finished the last "Tales of My Landlord" of which the fourth volume is the worst. I think Walter Scott has the peculiar art of growing worse and worse yet preserving his popularity. One poem after another was worse than the former; just so his tales and every volume of every tale continues in a similar climax of deterioration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Moral Tales
'E- being called out for a few hours in the morning I attempted to amuse myself with Marmontel's Tales- it was but an attempt. For I hurried thro' them 'quite upon thorns' expecting every moment his return, - which prevented either pleasure or instruction to arise from it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
George Gregory : The Life of T. Chatterton or The Works of T. Chatt
'The evening was devoted to the perusal of the life of the most extraordinary genius this country has produced- need I say, Chatterton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Works of Thomas Chatterton, Containing his Life
'[Returns after afternoon reading session] to renew the subject from a more enlarged account of this wonder of the 18th Century [Chatterton] lately published by Southey ... in 3 large volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
Tobias George Smollett : The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
'I got thro 6 chapters of Count Fathom- about an hours undertaking- and this has been the way thro my whole readings- a chapter at one hour - the volume thrown aside for perhaps two more- take it up make another attempt- ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous Works ... With Memoirs of His Life
'Rose at seven, purposely to proceed in Gibbon's Miscell. Works- which I began yesterday. - read the whole of his own memoirs- 185 pages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous Works ... With Memoirs of His Life
'The finishing of the first volume of Gibbon is all I have been able to accomplish comfortably from my last memoranda. Every morning this week has been taken up in copying a Book for Mr Humphreys ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
Herman Melville : The Green Hand
'Herman Melville's "The Green Hand" he had read but it "was not much use to me" - a phrase which suggests that already he was reading as a writer reads, with a view to using the book for his own development. He read other works by Melville, and enjoyed parts of "Moby Dick"'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'Herman Melville's "The Green Hand" he had read but it "was not much use to me" - a phrase which suggests that already he was reading as a writer reads, with a view to using the book for his own development. He read other works by Melville, and enjoyed parts of "Moby Dick"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
George du Maurier : Trilby
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : The Three Musketeers
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : A Sentimental Journey
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Origin of Species
'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
George du Maurier : Peter Ibbetson
'After "Trilby" came the effect of "Peter Ibbetson". "It came to me", writes the poet of this book, "just when I needed an inner life". From "Peter Ibbetson" he learned of the existence of Villon and of de Musset. He read these poets but "the time was not ripe for either".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Francois Villon :
'After "Trilby" came the effect of "Peter Ibbetson". "It came to me", writes the poet of this book, "just when I needed an inner life". From "Peter Ibbetson" he learned of the existence of Villon and of de Musset. He read these poets but "the time was not ripe for either".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset :
'After "Trilby" came the effect of "Peter Ibbetson". "It came to me", writes the poet of this book, "just when I needed an inner life". From "Peter Ibbetson" he learned of the existence of Villon and of de Musset. He read these poets but "the time was not ripe for either".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Richard Steele : [essays]
'The essays of Steele and Addison, whose prose has so greatly influenced his own, seem to have impressed but, at this time, not moved him. Likewise, Pope, whose translation of the Odyssey found the young reader "by no means skilled enough to perceive the perfection of much of the verse" - "But I found the story worth the trouble", Masefield adds'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Homer : Odyssey
'The essays of Steele and Addison, whose prose has so greatly influenced his own, seem to have impressed but, at this time, not moved him. Likewise, Pope, whose translation of the Odyssey found the young reader "by no means skilled enough to perceive the perfection of much of the verse" - "But I found the story worth the trouble", Masefield adds'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Revolt of Islam
"'On first reading Shelley", he writes, "I told myself that this was a new kind of verse, such as I had not known existed." Now it was the VERSE, not the argument, which had an effect upon Masefield which he describes as "electric and ecstatic", and he tells how excited he was by the CONSTRUCTION of "The Revolt of Islam"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Edward Fitzgerald :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
George Meredith :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Robert Browning :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal) :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Prosper Merimee :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Walter Pater :
''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Before his departure for his native land he had read some of Dickens and Stevenson... and William Morris. John Masefield's debt to William Morris as a constructive thinker is considerable. It may be that Morris has been the formative influence, in his limitations as well as his liberations, on Masefield's view of life'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'Before his departure for his native land he had read some of Dickens and Stevenson... and William Morris. John Masefield's debt to William Morris as a constructive thinker is considerable. It may be that Morris has been the formative influence, in his limitations as well as his liberations, on Masefield's view of life'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Chastelard
'Fine writing and realism were what John Masefield was after in prose. In poetry, it was the upsurge of feeling and rhythm first released by Swinburne. Masefield wrote in a letter to me after my first meeting with him, "Swinburne meant much to my generation: he was literary, he adored the French masters, who were then our masters in all things: he was generous beyond most poets...:he was one of the real discoverers of Blake: he could write exquisite verse in an age of exquisite verse: he laid us all at his feet with half a dozen things which I cannot read without emotion now. he was one of the first romantic poets to be read by me: and Chastelard, to a boy, is all that the heart can desire and the lines on the death of Baudelaire all that genius and grief can utter".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : [poem on the death of Baudelaire]
'Fine writing and realism were what John Masefield was after in prose. In poetry, it was the upsurge of feeling and rhythm first released by Swinburne. Masefield wrote in a letter to me after my first meeting with him, "Swinburne meant much to my generation: he was literary, he adored the French masters, who were then our masters in all things: he was generous beyond most poets...:he was one of the real discoverers of Blake: he could write exquisite verse in an age of exquisite verse: he laid us all at his feet with half a dozen things which I cannot read without emotion now. He was one of the first romantic poets to be read by me: and Chastelard, to a boy, is all that the heart can desire and the lines on the death of Baudelaire all that genius and grief can utter".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Wiliam Butler Yeats : [unknown]
'Masefield was already a well-read man when, at the age of twenty-one, he came across the works of Yeats, whose disciple he became, and whom he shortly met'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'[Howard] Spring was the son of a Cardiff gardener who bought his children secondhand copies of "Tom Jones" and "Swiss Family Robinson", and read aloud from "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe" and Charles Dickens'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : [unknown]
'[Aneurin Bevan] burrowed through the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library, and acquired his characteristically grandiose vocabulary through close study of Roget's Thesaurus... When he chaired the Tredegar Library Committee, ?60 of its ?300 acquisitions budget was delegated to a colliery repairman to buy philosophy books. Bevan could quote Nietzsche, discuss F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality", and deeply impress an Oxford tutor with his crique of Kant's "Categorical Imperative"... Bevan was... deeply influenced by "The Theory of the Leisure Class".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin (Nye) Bevan Print: Book
Lord Monboddo : Of the origin and progress of language
'I went through that extraordinary work of Lord Monboddo on the "Origin of Language". I was entertained and instructed from the singularity of the system, the many erroneous and yet plausible arguments on which it is founded, the infinite display of learning. A mind wedded to antiquity is the source together with a strong imagination easily biased from Credulity, of the principles offered in this work. I should apprehend the criticisms to be good in many parts... There is too much classical learning in it to allow me to form a Judgement of it, as a learned work. Indeed it is not to be supposed I understood it in a followed manner [.] Yet I never throw aside a book because it makes me feel an ignorance I am not ashamed of from its being one belonging to my Sphere as a female. I read on and often reap much information from the mere introduction to scholars.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
Thorstein Veblen : The Theory of the Leisure Class
'[Aneurin Bevan] burrowed through the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library, and acquired his characteristically grandiose vocabulary through close study of Roget's Thesaurus... When he chaired the Tredegar Library Committee, ?60 of its ?300 acquisitions budget was delegated to a colliery repairman to buy philosophy books. Bevan could quote Nietzsche, discuss F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality", and deeply impress an Oxford tutor with his crique of Kant's "Categorical Imperative"... Bevan was... deeply influenced by "The Theory of the Leisure Class".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Aneurin (Nye) Bevan Print: Book
Henri Bergson :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
[probably] Georges-Eugene Sorel :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence :
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Ezra Pound : article in The New Age
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Serial / periodical
Friedrich Nietzsche : The Twilight of the Idols
[Muir undertook 'intense study of Nietzsche'] "I tried, when I came to Nietzsche's last works, 'The Twilight of the Idols' and 'Ecce Homo', to ignore the fact that they were tinged with madness... I adopted the watchword of 'intellectual honesty', and in its name committed every conceivable sin against honesty of feeling and honesty in the mere perception of the world... my Nietzscheanism was what psychologists call a 'compensation'. I ccould not face my life as it was, and so I took refuge in the fantasy of the Superman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : Ecce Homo
[Muir undertook 'intense study of Nietzsche'] "I tried, when I came to Nietzsche's last works, 'The Twilight of the Idols' and 'Ecce Homo', to ignore the fact that they were tinged with madness... I adopted the watchword of 'intellectual honesty', and in its name committed every conceivable sin against honesty of feeling and honesty in the mere perception of the world... my Nietzscheanism was what psychologists call a 'compensation'. I ccould not face my life as it was, and so I took refuge in the fantasy of the Superman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Sarah Trimmer : Sacred history
'In a ritual that was to be repeated throughout the holidays, Anna and John [her son] read passages from an instructive and improving work, Sarah Trimmer's sacred history, a didactic anthology from the scriptures written by the best-selling pious evangelical.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Larpent Print: Book
Sarah Trimmer : Sacred history
'In a ritual that was to be repeated throughout the holidays, Anna and John [her son] read passages from an instructive and improving work, Sarah Trimmer's sacred history, a didactic anthology from the scriptures written by the best-selling pious evangelical.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
Pierre Marivaux : Marienne
'While her friends were engaged in different sorts of women's work... she read them a great favourite, the sentimental novel "Marienne" by Pierre Marivaux.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : [unknown]
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : [unknown]
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Karl Marx : [unknown]
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Henri Murger : Scenes de la Boheme
'The poet Clare Cameron, born Winifred Wells to a London blacksmith, was a 15s a week clerk given to artistic ecstasies... She ate cheap lunches at Lyons to save money for volumes of Tennyson, Shelley and Ruskin. She found the "kindling glow" of words and ideas in Tolstoy, Shaw, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Marx... Once she read Murger's novel and saw Puccini's opera, she could not turn back: "Ah, THERE was the life we craved. There was expression of and answer to all our fumbling desires and half-formed dreams"...At her first Bohemian party (it was actually in St John's Wood) she was dazzled and intimidated by the easy conversation, the poise, the confidence, the wit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clare Cameron Print: Book
Andre Gide : [unknown]
'[Charlie] Lahr lent [Bonar] Thompson Andre Gide and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". "It was wonderful for me to feel that I belonged to the elect who had read these giants of the future", wrote Thompson, who credited Lahr with introducing him to "writers of whom I should not otherwised have heard until years later". The difficulty was that "As soon as authors did become well known, Charlie had done with them. He felt, I suppose, that they had been bought over, or had taken to writing for the mob, else why were they popular with the wrong kind of readers?".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bonar Thompson Print: Book
George Gissing : [unknown]
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [unknown
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Orlando
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
Gertrude Stein : [unknown]
'[Ethel] Mannin was firmly rooted in the autodidact tradition. In her father's library she enjoyed Gissing and Wells, "Adam Bede" and "The Cloister and the Hearth". A Clapham letter-sorter, he collected Nelson's Sevenpenny Classics, which she applauded as "a great boon to poor people"... By age fifteen she was quoting Wilde, Dr Johnson, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Browning, Omar Khayyam, Anatole France, Emily Bronte, Shaw, Hazlitt, Stevenson, W.E. Henley, and Schopenhauer in her commonplace book...Except "Orlando", she read nothing of Virginia Woolf, whom she found "too intellectual, too subtle and complicated and remote from reality"...Mannin made sure to read "Ulysses" (or at least the final chapter) and she admired Gertrude Stein'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Mannin Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
'Soon Pritchett was reading Penny Poets editions of "Paradise Regained", Wordsworth's "Prelude", Cowper, and Coleridge. He formulated plans to become Poet Laureate by age twenty-one'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
George du Maurier : [unknown]
'as an office boy, Pritchett tried to read widely and dreamt of an escape to Bohemia. But his knowledge of the Latin Quarter was gleaned not from Flaubert, only from third-raters like George du Maurier, W.J. Locke, and Hilaire Belloc'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Hilaire Belloc : [unknown]
'as an office boy, Pritchett tried to read widely and dreamt of an escape to Bohemia. But his knowledge of the Latin Quarter was gleaned not from Flaubert, only from third-raters like George du Maurier, W.J. Locke, and Hilaire Belloc'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Riceyman Steps
'Riceyman Steps' had brought him new prestige; it was read by lords and barbers, and Conrad was reported to say that it showed 'Bennett victorious'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Gertrude Stein : unknown
'...he confessed that he could not understand a word of Gertrude Stein.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
'With autodidact diligence [Leslie Paul] closed in on the avant-garde. He read "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", though not until the 1930s. He smuggled "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" past customs. In "John O'London's" and "The Nation", in William MacDougall's Home University Library volume on "Psychology" and F.A. Servante's "Psychology of the Boy", he read up on Freud. In a few years he knew enough to ghost-write BBC lectures on modern psychology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Paul Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Waste Land
'With autodidact diligence [Leslie Paul] closed in on the avant-garde. He read "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", though not until the 1930s. He smuggled "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" past customs. In "John O'London's" and "The Nation", in William MacDougall's Home University Library volume on "Psychology" and F.A. Servante's "Psychology of the Boy", he read up on Freud. In a few years he knew enough to ghost-write BBC lectures on modern psychology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Paul Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : Lady Chatterley's Lover
'With autodidact diligence [Leslie Paul] closed in on the avant-garde. He read "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", though not until the 1930s. He smuggled "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" past customs. In "John O'London's" and "The Nation", in William MacDougall's Home University Library volume on "Psychology" and F.A. Servante's "Psychology of the Boy", he read up on Freud. In a few years he knew enough to ghost-write BBC lectures on modern psychology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Paul Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : Grantchester
'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : 'The Waste Land'
'Bernard Kops, the son of an immigrant leather worker, had a special understanding of the transition from from autodidact culture to Bohemia to youth culture, because he experienced all three. He grew up in the ferment of the Jewish East End... read "The Tempest" at school, and cried over "The Forsaken Merman". At fifteen he became a cook at a hotel, where the staff gave him Karl Marx, Henry Miller and "Ten Days that Shook the World". A neighbor presented him with the poems of Rupert Brooke, and "Grantchester" so resonated with the Jewish slum boy that he went to the library to find another volume from the same publisher, Faber and Faber. Thus he stumbled upon T.S. Eliot. "This book changed my life", he remembered. "It struck me straight in the eye like a bolt of lightning... I had no preconceived ideas about poetry and read 'The Waste Land' and 'Prufrock' as if they were the most acceptable and common forms in existence. The poems spoke to me directly, for they were bound up with the wasteland of the East End, and the desolation and lonelines of people and landscape. Accidentally I had entered the mainstream of literature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Lord Raingo
'Beaverbrook vetted all the politics, finding only two or three small slips in the entire novel, which is a tribute to his briefing and to Bennett's attention.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Beaverbrook Print: Book
Theodore Dreiser :
'There Bennett worked on his novel, read Dreiser and Balzac, . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sandys : A relation of a journey begun Anno Dom. 1610. Foure bookes. Containing a description of the Turkish empire, of AEGYPT, [etc]
"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading: "'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks. "'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen. "'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer. "'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery Print: Book
George Sandys : A Relation of a Journey begun Anno Dom. 1610
"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading: "'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks. "'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen. "'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer. "'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading: "'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks. "'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen. "'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer. "'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery Print: Book
Robert Parson : The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution
" ... Lady Anne [Clifford] ... read Robert Parsons's Resolutions, Thomas Sorocold's Supplications of Saints, a 'lady's book of praise of a solitary life,' and a 'book of the preparation to the sacrament.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Anne Clifford Print: Book
Richard Johnson : The Seven Champions of Christendom and Destruction of Troy
Henry Cooke, in evidence to the Commissioners on Education in Ireland in 1825 [regarding books available in Irish schools]: "'I recollect reading a book, called the Seven Champions of Christendom and Destruction of Troy; I recollect reading Hero and Leander, Gesta Romanorum, and Seven wise masters; I recollect having read the Chinese tales; I recollect having read the romance called Parismos and Parismenes, and Don Belianis of Greece; another extravagant tale I recollect having read, the History of Captain Freney, a robber ...'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Cooke Print: Book
Richard Johnson : The honour or chivalry; or, the famous history of Don Belianis of Greece
Henry Cooke, in evidence to the Commissioners on Education in Ireland in 1825 [regarding books available in Irish schools]: "'I recollect reading a book, called the Seven champions of Christendom and Destruction of Troy; I recollect reading Hero and Leander, Gesta Romanorum, and Seven wise masters; I recollect having read the Chinese tales; I recollect having read the romance called Parismos and Parismenes, and Don Belianis of Greece; another extravagant tale I recollect having read, the History of Captain Freney, a robber ...'"
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Cooke Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
"William Carleton got the perusal of Gil Blas from a 'pedlar, who carried books about for sale, with a variety of other goods'."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Carleton Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'my mother arrived in England with a great respect for culture, and eager to learn all she could. We find her struggling to read Browning and Tennyson and Shelley; battering her way with pride and tenacity through "La Petite Fadette"... But with all her respect for education...learning was never her strong point'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maud du Puy Print: Unknown
Robert Browning :
'my mother arrived in England with a great respect for culture, and eager to learn all she could. We find her struggling to read Browning and Tennyson and Shelley; battering her way with pride and tenacity through "La Petite Fadette"... But with all her respect for education...learning was never her strong point'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maud du Puy Print: Unknown
Alfred Lord Tennyson :
'my mother arrived in England with a great respect for culture, and eager to learn all she could. We find her struggling to read Browning and Tennyson and Shelley; battering her way with pride and tenacity through "La Petite Fadette"... But with all her respect for education...learning was never her strong point'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maud du Puy Print: Unknown
George Sand : La Petite Fadette
'my mother arrived in England with a great respect for culture, and eager to learn all she could. We find her struggling to read Browning and Tennyson and Shelley; battering her way with pride and tenacity through "La Petite Fadette"... But with all her respect for education...learning was never her strong point'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maud du Puy Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : [novels]
'it was many, many years before any of us was able to look with unprejudiced eyes at anything Scotch again. Always excepting Scott's novels, which we loved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Brothers Karamazov, The
'He travelled alone, by train, . . . reading "The Brothers Karamazov" for the fourth time'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'David Copperfield was puzzling, too. He was a 'posthumous child' and was born with a 'caul'. The French dictionary, the only one I had, gave posthumous; posthume, which did not help me much; but for caul it gave fillet, and of course a fillet was a string bag. How very odd. Then someone gave me a present of Esmond; but my mother said I was not to read it, because parts of it were "not very nice". Of course I wanted to find out what was not nice about it; so, by a quibble, I decided that I might read all that I could manage without cutting the pages. With industry and perseverance this meant practically all of it, though the pages were not cut for many a long year. But I could never discover what was wrong with it'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
'Uncle Richard had adored Ruskin, and worshipped Morris, and had slept for years with a copy of "In Memoriam" under his pillow. He told me once how he and his friends used to wait outside the bookshops in the early morning, when they heard that a new volume of Tennyson was to come out. He had read all Browning too, and all Wordsworth, and Carlyle, in fact nearly everything contemporary; and he constantly re-read the Classics in their own classic tongues... a triumph of timing occurred once when he was listening to the Thunderstorm in the Pastoral Symphony, and reading the thunderstorm in "Oedipus at Colonus", and a real thunderstorm took place!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Litchfield Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'Uncle Richard had adored Ruskin, and worshipped Morris, and had slept for years with a copy of "In Memoriam" under his pillow. He told me once how he and his friends used to wait outside the bookshops in the early morning, when they heard that a new volume of Tennyson was to come out. He had read all Browning too, and all Wordsworth, and Carlyle, in fact nearly everything contemporary; and he constantly re-read the Classics in their own classic tongues... a triumph of timing occurred once when he was listening to the Thunderstorm in the Pastoral Symphony, and reading the thunderstorm in "Oedipus at Colonus", and a real thunderstorm took place!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Litchfield Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : Masterman Ready
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge : The Little Duke
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Settlers at Home
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : The Children of the New Forest
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
George Macdonald : The Princess and the Goblin
'Lovely books she read to us...:"The Wide Wide World", with all the religion and deaths from consumption left out, and all the farm life and good country food left in; "Masterman Ready", with that ass Mr Seagrave mitigated, and dear old Ready not killed by the savages; "Settlers at Home", with the baby not allowed to die; "The Little Duke" with horrid little Carloman spared to grow more virtuous still; "The Children of the New Forest"; "The Runaway"; "The Princess and the Goblin", and many more'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Litchfield Print: Book
Richard Steele : The Conscious Lovers
'Mary Martin came to live with me at 30s per year. Read "The Conscious Lovers" in the even.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Christopher Smart : On the eternity of the Supreme Being: a poetical essay
'At home all day. Not at church all day. Read part of Boyle's lectures and Smart's poem on eternity and immensity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Desmond
'With a fine imagination and command of Language Charlotte Smith cannot write without Interest [.] this is an odd work. She introduces in a prettily wrought novel the more early French troubles in consequence of the Revolution, she is a wild leveller. She defends the revolution, she writes with the enthusiasm of a woman and a poetess. Her story is hurried [,] has faults in the conduct and narrative, yet it interests. Her descriptions are very pleasing and her characteristic conversations are somewhat forced. She writes herself out. yet her genius predominates.' [opinion of "Desmond", entered in diary].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
Christopher Smart : On the immensity of the Supreme Being: a poetical essay
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : Delphine
'Maria Josepha Holroyd in her teens was "enchanted" with the "all for Love" of de Stael's "Delphine", which in mature years she viewed more critically (if still with enjoyment, although her husband was "disgusted" by it).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Josepha Holroyd Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Letters of a Solitary Wanderer
'In 1816, left alone in Bath by her husband, Mary Shelley records reading "The Solitary Wanderer", Charlotte Smith's "Letters of a Solitary Wanderer" (1799), a collection of interlocking tales in which a number of suffering women relate their stories. It is the single occasion her comprehensive reading diary mentions this book, which she seems to choose at this point to express a resentful, self-pitying protest against her desertion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Aphra Benn : Delphine
'Mrs Keith of Ravelstone remembered, as a girl in London perhaps in the 1760s, hearing Aphra Behn's fiction "read aloud for the amusement of large circles of the first and most creditable in society"; in old age she tried to re-read it but, affected by the changing cultural climate, found it too embarrassing to continue.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs ? Keith (of Ravelstone) Print: Unknown
George Burder : Early piety: or, memoirs of children eminently serious. Interspersed with familiar dialogues, emblematical pictures, prayers, graces and hymns. Recommended by the Rev. Mr. Peckwell
[Marginalia]: 4 lines of ms notes on the binding page are now rubbed and difficult to decipher but appear to be notes of references to specific pages eg ;'joys 96, 95-6 to the end'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Rene Descartes :
Adrian Johns notes that "It was [Robert] Hooke who, during his employ with [Robert] Boyle, conducted him through most of Descartes's works; before that Boyle had ... read only the Passions ..."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Boyle Print: Book
Rene Descartes : Passions
Adrian Johns notes that "It was [Robert] Hooke who, during his employ with [Robert] Boyle, conducted him through most of Descartes's works; before that Boyle had ... read only the Passions ..."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Boyle Print: Book
Aristotle : Mechanics
Adrian Johns recounts how, in a dream "at around the time of the outbreak of the Civil War," Henry More saw "a series of huge figures in the sky," including "that of an old man with a long beard ... [who] made a number of gestures with his arm," and how More "[adduced] 'reasons out of Aristotles Mechanicks, which I had very lately read,' for the precise nature of the movements."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry More Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : various works
'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot funds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : works
'[Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot] read and admired the work of Elizabeth Rowe, and questioned each other excitedly about an almost forgotten Katherine Phillips, "the matchless Orinda", impressed that her work is mentioned with "the highest respect, admiration and reverence by the writers of that time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : various books
'[Carter] is sympathetic to women of different views, like Charlotte Smith or Helen Maria Williams whose books she finds "too democratical" but praises as "exprest with decency and moderation" and "very prettily written".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Charlotte Trotter Cockburn : works
'Having heard the work of another virtuous woman writer, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, was to be published, [Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot] displayed great interest in this literary foremother, and when the 1751 edition of her work appeared, they were struck by her "most remarkable clear understanding and excellent heart".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
'Even during their elopement in Switzerland and Germany in 1814, Shelley read to her: "The Siege of Jerusalem" from Tacitus is read by Lake Lucerne, and as they sail to Mainz he "read to us Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Letters from Norway'."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Patrick Gordon : Geography anatomized: or a compleat geographical grammar
'Tho. Davy came in after supper and stayed with us about 2 1/2 hours. He and I looked over Gordon's "Geographical Grammar", and in particular the religions of all nations.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
George Bally : The Wisdom of the Supreme Being
'In the even read to Tho. Davy an appeal to the public in behalf of Admiral Byng ...I also read Bally's poem on the wisdom of the Supreme Being, which I think is a very sublime piece of poetry and almost too much so for my mean capacity. But as I find the author's views are good, I do, as I am bound in duty, like it very much.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Richard Haworth : [Sermon]
'In the even read a sermon preached at this church on the 1st of August 1716 by the Rev. Mr Richard Haworth on the wonders of providence in the defence of the reformation, which in my opinion is an excellent discourse...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Unknown
Hans Christian Andersen : Fairy Tales
[Maud Montgomery and her foster brothers] 'read the "Wide Awake" magazines the boys' aunt sent them for a while - the last instalment of a serial Maud was reading was due when the magazines stopped coming. The boys thought this was a huge joke...(thirty years later she came across bound copies of "Wide Awake" and was finally able to finish reading that story). They told ghost stories. In school Well won the teacher's prize for being the best in arithmetic that winter, a copy of Hans Andersen's fairytales. Maud was enchanted by the book. Then she won a collection of fairytales for being top student most often and it had a story in it called "The Honey Stew of the Countess" Bertha which "abounded in ghosts" and she liked it even better'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Alexander Macaulay : A dictionary of medicine, designed for popular use
[Marginalia]: p. 465 has a bookmark and marginal mark against item 'Regimen'; opposite the half-title there is reference to another medical work 'An Essay on The Action of Medicines in the system, or: on the Mode in which Therapeutic Agents introduced in the Stomack ... awarded ... Frederick William [Headland] ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe Erskine Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Zanoni
'That fall [Maud Montgomery] was enthralled by a book called "Zanoni", an occult love story written by an English nobleman named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. She read and re-read "Zanoni"... until she knew whole chunks of it by heart... She was so in love with its dark, masterful hero that she actually spent hours rewriting some of Lord Lytton's story so that the heroine's dialogue and behaviour would read more like dialogue and behaviour that would be hers if she were "Zanoni"'s heroine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers, The
'Along with her old school books [Maud Montgomery] read whatever she could find both for pleasure and to learn from their authors how to improve her own writing: religious tracts, newspapers, the Godey's Lady's Book, Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers", Sir Walter Scott's novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables", Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book", and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'Along with her old school books [Maud Montgomery] read whatever she could find both for pleasure and to learn from their authors how to improve her own writing: religious tracts, newspapers, the Godey's Lady's Book, Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers", Sir Walter Scott's novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables", Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book", and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : [Essays]
'Along with her old school books [Maud Montgomery] read whatever she could find both for pleasure and to learn from their authors how to improve her own writing: religious tracts, newspapers, the Godey's Lady's Book, Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers", Sir Walter Scott's novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables", Washington Irving's "The Sketchbook", and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Beatrix Potter : Peter Rabbit
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
George Eliot :
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte :
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Robert Lambe : An exact and circumstantial history of the battle of Floddon in verse written about the time of Queen Elizabeth. In which are related many particular facts not to be found in the English history[...]
[Marginalia]: ms note on binding page appears to refer both to the battle of Flodden and to poems about it: '... The battle of Flodden Field which was fought between the English under the Earl of Surrey ( in the absence of Henery 8th) and the Scots under their valiant King James IV who was slain on the field of battle in the year 1513. An ... poem ... collected from .... ms by Joseph Philamoth ... These three poems differ ... from each other. British Topography Chpt. [?] p. 61'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Reginald de Graaf :
" ... in the [Royal] Society ... date of publication could override date of registration. Walter Needham made this explicit in reporting his perusal [as part of Royal Society registration process] of a book by Reginald de Graaf that had provoked Swammerdam to contest de Graff's authorship of discoveries."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Needham Print: Book
Henry Oldenburg : review of Robert Hooke, Description of Helioscopes
"[John] Martyn revealed sheets of the [Philosophical] Transactions [containing Henry Oldenburg's remarks on Robert Hooke's Description of Helioscopes] to Hooke as they were printed. On 8 November [1675] he came to the review of Helioscopes. Hooke was livid. 'Saw the Lying Dog Oldenburg's Transactions,' he wrote in his diary. 'Resolved to quit all employments and seek my health.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Hooke Print: Serial / periodical, newly printed sheets
Robert Hooke : Cometa
"Foremost among ... [John Flamsteed's] critics was ... [Robert] Hooke, whose Cometa Flamsteed read with disdain ... [suggesting] that Hooke's prescriptions for astronomical practice rested on false [ie supposedly philosophical] grounds."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Flamsteed Print: Book
Abraham Sharp : shorthand writings
" ... when he (and all other readers) had failed to decipher the shorthand of [John] Flamsteed's most informed correspondent, Abraham Sharp, [Francis] Baily turned to Charles Babbage ... Babbage agreed to assist, and eventually succeeded in decoding Sharp's text."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Babbage Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Hodgson Burnett : Little Lord Fauntleroy
[Aunt Bessy] 'used to read "Little Lord Fauntleroy" over and over again to the old women [in the Cambridge workhouse], because they never wanted any other book'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Darwin Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'I have only now realised that the reason Blind Pew in "Treasure Island" frightened me so extremely was that I gave him the face of our own Blind Man' [seen regularly in Cambridge and looking "most evil"]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint: or night thoughts
'Tho. Davy to our house in the evening to whom I read two nights of "The Complaint", one of which was the Christian triumph against the fear of death, which must be allowed by all Christians a noble subject, it being the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ, and I think the author has treated it in a very moving and pathetic manner.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Homer :
'[Uncle William] read everything: all the classic works in all the languages he had ever known, or not quite forgotten: Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian; a bit of each every day; and when he was late for dinner, it was always because he was "just finishing a paragraph". He was very shy about it, and would be caught hiding Homer under a pile of papers, and have to be gently coaxed out into the open to talk about him. "Fine fellow, old Homer", he would say; or "Fine fellow, old Go-eethe"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Darwin Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint: or night thoughts
'Tho. Davy at our house in the latter part of the even to whom I read the last of "The Complaint" and part of Sherlock on death. I now having read "The Complaint" through, think it an extreme good book, the author having treated many parts of religion in a very noble and spiritual manner wherein I think every deist, free-thinker, as also every irreligious person may read himself a fool. For what is wit or wisdom (without religion) but foolishness?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'The books [Uncle George] read to us were all in the romantic vein: Shakespeare's "Histories", Chaucer, Percy's "Reliques", Scott's novels'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Darwin Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'The books [Uncle George] read to us were all in the romantic vein: Shakespeare's "Histories", Chaucer, Percy's "Reliques", Scott's novels'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Darwin Print: Book
Stendhal (pseud -Marie-Henri Beyle) : Le Rouge et le Noir
'[Gwen Raverat's father] was disgusted by Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" when I lent it to him; though I am still surprised that he did not appreciate the romantic fire which lies beneath Julien Sorel's somewhat unscrupulous methods of getting on in the world'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Darwin Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'Aunt Ellen and her friends seemed to me wonderfully up-to-date and literary. She used to read Stevenson and Henley to us, which was the height of modernity then'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Crofts Print: Book
(probably) William Ernest Henley :
'Aunt Ellen and her friends seemed to me wonderfully up-to-date and literary. She used to read Stevenson and Henley to us, which was the height of modernity then'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Crofts Print: Book
Richard Allestree : The new whole duty of man, containing the faith as well as the practice of a Christain
'In the even read part of the "New Whole Duty of Man".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge : The Daisy Chain
'I could read "The Daisy Chain" or "The Wide Wide World", and just take the religion as the queer habits of those sorts of people, exactly as if I were reading a story about Mohammedans or Chinese'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Richard Burn : The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer
'In the day read part of Burn's "Justice".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Robert Browning : Saul
'I learnt with interest all about David and read Browning's "Saul" with "an intelligent scripture mistess".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book
Charles Leadbetter : The royal gauger; or gauging made perfectly easy
'In the even read part of Leadbetter's "General Gauger".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Richard Allestree : The whole new duty of man, containing the faith as well as the practice of a Christain
'In the day read part of the "New Whole Duty of Man". And in the even Tho. Davy at our house to whom I read part of Sherlock on death.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster :
'Aunty Etty wrote of E.M. Forster, "His novel is really NOT good; and it's too unpleasant for the girls to read. I very much hope he will turn to something else".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Darwin Print: Book
Arthur Collins : The peerage of England
'In the even read part of Collins's "Peerage of England".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Arthur Collins : The peerage of England
'In the day read part of the 1st volume of "The Peerage of England".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Arthur Collins : The peerage of England
'Read part of "The Peerage of England".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Letters
Leon Edel, introducing vol 1 of Henry James's Letters, on James's feelings regarding publication of letters: "He opposed truncation. 'One has the vague sense of omissions ... one smells the thing unprinted,' he remarked after reading [Sidney] Colvin's edition of Stevenson's letters."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : unknown
Noted by Leon Edel in "Brief Chronology" of Henry James: "1860: Returns to Newport ... Reads Balzac and Merimee."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Prosper Merimee : unknown
Noted by Leon Edel in "Brief Chronology" of Henry James: "1860: Returns to Newport ... Reads Balzac and Merimee."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from home of host family in Bonn, Sunday 5 August 1860: "[on Wednesday morning] I sat down to read [in the study] till our room should be made ready for me to go in and set to work. I looked over an old volume of the 'British Chronicle,' a lot of bound weekly newspapers of the time of Byron, Shelley, Tom Moore and Walter Scott and which I had discovered in a corner the night before. Then I finished the Letters of Lady M. W. Montague which I had commenced a few days before from curiosity and had continued from interest."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Friedrich von Schiller : Maria Stuart
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from home of host family in Bonn, Sunday 5 August 1860: "[on Wednesday morning] We [himself and his brother William] ... commenced study, which simply consists in translating German into English. I am now working at Schiller's play of Maria Stuart, which I like exceedingly, though I do get on so slowly with it ... I worked on ploddingly till dinner-time which is one o'clock."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Browning : plays
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, 18 April 1864: "I got Browning's plays from J[ohn].'s [La Farge] and have been reading them with deep interest."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Maurice de Guerin : Journals/Letters
Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton of the North American Review, offering book review, 9 August 1864: "I have just been reading with great interest the Journals and Letters of Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin -- (Paris, 1864, 2d Edition.) I should like to write a notice of the two books combined; or at least of Maurice alone ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James : Review of Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism
Leon Edel notes re Henry James's unsigned review of Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, in North American Review (July 1865): "Arnold read this review and praised it to his friends unaware it was the work of a twenty-two-year-old novice."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Arnold Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Beecher Stowe : [two or three works]
Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton, 28 February 1866: " ... allow me to retract my proposal to deal critically with Mrs. Stowe, in the N[orth]. A[merican]. R[eview]. I have been re-reading two or three of her books and altho' I see them to be full of pleasant qualities, they lack those solid merits wh. an indistinct recollection of them had caused me to attribute to them ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve : Nouveaux lundis
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from Cambridge, Mass., 20 September 1867: "I had just been reading, when your letter came, Taine's Graindorge, of which you speak ... I enjoy Taine more almost than I do any one; but his philosoph of things strikes me as essentially superficial and as if subsisting in the most undignified subservience to his passion for description ... I have also read the last new Mondays of Ste.B, and always with increasing pleasure."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
George Sand : Memoirs
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from Cambridge, Mass., 20 September 1867: "I read recently, by the way ... [George Sand's] Memoirs a compact little work in ten volumes. It's all charming (if you are not too particular about the exact truth) but especially the two 1st volumes, containing a series of letters from her father, written during Napoleon's campaigns."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Charles de Brosses : unknown
Leon Edel, introducing Henry James's letters from 1869-70: " [James] traveled in 1869, reading Goethe, Stendhal, the President de Brosses and Hawthorne."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Francis Lord Bacon : essays
'After the breakdown of her marriage in 1752, Sarah Scott read voraciously and eclectically, the "history of Florence" and Lord Bacon's essays, and the Old Plays, Christianity not founded on argument, Randolph's answer to it... and some of David's Simple Life... an account of the Government of Venice, Montaigne's Essays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Scott Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : David Simple
'After the breakdown of her marriage in 1752, Sarah Scott read voraciously and eclectically, the History of Florence and Lord Bacon's essays, and the Old Plays, Christianity not founded on argument, Randolph's answer to it... and some of David's Simple Life... an account of the Government of Venice, Montaigne's Essays.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Scott Print: Book
Katherine Philips : works
'[Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot] read and admired the work of Elizabeth Rowe, and questioned each other excitedly about the almost forgotten Katherine Philips, the "matchless Orinda", impressed that her work is mentioned with "the highest respect, admiration and reverence by the writers of that time."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Francois-Marie Voltaire : Candide
'She began Candide but "threw it aside, and nothing, I believe, will tempt me ever to look into it again."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : Henrietta
'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot finds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : many works
'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot finds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad
'Methinks, Sir, Mr Pope might employ his Time, and his admirable Genius better than in exposing Insects of a Day: For if these Authors would live longer, they should not be put down as Dunces.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Aaron Hill : Fanciad
'what a charming instance have you given me, good sir, of the Restoration of [your health], if I may be permitted to infer it from the noble strength and Vigor of your verses. It is impossible, Sir, not to be animated by the Subject and the Poem'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Unknown, Richardson is about to print the manuscript
Alexander Pope : Dunciad
'I have bought Mr Pope over so often, and his "Dunciad" before his last new-vampt one, that I am tired of the Extravagance; and wonder every Body else is not. Especially, as now by this, he confesses that his Abuse of his first hero was for Abuse sake, having no better object for his Abuse. I admire Mr Pope's Genius, and his Versification: But forgive me, Sir, to say, I am scandaliz'd for human Nature, and such Talents, sunk so low'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Homer : Iliad
'I admire you for what you say of the fierce fighting "Iliad"... I am afraid this poem, noble as it truly is, has done infinite mischief for a series of ages; since to it, and its copy the "Eneid", is owing, in a great measure, the savage spirit that has actuated, from the earliest ages to this time, the fighting fellows that, worse than lions or tigers, have ravaged the earth, and made it a field of blood'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
'I admire you for what you say of the fierce fighting "Iliad"... I am afraid this poem, noble as it truly is, has done infinite mischief for a series of ages; since to it, and its copy the "Eneid", is owing, in a great measure, the savage spirit that has actuated, from the earliest ages to this time, the fighting fellows that, worse than lions or tigers, have ravaged the earth, and made it a field of blood'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Pliny the Elder : [observations and transcriptions from work]
'I am very much obliged to you, for your transcriptions and observations from Pliny; as you say, I should never find time to read the book. What stores of knowledge do I lose, by my incapacity of reading, and by my having used myself to write, till I can do nothing else, nor hardly that'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Unknown, transcriptions by Susanna Highmore
Abraham Cowley :
'I am glad that Cowley takes his turn with you. Cowley has great merit with me; and the greater, as he is out of fashion in this age of taste. And yet I wonder he is so absolutely neglected, as he wants not point and turn, and wit, and fancy, and an imagination very brilliant: nor puts the reader to vast trouble to understand him
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Abraham Cowley :
'I am glad that Cowley takes his turn with you. Cowley has great merit with me; and the greater, as he is out of fashion in this age of taste. And yet I wonder he is so absolutely neglected, as he wants not point and turn, and wit, and fancy, and an imagination very brilliant: nor puts the reader to vast trouble to understand him.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Highmore Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'Carter read and enjoyed fiction until the end of her life. Pennington reveals her enthusiasm for a number of novelists "of considerable genius, as well as strict morals", who provided "a very pleasing relaxation from her severer studies" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol 1, p. 69). According to him, she disliked realist fiction, though she made an exception for Burney's which she read with "increasing approbation more than once": her favourite was "Evelina" (Memoirs, p. 299). She also enjoyed Jane West (who dedicated "A Tale of the Times" to her) and Ann Radcliffe, who impressed her, according to Pennington, by "the good tendency of all her works, the virtues of her principal characters... and her accurate, as well as vivid delineation of the beauties of nature" (Memoirs, p. 300). She thought "A Sicilian Romance" "elegant" and praised its "good" moral (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, Vol III, p. 323).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Emmeline
'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Desmond
'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Old Town Folks
Henry James to Alice James, 31 August 1869, on walking in Switzerland and Italy: "[after crossing Bernadine pass] I ... pursued my way ... to the village of Splugen, where I was glad to halt and rest and where I diverted myself the rest of the day, as I lay, supine, with Mrs. Stowe's Old Town Folks, which I found kicking about, and which struck me under the circumstances as a work of singular and delicious perfection."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James Sr : "reply to a 'Swedenborgian'"
Henry James to William James, 1 January 1870 (letter begun 27 December 1869): " ... I felt a most refreshing blast of paternity, the other day in reading Father's reply to a 'Swedenborgian,' in a number [of The Nation] that I saw at the bankers."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Wiseman : Several Chirurgical Treatises
'In the even read part of Wiseman's "Chyrurgery".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Henry Bracken : The traveller's pocket-farrier: or a treatise upon the distempers and common incidents happening to horses upon a journey
'In the day read part of Bracken's "Pocket Farrier", which I look upon as a very complete thing of its kind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Edward Young : The complaint or night thoughts
'In the even read part of Young's "Night Thoughts".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Charles Drelincourt : The Christian's defence against the fears of death
'...read part of Drelincourt on death and in the even one of Tillotson's sermons.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Henry Wharton : A defence of pluralities, or, holding two benefices with cure of souls
'In the morning read part of a book entitled "A Defence of Plurality of Church Benefices", but I cannot be persuaded by his reasons that it is always beneficial to promote our most holy religion.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'In the even Mr Tipper read to me part of a -I know not what to call it but "Tristram Shandy".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Tipper Print: Book
Edward Young : A vindication of providence; or, a true estimate of human life
'Read part of Young's "Estimate of Human Life".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia (1st vol.)
'You guess that I have not read "Amelia". Indeed I have read but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them; and to read and not to care what became of the hero and heroine, is a task that I thought I would leave to those who had more leisure than I am blessed with'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Henry James Sr : articles on Swedenborg
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James Sr : "Is Marriage Holy?"
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "With your letter [of 22 December 1869] came two Nations, with your Swedenborgian letters, which I had already seen and I think mentioned. I read at the same time in an Atlantic borrowed from the Nortons, your article on the woman business ... your Atlantic article I decidedly liked ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Lowell : poem
Henry James to Henry James Sr, 14 January 1870: "I read in the last Atlantic Lowell's poem and Howells's Article."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : The Ring and the Book
Henry James to William James, 8 March 1870: "During the past month I have been ... reading among other things Browning's Ring and Book ... the President de Brosse's delightful letters, Crabbe Robinson's memoirs and the new vol. of Ste Beuve."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Charles de Brosses : Lettres familieres ecrites d'Italie en 1739 et 1740
Henry James to William James, 8 March 1870: "During the past month I have been ... reading among other things Browning's Ring and Book ... the President de Brosse's delightful letters, Crabbe Robinson's memoirs and the new vol. of Ste Beuve."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry Crabbe Robinson : Memoirs
Henry James to William James, 8 March 1870: "During the past month I have been ... reading among other things Browning's Ring and Book ... the President de Brosse's delightful letters, Crabbe Robinson's memoirs and the new vol. of Ste Beuve."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Charles-Augustin Saint-Beuve : unknown
Henry James to William James, 8 March 1870: "During the past month I have been ... reading among other things Browning's Ring and Book ... the President de Brosse's delightful letters, Crabbe Robinson's memoirs and the new vol. of Ste Beuve."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Francis Bret Harte : [unidentified story]
Henry James to Elizabeth Boott, 24 January 1872: "I heard read in MS. the other evening a new story by Bret Harte (for the next Atlantic) better than anything in his 'second manner' -- though not quite so good as his first."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
Joseph Ernest Renan : unknown
" ... [Henry James] would [after 1872] be a close reader of Renan ... whom he later met."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James Sr : anecdote/account ("story of Mr Webster")
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr, 24 March 1873: "Thank him [Henry James Sr] ... greatly for his story of Mr Webster. It is admirable material, and excellently presented: I have transcribed it in my notebook with religious care, and think that some day something will come of it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Sheet
Marcus Tullius Cicero : [Letters]
'The fault of the great author, whose letters to his friend you have been reading, is, that Tully is wholly concerned for the fame of Cicero; and that for fame and self-exaltation sake. In some of his orations, what is called his vehemence (but really is too often insult and ill manners) so transports him, that a modern pleader... would not be heard, if he were to take the like freedoms... Cicero's constitutional faults seem to be vanity and cowardice. Great geniuses seldom have
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group:
Marcus Tullius Cicero :
'The fault of the great author, whose letters to his friend you have been reading, is, that Tully is wholly concerned for the fame of Cicero; and that for fame and self-exaltation sake. In some of his orations, what is called his vehemence (but really is too often insult and ill manners) so transports him, that a modern pleader... would not be heard, if he were to take the like freedoms... Cicero's constitutional faults seem to be vanity and cowardice. Great geniuses seldom have
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero
'The fault of the great author, whose letters to his friend you have been reading, is, that Tully is wholly concerned for the fame of Cicero; and that for fame and self-exaltation sake. In some of his orations, what is called his vehemence (but really is too often insult and ill manners) so transports him, that a modern pleader... would not be heard, if he were to take the like freedoms... Cicero's constitutional faults seem to be vanity and cowardice. Great geniuses seldom have
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Female Quixote
'"The Female Quixote" is written by a woman...Lennox her name. Her husband and she have often visited me together. Do you not think, however her heroine over-acts her part, that Arabella is amiable and innocent? The writer has genius. She is hardly twenty four, and has been unhappy. She wrote a piece, called "Harriet Stuart''.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Life of Harriet Stuart, Written by Herself
'"The Female Quixote" is written by a woman...Lennox her name. Her husband and she have often visited me together. Do you not think, however her heroine over-acts her part, that Arabella is amiable and innocent? The writer has genius. She is hardly twenty four, and has been unhappy. She wrote a piece, called "Harriet Stuart".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Female Quixote
'"The Female Quixote" is written by a woman...Lennox her name. Her husband and she have often visited me together. Do you not think, however her heroine over-acts her part, that Arabella is amiable and innocent? The writer has genius. She is hardly twenty four, and has been unhappy. She wrote a piece, called "Harriet Stuart".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield
'His plan was to make use of me as a talking dictionary and grammar, confining my teachings exclusively to the answering of such questions as he thought fit to put. Having made this arrangement he produced a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield", and, commencing at the title-page, read it after me, looking to me for translation as he went along. In this way we got through four or five pages in the course of the first hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Dr D of Prospect Villa : [letter]
"'ne morning as we were sitting at breakfast, about 9 o'clock, ... in the garden, the postman, who had been knocking at the door, ... flung a paid letter on the path. Patty picked it up - it was directed to my father, and my mother opened it... My mother put a half-sheet into my hand from Dr D of Prospect Villa, ... "There", said she, "is something which I hope will prevent your going to Caudon - read it". The note was an acknowledgement...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Manby Smith Manuscript: Letter
Dr D of Prospect Villa : [letter]
'One morning as we were sitting at breakfast, about 9 o'clock, ... in the garden, the postman, who had been knocking at the door, ... flung a paid letter on the path. Patty picked it up - it was directed to my father, and my mother opened it... My mother put a half-sheet into my hand from Dr D of Prospect Villa, ... "There", said she, "is something which I hope will prevent your going to Caudon - read it". The note was an acknowledgement...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Smith Manuscript: Letter
Dr D : [manuscript of his book]
[Smith describes evening activities while working as the private printer of Dr D.] 'By the middle of March 1831, I had completed the first volume, amounting to above four hundred pages, of the Doctor's book. So far as I was capable of finding, it was an admirable work, profound in thought, simple in style, and full of matter, though somewhat disfigured by virulent remarks upon Methodism and Dissent in all forms.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Manby Smith Manuscript: manuscript of book
Torquato Tasso : unknown
Henry James to Sarah Butler Wister, 9 May 1873: "Some time since I began to read Tasso with Miss Bartlett and though he is very delicious I have let it become rather desultory."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James and Miss Bartlett Print: Book
Henry James : Eugene Pickering
Henry James to William Dean Howells, 9 January 1874, regarding first half of "tale" (Eugene Pickering) being sent in separate cover: "I have been reading it to my brother who pronounces it 'quite brilliant.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : unknown
Henry James to William Dean Howells, 13 January 1875: "I have been staying at Mrs. Owen Wister's and having Fanny Kemble read Calderon for me tete a tete of a morning."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : unknown
Henry James to E. C. Stedman, 1 September 1875: "My pretentions, in attenpting to talk about Tennyson [in review of Queen Mary], were very modest ... I know him only as we all know him -- by desultory reading ..."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Thomas : The modern practice of physic, exhibiting the characters, causes, symptoms, prognostic, morbid appearances, and improved method of treating, the diseases of all climates
[Marginalia]: pencil annotations on last binding page are in Latin and appear to be brief notes relating to 4 classes of disorders.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Frederick Douglass : Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave
'Two little books that I read in my boyhood impressed and stimulated me greatly. They helped me in my efforts to live bravely and to use my life for noble ends. These were the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'There is a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", which I should not omit to mention, since it made a great sensation when it appeared, and it was the only book of its class brought home by my father. "Uncle Tom" was read aloud in our little family circle, and it gave us many hours of happy, thrilling and not unwholesome excitement.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Burt Print: Book
Richard Hildreth : The white slave, or memoirs of a fugitive
'That would be in the year 1852, when I was fifteen. About the same time I read "The White Slave" and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Thus began a keen, lasting interest in the anti-slavery agitation.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Horace Benedict Saussure : Voyage dans les Alpes
'I have no enthusiasm-cui bono? I always ask myself. It would be irksome, & impossible, in this state of my sheet, to criticise the elegant and ingenious rather than powerful or philosophical narrative which Horace Benedict Saussure gives of his journeys in the Alps. I am in the third quarto-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Catherine Dodd : Farthing Spinster, The
'I am reading a sweet book, "The Farthing Spinster", by Catherine Dodd. Some of the passages about gardens are beautiful. Here are some of the most lovely [...] from the diary of an early 18C lady. I wish my diary could be as beautiful as that. Another of her gardens was of "sweet scents" [...]. "A houseful of books and a garden full of flowers" would be enchanting. In the same book is a delicious description of syllabub, a sweet then in fashion; [...] I love food. I wonder if it is greed or just because I love to see things served well and carefully with their proper etceteras. I think books, food, lovely pictures, good plays and nice clothes are the most interesting things in my life! I suppose the book has made me think of these things.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Francis Brett Young : My Brother Jonathon
'I am reading a very thick fiction book, although we have to give them in by Monday. Dangerous!... We had a super day doing nothing! I read the whole time "My Brother Jonathon"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Howard Spring : Fame is the Spur
'Read and read "Fame is the Spur" which is gorgeous.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Dandelion Days
'Read most of day. I am reading "Dandelion Days", and love it. I must get some more of the Henry Williamson books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", as I always do when in the sick room.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Richmal Crompton : Old Man's Birthday, The
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Old Man's Birthday".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Kidnapped". Not up to much... Dr came and said I couldn't go down [into lessons] until Monday. Damn. Felt miserable. Read "Trail of the Sandhill Stag" and tidied out the book cupboard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Ernest Seton Thompson : Trail of the Sandhill Stag, The
[alone in the sick bay] 'Read "Kidnapped". Not up to much... Dr came and said I couldn't go down [into lessons] until Monday. Damn. Felt miserable. Read "Trail of the Sandhill Stag" and tidied out the book cupboard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R.D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone
'Read "Lorna Doone" and loved it. Must try to get it next hols.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Am reading "Jane Eyre" and adore it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Eleanor Smith : Man in Grey, The
'I read "The Man in Grey" which is simply glorious. I must ry and get it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Mary Webb : House in Dormer Forest, The
'Am reading "The house in Dormer Forest" by Mary Webb; it has such a lovely cover that I must try and get it, but I think it's the only one of Mary W's books I'll like, as I tried "Precious Bane" and hated it after the 2nd page.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Mary Webb : Precious Bane
'Am reading "The house in Dormer Forest" by Mary Webb; it has such a lovely cover that I must try and get it, but I think it's the only one of Mary W's books I'll like, as I tried "Precious Bane" and hated it after the 2nd page.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Richard Llewellyn : How Green Was My Valley
'1943 My Favourite: Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood". Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters" Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
'1943 My Favourite: Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood". Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters" Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Lotos Eaters, The
'1943 My Favourite: Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood". Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters" Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'1943 My Favourite: Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood". Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters" Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Eleanor Smith : Lover's Meeting
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R.A.J. Walling : Murder at the Keyhole
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dora Olive Thompson : That Girl Ginger
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Edgar Rice Burroughs : Tarzan the Untamed
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Stalky and Co
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rafael Sabatini : Bellarion
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Beverley Nicholls : Down the Garden Path
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : The Three Musketeers
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Edward Woodward : House of Terror
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de Sta?l-Holstein : 'Considerations on the French Revolution'
'There is also Madame de Stael on the French revolution - first volume only finished - remarks (if any) in the next letter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Jameson : Unknown
'With regard to reading, you would think I have enough of time upon my hands at present: yet the truth is, I have often read more, almost never studied less!... There is Jameson with his most crude theories - his orders Mammalia, Digitala & fencibles of gli[illegible]rac & bruta with [chi[sel]-shaped foreteeth && grieves me every day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de Sta?l-Holstein : Considerations Sur La Revolution Francaise
'In conformity with ancient custom, I ought now to transmit you some account of my studies- But I have too much conscience to dilate upon this subject. Besides, it is not so easy to criticise the brilliant work of Madame de Stael-considerations sur quelques evenemen[t]s de la revolution - as to tell you, what I learnt from a small Genevese attending Jameson's class, that she was very ugly and very immoral- yet had fine eyes, and was very kind to the poor people of Coppet & the environs.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Horace Benedict Saussure : Voyages dans les Alpes
'In conformity with ancient custom, I ought now to transmit you some account of my studies- But I have too much conscience to dilate upon this subject... On the same authority [a small Genevese], I inform you that Horace Benedict Saussure (whose beautiful voyages I have not yet finished) died 20 years ago; but Theodore, his son, is still living.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Edward Moore : The Gamester
'I heard the greatest part of the Gamester read by Mr Garrick, before it was brought upon the stage. On the whole, I much liked it. I thought it a very affecting performance. There are faults in it; but I think it a moral and seasonable piece'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick
Sarah Scott (attrib) : A Journey Thro' Every Stage of Life
'A bookseller made me a present of 2 vols of a piece intitled, "A Journey thro' Life." My wife and girls, and Miss Collier say it is not very interesting, but has some moral sentiments in it. It seems to me, by the Contents, to be a collection of tales or Stories.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Richardson's wife and daughters Print: Book
Sarah Scott (attrib) : A Journey Thro' Every Stage of Life
'A bookseller made me a present of 2 vols of a piece intituled, A Journey thro' Life. My wife and girls, and Miss Collier say it is not very interesting, but has some moral sentiments in it. It seems to me, by the Contents, to be a collection of tales or Stories.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Collier Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal Marquise de Sevigne : Letters
'Have you read Mad. Sevigne's Letters from the [French]? Fine passages and Sentiments there are in it, & a notion given of the French manner tho' written in the middle reign of Louis XIV. What are the Two volumes called the History of Man from the French also. There is a volume which is not chaste enough to be recommended to your Ladiship. It is truly French. Its language good. But for the knowledge of the hearts of people given up to what is called Gallantry, particularly French Gallantry, I have not seen its equal. It is called Letters of Ninon de Lenclos to the marquis of Sevigne. Son of the above-named Lady, and her contemporary. It will not offend the Ear. But I would not by any means recommend it to a very young Lady'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Christopher Smart : On the omniscence of the Supreme Being: a poetical essay
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Christopher Smart : On the power of the Supreme Being: a poetical essay
'At home all day. On reading Derham's notes on Boyle's lectures I find he says that Mr Boyle demonstrates that so slender a wire may be drawn from gold that from once ounce of gold a wire may be drawn 777,600 feet in length or 155 miles and a half. In the even Tho. Davy here and supped with us and stayed until 11 o'clock but drunk nothing, only 1 pint of mild beer. We read Smart's poems on immensity, omniscience and power.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Dorothy L Sayers : The Man Born to be King
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth : Old Saint Paul's
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Beverley Nichols : Mesmer
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : Hound of the Baskervilles, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Beautiful Years, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Salar the Salmon
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Dream of Fair Women, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Star-born, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Harry S. Keller : Mysterious Mr I, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Arthur Ransome : Picts and the Martyrs, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Beverley Nichols : Thatched Roof, A
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Sava : Healing Knife, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alexander Woolcot : While Rome Burns
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Beverley Nichols : Star Spangled Manner, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth : Tower of London, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Sarah Hodgson Burnett : Little Princess, A
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Franz Werfel : Song of Bernadette, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Laurence Housman : Happy and Glorious
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Sixty Poems
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R Brimley Johnson : Birth of Romance, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R Brimley Johnson : Comedy of Life, The
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R Brimley Johnson : Some Little Tales
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margaret Irwin : Royal Flush
[List of books read in 1943, in diary for 1943]: 'The Farthing Spinster; Guy Mannering; Whereas I was Blind; And So to Bath; The Story of San Michele; Attack Alarm; The Murders in Praed Street; Lover's Meeting; The Secret Battle; Witch Wood; MD - Doctor of Murder; Murder at the Keyhole; That Girl Ginger; Ten Minute Alibi; Diary of a District Officer; Tarzan the Untamed; Peter Abelard; Pip; Pied Piper; A Man Lay Dead; Random Harvest; Madame Curie; Stalky and Co; Bellarion; Down the Garden Path; The Three Musketeers vol 1; The House in Cornwall; A Tall Ship; The Two Saplings; Farewell Victoria; Quinneys; House of Terror; Penguin Parade 4; Guy Mannering[presumably a re-reading]; The Man Born to be King; Casterton Papers; Old Saint Paul's; The Moon is Down; 1066 and all That; My Brother Jonathon; Gulliver's Travels; Ensign Knightley; Men Against Death; Fame is the Spur; Gone with the Wind; Mesmer; First Nights; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Little Gidding; Beau Geste; Beau Sabreur; The Amazing Theatre; The Pleasure of Your Company; Dandelion Days; Humour and Fantasy; Juno and the Paycock; The Beautiful Years; Teach Yourself to Think; Salar the Salmon; The Cathedral; The Mysterious Mr I; The Picts and the Martyrs; The Dream of Fair Women; The Star-born; Three Short Stories; A Thatched Roof; The Surgeon's Log; The Healing Knife; Nine Ghosts; While Rome Burns; The Star Spangled Manner; The Day Must Dawn; The Tower of London; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Old Man's Birthday; A little Princess; Ego 5; The Lighter Side of School Life; Kidnapped; The Trail of the Sandhill Stag; Ballet Lover's Notebook; Lorna Doone; The Plays of JM Barrie; Jane Eyre; I'll Leave it to You; Henry Fifth; Longer Poems; Antony and Cleopatra; The Man in Grey; The House in Dormer Forest; The Writing of English; Miss Mapp; The Song of Bernadette; Happy and Glorious; Sixty Poems; The Birth of Romance; The Comedy of Life; Some Little Tales; Dream Days; Royal Flush.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'Am reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin", which is glorious, but very sad. I cried buckets and buckets!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Warwick Deeping : Roper's Row
'Whole afternoon and evening of prep in which I (most regrettably) finished "Roper's Row".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Sister Black : King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse
'Am reading "King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse", which is really glorious.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Eric Linklater : Great Ship, The
'Shopped and tried to find some books. Succeeded at last in getting "The Great Ship", the play by Linklater that JG was in last year on the wireless.' [NB "The Great Ship" appears on the list of 'Books read during this year' [1944] at end of diary]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Count of Monte Cristo, The
'Read "The Count of Monte Cristo" (abridged) which is simply superb. Bought "Song of Bernadette" at last.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Franz Werfel : Song of Bernadette
'Read "The Count of Monte Cristo" (abridged which is simply superb. Bought "Song of Bernadette" at last.' NB "Song of Bernadette" appears on the list of 'books read during this year' [1944].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy L Sayers : Have His Carcase
'Read "Have His Carcase". Will be the last fiction I'll read at weekends till after exams, worse luck. Am beginning revision to-morrow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Some Essays of Elia
'Spent the day reading Lamb [for Higher School Certificate Eng. Lit]. Have decided that if I read an author each fortnight I might manage to finish (by February) "The Age of Wordsworth"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charles Lamb : The Best of Lamb
'Spent the day reading Lamb [for Higher School Certificate Eng. Lit]. Have decided that if I read an author each fortnight I might manage to finish (by February) "The Age of Wordsworth"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'Today I finished "Wuthering Heights" and began "Villette". I must try and get a set of the Bronte books as soon as I can - they are most refreshing and not a bit old fashioned as they ought to be.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'Finished "Villette", and went fast asleep on couch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Complete Plays
'Read Shaw, which is wonderful, but I'm sure I don't understand half of it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Williamson : unknown
'1944 My Favourite: Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele" Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Beverley Nichols : unknown
'1944 My Favourite: Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele" Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Hiawatha
'1944 My Favourite: Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele" Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter de la Mare : Arabia
'1944 My Favourite: Books: "Peter Abelard". "The Story of San Michele" Authors: Henry Williamson, B. Nichols Poems: Hiawatha. Arabia Writers: Shaw. Dorothy Sayers'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rachel Field : All This and Heaven Too
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Lord Lytton : Antony: A Record of Youth
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Eleanor Smith : Life's a Circus
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings : Cross Creek
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Caryl Brahms : Footnotes to the Ballet
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rafael Sabatini : Captain Blood
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rafael Sabatini : Scaramouche
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Heartbreak House
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rafael Sabatini : Fortune's Fool
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rafael Sabatini : Lost King, The
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Sava : Surgeon's Destiny, The
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Norman Collins : Anna
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Georgette Heyer : Black Moth, The
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter de la Mare : Peacock Pie
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Sava : Healing Knife, The
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Saint Joan
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Thornton Wilder : Bridge of San Luis Rey
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Caesar and Cleopatra
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Dark Lady of the Sonnets
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Christmas Carol, A
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Jerome K. Jerome : Three Men in a Boat
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Wilfred Massey : Crime at the Club
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Major Barbara
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Pygmalion
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : You Never Can Tell
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Doctor's Dilemma
[List of books read during 1944]: 'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : [poems]
?The gentle Cowper was my earliest favourite, a small second-hand copy of his poems, which I bought for eighteen pence, being the first book I bought for myself. It emptied my pocket, but I walked home, as I had walked to Newcastle (a distance some eighteen miles to and fro) with a light head, now and then reading as I fared along. Longfellow, Pope, Milton, Wordsworth and other poets were soon afterwards added to my little collection. I read them all. Many passages have clung to my memory, a life-long possession, giving, with their music, sometimes inspiration, sometimes solace in the conflicts and sorrows of life.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [poems]
?The gentle Cowper was my earliest favourite, a small second-hand copy of his poems, which I bought for eighteen pence, being the first book I bought for myself. It emptied my pocket, but I walked home, as I had walked to Newcastle (a distance some eighteen miles to and fro) with a light head, now and then reading as I fared along. Longfellow, Pope, Milton, Wordsworth and other poets were soon afterwards added to my little collection. I read them all. Many passages have clung to my memory, a life-long possession, giving, with their music, sometimes inspiration, sometimes solace in the conflicts and sorrows of life.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Archibald Alison : History of Europe
?Two or three years my senior, Sam, like myself, was acquiring a taste for books. Our tastes were not wholly dissimilar. Both of us read and enjoyed poetry; but while Sam?s more solid reading was in science, especially in astronomy and geology, mine was in history, biography, logic, languages, oratory, and general literature. Sam?s favourite books at this time were Alison?s "History of Europe" and Humboldt?s "Cosmos".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bailey Print: Book
Alexander van Humboldt : Cosmos
?Two or three years my senior, Sam, like myself, was acquiring a taste for books. Our tastes were not wholly dissimilar. Both of us read and enjoyed poetry; but while Sam?s more solid reading was in science, especially in astronomy and geology, mine was in history, biography, logic, languages, oratory, and general literature. Sam?s favourite books at this time were Alison?s "History of Europe" and Humboldt?s "Cosmos".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bailey Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : The history of the reformation of the Church of England
'In the afternoon and even read part of Burnet's "History of the Reformation" which I esteem a very impartial history, as the author has everywhere treated his subject with moderation and coolness, which is in my opinion always a sign of learning and virtue.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book
Louise-Florence d'Epinay : Memoirs
Henry James to Thomas Seregant Perry, 25 November 1883: "Her [Louise-Florence d'Epinay's] Memoirs I read years ago ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Countess Claire-Elisabeth de Remusat : Correspondence (vols 6 and 7)
Henry James to Thomas Seregant Perry, 25 November 1883: "I have just been reading the two last [sixth and seventh] volumes of Mme de Remusat, just out -- her correspondence with her son -- and finding them interestng ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Francis Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe
Henry James to Francis Parkman, 24 August 1884: " ... I cannot hold my hand from telling you ... with what high appreciation and genuine gratitude I have been reading your Wolfe and Montcalm ... I have found the right time to read it only during the last fortnight, and it has fascinated me from the first page to the last."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Vernon Lee : Euphorion
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 21 October 1884: "I have just been reading your Euphorion, and I find it such a prodigious young performance ... that dedications should come to you not from you [Lee had dedicated her novel Miss Brown to James]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Grace Norton : [unidentified articles]
Henry James to Grace Norton, 3 November 1884: "I have read with enjoyment your various articles ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Louis Stevenson : article
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 5 December 1884: "I read only last night your paper in the December Longman's in genial rejoinder to my article in the same periodical on Besant's lecture, and the result ... is a friendly desire to send you three words."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Mrs Humphry Ward : Miss Bretherton
Henry James to Mrs Humphry Ward, 9 December 1884: "I read ... [Miss Bretherton] with great interest and pleasure ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James Sr and William James : The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James
Henry James to William James, 2 January 1885: "Three days ago ... came the two copies of Father's (and your) book ... All I have had time to read as yet is the introduction ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book, Unknown
Vernon Lee : Miss Brown
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 10 May 1885: "I read Miss B[rown]. with eagerness ... as soon as I received the volumes, and have lately read a large part of them over again."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Vernon Lee : Miss Brown
Henry James to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee), 10 May 1885: "I read Miss B[rown]. with eagerness ... as soon as I received the volumes, and have lately read a large part of them over again."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. Rider Haggard : King Solomon's Mines
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 August 1886: "Since I saw you [on Sunday 1 August] I have finished Solomon and read half of 'She' ... It isn't nice that anything so vulgarly brutal should be the thing that succeeds most with the English of today [goes on to complain further of violence and racism in this novel]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
H. Rider Haggard : She
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 August 1886: "Since I saw you [on Sunday 1 August] I have finished Solomon and read half of 'She' ... It isn't nice that anything so vulgarly brutal should be the thing that succeeds most with the English of today [goes on to complain further of violence and racism in this novel]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James : Portrait of a Lady
Robert Louis Stevenson to Henry James, November-early December 1887: "I must break out with the news that I can't bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept, too; but I can't stand your having written it, and I beg you will write no more of the like."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Master of Ballantrae
Henry James to Wiliam James, 29 November 1888: " ... I have had in my hands the earlier sheets of the Master of Ballantrae, the new novel ... [R. L. Stevenson] is about to contribute to Scribner, and have been reading them with breathless admiration."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Sheet
various authors : correspondence and other papers
'I am employing myself at present, in looking over & sorting, & classing my Correspondencies and other Papers. This, when done, will amuse me by reading over again, a very ample Correspondence: & in comparing the Sentiments of my Correspondents, at the time, with their present; and improving from both'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Letter, letters and papers
Edward Young : The Centaur not Fabulous; in Six Letters to a Friend on The Life in Vogue
'With us, the "Centaur not fabulous" has met with a pretty good Reception; tho' some good People wish that it had less of the Enthusiasm of Poetry in it; less of Imagination. But are there not very fine, very solemn, very noble Strokes in almost every Page of it? Is not the Author's good Design apparent in every Line?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Unknown, printed by Richardson so presumably read in MS
Sarah Fielding : Familiar Letters Between the Principle Characters in David Simple
'I amuse myself as well as I can with reading. I have just gone through your two vols. of Letters. Have reperused them with great pleasure and found many new beauties in them. What a knowledge of the human heart!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'Who is this Yorick? you are pleased to ask me. You cannot, I imagine have looked into his books: execrable I cannot but call them; for I am told that the third and fourth volumes are worse, if possible, than the two first; which, only, I have had the patience to run through. One extenuating circumstance attends his works, that they are too gross to be inflaming'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'Rudie inspired in all his children a love of literature, reading aloud to them from his own favourites, the great Victorians, particularly Dickens, and helping them to choose from the library shelves. "I had the run of my father's library", Rosamond remembered. "I was allowed to read anything and did". There was a bookcase in the hall where he would put books sent to him for review, and from these Rosamond, graduating from her beloved Hans Andersen, E. Nesbit and Les Petites Filles Modeles, began to discover some of the more adult novelists'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rudolph Lehmann Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : [poem(s) in the London Mercury]
'To her father she wrote about her term work, the poetry she was reading and with details about new publications. "Do", she urged him, "try to get hold of 'The London Mercury', a new periodical edited by J.C. Squire. The first number has just appeared and is quite excellent, - but I don't suppose it will keep it up. There are hitherto unpublished poems by Rupert Brooke and Thomas Hardy".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Serial / periodical
David Herbert Lawrence :
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
William Alexander Gerhardi(e) :
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
William Alexander Gerhardi(e) :
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Runcimann Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence :
[Lehmann and her first husband, Leslie Runcimann] 'were great readers, particularly of modern novelists such as Huxley, Lawrence and Gerhardie.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Runcimann Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Roger Fry: A Biography
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : To the Lighthouse
[Virginia Woolf's] 'masterpiece, in Rosamond's opinion, was her biography of Roger Fry, although the novels were also revered - "To the Lighthouse" above all - even if some of the stylistic tricks were sometimes found to be irritating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon :
'Through her old friendship with Stephen Tennant, Rosamond became devoted to his lover, Siegfried Sassoon, whose work she much admired'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot :
'her main intellectual interests were always literary, and as a novelist she was predominantly engaged in the business of reading and writing, with a keen critical interest in the works of other writers. She read avidly, modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, Roy Fuller, Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and contemporary novelists, admiring in particular the work of Faulkner and Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton Burnett, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen. Jean Rhys's bleak, beautiful novel "Voyage in the Dark", published in the same month as [Lehmann's] "Invitation to the Waltz", had much impressed Rosamond, who invited its author to tea'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Roy Fuller :
'her main intellectual interests were always literary, and as a novelist she was predominantly engaged in the business of reading and writing, with a keen critical interest in the works of other writers. She read avidly, modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, Roy Fuller, Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and contemporary novelists, admiring in particular the work of Faulkner and Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton Burnett, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen. Jean Rhys's bleak, beautiful novel "Voyage in the Dark", published in the same month as [Lehmann's] "Invitation to the Waltz", had much impressed Rosamond, who invited its author to tea'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford :
'her main intellectual interests were always literary, and as a novelist she was predominantly engaged in the business of reading and writing, with a keen critical interest in the works of other writers. She read avidly, modern poets such as T.S. Eliot, Roy Fuller, Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and contemporary novelists, admiring in particular the work of Faulkner and Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton Burnett, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen. Jean Rhys's bleak, beautiful novel "Voyage in the Dark", published in the same month as [Lehmann's] "Invitation to the Waltz", had much impressed Rosamond, who invited its author to tea'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Four Quartets
[Rosamond Lehmann wrote in her memoir, "Swan at Evening"] "I took down and re-read "The Four Quartets", the sublime, unhopeful, consoling cluster of poems; and discovered, or rather re-discovered, that everything was there - everything that I have been trying, and shall be trying, to say".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
Francois Bernier : History of the late revolution of the empire of the Great Mogol, The
[Marginalia]: pen annotations on binding pages appear to be page references to a number of topics eg: "Jesseigne"; "Rajah Rannah". Occasional marks in the margins, usually in the form of an italic N (examples on p. 58, 64, 65 etc) or vertical lines (p. 75 only).
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
Patrick Gordon : Famous history of the renown'd and valiant prince, Robert sirnamed, the Bruce, King of Scotland, ... A history both pleasant and profitable, set forth and done in heroic verse, by Patrick Gordon, Gentleman, The
[Marginalia]: has pencil annotations, opposite the title page and inside front cover, relating to the history and purchase of the book "Mr Heber certifies to me, that this is very/ faithfully reprinted from the rare Dort edit: ? [?]/ so rare that I know not of a perfect copy. / Nor have I seen more that 4 copies of it imperfect [?]"[2nd para deals with another Dort. publication]; "Bought from Blackwood's cat. Edinburgh 1796 [?] ..."; and a pen annotation on the inside back cover, a 8 line quote from a poem, by Walter Quin on Bernard Stuart, Lord d'Aubigni praising Bruce.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : Political Economy
?There were other books which I then read and studied with care, including Adam Smith?s "Wealth of Nations" and Mill?s "Political Economy". This was not a kind of literature to borrow from public libraries, but to have in one?s possessions.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
?The library of the Mechanics' Institute gave me the opportunity to read some books which were then new to me, among them being, I remember, "Adam Bede", and other of George Eliot?s novels. My appetite for Ruskin had been whetted by his "Unto this Last", which I had read with care and keen appreciation. Ruskin?s works were at the time beyond the reach of my slender purse. Now I read with delight his "Crown of Wild Olive", his "Sesame and Lilies", and other of his smaller books. These, together with his "Modern Painters", I soon afterwards added to my own little library, as well as a complete set of George Eliot?s works. Next to Wordsworth I do not think any writer has influenced me more deeply and more healthily than Ruskin.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Frank Harris : Bomb, The
'Do you want Frank Harris? If so, I think I could bring him into the fold. . . . His last book "The Bomb" (which is a masterly thing) is published by Long (!) who gave him ?75 in advance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frank Harris :
'He [Frank Harris] has two or three books unpublished; including one on Shakespeare which is probably the most penetrating book on Shakespeare ever written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Arnold Bennett : preface to The Old Wives' Tale
'I have just read in The Bookman your preface to the American edition of ?An Old Wives? Tale.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: J.B. Pinker Print: Serial / periodical
Arnold Bennett : Regent, The
'I have this day despatched to you in two book packets, a copy of "The Regent". You may take it positively from me that this book is all right. I have read nearly all of it aloud to friends, with enormous success.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: manuscript of new novel (typescript?)
Arnold Bennett : Artist and the Public, The
'I have received your fourth and last article for Austin Harrison, and I have read it with a great deal of enjoyment.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: J.B. Pinker
Arnold Bennett : Journal
'By the way, My Journal is now in its eighteenth volume, and almost the whole of it is yet in manuscript. Whenever I look at it it seems to me to be rather interesting, and some of my friends say that it is far more interesting than anything else I have written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Arnold Bennett : Price of Love, The
'It ["The Price of Love"] and ?Sinister Street? were, he told me, the only works of fiction he [Henry James] had read since the War broke out.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : 'New Age' articles
'[Hugh] Walpole spent all Sunday afternoon at my house in reading Jacob Tonson?s "New Age" articles, which he had asked for. He said it would be ridiculous not to reissue a selection from them as a book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Serial / periodical
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
?Another great book which I bought in those days was Gibbon?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (Bohn?s edition in seven volumes). Relative to my means, the price was rather stiff, but by getting one volume at a time, as I could afford to pay for it, this difficulty was surmounted. ? Vividly do I remember bringing the final volume home. With youthful glee I read till a late hour. I slept little that night; the book haunted my dreams. I awoke about four on the bright summer Sunday morning and went into the fields to read till breakfast-time. The stately, majestic march of Gibbon?s periods had some attraction for me even then; but the "Decline and Fall", it must be admitted, was hard reading for an unlettered collier lad. Yet I plodded on until I had finished the book which, besides its direct teachings, brought me many indirect advantages.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Bleak House
?This period gave me unnumbered hours for reading, and I devoured everything that came in my way, novels, histories, travels, even "The lives of the Stoics". There was no such thing as a free library then, so enough money was scraped up for a subscription one, the first volume borrowed being Dickens?s newly published "Bleak House".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Catling Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [works]
?There were no free libraries, so the younger hands joined with me in starting a "Literary Fund" of our own, towards which each paid three-halfpence a week. The papers and books bought for general reading were afterwards divided. In our little club the "Cornhill Magazine", from its start under Thackeray?s editorship, was read and discussed; also Dickens?s successive productions. I call to mind many serious books, as well as "Cassell?s Magazine" and the "London Journal", in which appeared Miss Braddon?s great story of "Henry Dunbar", then entitled "The Outcasts".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Printers and compositors at Thomas Catling's place of work, Edward Lloyd's publishing house Print: Book, Serial / periodical, presumably Dickens's fiction and journals
Arnold Bennett : The Roll Call
'I have received some copies of "The Roll Call". They are odious in a very high degree. I do not complain of the quality of the paper, but I object to there being two half-titles one before the title and the other after it! I object more strongly to the illustrated cover being passed without reference to the author and still more strongly to the descriptive matter not being submitted to the author. The description of the book inside the jacket: "Can a man love two women is the theme of this book", is perfectly ridiculous and extremely misleading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : The Roll Call
'I have received some copies of 'The Roll Call'. They are odious in a very high degree. I do not complain of the quality of the paper, but I object to there being two half-titles one before the title and the other after it! I object more strongly to the illustrated cover being passed without reference to the authorand still more strongly to the descriptive matter not being submitted to the author. The description of the book inside the jacket: 'Can a man love two women is the theme of this book,' is perfectly ridiculous and extremely misleading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: proofs
Vernon Lee : Hauntings
In letter to Violet Paget (Vernon Lee) of 27 April 1890, Henry James thanks her for Hauntings, her book of ghost stories, which he has read and enjoyed: "I possess the eminently psychical stories as well as the material volume."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
[various] : [various works]
[compiling the anthology "The Female Reader", Mary Wollstonecraft spent] 'long hours reading, for the extracts included came from widely scattered sources and might consist of only a few lines from a long work.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Unknown
Arnold Bennett : How to Become an Author
'Swinnerton feels sure that C & W would be willing to publish a new edition of "How to become an Author". I gave him the book to read and he is enthusiastic about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Swinnerton Print: Book
Richard Price : Sermons on the Christian Doctrine, as Received by the Different Denominations of Christians
'I had rather you would not read Dr Price's sermons, as they would lead you into controversial disputes, and your limited range of books would not afford you a clue - the Dissertations are less entangled with controversial points, and contain useful truths - coming warm from the heart they find the direct road to it; but the sermons require more profound thinking, are not calculated to improve the generality'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
Richard Price : Four Dissertations
'I had rather you would not read Dr Price's sermons, as they would lead you into controversial disputes, and your limited range of books would not afford you a clue - the Dissertations are less entangled with controversial points, and contain useful truths - coming warm from the heart they find the direct road to it; but the sermons require more profound thinking, are not calculated to improve the generality.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
[probably] Christian Gotthilf Salzmann : [probably] Moralisches Elementarbuch
'I am so fatigued with poring over a German book, I scarcely can collect my thoughts or even spell English words.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Ballads
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 12 January 1891: "To-day what I am grateful for is your new ballad-book, which has just reached me by your command. I have had time only to read the first few things ... As I turn the pages I seem to see that they are full of charm ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : The South Seas
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 12 January 1891: "I read with unrestrictive relish the first chapters of your prose volume (kindly vouchsafed me in the little copyright-catching red volume) and I loved 'em and blessed them quite."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Ballads
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 13 January 1891 (in letter begun 12 January 1891): "Since yesterday I have ... read the ballad book -- with the admiration that I always feel as a helplessly verseless creature ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Mr Barlow : [letters to his wife]
'Delighted with some of her husband's letters, [Mrs Barlow] has exultingly shewn them to me; and, though I took care not to let her see it, I was almost disgusted with the tender passages which afforded her so much satisfaction, because they were turned so prettily that they looked more like the cold ingenuity of the head than the warm overflowings of the heart.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Manuscript: Letter
Mary Hays : Cursory Remarks
'I have just cast my eye over your sensible little pamphlet, and found fewer of the superlatives, exquisite, fascinating &c, all of the feminine gender, than I expected. Some of the sentiments, it is true, are rather obscurely expressed; but if you continue to write you will imperceptibly correct this fault...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Manuscript: Unknown, MS version of pamphlet
Henrik Ibsen : Rosmersholm
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 28 April 1891: "I return the Ibsenite volume with many thanks -- especially for the opportunity to read your charming preface which is really ... more interesting than Ibsen himself ... I think you make him out a richer phenomenon than he is. The perusal of the dreary Rosmersholm and even the reperusal of Ghosts has been rather a shock to me -- they have let me down, down."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Ghosts
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 28 April 1891: "I return the Ibsenite volume with many thanks -- especially for the opportunity to read your charming preface which is really ... more interesting than Ibsen himself ... I think you make him out a richer phenomenon than he is. The perusal of the dreary Rosmersholm and even the reperusal of Ghosts has been rather a shock to me -- they have let me down, down."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Mary Hays : Memoirs of Emma Courtney
'Mrs Robinson... has read your novel, and was very much pleased with the main story; but did not like the conclusion. She thinks the death of Augustus the end of the story and that the husband should have been suffered to die a natural death.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Robinson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Arnold Bennett : Mr Prohack
'I congratulate you on ?Prohack?. It is brilliant and I have read it with intense admiration.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Methuen Marshall Print: Book
'L.' - prob George Henry Lewes :
'When we came home I read some of L.'s M.S. aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Augustin Sainte Beuve : [unknown]
'We read, wrote and walked a little before dinner. After, I read Sainte Beuve aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben : [a bacchanalian poem]
'When the cigars came, Hoffmann was requested to read some of his poetry, and he gave us a bacchanalian poem with great spirit... little rain sent us into the house, and when we were seated in an elegant drawing room, opening into a large music salon, we had more reading from Hoffmann, and from the French artist who with a tremulous voice pitched in a minor key, read us some rather pretty sentimentalities of his own'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: Unknown, own poem
[a french artist] : [his own poems]
'When the cigars came, Hoffmann was requested to read some of his poetry, and he gave us a bacchanalian poem with great spirit... little rain sent us into the house, and when we were seated in an elegant drawing room, opening into a large music salon, we had more reading from Hoffmann, and from the French artist who with a tremulous voice pitched in a minor key, read us some rather pretty sentimentalities of his own'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: Unknown
Walter de la Mare : Henry Brocken
'Read "Henry Brocken" all evening, as had finished prep. It's enchanting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Maurice Maeterlinck : Life of the Bee, The
'Spent evening dancing, and reading Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Arthur Quiller Couch : Art of Writing, The
'I'm reading Quiller Couch's "Art of Writing", & am more & more convinced that he should be read by everyone compulsorily. He hits the nail on the head. Also "Screwtape Letters", which should also be widely read, as are most revealing. Feel less like working seriously this term, than reading widely. Can't decide whether this is good or not, but shall not yield to impulses too greatly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Florence Converse : House of Prayer, The
'[while in the sickroom with a bug] Today I felt heaps better, no temp, no aches, & felt less jellyish. I read a lot, but only silly school stories, except one book, "The House of Prayer", which was very good & well-written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Franz Liszt : [account of Der Fliegende Hollander - The Flying Dutchman]
'We set off for Ilmenau by railway. I read Liszt's account of "Der Fliegende Holander" by the way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Unknown
Franz Liszt : [article on Meyerbeer]
'In the morning I partly condensed Liszt's article on Meyerbeer for the Vivian paper. In the evening walked and read aloud the Wahlverwandtschaften.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: Unknown
James Elroy Flecker : [poetry]
'Spent half an hour reading Flecker - he's wonderful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
James Elroy Flecker : [poetry]
'I felt incapable of doing any Zoo [zoology preparation for mid-school exams] so read Flecker's poetry all night! Felt immensely cheered up by it, but very wicked!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy Sayers : Hangman's Holiday
'I read "Hangman's Holiday" with great enjoyment.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy Sayers : Strong Poison
'I read "Strong Poison" all day and enjoyed it thoroughly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'I read quite a lot of the "Antiquary" and felt quite virtuous.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Ghosts
'Spent most of the morning in bed reading Ibsen's "Ghosts", which is a masterpiece, I think.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margaret Irwin : Gay Galliard, The
'I stayed up late reading "The Gay Galliard" by Margaret Irwin, which is a lovely book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
[Three days after V.E. day] 'I finished the "Antiquary" at last. It's pretty awful, though quite exciting in patches.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Knight's Tale, The
'I did "The Knightes Tale" all my prep. time and like it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Knight's Tale, The
'Finished "The Knightes Tale" and am now embarking on "Luria" - it's pretty awful."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Robert Browning : Luria
'Finished "The Knightes Tale" and am now embarking on "Luria" - it's pretty awful."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
James Elroy Flecker : Old Ships, The
'Today I spent ages trying to find a poem for Elocution [Grade 6 exam] in my special choice part. At last I chose "The Old Ships" by Flecker, which I think is one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Summer Evening
'I have been reading Tennyson's "Summer Evening", which is a lovely poem, full of pictures.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Edwyn Robert Bevan : Jerusalem under the High Priests: five lectures on the period between Nehemiah and the New Testament
[Sunday, on a bike picnic] 'It began to pour down just as B [unidentified] and I reached a barn... so we stayed there to eat, and curled up on rugs on mouldy straw, and I read "Jerusalem under the High Priests"! Arrived in at 6:30 totally soaked! Maccy [later the cookery writer Jane Grigson] has a tiny book of Shakespeare's Sonnets which I must try and get - they are most lovely and very interesting and soothing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Rivals, The
'I finished reading "The Rivals", and have embarked on Bradley's "Shakespearean Tragedy"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Carl Eduard Vehse : Der Hof zu Weimar
'Read Vehse's Weimar in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Rivals, The
'I did a lot of "The Rivals", which I don't like a bit. It has momentary flashes of wit, but otherwise it's awful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : "Donna Clara"
'Fraulein Assing, Varnhagen's niece, lent me a volume of Heine's poems. I read aloud "Donna Clara" and then Wilhelm Meister till 10'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
James Elroy Flecker : [poetry]
'I read Flecker most of evening and am more and more convinced that his poetry is wonderful'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy Sayers : Nine Tailors, The
'I read "Nine Tailors" all pm although I'd promised myself I'd work at night. But it was a lovely evening and I lay in a secluded corner of the garden on my rug and although there was a high wind in the trees I was beautifully sheltered and warm. No doubt I shall regret not working.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy Sayers : Nine Tailors, The
'"Nine Tailors" all evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : poems
'I read Heine's poems; wrote a few recollections of Weimar and translated Genealogical Tables of the Goethe family'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry
'Read Laocoon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry
'Finished Lessing's Laocoon - the most un-German of all German books that I have ever read.The style is strong clear and lively, the thoughts acute and pregnant. It is well adapted to rouse an interest both in the classics and in the study of art'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi : Briefe Uber Spinoza
'The weather continues disagreeable and the streets dirty. Read Jacobi's Briefe uber Spinoza.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Nathan der Weise
'Home for half an hour and read Nathan der Weise'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Marguerite Steen : Sun is my Undoing, The
'I read "The Sun is My Undoing" - fast and very meaty. Intensely interesting - till 12 pm'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Minna von Barnhelm
''Finished Minna von Barnhelm... G. began Antony and Cleopatra'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Christopher Marlowe : Jew of Malta, The
'Reading "The Jew of Malta", which in spite of critics is the most interesting of the plays I've read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Marcelin Marbot : Memoires
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 15 April 1892: "I send you by this post the magnificent Memoires de Marbot, which should have gone to you sooner by my hand if I had sooner read them ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Across the Plains
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 15 April 1892: "... I have just read the last page of the sweet collection of some of your happiest lucubrations put forth by the care of dear [Sidney] Colvin."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Island Nights
Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 8 June 1893: "It was only when I came back [from travels abroad] the other day that I could put my hand on the Island Nights, which by your generosity ... I found awaiting me on my table ... I read them as fondly as an infant sucks a stick of candy."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : Letters of James Russell Lowell
Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton, 15 November 1893: "The two beautiful volumes of dear J[ames] R[ussell] L[owell] constitute a gift for the substantial grace of which I lose as little time as possible in affectionately thanking you ... I have read the whole thing with absorption and with a delightful illusion [of Lowell's being present]."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
George Meredith : Lord Ormont and His Aminta
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 22 August 1894: " ... I have vowed not to open Lourdes [by Zola] till I shall have closed with a furious bang the unspeakable Lord Ormont, which I have been reading at the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day ... I have finished, at this rate, but the first volume ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Horatio Brown : Memoir of John Addington Symonds
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 27 December 1894: "I have been reading with the liveliest -- and almost painful -- interest the two volumes on the extraordinary Symonds."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
Henry James to Alice James, 22 February, 1876: "Of course you have read Daniel Deronda, and I hope you have enjoyed it a tenth as much as I. It was disappointing, and it brings out strongly the defects of later growth ... But ... I enjoyed it more than anything of hers ... I have ever read. Partly for reading it in this beastly Paris ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James : stories
Henry James to Mrs. Henry James Sr., 8 May 1876: "The other day I was at the house of a dreadful old lion huntress, Mme. Blaze de Bury -- an Englishwoman with a French husband and daughter. She invited me, unsolicited, from having read my threadbare tales in the Revue des Deux Mondes ..."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mme. Blaze de Bury Print: Serial / periodical
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
Henry James to Mrs. Henry James Sr., 8 May 1876: "... [Daniel Deronda] disappoints me as it goes on -- the analysing and the sapience -- to say nothing of the tortuosity of the style -- are overdone."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Henry James : Roderick Hudson
Henry James to Wiliam James, 28 February 1877: " ... [Henry Sidgwick] has read Roderick Hudson (!) and asked me to stop with him at Cambridge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Sidgwick Print: Unknown
Henry James : The American
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 19 April 1878: "Two days since I dined with Frederick Macmillan to meet Mr Grove, the editor of their magazine, who had just been reading The American ... 'with great delight.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Archibald Grove Print: Unknown
Henry James : "French essays"
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 29 May 1878: " ... Sir Charles Dilke ... appears to have found time ... to read and be 'struck' by my French essays."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Charles Dilke Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall
Henry James to Elizabeth Boott 30 October 1878, on lunch that day with Tennyson at his home, : "He read out 'Locksley Hall' to me, in a kind of solemn, sonorous chant, and I thought the performance, and the occasion, sufficiently impressive."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
George Henry Lewes : [a farce]
'G went at 8 and I spent the evening alone for the first time since we have been at Berlin. I read G's Farce - Robson's adventure with a Russian Princess'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
Euripides : Iphigenia
'went to dine at the Hotel de l'Europe. I took "Iphigenia" to read. Italianische Reise until Dessoir came. He read us the opening of "Richard the 3rd" and the scene with Lady Anne. Then Shylock, which G. afterwards read... Finished 1st act of "Iphigenia"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Priscilla Wakefield : Mental improvement: or the beauties and wonders of nature and art. In a series of instructive conversations. By Priscilla Wakefield
[Marginalia]: 2 small ms notes laid into v.3 have references to items of interest eg.(1) 'Rupert's drops'; (2) 'From Mental improvement Vol 1st ... Of artificial coral [page] 130, Of painting on glass [page] 156 ...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : unknown
'Began Tasso aloud. G. read two acts of As You Like It'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Eliot : Adam Bede
'I also read again Silvio Pellico's "Prisons". I read it once at Granton- a lovely book (same edition) and "Adam Bede" and a French Novel and other new works. I like all Adam Bede immensely except the extremely inartistic plot. Geo. Eliot loves to draw self-righteious people with good instincts being led into crime or misery by circumstances.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : Die Gotter im Exil
'Read aloud Heine's "Gotter im Exil" and some of his poems. G. read aloud Lear'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Heinrich Heine : [poems]
'Read aloud Heine's "Gotter im Exil" and some of his poems. G. read aloud Lear'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [draft of Life of Goethe]
'Came home and copied Goethe's discourse on Shakespeare. Read, at dinner, his wonderful observations on Spinoza. Particularly struck with the beautiful modesty of the passage in which he says he cannot presume to say that he thoroughly understands Spinoza. After coffee read aloud G's M.S. of the Leipsic and beginning of the Strasburg Period. G. finished Lear - sublimely powerful!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown, MS of Lewes' book
Heinrich Heine : De l'Allemagne
'read Heine's "Allemagne" in the German edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Heinrich Heine : Der Salon
'Read at dinner Goethe's account of his relations with Herder at Strasburg in Dichtung und Warheit. Continued aloud Heine's Salon. G. read Knight's studies of Shakspeare. Twaddling in the extreme'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Heinrich Heine : [on German philosophy]
'Read Heine in the evening - on German Philosophy'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
[Dr] Fischer : [a pamphlet]
'Read Dr Fischer's pamphlet'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
[Prof.] Gruppe : [poem in MS]
'We went in the evening to Gruppe's. He read to us parts ofa poem "Ferdusi" still in M.S. which is to be read to the King.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [Prof] Gruppe Manuscript: Sheet
George Henry Lewes : book in MS, perhaps his Life of Goethe
'Staid at home this evening and read G's M.S. Book 3. Took a little walk under the Linden and afterwards read Twelfth Night'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown, book M.S.
Georg Gottfried Gervinus : [on Shakespeare]
'Tried reading the 2nd part of Faust aloud, but gave it up, as it was too difficult for G. to follow it rapidly enough. Read a little of Gervinus on Shakespeare, but found it unsatisfactory. Read some of Stahr's "Ein Jahr in Italien". The description of Florence excellent'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Karl Eduard Vehse : probably Geschichte der deutschen H?fe seit der Reformation
'Read... two first vols. of Vehse. Called at Vehse's for the other volumes'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
[Prof] Gruppe : Ferdusi
'we went to hear the reading of Gruppe's Ferdusi. But the reading was bad and the room insufferably hot. So we came away and read Shakspeare (sic) at home'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Manuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : part of the MS of his Life of Goethe
'In the evening began Macaulay's History of England. Richard III and G's M.S. on Goethe's scientific labours'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown, MS of book
George Henry Lewes : MS of his Life of Goethe
'Read G.'s MS. of Friendship between Schiller and Goethe'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown, MS of book
Eberhard Schrader : [German Mythology]
'Began Schrader's German Mythology'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Herbert Spencer : The Genesis of Science
'Read Schrader. Spinoza. Leader and Athenaeum. "Genesis of Science". Gibbon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Homer : Odyssey
'We are reading in the evenings now, Sydney Smith's letters, Boswell, Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences, the Odyssey and occasionally Heine's Reisebilder. I began the second Book of the Iliad in Greek this morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Heinrich Heine : Reisebilder
'We are reading in the evenings now, Sydney Smith's letters, Boswell, Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences, the Odyssey and occasionally Heine's Reisebilder. I began the second Book of the Iliad in Greek this morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Homer : Iliad, book II
'We are reading in the evenings now, Sydney Smith's letters, Boswell, Whewell's "History of Inductive Sciences", "the Odyssey" and occasionally Heine's "Reisebilder". I began the second Book of "the Iliad" in Greek this morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Henry James : Daisy Miller
Henry James to Mrs F. H. Hill, 21 March 1879, on his characterisation of Lord Lambeth in Daisy Miller: "That he says 'I say' rather too many times is very probable (I thought so, quite, myself, in reading over the thing as a book): but that strikes me as a rather venial flaw."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James Sr : [book]
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 8 April 1879: "I have received father's book from Trubner -- but really to read it I must lay it aside till the summer. I have however dipped into it and found it a great fascination."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James : review of Correspondence de C. A. Sainte-Beuve
Henry James to Henry James Sr., 11 January 1880: "I know there are quite too many 'I's' in my Sainte-Beuve -- they shocked me very much when I saw it in print, and they would never have stayed had I seen it in proof."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : poems
Henry James to Grace Norton, 26 July 1880: "One of my latest sensations was going one day to Lady Airlie's to hear Browning read his own poems ... He read them as if he hated them and would like to bite them to pieces."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning
Charles Eliot Norton : Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence
Henry James to Grace Norton, 7 November 1880: ' ... please tell Charles [Norton] I am to write to him in a day or two to thank him for his own beautiful volume which I have waited to do, only to read it. I am just terminating this pleasure, and he shall hear from me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Grant Allen : article (?in response to work by William James)
Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 16 March 1881: "I have of course read Grant Allen in the March Atlantic and think it seems prettily enough argued."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James : Daisy Miller
Leon Edel notes: "In the weeks after his mother's death H[enry]J[ames] converted 'Daisy Miler' into a play, and before sailing read it to Mrs. [Isabella Stewart]Gardner."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
George Pellew : dissertation on Jane Austen's novels
Henry James to George Pellew, 23 June 1883: 'I found your thin red book [on Jane Austen] on my table when I came in late last night. I read it this morning before I left my pillow -- read it with much entertainment and profit.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Andrew Birnie of Saline : A compend or abreviat of the most important ordinary securities of, and concerning. [sic] rights personal and real, redeemable and irredeemable; of common use in Scotland. Containing above an hundred different securities. Collected from the stiles of seve
[Marginalia]: two ms notes, one opp. to: "Joannes Marshall scripsit hunc librum./ Incepi scribere hunc librum duodecimo die Aprilis 1729. Finivi librum nonodecimo die Junij 1729"; opp. p. 88: "David Marshall ... libro Gulielmus D... scripsit hunc librum./ Incepi scribere hunc librum Quinto die Februarij 1725/ ... John Halkerston ... [ie between two paras.]/ Ego Joannes Marshall Incepi scribere hunc librum duodecimo die Martii 1729 et finivi librum nondecimo die Junij 1729" ["John Marshall transcribed this book. I began to transcribe this book on 12th April 1729. I finished the book on 19th June 1729", "David Marshall... book...William D... transcribed this book. I began to transcribe this book on the 5th Feb 1725.... John Halkerston... I John Marshall began to transcribe this book on 12 March 1729 and I finished the book on 19th June 1729."; marginal marks in text p. 112-3.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Marshall Print: Book
Baron Jacob Berzelius : Examination of some compounds which depend upon very weak affinities
'The Dr [Brewster] stopped to tell me that he had got a paper on Chemistry written (in French) by Berzelius, professor of that science in Stockholm - which was to be published in April:- would I translate it? I answered in the affirmative; and next day went over to get the paper in question. It consists of six long sheets, written in a cramp hand, & in a very diffuse [s]tile. I have it more than half done. The labour of writing it down is the principal one. In other respects there is no difficulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Sheet
Baron Jacob Berzelius : Examination of some compounds which depend upon very weak affinities
'With respect to my occupations at this period; they are not of the most important nature. Berzelius' paper is printed - I was this day correcting the proof-sheet-. The translation looks not very ill in print. I wish I had plenty more of a similar [sor]t to translate and good pay for doing it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Proof-sheet
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue : Unknown
'At present, I am reading a stupid play of Kotzebue's - but to-night I am to have the history of Frederick the Great from Irving. I will make an affu' struggle to read a good deal of it & of the Italian in Summer - when at home.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Jean le Rond D'Alembert : Unknown
'You are not to think that I am fretful. I have long accustomed my mind to look upon the future with a sedate aspect; and at any rate, my hopes have never yet failed me. A French Author (D'Alembert, one of the few persons who deserve the honourable epithet of honest man) whom I was lately reading, remarks that one who devotes his life to learning ought to carry for his motto-Liberty, Truth, Poverty; for her that fears the latter can never have the former.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : History of England
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient history
?As spring and autumn were our only really busy seasons, I had occasionally , during other parts of the year, considerable leisure, which, if I could procure a book that I considered at all worth the reading, was spent with such a book of my desk, in the little recess of the packing room. Here, therefore, I had opportunities for reading many books of which I had only heard the names before, such as Robertson?s "History of Scotland", Goldsmith?s "History of England", Rollin?s "Ancient History", Hume?s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", Anachaises? "Travels in Greece"; and many other works on travels, geography, and antiquities.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Charles Knight : Penny Magazine
?There was and is so judicious a blending of light and heavy literature in "Chambers?s Journal" that their periodical has helped to educate, inform and entertain many generations of the British public. Whenever it came in my way, as it did sometimes, I revelled in its pages. The "Penny Magazine" also was a great delight on the rare occasions that I saw it. But I remember best the "Family Herald", "Reynolds?s Miscellany", and Lloyd?s penny dreadfuls.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Edwin Adams Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [poems]
?A situation as an errand boy at a bookseller?s was then found for me. A circulating library was attached to the business. My duties were to clean books and knives and brasses, and then carry books and magazines to the houses of the gentry who were subscribers to the library. The occupation was not uncongenial? for I was able to steal a peep at literature which would not otherwise have come within my reach. The book that was then in greatest demand, as I gathered from so often carrying it from one house to another, was Eliot Warburton?s "Crescent and the Cross", and next to it, I think, came Tennyson?s poems.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Edwin Adams Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint: or night thoughts
?One Sunday afternoon, the usual call was made for our ramble in the fields. Word was sent to the callers that their old companion was not going to join them. I heard from an upper room, not without a certain amount of tremour, their exclamations of surprise. They wandered off into the fields in one direction; I, with a new companion, wandered off into the fields in another. My new companion was Young?s "Night Thoughts". The old companions were never joined again.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Edwin Adams Print: Book
Richard Carlile : Republican
?[James Watson?s] mother, who was left a widow soon after he was born, obtained a situation at the parsonage, where she read Cobbett?s "Register" and "saw nothing bad in it". James himself was apprenticed to the clergyman to "learn field labour" but his indentures, owing to the reverend gentleman leaving Yorkshire for another part of the country, were cancelled before he had finished his time. Thereupon the youth set out for Leeds in search for friends and employment. While working in a warehouse, he too began to read Cobbett?s "Register" and "saw nothing bad in it". Besides Cobbett?s writings, he early made the acquaintance of the Radical literature of the day ? Wooler?s "Black Dwarf" and Carlile?s "Republican".?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Watson Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : Little Dorritt
?We even formed a magazine club ? purchasing periodicals, reading them in turn, and then distributing them among the members. Thackeray?s "Virginians" and Dickens?s "Little Dorrit" were, I recollect, among the serials for which we subscribed.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Adams and colleagues at the office of the 'Illustrated Times' Print: Serial / periodical
Dr Watts : Hymns
?I made very little progress in learning until the year 1794 only my mother borrowed the pilgrim?s progress and Doctor Watts hymns for me and told me the meaning of them as well as she Could which kept me from going back but I Could not advance because I had no one to teach me.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
Sir Richard Phillips : Geography
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fall in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free acess to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Citizen of the World, The
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield, The
'I had been made the more anxious to get some spare time, because several books which I had not before seen now fell in my way. This was through the courtesy of my young master whose kindly feelings I have already noticed. He now gave me free access to his little library, in which were Enfield's "Speaker", Goldsmith's "Geography", an abridged "History of Rome", a "History of England", Thomson's "Seasons", "The Citizen of the World", "The Vicar of Wakefield", and some other books the titles of which I do not now remember. These books furnished me with a large amount of amusing and instructive reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Rev. Thomas Scott : [various essays]
'Nor must I omit to mention the obligations I owe to some essays written by the late Rev. Thomas Scott and which were given me by my master. I do not remember their exact titles, nor can I recollect much of more than one of them. This was, if I err not, a kind of exposition on the tenth commandment...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
George Sand : Lucrezia Floriani
'Headache. Read "Lucrezia Floriani". We are reading White's "History of Selborne" in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Gilbert White : The Natural History of Selborne
'Headache. Read Lucrezia Floriani. We are reading White's History of Selborne in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Theodor (?) Schwann : unknown
'We are reading Wallenstein and Schwann in the evenings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Franz Joseph Gall : Anatomie et Physiologie du Cerveau
'We are reading Gall's Anatomie et Physiologie du Cerveau in the evening, with, occasionally, Carpenter's Comparative Physiology. The Newcomes as light fare after dinner'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Hiawatha
'We have been reading Longfellow's Hiawatha'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
George Meredith : The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment
'Read the Shaving of Shagpat'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : The Greek Heroes
'Read Kingsley's Greek Heroes'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Karl Friedrich August Kahnis : [history of German Protestantism - title unclear]
'finished Kahnis' History of German Protestantism'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
William Heinrich (?) Riehl : unknown
'Began to read Riehl, on which I am to write an article for the Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Richard Chenevix Trench : An essay on the life and genius of Calder?n,: With translations from his Life's a dream and Great theatre of the world
'In the evenings I have been reading Masson's Essays - "The Three Devils" and Chatterton's Life - and this evening I have read some of Trench's Calderon'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Pierre Beaumarchais : M?moires contre Goezman
'I am reading in the evenings the Memoirs of Beaumarchais and Milne Edwards's Zoology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Henri Milne-Edwards : [work on Zoology]
'I am reading in the evenings the Memoirs of Beaumarchais and Milne Edwards's Zoology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Henri Milne-Edwards : [work on Zoology]
'I have continued reading Milne-Edwards aloud, and have also read Harriet Martineau's article on Missions in the "Westminster", and one or two articles in the "National". Reading to myself Harvey's "Sea-side Book", and "The Lover's Seat".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : [article on Missions in the Westminster Review]
'I have continued reading Milne-Edwards aloud, and have also read Harriet Martineau's article on Missions in the "Westminster", and one or two articles in the "National". Reading to myself Harvey's "Sea-side Book", and "The Lover's Seat".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Serial / periodical
Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Breau : [zoology]
'have now taken up Quatrefages again.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
'Finished Cesar Birotteau aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : History of the Peace: Being a History of England from 1816 to 1854
'Began the Ajax of Sophocles. Also Miss Martineau's History of the Peace'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Sara Hennell : Christianity and Infidelity
'I wrote to Sara, also, this morning telling her my impressions from her book just published - "Christianity and Infidelity".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh
'We are reading Carlyle's "Cromwell" and "Aurora Leigh" again in the evenings. I am still in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", with Shelley's Poems and snatches of "Natural History".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [Poems]
'We are reading Carlyle's "Cromwell" and "Aurora Leigh" again in the evenings. I am still in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", with Shelley's Poems and snatches of "Natural History".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
George Eliot (pseud) : Janet's Repentance
'read G. the three first chapters of "Janet's Repentance".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: MS of own work
Henry Thomas Buckle : History of Civilization in England
'Finished Buckle's "History of Civilization in England" vol. I which I began a fortnight ago.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : The history of the British Empire in India
'In the evenings of late, we have been reading Harriet Martineau's sketch of "The British Empire in India", and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles of Clive and Hastings. We have lately read H.M.'s Introduction to the "History of the Peace" and have begun the "History of the Thirty Years Peace".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : The history of England during the thirty years' peace : 1816-1846
'In the evenings of late, we have been reading Harriet Martineau's sketch of "The British Empire in India", and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles of Clive and Hastings. We have lately read H.M.'s Introduction to the "History of the Peace" and have begun the "History of the Thirty Years Peace".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Bernard de Montfaucon : Antiquity explained, and represented in sculptures, by the learned Father Montfaucon, translated into English by David Humphreys,
[Marginalia]; Several pp of ms notes copied from another related work laid into v.1. Notes are entitled 'Extract from the 1st volume of Voyages et Recherches dans la Grece par le Chev.er P.O. Brondsted de l'Ile de Ceos'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
Bernard de Montfaucon : Antiquity explained, and represented in sculptures, by the learned Father Montfaucon, translated into English by David Humphreys
[Marginalia]: very brief annotations, bookmarks and marginal marks, indicating active use when on visit to Paris. Also has several tiny samples of fabric pinned into inside back cover with some notes eg "'ong gloves 2-16'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Erskine Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Household Words - "Perils of certain English Prisoners"
'We have been reading the last two evenings, the Christmas number of Household Words - "Perils of Certain English Prisoners" - by Wilkie Collins and Dickens. I am reading "Die Familie" by Riehl, forming the third volume of the series, the two first of which "Land und Volk" and "Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft", I reviewed for the Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Serial / periodical
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl : Die Familie
'We have been reading the last two evenings, the Christmas number of "Household Words" - "Perils of Certain English Prisoners" - by Wilkie Collins and Dickens. I am reading "Die Familie" by Riehl, forming the third volume of the series, the two first of which "Land und Volk" and "Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft", I reviewed for the Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl : Land Und Volk
'We have been reading the last two evenings, the Christmas number of "Household Words" - "Perils of Certain English Prisoners" - by Wilkie Collins and Dickens. I am reading "Die Familie" by Riehl, forming the third volume of the series, the two first of which "Land und Volk" and "Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft", I reviewed for the Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl : Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft
'We have been reading the last two evenings, the Christmas number of "Household Words" - "Perils of Certain English Prisoners" - by Wilkie Collins and Dickens. I am reading "Die Familie" by Riehl, forming the third volume of the series, the two first of which "Land und Volk" and "Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft", I reviewed for the Westminster'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
George Eliot (pseud.) : Adam Bede
'Read my new story to G. this evening as far as the end of the third chapter. He praised it highly... I am in the Choephorae now. In the evenings we are reading "History of Thirty Years' Peace" and Beranger. Throughly disappointed in Beranger'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Manuscript: MS of own novel
Pierre Jean de Beranger :
'Read my new story to G. this evening as far as the end of the third chapter. He praised it highly... I am in the Choephorae now. In the evenings we are reading "History of Thirty Years' Peace" and Beranger. Throughly disappointed in Beranger'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Haunted Man
'G. returned from Vernon Hill, and I read to him, after the review of my book in the "Times", the delicious scenes at Tetterby's with the "Moloch of a baby" in "the Haunted Man".'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Unknown, could have been book or serial
Jean Fran?ois de Galaup La P?rouse : [narratives of voyages]
'About this time I read also the narratives of some eminent navigators and travellers; among the former were those of Cook, P?rouse and Bougainville; of the latter I chiefly remember those of Bruce, Le Vaillant and Weld. Mr. Weld's narrative so deeply interested me, as to have well nigh been the occasion of my emigrating to the United States or Canada. The desire of seeing those countries which was excited thereby remained with me for some years: it was the cause of my reading several works descriptive of North America and the condition of its inhabitants.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Fran?ois Le Vaillant : [narratives of travels]
'About this time I read also the narratives of some eminent navigators and travellers; among the former were those of Cook, P?rouse and Bougainville; of the latter I chiefly remember those of Bruce, Le Vaillant and Weld. Mr. Weld's narrative so deeply interested me, as to have well nigh been the occasion of my emigrating to the United States or Canada. The desire of seeing those countries which was excited thereby remained with me for some years: it was the cause of my reading several works descriptive of North America and the condition of its inhabitants.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Christoph Christian Sturm : Reflections on the Works of God and of His Providence
'While walking to Hampstead, I strayed into a copse not far from my road, where I seated myself upon the trunk of a tree, and read, with no small pleasure, several of the papers contained in that highly entertaining book, "Sturm's Reflections on the Works of God". As I read these, surrounded by many of the objects upon which they so pleasingly descant, I was enabled to look "through nature up to nature's God"; to hold, as it were, converse with that glorious and beneficient Being, and to recognise Him as a father and a friend.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : History of the Thirty Years Peace
'Gave up Miss Martineau's "History" last night after reading some hundred pages in the second volume. She has a sentimental, rhetorical style in this history which is fatiguing and not instructive. But her history of the Reform Movement is very interesting'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
Barrett Wendell : critical study of Shakespeare
'[Barrett Wendell] has [...] sent me his new book on Shakespeare, in which I have been (I had read some laudatory notice of it) much disappointed. Besides being critically very thin and even common, it is surely not written as the Prof. of "English" at Harvard should write.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Edward Holton James : two stories
Henry James to Edward Holton James, 15 February 1896: 'For the two stories in the "Harvard Magazine" I am [...] gratefully indebted to you. I have read them with a searching of spirit (to begin with) inevitable to one who has in a manner set an example and who sees it (in his afternoon of life) inexorably and fatally followed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Pierre Louys : Aphrodite: moeurs antiques
Henry James, in 25 July 1896 letter to Edmund Gosse, praises Pierre Louys' novel "Aphrodite: moeurs antiques", which he has read in a copy apparently borrowed from Gosse.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Maurice Barres : Du Sang, de la Volupte et de la Mort
Henry James writes (in French) to Maurice Barres, in praise of "Du Sang, de la Volupte et de la Mort", a copy of which had been sent to him, 7 September 1896.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Edward Fitzgerald : Letters
In postscript to his letter of 3 July 1897 to Ellen Temple Hunter, Henry James tells anecdote about 'yesterday afternoon', in which, after having been 'reading the delightful letters of [...] Edward Fitzgerald ("Omar Khayyam") and, just finishing a story in one of them about his relations with a boatman of Saxmundham,' he went for a walk along the Bournemouth coast where he met, and got into conversation with, a 'sea-faring man' who turned out to have come from Saxmundham, and whose brother had been the boatman Fitzgerald had written of (he goes on to mention the further coincidence of coming home to find a letter from Hunter dated from Saxmundham).
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Arthur Christopher Benson : Diary
Henry James thanks Arthur Christopher Benson for letting him borrow and read his 'Diary', in letter of 1 October 1897: 'I have read, of course, every word -- and I think I have had real inspirations in the way of making you out.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock : Messiah
'It is the rainy evening of a dull day which I have spent in reading a little of Klopstock's Messiah (for the man Jardine, who broke his engagement); and in looking over the inflated work of 'Squire Bristed on "America and her resources". "Vivacity", therefore, on my part, is quite out of the question-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Barthelemy Faujais de Saint-Frond : Voyage en Angleterre, en Ecosse et aux Iles Hebrides...
'I know not if there be a Goddess of Sloth - tho' considering that this of all our passions is the least turbulent and most victorious, it could not without partiality be left destitute - But if there be, she certainly looks on with an approving smile - when in a supine posture, I lie for hours with my eyes fixed upon the pages of Lady Morgan's France or the travels of Faujas St Fond - my mind seldom taking the pains even to execrate the imbecile materialism, the tawdry gossipping of the former, or to pity the infirm speculations and the already antiquated mineralogy of the latter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : [from 'The Lady of the Lake']
'Despite his grandmother's strictures on reading, Davies read widely. His first attraction was to the penny dreadfuls of his day, which he read in secret... The school books he read contained poems that stirred him deeply. One of the school texts he used contained long passges from "The Lady of the Lake" with a prose commentary attached. And then there was a favourite schoolboy poem starting with the resounding line: "The Soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers", with a refrain that the boys loved to chant at play. There were extracts from Shakespeare, the usual lyrics, and a few heavily didactic poems intended to inculcate morality in the boyish heart'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe :
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'In the [italics]Autobiography[end italics] he tells us of the impact of Byron on him and his friend Dave: "His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom... While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing... Dave would lean his figure... against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merrymaking"... His friend soon tired of this Byronic posing, but Davies marks the occasion as the first time he was really attracted to poetry with enjoyment and serious purpose. He went on to read Shelley, Marlowe's plays, and some further Shakespeare. Wordsworth failed to attract him, though he later studied him very diligently'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [Dave, friend of W.H. Davies] anon Print: Book
Pierre Louys : La Femme et le Pantin
Henry James writes (in French) in letter of 26 September 1898 to Paul Bourget of reading Pierre Louys' novel "La Femme et le Pantin", at Bourget's recommendation.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Mrs Everard Cotes : His Honour and a Lady
Henry James to Mrs Everard Cotes, 26 January 1900, on (published) novel she has written and sent to him: 'Your book is extraordinarily keen and delicate and able [...] One or two things my acute critical intelligence murmured to me as I read. I think your drama lacks a little, [italics] line [end italics] [...] on which to string the pearls of detail.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Katherine Prescott Wormeley : MS notes to Balzac's Letters
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes: 'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Unknown
Katherine Prescott Wormeley : Preface [on Balzac]
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes: 'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: proof
Honore de Balzac : Un Roman d'Amour
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes: 'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Lettres a l'Etrangere
Henry James to Katherine Prescott Wormeley, 8 February 1900, thanking her for sending him a proof copy of her preface to her translation [of Balzac's Letters], and accompanying MS notes: 'I deeply appreciate the admirable and generous labour that prepared for me the ms. notes to Balzac's Letters and that accompanied the Preface to your translation. [...] I have read with care every word of your preface and notes -- as I had already read the "Roman d'Amour", and bought and read much of the "Lettres a l'Etrangere".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
George Santayana : Interpretations of Poetry and Religion
Henry James to Mrs William James, 22 May 1900: 'Thank you [...] for telling me of Santayana's book (P. and R.) which has come and which I find of an irresistible distraction.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Ford Madox Hueffer : Poems for Pictures
Henry James to Ford Madox Hueffer, 23 May 1900, thanking him for copy of his newly published volume of verse: 'I think your doubt about the verses misplaced and unjustified -- all those I have yet read seeming to me to hold their own very firmly indeed. Those I have read -- and re-read -- are the little rustic lays -- several of which I think admirable'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
W. Morton Fullerton : article
Henry James to W. Morton Fullerton, 9 August 1901: 'You speak of your "Cornhill" article as one always speaks and feels about one's potboilers; but that doesn't prevent me from having felt as I read it as if I were seated with you before that little [italics] cafe-glacier [end italics] that has the summer shade [...] and you were telling me, happily passive, things out of your abundance, and I could put my hand on your shoulder and wish the occasion would last.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Sarah Orne Jewett : The Tory Lover
Henry James to Sarah Orne Jewett, 5 October 1901: 'Let me not [...] delay to thank you for your charming and generous present of "The Tory Lover" [her historical novel]. He has been but three or four days in the house, yet I have given him an earnest, a pensive, a liberal -- yes, a benevolent attention [goes on to offer detailed criticisms]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Kim
Henry James to Rudyard Kipling, 30 October 1901: 'I can't lay down "Kim" without wanting much to write to you [...] I overflow, I beg you to believe, with "Kim", and I rejoice in such a saturation, such a splendid dose of you.[goes on to praise novel further]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Graham Balfour : Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
Henry James to Graham Balfour, 15 November 1901: 'Into my rural backwater books float a bit slowly and circuitously, so that it is only this evening that I have, after delayed acquisition, finished with emotion, your two admirable volumes [a biography of R. L. Stevenson].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard : The Morgesons
Henry James to Sarah Butler Wister, 21 December 1902: ' [...] as for the "Morgesons" and "Two Men," I read them long years ago (the first in queer green paper covers) when they originally appeared [...] I seem to remember even having "noticed" the second (probably in the "Nation" and very badly).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard : Two Men
Henry James to Sarah Butler Wister, 21 December 1902: ' [...] as for the "Morgesons" and "Two Men," I read them long years ago (the first in queer green paper covers) when they originally appeared [...] I seem to remember even having "noticed" the second (probably in the "Nation" and very badly).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Urbain Mengin : Italie des Romantiques
Henry James to Urbain Mengin, 1 January 1903: 'Your great handsome wide-margined large-printed, yellow-covered "Italie des Romantiques" came to me safely more months ago than I have the courage to confess to in round numbers [...] I have in any case attentively and appreciatively read it; finding in it much entertaining matter very succinctly and agreeably presented'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Howard Sturgis : Belchamber
Henry James to Howard Sturgis, 8 November 1903: 'I send you back the blooming proofs [of Sturgis's novel "Belchamber"] with many thanks and with no marks or comments at all [goes on to offer criticisms].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: In proof
Howard Sturgis : A Sketch from Memory
Henry James to Howard Sturgis, 8 November 1903: 'I send you back the blooming proofs [of Sturgis's novel "Belchamber"] with many thanks and with no marks or comments at all [goes on to offer criticisms] [...] I send you back also "Temple Bar", in which I have found your paper a moving and charming thing'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Edward Parkinson : Travels in North America
'When at home I usually retired to my garret, where I employed myself in either reading or working... In reading I usually sat in the Oriental, or, to use a less pompous word, in the tailor's posture, and thus had no need of either chair or table... The books I read at this time related chiefly to North America. Among the chief of them were Ramsay's "History of the American Revolution", Smith's "Travels in Canada and the United States", and Parkinson's "Travels in North America".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
'We have just finished reading aloud "Pere Goriot" - a hateful book... I have been reading lately and have nearly finished Comte's "Catechism". We have also read aloud "Tom Brown's School Days" with much disappointment. It is an unpleasant, unveracious book'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Francois Huber : New Observations on the Natural History of Bees
'We are reading aloud Huber's "History of Bees", and the "Life of Charlotte Bronte" for the second time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Charles Darwin : Origin of Species, The
'We began Darwin's work on "The Origin of Species" tonight. It seems not to be well written: though full of interesting matter, it is not impressive, for want of luminous and orderly presentation.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
Robert Bloomfield : [Poems]
'At one of these sales I bought a copy of "Bloomfield's Poems", but not so cheaply as to encourage me to combine my biddings. I read Bloomfield with much interest, as I also did a copy of Montgomery's "Wanderer in Switzerland, and other Poems". Being at the time in poor health of body, at which times my imaginative faculty has always been morbibly active, I was unwise to read poetry of this class, which, under the circumstances, was more likely to excite uneasy feelings than to invigorate the mind. And thus it fell out; for while I read of rural scenes and also of the comparative quietude and the superior happiness of country life, I grew uneasy and heartsick of the noisy and restless town...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Viscount Garnet Wolseley : The Story of a Soldier's Life
Henry James to Viscount Garnet Wolseley, 7 December 1903: 'I feel I must absolutely not have passed these several last evenings in your so interesting and vivid society without thanking you almost as much as if you had personally given me the delightful hours or held me there with your voice. I have read your two volumes [The Story of a Soldier's Life] from covers to covers and parted from you with a positive pang.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson : [book on Greek history]
Henry James to Grace Norton, 13 December 1903: 'Lowes Dickinson, whom you [...] mention [in her most recent letter to James], I don't know [...] But I've read a charming little Greek history-book from his hand'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Ralph Gordon Noel King, second Earl of Lovelace : Astarte
Henry James to the Earl of Lovelace, 14 January 1906: 'I left home at Christmas for a few weeks' stay, which became a fortnight's absence, and, on my return a week ago, found the very handsome, remarkable and interesting volume ["Astarte", Lovelace's account of his grandmother's marriage to Byron] which you had been so good as to send me. I wished to take real possession of it before having the pleasure of thanking you, and have now done so by a very attentive, and in fact fascinated perusal.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Francisco de Quevedo : The Visions of Don Quevedo
'I found a good deal of amusement in looking over the engravings in a Spanish volume, called, I think, "The Visions of Don Quevedo". It was, of course, a book from which I could get but little information in the way of reading. The plates, however, told a tolerably clear story, and my host, who had learned something of the Spanish language, gave me such explanations as were necessary to my fully comprehending the meaning of the illustrations.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Jerusalem Delivered
'My friend had a good deal to do in order to be prepared for his approaching voyage. While he was attending to these matters, I usually remained at home and read in such books as I found at hand. Among these was a copy of Mr. Hoole's translation of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered", which poem I now read for the first time, and with much interest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Richard Price : [volume of sermons]
'At the request of our landlady, I looked over a volume of Sermons by the eminent Unitarian minister, Dr. Price. I did this, however, out of mere courtesy: for although I have no objection to read any regular treatise on theological subjects, I have never been much disposed to read sermons. I ventured to report so favourably concerning these discourses, that the good woman was quite satisfied that she would do well to read them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthagians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians
'At home I acquired increased facilities for reading, by means of a small book-club, consisting of my landlord and a few of his friends. Of this I became a member; and thus had the means of becoming a little acquainted with works which I had not before seen. Among these was Rollin's "Ancient History", which greatly pleased me, although I was at a loss to account for his seemingly intimate knowledge of what was done or said in the private cabinet of monarchs and warriors two or three thousand years before he wrote.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward : The Whole Family (chapter)
Henry James to Elizabeth Jordan, 3 May 1907: 'you sent me Mrs. Phelps Ward's contribution to the "Whole Family" -- which I began to read the other day, but which immediately affeted me as subjected to so pitiless an ordeal in the searching artistic light and amid the intellectual and literary associations of Paris that I [...] laid it away to await resuscitation of it in a medium in which I shall be able to surround my perusal of it with more precautions.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James
Clare Benedict : "Roderick Eaton's Children"
Henry James to Clare Benedict, 13 September 1907: 'Returning to this place [Lamb House, Rye] early in July after a long absence abroad [...] I found the March "Atlantic" in a great heap of waiting postal matter on my table [...] I addressed myself to your delicate discreet little story [goes on to praise it]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James : "Covering End"
Leon Edel notes, regarding Henry James's letter to James B. Pinker of 14 October 1907: 'The eminent actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson read H[enry]J[ames]'s story "Covering End" in "The Two Magics" (1898) and proposed that the novelist turn it into a play for him.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Johnston Forbes-Robertson Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : letters to Lady Melbourne (copies)
Leon Edel quotes John Buchan, in "Memory Hold-the-Door" (1940), pp.151-52: 'an aunt of my wife's [Lady Lovelace], who was the widow of Byron's grandson, asked Henry James and myself to examine her archives in order to reach some conclusion on the merits of the quarrel between Byron and his wife [...] during a summer week-end, Henry James and I waded through masses of ancient indecency, and duly wrote an opinion [signed by Buchan on 4 April 1910 and by James on 7 April]. The things nearly made me sick, but my colleague never turned a hair.' Edel adds that 'Byron's intimate letters to Lady Melbourne [copied by Lord Lovelace] [...] written during the three years preceding [his] marriage, were the ones read by James and Buchan.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James and John Buchan Manuscript: Letter
Mrs W. K. Clifford : The Getting Well of Dorothy
Henry James to Mrs W. K. Clifford, 18 May 1912: 'I find G. W. [Mrs Clifford's recent novel] very brisk and alive, but I [italics]have[end italics] to take it in pieces, and so have only reached the middle.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : articles
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 19 May 1912: 'A. Benett [sic] I've never to this day beheld -- and certain [italics]American[end italics] papers of his in "Harper", of an inordinate platitude of journalistic cheapness, have in truth rather curtailed me in such a disposition.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
George Meredith : Letters
Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 10 October 1912: 'I have received within a day or two dear old George Meredith's "Letters"; and, though I haven't been able yet very much to go into them, I catch their emanation of something so admirable, and, on the whole, so baffled and so tragic. We must have some more talk of them -- and also of Wells's book ["Marriage"], with which I am however having much difficulty. I am not so much struck with its hardness as with its weakness and looseness, the utter going by the board of any real self respect of composition and expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Andrew Lang : The Maid of France, being the Story of the Life and Death of Jeanne d'Arc
Henry James, in letter to Edmund Gosse, 9 November 1912, mentions 'having recently read [...] [Andrew Lang's] (in two or three respects so able) Joan of Arc, or Maid of France, and turned over his just-published (I think posthumous) compendium of "English Literature"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Andrew Lang : compendium of English literature
Henry James, in letter to Edmund Gosse, 9 November 1912, mentions 'having recently read [...] [Andrew Lang's] (in two or three respects so able) Joan of Arc, or Maid of France, and turned over his just-published (I think posthumous) compendium of "English Literature" [...] The extraordinary inexpensiveness and childishness and impertinence of this latter gave to my sense the measure of a whole side of Lang [goes on to attack Lang's "Scotch provincialism"]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry Kirk White : Remains
'For my private and sole use, seeing that my friends had no taste for poetry, I bought Mr. Pye's translation of Horace, and was well pleased with my purchase; for I found the old "Roman poet" to be a very lively and shrewd companion. I also ventured to spend a guinea in the purchase of "Kirke White's Remains": a large sum for one like myself to spend at one time in buying books; yet I had good reason to be satisfied; for the work was useful to me in the way of strengthening and confirming my habits of reading and observation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [poems]
'By courtesy of a friend I had the loan of Mr. Pope's poetical works together with his translations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". I also read Mr. Hervey's "Theron and Aspasia", but with no great pleasure, because of its chiefly dwelling upon controverted points of theology. I was induced to read it by a sense of what was due to the request of a valued friend. As to Mr. Pope's works and translations, I read them with much satisfaction. In passing, I must observe that of Homer's poems I greatly preferred the "Odyssey"; for the "Iliad" was too full of warlike descriptions for one of my pacific temper. I still retain this preference. My reading times were at my meals, and after I had left work in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : Man of Feeling and other tales
'I was unable to work for a fortnight through lameness... While laid by from work, I read Mr. MacKenzie's "Man of Feeling" and other tales. I thought them a little too highly coloured to be of any great use, considered as pictures of men and manners.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Mark Akenside : Pleasures of the Imagination, The
'In the course of the ensuing spring (1821), I read Mr. Washington Irving's "Sketch-Book". I thought it very beautiful, and only wished that he had more fully carried his fine imaginative powers beyond "this visible diurnal sphere". By the way, I must observe a similar defect exists in Akenside's "Pleasures of the Imagination"; a poem which in every other respect gives me very great satisfaction. I also read some volumes of the "London Magazine", which I thought to be a very cleverly conducted publication.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Barry Edward O'Meara : Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from St Helena
'During this year I read an odd volume of that curious publication, the "Anti-Jacobin-Review", from which I gathered a little that pleased me. Among other things I met with some views respecting the conduct of Judas Iscariot towards his Divine Master which to me were quite new. I, however, thought them both reasonable and probable. I also read Mr. O'Meara's "Voice from St Helena", Dr. Henderson's "Travels in Iceland", and Captain Parry's "Narrative" of his Arctic Voyage. I must here beg the reader to remember that henceforth when I say that I have read any book it will only mean that I gave it a hasty perusal, for I had no time for close reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Ebenezer Henderson : Iceland, or the Journal of a Residence in that Island during the years 1814 and 1815
'During this year I read an odd volume of that curious publication, the "Anti-Jacobin-Review", from which I gathered a little that pleased me. Among other things I met with some views respecting the conduct of Judas Iscariot towards his Divine Master which to me were quite new. I, however, thought them both reasonable and probable. I also read Mr. O'Meara's "Voice from St Helena", Dr. Henderson's "Travels in Iceland", and Captain Parry's "Narrative" of his Arctic Voyage. I must here beg the reader to remember that henceforth when I say that I have read any book it will only mean that I gave it a hasty perusal, for I had no time for close reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
William Edward Parry : Journal of a Voyage to discover a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific
'During this year I read an odd volume of that curious publication, the "Anti-Jacobin-Review", from which I gathered a little that pleased me. Among other things I met with some views respecting the conduct of Judas Iscariot towards his Divine Master which to me were quite new. I, however, thought them both reasonable and probable. I also read Mr. O'Meara's "Voice from St Helena", Dr. Henderson's "Travels in Iceland", and Captain Parry's "Narrative" of his Arctic Voyage. I must here beg the reader to remember that henceforth when I say that I have read any book it will only mean that I gave it a hasty perusal, for I had no time for close reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu : Letters
?While in this state I read the "Letters" of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and some of Dr Beattie?s and Mr Hume?s ?Essays?, together with part of Dr Beattie?s ?Essay on Truth?.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Sharon Turner : Sacred history of the creation
?In my leisure hours during this year, and the years 1838 and 1839, I read the whole of Shakespeare?s dramatic works, Mr. Sharon Turner?s ?Sacred History of the Creation?, the ?Memoirs of Mr. Samuel Drew? and Dr. Stilling?s ?Theory of Pneumatology?, together with same odd volumes of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Gilbert Cannan : Round the Corner
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 11 April 1913: 'I have [...] read -- with difficulty -- another Young Fiction of the day [...] Gilbert Cannan's "Round the Corner".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Aubrey Beardsley : The Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley
Henry James to Andre Raffalovich, 7 November 1913: 'I thank you very kindly indeed for the volume of [Aubrey] Beardsley's letters, by which I have been greatly touched [...] the personal spirit in him, the beauty in nature, is disclosed to me by your letters as wonderful and [...] deeply pathetic and interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Rhoda Broughton : unknown
Henry James to Rhoda Broughton, 10 August 1914: 'we walked, this strange Sunday afternoon (9th), my niece Peggy, her youngest brother and I [...] to see and have tea with a genial and garrulous old Irish friend (Lady Mathew, who has a house here for the summer), and came away an hour later bearing with us a substantial green volume, by an admitrable eminent hand [ie Broughton's], which our hostess had just read with such a glow of satisfaction that she overflowed into easy lending.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Mathew Print: Book
Gabriele D'Annunzio : unknown
Henry James, in letter of 19 August 1914, thanks Edith Wharton for 'D'Annunzio's frenchified ode', which he has apparently read and admired.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : critique of George Bernard Shaw, Common Sense about the War
Henry James to James B. Pinker, 6 January 1915: 'be thanked [...] for your conveyance to me of Arnold Bennett's healthy article (which I had seen and much relished, though I do myself deprecate everywhere the laying on of any rose-colour too thick), and of Wells's admirable scarification, as I hold it, of G[eorge].B[ernard].S[haw]. -- in which I find myself ready to back himn up to the hilt.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Rupert Brooke : sonnets
Henry James to Edward Marsh, 28 March 1915: 'I take it very kindly indeed of you to have found thought and time to send me the publication with the five brave sonnets [by Rupert Brooke]. The circumstances that have conduced to them [...] have caused me to read them with an emotion that somehow precludes the critical measure [...] and makes me just want [...] to be moved by them and to "like" and admire them [...] this evening, alone by my lamp, I have been reading them over and over to myself aloud'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Unknown
Margot Asquith : Diary
Henry James to Margot Asquith, 9 April 1915, thanking her for sending him her diary to read ('a few days ago'): 'I have absorbed every word of every page with the liveliest appreciation [...] I have read the thing intimately, and I take off my hat to you as the Balzac of diarists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Codex
Margot Asquith : Diaries
Margot Asquith in footnote to letter to her from Henry James of 9 April 1915, in praise of her diary, in Margot Asquith: An Autobiography (1922), 70-73: 'Out of all my diaries I have hardly been able to quote fifty pages, for on re-reading them I find they are not only full of Cabinet secrets but jerky, disjointed and dangerously frank.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margot Asquith Manuscript: Codex
Margaret Phillips : Within the City Wall
'Long before I heard of Freud I was interested in reading accounts of first memories and impressions. My own experience had taught me that the roots of life were there but it was never certain, and that was the adventure, how they would emerge. It was partly because of this belief and partly because of a poem with that title by Robert Browning that I called my first book Development. The two volumes I now discovered were linked to this interest and not only gave me great pleasure but won me lasting friendships. They were A London Child of the Seventies (and its sequels) by Molly V. Hughes and Within the City Wall by Margaret Phillips.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group:
David Steuart Erskine, Lord Buchan : Anonymous and fugitive essays of the Earl of Buchan
[Marginalia]: an additional printed page, printed by the Buchan Portable Press, titled "Letter from Princess Mary to Lord Buchan" has been inserted after p.196 and has the ms annotation 'This message is the last (as is believed) that his Majesty was capable of dictating in his right mind' . This appears to be in the same hand as the ms note at the end of the preface 'To Edwards [? deleted] Constable Esq. as a mark of my regard, Buchan: Edr. October 25th 1816' as does the ms poem pasted in facing the Contents page. Part Latin, part English, it begins 'Quanti est ostimanda [?] Virtus ...'. Page 195 has the line 'On literary envy ..' marked * and the ms note '*In honour of the unfortunate ... George III'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: David Steuart Erskine, Lord Buchan Print: Book
[author of "The Manoeuvering Mother"] anon : History of a Flirt, The
'Before I forget again?have you looked into the "History of a Flirt"? [The History of a Flirt, related by Herself ? by the author of "The Manoeuvring Mother"] The name may alarm you ? but the writer "leans to Miss Austen?s side," ? as I remember dear Dr. Mitford and yourself do - & there is some power and much truth to nature.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village
'The title is, The Neighbours ? just a title for Miss Austen you see! ? And for Miss Austen, you shall praise her as much as you please. She is delightful exquisite in her degree! ? only I wdnt have one of your dear hands "cut off" that you shd "write one page like her?s with the other", - because, really & earnestly, your Village and Belford Regis are more charming to me than her pages in congregation. She wants (admit it honestly, because you know she wants it) she wants a little touch of poetry. Her "neighbours" walk about & gossip, all unconscious of the sunshine & the trees & the running waters ? to say nothing of the God of nature & providence. "Persuasion" (ah! You are cunning to bring "Persuasion" to me!) is the highest & most touching of her works ? and I agree with you gladly that it is perfect in its kind, & with touches of a higher impulse in it than we look generally to receive from her genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Belford Regis
'The title is, The Neighbours ? just a title for Miss Austen you see! ? And for Miss Austen, you shall praise her as much as you please. She is delightful exquisite in her degree! ? only I wdnt have one of your dear hands "cut off" that you shd "write one page like her?s with the other", - because, really & earnestly, your Village and Belford Regis are more charming to me than her pages in congregation. She wants (admit it honestly, because you know she wants it) she wants a little touch of poetry. Her "neighbours" walk about & gossip, all unconscious of the sunshine & the trees & the running waters ? to say nothing of the God of nature & providence. "Persuasion" (ah! You are cunning to bring "Persuasion" to me!) is the highest & most touching of her works ? and I agree with you gladly that it is perfect in its kind, & with touches of a higher impulse in it than we look generally to receive from her genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : unknown
'I confess my surprise at your considering Miss Edgeworth & Miss Austen mistresses in pathos ? when the fault of both those excellent writers appears to me (if indeed that can be a fault which is so closely allied to the peculiarity of their excellencies) a defect in passion altogether, through their habit of considering life & humanity on the cold conventional side. "Persuasion", to be sure, has touching passages ? and Miss Edgeworth permits you to see, not unfrequently, that she can feel as well as teach, though she chooses to teach. I hope I do not ungratefully misprize the writings of Miss Edgeworth ? it wd be rank ingratitude if I did. They are excellent & admirable ? but I cannot say, poetical & passionate. The depths of the heart & the heights of Heaven have no part or lot in them ? and pastoral Nature is as utterly shut out. Still, after their kind, they are excellent; and I too shd be one-sided if I could not honor them aright [?] Woe be to me, if I pretended to misprize Miss Edgeworth!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Howitt : Home, The
'Mary Howitt?s last translation from Frederika Bremer?s Swedish "The Home" charms me even more than "The Neighbours" did. The Athenaeum compares these books to Miss Austen?s, but I shd be afraid to tell you exactly how I wd modify the comparison. [The Athenaeum of 13 May 1843 said of the Bremer books: 'We have had nothing so simply life-like since Galt?s "Annals of the Parish" ? no pictures of female nature so finely touched, since Miss Austen.']
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Psalm of Life
'Repeated Longfellow?s Psalm of Life. Read three first chapters of Chaucer?s Prologue. I had been depressed and ill all the morning, a little intercourse with minds seems to refresh me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales
'Repeated Longfellow?s Psalm of Life. Read three first chapters of Chaucer's Prologue. I had been depressed and ill all the morning, a little intercourse with minds seems to refresh me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Frances Burney : Memoirs
'During breakfast I read some of Mme. d'Arblay's Memoirs to dear Charley, who was much interested in her account of Dr. Johnson. He had not read it before, and I had not read it since it first came out.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Morte d'Arthur
'In the evening we all went over to the Camerons. Several Pre-Raphaelite artists were there to meet Tennyson; Hunt and Rossetti and one or two whose names I did not gather. Lear was there also and sang a great many of his compositions to Tennyson's words. They are mostly very pretty things but he has no voice, and, on the whole, it is rather painful to listen to him. When they were all gone Tennyson read us his own Morte d'Arthur, and that really was a pleasure. It is a poem I have always been fond of.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Horace Walpole : unknown
[editor's narrative] 'A visit to Dresden was richly rewarded by the acquisition of six valuable fans to add to Lady Charlotte's collection, but it was a regret to have reached the end of the reading of Walpoliana and Pepys' Journal.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey, A
November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
March 16, 1884 [Lisbon] 'I am now reading to C.S. [Charles Schreiber] that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and the Old Curiosity Shop, which, with Pickwick which we read at Ceres, is enough of Dickens for the present. C. S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Barnaby Rudge
March 16, 1884 [Lisbon] 'I am now reading to C.S. [Charles Schreiber] that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and the Old Curiosity Shop, which, with Pickwick which we read at Ceres, is enough of Dickens for the present. C. S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Old Curiosity Shop, The
March 16, 1884 [Lisbon] 'I am now reading to C.S. [Charles Schreiber] that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and the Old Curiosity Shop, which, with Pickwick which we read at Ceres, is enough of Dickens for the present. C. S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers, The
March 16, 1884 [Lisbon] 'I am now reading to C.S. [Charles Schreiber] that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and the Old Curiosity Shop, which, with Pickwick which we read at Ceres, is enough of Dickens for the present. C. S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Mariano Vasi : Itineraire instructif de Rome ancienne et moderne ?
[Marginalia]: marginal marks (*) and dates throughout the guidebook, with v.2 more heavily marked than v.1.: eg. p.376-7 against the text line 'L'Eglise de St. Francois' is the ms note 'Jan 30 again'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Erskine Print: Book
Mariano Vasi : Itineraire instructif de Rome a Naples ou description generale ? de cette ville celebre et de ses environs, antiquaire Romain
[Marginalia]: marginal marks (++) throughout, one date (p. 68 'Feb, 18.19'), and very occasional comments; eg. longest example is p. 83 at the end of the section 'Tombeau de Virgile' is the ms note 'little doubt but that the Poet was buried on the other side of the bay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Andrew Fuller : An apology for the late Christian missions to India
[Marginalia]: a drawing on a blank page at end of text relates to the topic. It is an unflattering portrait of a cleric and titled 'Brother Carey' [ie William Carey orientalist and missionary?] and with the inscription 'Had much enjoyment today wrestling with G..d! [deleted]'. A further inscription is illegible.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book
Patrick Colquhon : Treatise on the Police of the metropolis
'I also had some good opportunities for borrowing books; and thus read that very interesting quarto volume, Mr Park's "Travels in Africa". I also read Mr Colquhoun's large treatise on the "Police of the Metropolis" from which I gleaned much information and amusement.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Charles Lamb : [works]
'In my hours of leisure I read the works of Mr Charles Lamb, Mr Holcroft's memoirs, and the "Life of General Washington".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [works]
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Walter Scott : [works]
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Robert Southey : [works]
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : [works]
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Rapin de Thoyras : History of England
?With this proposal I of course readily closed and accordingly the next day my father gave me the 1st vol of the "Universal History" (beginning with the life of Mohamed) and the 1st of Rapin?s "History of England", to begin with, an each of which in turn, I bestowed an hour in reading on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday mornings, allotting the other two mornings to a more amusing kind of reading such as Dryden?s "Virgil", "Telamachus", "Charles 12th". etc. I also began a translation of "Diable Boiteaux" & a prose one of Virgil?s "Eneid".?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Francois Fenelan : Les Aventures de Telemaque
?With this proposal I of course readily closed and accordingly the next day my father gave me the 1st vol of the "Universal History" (beginning with the life of Mohamed) and the 1st of Rapin?s "History of England", to begin with, an each of which in turn, I bestowed an hour in reading on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday mornings, allotting the other two mornings to a more amusing kind of reading such as Dryden?s "Virgil", "Telamachus", "Charles 12th". etc. I also began a translation of "Diable Boiteaux" & a prose one of Virgil?s "Eneid".?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Alain Rene le Sage : Diable Boiteaux
?With this proposal I of course readily closed and accordingly the next day my father gave me the 1st vol of the "Universal History" (beginning with the life of Mohamed) and the 1st of Rapin?s "History of England", to begin with, an each of which in turn, I bestowed an hour in reading on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday mornings, allotting the other two mornings to a more amusing kind of reading such as Dryden?s "Virgil", "Telamachus", "Charles 12th". etc. I also began a translation of "Diable Boiteaux" & a prose one of "Virgil?s Eneid".?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of England from the earliest times to the death of George II
?The day after this being the last of the year, I managed to finish reading Blackstone?s Commentaries and Goldsmith?s History of England, both for the 2d time over & in the evening danced out the year at the Assembly.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Richard Graves : The spiritual Quixote: or the summer's ramble of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose
?As during my confinement I amused myself with light reading, I now for the 1st time read the "Spiritual Quixote" (w?th which I was much entertain?d) & other books of the kind, which I got from the circulating library.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
members of the Society of London Scholars, J.D. and C.M. : Campanologia improved; or, the Art of ringing made easie
?Being now became a constant attendant of the gent?n ringers once or twice a week, I ? began to aspire towards ringing a longer peal, for w?ch purpose I wrote the changes out in figures with the rules & got a little old book called "Campanologia, or the Art of Change Ringing", w?ch within the insight I had now got into the mystery, I began to understand very well.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Alexander Carlyle : Letter (date unknown)
'I was truly sorry and at the same time tickled to observe the abrupt conclusion of your letter. The thunder of Jack's snoring is not unknown to me; but poor fellow! you would pity his cold and rejoice that he could sleep at all.' [A large number of Carlyle's reading experiences were letters. We have not included them all, but this is included as a sample of the type of response].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
Richard Walter : Anson's Voyage round the World
'On Tuesday the 30th. I began reading for the 1st time Anson's "Voyage round the World", w'th which I was much amused and interested.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Celestina
'Tuesday the 4th being a very wet day we were obliged to keep pretty close to our miserably dull apartments the walls of w'ch were about a yard thick & the windows very small. We however at the library (consisting of about 400 volumes) got Mrs Smiths [sic] novel of "Celestina" & "Humphrey Clinker" to amuse us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh, Elizabeth Marsh and Miss White Print: Book
Dr Combe : Principles of Physiology
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately': 'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately': 'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : unknown
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately': 'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : unknown
Fanny Kemble, journal letter to Harriet St. Leger, 27 June 1835, listing 'the books just now lying on my table, all of which I have been reading lately': 'Alfieri's "Life", by himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book, "A Tour on the Prairies", rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr. Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays, containing "Dr. Faustus". I have just finished Hayward's Translation of Goethe's "Faust", and wanted to see the old English treatment of the subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure. This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read, but if you remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say that they are still apt to be of the same heterogenous quality. But my brain is kept in a certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the desirable results of reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : Zoonomia
'On this day I began reading Darwin's "Zoonomia", w'ch I had lately proposed in the Book Society.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Sir Richard Joseph Sullivan : A View of nature, in Letters to a Traveller among the Alps
'On this day I finis'd Sullivan's "View of Nature" w'ch I had from the Library Society from w'ch & from the Book Society we were now finish'd with as many books as we co'd get thro'.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Carl Philipp Moritz : Travels of a German through England in 1782
'To amuse ourselves at the inns on this road we brought with us Jackson's "30 Letters" & Moritz's "Travels in England" (both in our Society) but having finish'd the latter (w'ch John was now reading) & Mrs M being reading the other, I got Mrs Radcliffe's novel of the "Sicilian Romance" from the Library there, which I this day began reading & was much pleased with.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Carl Philipp Moritz : Travels of a German through England in 1782
'To amuse ourselves at the inns on this road we brought with us Jackson's "30 Letters" & Moritz's "Travels in England" (both in our Society) but having finish'd the latter (w'ch John was now reading) & Mrs M being reading the other, I got Mrs Radcliffe's novel of the "Sicilian Romance" from the Library there, which I this day began reading & was much pleased with.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Alistair and Henrietta Tayler (eds) : Domestic papers of the Rose family
[Marginalia]: there are two annotators, one using blue ink and one red. All ms notes take the form of additional genealogical information ie pp. 4-7 added dates and people, p. 79 a family tree for William Cumming of Craigmill, and the beginning of an index on the inside back cover and facing page.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Edward Cocker : Cocker's Arithmetic, being a Plain and Easy Method of 1678
'? with the exception of Bible lessons at Sunday school, all my reading was done at home, after the daily task was finished. When not strongly tempted to play I was almost certain to be reading by the summer?s twilight, or by the red embers of the winter's fire, my books being chiefly "Wesley?s Journals", "The Armenian Magazine", wherein I found "Maundrell?s Travels from Aleppo to Jerusalem", which I was very much interested by; "An account of the Inquisition in Spain", which filled me with a dislike of Popery"; "The Drummer of Tedworth"; "Some account of the Disturbances at Glenluce"; "An account of the Apparition of the Laird of Cool", - and other most marvellous narratives which excited my attention, and held me pausing over the ashes until the light was either gone or I was sent to bed. I also got hold of an old superstitious doctoring book, which gave me some unexpected information relative to the human frame, and equally surprised me as to the occult powers of certain herbs and simples, when prepared under supposed planetary aspects. A copy of Cocker?s "Arithmetic" soon after set me to writing figures and casting accounts, in which I made but slow progress; and part of a small volume of "The History of England", which I found in rumaging an old meal ark, gave me the first insight into the chronicles of my native country.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : Henry
'To amuse myself during this solitary journey I got Cumberland's "Henry" (then a new publication)... Wishing to reach Maidstone in good time on the follow'g day I ordered the chaise to be ready at 4 in the morning, at w'ch time I sat off & breakfasted at Uckfield the end of my 2d stage, by w'ch time I [had] become much interested in my travelling companion "Henry".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
George Keate : Sketches from nature, taken and coloured on a journey to Margate
'The next day being wet, we staid [sic] within, when to amuse me I got the 2 last vols of the "Mysteries of Udolpho" (the 2 first of w'ch I had read before we left Chichester) & afterw'ds Keate's "Sketches of Nature", from the library.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Agnes Maria Bennett : The beggar girl and her benefactors
'I on Friday the 16th went up in the coach to consult Mess'rs Bridges, Blake & other friends upon the matter, taking with me to amuse myself in the coach etc. the new popular novel of the "Beggar Girl".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : The history of Vanillo Gonzales, surnamed the Merry Bachelor
'I spent the evening and slept at the Old Tree, a very poor inn in which I was forced to sleep in a double bedded room with a stranger. For my amusement during this journey I took the novel of "Vanillo Gonzales".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : The Young Philosopher
'Having finish'd my business in this neighbourhood, I on the next day (Friday the 24th) return'd to London in the coach, in w'ch being alone great part of the way I finished the novel of the "Young Philosopher" & in the evening began that of "Ned Evans" which I sat and read at the Bolt and Tunn, where I found the principal topic of conversation in the coffee room was Sheridan's new play of Pizarro, w'ch came out that evening at Drury Lane.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : The Outcasts or Henry Dunbar
?There were no free libraries, so the younger hands joined with me in starting a "Literary Fund" of our own, towards which each paid three-halfpence a week. The papers and books bought for general reading were afterwards divided. In our little club the "Cornhill Magazine", from its start under Thackeray?s editorship, was read and discussed; also Dickens?s successive productions. I call to mind many serious books, as well as "Cassell?s Magazine" and the "London Journal", in which appeared Miss Braddon?s great story of "Henry Dunbar", then entitled "The Outcasts".?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Printers and compositors at Thomas Catling's place of work, Edward Lloyd's publishing house Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau : Deerbrook
'I was reading to-day and I have since finished Miss Martineau's "Deerbrook", a capital novel though it is too full of preaching. It is inferior in execution to Miss Austen's novels in the development of common characters, but is suprior in the higher parts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [novels]
'The women do this better - Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen have all had their portraits of real society, far superior to any thing Man, vain Man, has produced of the like nature.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Scott Print: Book
George Sand : Consuelo
'Now I can understand admiration of George Sand; for though I never saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even "Consuelo", which is the best, of the best that I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence), yet she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges : Arthur Fitz-Albani
'During my late visit to the Hammonds, they had acquainted me with the names of the principal characters amongst our former neighbours in East Kent, pointed at in Mr E Bridges then late popular novel of "Arthur Fitzalbini" w'ch we on that account had lately read.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book
Richard Carlisle : [various titles]
'During this winter I fell into Company with some men in my journeys to and from my work that were of a Deistical principle these men had got several books that were written by Cobbet woler and Carlisle against all revealed religion and these men often put them into my hands and I at this time thought myself a sufficient Judge to read them without any danger of being drawn aside by them...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
Francis Thompson : Hound of Heaven, The
[List of favourite things of 1945]: 'My favourite Books: The Keys of the Kingdom. The Good Companions Authors: Daphne du Maurier Poems: Squinency Wort. The Hound of Heaven Writers: Shaw. Galsworthy'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Ernest Hemingway : For Whom the Bell Tolls
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Robert Browning : Men and Women
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Winifred Darch : Eleanor in the Fifth
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
J. Patterson Milne : Adventures of Jig and Co
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Norbert Davis : Rendezvous with Fear
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
James Elroy Flecker : Poetry of James Elroy Flecker
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Cecil Freeman Gregg : Body behind the Bar, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Critic, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Lady Eleanor Smith : Magic Lantern
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Pearl Buck : Dragon Seed
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Lady Eleanor Smith : Spanish House, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Light that Failed, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Rivals, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Professor, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dorothy L Sayers : Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dornford Yates : Adele and Co
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margery Sharp : Cluny Brown
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margery Sharp : Four Gardens
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Hermione Gingold : World is Square, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dornford Yates : And Five were Foolish
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Mrs Warren's Profession
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Tambourlaine
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Peele : Old Wives Tale
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Carter Dickson : Reader is Warned, The
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Alexander Woolcott : Long, Long Ago
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R. Greene : Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
R. Greene : James IV of Scotland
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Peter Cheyney : I'll Say She Does
[List of books read in 1945]: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls; Henry Brocken; Doctor Faustus; Life of the Bee; The Screwtape Letters; Modern Short Stories; Letters of People in Love; Men and Women; The Headmistress; The People's Government; The Art of Writing; Speech and Sound; Background to the Life of Christ; The House of Prayer; Eleanor in the Fifth; Adventures of Jig and Co; Rendezvous with Fear; Antony and Cleopatra; Hamlet; The Poetry of James Elroy Flecker; Escape; Hangman's Holiday; The Body Behind the Bar; Strong Poison; The Critic; Magic Lantern; Listening Valley; Emma; Dragon Seed; Crowthers of Bankdam; The Rat Trap; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; The Spanish House; O the Brave Music; The Light that Failed; Ghosts; The Antiquary; The Knightes Tale; Luria; The Best of Hazlitt; Pericles; The Rivals; Hamlet [again]; Antony and Cleopatra [again]; Knightes Tale [again]; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; The Critic; The Rivals; Cymbeline; Adventures of a Young Soldier in Search of a Better World; The Nine Tailors; The Conquered; The Professor; Peter Abelard; Then They Pulled Down the Blind; The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Portrait of a Man with Red Hair; Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner; Mrs Parkinson; Adele and Co; Frossia; Cluny Brown; Four Gardens; The World is Square; Being Met Together; Best Sporting Stories; Selected stories by Q; And Five were Foolish; Campaspe; Endimion [by Lyly]; Midas; Dr Faustus [again]; Twelfth Night; Mrs Warrent's Proffession [sic]; The Spanish Tragedy; The Jew of Malta; Galathea; Tambourlaine; Sun is my Undoing; By Greta Bridge; Utopia; England, their England; The Art of Poetry; Old Wives Tale; The Reader is Warned; Long, Long Ago; Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay; James IV of Scotland; The Handsome Langleys; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Island of Youth; I'll Say She Does; The Forsyte Saga; In Youth is Pleasure; On Forsyte Change; Genesis to Nehemiah.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Peter Longueville : The hermit Philip Quarll
'I now became anxious to read all that came in any way, and like most juveniles, felt a deep interest in the reading of "Robinson Crusoe", Philip Quarll, Boyle's Travels, and other such books as our school library contained.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Boyle's Travels
'I now became anxious to read all that came in any way, and like most juveniles, felt a deep interest in the reading of "Robinson Crusoe", Philip Quarll, Boyle's Travels, and other such books as our school library contained.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : [unknown]
'For three years I continued a regular subscriber to the circulating library, during which time I read various works, including Milton's, Shakespeare's, Sterne's, Dr Johnson's, and many others. It was a usual practice for me to sit up to read after the family had retired for the night. I remember it was on one of these occasions that I read Lewis's "Monk". On rising from my seat to go to bed, I was so impressed with dongeon horror, that I took the candle and ? up stairs, not daring to look either right or left, lest some Lady Angela should plunge a dagger into me!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
Charles Knight : Penny Magazine
'The "Penny Magazine" was published - I borrowed the first volume, and determined to make an effort to possess myself with the second; accordingly, with January 1833, I determined to discontinue the use of sugar in my tea, hoping that my family would not then feel the sacrifice necessary to buy the book. Since that period, I have expended large sums in books, some of them very costly ones, but I never had one so truly valuable, as was the second volume of the "Penny Magazine"; and I look as anxiously for the issue of the monthly part, as I did for the means of getting a living. I continued to be a subscriber to this periodical up to the publication of the last number...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George L. Craik : Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : St Ronan's Well
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'Much is being said and written now-a-days about the influence of books on the formation of character; let me therefore mention that my prime favourites while at Tait's were "Cobbett's advice to young men", and Charles Knight's "Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties"; which I read over and over again with great zest, and, I hope, much benefit. As a matter of course, I also read "Tait's Magazine" regularly, making myself familiar with its contents even before publication; the elaborate reviews of many of the best books of the period affording me the opportunity of picking up a considerable amount of useful information. Curiously enough, the reading of the "Waverley novels" was to me a task of difficulty; and I am ashamed to say that I have only read few of them, "Guy Mannering", "The Heart of Midlothian", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "St Ronan's Well". "Waverley", although attempted more than once, failed to attract.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Monastery
'My father, who was in the employment of Mr Cadell, Sir Walter's publisher, brought home "The Monastery" and "The Fortunes of Nigel", and several others, much to the delight of my mother, who never could understand how so voracious a reader as myself did not take to them; but so it was, and now my children express the same surprise, and unsuccessfully recommend me to try once more.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Fortunes of Nigel
'My father, who was in the employment of Mr Cadell, Sir Walter's publisher, brought home "The Monastery" and "The Fortunes of Nigel", and several others, much to the delight of my mother, who never could understand how so voracious a reader as myself did not take to them; but so it was, and now my children express the same surprise, and unsuccessfully recommend me to try once more.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Mary, a fiction
Journals of Mary Shelley "We go out on the rocks & Shelley & I read part of Mary a fiction"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels
'the diverse collection of literature that Christopher Thomson, a sometime shipwright, actor and housepainter, worked his way through [...] included adventure stories such as "Robinson Crusoe" and the imitative "Philip Quarll", books of travel, such as Boyle's "Travels", some un-named religious tracts, a number of "classics" including Milton and Shakespeare, some radical newspapers, particularly Cobbett's "Register" and Wooller's "Black Dwarf", mechanics' magazines, and some occasional items of contemporary literature, including the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : poetry
'the diverse collection of literature that Christopher Thomson, a sometime shipwright, actor and housepainter, worked his way through [...] included adventure stories such as "Robinson Crusoe" and the imitative "Philip Quarll", books of travel, such as Boyle's "Travels", some un-named religious tracts, a number of "classics" including Milton and Shakespeare, some radical newspapers, particularly Cobbett's "Register" and Wooller's "Black Dwarf", mechanics' magazines, and some occasional items of contemporary literature, including the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock : The Messiah
'Charles Shaw's dependance upon a small Sunday school library in Tunstall [...] imparted a magnificent if involuntary scope to his education: '"I read "Robinson Crusoe" and a few other favourite boys' books [...] After these the most readable I could find was Rollin's "Ancient History". His narratives opened a new world [...] [which] I regarded as remote from Tunstall and England as those other worlds I read of in Dick's "Christian Philosopher," which book I found in the library too ... Then I read Milton's "Paradise Lost", Klopstock's "Messiah", and later on, Pollock's "Course of Time", and Gilfillan's "Bards of the Bible".These books may look a strange assortment for a boy of fourteen or fifteen to read, but [...] they just happened to fall into my hands"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Shaw Print: Book
George Gifillan : The Bards of the Bible
'Charles Shaw's dependance upon a small Sunday school library in Tunstall [...] imparted a magnificent if involuntary scope to his education: '"I read "Robinson Crusoe" and a few other favourite boys' books [...] After these the most readable I could find was Rollin's "Ancient History". His narratives opened a new world [...] [which] I regarded as remote from Tunstall and England as those other worlds I read of in Dick's "Christian Philosopher," which book I found in the library too ... Then I read Milton's "Paradise Lost", Klopstock's "Messiah", and later on, Pollock's "Course of Time", and Gilfillan's "Bards of the Bible".These books may look a strange assortment for a boy of fourteen or fifteen to read, but [...] they just happened to fall into my hands"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Shaw Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'The Dundee Factory Boy claimed that while an apprentice shoemaker, he read, "books on nearly all the disputed questions in theology and metaphysics, books on history, belle lettres, and science. I even read the celebrated Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire three times from beginning to end".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Heart of Midlothian
'I have heard, too, that several workmen in shops adjacent to Sutherland's library arranged with him for a reading of "The Heart of Midlothian" and "Rob Roy", one of the men reading the book aloud to his comrades.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: workmen Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'I have heard, too, that several workmen in shops adjacent to Sutherland's library arranged with him for a reading of "The Heart of Midlothian" and "Rob Roy", one of the men reading the book aloud to his comrades.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: workmen Print: Book
Robert Chambers : Chambers's Journal
'One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1838, whilst crossing Brumsfield links on my way home to Morningside, endeavouring as I walked over the grass to read a story in one of the volumes of "Chambers's Journal", then of a somewhat unwielding size, I was stopped by two gentlemen, one of whom asked what I was reading...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Serial / periodical
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
'I pursued a similar plan with others of the magazines whenever I got a chance, especially "Bentley's Miscellany", which contained in my young days "Jack Sheppard".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Serial / periodical
Mrs Johnstone : The Schoolmaster
'When, in the course of a year or two, we removed to the vicinity of Edinburgh, matters in respect of books brightened a little. I then obtained access to a greater variety, and, as I well remember, greatly enjoyed reading some numbers of a periodical called "The Schoolmaster", edited by Mr Johnstone, or, to speak more correctly, by Mrs Johnstone.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram Print: Serial / periodical
Chevalier Ramsay : Life of Cyrus
James Burn, on his first contact with literature after years of having seen none: '"In the latter end of the year of 1826, a friend made me a present of an old edition of Chevalier Ramsay's "Life of Cyrus". This little volume opened up to my enquiring mind a rich field of useful knowledge. The apendix to the work contained the [italics]heathen mythology[end italics]: this part of the work completely fascinated me, and for a considerable time became my constant companion."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Dawson Burn Print: Book
Henry Kirke White : The Remains of Henry Kirke White
'Both John Harris and Mary Smith read the "Remains of Henry Kirke White" "with great delight", and Thomas Carter actually saved up a guinea to buy the book. It was, he said, "a large sum for one like myself to spend at one time in buying books: yet I had good reason to be satisfied; for the work was useful to me in the way of strengthening and confirming my habits of reading and observation".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Harris Print: Book
Henry Kirke White : The Remains of Henry Kirke White
'Both John Harris and Mary Smith read the "Remains of Henry Kirke White" "with great delight", and Thomas Carter actually saved up a guinea to buy the book. It was, he said, "a large sum for one like myself to spend at one time in buying books: yet I had good reason to be satisfied; for the work was useful to me in the way of strengthening and confirming my habits of reading and observation".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
Henry Kirke White : The Remains of Henry Kirke White
'Both John Harris and Mary Smith read the "Remains of Henry Kirke White" "with great delight", and Thomas Carter actually saved up a guinea to buy the book. It was, he said, "a large sum for one like myself to spend at one time in buying books: yet I had good reason to be satisfied; for the work was useful to me in the way of strengthening and confirming my habits of reading and observation".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
David Vincent notes how it was in the poetry of Burns and Byron that the nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley (whose jobs included winding bobbins and working as a 'piecer' in a textile factory) first experienced the sense of the transcendent and uplifting inspiration that had been missing from school Bible study.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Unknown
Robert Burns :
David Vincent notes how it was in the poetry of Burns and Byron that the nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley (whose jobs included winding bobbins and working as a 'piecer' in a textile factory) first experienced the sense of the transcendent and uplifting that had been missing from school Bible study.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Unknown
Voltaire : Dictionary of Philosophy
'The Coventry ribbon weaver Joseph Gutteridge [...] had read and pondered Voltaire's "Dictionary of Philosophy" and Paine's "Age of Reason", but remained unconvinced [by radicalism and religious scepticism] until a prolonged period of family poverty and ill-health finally destroyed what was left of his faith'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Gutteridge Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint, and the Consolation, or, Night Thoughts
David Vincent relates how the nineteenth-century apprentice compositor William Adams rejected his usual work associates and walking-companions after discovering Young's "Night Thoughts".
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Adams Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
The nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley would recall in his 1886 memoir having read the poetry of Byron and Burns whilst on '"solitary walks on summer evenings"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Book
Robert Burns :
The nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley would recall in his 1886 memoir having read the poetry of Byron and Burns whilst on '"solitary walks on summer evenings"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Book
Robert Burns : volume containing life and writings of Burns
'Samuel Bamford never forgot the sensation of reading a volume of [...] [Robert Burns's] life and writings whilst working as a porter and warehouseman in Manchester'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Henri Marc-Bonnet : "Histoire des Ordres Religieux"
'Finished reading the four last volumes of the "Histoire des Ordres Religieux". Began "La Beata", a story of Florentine life by T.A. Trollope. I am also reading Sachetti's Novelle, and Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Franco Sachetti : Novelle
'Finished reading the four last volumes of the "Histoire des Ordres Religieux". Began "La Beata", a story of Florentine life by T.A. Trollope. I am also reading Sachetti's Novelle, and Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Jean Charles L?onard de Sismondi : History of the Italian Republics
'Finished reading the four last volumes of the "Histoire des Ordres Religieux". Began "La Beata", a story of Florentine life by T.A. Trollope. I am also reading Sachetti's Novelle, and Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Marco Lastri : L'Osservatore Fiorentino
'Desultory morning, from feebleness of head. Osservatore Fiorentino and Tenneman's Manual of Philosophy'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Charles Montalambert : The Monks of the West
'Read, in the Athenaeum, an interesting article on Bishop Colenso's (of Natal), Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the toleration of Polygamy in converts to Christianity. In the evening read the "Monks of the West".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Ernest Renan : ?tudes d?histoire religieuse
'In the evening read Renan "Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse" aloud to G.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : [MS article on Mad Dogs]
'Read... G's article on Mad Dogs which he was going to send to Edinburgh'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Sheet, MS of article
Henry Hallam : [perhaps The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages]
'Read Hallam on the study of Roman law in the Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Edward Gibbon : [on revival of Greek learning]
'Read Gibbon on the revival of Greek learning'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: UnknownManuscript: Unknown
Girolamo Savonarola : [Sermons]
'Savonarola's Sermons'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Girolamo Savonarola : Discourse on Government
'Before breakfast I have been reading Savonarola's "Discourse on Government", and have looked into his Sermons on the Epistle of John and the Psalm Quam Bonus'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Girolamo Savonarola : [Sermon on the Epistle of John]
'Before breakfast I have been reading Savonarola's "Discourse on Government", and have looked into his Sermons on the Epistle of John and the Psalm Quam Bonus'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Girolamo Savonarola : [Sermon on Psalm Quam Bonus]
'Before breakfast I have been reading Savonarola's "Discourse on Government", and have looked into his Sermons on the Epistle of John and the Psalm Quam Bonus'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Marco Lastri : L'Osservatore Fiorentino
'Began Lastri - "Osservatore Fiorentino" - this morning, intending to go regularly through it'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Anton Francesco Doni : I Marmi
'Looked into the "Marmi" of Doni... read Saccheti and Bocaccio's capital story of Fra Cipolla - one of his few good stories - and the Little Hunchback in the Arabian Nights, which is still better. Read Nardi in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Rienzi
'I have begun Bulwer's Rienzi, wishing to examine his treatment of an historical subject'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Francesco Sachetti : [stories]
'Read Roscoe's Life of Lorenzoi de Medici. Headache still. Read some of Sachetti's stories and spent the evening alone with G.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
[probably] Luigi Pulci : [if this Pulci, poetry]
'began Pulci'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Girolamo Tiraboschi : [probably] Storia della letteratura italiana
'Read Tiraboschi and Rock's Hierurgia'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Girolamo Tiraboschi : [probably] Storia della letteratura italiana
'Read Tiraboschi on the Discovery of Ancient MSS., and Manni, Vite etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Pierre Louis Ginguene : unknown
'Read Ginguene in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Charles Lewes : [compositions]
'In the evening I read aloud Charlie's compositions, which show very good sense in their effort to arrive at exactness of expression about common things'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Manuscript: Unknown, compositions
Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot : [probably] The History of France from the Earliest Times to the Year 1789
'Read a chapter on the Roma Law in the Middle Ages in Guizot's History of Civilisation in France'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Francesco Petrarch : [Letters]
'Read Cicero "de Officiis" and began Petrarch's letters'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Pierre Louis Ginguene : [possibly] Histoire litteraire d'Italie
'Read "La Tancia", and Gingenue, Roman Epic'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Lillie Craik : History of English Literature and the English Language
'I read Craik's "History of English Literature"... up to end of XVth Century'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Marco Lastri : Osservatore Fiorentino
'Read Epictetus, and the sixth satire of Juvenal, with part of a vol. of the Osservatore Fiorentino'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Humphrey Hody : De Graecis Illustribus
'There came from the library Hody de Graecis Illustribus, in which I looked at the life of Marullus...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Franco Sachetti : [probably] Novelle
'Read Sachetti and the Letters of Filelfo'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Francesco Filelfo : [Letters]
'Read Sachetti and the Letters of Filelfo'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Girolamo Savonarola : De Veritate Profetica
'Read half through the dialogue de Veritate Profetica'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : Dr. Middleton's Letter From Rome, Showing an Exact Conformity Between Popery and Paganism
'Read through Middleton's Letter from Rome'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Girolamo Savonarola : Compendium Revelationum
'Read the "Compendium Revelationum"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren : [on the XVth Century]
'Read... Heeren on the XVth Century'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Antonio Francesco Grizzini (pseud. Lasca) : [possibly a story from Le Cene]
'Read Sacchetti, and Luigi Pulci's novel, and part of Lasca's story of Lorenzo and the Medico Manente'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : 'The Changeling'
'Charlotte [Mew] used to read [...] [lines from her 1912 poem "The Changeling", in which a child speaker ponders reasons for its own existence] aloud [...] to children of her acquaintance, giving no explanation, because she believed [...] that none would be needed. They understood her at once.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Unknown
Christina Rossetti :
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning :
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
Coventry Patmore :
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Catarina to Camoens
'On her deathbed Lucy [Harrison] asked Amy [Greener, her lover] to read to her from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Caterina to Camoens" [...] It must have been painful for Miss Greener to read these words [about a dying woman's reconciling herself to the idea that her lover might love again] aloud in the whitewashed bedroom, among the plain oak furniture which her friend had knocked together.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Amy Greener Print: Book
Richard Jeffries : Field and Hedgerow
'In 1889 [...] [Charlotte Mew] had been reading [Richard] Jeffries' "Field and Hedgerow", his last essays, a book published after his death [which supplied the epigram for Mew's story "The Minnow Fishers"].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : "Requiescat"
Charlotte Mew to Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott, 12 May 1914: '"Looking through some of Ella [D'Arcy]'s old letters [...] I find she wrote to me 3 about the Requiescat ... she had seen it in "The Nation"and wrote [...] Thanking me for sending it to her [...] and adding "it goes into my private anthology".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ella D'Arcy Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Noyes : "The Old Sceptic"
'In 1910, when Alfred Noyes's "Collected Poems" came out [...] [Charlotte Mew] read his "The Old Sceptic" and reflected that as far as sentiment went, she might have written the poem herself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : "The Farmer's Bride"
'In the early spring of 1913 Sappho [i.e. Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott, nicknamed after a poem she had authored] wrote in her diary: '"When Charlotte [Mew] came [to Mrs Dawson Scott's house] I persuaded her to read to us "The Farmer's Bride", and May [Sinclair] was so won over that she deserted me and they went away together."'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew
Charlotte Mew : "The Forest Road"
'[Charlotte Mew's poem] "The Forest Road" is almost impossible to follow; Dr Scott [husband of Mew's friend Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] read it and said it was so deeply realized that he felt the author must be mad'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Scott
Charlotte Mew : "The Farmer's Bride"
'Alida [Klementaski], like Mrs [Catherine] Dawson Scott, had read "The Farmer's Bride" in 1912, and had not forgotten it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alida Klementaski Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Mew : "The Farmer's Bride"
'Alida [Klementaski], like Mrs [Catherine] Dawson Scott, had read "The Farmer's Bride" in 1912, and had not forgotten it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Dawson Scott Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Mew : The Farmer's Bride
'In the July of 1918 a copy of "The Farmer's Bride" arrived in [Sydney] Cockerell's vast daily post, with a stiff little note from Charlotte [Mew] [...] No worry [...] about his reading it; he always read everything, and he fell in love immediately with "The Farmer's Bride".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Cockerell Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : The Farmer's Bride
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Scawen Blunt Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : The Farmer's Bride
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : The Farmer's Bride
'[Sydney] Cockerell [...] busied himself with sending "The Farmer's Bride" to everyone he could think of [...] Wilfred Scawen Blunt [...] found the situations in Charlotte [Mew]'s poems puzzling and questioned their "sexual sincerity". Siegfried Sassoon was captivated at once and remained her faithful reader always. A. E. Housman [...] liked the little book, although he complained [in letter of 9 September 1918] that, like most female poets, Miss Mew put in ornament that did not suit the speaker.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: A. E. Housman Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : The Farmer's Bride
'In 1916 one of the tasks of the second Mrs Hardy was to read aloud in the evenings at their Dorchester home, Max Gate, to the old great man whom she so carefully tended. It was difficult to know what he would and wouldn't like [...] but he took to "The Farmer's Bride"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Hardy Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : "Saturday Market"
Penelope Fitzgerald relates how, during Charlotte Mew's stay at his home in December 1918, Thomas Hardy 'read some of his own poems to her, and she read him something which pleased him very much, "Saturday Market".'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew
Rudyard Kipling : Only a subaltern
'I was eighteen when I first read those words. My train was running into Rye station and I was knocked out the ashes of my first pipe of shag tobacco... My first book had just been published. I was going courting. My book had earned ten pounds. I desired to be a subaltern in H. B. M's army. The story was Mr Kipling's "Only a subaltern". The next station would be Winchelsea, where I was to descend.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Charlotte Mew : "Sea Love"
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Mew : "Sea Love"
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Cockerell Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Mew : "Sea Love"
'Siegfried Sassoon [...] bought [Sydney] Cockerell the first number of [Harold] Monro's new shilling magazine, "The Monthly Chapbook". On the last page was Charlotte [Mew]'s "Sea Love", certainly a new poem, which delighted both of them (and delighted [Thomas] Hardy too when it arrived at Max Gate).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Mew : "Madeleine in Church"
'Louis Untermeyer [an American poet] [...] had [...] been carried away by "Madeleine[in Church]" when Siegfried Sassoon read it to him [in 1920]'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
'Shelley reads aloud the letters from Norway'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Mary, a fiction
'Shelley finishes Mary a fiction'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [romance]
'Hookham calls here & Shelley reads his romance to him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
[Shelley] 'Reads the ancient mariner to us'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Finlay : A History of Greece
'Looked at the chronicle of the conquest of the Morea yesterday, and into Finlay's "History of Medieval Greece"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena : La Calandra
'Finished "La Mandragola", second time reading for the sake of Florentine expressions, and began "La Calandra"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Eliot (pseud.) : Romola
'I read to G. the Proem and opening scene of my novel and he expressed great delight in them'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Sheet, MS of novel
John Stuart Mill : Conquest in America, The
'Today we have been to the London Library and I have read J. Mill's article on "The American Conquest".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Heinrich von Sybel : History and Literature of the Crusades
'In the evening I read aloud von Sybel's Lectures on the Crusades'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Casa Guidi Windows
'I have lately read again with great delight Mrs Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows". It contains amongst other admirable things a very noble expression of what I believe to be the true relation of the religious mind to the Past.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : The Count of Monte Cristo
[at Englefield Green] 'I have finished Pulci there, and read aloud the "Chateau D'If" to G.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Christopher Wordsworth : Greece
'I have been lately reading some books on the medieval condition of Greece, sent by Mr Clark from Cambridge, and this morning not being well enough to write I have been running through Wordsworth's "Greece" and studying the geography'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Jean Marie Napol?on D?sir Nisard : Poetes Latins de la Decadence
'Read Juvenal this morning, and Nisard - "Poetes Latins de la Decadence" in the evening'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Girolamo Savonarola : Processi
'Reading once again the "Processi" of Savonarola and Vol. III of Boccaccio'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Girolamo Savonarola : Compendium Revelationum
'Reading the "Purgatorio" again, and the "Compendium Revelationum" of Savonarola'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Eliot (pseud.) : Romola
'Read aloud what I had written of Part IX to George, and he to my surprize entirely approved it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Sheet, MS of novel
George Henry Lewes : Aristotle, a Chapter from the History of Science
'I am now in the middle of G's "Aristotle", which gives me great delight'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Sheet, prob. in MS as publ. 1864
Theodor Mommsen : [one of his Roman history works]
'Reading Mommsen and Story's "Roba di Roma". Also Liddell's "Rome", for a narrative to accompany Mommsen's analysis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
William Wetmore Story : Roba di Roma
'Reading Mommsen and Story's "Roba di Roma". Also Liddell's "Rome", for a narrative to accompany Mommsen's analysis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Henry George Liddell : A History of Rome
'Reading Mommsen and Story's "Roba di Roma". Also Liddell's "Rome", for a narrative to accompany Mommsen's analysis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Reading Gibbon Vol 1 in connection with Mosheim. Read about the Dionysia. Also Gieseler, on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim [possibly] : [unknown]
'Reading Gibbon Vol 1 in connection with Mosheim. Read about the Dionysia. Also Gieseler, on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler : [unknown]
'Reading Gibbon Vol 1 in connection with Mosheim. Read about the Dionysia. Also Gieseler, on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Eliot (pseud.) : The Spanish Gipsy
'Read my 2nd Act to George. It is written in verse - my first serious attempt at blank verse. G. praises and encourages me'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Sheet, MS of own work
[probably] William Prescott : [unknown]
'I read Prescott again and made notes'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Philip Wentworth Buckham : Theatre of the Greeks
'Reading Aeschlyus, "Theatre of the Greeks", Klein's "History of the Drama" etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
John Stuart Mill : Principles of Political Economy
'Finished Bamford's "Passages from the life of a Radical". Have just begun again Mill's "Political Economy", and Comte's "Social Science" in Miss Martineau's edition'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : The Rivals
'Went to hear Mr and Mrs Wigan read Tennyson and "the Rivals" at Apsley House'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr and Mrs Wigan Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Alfred Lord Tennyson : unknown
'Went to hear Mr and Mrs Wigan read Tennyson and "the Rivals" at Apsley House'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr and Mrs Wigan Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [article on Grote's Plato]
'in the evening I read G.'s article on Grote's Plato'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Manuscript: Unknown, ms of article
Th?odore Claude Henri vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqu : Contes populaires des anciens Bretons
'I have been reading Villemarque's "Contes populaires des Anciens Bretons".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Mew : "Fin de Fete"
After Thomas Hardy's death on 11 January 1928, his literary executor Sydney Cockerell 'found a piece of paper on which Hardy had copied out "Fin de Fete" [by Charlotte Mew]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Serial / periodical
Felicia Dorothea Browne : War and Peace -- A Poem. Written at the age of Fifteen
'[in 1811] Reginald Heber reads and praises "War and Peace".'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Heber
Friedrich von Schiller : unknown
From Chronology: Hemans's Life and Publications: '[in 1824] F[elicia] H[emans] studies German (Schiller, Herder, and Goethe, Korner).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Johann Gottfried von Herder : unknown
From Chronology: Hemans's Life and Publications: '[in 1824] F[elicia] H[emans] studies German (Schiller, Herder, and Goethe, Korner).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Karl Theodor Korner : unknown
From Chronology: Hemans's Life and Publications: '[in 1824] F[elicia] H[emans] studies German (Schiller, Herder, and Goethe, Korner).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Johann Gottfried von Herder : Volkslieder
Susan J. Wolfson notes Felicia Hemans's reading of Herder's ballad collection "Volkslieder".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Catherine Maria Sedgwick : Hope Leslie
In introductory note to Felicia Hemans, "The American Forest-Girl": 'F[elicia]H[emans] [...] read Catherine Maria Sedgwick's "Hope Leslie" [...] a novel published in 1827 about the Pequod War in 17th-c. New England.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Mary Tighe : early poems
'After reading some of [...] [Mary Tighe's] early poems in manuscript, F[elicia]H[emans] wrote a sonnet, "On Records of Immature Genius"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Manuscript: Unknown
Stephanie Felicite de Crest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis : Le Siege de la Rochelle
Felicia Browne to her aunt, Miss Wagner, 19 December 1808: 'I have been reading a most delightful French romance, by Madame de Genlis, "Le Siege de la Rochelle".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Browne Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : Memoirs
Felicia Browne to Matthew Nicholson, 17 July 1811: 'I have been reading lately the memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with his discourses to the Royal Academy, & I am so enthusiastic an admirer of the beauties of painting, that I derived both pleasure and instruction from the perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Browne Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : Discourses
Felicia Browne to Matthew Nicholson, 17 July 1811: 'I have been reading lately the memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with his discourses to the Royal Academy, & I am so enthusiastic an admirer of the beauties of painting, that I derived both pleasure and instruction from the perusal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Browne Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Falklands
'I have been seeking 'Falkland' here for a long time without success. Those beautiful extracts of it which you showed me at Tealby haunted me incessantly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Henry Taylor : Philip van Artevelde
'By a quaint coincidence I received your letter directed (I suppose) by Phillip van Artevelde with Philip himself (not the man but the book) and I wish to tell you that I think him a noble fellow. I close with him in most that he says of modern poetry... etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Dr Alexander Brunton : Memoir of Mary Brunton
Felicia Hemans to James Simpson, 22 October 1819: 'I have been much interested in the perusal of a work sent me some time since by Mr. Murray, the memoirs of the late Mrs Brunton, and her beautiful though unfinished tale of "Emmeline."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Emmeline: With Some Other Pieces
Felicia Hemans to James Simpson, 22 October 1819: 'I have been much interested in the perusal of a work sent me some time since by Mr. Murray, the memoirs of the late Mrs Brunton, and her beautiful though unfinished tale of "Emmeline."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Caroline Bowles : Solitary Hours
Felicia Hemans to William Blackwood, 13 June 1827: 'I beg to thank you for your obliging letter and valuable present of books, from the perusal of which I have derived great pleasure. The little work called "Solitary hours" interested me particularly: some of the pieces it contains had before struck me in your Magazine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Caroline Bowles : poetical/prose "pieces"
Felicia Hemans to William Blackwood, 13 June 1827: 'I beg to thank you for your obliging letter and valuable present of books, from the perusal of which I have derived great pleasure. The little work called "Solitary hours" interested me particularly: some of the pieces it contains had before struck me in your Magazine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Serial / periodical
Johann Heinrich Voss : poem ("nuptial benediction")
Felicia Hemans to the Reverend Samuel Butler, 19 February 1828: 'I do not know whether you are at all a Lover of German Literature, but there is a poem in that Language, a beautiful nuptial benediction pronounced by a Father over his child [...] which some parts of your letter [about his daughter's forthcoming marriage] recalled to my mind. I have copied Madame de Stael's translation of it, and take the liberty of including it for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : De L'Allemagne
Felicia Hemans to the Reverend Samuel Butler, 19 February 1828: 'I do not know whether you are at all a Lover of German Literature, but there is a poem in that Language, a beautiful nuptial benediction pronounced by a Father over his child [...] which some parts of your letter [about his daughter's forthcoming marriage] recalled to my mind. I have copied Madame de Stael's translation of it, and take the liberty of including it for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Rienzi (excerpts)
Felicia Hemans to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 November 1828: 'My dear Miss Mitford, Accept my late, though sincere and cordial congratulations on the brilliant success of "Rienzi," of which I have read with unfeigned gratification [...] I have yet only read of Rienzi a few noble passages given by the Newspapers and Magazines, but in a few days I hope to be acquainted with the whole'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays
'I am much obliged to you for the volume of Emerson Essays. I had heard of him before and I know that Carlyle rates him highly. He has great thoughts and imaginations, but he sometimes misleads himself by his own facility of talking brilliantly. However, I have not perhaps studied him sufficiently.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Miss Martineau on Mesmerism
'Ps. Have you read Miss Martineau on Mesmerism in the Athenaeum (two of them). I have got them and if you like I will send them to you. They are very wonderful [underlined]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Ferdinand Freiligrath : Englische Gedichte als Neurer Zeit
'... therefore was my satisfaction great to receive (as I did this morning) a copy of your works with your own friendly autograph. I need not say how much I feel the honour you have done me in translating some of my poems... I have not yet had time and leisure sifficient to read your translations from myself carefully; but from what I have seen, ... they are not dry bones, but seem full of a living warmth in fact a Poet's [underlined] translation of poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Mary Hewitt : Ballads and other poems
'I got your beautiful book of Ballads the other day at Moxon's. It contains (as far as I have seen it) much that is sweet and good and reminds me of you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Aubrey de Vere : English Misdeeds and Irish Misrule
'His Irish book seems to me from the little I have read very clever.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Coventry Patmore : The aesthetics of gothic architecture
'I now thank you very much for your able inauguration essay on Architecture and live in expectation of its successors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : unknown
Another great source of amusement as well as knowledge, I have met with in reading almost all the best novels (Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Miss Burney, Voltaire, Sterne, Le Sage, Goldsmith and others).?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Frances Burney : unknown
Another great source of amusement as well as knowledge, I have met with in reading almost all the best novels (Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Miss Burney, Voltaire, Sterne, Le Sage, Goldsmith and others).?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Lawrence Sterne : unknown
Another great source of amusement as well as knowledge, I have met with in reading almost all the best novels (Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Miss Burney, Voltaire, Sterne, Le Sage, Goldsmith and others).?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
?Pray, said Mr Thrale, do you read much?? ?When I can meet with large Print,? answered the old Gentleman. ?Did you ever, said my Master, read Evelina?? ? I almost jumped; little expecting such a frolic from Mr Thrale,?who however, avoided looking at me. ?No, Sir, never, answered Mr. Legh, but I have heard of it,?I have heard a good deal of it.? ?Well, Sir, added Mr Thrale, I would advise you to read it.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Thrale Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'He [Dr Johnson] says Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eaton, has been singing the praises of my Book . . .'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Barnard Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'. . . & that old Dr. Lawrence has read it ["Evelina"] through 3 Times within this last Month!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Lawrence Print: Book
Frances Burney : [letters]
?"She has heard a great deal of you, ? & has seen some of your Letters" . . . I am [ital] very [ital] much concerned, nay & [ital] hurt & half angry [ital] that this lady, whose name it seems is Lee, should have seen any of my Letters . . .'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Leigh Manuscript: Letter
Lady Georgiana Morpeth : unknown
'How pretty I think your verses they express so exactly what I felt but could not find words to speak [...]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Faustina Maratti Zappi : Donna che tanto al mio bel sol piacesti
'Donna che tanto al mio bel sol piacesti Che ancor d'preggi tuoi parla sovente Lodando ora il bel crine, ora il ridente Tuo labbro ed ora i saggi detti onesti'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Stanzas ("My Sister -- my sweet Sister")
Henry Chorley, in Memorials of Mrs Hemans (1836): 'after having heard those beautiful stanzas addressed to his sister [composed August 1816] by Lord Byron -- which afterwards appeared in print -- read aloud twice in manuscript, she [Felicia Hemans] repeated them to us, and even wrote them down with a surprising accuracy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Manuscript: Unknown
Sir John Moore : A Narrative of the Campaign of the British Army in Spain
'I began Sir John Mo[o]res letters again and am very much struck if the account is true with the bad management there seems to have been at first setting out. I cannot also conceive how with such letters & opinions daily coming forth such a general infatuation about the Spaniards could prevail [...] [I]n Sir J Mo[o]res letter to Mr. Frere where one can see he is in a tiff at his appointment he agrees with you about titles wrongly bestowed [...] my blood curdled with the quantity of black bile Freres' pompous insignificant impudent letter brought forth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'I have read the rights of Woman, am become a convert think dissipation great folly & shall remain the whole year discreetly & quietly in the Country.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb (nee Ponsonby) Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'[L]ittle else travels down to me my Cousins & Virtuous friends not being over addicted to scribbling--do not think I put you in the other class [...] it is only an appellation I give them out of Contrast to myself & other more liberal minded women who like Mary Wollstonecraft stand up for the rights of the Sex & wear our shackles with dignity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'Childe Harold I have read your Book & cannot refrain from telling you that I think it & all those whom I live with & whose opinions are far more worth having--think it beautiful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'"perchance my dog will whine in vain "Till fed my stranger hands-- "But long e'er I come back again "he'd tear me where he stands'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage [probably]
'Miss Edg[e]worth must not be run down because she has like most people misunderstood her own powers--she never can pretend to any thing that is the least [particle?] of Genius she has not one single spark of it which time or opportunity could kindle--but in its place I think she has a very reasoning head much Humour, & great discrimination--she paints like the Dutch school true to the life--I only quarrel with her choice--she introduces us to the society of those who are disagreeable & she delineates characters we regret ever to meet with--like Crabbe she delights in drawing mediocrity vulgarity & meanness--this can never please--in her present production--there is more than an ordinary share of it--& no great humour to make up--no interest to carry us through--I for one cannot finish it but those more persevering will'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Crabbe : Poems
'Miss Edg[e]worth must not be run down because she has like most people misunderstood her own powers--she never can pretend to any thing that is the least [particle?] of Genius she has not one single spark of it which time or opportunity could kindle--but in its place I think she has a very reasoning head much Humour, & great discrimination--she paints like the Dutch school true to the life--I only quarrel with her choice--she introduces us to the society of those who are disagreeable & she delineates characters we regret ever to meet with--like Crabbe she delights in drawing mediocrity vulgarity & meanness--this can never please--in her present production--there is more than an ordinary share of it--& no great humour to make up--no interest to carry us through--I for one cannot finish it but those more persevering will'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Bride of Abydos
'"Gull" & the Bulbul and a young Galeongee are just so many baits to draw sneers--which however disposed are always better avoided--I think the Bride of Abydos full of these lesser faults but the Corsair is quite beautiful--indeed he [Byron] has a very splendid Genius--& I cannot but feel a deep & lasting anxiety that he should be himself [underlined] in all things it is all I ask--you owe his quotations from Dante and the beginning of the Bride to me--& not to Mad. De Staal--for I sent him Dante last year so that you see I was not useless even to his Genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
'"Gull" & the Bulbul and a young Galeongee are just so many baits to draw sneers--which however disposed are always better avoided--I think the Bride of Abydos full of these lesser faults but the Corsair is quite beautiful--indeed he [Byron] has a very splendid Genius--& I cannot but feel a deep & lasting anxiety that he should be himself [underlined] in all things it is all I ask--you owe his quotations from Dante and the beginning of the Bride to me--& not to Mad. De Staal--for I sent him Dante last year so that you see I was not useless even to his Genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book, Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lines to a Lady Weeping
'How you surprise me--write me but one word more [--] it is not true that he [Byron] sent word to you that he was very angry "Weep daughter" was cut out of the other editions--is it not true that he stood firm to what he had done & took blame wholly upon himself--this I trust is true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : unknown
'I never saw two Women more in love with you than my favourite Lady Hamilton & her sister. They talk of you in a manner I cannot bear to hear [...] I read to them in your voice & they nearly cried & kissed me till I was suffocated all for love of you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Unknown
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'I literally saw nothing but your ear for a whole hour one night--it is perfectly unlike any ear in Nature--& as Tristram Shandy might say requires a Chapter in itself'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Choderlos de Laclos : Les Liaisons Dangereuses
'Farewell Mephistocles--Luke Makey de la Touche Richard the 3 Valmont Machiavelli Napoleon [Prival?] the Wicked Duke of Orleans--for you are a little like them all'..
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Robert Southey : Madoc
'Farewell--not as you say so to your favourites or they to you--not as any Woman ever spoke that Word for they never mean it to be what I will make it--but as nuns & those who die--as Madoc said it to Llewellyn--so will I to you'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Giaour
'I think I shall live to see the day--when some beautiful & innocent Lady Byron shall drive to your door [...] I really believe that when that day comes, I shall buy a pistol at Mantons & stand before the Giaour [Lord Byron] & his legal wife & shoot myself'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'I cried over Meg Merrilies when she met Brown again--at a little Inn at Cumberland & my tears are not apt to flow'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'I entirely deprecate your opinion concerning Manwaring [sic--Mannering] or sooner the opinion you had borrowed for I am convinced if you had read it through or even half you would have admired it excessively--I judge by myself who never can get over ten pages of any Book[--]yesterday--I finished it--I liked it better than I did Waverly [sic] --the story is better told the Hero more interesting the Gypsies delightful the Characters very well drawn indeed--all good in short except the love & the Ladies which are flippant & vulgar as is the Fashion now'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverly
'I entirely deprecate your opinion concerning Manwaring [sic--Mannering] or sooner the opinion you had borrowed for I am convinced if you had read it through or even half you would have admired it excessively--I judge by myself who never can get over ten pages of any Book[--]yesterday--I finished it--I liked it better than I did Waverly [sic]--the story is better told the Hero more interesting the Gypsies delightful the Characters very well drawn indeed--all good in short except the love & the Ladies which are flippant & vulgar as is the Fashion now'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Hebrew Melodies
'Many a dull thing goes down by a puff--& all in all is fame Witness the Hebrew Melodies which I have though you did not send them me--they are not worthy of him--trust one who can appreciate his Genius they are very common place lowly performances'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Hebrew Melodies--"She walks in beauty"
'"She walks in beauty like the night," for example--if Mr. Twiss had written it how we should have laughed! Now we can only weep to see how little just judgement there is on earth, for I make no doubt the name of Byron will give even these lines a grace. I who read his loftier lay with transport will not admire his flaws and nonsense. You will say it is only a song, yet a song should have sense'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Stanzas to Augusta
'At a moment of such deep agony & I may add shame--when utterly disgraced judge Byron what my feelings must be at Murrays shewing me some beautiful verses of yours--I do implore you for God sake not to publish these could I have seen you one moment I would explain why--I have only time to add that however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it you will draw ruin on your own head and hers [Augusta Leigh's] if at this moment you shew these lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : unknown
'[B]e not thrown into wild delight because his genius has shone forth--misfortune & rage have occasioned this & whenever he may speak himself [underlined] Lord Byron will succeed--self is the sole inspirer of his genius he cannot like Homer Dante Virgil Milton Dryden Spencer Gray--Goldsmith [underlined] Tasso write on other subjects well[--]but what he feels he can describe extravagantly well--& therefore I never did doubt that he would one day or other write again as at first--but for God sake do not let this circumstance make you forget what a Rogue he is'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Beppo
'[A]nd so you have never heard of Beppo--I think you said so at Devonshire House supper. Now Heaven fail in granting me pardon for all my offenses if it is not by himself [Byron], & in his very best wit as good as any thing Swift ever wrote a flatterer would say better. I read it having taken an Emetic for that head ache which troubled me so much the night I sat beside you & I must own it did delight me so that the Emetic faild [sic] in affecting me--now though this is not a pretty illustration of what should be felt in reading Poetry--believe me it is emphatic & expresses much more than fairer words--after all it would be kind in you to tell me if it is his'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Beppo
'How very very clever I think Beppo--I am quite sure it is his [Byron's]--& still more that Mr. Frere never could have written any thing like it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'Do you remember when Jeannie Deans went to London for her sister the gentle Gertie [sic--Geordie] Robertson gave her a [illegible] among the Robbers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Lady Caroline Lamb : Ada Reis
'I must tell you an act of kindness of William Lamb--he has been looking over and correcting Ada Reis for me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lamb Manuscript: Unknown, William Lamb would have read either fair copies or proofs from the printer.
Lady Caroline Lamb : Graham Hamilton
'Thank you for being pleased with your visit and not displeased with Graham [Hamilton]'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Godwin Manuscript: Unknown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Wallenstein
'[Y]ou interested me very much about Coleridge--I wish I had ever known him--his translation of Wallenstein is in my opinion perfectly beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Karl Baedeker : [guidebook on Florence]
'Bennett needed a guide when he travelled abroad - and his Florentine Journal is touchingly full of his delightful efforts to see and understand all, through his Baedeker...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Richard Bentley : A Reply to a Copy of Verses made in Imitation of Ode II Book III of Horace.
'"drudge like Selden days & nights And in the Endless labour die"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : [Memoirs]
'I told Murray to tell you that I read his journal with sorrow & perhaps with anger'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Lady Caroline Lamb : [letters and verses]
'I must tell you that Lord Byron said Mrs Lee [Augusta Leigh?] & Lady Byron had read all my letters [and] verses'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Manuscript: Unknown
Lady Caroline Lamb : [letters and verses]
'I must tell you that Lord Byron said Mrs Lee [Augusta Leigh?] & Lady Byron had read all my letters [and] verses'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Annabella Byron (n?e Milbanke) Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : Madoc: a poem
'Read the Excursion & Madoc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : Madoc: a poem
'M Read Madoc all morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : The Curse of Kehama
'He [Percy Bysshe Shelley] reads the curse of Kehama to us in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : The Curse of Kehama
'She [Mary] reads the curse of Kehama while Shelley walks out with Peacock who dines.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'In the evening Shelley reads Thaliba aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Unknown
Grant Allen : What's bred in the bone
'he entered a competition held by Tit-Bits. The prize money was twenty guineas, and it was offered for a "humorous condensation" of a sensational serial which the paper had been running. The serial was called What's bred in the bone [title in italics], and it was by Grant Allen, a scientist-turned novelist like Wells...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James : unknown
'Bennett selected the things that interested him - notably novelists such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and his friend George Paston. It was through a review of a book by H. G. Wells that the two men first became friends, Bennett taking the initiative and writing to Wells in September 1897 to say how much he liked his work, and to ask him how well he knew the Potteries, which Wells had mentioned in several of his stories.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Paston : unknown
'Bennett selected the things that interested him - notably novelists such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and his friend George Paston. It was through a review of a book by H. G. Wells that the two men first became friends, Bennett taking the initiative and writing to Wells in September 1897 to say how much he liked his work, and to ask him how well he knew the Potteries, which Wells had mentioned in several of his stories.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sturt : letter
'Six weeks since I received your letter! ... I have no great interest in the theory of our sacred art.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Letter
George Moore : A Mummer's Wife
'he claimed that he had not thought of using them [the Potteries] as fiction until he read another man's work of fiction, George Moore's A Mummer's wife [title in italics]; he wrote to Moore on 24 December 1920, "I wish also to tell you that it was the first chapters of A Mummer's wife [title in italics] which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district I had blindly inhabited for over twenty years.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Moore : A Mummer's Wife
'A Mummer's Wife [title in italics] had impressed him very much with its power and its Staffordshire setting.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : On Liberty
'I have been reading Fawcett's Economic condition of the Working Classes, Mill's Liberty, looking into Strauss's Second Life of Jesus, and reading Neale's History of the Puritans of which I have reached the fourth volume'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
David Friedrich Strauss : Life of Jesus [second version]
'I have been reading Fawcett's Economic condition of the Working Classes, Mill's Liberty, looking into Strauss's Second Life of Jesus, and reading Neale's History of the Puritans of which I have reached the fourth volume'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Henry Hallam : The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
'began Hallam's Middle Ages'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : A System of Logic
'I am reading Mill's Logic again, Theocritus still, and English History and Law'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
George Eliot (pseud.) : Felix Holt
'Read my MS to George up to p.468. He was delighted with it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Manuscript: Unknown, MS of own novel
Friedrich Bouterwek : Geschichte der neuern Poesie und Beredsamkeit [vol on Spanish literature]
'I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gipsy" again, and am reading on Spanish subjects - Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorente etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Jean Charles L?onard de Sismondi : [unknown - on Spain]
'I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gipsy" again, and am reading on Spanish subjects - Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorente etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Georges Bernard Depping : [unknown - on Spain]
'I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gipsy" again, and am reading on Spanish subjects - Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorente etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Georges Depping : Juifs au Moyen Age
'Finished Depping's "Juifs au Moyen Age". Reading Chaucer, to study English. Also, reading on acoustics, musical instruments etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer : [unknown]
'Finished Depping's "Juifs au Moyen Age". Reading Chaucer, to study English. Also, reading on acoustics, musical instruments etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Ernest Renan : Histoire g?n?rale et syst?me compar? des langues s?mitiques
'Reading Renan's Histoire des Langues Semitiques. Ticknor's Spanish Literature'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Ticknor : History of Spanish Literature
'Reading Renan's Histoire des Langues Semitiques. Ticknor's Spanish Literature'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Cornewall Lewis : Astronomy of the Ancients
'I have been reading Cornewall Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, Ockley's History of the Saracens, Astronomical Geography, and Spanish Ballads on Bernardo del Carpio'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
William Henry Prescott : History of Ferdinand and Isabella, The
'Began again Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Ernest Renan : Averroes et l'Averroisme
'Finished reading "Averroes and l'Averroisme", and "Les Medecins Juifs". Reading "First Principles".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [letter]
'I walked to Grossmutter's and read her a letter of G's'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Manuscript: Letter
George Grote : unknown
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius : unknown
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Frederick Denison Maurice : Conscience: Lectures On Casuistry
'Reading; First book of Lucretius, 6th book of the Iliad; Samson Agonistes, Warton's History of English Poetry; Grote 2nd vol; Marcus Aurelius; Vita Nuova; vol IV, Chapter 1 of the Politique positive; Guest on English Rhythms, Maurice's Lectures on Casuistry'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
[Mrs] Grey : [Etruscan subjects]
'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
George Dennis : Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, The
'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan
'have been reading a little on philology, have finished the 24th book of the Iliad, the first book of the Faery Queene, Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things in Mrs Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's Alchemist and Volpone, and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading - besides the first four cantos of Don Juan'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Alessandro Manzoni : I Promessi Sposi
'Aloud [these past two days] I have read Bright's speeches and "I promessi sposi". To myself I have read Mommsen's Rome'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Theodor Mommsen : History of Rome
'Aloud [these past two days] I have read Bright's speeches and "I promessi sposi". To myself I have read Mommsen's Rome'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
Hermann von Helmholtz : [book on music]
'I am reading about plants, and Helmholtz on music'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Victor Hugo : L'Homme Qui Rit
'Finished my readings in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's "L'Homme qui rit". Also the Frau von Hillern's novel "Ein Arzt der Seele".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Jean Marie Napol?on D?sir Nisard : Histoire de la litt?rature fran?aise
'Began Nisard's History of French Literature - Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Philippe de Comines, Villon'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Jean Charles L?onard de Sismondi : Litt?rature du midi de l'Europe
'Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in Ancient Geography. Looked into Smith's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Litterature du Midi", for Roman de Rose, and ran through the first chapter, about the formation of the Romance Languages. Read about the Thallogens and Acrogens in "the Vegetable World". Drayton's Nymphidia - a charming poem. A few pages of his Polyolbion. Re-read Grote v-vii on Sicilian affairs down to rise of Dionysius'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Grote : [probably] History of Greece
'Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in Ancient Geography. Looked into Smith's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Litterature du Midi", for Roman de Rose, and ran through the first chapter, about the formation of the Romance Languages. Read about the Thallogens and Acrogens in "the Vegetable World". Drayton's Nymphidia - a charming poem. A few pages of his Polyolbion. Re-read Grote v-vii on Sicilian affairs down to rise of Dionysius'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve : [unknown]
'[in the past week I have read] part of 22nd Idyll of Theocritus, Sainte Beuve aloud to G. two evenings... Monday evening [was occupied] with looking through Dickson's Fallacies of the Faculty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Pierre Victor Renouard : History of Medicine
'I am reading Renouard's "History of Medicine"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Rutherford Russell : History and Heroes of Medicine
'I have achieved little during the last week except reading on medical subjects - Encyclopaedia about the medical colleges - Cullen's life - Russell's Heroes of Medicine etc. I have also read Aristophaes Ecclesiazusae, and Macbeth'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : [probably] Principles of Psychology, The
'I have read rapidly through Max Muller's History of Sanskrit Literature and am now reading Lecky's "History of Morals". I have also finished H. Spencer's last number of his Psychology'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : Edwin Drood
'I read aloud No. 3 of "Edwin Drood".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Serial / periodical
[probably] Dante Gabriel Rossetti : [poems]
'In the evening, G. being very weary, I read him some of Rossetti's poems'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Horace Walpole, Lord Orford : Letters to Lady Ossory
'Mr Brand' to Mary Berry, January 1798: 'Lady Ossory, to alleviate my confinement with a very bad cold, has treated me to Lord Orford's letters to her, tho' in a very mutilated transcript, and desired my opinion about their publication.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Brand Manuscript: Unknown
Isocrates : oration
Mary Berry to Anne Damer, October 1798: 'Do you know that I have been working as hard at Greek for this week past as you could possibly desire? The parson who I mentioned in my last, stayed till yesterday. He is a very good scholar, and much in the habit of teaching. He corrected a piece of Isocrates which I had done by myself, and then read on with me in the same oration, and whilst he was here I translated above two pages more, writing them down, I mean, and all the verbs and their parts in the opposite page'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Isocrates : oration
Mary Berry to Anne Damer, October 1798: 'Do you know that I have been working as hard at Greek for this week past as you could possibly desire? The parson who I mentioned in my last, stayed till yesterday. He is a very good scholar, and much in the habit of teaching. He corrected a piece of Isocrates which I had done by myself, and then read on with me in the same oration, and whilst he was here I translated above two pages more, writing them down, I mean, and all the verbs and their parts in the opposite page'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry and parson Print: Book
Thomas Robert Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population
Mary Berry to a friend, 19 November 1798: 'Don't let me forget to advise you to to read the "Natural Son," or "Lovers' Vows;" it is the entire and literal translation of the play which is now acting with such success at Covent Garden, but [italics]not[end italics] as it is acted; you can get it at Todd's [bookseller's], where I did, to read in the chaise [...] Another book which I purchased at Todd's and read in my chaise was the "Essay on Population" which Mr. Wrangham left with you. It is uncommonly clearly thought and written, and contains much curious and uncontrovertible reasoning on the subject in question.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Thomas Robert Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population
Mary Berry to a friend, 14 December, 1798: 'During my illness I have finished the 2nd vol. of Wraxhall which I had just begun at Brandsby, and which I like better and better the farther I go. I have consulted, too, one of his authorities for many things in the age of Henry the Third, Montaigne's Essays, a very curious and an [italics]astonishing[end italics] book, considering the times in which it was written, and which one never consults without entertainment. I have re-read, too, Condorcet's book, and compared his ideas and arguments on the subject of population with those of the Essay [by Malthus] we have been reading, and certainly the Essay has not only the best of the argument [...] but is absolute [italics]conviction[end italics]on the subject of the different ratios in which population, and the means of subsisting that population, increase'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : unknown
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 2 April 1799: 'In the many hours I have spent alone this week, I have been able, though by very little bits at a time, to go entirely through Hannah More [whose "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education" she writes of receiving on 21 March 1799], and Mrs. Woolstonecroft [sic] immediately after her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Charles James Fox : letter to Uvedale Price on series of plays
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 17 May 1799: 'I was much entertained by some letters which [Uvedale] Price showed me from Sr George Beaumont, Fox, and Knight, containing criticisms on the series of plays which he (Price) had set them all reading. They were excellent, the ideas of three very superior understandings and tastes'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Letter
Homer : The Iliad
Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, Thursday 23 May 1799: 'I began Homer's Iliad on Wednesday last, to my no small delight, and felt no particular difficulty in the comprehension of the first doz. lines'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Bartholomew Mercier : Le Nouveau Paris
Mary Berry, letter of 26 December 1799: 'What little I could read during two days and part of two nights has been Mercier's "Nouveau Paris", a sort of continuation of his former "Tableau de Paris". This last, in six vols. is one of the most stupid, unclearly thought, ridiculous books I ever saw, and yet I read it, not without entertainment and instruction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Bartholomew Mercier : Tableau de Paris
Mary Berry, letter of 26 December 1799: 'What little I could read during two days and part of two nights has been Mercier's "Nouveau Paris", a sort of continuation of his former "Tableau de Paris". This last, in six vols. is one of the most stupid, unclearly thought, ridiculous books I ever saw, and yet I read it, not without entertainment and instruction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : The Monk: a romance
'Shelley draws & Mary reads the monk all evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
'Shelley reads the Ancient Mariner aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab: a philosophical poem with notes
'Shelley is very unwell - he reads one canto of Queen Mab to me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown, owned by author
Edward du Bois : St. Godwin: a tale of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Count Reginald St. Leon
'Read St. Godwin - it is ineffably stupid.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff, translated from the oiginl Latin MS. under the immediate inspection of the prince by John Brown, Esq.
'I read part of Alexy. I repeated one of my own poems.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
'I read part of Alexy. I repeated one of my own poems.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Smith Surtees : [probably] Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities
'on his eighth birthday, 27 February 1920, an ox-cart drew up outside Everleas Lodge with a present for him - a huge parcel of books. His father had bought him a complete set of Dickens which had belonged to a recently expired tea-planter. Durrell claimed later that he never got beyond the Pickwick Papers (sometimes he said that he got through about ten of them), but Dickens gave him a vision of merrie England... supplemented later by reading Thackeray and R.S. Surtees. In Surtees' convivial tales of the hunting, shooting, sporting Mr Jorrocks and his pursuitful adventures, there was something ruddy, jolly and rumbustious, which appealed to the perky youngster'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Kim
'Kipling had now been supplemented with Henty, Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, all with their own tales of imperial derring-do to tell theimpressionable young colonial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
George Alfred Henty : [unknown]
'Kipling had now been supplemented with Henty, Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, all with their own tales of imperial derring-do to tell theimpressionable young colonial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : [unknown]
'Kipling had now been supplemented with Henty, Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, all with their own tales of imperial derring-do to tell theimpressionable young colonial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : [unknown]
'Kipling had now been supplemented with Henty, Ballantyne, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, all with their own tales of imperial derring-do to tell theimpressionable young colonial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Richard (pseud.) Aldington [real name] : Death of a Hero
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Richard (pseud.) Aldington [real name] : [poetry]
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : [poetry]
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Robert Graves : [poetry]
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : [poetry]
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [unknown]
'The fresh-sounding work of the War generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Francois Rabelais : [unknown]
'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Francois Villon : [unknown]
'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Charles Pierre Baudelaire : [unknown]
'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Arthur Rimbaud : [unknown]
'He lapped up those French writers who kicked against those conventions - Rabelais, Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Norman Haire : [unknown]
'like any bright young intellectual of his day, he was greatly influenced by Freud and writers on sex, such as Havelock Ellis and Norman Haire, who had taken their cue from Freud's liberating initiative'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : [unknown]
'Durrell's studies at the British Museum turned even further towards the Elizabethans. He took in Sidney, Marlowe, Nashe, Greene, Peel and Tourneur, as well as Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Robert Greene : [unknown]
'Durrell's studies at the British Museum turned even further towards the Elizabethans. He took in Sidney, Marlowe, Nashe, Greene, Peel and Tourneur, as well as Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Cyril Tourneur : [unknown]
'Durrell's studies at the British Museum turned even further towards the Elizabethans. He took in Sidney, Marlowe, Nashe, Greene, Peel and Tourneur, as well as Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : [unknown]
'He was also interesting himself in poets such as Keats, Fitzgerald and Yeats'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Edward Fitzgerald : [unknown]
'He was also interesting himself in poets such as Keats, Fitzgerald and Yeats'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Percy Wyndham Lewis : [unknown]
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Remy de Gourmont : [unknown]
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Donatien Alphonse-Fran?ois de Sade : [unknown]
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing : [probably] Psychopathia Sexualis
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : Sea and Sardinia
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
George Norman Douglas : South Wind
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Henry Miller : Tropic of Cancer
'Barclay Hudson, an American living near by, lent him a new novel to read. It was published in Paris by the Obelisk Press, a publisher specializing mainly in pornography in English for visiting tourists, and in books banned elsewhere. The novel Hudson lent him was the recently published "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. The impact was immediate, and he read it straight through twice..."There isn't a good word to express its excellence", he wrote. "Of course, like all works of genius it's strong fruit and you'd have to be careful about getting it into England".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : The Wrongs of Woman; or Maria
'Read the wrongs of woman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the rights of woman
'Read Posthumous works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Zastrozzi
'Read Zastrozzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Marcus Tullius Cicero :
'Begin Julius Florus and finish the little vol of Cicero.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of my Own Time
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Robert Watson : History of the Reign of Philip II
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Robert Watson : History of Philip III
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History
'Much of it [ie. ?the daily instruction I received?] consisted in the books I read by myself, and my father?s discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. My father?s health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these, in the morning walks, I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson?s histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson?s Philip the Second and Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke?s History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin?s Ancient History, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight Langhorne?s translation of Plutarch. In English history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnett?s History of his Own Time, though I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the Annual Register, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father borrowed for me from Mr Bentham left off?. In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim : An Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ, to the Beginning of the Present Century
'He [?my father?] also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar?s Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim?s Ecclesiastical History, McCrie?s Life of John Knox, and even Sewell?s and Rutty?s Histories of the Quakers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : unknown
'The house was behind the post office and below the town library, and in a few years not even the joys of guddling, girning and angling matched the boy's pleasure in Emerson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Pierce, Sidney Lanier and Mark Twain. Day after day... he carried a large washing basket up the stairs to fill it with books, choosing from upwards of twelve thousand volumes, then downstairs to sit for hours in corners absorbed in mental worlds beyond the narrow limits of Langholm.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Grieve Print: Book
Ambrose Bierce : unknown
'The house was behind the post office and below the town library, and in a few years not even the joys of guddling, girning and angling matched the boy's pleasure in Emerson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Sidney Lanier and Mark Twain. Day after day... he carried a large washing basket up the stairs to fill it with books, choosing from upwards of twelve thousand volumes, then downstairs to sit for hours in corners absorbed in mental worlds beyond the narrow limits of Langholm.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Grieve Print: Book
Mark Twain : unknown
'The house was behind the post office and below the town library, and in a few years not even the joys of guddling, girning and angling matched the boy's pleasure in Emerson, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Sidney Lanier and Mark Twain. Day after day... he carried a large washing basket up the stairs to fill it with books, choosing from upwards of twelve thousand volumes, then downstairs to sit for hours in corners absorbed in mental worlds beyond the narrow limits of Langholm.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Grieve Print: Book
R Garvey : letter
'Read letter from Rev R Garvey of Lincoln (?) reps. Lecture'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Letter
William R. Grove : On the Correlation of Physical Forces
'I began Grove on the Correlation of the Physical Forces, needing to read it again with new interests after the lapse of years'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Friedrich August Wolf : Prolegomena ad Homerum
'I am reading Wolf's Prolegomena to Homer. In the evening aloud, Wilhelm Meister again!'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Grote : [on Sicilian History]
'Reading Quintus Fixlein aloud to G. in the evening. Grote on Sicilian history'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : "Principles of Success in Literature
'Began to read "Principles of Success in Literature".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : [Social Function...]
'Read M.S. 'Social Function' and Physical Basis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : Physical Basis of Mind, The
'Read M.S. 'Social Function' and Physical Basis'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : [journal, 1874]
'Wrote memories and lived with him all day. Read in his diary 1874 - "Wrote verses to Polly - Wrote verses on Polly".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown, journal
George Henry Lewes : [various works Eliot was revising]
'Began Revision of Problem II. Revised Introduction. Finished 2nd reading of Psychological Principles'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : Spanish Drama, The
'Read my darling's book on the Spanish Drama'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [first article on Goethe]
'Read my darling's first article on Goethe'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: UnknownManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [probably] Problems of Life and Mind; Third Series: Mind as a Function of Organism
'Reading Problem III'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
John Stuart Mill : [on socialism]
'Read J.S. Mill on Socialism'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Herbert Spencer : Principles of Psychology
'Read Spencer's Psychology'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [on language]
'read my darling's M.S. on Language'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Bain : [on nervous mechanism]
'Read Bain on the Nervous mechanism - and looked for comparison into Foster's'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : [article on Philosophy in France]
'Made list of his articles, and read His article on Philosophy in France, 1843'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown
Alexander (perhaps) Ellis (perhaps) : [perhaps] On the Laws of Operation, and the Systematization of Mathematics
'Re-read "Laws of Operation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown
Alexander Herzen : La Condizione fisica della Coscienza
'Read Herzen's "La Condizione fisica della Coscienza", sent to me at my request, because it criticizes my darling's standpoint'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown
George Henry Lewes : [essay on Dwarfs and Giants]
'Read 'Dwarfs and Giants' with which many memories are connected of far off Richmond Days'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown
Alexander Bain (?) : unknown
'Read Homer, Bain, St Beuve'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Unknown
Charles Augustin Sainte Beuve : unknown
'Read Homer, Bain, St Beuve'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Grote : [probably] History of Greece
'Grote on the Sophists - then History of Philosophy to compare'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Biographical History of Philosophy, A
'Grote on the Sophists - then History of Philosophy to compare'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Life and Works of Goethe, The
'History of Philosophy. Pollock's Sketch of Clifford. Life of Goethe. Homer'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Frederick Pollock : [biographical sketch of W.K. Clifford]
'History of Philosophy. Pollock's Sketch of Clifford. Life of Goethe. Homer'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Edward Caird : [probably] Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, The
'History of Philosophy. Pollock's Sketch of Clifford. Life of Goethe. Homer'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Dr Porteus : Death
'It was in this state of feeling that I first got hold of a little volume called "The Wreath", containing a collection of poems by various authors. Among these pieces was "The Grave", which soon commended itself to my hearty and unqualified approbation...Besides this poem the volume contained "The Minstrel", of which I venture to say that I consider it to be of almost unequalled beauty and interest... There was here yet another poem which arrested my attention as fully as much as did "The Grave" or "The Minstrel". This was entitled "Death" - a prize winning poem written by that eminently good man Dr Porteus...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : [poems]
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Mark Akenside : [poems]
'It was at this time that I read the remaining seven volumes of the "Spectator"; to which I added the "Rambler", the "Tatler", and some others of the "British Essayists". I also read the poetical works of Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Falconer, Pomfret, Akenside, Mrs. Rowe, with others which I cannot now clearly call to mind. I remember, however, to have read Gay's poems. These gave me more than usual satisfaction. I was much amused with his "Trivia, or the Art of Walking London Streets" but I was especially pleased with his admirably burlesque "pastorals". These just squared with my humour, for I had then, as I have ever had, an utter dislike to the sickening stuff that is called the pastoral poetry...I must not omit to mention the pleasure I derived from reading a poem called "The Village Curate", which, I think, has fallen into unmerited oblivion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
Germaine De Stael : Delphine (three volumes)
Mary Berry to Anne Damer, from Nice, January 1803: 'In spite of my headaches yesterday, I contrived to read nearly three volumes of Madame de Stael's Delphine [...] It is certainly interesting [...] It is well written, too'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Catherine Fanshawe : "Ode, by Mary Berry."
Lady Theresa Lewis reproduces 1805 letter from Mary Berry (writing as Catherine Fanshawe) to Catherine Fanshawe, in response to poem written by Fanshawe as Berry, and lent to her in manuscript; having praised the piece and offered some specific criticisms, she closes with an injunction that Fanshawe 'show it sparingly to the few who may be worthy, and on no account distribute any copies without [her] [...] licence and authority'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Francesco Baldovini : 'Lamento di Cecco'
Mary Berry, Journal, 21 August 1807: 'Read a little of the "Lamento di Cecco," which, having often heard of, I had never seen before. It is a beautiful, simple, but not vulgar pastoral, in the Tuscan patois; but after the first three or four stanzas, not very difficult to understand. If it were, there are notes, which swell a poem of forty stanzas into a tolerable-sized quarto volume!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mr Greathead : Journals
Mary Berry, Journal, 23 August 1807: 'I remained in my room the whole morning reading Mr. Greathead [her host]'s Journals, which let me more into their every-day life, where they went, and what they did while abroad, than a month's conversation could do.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry
Walter Scott : Marmion
Mary Berry, Journal, 9 March 1808: 'I went in the evening to Mrs. D[?amer]. Read "Marmion," just come out, to her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
Mary Berry, Journal, 10 March 1808: 'Read some more of "Marmion".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
Mary Berry, Journal, 14 March 1808: 'Began reading the "Odyssey" of Homer in Pope's translation. Delighted with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Caroline Matilda Warren : Conrade, or the Gamesters
Mary Berry, Journal, 20 April 1808: 'At night finished Miss Warren's novel ["Conrade, or the Gamesters" by galloping over half the pages; human patience could not regularly wade through a series of adventures without "ensemble", of violent situations without interest or probability, and of characters equally pious or equally profligate.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry : Draft preface to edition of letters of Mme du Deffand
Mary Berry, Journal, 24 April 1808: 'In the evening, after dinner, I read aloud the sketch of my preface [to the letters of Mme du Deffand], and finished the evening with Ashe's Travels, which are very entertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Charles James Fox : Historical Work
Mary Berry, Journal, 2 June 1808: 'I began reading aloud Mr. Fox's historical work, in the beautiful large-paper copy which Robert Ferguson has given me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Charles James Fox : Historical Work
Mary Berry, Journal, 3 June 1808: 'I continued reading Fox's work. It is very well to read it once out; but it suggests so much thought, and so many new views of things, that I shall read it over more than once to myself in a very different manner to what I am now doing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Life and Works of Goethe
'Finished reading "Life and Works of Goethe" with great admiration and delight.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Grote : History of Greece
'Read Grote on the Sophists'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : [letters to George Eliot]
'I read his letters, and packed them together, to be buried with me. Perhaps that will happen before next November'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Manuscript: Letter
Albrecht Weber : History of Indian Literature, The
'Finished Weber's Indian Literature'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Monier Monier Williams : [presumably work on Sanskrit]
'Finished Monier Williams'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
George John Romanes : Candid Examination of Theism, A
[Read] 'Romanes, 'Theism'. Tiele, History of Religions. Odyssey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Cornelis Petrus Tiele : Outlines of the History of Religion
[Read] 'Romanes, 'Theism'. Tiele, History of Religions. Odyssey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales, The
[Read] 'Chaucer's Prologue'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Frances Anne Kemble : Records of a Girlhood
'Finished Fanny Kemble's Records of a girlhood'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Ruy Blas
'Read Ruy Blas aloud. Afterwards saw three acts'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
[probably] Archibald Henry Sayce : [if this Sayce then work of Assyriology]
[Read] 'Sayce and Promessi Sposi'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Alessandro Manzoni : I Promessi Sposi
[Read] 'Sayce and Promessi Sposi'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Jean Le Rond D'Alembert : Discours pr?liminaire de l'Encyclop?die
'Finished the Discours Preliminaire'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : Principles of Sociology
'Having finished Spencer's Sociology we began Max MUller's Lectures on the Science of Language'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and John Cross Print: Book
Friedrich Max Muller : Lectures on the Science of Language
'Having finished Spencer's Sociology we began Max Muller's Lectures on the Science of Language'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and John Cross Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : [poems including 'The First Quarrel']
'Read Tennyson's new vol. of poems and particularly like "The first Quarrel".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : My faithful Johnny
'Read "My faithful Johnny" in the Cornhill'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Serial / periodical
Frederic William Henry Myers : Wordsworth
'after dinner began Duffield's translation of Don Quixote and Myers' Wordsworth'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
David Friedrich Strauss : Das Leben Jesu
'I am going to begin Strauss, and see what I can make of him. - Have you seen the Opium-Eater's papers on the Lakers in Tait? They are very interesting , but, it seems to me, the most tremendous breach of confidence ever committed; - particularly the giving an account of the "most sublime passage" of Wordsworth's great posthumous work. I wonder what you think of Chorley's "Lion". I don't think it can live, but that there is good enough in it to make one hope he may do something that will'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Henry Fothergill Chorley : Lion: A Tale of the Coteries, The
'I am going to begin Strauss, and see what I can make of him. - Have you seen the Opium-Eater's papers on the Lakers in Tait? They are very interesting , but, it seems to me, the most tremendous breach of confidence ever committed; - particularly the giving an account of the "most sublime passage" of Wordsworth's great posthumous work. I wonder what you think of Chorley's "Lion". I don't think it can live, but that there is good enough in it to make one hope he may do something that will'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Alessandro Manzoni : I Promessi Sposi
'I do sometimes wish for my library here, where it costs trouble to other people to get books for me, and yet I have done well enough lately with Montaigne, and a bit of Moliere with the boys, now and then, and I Promessi Sposi with Fanny discovering thereby that I can read Italian almost like French or English, which I was not aware of'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Alfred de Vigny : Cinq Mars
'Is not "Cinq Mars" very fine? I should like to read more of De Vigny'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
George Grey : Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in Northwest and Western Australia, 1837-1839
' I find I like reading stories far better than writing them. I have been reading a very sad one recently, - Capn' Grey's discoveries in Australlia. There is an anecdote there which shows how little some people are in the habit of regarding savages as men...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays
'Have you read Emerson's Essays? I suppose it is the first immortal Amern book. It has come to me like a visitation of health'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Horace Walpole (ed. Richard Bentley) : Letters of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann
'I have held off reading Walpole's Correspondences till now. I am in the former series to Mann. At first, I was agreeably disappointed: but now my pain and disgust are growing fast. What a horrid spirit it is!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mrs Warburton : Letters to the Duchess of Argyll
Mary Berry, Journal, 14 August 1808, during stay at Bothwell Castle, seat of Lord Douglas: 'Sat till dinner-time in Lady Douglas's dressing-room, reading old letters to her grandmother, the Duchess of Argyll, from [italics]her[end italics] mother, Mrs Warburton, and to Lady Greenwich from the Duchess of Queensberry and several other persons. Remarkable form and expressions of respect in the letters of Mrs Warburton to her duchess daughter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Letter
Mary Berry : Draft preface to edition of Letters of Madame du Deffand
Mary Berry, Journal, 22 September 1808, during stay at Bothwell Castle, seat of Lord Douglas: 'I read to Lady Douglas my sketch of a preface for the Letters [of Madame du Deffand], with which she seemed well pleased. Finished reading "The Tale of the Times," a novel, which, like most other novels, begins better than it finishes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : "Notice upon Madame du D[effand]'s Life"
Mary Berry, Journal, 28 April 1809: 'In the morning I saw Joanna [Baillie]. She stayed nearly an hour with me. I read to her my "Notice upon Madame du D----'s Life," with which she was so pleased that I could not but feel very much flattered.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : "Notice upon Madame du D[effand]'s Life"
Mary Berry, Journal, 12 May 1809: 'This morning I had the Bishop of Rodez with me for nearly two hours. I read to him my preface and my "Notice on the Life [of Madame du Deffand], &c., &c.," with which he was well pleased, saying it was impossible to give a more faithful picture of the person whom he had known during the latter years of his life in great intimacy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Preface to edition of Letters of Madame du Deffand
Mary Berry, Journal, 12 May 1809: 'This morning I had the Bishop of Rodez with me for nearly two hours. I read to him my preface and my "Notice on the Life [of Madame du Deffand], &c., &c.," with which he was well pleased, saying it was impossible to give a more faithful picture of the person whom he had known during the latter years of his life in great intimacy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Preface to edition of Letters of Madame du Deffand
Mary Berry, Journal, 31 March 1810: 'Mr Sydney Smith with me in the morning, looking critically over my Preface [to her edition of the Letters of Madame du Deffand] and Life [of Madame du Deffand]. Much mended by his observations, upon which I am to work, and I set to it as soon as he was gone.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Rev. Sydney Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Life of Madame du Deffand
Mary Berry, Journal, 31 March 1810: 'Mr Sydney Smith with me in the morning, looking critically over my Preface [to her edition of the Letters of Madame du Deffand] and Life [of Madame du Deffand]. Much mended by his observations, upon which I am to work, and I set to it as soon as he was gone.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Rev. Sydney Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Preface and notes to Letters of Madame du Deffand
John Playfair to Mary Berry, 22 September 1810, in response to her edition of the Letters of Madame du Deffand, received three days previously: 'The preface is excellent, very well written and very judicious. The notes bespeak that great familiarity with the characters and persons who figure in the book, whch cannot be acquired by reading [...] I find a great deal of amusement and interest in the few letters I have yet read'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Playfair Print: Book
Mary Berry : Life of Madame du Deffand
'Mr Cambridge' to Mary Berry: 'I was about to take up my pen to you to express the pleasure and satisfaction we have just experienced in the perusal of your "Life of Madame du Deffand," which does great credit to your judgement and feeling [goes on to make more detailed comments].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Cambridge Print: Book
Mary Berry : Preface and Notes to Letters of Madame du Deffand
'Mr Hope' to Mary Berry: 'Your preface [to her edition of the Letters of Madame du Deffand] I devoured the moment I got it. I have since not [italics]despatched[end italics], but finished your life [of Madame du Deffand], with the highest relish for its ease of style [...] I now feast upon your notes, and a delightful treat they are [...] No matter what, I read all out to Louisa, who owes you the whole of the few moments of enjoyment she feels at this period of anxious expectation'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Hope Print: Book
Mary Berry : Life of Madame du Deffand
'Mr Hope' to Mary Berry: 'Your preface [to her edition of the Letters of Madame du Deffand] I devoured the moment I got it. I have since not [italics]despatched[end italics], but finished your life [of Madame du Deffand], with the highest relish for its ease of style [...] I now feast upon your notes, and a delightful treat they are [...] No matter what, I read all out to Louisa, who owes you the whole of the few moments of enjoyment she feels at this period of anxious expectation'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Hope Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Two Martius
Mary Berry, Journal, Saturday 18 May 1811: 'I went with Joanna Baillie to Hampstead, to remain till Monday. Dined before four, and went out upon the Heath. Sat for above two hours in a delicious fine evening; afterwards read over together "The Two Martius," and criticised them, and likewise some of my other scraps, which I think Joanna liked less than I expected.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry and Joanna Baillie Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : ["scraps" of writings]
Mary Berry, Journal, Saturday 18 May 1811: 'I went with Joanna Baillie to Hampstead, to remain till Monday. Dined before four, and went out upon the Heath. Sat for above two hours in a delicious fine evening; afterwards read over together "The Two Martius," and criticised them, and likewise some of my other scraps, which I think Joanna liked less than I expected.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry and Joanna Baillie Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Can you tell me about "Jane Eyre", - who wrote it? I am told I wrote the 1st vol: and I don't know how to disbelieve it myself, - though I am wholly ignorant of the authorship. I cannot help feeling that the author must know not only my books but myself very well. My own family suppose me in the secret, till I deny it. With much improbability of incident, it is surely a very able book (outside of what I could have done of it) and the way in which the heroine comes out without conceit or egotism is, to me, perfectly wonderful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'O! "Esmond"! That book marks its own year in one's life. I never did any justice to Thackeray before; and I cannot
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Robert Southey : Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey
'I wanted to write about Malcolm's Life and Sothey's new letters, and other things; but I must stop now'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Henry Buckle : History of the Civilisation in England
'Tell Eras: that Buckle has been an immense treat...Of course I agree about the grave inconsistencies, serious disproportions &c; and I doubt whether he understands Condillac and that sort of men: but it is truly a great work, suggestive and productive.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
'what I write for is to thank you again for sending me your brother's [Charles Darwin's] book. As for thanking
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Victor Alfieri : Memoirs of the life & writings of Victor Alfieri...written by himself
'Read the life of Alfieri.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Victor Alfieri : Memoirs of the life & writings of Victor Alfieri...written by himself
'Finish the life of Alfieri'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Sara Sophia Hennell : Thoughts in Aid of Faith
'[Miss Hennell's] is a wonderful book for
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner
'No doubt it is to you that I owe this pleasure, - of Buckle's 2d vol. Maria has been cutting and skimming, and she opines that I shall find it a very great treat indeed. My best thanks to you for it, dear friend. I am in the thick of a very different sort of book now, - "Elsie Venner", which I did not mean to read; but a look at the first page carried me on: How immensely clever some of these Americans are! and their style of tale so new! I dislike all the part connected with Elsie: but I enjoy the New England atmosphere of the thing, and the wonderful power of deep and incessant observation'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : Causes of the Civil War in America [probably]
'We are reading Motley's last, - much surprised not to like it better. It is so diffuse and sinks so very low in its Carlylisms &c.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Charles Knight : Passages of a Working Life
'I have just been remonstrating with Mr Knight about a couple of sentences in his charming new volume "Some Passages in a Working Life &c.". He quotes an early and witless sneer of Macaulay's against the Americans, and himself applies and points it in a most offensive way. As he asked for my opinion of the book, I tacked this one bit of remonstrance on the thanks I could honestly give. I must mention (as I did to him) that there is a story about me in it which has not a word of truth in it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Theresa Lewis : Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year 1783 to 1852
'So it was you that sent me "Miss Berry"! That was a real good deed. I don't find that anybody enjoys it half so much as I do; but nobody I see had any clear idea of that trio, or cares about their times as I do. I have not finished it even yet, I am glad to say. I read it as you do; and moreover, a big book has come in which must be read at once, - Mr Grote's "Plato". That too is an immense enjoyment in its way. At first, it was pure delight; but as I go on I am rather dismayed at the amount of repetition in it...'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
George Grote : Plato, and the other Companions of Socrates
'So it was you that sent me "Miss Berry"! That was a real good deed. I don't find that anybody enjoys it half so much as I do; but nobody I see had any clear idea of that trio, or cares about their times as I do. I have not finished it even yet, I am glad to say. I read it as you do; and moreover, a big book has come in which must be read at once, - Mr Grote's "Plato". That too is an immense enjoyment in its way. At first, it was pure delight; but as I go on I am rather dismayed at the amount of repetition in it...'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mary Grote : A Lady's Walks in the South of France in 1863
'I wonder whether you have read that first book of Miss Eyre's ("Mary Eyre" of the Times) "A Lady's Walks in the South of France". What a disgusting book it is, - a begging book, avowedly written to get money, and disclosing the family poverty, and bemoaning herself all the way through, and preaching and censuring, right and left, and with such adulation of Brougham, as the patron!'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charles Babbage : Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
'I have been unexpectedly interested - unexpectedly as to degree - in my old friend Babbage's "Passages in the Life &c". I dare say you read it, and half forgot it, months or years ago. I did not like the look of it in the notices I saw: but I let it come in the Mudie box; and I have been almost terribly interested in it... His face and voice come back with a painful vividness while I read... Some tremendous glimpses in this book are like inspiration...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Barry Cornwall : Charles Lamb: A Memoir
'I am reading Mr Procter's "Ch.Lamb", - so full of affecting signs of his own failure, and so interesting in all ways. I could not help enjoying Ld Cornwallis, though half-ashamed to own it. Mrs Grote sends me her vol: of "Collected Papers", and some unpublished records of our time, - very interesting. They and I seemed to have rushed into a more vigorous intercourse than ever, as by a sort of accident'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charles Ross : The Correspondence of Charles, 1st Marquis of Cornwallis
'I am reading Mr Procter's "Ch.Lamb", - so full of affecting signs of his own failure, and so interesting in all ways. I could not help enjoying Ld Cornwallis, though half-ashamed to own it. Mrs Grote sends me her vol: of "Collected Papers", and some unpublished records of our time, - very interesting. They and I seemed to have rushed into a more vigorous intercourse than ever, as by a sort of accident'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Grote : Collected Papers in Prose and Verse. 1842-1862
'I am reading Mr Procter's "Ch.Lamb", - so full of affecting signs of his own failure, and so interesting in all ways. I could not help enjoying Ld Cornwallis, though half-ashamed to own it. Mrs Grote sends me her vol: of "Collected Papers", and some unpublished records of our time, - very interesting. They and I seemed to have rushed into a more vigorous intercourse than ever, as by a sort of accident'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Frances Edgeworth ? : [possibly] A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters by the late Mrs Edgeworth
'The two most interesting books I have read for some time are the Edgeworth Memoir (Lady Strangford's copy) and Ld Grey's 2 vols: of Correspondce between his father and Wm 4th (Lady Elgin's copy). I must not begin on either of them, or I shall write myself dead. I could not have supposed that any book could stir me as the Edgeworth correspondence does...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Henry, Earl Grey : The reform act, 1832; the correspondence of the late Earl Grey with His Majesty King William IV. and with Sir Herbert Taylor, from Nov. 1830 to June 1832
'The two most interesting books I have read for some time are the Edgeworth Memoir (Lady Strangford's copy) and Ld Grey's 2 vols: of Correspondce between his father and Wm 4th (Lady Elgin's copy). I must not begin on either of them, or I shall write myself dead. I could not have supposed that any book could stir me as the Edgeworth correspondence does...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Lost Tales of Miletus, The
'I don't know whether I shall lose your good opinion forever if I tell you a true thing; but I had rather you knew the worst: - that I am intensely enjoying, this day or two, "The Lost Tales of Miletus".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Epistle to Mr Gay
'Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was simultaneously complemented and embarrassed by Pope's tribute in "Epistle to Mr Gay". She sent a copy of the verses to her sister in Paris, but she explained she had "stiffle'd" them in England... Lady Mary characteristically felt the impropriety as much as the flattery of Pope's admiration'.
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wortley Montagu
Mary Wortley Montagu : [Letters]
'Seward had been reading a five-volume edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters, and she had confessed her irritation with Lady Mary's avowed contempt for Pope' [see letter to Mrs Childers, 1804]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [volume of poems]
'An example of vivid, if not particularly fair, criticism occurs in a letter from Lady Hertford to the countess of Pomfret in 1739. "Mr Pope has seen fit to publish a new volume of poems. It contains his 'Sober Advice', 'Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight', his 'Epistle to Augustus', and several things which he had sold singly... I presume [the poem "Engraved on the collar of a dog which I gave to his royal highness"] is to prove that he can descend into Bathos, with the same alacrity that he has formerly soared to the summit of Parnassus'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Hertford Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
'In a 1735 letter to Lady Hertford, [Elizabeth Singer] Rowe observes that the "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" "Seems to be writ with a malice more than human, and has surely something infernal in it. It is surprising, that a man can divest himself of the tender sentiments of nature so far, as deliberately to give anguish and confusion to beings of his own kind".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Singer Rowe Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : [poetry]
'Mary Lepel Hervey, although Pope's friend before her marriage,disparaged the poet in her mature correspondence. Attributing his polished style to Lord Bolingbroke's influence, she declared in 1748 that Pope "would certainly never have wrote so elegantly, but that, as he bragged,
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lepel Hervey Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Letters of Mr Pope and Several Eminent Persons
'[Mary] Jones particularly admired Pope's letters. In August 1735, not long after the publication of "Letters of Mr Pope and Several Eminent Persons", she wrote Martha Lovelace that "I've at last had the inexpressible Pleasure of reading Mr Pope's Letters; and am so well satisfied with 'em, that I shall read all future Letters (Except Miss Lovelace's) with a great deal less Pleasure for their sake. In his other Productions I have always admir'd the Author, but now I love the Man".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Jones Print: Book
Mark Akenside : [unknown]
'[Anna Seward's] training was not necessarily less rigorous for being informal and solitary. Seward scoffed at a male contemporary who claimed never to have read or studied poetry. "If Shakespeare's talents were miracles of uncultured intuition, we feel, that neither Milton's, Pope's, Akenside's, Gray's or Darwin's were such, but that poetic investigation, and long familiarity with the best writers in that line, cooperated to produce their excellence".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : [unknown]
'[Anna Seward's] training was not necessarily less rigorous for being informal and solitary. Seward scoffed at a male contemporary who claimed never to have read or studied poetry. "If Shakespeare's talents were miracles of uncultured intuition, we feel, that neither Milton's, Pope's, Akenside's, Gray's or Darwin's were such, but that poetic investigation, and long familiarity with the best writers in that line, cooperated to produce their excellence".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Satires
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [Ethic Epistles]
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Man
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Rape of the Lock, The
'When Erasmus Darwin espouses the late-century opinion that "poetry admits of few abstract terms", Seward replies, "poetry that is merely imaginative and picturesque may not. If we find few abstract terms in the 'Rape of the Lock', we find a profusion of them in the sublimer 'Essay on Man'".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : The Botanic Garden (part 1)
Horace Walpole (as 'Thelyphthorus') to Mary Berry, 28 April 1789: 'I send you the most delicious poem upon earth [Erasmus Darwin, "The Botanic Garden"] [...] This is only the Second Part; for like my king's eldest daughter in the Hieroglyphic Tales, the First part is not yet born yet. No matter, I can read this over and over again for ever'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Unknown
Erasmus Darwin : The Botanic Garden (first thirty lines)
Mary Berry to Horace Walpole [1789]: 'A thousand thanks for the "Botanic Garden." the first thirty lines, which I have just read, are delicious, and make me quite anxious to go on'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Unknown
Virgil : Works
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1791: 'Florence. -- Went to see the Laurentian Medicean Library [...] The librarian, a very civil Canonico Bandini, showed us the Virgil of the fourth century, which they call the oldest existing; it is very fairly written, but less easy to read than the one in the Vatican. We saw, too, the Horace that belonged to Petrarch, with some notes in it by his own hand. It is in large quarto, and not a beautiful manuscript from the number of notes and scoliastes interrupting and confusing the text.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Horace : Works
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1791: 'Florence. -- Went to see the Laurentian Medicean Library [...] The librarian, a very civil Canonico Bandini, showed us the Virgil of the fourth century, which they call the oldest existing; it is very fairly written, but less easy to read than the one in the Vatican. We saw, too, the Horace that belonged to Petrarch, with some notes in it by his own hand. It is in large quarto, and not a beautiful manuscript from the number of notes and scoliastes interrupting and confusing the text.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Francesco Petrarch : annotations to manuscript copy of works of Horace
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1791: 'Florence. -- Went to see the Laurentian Medicean Library [...] The librarian, a very civil Canonico Bandini, showed us the Virgil of the fourth century, which they call the oldest existing; it is very fairly written, but less easy to read than the one in the Vatican. We saw, too, the Horace that belonged to Petrarch, with some notes in it by his own hand. It is in large quarto, and not a beautiful manuscript from the number of notes and scoliastes interrupting and confusing the text.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Vittorio Alfieri : [unknown]
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [unknown]
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Robert Southey : Madoc
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [unknown]
'She read enormously, finding time and energy we wonder how. A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though she did include some novels - Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's sensation-making "Vathek", in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold". "Childe Harold's" only rival in her poetic reading was "The Faerie Queene". That was a reckless undertaking for the height of the London season; she may not, like so many of us, have quite finished "The Faerie Queene".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'She read enormously, finding time and energy we wonder how. A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though she did include some novels - Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's sensation-making "Vathek", in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold". "Childe Harold's" only rival in her poetic reading was "The Faerie Queene". That was a reckless undertaking for the height of the London season; she may not, like so many of us, have quite finished "The Faerie Queene".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara
'she asked [Byron] to recommend her some books of modern history. At present she was reading Sismondi's "Italian Republics". And she had read "Lara". Shakespeare alone possessed the same power as Byron had there displayed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
Jean Charles de Sismondi : Litt?rature du midi de l'Europe
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Rene Aubert de Vertot : [book(s) on Revolutions]
[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Robert Southey : Roderick
[Letter from Byron to Anabella Milbanke, 28 Nov 1814]. 'I think Southey's "Roderick" as near perfection as poetry can be - which considering how I dislike that school I wonder at. However, so it is. If he had never written anything else, he might safely stake his fame on the last of the Goths'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles
'they read books together and discussed them; Scott's "Lord of the Isles" was sent to Byron by Murray. It they did not only discuss, for he pointed out to her, "with a miserable smile", the description of the wayward bridegroom'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles
'they read books together and discussed them; Scott's "Lord of the Isles" was sent to Byron by Murray. It they did not only discuss, for he pointed out to her, "with a miserable smile", the description of the wayward bridegroom'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'Early in July appeared the first part of "Don Juan". "The impression was not so disagreeable as I expected", wrote Annabella. "In the first place I am very much relieved to find that there is not anything which I can be expected to notice... I do not feel inclined to continue the perusal. It is always a task to me now to read his works, in which, through all the levity, I discern enough to awake very painful feelings".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Serial / periodical
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Giaour
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Fare Thee Well
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [a Satire - on Annabella?]
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in 'The Giaour', the 'Fare thee well', and the 'Satire'. With the first she was highly pleased, from its efusion-of-feeling character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Five Years of Youth: or, Sense and Sentiment
'[Annabella] had been reading Harriet Martineau's "Five Years of Youth", and wrote to a friend: "it is very good - chiefly directed against Romance, and therefore not necessary for Ada".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
George Macdonald : Within and Without
'It was through the reading of his narrative poem, "Within and Without" (published in 1855, but written a few years earlier), that their acquaintance began. She wrote to him of her admiration, and soon afterwards they met'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Waverley novels]
'By the age of ten he had gone through E.W. Lane's three-volume translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night", Scott's Waverley novels, Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", the adventure stories of Captain Marryat, everything of Harrison Ainsworth, and other, now forgotten, works'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : [unknown]
'By the age of ten he had gone through E.W. Lane's three-volume translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night", Scott's Waverley novels, Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", the adventure stories of Captain Marryat, everything of Harrison Ainsworth, and other, now forgotten, works'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Somerset Maugham Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : [works]
'By the age of ten he had gone through E.W. Lane's three-volume translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night", Scott's Waverley novels, Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", the adventure stories of Captain Marryat, everything of Harrison Ainsworth, and other, now forgotten, works'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Edward Jerningham : Prologue to The Siege of Berwick
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 23 November 1793, on meeting Edward Jerningham ('the Charming Man') at a gathering at the home of their friend Anne Damer the previous evening: 'I congratulated the Charming highly on the success of his tragedy ["The Siege of Berwick", which opened 13 November at Covent Garden], and on his prologue, which I had seen in the papers and like'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Newspaper
[probably] James Murphy : [probably] Travels in Portugal ... in the Years 1789-90
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 22 November 1795: 'I will, while expecting Marchand [...] transcribe the wonderful Sanscrit paragraph which you found t'other morning in Murphy's "Portugal," and which you will like to possess: -- '"From whose splendid virtues, the great men, who delight to sport in the atoms which float in the beams of light issuing from the beauty of the leaf of the sleepy Ketahee of the diadem of the goddess Saraskatee, went to adorn the females of the eight points."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
[probably] James Murphy : [probably] Travels in Portugal ... in the Years 1789-90
Horace Walpole to Mary Berry, 22 November 1795: 'I will, while expecting Marchand [...] transcribe the wonderful Sanscrit paragraph which you found t'other morning in Murphy's "Portugal," and which you will like to possess: -- '"From whose splendid virtues, the great men, who delight to sport in the atoms which float in the beams of light issuing from the beauty of the leaf of the sleepy Ketahee of the diadem of the goddess Saraskatee, went to adorn the females of the eight points."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Two Martius
Mary Berry, Journal, 15 June 1812: 'Called by appointment on Sir G. Beaumont to meet [George] Colman [manager of Haymarket Theatre], and read with him 'The Two Martius.' As Sir George had told him that it was written by a woman, I owned myself to be that woman [...] I read the piece: he stopped me each time where he thought something piquant could be added'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Lord Cathcart : account of Battle of Borodino
Mary Berry, Journal, 9 October 1812: 'Read the newspapers, which contained the extraordinary letter of Lord Cathcart announcing the great defeat of the French, and their nineteenth bulletin dated Moscow!!!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Newspaper
Charles Brockden Brown : Edgar Huntley; or, the Sleep-walker
'Shelley reads Edgar Huntley to us'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francois de La Rochefoucauld : Maximes
'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Pere Goriot
'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham Print: Book
Pierre Loti (pseud.) : [exotic tales]
'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham Print: Book
John Henry, Cardinal Newman : [theological works]
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
George Meredith : [unknown]
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
Walter Pater : Imaginary Portraits
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : [unknown]
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
Edward Fitzgerald (trans.) : Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'Mary read to me some passages from Ld Byron's poems. I was not before so clearly aware [of] how much of the colouring our own feelings throw upon the liveliest delineations of other minds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Mary, A Fiction
'We go out on the rocks & Shelley & I read part of Mary a fiction'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Southey : Curse of Kehama, The
'Mary receives her first lesson in greek - She reads the curse of Kehama while Shelley walks out with Peacock'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
James Henry Lawrence : Empire of the Nairs; or, The Rights of Women, The
'read Political Justice & the empire of the Nairs'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff
'read Alexy Haimatoff - study a little greek - read Political Justice'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria
'We walk out - when we return Shelley talks with Jane and I read Wrongs of woman'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Julius (Or Lucus Annaeus) Florus : [possibly] Epitome bellorum omnium annorum
'in the evening read Cicero de Senectute & the Paradoxa - Night comes. Jane walks in her sleep & groans horribly. listen for two hours - at length bring her to Mary. Begin Julius Florus and finish the little Vol of Cicero'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : L'Allemagne (vol.3)
Sir Uvedale Price to Mary Berry, 29 March 1814: 'Since I wrote to you last, I have read "L'Allemagne," not in the usual way of reading, [italics]car je ne commencais pas, par le commencement[end italics]. My neighbour Peploe, who has read it, called upon me just as I had received it. He told me the first volume was highly entertaining; the second less so [...] the third very abstruse [...] He liked, however, particular parts [...] He told me, at the same time, that the subject of the third volume was distinct from those of the other two, being entirely on German philosophy. Upon this information, Lady Caroline [Carpenter] and my daughter having eagerly seized on the first volume, I began with the third, in which I found so many new and striking thoughts and reflections that, in order to recollect and dwell upon them again, I marked them as I went on'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Uvedale Price Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : L'Allemagne
Sir Uvedale Price to Mary Berry, 29 March 1814: 'Since I wrote to you last, I have read "L'Allemagne," not in the usual way of reading, [italics]car je ne commencais pas, par le commencement[end italics]. My neighbour Peploe, who has read it, called upon me just as I had received it. He told me the first volume was highly entertaining; the second less so [...] the third very abstruse [...] He liked, however, particular parts [...] He told me, at the same time, that the subject of the third volume was distinct from those of the other two, being entirely on German philosophy. Upon this information, Lady Caroline [Carpenter] and my daughter having eagerly seized on the first volume, I began with the third, in which I found so many new and striking thoughts and reflections that, in order to recollect and dwell upon them again, I marked them as I went on'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : L'Allemagne (vols 1-3)
Sir Uvedale Price to Mary Berry, 29 March 1814: 'Since I wrote to you last, I have read "L'Allemagne," not in the usual way of reading, [italics]car je ne commencais pas, par le commencement[end italics]. My neighbour Peploe, who has read it, called upon me just as I had received it. He told me the first volume was highly entertaining; the second less so [...] the third very abstruse [...] He liked, however, particular parts [...] He told me, at the same time, that the subject of the third volume was distinct from those of the other two, being entirely on German philosophy. Upon this information, Lady Caroline [Carpenter] and my daughter having eagerly seized on the first volume, I began with the third, in which I found so many new and striking thoughts and reflections that, in order to recollect and dwell upon them again, I marked them as I went on [...] I have now returned again to the first, and am reading the whole through [italics]de suite[end italics], and I find great pleasure in reading on without interruption, and great pleasure also in observing, [italics]en passant[end italics], the passages I had marked'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Uvedale Price Print: Book
Princess of Wales : Letters to the Queen of England
Mary Berry, Journal, 29 May 1814: 'The Princess [of Wales] sent for me at three o'clock. She made Lady Charlotte read to me the letters that had passed between the Queen and her on the subject of the drawing-rooms [i.e. two gatherings, to take place in June 1814, from which the Prince of Wales wished his wife to be excluded]. They were good, but too long, and sometime marked by Whitbread's lack of taste, who dictated them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Manuscript: Letter
Princess of Wales : Letter to the Speaker [?Parliamentary]
Mary Berry, Journal, 5 July 1814: 'The Princess [of Wales] sent for me to read a letter that she had sent to the Speaker [re proposed increase to her allowance].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Letter
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara
Mary Berry, Journal, 20 August 1814: 'Lord Rosslyn read to us "Lara," Lord Byron's new tale. It strongly marks his manner of thinking and writing. It is a sort of continuation of the "Corsair."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Alexander, second Earl of Rosslyn Print: Book
?Walter ?Scott : Life of Jonathan Swift
Mary Berry, Journal, 21 August 1814: 'I read "Swift's Life" in the new edition of his works by Walter Scott. It does not appear to me that there is much that is new.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry : Draft Life of Lady Russell
Mary Berry, Journal, 30 August 1817, from Genoa: 'Mr. Wishaw leaves to-morrow for Florence. I showed him a sketch of the beginning for "The Life of Lady Russell," which he much approved of [...] then during the evening he read to us the list of the MSS. of poor Horner, and some pieces of a journal of Lord Byron's in Switzerland, put down [italics]au coin de son etrange esprit[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wishaw Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : journal of travels in Switzerland (extracts)
Mary Berry, Journal, 30 August 1817, from Genoa: 'Mr. Wishaw leaves to-morrow for Florence. I showed him a sketch of the beginning for "The Life of Lady Russell," which he much approved of [...] then during the evening he read to us the list of the MSS. of poor Horner, and some pieces of a journal of Lord Byron's in Switzerland, put down [italics]au coin de son etrange esprit[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wishaw Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Memoir of Lady Russell
Mary Berry, Journal, 12 December 1818: 'I worked all the morning; before dinner I read in my own room to Lady Hardwicke, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, and my sister, what I had written of Lady Russell's Memoir, with which they expressed themselves much pleased.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Memoir of Lady Russell
Mary Berry, Journal, 19 December 1818: 'Sir James Mackintosh in my room this morning; hearing me read over and commenting on my "Memoir of Lady Russell," spoke frankly, seemed pleased, and satisfied me very tolerably with his opinion [...] In the evening he read some of Milton's "Paradise Regained" to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Life of Lady Russell
Joanna Baillie to Mary Berry, 24 July 1819: 'Your "Life of Lady Russell," as far as my acquaintance extends, gives general satisfaction [...] I must thank you again for your copy so kindly bestowed upon your unworthy servant [...] I have, indeed, read it with great interest'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
Mary Berry : Life of Lady Russell
'Mr Wishaw' to Mary Berry, 14 July 1819: 'On returning from the country I find your kind and acceptable present [Berry's Life of Lady Russell] [...] I have read over the whole with great interest and satisfaction'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wishaw Print: Book
Martial : unknown
Mary Berry to Anne Damer, from Rome, 3 April 1821: 'I have got a charming little [italics]savant[end italics], who reads with me two or three times a week [...] I have been excessively amused in reading Martial, Livy, Suetonius, &c. &c. with him on the spot where they were written, and comparing the descriptions with the actual state of the scenes described.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Hon Mrs C. Scott : MS
Mary Berry, Journal, 28 August 1823: 'Loitered in the garden with Car. [Hon. Mrs Scott, novelist], and read the MS. which she gave me.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Berry : Introduction to The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England
Joanna Baillie to Mary Berry, 24 April 1828, acknowledging receipt, the previous day, of her copy of Berry's "The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England" (vol.1): 'I have had no opportunity of reading it, part of the introduction excepted, which I liked much. It reads well, being clear and sensible, and happily expressed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England (vol. 1)
Lady Charlotte Lindsay to Mary Berry, 25 April 1828, on vol.1 of Berry's "Comparative View of Social Life in France and England": 'Your book is [italics]quite new[end italics] and perfectly delightful to me [...] I had no idea that I should have derived so much amusement from it [...] it exactly suits the extent of my reading and reasoning powers'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Lindsay Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England (vol.1)
Joanna Baillie to Mary Berry, 9 June 1828: 'I have read your "View of the Social Life, &c.," twice; and it has lost nothing, but rather gained, on the second perusal. The style is clear and scholar-like [...] it is written in a good spirit of liberality and rectitude, and it abounds in excellent observations concisely and cleverly expressed' [goes on to express reservations, among these being that Berry's account of Voltaire's mistress Madame du Chatelet "rather offends as to that delicacy which is expected in the writings of a woman"].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Elements of Morality, for the use of children
'read Elements of Morality and Smellie'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England (vol 1)
Professor W. Smythe to Mary Berry, [1828]: 'Your book [vol. 1 of "The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England"] quite succeeded with me, giving me a great deal of information that was very entertaining, and that had not reached me before [...] I still observe in it some long sentences, which it would have been very easy for you, I should have thought, to have broken up [...] You have not always remembered that you are writing for an English, not a French public -- where not only men, but men, women, and children, read, when a book is considered worth reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Professor W. Smythe Print: Book
Lazare N.M. Carnot : Memoir adresse au Roi en juillet 1814
'I read Carnot's memorial - he is a common place man'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England (vol 1)
Charles Poulett Thomson to Mary Berry, [1828]: 'I return you your book [vol. 1 of "The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England" with many thanks for the instruction and amusement which it has afforded me [...] I hope you have not abandoned your intention of following it up by a second volume.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Poulett Thomson Print: Book
Mary Berry : The Comparative View of Social Life in France and England (vol 2)
Joanna Baillie to Mary Berry, [1831]: 'I have just read your proof-sheet [of second volume of Berry's "Comparative View of Social Life in France and England"] [goes on to express pleasure at Berry's mentions of herself (Baillie) in the work)]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: In proof
Charles Brockden-Brown : Edgar Huntley; or, the Sleep-walker
'Shelley writes his critique & then reads Edgar Huntley to us all all day and all the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mrs Somerville : [work on astronomy]
Mary Berry to 'Mrs Somerville', from Bellevue, September 1834: 'I have just finished reading your book [apparently on astronomy], which has [italics]entertained[end italics] me extremely, and at the same time, I hope, improved my moral character in the Christian virtue of humility [...] Humbled I must be, by finding my own intellect unequal to following, beyond a first step, the explanations by which you seek to make easy to comprehension the marvellous phenomena of the universe'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Victor Jaquemont : Letters describing a journey in India
Mary Berry to Thomas Babington Macaulay, 15 October 1834: 'Have they sent you among your books "Victor Jaquemont's Letters?" they are perfectly original [...] I never knew before half so much of the life of our countrymen in India; and the author himself is so natural and unaffected a character, that I had well-night cried at his death, as if it had not been true.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Princess Dashkoff : Life and Writings
Mary Berry on the Life and writings (including memoirs) of the Princess Dashkoff, published 1840: 'The whole work -- of which I saw only the first part, which comes down to 1783, when she returned to Russia after her tour through Italy -- is the picture, not only of a human mind and character placed in most extraordinary circumstances, and acting a most extraordinary part, but endowed by nature with those extraordinary powers, and that energy, which I have ever thought [...] always accompanied by [...] warm, pure, and ardent affections of the heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book
Mary Berry : Letter to Lord Francis Jeffrey
Lord Francis Jeffrey to Mary Berry, 22 April 1842 ('Friday Evening'): 'I have just been reading over your admirable letter for a third time, and, after nourishing the meditations to which it led by gazing for half-an-hour on the long waves which come glittering in the moonlight to the beach below my windows [...] find that I cannot lay myself down with a quiet conscience till I have thanked you for the pleasure it has given, [italics]and the good it has done me[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Francis Jeffrey Manuscript: Letter
Mr Everett : Inaugural discourse given at Harvard College
Lady Theresa Lewis reproduces letter from Mary Berry to 'Mr. Everett' of Harvard College, of 25 August 1846, in which she praises, and discusses in detail, the 'inaugural discourse at Harvard College' (on educational issues) of which he had sent her a copy within the past year.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry
Geoffrey Chaucer : Works
Extracted by G. C. Moore Smith from J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "Memoranda on the Tragedy of Hamlet"(1879): 'There was once in existence a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, 1598, with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey, one of those notes being in the following terms: -- "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespear's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark have it in them to please the wiser sort."'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Osorius : unknown
'In ["Ciceronianus" (published 1577; delivered c.1575)] [...] Harvey says he has been for nearly twenty weeks in his Tusculan villa, i.e. at his father's house in Saffron Walden, assiduously studying not only the greatest of the old Roman writers, but renaissance writers such as Sturm, Manutius, Osorius, Sigonius and Buchanan. He had given more time to Cicero than to all the rest put together, yet sometimes he had dropped Cicero on Friendship to take up Osorius on Glory'.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Cicero : Works including On Friendship
'In ["Ciceronianus" (published 1577; delivered c.1575)] [...] Harvey says he has been for nearly twenty weeks in his Tusculan villa, i.e. at his father's house in Saffron Walden, assiduously studying not only the greatest of the old Roman writers, but renaissance writers such as Sturm, Manutius, Osorius, Sigonius and Buchanan. He had given more time to Cicero than to all the rest put together, yet sometimes he had dropped Cicero on Friendship to take up Osorius on Glory'.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Osorius : Works including On Glory
'In ["Ciceronianus" (published 1577; delivered c.1575)] [...] Harvey says he has been for nearly twenty weeks in his Tusculan villa, i.e. at his father's house in Saffron Walden, assiduously studying not only the greatest of the old Roman writers, but renaissance writers such as Sturm, Manutius, Osorius, Sigonius and Buchanan. He had given more time to Cicero than to all the rest put together, yet sometimes he had dropped Cicero on Friendship to take up Osorius on Glory'.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Ramus : Ciceronianus
'There had been a time when [...] [Gabriel Harvey] had been a pure Ciceronian [...] He had then come across the "Ciceronianus" of Sambucus -- that had led him to the "Ciceronianus"of Ramus [...] He now read Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Pliny and Columella, and found merits in all.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Caesar : unknown
'There had been a time when [...] [Gabriel Harvey] had been a pure Ciceronian [...] He had then come across the "Ciceronianus" of Sambucus -- that had led him to the "Ciceronianus"of Ramus [...] He now read Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Pliny and Columella, and found merits in all.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Varro : unknown
'There had been a time when [...] [Gabriel Harvey] had been a pure Ciceronian [...] He had then come across the "Ciceronianus" of Sambucus -- that had led him to the "Ciceronianus"of Ramus [...] He now read Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Pliny and Columella, and found merits in all.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : Parabolae
'[Gabriel] Harvey no doubt has the incident [of Philip, Lord Surrey's 'attempts [...] on the virtue' of Harvey's sister Mercy, c. Christmas 1574] in mind when in his copy of Erasmus' "Parabolae" to the words "stultus magnifica fortuna iniucunda", he adds the notes, "you knowe, who vsed to write: 'Vnhappy Philip'."'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Richard Mant : unknown
'Palm Sunday Appropriate readings this week from Mant (?) [sic] &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Dr Sanford : lecture on Good Friday
'Read Dr Sandford's lecture on Good Friday.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole
Baldassare Castiglione : The Book of the Courtier
'[Gabriel Harvey's] marginalia show that he studied Castiglione [...] with considerable care [...] In 1572 he acquired [Thomas] Hoby's translation of Castiglione's [italics]Courtier[end italics] and annotated it copiously.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Aristotle : Organon
'In 1568 [Gabriel] Harvey purchased a copy of Aristotle's "Organon"; in 1572 he was given a copy of Aristotle's "Rhetoric". Both Greek texts were copiously annotated and thus indicate that they were carefully studied.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Aristotle : Rhetoric
'In 1568 [Gabriel] Harvey purchased a copy of Aristotle's "Organon"; in 1572 he was given a copy of Aristotle's "Rhetoric". Both Greek texts were copiously annotated and thus indicate that they were carefully studied.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Audomarus Talaeus : Academia
'About 1570 [Gabriel] Harvey purchased and read the [italics]Academia[end italics] of Audomarus Talaeus, a close associate and disciple of [Peter] Ramus in his programme of teaching reform.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : Parabolae
'[Erasmus's "Parabolae"] was acquired by [Gabriel] Harvey in 1566, read by him at some time thereafter, and was re-read in September of 1577.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : Parabolae
'[Erasmus's "Parabolae"] was acquired by [Gabriel] Harvey in 1566, read by him at some time thereafter, and was re-read in September of 1577.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton : A Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophesies
'Throughout [Gabriel] Harvey's copy of [Lord Henry Howard's "A Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophesies"] are underlinings and comments [on the necessity of patience, Howard's work having contained attacks on Harvey's astrologer brother]'.
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : Works
'[Gabriel] Harvey's favourite books were read and annotated a number of times [...] at the conclusion of [his Erasmus] is a large inscription which reads: "Relegi mense Septembri. 1577: Gabriel Harveius".'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Frontinus : The stratagemes
'In [Gabriel] Harvey's copy of Frontinus, there is evidence of an initial reading in 1578 with marginalia from this period as well as from 1580 and 1588.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Frontinus : The stratagemes
'In [Gabriel] Harvey's copy of Frontinus, there is evidence of an initial reading in 1578 with marginalia from this period as well as from 1580 and 1588.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Frontinus : The stratagemes
'In [Gabriel] Harvey's copy of Frontinus, there is evidence of an initial reading in 1578 with marginalia from this period as well as from 1580 and 1588.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
George North : Description of Swedland, Gotland, and Finland
'In George North's "Description of Swedland, Gotland, and Finland" (1561), on sig.G2r next to a textual discussion of the "Swecian Language" and a copy of "The Lordes Prayer" in Swedish, Harvey adds: "The same radical of owre Inglish, & Scottish, notwithstanding sundrie dialects, or idioms, even amongst owrselves".'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Francois Rabelais : unknown
'Although he read Rabelais and several other French authors in the original, it is unlikely that [Gabriel] Harvey's mastery of this language approached that of Italian'.
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Richard Perceval : Bibliotheca Hispanica
'In the early 1590s [Gabriel Harvey] studied Spanish with the aid of Antonio de Corro's "Spanish Grammer" (1590) and Richard Perceval's "Bibliotheca Hispanica"(1591), an English, Spanish, Latin dictionary printed as an adjunct to Corro's grammar.'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Peter Whitehorne : Certain wayes for the ordering of Soldiours
'[One] branch of [Gabriel] Harvey's marginalia [...] has to do with his study of the techniques of warfare. Extensive notes in this area are found in his copies of [...] Machiavelli (Peter Whitehorne's 1573 translation of the "Arte of Warre"), and Whitehorne's "Certaine wayes for the ordering of Soldiours" (1574).'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Heinrich Rantzau : Commentarius Bellicus ... praecepta, consilia et stratagemata
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595: 'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Marco Antonio Gandino : unknown
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595: 'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Carlo Theti : unknown
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595: 'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Sir Roger Williams : unknown
Gabriel Harvey's favourite authors on warfare, listed in his copy of Machiavelli, "The Arte of Warre", after 1595: 'Mie principal Autors for Warr, after much reading, & long consideration: [...] For the Art, Vegetius, Machiavel & Sutcliff: for Stratagems, Gandino, & Ranzovius: for Fortification, Pyrotechnie, & engins, Tetti, & Digges [Stratioticos]: for the old Roman most worthie Discipline & Action, Caesar: for the new Spanish, & Inglish excellent Discipline & Action, Sir Ro[ger]: Williams.'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Philostratus : unknown
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading: '"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Theodore Zwinger : Theatrum
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading: '"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Theocritus : "Idyll I"
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading: '"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Homer : unknown
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading: '"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Virgil : unknown
'The marginalia [dating from late 1570s-c.1608] on fol.3v [of Lodovico Domenichi, "Facetie, motti et burle, di diversi signori et persone private" (1571)] record Eutrapelus's [i.e Gabriel Harvey's] reading: '"What kinds of unique authors does Eutrapelus read daily? Eunapius, with Tacitus, Philostratus with Julian, Zwinger's "Theatre" with Gandino, Bartas with Rabelais, Theocritus's "Idyll I" with the epitaphs of Bion and Adonis. Three heroic shields (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil) with the "seventh day" of Bartas, Solomon's "Song of Songs" with the Behemoth of Job and the Leviathan"' (translated from Latin).
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Barnabe Barnes : Parthenophil and Parthenope. Sonnettes, madrigals, elegies and odes.
'On sig. A2 of "A New Letter of Notable Contents" (1593) [Gabriel] Harvey refers to [Barnabe Barnes, "Parthenophil and Parthenophe" as one of the recently-read books received from [John] Wolfe [publisher for whom Harvey acted as reader].'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
George Buchanan : Ane admonition direct to the trew Lordis mantenaris of the Kingis Graces Authoritie M.G.B. ... accordyng to the Scottish copie Printed at Strivilyng by Robert Lekpreuik
Virginia F. Stern notes 'Many underlinings and MS. notes' in Gabriel Harvey's copy of George Buchanan, "Ane admonition direct to the trew Lordis mantenaris of the Kingis Graces Authoritie" (1571), as well as comment '"A fine Discourse of Buchanan, but bitter in his Invective veine"'.
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
Mary Roberts : Annals of my Village
'Read "Annals of my village" - the month.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Sir R Phillips : Personal Tour
'Read a portion of Sir R Phillips' Personal tour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Cicero :
Harriet Martineau on school life: 'We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar [...] Cicero, Virgil, and a little Horace were our main reading then'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Mr Perry's school Print: Book
Virgil :
Harriet Martineau on school life: 'We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar [...] Cicero, Virgil, and a little Horace were our main reading then'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Mr Perry's school Print: Book
Horace :
Harriet Martineau on school life: 'We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar [...] Cicero, Virgil, and a little Horace were our main reading then'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Mr Perry's school Print: Book
Petrarch : sonnets
Harriet Martineau on her passion, aged eighteen, for translation: 'Our cousin J. M. L., then studying for his profession in Norwich, used to read Italian with Rachel [her sister] and me [...] before breakfast. We made some considerable progress, through the usual course of prose authors and poets; and out of this grew a fit which Rachel and I at one time took, in concert with our companions and neighbours, the C.'s, to translate Petrarch [sonnets] [...] I believe we really succeeded pretty well'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet and Rachel Martineau, and "C" family Print: Book
Dr Carpenter : Notes and Observations on the Gospel History
Harriet Martineau on Bible studies in early adulthood: 'I studied the Bible incessantly and immensely; both by daily reading of chapters [...] and by getting hold of all commentaries and works of elucidation that I could lay my hands on. A work of Dr. Carpenter's, begun but never finished, called "Notes and Observations on the Gospel History" [...] first put me on this track of study [...] It was while reading Mr. Kenrick's translation from the German of "Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," with which I was thoroughly bewitched, that I conceived [...] the audacious idea of giving a somewhat resembling account of the Jews and their country, under the immediate expectation of the Messiah, and even in his presence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mr Kenrick : Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
Harriet Martineau on Bible studies in early adulthood: 'I studied the Bible incessantly and immensely; both by daily reading of chapters [...] and by getting hold of all commentaries and works of elucidation that I could lay my hands on. A work of Dr. Carpenter's, begun but never finished, called "Notes and Observations on the Gospel History" [...] first put me on this track of study [...] It was while reading Mr. Kenrick's translation from the German of "Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," with which I was thoroughly bewitched, that I conceived [...] the audacious idea of giving a somewhat resembling account of the Jews and their country, under the immediate expectation of the Messiah, and even in his presence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : article on "Female Writers on Practical Divinity"
Harriet Martineau hears her first (pseudonymously) published work read by her unsuspecting eldest brother: 'After tea he said "[...] I will read you something"; and he held out his hand for the new "[Monthly] Repository." After glancing at it, he exclaimed, "They have got a new hand here. Listen." After a paragraph, he repeated, "Ah! this is a new hand; they have had nothing so good as this for a long while." [...] I was silent, of course.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau : Devotional Exercises
Harriet Martineau on her early writings: 'I immediately after [the publication of her first periodical essay] began to write my first work, -- "Devotional Exercises," [...] I remember my brother's anxious doubting looks, as he read the M.S.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : My Servant Rachel
Harriet Martineau on one of her early publications: 'A most excellent young servant of ours [...] went out to Madeira with my brother and his family [...] Her history was a rather remarkable, and a very interesting one; and I wrote it in the form of four of Houlston's penny tracts. He threw together, and made a little book of them; and the heroine, who would never have heard of them as tracts, was speedily put in possession of her Memoirs in the form of the little book called "My Servant Rachel." An aunt of mine, calling on her one day, found her standing in the middle of the floor, and her husband reading the book over her shoulder.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martineau family servant, and husband Print: Book
Mrs Marcet : Conversations on Political Economy
'It was in the autumn of 1827, I think, that a neighbour lent my [Harriet Martineau's] sister Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Political Economy." I took up the book, chiefly to see what Political Economy precisely was; and great was my surprise to find that I had been teaching it unawares, in my stories about Machinery and Wages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : "Weal and Woe in Garveloch"
Harriet Martineau on her concerns about the acceptability of some of her writings: 'While writing "Weal and Woe in Garveloch," the perspiration many a time streamed down my face, though I knew there was not a line in it which might not be read aloud in any family. The misery arose from my seeing how the simplest statements and reasonings might and probably would be perverted [...] when the number was finished, I read it aloud to my mother and aunt [...] they were as complacent and easy as they had been interested and attentive.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau : volume containing "Garveloch" stories
Harriet Martineau, on a response to her series of "Tales", denounced as 'improper' in the Quarterly Review, by a woman lent the 'Garveloch' stories by one of Martineau's friends: 'A few days after, [she] brought back the book, saying [...] it was so harmless that her husband had read it aloud to the young people in the evening [having been offered another] [...] The lady and her husband read the whole series through in this way, and never could find out the "improper book."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Series of Tales
Harriet Martineau, on a response to her series of "Tales", denounced as 'improper' in the Quarterly Review, by a woman lent the 'Garveloch' stories by one of Martineau's friends: 'A few days after, [she] brought back the book, saying [...] it was so harmless that her husband had read it aloud to the young people in the evening [having been offered another] [...] The lady and her husband read the whole series through in this way, and never could find out the "improper book."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon woman and husband Print: Book
Christopher Wieland : Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus
'read "P. Proteus" in the even'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Charles Brockden Brown : Philip Stanley; or, the Enthusiasm of Love
'read Philip Stanley - very stupid'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Louis-Marie Prudhomme : [unknown, possibly one of his French revolutionary works]
'S. reads Prud'homme aloud to us'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Christopher Martin Wirland : Geschichte des Agathon
'read Agathon part of which I like but it [is] not so good as Peregrine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Christopher Martin Wirland : Geschichte des Agathon
'finish Agathon - I do not like it. Wieland displays some most detestable opinions - he is one of those men who alter all their opinions when they are about 40 and then thinking that it will be the same with every one think themselves the only proper monitors of youth'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Lord Macartney : Journal of an Embassy to China
'read Embassy to China. finish it in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles Rollin : The ancient history of the Egyptians
'In the room is a library to which we can at any time resort, consisting of Tillotson, Blair, Howe and Watt's Sermons, Sherlock on Death, Watts' world to come, Rollin's "Ancient History", Josephur, Hervey's "Meditations", Hervey's letters, Edwards on the religions, Affections, Pope, Kirke White, Cowper, Milton, Henry + Scott's Commentary, Sherlock on a Future state, etc, etc. Of these made some use of Blair, Rollin, Hervey, Sherlock on Death, Dr Johnson's poems, etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Sir Richard Phillips : Personal Tour
'Read in Sir Phillip's "Personal Tour" - curios of natural history... Read a portion of Blair on death.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Richard Phillips : Tour
'Read a portion of Sir R Phillips "Tour".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Richard Phillips : Tour
'Read portions if Sir Rd Phillip's "Tour" and Journal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Richard Phillips : Journal
'Read portions if Sir Rd Phillip's "Tour" and Journal.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Stories including "Cousin Marshall"
'[Elizabeth Fry] told me [Harriet Martineau] that her brother, J. J. Gurney, and other members of her family had become convinced by reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my tales that they had been for a long course of years doing mischief where they meant to do good; that they were now convinced that the true way of benefiting the poor was to reform the Poor-law system'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J. J. Gurney Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : Stories including "Cousin Marshall"
'[Elizabeth Fry] told me [Harriet Martineau] that her brother, J. J. Gurney, and other members of her family had become convinced by reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my tales that they had been for a long course of years doing mischief where they meant to do good; that they were now convinced that the true way of benefiting the poor was to reform the Poor-law system'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Family of Elizabeth Fry Print: Unknown
Richard Phillips : Tour
'Read portions if Sir Rd Phillip's "Tour".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Sir William Temple : [work on Holland]
Harriet Martineau, on research for a story on Bills of Exchange to be set either in Holland or South America: 'I thought Holland on the whole the more convenient of the two; so I dipped into some book about that country (Sir William Temple, I believe it was), picked out the two ugliest Dutch names I could find, made them into a firm, and boldly advertised them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Richard Phillips : Tour
'Read an acct of the walkers of Rotherham in Sir Rich'd's book. I knew them well at Scarborough i.e. the descendents of the original where, in the season, they were constant visitors ... [quote form book] ... Sir Rd's character of the Yorkshire people is very good and correct: it is the character of praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Maria Graham : unknown
Harriet Martineau, on her research for a story to be set in Ceylon: 'I gathered what I could from books, but really feared being obliged to give up a singularly good illustrative scene for want of the commonest facts concerning the social life of the Cingalese. I found scarcely anything even in Maria Graham and Heber. At this precise time, a friend happened to bring to my lodging [...] Sir Alexander Johnstone, who had just returned from governing Ceylon [...] Before we had known one another half an hour, I confided to him my difficulty. He started off [...] and was soon at the door again, with his carriage full of books, prints and other illustrations [...] Among the volumes he left with me was a Columbo almanack, which furnished me with names, notices of customs, and other valuable matters.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Garcilaso de la Vega : History of the Incas
To Miss Hunt, April 7, 1794 'At present I am puzzling at Persian and Arabic, and I mean to begin Hebrew. I get on at least with Spanish, for I have been able to meet with only one book since I read Don Quixotte, which was the "History of the Incas" by Garcillaso de la Vega. I was very pleased with it, though it is very long and in some parts tedious.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Stories including "Cousin Marshall"
'Since reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my Numbers, [Lord Henley] had dropped his subscriptions to some hurtful charities, and had devoted his funds to Education, Benefit Societies and Emigration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Henley Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : Life and Correspondence
'After reading Southey's Life and Correspondence, the maintenance of that friendship [between the conservative Southey and the more radical William Taylor] appears to me [Harriet Martineau] more singular than when we young people used to catch a glimpse in the street [at Norwich] of the author of "Thalaba" and "Kehama."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Tuscular Disputations
To Miss Hunt Shirley, July 28, 1795 'I must tell you that I cannot help being quite reconciled to Cicero... If you have not yet met with it, only read, as a sample, the first book of his "Tuscular disputations", "de contemrenda morte", and I think you will agree with me, that with the addition of Christianity to confirm his supposition, and rectify a few mistakes in them, and the knowledge of the true state of the universe, no doctrine can be more perfect than his; and that half the modern books on the subject might have been spared, had the writers of them, before they began, read this dialogue.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Edward Hyde Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and civil wars in England
To Miss Hunt Shirley, July 28, 1795 'I have just finished Clarendon's "History of the rebellion", which Miss Bowdler long ago desired me to read. It is extremely interesting and instructive.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
R. Monckton Milnes : poems
'My [Harriet Martineau's] pleasure in [R. Monckton Milnes's poems] was greatest when I read them in my Tynemouth solitude. My copy is marked all over with hieroglyhics involving the emotions with which I read them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mrs Marsh : The Admiral's Daughter
'I [Harriet Martineau] was spending a couple of days at Mrs. Marsh's, when she asked me whether I would let her read to me "one or two little stories" which she had written. From her way of speaking of them, and from her devotion to her children [...] I concluded these to be children's stories. She ordered a fire in her room, and there we shut ourselves up for the reading. What she read was no child's story, but "The Admiral's Daughter." My amazement may be conceived. We were going to dine at the Wedgwoods': and a strange figure we must have cut there; for we had been crying so desperately that there was no concealing the marks of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Marsh Manuscript: Unknown
Mrs Marsh : Two Old Men's Tales (including The Admiral's Daughter)
'Mrs. Marsh asked me what I thought of getting her tales published. I offered to try if, on reading the manuscript at home, I thought as well of it ["The Admiral's Daughter"] as after her own most moving delivery of it. A second reading left no doubt in my mind; and I had the pleasure of introducing the "Two Old Men's Tales" to the world through Messrs. Saunders and Otley'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : Tales
'[S. T. Coleridge] told me [Harriet Martineau] that he (the last person whom I should have suspected) read my tales as they came out on the first of the month'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
Harriet Martineau on her first acquaintance with Robert Browning's poetry, 'a wonderful event': 'Mr. Macready put "Paracelsus" into my hand, when I was staying at his house, and I read a canto before going to bed. For the first time in my life, I passed a whole night without sleeping a wink.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Robert Browning : Sordello
'The unbounded expectation I [Harriet Martineau] formed from "Paracelsus"[...] was sadly disappointed when "Sordello" came out. I was so wholly unable to understand it that I supposed myself ill.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Frederika Bremer : Brothers and Sisters
'A neighbour lent me [Miss Bremer's] novel, "Brothers and Sisters," the first volume of which we thought admirable: but the latter part about Socialism, Mesmerism, and all manner of [italics]isms[end italics] which she did not understand, made us blush as we read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau and neighbour Print: Book
Tobias George Smolett : History of England
To Miss Hunt, December 12 1792 'The "Lusiad" I never read. It was Middleton's "Life of Cicero" that I meant. I was not tired with its length because the chief of its contents were new to me. I have lately undertaken Smollet's "History of England", but must leave it in the middle.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels
The elderly Harriet Martineau reflects upon her altered reading capacity: 'I could not now read "Lalla Rookh" through before breakfast, as I did when it appeared. I cannot read new novels [...] while I can read with more pleasure than ever the old favourites, -- Miss Austen's and Scott's. My pleasure in Voyages and Travels is almost an insanity'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : work on Toussaint L'Ouverture
Harriet Martineau, on plans for, and execution of, her work on Toussaint L'Ouverture: 'I went to my confidante, with a sheetful of notes, and a heartful of longings to draw that glorious character [...] But my friend could not see the subject as I did [...] I gave it up; but a few years after, when ill at Tynemouth, I reverted to my scheme and fulfilled it; and my kind adviser, while never liking the subject in an artistic sense, graciously told me that the book had kept her up, over her dressing-room fire, till three in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Stories including "Ella of Garveloch"
'At a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms, some time before [Queen Victoria's accession] (I forget what year it was) the Duchess of Kent sent Sir John Conroy to me [Harriet Martineau] with a message of acknowledgement of the usefulness of my books to the Princess [Victoria]: and I afterwards heard more particulars of the eagerness with which the little lady read the stories on the first day of the month [...] Her "favourite" of my stories is "Ella of Garveloch."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Victoria Print: Serial / periodical
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder : Floods in Morayshire
Harriet Martineau on inspirations and research for her story 'Settlers at Hoime': 'Tait's Magazine of last year had an article of De Quincy's which made me think of snow-storms for a story: -- then it occurred to me that floods were less hackneyed [...] Floods suggested Lincolnshire for the scene, and Lauder's book (Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's "Floods in Morayshire," read many years before) for the material. For Lincolnshire I looked into the Penny Cyclopedia, and there found references to other articles'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Retrospect of Western Travel
'[A friend] one day desired to be allowed to see and criticise the first chapter of my [Harriet Martineau's] "Retrospect of Western Travel." I gave him the MS. at night; and in the morning he produced it, covered with pencil marks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : articles on Household Education
Harriet Martineau to 'Mr Atkinson', 21 November 1847: 'I saw a sort of scared smile on Mrs. ----'s face the other day, when in talking about education, I said we had yet to see what could be done by a direct appeal to human nature. She, liberal as she is, thinks we have such active bad tendencies [...] that we can do nothing without [...] Help. Yet she, and Mrs. ---- too, devours my Household education papers, as if she had never met with anything true before on that subject.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : Deerbrook
Charlotte Bronte (writing as Currer Bell) to Harriet Martineau, 7 November 1849: 'When C.B. first read "Deerbrook" he tasted a new and keen pleasure [...] "Deerbrook" ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas, and rectified his views of life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'When I [Harriet Martineau] read ["Jane Eyre"], I was convinced that it was by some friend of my own, who had portions of my childish experience in his or her mind.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Household Education
'"Currer Bell" [Charlotte Bronte] told me [Harriet Martineau] that she had read with astonishment those parts of "Household Education" which relate my own experience. It was like meeting her own [?]fetch'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Letter to Assistant poor-law Commissioner
'I [Harriet Martineau] wrote a letter [...] to an Assistant Poor-law Commissioner, who was earnest in his endeavours to get workhouses supplied with milk and vegetables, by the labour of the inmates on the land. To my amazement, I found my letter in the "Times," one day while I was at Bolton.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Newspaper
Harriet Martineau : Letter
Harriet Martineau on the death of a Town Missionary acquaintance of hers: 'A friend of his at Birmingham wrote to me that he declared himself dying [of consumption] [...] she immediately wrote to suggest to me that a letter from me would gratify him. There was scarcely anything I would rather have done [Martineau having abandoned her Christian faith]: but it was impossible to refuse. I wrote at once [...] There was not a word about the future, or God, or even Christ. It was a letter of sympathy in his benevolent and happy life, and also, of course, in his present weakness. It reached him on the last day of his life. It was read to him. When he a little revived, he asked for it, and read it himself; and then desired his wife to tell all who loved him of "ths last flush on his darkness."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Letter
Harriet Martineau : Letter
Harriet Martineau on the death of a Town Missionary acquaintance of hers: 'A friend of his at Birmingham wrote to me that he declared himself dying [of consumption] [...] she immediately wrote to suggest to me that a letter from me would gratify him. There was scarcely anything I would rather have done [Martineau having abandoned her Christian faith]: but it was impossible to refuse. I wrote at once [...] There was not a word about the future, or God, or even Christ. It was a letter of sympathy in his benevolent and happy life, and also, of course, in his present weakness. It reached him on the last day of his life. It was read to him. When he a little revived, he asked for it, and read it himself; and then desired his wife to tell all who loved him of "ths last flush on his darkness."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Letter
Mr Atkinson : Letter on "distribution of the brain"
'When "Currer" [Charlotte Bronte] and I [Harriet Martineau] came home, there were proof-sheets [of Martineau's correspondence with Atkinson] lying; and I read her Mr. Atkinson's three letters about the distribution of the brain.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: In proof
Harriet Martineau and H.G. Atkinson : Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development
Charlotte Bronte to Harriet Martineau, on Martineau's published correspondence with Atkinson: 'Having read your book, I cannot now think it will create any outcry. You are tender of others: -- you are serious, reverent and gentle.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Mary and her Grandmother
Maria Weston Chapman on Harriet Martineau's story 'Mary and her Grandmother': 'I found it in the [italics]mansarde[end italics] of a Paris friend, and stood reading on the spot where I took it up, without the least idea of its authorship. It seemed like a Sunday-school book, but how different from its class in general!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Weston Chapman Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : article
Lord Durham to Harriet Martineau, 1 January 1834: 'I have read your excellent paper with great pleasure'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Durham
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 September 1837: 'I read Gibbon. It makes me dread a single literary life, so selfish, so vain and blind, as ths great man grew to be!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : correspondence
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 September 1837: 'Read Gibbon's correspondence. Selfish, vain creature! -- beyond almost all I ever read of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 10 September 1837: 'Read Gibbon. Selfish, vain, unhappy man! [goes on to discuss Gibbon]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Retrospect
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 10 September 1837: 'Read to Mrs ---- my last chapters of my first volume of "Retrospect." She says the book will do.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Charles Lamb : Letters
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 24 September 1837: 'Revelled in Lamb's letters. What an exquisite specimen is that man of our noble, wonderful, frail humanity!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : article on Sedgwick
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 24 September 1837: '[italics]Evening[end italics] Read [...] to my mother [...] my Sedgwick article, which she likes.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Richard Hildreth : Archy Moore
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 19 October 1837: 'At night, read some of "Archy Moore." A terrible story, which stirred me deeply [...] It is truer than any slave-story I ever read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : oration
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 7 November 1837: 'Read Waldo Emerson's oration. Though fanciful, it has much truth and beauty. It moved, roused, soothed and consoled me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Lord Brougham : speech on education
Harriet Martineau, Journal, late November 1837: 'Read some of Brougham's education speech, but not all; so have no judgement to give.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Robert Southey : article on British [?Monarchism]
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 11 December 1837: '"Evening".-- Read aloud Southey's famous article in the Quarterly on British Monachism [sic]. Entertaining, but with a vain attempt to prop up Lady Isabella King's institution.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau : Loom and Lugger
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 16 December 1837: 'Morning, read one of my own stories, -- "Loom and Lugger." Was quite disappointed in it. It has capital material, but is obscure, and not simple enough.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau
Robert Southey : Article on cemeteries
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 14 January 1838: 'Read Channing's "Texas," and found it nobler than ever before [...] Read aloud Southey's article in the Quarterly on Cemeteries; much learning, but little interest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau : unknown
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 6 February 1838: '[At Captain Beaufort's] Met [...] C. Darwin, Mr. F. Edgeworth, and Mr. Hamilton, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, who had been reading my book up to dinner-time, and took a good gaze at me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Deerbrook
Sir Arthur Helps to the publisher Macmillan, 'I have lately re-read "Deerbrook" with exceeding delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Arthur Helps Print: Book
Ebeneezer Elliot : Corn Law Rhymes
'Work'd all day. In the evening was visited by Wm Camm and Geo Seston to the latter of whom I lent Watts "Improvement of the Mind". Read part of "Corn Law Rhymes" to my friends. G. Ward was then added to the number- staid up till 11 o'clock.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Jenkinson Print: Book
Patrick Murphy : The Weather Almanack, 1838-39
'Trade very dull - weather very wet and rather windy as predicted by Murphy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Jenkinson Print: Book, almanac
Frederick Reynolds : Notoriety: A Comedy [Five Acts in Prose]
'My Grandmother and Miss Haynes dined at our house. Read Reynolds' "Comedy of Notoriety"; I think it is fully equal to the dramatist.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
George Gregory : The Economy of Nature Explained and Illustrated
[account of attending the lectures on metals advertised in the "Iris"] ...all this I had read before ... in the "Sup. Ency." [supplement to the "Encyclopedia Britanica"] and Gregory's "Economy of Nature".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Rev. George Butt : Timoleon
'One thing, however, yet remains to us & dares to baffle all the wickedness of the Ministry, the tyranny of the Crown, & the various horrours of these ruinous times, ?Manuscript tragedies are yet Handed about to be read & Country Parsons are yet left to Write them. One of these we had last Night the happiness of hearing,? the Author is Tutor to a Nephew of Sir Philip Clerke, ?I shall not pretend either to praise or to censure his Piece, but content myself with giving You a specimen of his ingenuousness ? "If", says he, "any one asserts that my Play is barren of incident,?it is no more than I know already,?but I can?t help it,?for I could find none in The History from which I took it". It is called, from its Hero, Timoleon.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Manuscript: Sheet
Dr Crowther : unknown
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 3 January 1840: '[italics]Evening[end italics]. -- Read Wilberforce, and looked over Dr. Crowther's book.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : The Hour and the Man (vol. I)
Lord Jeffrey to 'Mr. Empson', December 1840: 'I have read Harriet [Martineau]'s first volume [of "The Hour and the Man"], and give in my adhesion to her Black Prince [Toussaint L'Ouverture] with all my heart and soul. The book is really not only beautiful and touching, but [italics]noble[end italics]; and I do not recollect when I have been more charmed, whether by very sweet and eloquent writing and glowing description, or by elevated as well as tender sentiments. I do not believe that the worthy people ever spoke or acted as she has so gracefully presented them, and must confess that in all the striking scenes I entirely forgot their complexion, and drove the notion of it from me as often as it occurred. But this does not at all diminish, but rather increases the merit of her creations.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam A. H. H.
Harriet Martineau to E. J. Furnival, 5 October 1851, thanking him for a copy of Tennyson's "In Memoriam": 'Like most other people (whom I have met with, at least), I shrank from a whole volume of published griefs; and the more, because I knew Arthur Hallam [...] I began to cut and read last night; and I stopped at last, by a virtuous effort, from the feeling that I ought not to be able to take in so much at once, -- that I ought to spread it out [...] I cannot honestly say that I had anything like so much pleasure from "The Princess." There are bits of wisdom and beauty [...] but the impression of the whole is more than odd; -- it is very disagreeable, to my feeling. It does not follow that I am not glad to know it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Princess
Harriet Martineau to E. J. Furnival, 5 October 1851, thanking him for a copy of Tennyson's [italics]In Memoriam[end italics]: 'Like most other people (whom I have met with, at least), I shrank from a whole volume of published griefs; and the more, because I knew Arthur Hallam [...] I began to cut and read last night; and I stopped at last, by a virtuous effort, from the feeling that I ought not to be able to take in so much at once, -- that I ought to spread it out [...] I cannot honestly say that I had anything like so much pleasure from "The Princess." There are bits of wisdom and beauty [...] but the impression of the whole is more than odd; -- it is very disagreeable, to my feeling. It does not follow that I am not glad to know it'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
Harriet Martineau, in postscript to letter written in the month before her death, to 'Mr. Atkinson', 19 May 1876: 'I am in a state of amazement at a discovery just made; I have read (after half a lifetime) Scott's "Bride of Lammermoor," and am utterly disappointed in it. The change in my taste is beyond accounting for, -- almost beyond belief.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : The Hour and the Man
Florence Nightingale to Jane Martineau, 29 June 1876: 'I have thought of "The Hour and the Man" as the finest historical romance in any language. You would wonder if you knew how often I have read it over and over again, even in the last two years.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Life in the Sickroom
From letter of Elizabeth B. Ker, niece of Harriet Martineau: 'I regret infinitely that she desired all her letters to be destroyed. I had so large a boxful that it took some time to read and burn them [...] on reading that most charming of all her publications, "Life in the Sick-Room" [...] I said, "Oh, but I have read it all before! -- this is only my burnt letters!"'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth B. Ker Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey
'Sterne has published two little volumes, called, "Sentimental Travels". They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome "Tristram Shandy", of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
'Sterne has published two little volumes, called, "Sentimental Travels". They are very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely preferable to his tiresome "Tristram Shandy", of which I never could get through three volumes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Ontranto
'As my love of books became known, I was made free of such libraries as the neighbours possessed which led to me reading some curious and unsuitable matter, old-fashioned theological works, early Methodist magazines, cookery books and queer tales of murder and robbery. One such, entitled "The Castle of Otranto", haunted my dreams for many a night. Our nearest neighbour who was more of a scholar than his rough exterior and taciturn manner suggested, lent me a "History of England" which was a veritable godsend.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Kenilworth
'In another house I found a tattered copy of Scott's "Kenilworth" and a quite new copy of "Cranford". Among some old books in my grandmother's cottage I found a curious one entitled "Adam's First Wife". This was a sort of history of the Garden of Eden which rather discounted the "rib theory" and raised some doubt in my mind as to Adam's innocence in the pre-apple days.' [continuation of discussion of Adam etc]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans : Bring flowers
[Transcribed into a ms volume] Title 'Lines by Mrs Hemans'; Text 'Bring flowers, young flowers, for the festal board/ To wreathe the cup ere the wine is poured;/ Bring flowers! they are springing in wood and vale,/ Their breath floats out on the southern gale; ...' [total = 6 x 6 lines verses]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Richard Steele : An Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion
'Read Sir Richard Steele's Dedication of his Account of the state of the Roman Catholic Religion to the Pope'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dudley Ryder Print: Book
Mary Humphrey Ward : The History of David Grieve
'One of them asked me if I was fond of reading and told me that she herself wrote books and was staying in the neighbourhood hoping to include the dale in her next book. Many years afterwards I read "The History of David Grieve" and at once remembered our visitor. Comparing dates I realised it was Mrs. Humphry Ward, seeking the atmosphere of the wild valley she described so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Georg Eberhard Rumphius : Herbarium Amboinensis
'The growth of the Rhizophora also pleased me much, although I had before a very good idea of it from Rumphius, who has a very good figure of the tree in his Herb. Amboin. [v. iii. tab. 71, 72]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
George Shelvocke : A Voyage Round the World by way of the Great South Sea
'We took Beroe incrassata, Medusa limpidissima, plicata and obliquata, Alcyonium anguillare (probably the thing that Shelvoke mentions in his "Voyage Round the World" p. 60), and A. frustrum, Ulva intestinalis, and Corallina officinalis.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Charles De Brosses : Histoire des navigations aux terres australes, contenant ce que l'on sait des moeurs et des productions des contr?es d?couvertes jusqu'? ce jour
'Possibly that might be Cape Horn, but a fog which overcast it almost immediately after we saw it, hindered our making any material observations upon it; so that all we can say is, that it was the southernmost land we saw, and does not answer badly to the description of Cape Horn given by the French, who place it upon an island, and say that it is two bluff headlands (vide Histoire des Navigat. aux terres australes, tom i. p. 356).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Patrick Browne : The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica
'Browne, in his "History of Jamaica" mentions three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly agrees.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georg Eberhard Rumphius : Herbarium Amboinensis
'Browne, in his "History of Jamaica" mentions three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly agrees.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Charles de Brosse : Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes
'From the vocabularies given in Le Maire's voyage (see Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, tom. i. p. 410) it appears clearly that the languages given there as those of the Isles of Solomon and the Isle of Cocos are radically the identical language we met with, most words differing in little, but the greater number of consonants.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Rene Augustin Constantin de Renneville : A collection of voyages undertaken by the Dutch East-India Company, for the improvement of trade & navigation ...
'I shall give them from a book called a "Collection of Voyages by the Dutch East Company", Lond. 1703, p. 116, where, supposing the author who speaks of ten numbers and gives only nine to have lost the fifth, their similarity is beyond dispute.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Alexander Dalrymple : An Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacifick Ocean, previous to 1764
'He was covered with a fine cloth of a manufacture totally new to us; it was tied on exactly as represented in Mr. Dalrymple's book, p. 63; his hair was also tied in a knot on the top of his head, but there was no feather stuck in it; his complexion brown but not very dark.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Amedee Francois Frezier : Relation du voyage de la Mer du Sud, aux c?tes du Chili, et du Peron, fair pendent les annees, 1712, 1713, et 1714
'We had also that fish described by Frezier in his voyage to Spanish South America by the name of "elefant, pejegallo" or "poisson coq" which, though coarse, we made shift to eat, and several species of skate or sting-rays, which were abominably coarse.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Mrs. Henry Wood : [novels]
'I also found a small library, which meant that many copper really needed for food were spent on borrowing books. At this time I read all Mrs. Henry Wood's novels, most of Sir Walter Scott's works along with a good deal of poetry and history, as well as a good deal of rubbish I daresay. But as I have forgotten it it did me no harm.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : [works]
'I also found a small library, which meant that many copper really needed for food were spent on borrowing books. At this time I read all Mrs. Henry Wood's novels, most of Sir Walter Scott's works along with a good deal of poetry and history, as well as a good deal of rubbish I daresay. But as I have forgotten it it did me no harm.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
Robert Blatchford : Nunquam
'When I was living in Sallie's home one of the male boarders who called himself a Socialist showed me some articles in a Sunday paper written by Robert Blatchford, "Nunquam", dealing with slums and sweated industries. These articles excited much interest, and many were the arguments in Mrs. J's house as to the rights or wrongs of the matter.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Newspaper
James Edward Austen-Leigh : A Memoir of Jane Austen
"Jane Austen herself, the Queen of novelists, the immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr Knightley, and a score or two more of unrivalled intimate friends of the whole public, was compelled by the feelings of her family to cover up her manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : When coldness wraps this suffering clay
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title = 'Strangers by Lord Byron'; Text = 'When coldness wraps this suffering clay/ Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?/ It cannot die, it cannot stay/ But leaves its darken'd dust behind ...' [total = 4 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[George Gordon, Lord] [Byron] : [Don Juan - Canto the Third]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Untitled; Text = 'Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine/ A sad, sour, sober beverage - by time/ Is sharpen'ed from its high celestial flavour/ Down to a very homely household savour'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'And with that, dismissing the subject, I dived again into the unplumbed depths of the "Penny Cyclopaedia"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Serial / periodical
Andrew John Jukes : The law of the offerings in Leviticus
'There was, for instance, a writer on prophecy called Jukes, of whose works each of my parents was inordinately fond, and I was early set to read Jukes aloud to them. I did it glibly , like a machine, but the sight of Jukes's volumes became an abomination to me, and I never formed the outline of a notion what they were about.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'Later on, a publication called the "Penny Cyclopaedia" became my daily, and for a long time almost my sole study...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [Memoirs]
'I read his own [Byron's] memoirs before Murray burnt them.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Alexander Pope : Essay on Man
'"I however still love the hand upraised to shed my blood."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
[Robert] [Burns] : [Lady Mary Anne]
[Transcription from a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text = prose introduction followed by verse] 'During the troubles in the reign of Charles 1st, a/ country girl came up to London in search of a place as/ servant maid ... Lady Mary Anne was a flower in the dew/ Sweet was its smell and bonnie was its hue ...' [total = 1p. of prose and 2x 4 line verses)
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Charles Darwin : Origin of species
'The conversation went on about Darwin's "Origin of species", and F. said to S. "tha doesn't favour a monkey, but tha acts like one." R. said "I think he's bloody crackers". S. went on to say their house was full of books, so F. said "Don't you think it's about time you started reading them". Eventually between them they got S. that tied up in argument he had to retire, and shook hands with us all and went home.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Bronislaw Malinowski? : [unknown]
'Our own attitude and our feeling of amateur enterprise have been summed up by Professor Bronislaw Malinowski, who in our first year's "Report" (Lindsay Drummond, 1938) describes how he first met one of us reading a paper to the Institute of Sociology.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Sheet, Academic paper
Sir Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
?There are good characters I think in Guy [Mannering] ? the Scotch Lawyer ? the Farmer ? [...] the Gipsies[sic] & Brown himself as a Modern Tom Jones ? It certainly cannot be called a bad novel it is written by a clever man ? a man who knows human nature & has looked as closely as Claude Lauraine on views of skies & water & rocks ? but there is not much genius there as there was in Waverly'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Waverley
?There are good characters I think in Guy [Mannering] ? the Scotch Lawyer ? the Farmer ? [...] the Gipsies[sic] & Brown himself as a Modern Tom Jones ? It certainly cannot be called a bad novel it is written by a clever man ? a man who knows human nature & has looked as closely as Claude Lauraine on views of skies & water & rocks ? but there is not much genius there as there was in Waverly [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poem]
'Dear Lord Byron? I must thank you for yr. Poem you have sent me I [this word is illegible] not say how good I think it is [?]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Sarah Jersey Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Bride of Abydos
'I received the Books, & among them the Bride of Abydos. It is very, very beautiful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Canning Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Charles Dickens : A tale of two cities
'The only social event she goes to is the Sunday afternoon tea run by her chapel. Again she has not made many friends here, but she seems to enjoy going. Apart from that, she spends her evenings writing letters, sewing, and reading. Molly reads far more than most of the girls-she always brings a book to read in the canteen. She does not just read idly for pleasure, but has a real thought-out attitude toward it, and regards it as a worthwhile occupation. At the time of writing she is reading "A Tale of Two Cities", and intends to have read the whole of Dickens by the end of the summer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Molly Print: Book
[Felicia Dorothea Browne] [Hemans] : The grave of a poetess
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The grave of a poetess (Mrs` Tighe at Woodstock near Kilkenny)'; [text] 'I stood beside thy lowly grave;/ Spring-odours breath'd around/ And music, in the river-wave/ pass'd with a lulling sound ...' [total = 13 x 4 lines verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Anne Gabriel] [De Querlon]? : [Adieu]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Mary, Queen of Scots' farewell to France'; [text] 'Adieu, plaisant pays de France/ O ma patrie/ La plus cherie/ Qui a nourri ma jeune enfance ......' [total = 13 x 4 lines verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Dr Clark : [unknown]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'England'; [text] 'The late excellent Dr Clark thus apostrophizes his/ native country in the last volume of his travels & few/ men have seen more of the world'. 'Oh England! decent abode of comfort and /cleanliness, & decorum! Oh blessed assylum of all/ that is worth having upon earth ? Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see/ My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee' [total =15 lines of extract with 3 lines of introduction. The final two lines are from 'The traveller' by Oliver Goldsmith. It is uinclear whether they are in Clark's text or are added]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
George Crabbe : Tale II, 'The Parting Hour'
[transcribed in Lady Caroline's hand]: ?From Crabbe Minutely trace Man?s life; year after year, Through all his days let all his deeds appear And then though some may in that life be strange, Yet there appears no vast nor sudden change: The links that bind those various deeds are seen, And no mysterious void is left between [?] Yet none who saw the rapid current flow, Could the first instant of that danger know. [line drawn across 12 recto] 'All things prepar[e]d, on he expected day Was seen the vessel anchor'd in the bay. From her would seamen in the evening come, To take the adventurous Allen from his home [...]'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Edgar Wallace : Sanders of the River
'On the dressing table were three books, my own, "Sanders of the River", Snowden's "Wages and Prices", a relic of my student days, and "The Book of Mormon" which had been given me by a Mormon missionary. I picked up "Sanders" and got back into bed. I didn't read much of it. I could not concentrate, so continued to smoke and gaze around the room.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Alexander Pope : An Essay on Man, Epistle I
[Transcribed in Lady Caroline's hand]: ?["]The Lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today Had he thy ['thy' is underlined] reason would he skip & play Pleas?d to the last he cropp?s the flowery food And licks the hand upraised to shed his blood["] What you always repeated! 1812?
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Maria Tighe : The lily
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The Lily'; [text] 'How withered, perished seems the form/ Of you obscure unsightly root/Yet from the blight of wintry storm/ It hides secure the precious fruit/ ... (Mrs Tighe)' [total = 40 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
George Croly : Evening's daughter
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Evening's daughter'; [text] 'Come, evening gale! The crimson rose/ Is drooping for thy sigh of dew/ The Hyacinth woos thy kiss to close/ In slumber sweet its eye of blue ... (Croly)' [total = 3 x 4 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : 'The Walse' also entitled 'The Waltz'
[transcribed in what appears to be Lady Caroline's hand]: 'With modest sidelong look and downcase glance / Behold the well matched couple now advance / His hand held hers. The other grasped her hip[...]'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
William Robert Spencer : Urania
[transcribed in what seems to be Lady Caroline's hand]: 'If guardian Powers preside above Who still extend to virtuous Love A tutelary care The Virgins bosom?s earliest dole The first born Passion of the soul Must find protection there. Never can noon's maturer ray That charm of orient light display, Which morning suns impart So can no later passion prove That glow which gilds the dawn of Love The day spring of the hearts?
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine : [L'Homme]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title 'Address to Lord Byron by Dr Lamartine'; [Text] 'Toi, dont le monde encore ignore le vrai nom/ Esprit mysterieux, mortel ou demon/...' [total = 58 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Henry Neele : The comet
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title 'The Comet'; [Text] 'O'er the blue heavens majestic & alone/ He treads [?], as treads a monarch towards his throne/ Darkness her leaden sceptre lifts, in vain,/ Crushed and consumed beneath his fiery ?/ [by] Henry Neele' [total = 26 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans : The illuminated city
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The Illuminated City' ; [Text] 'The hills all glow'd with a festive light/ For the Royal city rejoiced by night/ ... [by] Mrs Hemans' [total = 5 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans : The forest sanctuary
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'From the Forest Sanctuary'; [Text] 'But the dark hours wring forth the hidden might/ Which hath lain bedded in the silent soul/ A treasure all undreamed of ; - as the night/ ... [by] Mrs Hemans' [total = 8 x 9 line verses, probably not a continuous extract]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Mary] [Tighe] : The old Maid's prayer to Diana
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'The old Maid's prayer to Diana'; [Text] 'Since thou and the stars, my dear goddess decree/ That Old Maid as I am, an Old Maid I must be;/ O, hear the petition I offer to thee/ For to hear it must be my endeavour/ ...'; [total = 5 x 8 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Robert] [Pollock] : The Course of Time [extract]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Lord Byron ? From "The Course of Time"'; [Text] '... He touched his harp and nations heard, entranced/ As some vast river of unfailing source/ Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his number flowed/ And op'ed new fountains in the human heart...'; [total = 86 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
George Orwell : Road to Wigan Pier
'Started to read George Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier" -Left Book Club choice for March. Arrived at Liverpool St. punctually at 9.30.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Fredrik Hasselquist : Iter Palestinum
'In examining a fig which we had found at our last going ashore, we found in the fruit a "Cynips", very like, if not exactly the same species as "Cynips sycomori", Linn., described by Hasselquist in his Iter Palestinum, a strong proof of the fact that figs must be impregnated by means of insects, though indeed that fact wanted not any additional proofs.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Sir Hans Sloane : History of Jamaica
'The gum-trees were like those in the last bay, both in leaf and in producing a very small proportion of gum; on the branches of them and other trees were large ants' nests, made of clay, as big as a bushel, something like those described in Sir Hans Sloane's "History of Jamaica", vol. II. pp. 221 to 258, but not so smooth.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere
'While botanising to-day I had the good fortune to take an animal of the opossum ("Didelphis") tribe; it was a female, and with it I took two young ones. It was not unlike that remarkable one which De Buffon has described by the name of "Phalanger" as an American animal. It was, however, not the same. M. de Buffon is certainly wrong in asserting that this tribe is peculiar to America, and in all probability, as Pallas has said in his "Zoologia" the "Phalanger" itself is a native of the East Indies, as my animals and that agree in the extraordinary conformation of their feet, in which particular they differ from all the others.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Peter Simon Pallas : Miscellanea Zoologia
'While botanising to-day I had the good fortune to take an animal of the opossum ("Didelphis") tribe; it was a female, and with it I took two young ones. It was not unlike that remarkable one which De Buffon has described by the name of "Phalanger" as an American animal. It was, however, not the same. M. de Buffon is certainly wrong in asserting that this tribe is peculiar to America, and in all probability, as Pallas has said in his "Zoologia" the "Phalanger" itself is a native of the East Indies, as my animals and that agree in the extraordinary conformation of their feet, in which particular they differ from all the others.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere
'The third was of the opossum kind, and much resembled that called by De Buffon "Phalanger". Of these two last I took only one individual of each. Bats here were many: one small one was much if not identically the same as that described by De Buffon under the name of "Fer de cheval". Another sort was as large as, or larger than, a partridge; but of this species we were not fortunate enough to take one. We supposed it, however, to be the "Rousette" or "Rougette" of the same author.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georg Eberhard Rumphius : Herbarium Aboinense
'When first we found the tree, we of course gathered the branches, and were surprised to find our hands instantly covered with legions of these small animals, who stung most intolerably; experience, however, taught us to be more careful for the future. Rhumphius mentions a similar instance to this in his "Herbarium Amboinense", vol. ii. p. 257; his tree, however, does not at all resemble ours.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georg Eberhard Rumphius : Herbarium Aboinense
'The chief inconvenience in handling the roots came from the infinite number; myriads would come in an instant out of many holes, and running over the hand tickle so as to be scarcely endurable. Rhumphius has an account of this very bulb and its ants in vol. vi. p.120, where he describes also another sort, the ants of which are black.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Amedee Francois Frezier : Relation d'un voyage de la Mer du Sud aux cotes du Chili et du Perou
'I have been told that this very method was proposed in the "Gentleman's Magazine" many years ago, but have not the book on board. Frezier, in his voyage to the South Sea, describes a contrivance of the Peruvian Indians upon the same principles, plate 31, p. 273, but his drawing and plan are difficult to understand, if not actually very faulty, and his description is nothing; the drawing may serve, however, to give an idea to a man who has never seen a thing of the kind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Francois Valentijn : Oudt en Nieuw Oost-Indie
'All I can say is that when seen from the top of a building, from whence the eye takes it in at one view, it does not look nearly so large as it seems to be when you walk about it. Valentijn, who wrote about and before the year 1726, says that in his time there wre within the walls 1242 Dutch houses, and 1200 Chinese; without 1066 Dutch and 1240 Chinese, besides twelve arrack houses. This number, however, appeared to me to be very highly exaggerated, those within the walls especially.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Georg Eberhard Rumphius : Herbrium Aboinensis
'Authors tell strange stories about the immense size to which this fruit grows in some countries which are favourable to it. Rumphius says that they are sometimes so large that a man cannot easily lift one of them: the Malays told me that at Madura they were so large that two men could but carry one of them; at Batavia, however, they never exceed the size of a large melon, which in shape they resemble, but are coated over with angular spines like the shootings of some crystals: they are, however, soft, and do not at all prick any one who handles them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Banks Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
'In 1823 I read in Scott?s novel of ?Quentin Durward? the prophetic words of Martivalle, ?Can I look forward without wonder and astonishment to the lot of a succeeding generation, on whom knowledge shall descend like the first and second rain, uninterrupted, unabated, unbounded.? The Printing Press had produced the first rain; the Printing Machine was the ?little cloud no bigger than a man?s hand? which promised the second rain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Knight Print: Book
Ernest Raymond : [various titles]
' "Well, because I do like Ernest Raymond's books and I read all of them as far as I can." '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Archibald Joseph Cronin : Hatter's Castle
'On the whole I'd rather have a book like G. B. Stern's, or Hatter's Castle or The Stars Look Down. It's very sad to read, but it does give you life's problems, doesn't it?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Archibald Joseph Cronin : The stars look down
'On the whole I'd rather have a book like G. B. Stern's, or Hatter's Castle or The Stars Look Down. It's very sad to read, but it does give you life's problems, doesn't it?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marceline d'Alroy : The d'Alroy Diary
'My life is serious enough without worrying over things like that, so I don't read the papers-only read d'Alroy and Ann Temple. Anyhow-if there's a war I shall be in it, so it doesn't make any difference.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
[Robert] Southey : [The curse of Kehama, canto X]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]'They sin who tell us love can die/ With life all other passions fly/ All others are but vanity/ Earthly these passions, as of earth/ They perish where they have their birth/ ?' [total = 20 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Walter] [Scott] : [The monastery]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]'There are those to whom a sense of religion/ has come in storm and tempest, there are those/ whom it has summoned amid scenes of vanity/ there are those too who have heard "its still small voice"/ Amid rural leisure & placid contentment ?' [total = 10 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Felicia Dorothea Browne] [Hemans] : [Kindred hearts]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]' ?Oh! ask not, hope not thou too much/ of sympathy below/ For are the hearts whence one same touch/ Bids the sweet fountains flow/ ?' [total = 16 lines but not a continuous extract]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans : [untitled]
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]' ? Now I feel/ What high prerogatives belong to Death/ He hath a deep, though voiceless eloquence, /To which I leave my ? His solemn veil/ ... Mrs Hemans' [total = 12 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Maria] Abdy : Worsted work
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'Worsted Work'; [Text] 'Oh! Talk not of it lightly in an tone of scornful mirth/ It brings to me glad visions of the calm and quiet hearth/ Of seasons of retirement from the world's obtrusive eyes/ Of freedom from absorbing toils - of dear domestic ties/ ... Mrs Abdy'; [Total = 9 x 4 line verses]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
[Elizabeth Rundle] [Charles] : To one at rest
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Title] 'To one at rest/ by the author of/ the Three Wakings'; [Text] 'And needest thou our prayers no more, Safe folded mid the blest/ How changed are thou since last we met, To keep the day of rest/ Young with the youth of angels; Wise with the growth of years/ For we have passed since thou has gone, A week of many tears/ ...24th Sept 1871'; [Total = 11 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
'on his eighth birthday, 27 February 1920, an ox-cart drew up outside Everleas Lodge with a present for him - a huge parcel of books. His father had bought him a complete set of Dickens which had belonged to a recently expired tea-planter. Durrell claimed later that he never got beyond the Pickwick Papers (sometimes he said that he got through about ten of them), but Dickens gave him a vision of merrie England... supplemented later by reading Thackeray and R.S. Surtees. In Surtees' convivial tales of the hunting, shooting, sporting Mr Jorrocks and his pursuitful adventures, there was something ruddy, jolly and rumbustious, which appealed to the perky youngster'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
Somerset Maughan : [unknown]
Letter 271 4 July 1940 'Please forgive me not having written eight and a half days ago or more to thank you for your lovely birthday present. The thin mints went of course in twenty four hours, and I curled up on a sofa with Somerset Maugham until I had finished him. It was a new one to me and marvellously disagreeable and exciting! So acid it nearly burnt!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Pears Print: Book
Dorothy Sayers : Man born to be king
'F 25 C is holding a slim book (looks new), approximate size 81/2" x 51/2", yellow jacket cover, title "Man Born to be King" by Dorothy Sayers. She does not open the book while the train is stationary, but once it starts she opens it at the first page and begins to read. Time take to read page 3, just under the minute. At Wood Lane she looks up for the first time, and her gaze rests on F 35 C, knitting, but she soon resumes reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Professor Hansteen : Inquiries Concerning the Magnetism of the Earth
'A review for Brewster's philosophical journal of a German book on Magnetism, I must also write or say I cannot - the former alternative is better: and then (as our man of Law concludes in a few days) I am my own master to go whithersoever I list.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
[Brothers] Grimm : [Fairy Tales]
'So in time she was able to read Grimms' "Fairy Tales", "Gulliver's Travels", "The Daisy Chain" and Mrs. Molesworth's "Cuckoo Clock" and "Carrots".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Old St Paul's
'Laura, who by this time was reading "Old St Paul's" at home, simply romped through this Little-Go'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Laura Thompson Print: Book
Queen Victoria : Leaves from Her Majesty's Life in the Highlands
'Laura was lucky enough to be given a bound volume of "Good Words" - or was it "Home Words"? - in which the Queen's own journal, "Leaves From Her Majesty's Life in the Highlands", ran as a serial. She galloped through all these instalements immediately to pick out the places mentioned by her dear Sir Walter Scott. Afterwards the journal was re-read many times, as everything was re-read in that home of few books.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Serial / periodical
Sir Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'"The Bride of Lammermoor" was one of the first books that Laura read with absorbed interest. She adored the Master of Ravenswood, his dark haughty beauty, his flowing cloak and his sword, his ruined castle, set high on its crag by the sea, and his faithful servant Caleb and the amusing shifts he made to conceal his master's poverty. She read and re-read "The Bride"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Maria Charlesworth : Ministering Children
'... and the spare hour or two was passed pleasantly enough over "Ministering Children", or "Queechy" or "The Wide Wide World".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'She was shocked by some of the hero's adventures but more often thrilled. Laura learned quite a lot by reading "Don Juan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'"Yes," bolted out Mrs. Bowdler, "Harriet is one of the greatest admirers of 'Evelina'." These sort of abrupt speeches from people one hardly knows are amazingly distressing: & Fanny Bowdler & Miss Leigh looked almost as awkward as myself.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Maria (Harriet) Bowdler Print: Book
Robert Southey : Article ix
'I consign you therefore if desirous of additional information, to two well-written articles by Jeffrey in the last "Edinr reviews" - and if you honour the maxim, audi alteram partem [hear the other side], to sundry delicious speculations from the pen of Mr Southey, wherein these points are handled at considerable length in the "Quarterly review".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Southey : Article iv
'I consign you therefore if desirous of additional information, to two well-written articles by Jeffrey in the last "Edinr reviews" - and if you honour the maxim, audi alteram partem [hear the other side], to sundry delicious speculations from the pen of Mr Southey, wherein these points are handled at considerable length in the "Quarterly review".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'Once Laura had the honour of choosing two passages for the father of one of her friends, who had been invited to read and could not, as he said, think of anything likely, not if his life depended upon it. She chose the scene from "The Heart of Midlothian" in which Jeanie Deans is granted an audience by Queen Caroline and the chapter about the Battle of Waterloo from "Vanity Fair"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson Print: Book
Charles Burney : 'Present State of Music in France and Italy' or 'General History of Music' vol 1
'"Do you know Dr. Burney, Ma'am?" said Mr Thrale. "No Sir, but I know his Book. I think it's vastly pretty;"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Victoria Kynaston Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'Lord, Ma'am, I was so entertained & I was quite ill, too, Ma'am, quite ill when I read it! - but for all that, Lord, Ma'am, why I was as eager, -& I wanted sadly to see the author.-'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Victoria Kynaston Print: Book
Henry Harrington : Nugae Antiquae
'... it is his son that is the Rev. Henry Harrington who published those very curious, entertaining & valuable remains of his Ancestor under the Title "Nugae Antiquae", which my Father & all of us were formerly so fond of.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
Pearl Mary Theresa Craigie : Letters from a Silent Study
'I will not tell you my exact state of health day by day, but will give you a diary of my reading, which is perhaps a good index of my physical state. Friday morning. Full of buck. "Tartarin sur les Alpes". Friday afternoon. Wanted soothing. "Letters from a Silent Study". Saturday morning. Very depressed. "Pickwick Papers". Saturday afternoon. A little better. "Esmond". Sunday morning. Quite well thank you! "Butler's Analogy". Sunday afternoon. Quite well thank you! "Esmond and Stonewall Jackson". As a guide I may point out that "Pickwick" cheers me up when I am most depressed, while "Butler's Analogy" taxes all my strength.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'I will not tell you my exact state of health day by day, but will give you a diary of my reading, which is perhaps a good index of my physical state. Friday morning. Full of buck. "Tartarin sur les Alpes". Friday afternoon. Wanted soothing. "Letters from a Silent Study". Saturday morning. Very depressed. "Pickwick Papers". Saturday afternoon. A little better. "Esmond". Sunday morning. Quite well thank you! "Butler's Analogy". Sunday afternoon. Quite well thank you! "Esmond and Stonewall Jackson". As a guide I may point out that "Pickwick" cheers me up when I am most depressed, while "Butler's Analogy" taxes all my strength.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Dimitri Merejkowski : The Forerunner, the romance of Leonardo da Vinci
'I would like you to read a little book called "The Forerunner", by Merejkowski, published by Constable. It is about Leonardo da Vinci, and though there is a lot of bosh in it, I think there is a fine idea running through it - half formed, and somewhat elusive, but nevertheless to a certain extent true.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Brooke Foss Westcott : Introduction to the Study of the Gospels
'As regards books, such a lot depends on what sort of life you are leading. I always relish Ingram's terse epigrammatic style, but more especially when I am actively busy in mind and body - as during a company course. At such times I have no use for Westcott and his Euclid-like problems and theorems and theses and antitheses. At the present moment, however, my brain is in tune with Westcott. I have a fair amount of spare time, my work is not much brain-work, and I feel I need an exercise of the reason such as I find his books give. I am reading his "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels" at present, and I like it better than any other book of his I have read. He has such a splendidly broad view of everything, and while he observes the minutest details of his subject, he never seems to lose his sense of the whole. That is what is so rare among religionists. They either seem to concentrate all their powers on one little details, or else get such a very general view that, not understanding the composition, they do not understand the full importance or significance of their subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Sir William Francis Patrick Napier : History of the War in the Peninsular
'Don't worry about me; at last I am a serious soldier. I have a pile of books on ordnance, and gunnery, and ammunition, and explosives etc., etc., littering my table, to say nothing of Napier's "Peninsular War", and a "Life of Napolean"! [sic] So when my major made a surprise descent yesterday afternoon from Curepipe, he found me immersed in an essay on Rifling, and was rather pleased!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Dom Lorenzo Scupoli : The Spiritual Combat
'Curiously enough I arrived at this result by the aid of an R. C. book, called "The Spiritual Combat". The motto of many of the chapters might be written: "Attack all your faults. Smite them by the virtue of the Holy Cross. You know your own weakness, you are full of distrust in yourself. Very well. Now is the time to put your trust in God, and where your own weakness has failed, God's strength will prevail." 'It is a magnificent doctrine. I am trying to attach all my carelessness, and unpractical habits, and am endeavouring to perform most carefully those duties which are most irksome to me. 'I am trying to earn my pay as a soldier. 'I hope you will have no more livery letters. To the author of "The Spiritual Combat", a liver is a Heaven-sent opportunity for conquering one's lower nature.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'In future I hope that instead of saying as the fat boy in "Pickwick" does "I wants to make yer flesh creep," when I have a "liver" my letters will be particularly cheerful!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Dr Robert William Dale : The Doctrine of Atonement
'Many thanks for the cuttings on higher criticism. I can't help thinking that this movement is larely the result of trying to reduce (as I tried to do a few days ago!) Christianity to a comprehensible, logical system of ethics, rather than trying to realize that wonderful communion with God which must always be its source of faith, hope, love, and strength. 'Religion would cease to be divine if it were capable of being compressed into the narrow limits of human comprehension; isn't that right? 'I am afraid I greatly prefer Dr Dale's book to Bishop Westcott's. It is so much easier to understand. Westcott is very well for Sundays, but rather exacting for a tired week-day brain! 'The Bishop has returned from the Seychelles and is acting as our chaplin. He is a peculiar man, but I believe he is a very good one. 'I am, your affectionate son. 'P.S. I find I have got a copy of Gore's Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, with your name in it. May I stick to it? I like it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Charles Gore : Prayer and the Lord's Prayer
'Many thanks for the cuttings on higher criticism. I can't help thinking that this movement is larely the result of trying to reduce (as I tried to do a few days ago!) Christianity to a comprehensible, logical system of ethics, rather than trying to realize that wonderful communion with God which must always be its source of faith, hope, love, and strength. 'Religion would cease to be divine if it were capable of being compressed into the narrow limits of human comprehension; isn't that right? 'I am afraid I greatly prefer Dr Dale's book to Bishop Westcott's. It is so much easier to understand. Westcott is very well for Sundays, but rather exacting for a tired week-day brain! 'The Bishop has returned from the Seychelles and is acting as our chaplin. He is a peculiar man, but I believe he is a very good one. 'I am, your affectionate son. 'P.S. I find I have got a copy of Gore's Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, with your name in it. May I stick to it? I like it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Brooke Foss Westcott : [unknown]
'Many thanks for the cuttings on higher criticism. I can't help thinking that this movement is larely the result of trying to reduce (as I tried to do a few days ago!) Christianity to a comprehensible, logical system of ethics, rather than trying to realize that wonderful communion with God which must always be its source of faith, hope, love, and strength. 'Religion would cease to be divine if it were capable of being compressed into the narrow limits of human comprehension; isn't that right? 'I am afraid I greatly prefer Dr Dale's book to Bishop Westcott's. It is so much easier to understand. Westcott is very well for Sundays, but rather exacting for a tired week-day brain! 'The Bishop has returned from the Seychelles and is acting as our chaplin. He is a peculiar man, but I believe he is a very good one. 'I am, your affectionate son. 'P.S. I find I have got a copy of Gore's Prayer and the Lord's Prayer, with your name in it. May I stick to it? I like it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey Print: Book
Henry Watson : Valentine and Orson
'at ten o'clock yesterday evening little Jem Parsons (the cabin boy), and his friend the black terrier, came on deck, and sat themselves on a gun-carriage, to read by the light of the moon. I looked at the boy's book, (the terrier, I suppose, read over the other's shoulder,) and found that it was "The Sorrows of Werter". I asked who had lent him such a book, and whether it amused him? He said that it had been made a present to him, and so he had read it almost through, for he had got to Werter's dying; though, to be sure, he did not understand it all, nor like very much what he understood; for he thought the man a great fool for killing himself for love. I told him I thought that every man a great fool who killed himself for love or for any thing else: but he had no books but "The Sorrows of Werter"? - oh dear yes, he said, he had a great many more; but he had got "The Adventures of a Louse", which was a very curious book, indeed; and he had got besides "The Recess", and "Valentine and Orson", and "Roslin Castle", and a book of Prayers, just like the Bible; but he could not but say that he liked "The Adventures of a Louse" the best of any of them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jem Parsons Print: Book
Ministry of Information : [invasion leaflet]
'The leaflet makes a special point of common sense but the way it urges people to use it is unconsciously the upper class talking to the stupid mass. This unconscious attitude, so noticeable on the red Government posters at the beginning of the war, underlies the leaflet as a whole-see below, on Little Squash borough and Great Midtown. The lack of emotional or layout appeal is reflected in many comments. Thus, after reading it carefully, a barmaid sums up: "It's plain enough. I should have to read it again."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group:
Ministry of Information : invasion leaflet
'And a housewife, after reading it, says she is satisfied the she has done everything and knows everything that can be done in civil defence: "We've got enough, I mean, we've got a pail of water handy. That's all you can do and bandages and that."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group:
Mary Border : Passport for a girl
'I had been reading Mary Border's book "Passport for a girl" and the day following my dream, I was interested to read in Page 201 describing the Austrian Anschluss, how old men and pregnant women were kept marching round till they dripped from exhaustion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Friedrich Mohs : Crystalography
'Nothing material has occurred to me since I returned from Mainhill. I wrote the first half of "Hunsteen" and translated, from the German, the first half of "Mohs";'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson
'So much for Mrs Piozzi. I had some thoughts of writing the whole of my letter in her stile [sic], but I beleive [sic] I shall not.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Robert Henry : History of Great Britain
'I am reading Henry's History of England, which I will repeat to you in any manner you may prefer, either in a loose, disultary [sic], unconnected strain, or dividing my recital as the Historian divides it himself, into seven parts...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Dr Edward Jenner : pamphlet on the cow pox
'We had a very pleasant day on monday at Ashe [...] There was a whist & a casino table, & six outsiders. - Rice & Lucy made love, Mat: Robinson fell asleep, James and Mrs Augusta alternately read Dr Jenner's pamphlet on the cow pox, & I bestowed my company by turns on all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Austen
Dr Edward Jenner : pamphlet on the cow pox
'We had a very pleasant day on monday at Ashe [...] There was a whist & a casino table, & six outsiders. - Rice & Lucy made love, Mat: Robinson fell asleep, James and Mrs Augusta alternately read Dr Jenner's pamphlet on the cow pox, & I bestowed my company by turns on all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Bramston
Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi : unknown history
'Having just concluded the first volume of Sismondi's history, and the other not being yet arrived from Edinr, I think I cannot better employ the hour of leisure, which necessarily intervenes between the end of this and the beginning of a fresh employment, than in returning you my thanks for the kind and good-humoured letter which I received last Saturday.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'James is the delight of our lives; he is quite an uncle Toby's annuity to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Female Quixote, or, the Adventures of Arabella
'"Alphonsine" did not do. We were disgusted in twenty pages, as, independent of a bad translation, it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure; and we changed it for the "Female Quixotte", which now makes our evening amusement; to me a very high one, as I find the work quite equal to what I remembered it. Mrs F.A., to whom it is new, enjoys it as one could wish; the other Mary, I believe, has little pleasure from that or any other book.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Austen family Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'What a Contretems [sic]! in the language of France; What an unluckiness! in that of Mde Duval.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Sarah Harriet Burney : Clarentine, A Novel
'We are reading Clarentine, & are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a 2d reading than at the 1st & it does not bear a 3d at all. It is full of unnatural conduct & forced difficulties, without striking merit of any kind.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Revd T. Jefferson : Request for subscribers for "Two Sermons"
'I have read Mr Jefferson's case to Edward [Austen], and he desires to have his name set down for a guinea and his wife's for another; but does not with for more than one copy of the work.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen
Walter Scott : Marmion, or A Tale of Flodden Field
'Ought I to be very much pleased with Marmion? - As yet I am not. James reads it aloud in the Eveng - the short Eveng - beginning at about 10, & broken by supper.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Austen Print: Book
Anna Maria Porter : Lake of Killarney
'While I write now, George is most industriously making and naming paper ships, at which he afterwards shoots with horse-chestnuts, brought from Steventon on purpose; and Edward equally intent over the "Lake of Killarney", twisting himself about in one of our great chairs'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Knight Print: Book
Mrs S. Sykes : Margiana, or Widdrington Tower
'The American Lady improved as we went on - but still the same faults in part recurred. - We are now in Margiana, & like it very well indeed. - We are just going to set off for Northumberland to be shut up in Widdrington Tower, where there must be two or three sets of Victims already immured under a very fine Villain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Austen Family Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'We began Pease on Sunday, but our gatherings are very small - not at all like the gathering in the Lady of the Lake.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Rachel Hunter : Lady Maclairn, the Victim of Villainy
In a joking letter to her niece, Anna Austen, Jane Austen writes, 'Miss Jane Austen begs her best thanks may be conveyed to Mrs Hunter of Norwich [...] Miss Jane Austen's tears have flowed over each sweet sketch in such a way as would do Mrs Hunter's heart good to see; if Mrs Hunter could understand all Miss Jane Austen's interest in the subject she would certainly have the kindness to publish at least 4 vols more about the Flint family...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Charles James Blomfield : A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of his Diocese
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Payne Knight : An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : The Dramatic Works
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
August Heinrich Matthiae : A Copious Greek Grammar
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Doctor
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Henry George Grey : Corrected Report of the Speech of Viscount Howick
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Herder : Kalligone
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Georg August Goldfuss : Handbuch der Zoologie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Lorenz Oken : Erste Ideen zur Theorie des Lichts, der Finsternis
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Ernst Platner : Ernst Platners Philosophische Aphorismen nebst ein
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Ueber die Idee der Universitaten
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Spee : Trutz Nachtigal ein geistlich poetisches Lustwaldl
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus : Das Leben Jesu
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gebbard Ehrenreich Maass : Versuch uber die Einbildungskraft
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Hermann Boerhaave : A New Method of Chemistry
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung in das Neue Testament
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Robinson : Miscellaneous Works of Robert Robinson
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
William Charles Wells : Two essays: one upon single vision with two eyes
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Ferdinand Friedrich Runge : Neveste phytochemische Entdeckingen zur Begrundung
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alighieri Dante : The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alighieri Dante : The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : Wissenschaft der Logik
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alexander Charles Louis D'Arblay : The Vanity of All Earthly Greatness
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Herder : Briefe das studium der Theologie betreffend
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Mariana Starke : Travels on the continent
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Nicola Francesco Haym : Notizia de' libri rari viella lingua italiana
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Anderson [Editor] : The Works of the British Poets
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Bond Head : Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an old man
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Christian Heinroth : Lehrbuch der Anthropologie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Bull : Defensio Fidei Nicaenae
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Royal Society : The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Nelson Coleridge : "Life and Writings of Hesiod" Quarterly Review
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Serial / periodical
Bernard Germain Etienne de La Ville Illon : Les ages de la nature et histoire de l'espece human
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Mary Lamb : Mrs Leicester's School: or, the history of several young ladies, related by themselves
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : A Course of Sermons for all the Sundays in the Year
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : A Course of Sermons for all the Sundays in the Year
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : A collection of polemical discourses
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Williams : Poems, Lyric and Pastoral
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Philosophische Schrifte[n]
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Philosophische Schrifte[n]
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Walter Wilson : Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Christoph Wolf : Curae philologicae et criticae, ...
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Karl Christian Wolfart : Jahrbucher Fur den Lebens-Magnetismus oder Neues
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christopher Wordsworth : Six Letters to Granville Sharp, Esq
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christopher Wordsworth : "Who Wrote Eikon Basilike?" considered and answered
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : System des transcendentalen Idealismus
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : System des transcendentalen Idealismus
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling : Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Wrangham : The Life of Dr. Richard Bentley
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Christian Wolff : Logic, or rational thoughts on the powers of the human understanding
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Wrangham : Scraps
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher : A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St Luke
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher : Ueber den sogenannten ersten Brief des Paulos
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
James Abraham Hillhouse : Hadad
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Hooker : Works
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Hugh of Saint Victor : De Sacramentis
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Darley : Sylvia or the May Queen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Rene Descartes : Opera Philosophica
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Homer : Whole Works
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette : Theodor
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francesco Baldovini : Lamento di cecco da Varlungo
[Marginalia]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Peter Augustine Baines : Faith, Hope, and Charity
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt : Glaubens-Bekanntniss
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus : The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
[Marginalia] mainly 1804-1811; a few notes added up to 1818-1819, one note is as late as 1826 or later
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens : Kabbalistische Briefe
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Christoph Adelung : Deutsche Sprachlehre fur Schulen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Patrick Colquhoun : A Treatise on Indigence
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Nelson Coleridge : Six Months in the West Indies in 1825
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Nelson Coleridge : Notes on the Reform Bill
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : A Discourse
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir George Colebrooke : Six Letters on Intolerance
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gabriello Chiabrera : Delle Opere
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Chambre : Some Animadversions upon the Declaration
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Hartley Coleridge : The Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alexander Chalmers : The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alexander Chalmers : The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Alexander Chalmers : The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Conrad Barchusen : Elementa Chemiae
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Byfield : The Doctrine of the Sabbath Vindicated
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Butler : Vindication of "The Book of the Roman Catholic Church"
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Butler : The Book of the Roman Catholic Church
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : The Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William Dukes of Hamilton
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : The Life of William Bedell
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gottfried August Burger : Gedichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or Enquries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Religio Medici
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Religio Medici
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Brooke : The Fool of Quality OR The History of Henry Earl of Moreland
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Brerewood : A Second Treatise of the Sabbath
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Hendrik Brenkmann : Historia Pandectarum
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Claude Alexandre, Comte de Bonneval : Memoirs of the Bashaw Count Bonneval
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gottfried Christian Bohn : Wohlerfahrner Kaufmann
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Fifty Comedies and Tragedies
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Reliquiae Baxterianae & c
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Reliquiae Baxterianae & c
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Reliquiae Baxterianae & c
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Catholick Theologie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Lavington : The Moravians compared and detected
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
St Francis of Sales : Il Teotima osia il trattato dell'amor di Dio
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Carl Friedrich Flogel : Geschichte der Komischen Litteratur
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Carl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge : Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magneti
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Carl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge : Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magneti
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Field : Of the Church
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Field : Of the Church
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Richard Field : Of the Church
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Marsilio Ficino : Platonica theologia de imortalitate animorum
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Peter Heylyn : Cyprianus Anglicus; or The history of the life and death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann : Fantasiestucke in Calloti Manier
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Pierre Jurieu : The History of the Council of Trent
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Heinrich Hoffbauer : Der Mensch in allen Zonen der Erde
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Philippe de la Clyle, sire de Commines : The History of Philip de Commines
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung in die apokryphischen Schriften
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung in die apokryphischen Schriften
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Einleitung ins Alte Testament
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi : Veber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herr
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi : Veber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herr Moses Mendelssohn
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi : Veber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herr Moses Mendelssohn
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn : Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Litteratur
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach : Uber die naturlichen Verschiedenheiten im Menschen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach : Uber die naturlichen Verschiedenheiten im Menschen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Andrew Fuller : The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared as to their Moral Tendency
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz : Theodicee, das ist, Versuch von der Gute Gottes
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Leighton : The Expository Works and Other Remains of Archbishop Leighton
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Leben, nebst seinem noch ubrigen litterarischen Nachlasse
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Gotthold Ephraim Lessings samm Hiche Schriften
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry More : The Theological Works of the most pious and learned Henry More, DD Sometime Fellow of Christ's College in Cambridge
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry More : Philosophical Poems, etc
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry More : Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica abscondita
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Martin Luther : Colloquia mensalia
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Lyttelton : The History of the Life of King Henry the Second
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Bernard de Mandeville : The Fable of the Bees: or, private vices, publick benefits
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Von Matthisson : Gedichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Von Matthisson : Gedichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Stillingfleet : Origines Sacrae, or a rational account of the grounds of natural and revealed religion
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc, an epic poem
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Algernon Sidney : The Works of Algernon Sidney
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir Philip Sidney : Arcadia der Graffin von Pembrock
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Henry More : The Second Lash of Alazonomastix
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann : De emendenda ratione graecae grammaticae pars prim
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Heinrich Jung : Theorie der Geister-Kunde
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling : Jahrbucher der Medicin als Wissenschaft
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi : Werke (Vol I-III [of 6])
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Anton Mesmer : Mesmerismus
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Cesare Mussolini : Italian Exercises
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Friedrich Ludwig Von Hardenberg : Novalis Schriften (Vol I of 2)
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Leighton : The Genuine Works of R Leighton, D.D. Archbishop of Glasgow
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Leighton : The Genuine Works of R Leighton, D.D. Archbishop of Glasgow
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Thomas Robert Malthus : An Essay on the Principle of Population
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Lloyd : Nugae Canorae
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Leighton : The Whole Works of Robert Leighton, D.D.
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Thomas Robert Malthus : The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the importation of foreign corn
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Smith : Seven Letters on National Religion
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : History of Brazil
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : History of Brazil
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : History of Brazil
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Life of Wesley; and the Rise and Progress of Methodism
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : Lives of the British Admirals
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Southey : Omniana, or horae otiosiores
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Sir William Stewart : Outlines of a Plan for the General Reform of the British Land Forces
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Johann Friedrich Meckel : System des vergleichenden Anatomie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger : Philosophische Gesprache
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Grundzuge der philosophischen Naturwissenschaft
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Grundzuge der philosophischen Naturwissenschaft
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Anthropologie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Lorenz Oken : Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Caricaturen des Heiligsten
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Caricaturen des Heiligsten
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Lorenz Oken : Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Die gegenwartige zeit und wie sie geworden mit besonderer R?cksicht auf Deutschland
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Heinrich Steffens : Beytrage zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Stanley Faber : A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri: Or the Great Gods of Phoenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Greece, Italy and Crete
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
George Stanley Faber : A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri: Or the Great Gods of Phoenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Greece, Italy and Crete
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
A member of the Church of England : Eternal Punishment Proved to Be Not Suffering, But Privation
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Adolph Carl August Eschenmayer : Psychologie in drei Theilen
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Irving : Sermons, Lectures and Occasional Discourses
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Edward Irving : For Missionaries after the Apostolical School
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History
'I well remember, and I sometimes think of it with tears, bringing to my lodgings Rollin's "Ancient History", in six volumes. I wanted something to read. I had no one to advise me to a course of reading, so I pitched on Rollin. Next I obtained a number of Wiley and Putnam's "Library of Choice Reading", and there I found essay, and biography, and history; but for the lack of a system, my reading was desultory. My time was soon fully occupied in speaking, day and night, in school-houses, vestries, and halls, so that the opportunities for intellectual culture were limited. Still, I read a great deal to small profit, owing to the lack of advantages, such as I might have obtained, by the training which an education would have imparted.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John B. Gough Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'You ask me (pertly enough- pardon the expression) whether I have read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"- Alas only twice- And have, in addition, only the following catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah H. Burney Print: Book
Francis Burgerdiscius [Burgersdijk] : Institutionum Logicarum
'I was deeply engag'd in Homer & Burgesdicius, otherwise should have answer'd it [letter from John Potter] sooner. I hope you don't think I preferr'd the old musty Greek, or the trifling Logician to a correspondence with a valuable friend: no; twas neccesity not choice that restrained my pen.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Hurd Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Trifles
'bought Dodsley's "Trifles", a very entertaining book [in margin] Price 1s which Mr E. gave me to buy it with & has likewise given me the book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Humphrey Prideaux : The Old and New Testament Connected
'I finished Prideaux's "Connection of the Old and New Testament" history.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Otranto
'Within these few days I could not have a book from the library because Mr E. had lent the "Castle of Otranto" to Miss Lowe [Love?], who happened to be there the afternoon when I was reading it; it was against the rules.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Mrs Harley : The Castle of Mowbray
'Fetched the "Castle of Mowbray" from Lindley's Library; a very silly Love tale. Took the "Castle of Otranto" to the Library. It is one of the most entertaining novels I ever read.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Posthumos Works, Vol IV: Letters and Miscellaneous
'Brought from the library for Miss Haynes the 4 [th] vol. of Mrs Godwin's Posthumous Works. It contains Letters, one on the Management of Infants, Several to Mr Johnson the Book-seller, one on the character of the French Nation, [?]of Fancy, & on Poetry & Hints. Finished it that night!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Cotton : Cotoni Postuma: Divers Choice Pieces of the Renown
'Returned from S. Read as I came along a considerable part of "Cotoni Posthuma" which Mr M[anley] lent me.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden
'Took "Letters from Norway & c" back to the Vestry Library. I did not read them, but Mr E. said they were very entertaining & instructive; brought Mrs Wollstonecraft "View of the French Revolution".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Evans Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
'Finished Wollstoncraft's "View of the French Revolution" Vol I. It appears to rather a panegyric upon the actions of the national assembly than a just history. She thinks the Duke of Orleans was the cause of that Riot, when the women went to Versailles.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Sir Frederick Morton Eden : The State of the Poor; or an History of the Labour
'Took the "Gent. Mag." to the Library, & brought Frederick Morton Eden's "State of the Poor"; he gives an account of the state of the poor in most of the large parishes in England, & amongst the rest Sheffield.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
George Smith : A Sermon Delivered in the Parish Church of Sheffield
'Bought Mr Smith's "Sermon to the Odd Fellows", Professor Robinson's "Proof of a Conspiracy" seems to have made a deep impression on his mind. Price 6d. Bought also the "Oeconomist" for July; they have raised the price to 2d.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter
Lawrence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [in 2 vols]
'Finished Sterne's "Tristram Shandy"; [borrowed from Mr Manley on visit to Stammington, July 7 1798] It has of late become the fashion to cry down Sterne as the greatest plagarist... [discusses the 'principal characters']. The parts which please me best are the story of le Fever, Uncle Toby's campaigns, Toby's apology, The Sermon and the conversation upon it, & the Death of Yorick.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Johann Georg Zimmermann : Solitude, or the effect of Occasional Retirement
'Wrote out of Zimmerman on "Solitude" the introduction to it. [Notes that it is a 1797 edn when borrowed on 26 Aug. 1798].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Johann Georg Zimmermann : Solitude, or the effect of Occasional Retirement
'Took Zimmermann to the library [In margin: 'vestry']. It consists for the most part of declamation, tho' it is very instructive; I have not finishe'd it but it was time to return it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Townson : Travels in Hungary with a Short Account of Vienna
'I have read part of Townson but I think I shall read no more as it consists of nothing [else?] but mineralogical & botanical remarks.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Sir George Leonard Staunton : An Authentic Account from the King of Great Britain
'Took the 1st vol of Staunton to the library [borrowed on 7 Sept], & brought Townson's "Travels" ... The 1st part of Staunton brings the embassador into the Yellow Sea, so it is the second, which we must expect the most entertainment as it gives a very particular account of the Chinese custom &c.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : A Tour in Switzerland
'Thought the following remarks in Miss Williams was exceeding applicable to the manufacturers of Sheffield: "There is a spirit in that class, in all countries more favourable to inquiry & consequently more hostile to unconditional submission" Vol 2 p.227.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Henry William Bunbury : An Academy for Grown Horsemen
'Brought from the Library as a pamphlet Bunbury's "Academy for Grown Horsemen"; in some parts he is exceedingly humurous.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter
Helen Maria Williams : A Tour in Switzerland
'Miss Williams "Tour" is very entertaining; besides describing the scenery (which she does in a masterly manner) she gives short sketches of the government of the different cantons & compares the state of Switzerland to Paris.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire
'I was too much engaged with Gibbon to bestow time on reading "Causes and Consequences"; Mr E. However, read it & was pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire
'I was too much engaged with Gibbon to bestow time on reading "Causes and Consequences"; Mr E. However, read it & was pleased with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Evans Print: Book
George Benson : The History of the Life of Jesus Christ
'Began to read as my Sunday Reading Benson's "Life of Christ".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field
'Oh! Woman! In our hours of ease Uncertain, coy and hard to please...'[6 lines] 'Marmion'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
Alaric Alexander Watts : Remember the Past
'Remember the Past!' '"Remember the Past" Oh since Fate has bereft me/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : On A Cornelian Heart Which Was Broken
'On a Gold Heart Which Was broken' 'Ill fated heart and can it be/...' [transcript changes the gender of the speaker]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
Alaric Alexander Watts : A Woman's Farewell. Adapted to an Air by Mozart
'Farewell to...' 'Fare thee well! Tis meet we part, /...' 'July 6th 1835/Julia'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
Mary Tighe : Sonnet Addressed To My Mother
'To My Mother' 'Oh! Thou whose tender smile most partially/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Destruction of Sennacherib
'On the Destruction of Semnacherib/ By Byron'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : The Curse of Kehama OR 'Love'
'They sin who tell us Love candie/...' [16 lines] 'Southey'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Bride of Abydos OR 'Modern Greece'
'Modern Greece/ From the Bride of Abydos' 'Know ye the land where the cypress & myrtle/...' [canto one, stanza one (only) of Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'To A Lady Weeping'
'To a Lady Weeping "Weep, daughter of a royal line..."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George or Edward Carey Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : From the Turkish [The Chain I Gave]
'From Byron' 'The Chain I Gave Was Fair to View.../'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Epitaph XI:Intended for Sir Isaac Newton
'Nature and Nature's Laws lay hidin night/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lines Written Beneath A Picture
'Written Beneath a Picture' 'Dear object of defeated care!/...' 'R.G.C. 1835'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: 'R.G.C.' Print: Unknown
Edward Young : Night Thoughts OR 'Night Two'
'We waste, not use, ourtime; we breathe, not live' [single line] 'Young'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : On Being Asked What Was the "Origin of Love"
'On being asked what was the "Origin of Love"' 'The "Origin of Love! - ah why/That question cruel ask of me/...' [minor differences from the original]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward or George Carey Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : A Fragment
'A Fragment' 'When to their airy hall... [printed first line 'When, to their...] 'Byron'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : To [George, Earl Delawarr]
'Friendship' 'O yes I will own we were dear to one another/...' [Oh! Yes, I will own we were dear to each other/...' - Byron's original text]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Maingay [?] Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Farewell! If Ever Fondest Prayer
'Farewell' 'Farewell! If ever fondest prayer/...' [Some differences in punctuation from Byron's text]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Tear
'The Tear' 'When Friendship or Love' [Epigraph from Gray, not transcribed]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
Mary Tighe : On Receiving a Branch of Mezereon
'Ah ['Oh!' in original] do not quite your friend forget/...' [4 lines: last 4 lines of 48-line text]'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
Bernard Barton : To A Dilatory Correspondent
'To A Dilatory Correspondent' 'Much as thy Silence I admire/...' [4, 6 line stanzas]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc, An Epic Poem
'I have not yet finished "Joan of Arc". Near 500 lines at the beginning of the 2d book were supplied by S.T. Coleridge. These appear to me to be the worst I have ever read. Who would suppose that the following sentence is in blank verse. Fancy - Peopling air by absence [to] teach my self-control & c. In contrast to the above I will transcribe one of the most beautiful passages speaking of the death of a common soldier of unrecorded name.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc, An Epic Poem
'[...] Gaze on - then heart-sick [...] It is in the first edition of this poem, that I am reading, which Southey composed in 6 weeks & corrected it, while it was proceeding thro' the press. A second edition has since been published, which the reviews state to be much more perfect than the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Southey : Joan of Arc, An Epic Poem
'took "Joan of Arc" to the library. I think the 4 first books, are much superior to any which follow, if we except the 9th [in margin: & the vision of the Maid] but even that [Book 9] contains something rather disgusting towards the beginning. His descriptions of battles are sometimes confused.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Rene Vertot : Histoire des Revolutions de Portugal
'For the sake of improving myself in the French language, began to translate Vertot's "Revolutions of Portugal".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Robert Dodsley (editor) : A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes
'When I came to extract the remarks on Dodsley, I found [they?] were remarks upon an old edition & that the editors we have published in 1782, have adopted the remarks & c.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Took Gibbon to the library. I have not had time to read more than one chapter being engaged with Bowyers. I can procure it another time.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Peter Pindar : Tales of the Hoy, interspersed with song
'Took Pindar's "Tales of Hoy" to the library; I think it much inferior to most of his other publications which I have seen. Corinna's "Epitaph", which I have transcribed is however one of his prettiest productions. Brought the 1st vol of "Remains of Living Authors".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Unknown
Patrick Colquhoun : Treatise of the police of the metrpolis
'Took Colquhoun's "treatise of the police of the metropolis" to the library. I have not read it but, Mr Evans has; he says that he gives a most dreadful idea of the state of London; he says there are no less than 200, 000 persons, who when they get up in the morning do not know where they shall lay their head at night. That very miserable story, which I have cut out of an old "Iris" & is amongst the rest of the newspaper scraps, & entitled "On the Police of Paris" Mr Col[...] says was related to him by a Foreign Ambassador, who was at Paris at the time.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Evans Print: Book
Elizabeth Robinson Montagu : An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare
'I think Mrs Montague [sic] has fully vindicated Shakespeare from the objections of Voltaire [...] Her three dialogues of the dead at the end of her essay, are I think very good ones.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
'Read with Cecilia a good deal of "marmion" the new poem of Sir Walter Scott, which I like.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
Humphrey Prideaux : Connections or The Old and New Testament Connected
'I looked also one evening into Prideaux's "Connections" [...]But my chief employment was [...]the renewed attempt at solving the problem which I met with in the work of M Agnesi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The History of England
'search Blackstone and Goldsmith's "History"; much struck with style of latter; deserving, I think, to be more talked of'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
Henry Saint John, Viscount Bolingbroke : Letter on the Study and Use of History
'Up by nine. Read a little this morning in Lord Bolingbroke's "Study of History". What extreme foppery! Yet what can one point out as proofs?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters of the Right Hon. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
'Afterwards, when upstairs, Mrs Montagu's "Letters" which I think very highly of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
Catherine Galindo : Mrs Galadano's letter to Mrs Siddons
'Dr Ferris, since I have been here, has lent me [...] at the same time Mrs Galando's "Letters", a foolish slander, as it seems, against Mrs Siddons'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Windham Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Life of Goethe
Letter to Barbara Leigh Smith from Bessie Raynor Parkes, 19 March 1856: 'What shall I say about Goethe? When I have done it I shall write to Marian - I don't see the self-development theory you see in him'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Bessie Raynor Parkes Print: Book
Horatio Forbes Brown : John Addington Symonds: A Biography Compiled from
'I have been reading the Life of Mr Symond, and it makes me almost laugh (though there is little laughing in my heart) to think of the strange difference between this prosaic little narrative,all about the facts of a life so simple, and his elaborate self- discussions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho!
'Louis and I have begun reading "Westward Ho!" together [...] He reads to me every day out of "Westward Ho!" which I think very beautiful and interesting'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Maud Mary or "Princess Alice" Print: Book
Ramsey Muir : A Short History of the British Commonwealth
'I'm off reading this period, glance at Insanity Bir, and open Marjorie's British Commonwealth by Ramsay Muir, at the every page that shows so plainly how Napoleon first won Europe and then set about Britain. Just as Hitler would like to do now. So nicely put. These two books suddenly show me how we stand in this war and how we must fight for out very existence. . . .Yes, I see all at once what we are up against -- How British would fight against any invasion here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage OR 'Impromptu, In Reply
'Impromptu, in Reply to a Friend' 'When from the heart where sorrow sits/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'On A Cornelian Heart' OR Childe Harold's Pilgrima
'On A Cornelian Heart Which Was Broken' [transcript entire poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage OR 'Written Beneath...'
'On A Cornelian Heart Which Was Broken' [transcript entire poem]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Huddersford : Song: Mutual Love
'Mutual Love Our Mutual Flame, inspires our bliss/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Charlotte Smith : Evening
'Evening by Charlotte Smith Oh soothing hour, when glowing Day, ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'From the Portuguese' 'In moments to delight devoted/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Edward Nares : Thinks-I-To-Myself: A Serio-Ludicro, Tragico-Comic
'Lines on the Death of a Beloved Wife' 'How without rule are the decrees of God/... Thinks I To Myself'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Mary Robinson : Lines To Him Who Will Understand Them
'Lines - To him that will understand them' 'Thou art no more my bosom's Friend;/...' 'Mrs Robinson'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Alexander Pope : An Essay on Man, Epistle IV
'Oh Happiness! Our beings end and aim,...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Peter Pindar : Lines to Lord Nelson
'written by Peter Pindar, at Merton, the seat of the late Lord Nelson, onhis catching a nightcap on fire, which his lordship had lent him'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Edward Moore : The Lover and the Friend
'O Thou for whom my lyre Istring/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage OR 'On Parting'
'On Parting' 'The kiss, dear maid! Thy lip has left, /...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
William Robert Spencer : Beth Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound
'Poetry Composed by Llewelyn on the Death of his Greyhound' 'The Spearman [spearmen in original] heard the bugle sound/...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
George Gordon, Lord Byron : On Being Asked What Was The "Origin of Love"
'On being asked what was the "Origin of Love"' 'The "Origin of Love!" - Ah Why That Cruel question ask of Me.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton : The Child of Earth
'"The Child of Earth" by the Hon. Mrs Norton Fainter Her Slow Step falls from day to day... Otley - February 15th 1831. Benj. Beanlands'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Beanlands
Reginald Heber : 'On Heavenly and Earthly Hope' OR ['Hope']
'Hope' 'Heber' 'Reflected in the lakes of love, ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Beanlands group
George Canning : Epitaph: George Charles Canning
'Lines on the Death of the Hon. G.C. Canning' 'Though short thy span of Heaven's unimpeached decrees...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Beanlands group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sonnet on Chillon
'Sonnet on Chillon "Eternal spirit of the Chainless Mind!, ..."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Robert Hartley Cromek [editor of vol] : 'My Ain Fireside' OR Remains of Nithsdale and Gall
'My Ain Fire Side' 'O, I hae seen great ones...' >From the Nithsdale and Galloway Songs
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Croly : The Late Queen of Russia on Seeing Her Bust in the King's chamber in 1812
'The Late Queen of Russia on seeing Her Bust in the King's Chamber in 1812' 'Thour't gone from us, to weep no more...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
'Stranger! If e'er thine ardent... Lord of the Isles 4th canto'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'Call it not vain - they do not err, To murmur dirges round the grave.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Heart of Mid-Lothian
'Arthur's seat like a couchant lion of immense size - Salisbury crags, like a huge [belt or] girdle of granite, were dimly visible. Sir Walter Scott'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Richard Lander : Records of Captain Clapperton's last expedition
'"Sometimes although neither of us was gifted with a voice of much power..." (Captain Clapperton). Landar's Expedition - Captain Clapperton died of a fever at Soccatoo 13th April 1827.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Anne Maria Sargent : The Isle of Wight
'Isle of Wight by Anne Maria Sargeant A light so varied bursts upon my view, ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'"Call it not vain: - they do not err ... To murmur dirges round his grave". Scott.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Devereux Bowly
Anna Maria Porter : A Vision
'A Vision The Night-Mare came to my silent bed... Miss Porter'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : L'Amitie Est L'Amour Sans Ailes
'Why should my anxious heart repine, ... Byron-1807' [three stanzas first published in Moore's 'Life', 1830]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Charles Swain : Song of the Bells
'Song of the Bells by Charles Swain "Soft upon the summer air,..."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Richard Lander : Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition
'Song of the wives of the King of Cariba... Landar's expedition'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Richard Lander : Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition
'The following imperfect translation of a song to the Sovereign of Khiama may serve as a specimen of the poetry of the Africans - Landor'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Elegy on Newstead Abbey
'It is the voice of the years that are gone! They roll before me with all their deeds. Ossian! Newstead! Fast falling, once resplendent dome!/...' 'Elegy on Newstead Abbey, Early Poems 1803'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Felicia Dorothea Hemans : The Graves of a Household
'Graves of a Household' 'They grew in beauty side by side, ...' 'Mrs Hemans'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'If That High World' OR Hebrew Melodies
'If that high World If that high World which has beyond...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'Harp of the North! that mouldering long hath hung, ..'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Caroline Anne Bowles : Autumn Flowers
'On seeing some Autumn Flowers' 'Those few pale autumn flowers, How beautiful they are!...' 'L.G. Feb 1831'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: 'L.G.'
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Elegy on Newstead
'On leaving Newstead Abbey ... >From Newstead Sept 9th 1830'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Stanzas
'I would I were a careless child, ...' 'Early Poems'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Mary Ann Browne : 'Relics' OR Winter's Wreath
'Relics' 'Oh! Wherefore, Lady dost thou price, ... M.A. Browne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group Print: Serial / periodical
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Oh! Snatched Away In Beauty's Bloom
'Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's bloom...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R.B. Sheridan
Extract from Byron's Monody on the Death of Sheridan
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Manfred: A Dramatic Poem
'Voice of the Second Spirit' 'Mont Blanc is the Monarch of mountains, ...' 'Manfred'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sun of the Sleepless
'Sun of the Sleepless' 'Sun of the Sleepless! Melancholy Star!...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles (Canto One)
'Autumn departs - but still his mantles fold...' 'Introduction to the Lord of the Isles'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Hebrew Melodies
'When coldness wraps this suffering clay ... Hebrew Melodies'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, ... On a foreign strand! O Caledonia! Stern and wild, ...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold, Canto IV
'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll! ... And laid my hand upon thy mane - as I do here. 4th canto'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group
Charles Wesley : [Hymn] Come on my Partners in Distress
'April 20 1828 / on Betty Shaw wife of Benj. Shaw / ... this washer favourite verse Who suffer with our master here We shall before his face appear And by his side sit down To patient faith the prize is sure And all who to the end endure The Cross shall wear the Crown.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Betty Shaw Print: Book
Robert Vansittart : Black Record
'I have been reading Sir. Robert Vansittart's little book "Black Record". I have found it very interesting. He certainly has no use for the Germans, and I am wondering whether a place can be found for him at the Peace conference. He warns up that after defeat Germany will be full of self pity and will try to organize sympathy, and says that as usual there will be fools among us willing to listen. Indeed as proof of this attitude I notice there has already been a protest against this book in Parliament, and a request for its banning. When this war is over the Battle of Words will begin and the world be fill[ed] with the sound of clamouring tongues.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold: A Romaunt, Canto IV
'Sometime about the twenty first year of my age I perceived the great advantage possessed by those who received a classical education. I had read Byron's "Childe Harold" and the passage "Alas for Tully's voice" and Virgil's Lay And Troy's pictured page &c inspired me with a desire to dive deeper into Latin Literature.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'. . . but I am going to the Library immediately for the Book, -though I assure you I read it all when it first came out,-. . .'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Maria Lawes Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'. . . Mrs Kynaston, good humouredly ,called out -"I'm sure, Ladies, I am very glad to see you so merry, - ah - one of you young ladies, - I don't say which, has given me a deal of entertainment! - I'm sure I could never leave off reading,- & when Miss Owen came into my Room, says I, don't speak a Word to me, for I'm so engaged! - Lord, I could not bear to be stopt!. . ."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Victoria Kynaston Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : [Unknown - Poetry]
'On the day that the bloody battle of Gravellote was fought [August 18, 1870] they [Hardy and Emma] were reading Tennyson in the grounds of the rectory.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma Gifford
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Poems on Various Subjects
'Lookd in the poems of Coleridge, Lamb and Loyde - Colridges monody on Chatterton is beautiful but his sonnets are not happy ones they seem to be a labour after exelence which he did not reach [.] some of those by his friend Lloyd are exelent [...] "Craig Millar Castle" and "To November" are the best [...] Lambs best poetry is in "Elia"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Essays
'Read Bacons essay on the idea of compleat garden divided into every month of the year [...] What beautiful essays these are.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Robert Southey : The life of Wesley
'read in Southeys "Wesley"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Robert Tannahill : Poems and Songs Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
'Read some passages in the poems of Tannahill some of his songs are beautiful particularly "Loudons bonny woods and braes" "We'll meet beside the dusky glen" and "Jessey"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Robert Tannahill : Poems and Songs Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
'Read some passages in the poems of Tannahill some of his songs are beautiful particularly "Loudons bonny woods and braes" "We'll meet beside the dusky glen" and "Jessey"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Richard Watson : An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters
'Recieved a letter & present of books from Lord Radstock containing Hannah Moores "Spirit of Prayer" - Bp Wilsons "Maxims", Burnets "Life of God in the Soul of Man" - "A New Manual of Prayer" and Watsons "Answer to Paine" - a quiet unaffected defence of the Bible [...] I have not read Tom Paine but I have always [...] a low blackguard'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Richard Ayton : Essays and Sketches of Character
'Recieved another parcel from Hessey [...] a present of "Aytons Essays" a young writer of great promise which was killed in the bud these essays are excelent and contain a deal More of the Human Heart than an affectedly written book with that title'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
Alphonse-Marie-Louis Prat de Lamartine : Histoire des Girondins
'Yesterday morning I received the enclosed note from that most conceited and not over-well-bred Mons. de Lamartine. I desired my friend Madame Belloc to use her own discretion in reporting my criticisms on his Histoire des Girondins, but requested that she would convey to him the thanks and admiration of our family for the manner in which he mentioned the Abbe Edgeworth, and our admiration of the beauty of the writing of that whole passage in the work... I feel, and I am sure so will you and Mr. Butler, "What an egotist and what a puppy it is!" But ovation has turned his head.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Bishop Edward Elliott : Horae Apocalypticae
'During those melancholy weeks at Pimlico, I read aloud another work of the same nature as those of Habershon and Jukes, the "Horae Apocalypticae" of a Mr. Elliott. This was written, I think in a less disagreeable style, and certainly it was less opaquely obscure to me...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge : The Penny Cyclopaedia
'At other times, I dragged a folio volume of the "Penny Cyclopaedia" up to the studywith me, and sat there reading successive articles on such subjects as Parrots, Parthians, Passion-flowers, Passover and Pastry, without any invidious preferences, all information being equally welcome, and equally fugitive.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'When in years to come, I read "Dombey and Son", certain features of Mrs Pipchin did irresistibly remind me of my excellent past governess.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'Prominent among these was a set of the poems of Walter Scott, and in his unwonted geniality and provisional spirit of compromise, my Father must do no less than read these works aloud to my stepmother in the quiet spring evenings. This was a sort of aftermath of courtship, a tribute of song, to his bride, very sentimental and pretty. She would sit, sedately, at her work-box, while he, facing her, poured forth the verses at her like a blackbird ... My Father read the verse admirably, with full, - some people ( but not I) might say with a too full - perception of the metre as well as of rhythm, rolling out the rhymes, and glorying in the proper names. He began, and it was a happy choice, with "The Lady of the Lake"...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gosse Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
'...but she procured for me a copy of "Pickwick", by which I was instantly and gloriously enslaved. My shouts of laughing at the richer passages were almost scandalous, and led to my being reproved for disturbing my Father while engaged, in an upper room, in the study of God's Word. I must have expended months on the perusal of "Pickwick", for I used to rush through a chapter, and then read it over again very slowly, word for word, and then shut my eyes to realise the figures and the action...[more..]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Dr. Edward Young : The Last Day
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'I think that the rhetoric and vigorous advance of Young's verse were pleasant to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Robert Blair : The Grave
'...a small thick volume, bound in black morocco, and comprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century. Gloomy, funeral poems of an order as wholly out of date as are the cross-bones an druffled cherubim on the gravestones in a country churchyard. The four - and in this order, as I never shall forget - were "The Last Day" of a Dr. Young, "Blair's Grave", "Death" by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and "The Deity" of Samuel Boyse ... How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by the oppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays ... [explains how this reading matter was approved, and how it was taken into the garden] Thither then I escaped with my grave-yard poets, and who shall explain the rapture with which I followed their austere morality?' Later, 'It was Blair's "Grave" that really delighted me, and I frightened myself with its melodious doleful images in earnest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon : Histoire Naturelle
Letter xiv- "On Buffon's natural history" is a critique of the work
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Aikin Print: Book
Dr. Withering : Botanical description of British Plants
'By some one of these publications, but most probably from the last-mentioned [i.e. Withering], Mr.Aikin was inspired with a taste for this delightful study...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Aikin Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : [unknown]
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made lifeworth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Francis Bacon : [unknown]
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made life worth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Richard Steele : [unknown]
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What anAladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made lifeworth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Charles Lamb : [unknown]
Sir John Hammerton looking back on his early days in Glasgow when he left school and became a correspondence clerk, he said of Cassell's Library "What an Aladdin's cave it proved to me! Addison, Goldsmith, Bacon, Steele, DeQuincey ..., Charles Lamb. Macaulay and many scores of others whom old Professor Morley introduced to me -- what a joy of life I obtained from these, and how greatly they made life worth living!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Hammerton Print: Book
Charles Babbage : Ninth Bridgewater Treatise
[Whewell read Babbage, and was concerned that it had been his own Bridgewater which had stimulated Babbage to write one]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Whewell Print: Book
George Dodd : Curiosities of Industry
In the BL copy: Written in margin of "Paper: Its Applications and its Novelties" p16 'In 1853 the sum of #4000 was at last paid to Mr Archer for his process -- and stamps are now supplied in that manner both Postage & Receipts -- 1854' Also in margin of "Glass and its manufacture" annotation to first line of page 9 'Thames Plate Glass comp - founded 1835-36' Also in margin of 'The Chemistry of manufactures" p.2 "#25 per ton" relating to output of copper from Swansea.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Alexander von Humboldt : Personal Narrative of Travels
Letter from Aikin to her brother Edmund, dated March 1818: 'It is curious to observe the native eloquence of Humboldt struggling with the encombrance of all the sciences. Did ever mortal man study so many ologies, or travel with so many ometers!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Sir J. Mackintosh : [a text on ethical philosophy]
Letter from Lucy Aikin to her niece Sue, dated Nov.17, 18..?: Aikin has been reading Mackintosh, and comments on the suitability of philosophical reading for women.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth : Practical Education
Letter from Lucy Aikinto Mrs.Taylor, dated October 1805: 'But within the last few days everything has given way to "Practical Education", which my mother and I have been studying with great diligence for the benefit of George's little boy, who was brought to us last Tuesday.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Aikin Print: Book
Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth : Practical Education
Letter from Lucy Aikin to Mrs.Taylor, dated October 1805: 'But within the last few days everything has given way to "Practical Education", which my mother and I have been studying with great diligence for the benefit of George's little boy, who was brought to us last Tuesday.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Martha Aikin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems]
'for each there had been no poet later than Byron...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip and Emily Gosse Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Waverley Novels
'neither had read a romance since, in childhood, they had dipped into the "Waverley Novels" as they appeared in succession.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip and Emily Gosse Print: Book
Rev. George Croly : Salathiel
'As a young man in America, he had been deeply impressed by "Salathiel", a pious prose romance of that then popular writer, the Rev. George Croly."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gosse Print: Book
R. Atterbury (Bishop of Rochester) : The Epistolacy Correspondence. Speeches and Miscellanies with historical notes
'How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour! How shin'd the Soul unconquer'd in the Tower!' Pope.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Rev William Smith : Poetic Works including his version of Longinus on the Sublime
24 Oct 1788: 'Smith's version of Longinus on the Sublime, a translation with notes and observations - is a credit to the author and reflects lustre on Longinus himself. [Long quotation]: "to the unlearned also it may be of use ... an inclination to literature"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Rev William Smith : Poetic Works including his version of Longinus on the Sublime
13 Dec 1788 Another long quotation from Smith's translation: 'The Sublime is a certain force in discourse... from these three particulars joined together.' Also listed Longinus's five sources of the sublime.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Rev J Granger : Biographical History of England from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, with a preface. Vol 1 and 2
Long description of character of Sir Keneth (?) Digby. 'By his eager pursuit of knowledge seemed to be born only for contemplation, but he was thought to be so well qualified for action, that in 1628 he was appointed commander of a Squadron ... made repris also on the Algerians [?] and set at liberty a great number of English slaves... His book "bodies" and that of "The Nature of Man's Soul" are reckoned among the best of his works. Abdiah Cole, a Physician of Note, flourished in this reign. There is a portrait of him in a Dr of Physic's Gown by / Crofts.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Hamilton Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Geschichte des dreissigj?hrigen Kriegs
'I have translated a portion of Schiller's History of the thirty years war (it is all about Gustavus and the fellow-soldados of Dugald Dalgetty your dearly-beloved friend); and sent it off, with a letter introduced by Tait the Review-bookseller, to Longman and Co London.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
'Your common student wrote to me about Blackwood's Magazine, shewing who wrote in it and who spoke of it; he talks about 'Kenilworth a Romance'; he then describes his stomach-complaints, and wishes me better fortune, sometimes the dog even pities me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [unknown student] anon Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'Out of all that reading only one memory survives now. The story itself I have forgotten but the scene was laid in Italy, and there was a chapter in which a beggar arrived at a cottage carrying a heavy sack, which he left in a corner while he went, as he said, to the barn to get some sleep. The woman of the house, who lived by herself, happened to touch the sack, felt it moving, and knew at once that there was a man in it who had come to murder her... When I read "Treasure Island" a few years later the horrible figure of the blind seaman Pew brought back again the terrors of that dream.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Felicia Dorothea Hemans : Casabianca
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Excelsior
'when I was eleven a school history-book containing biographies of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sire John Eliot showed me that reading could be something quite different. My reading books up to then must have been poor, for I can remember nothing of them except a description of Damascus, with a sentence to the effect that at night the streets were "as silent as the dead". I had had, of course, to learn "Casabianca" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "Excelsior" and the other vapid poems which are supposed to please children, but like everyone else I was bored by them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonais: An elegy on the death of John Keats
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Pied Piper of Hamelin
'Then, when I was twelve we had a really good poetry book which contained extracts from "The Excursion", part of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "The Eve of Saint Agnes", "Adonais", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Mathew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult". We were given "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Pied Piper" to learn by heart in consecutive years. I never liked "The Pied Piper", which, being written consciously as a child's poem, made me feel conscious, and most of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" seemed unreal to me... The poems in the book which I liked best were "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "Tristram and Iseult"...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Notre Dame de Paris
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Robert Michael Ballantyne : Hudson Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'but I was reading "Les Miserables", and consoled myself with the thought that I was too capable of loving noble things.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
Edward L. Wheeler : Deadwood Dick
'In the lower part of the newsagent's windows were the journals that catered for me. By would be reformers they were lumped together as "penny dreadfuls". One was "Deadwood Dick" -a cowboy who was always bumping off people in Deadman's Gulch or Gallow's Ravine, The reformers told me that my mind would become brutalised by reading Penny Dreadfuls... Besides "Deadwood Dick" in the shop window there was "Bronco Bill", with stories of a similar type. And there was "Jack Wright".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Hiawatha
'Maybe to neutralise the Penny Dreadful, Cassells brought out the Penny Classics. These had a bluish-green cover and were world famous novels in abridged form, but sixty or seventy pages. And W.T. Stead brought out the Penny Poets. The covers of these were pimply surface-paper, a bright orange colour, and they contained selections from Longfellow, Tennyson, Keats, and many others. I first read "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline" in the Penny Poets and thought them marvellous; so marvellous that I began to write 'poetry' myself. Stead also brought out another penny book; this had a pink cover and contained selections from the ancient classics: stories from Homer, the writings of Pliny the younger, Aesop's "Fables". I took a strong fancy to Aesop, he was a Greek slave from Samos, in the sixth century BC, and workpeople were only just beginning to be called "wage slaves". I read all these; non-selective and Catholic my reading...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Evangeline
'Maybe to neutralise the Penny Dreadful, Cassells brought out the Penny Classics. These had a bluish-green cover and were world famous novels in abridged form, but sixty or seventy pages. And W.T. Stead brought out the Penny Poets. The covers of these were pimply surface-paper, a bright orange colour, and they contained selections from Longfellow, Tennyson, Keats, and many others. I first read "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline" in the Penny Poets and thought them marvellous; so marvellous that I began to write 'poetry' myself. Stead also brought out another penny book; this had a pink cover and contained selections from the ancient classics: stories from Homer, the writings of Pliny the younger, Aesop's "Fables". I took a strong fancy to Aesop, he was a Greek slave from Samos, in the sixth century BC, and workpeople were only just beginning to be called "wage slaves". I read all these; non-selective and Catholic my reading...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [unknown]
'Maybe to neutralise the Penny Dreadful, Cassells brought out the Penny Classics. These had a bluish-green cover and were world famous novels in abridged form, but sixty or seventy pages. And W.T. Stead brought out the Penny Poets. The covers of these were pimply surface-paper, a bright orange colour, and they contained selections from Longfellow, Tennyson, Keats, and many others. I first read "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline" in the Penny Poets and thought them marvellous; so marvellous that I began to write 'poetry' myself. Stead also brought out another penny book; this had a pink cover and contained selections from the ancient classics: stories from Homer, the writings of Pliny the younger, Aesop's "Fables". I took a strong fancy to Aesop, he was a Greek slave from Samos, in the sixth century BC, and workpeople were only just beginning to be called "wage slaves". I read all these; non-selective and Catholic my reading...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
'We had met Dickens before, but only "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "The Chimes", both of which, in their mean little school editions, were enough to sour a boy against the novels for the rest of his life.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Chimes
'We had met Dickens before, but only "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "The Chimes", both of which, in their mean little school editions, were enough to sour a boy against the novels for the rest of his life.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'Mr Wilson had no more patience than we had with Little Nell and the atrocious Trotty Veck. He shovelled the sentiment and the trushery behind him, and started straight off with "Pickwick Papers". "Pickwick" is not a very mature Dickens and not very mature humour, but it semmed to us quite the funniest book we had ever met.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Wilson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Wilson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Barnaby Rudge
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [discusses at length the realism he found in the Phiz illustrations for "Dombey and Son": 'I would pick up my book sometimes and try to read by the glow from the coals, and the world I entered seemed not too far removed from the world I left. It was no more walking from one room into the next.']
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
'I do not know whether Mr Wilson read "Pickwick" right through, but I certainly did. My copy bears a plate inside the cover [school prize details]... It was the first of a succession of Dickens volumes on Indian paper, in stiff blue covers, with the original Phiz and Seymour illustrations. In 1926, at the Secondary School, I received "Barnaby Rudge"; in 1927, "Dombey and Son"; in 1928, "Nicholas Nickleby". "Great Expectations, which followed "Pickwick" in Mr Wilson's scheme, I acquired in the red, cardboard-backed Nelson's Classics, price One Shilling and Sixpence, a series which became my regular source of Christmas and birthday presents from uncles and friends... These books were my winter reading between the ages of ten and fourteen... [continues]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'Mr Wilson introduced us to another author - Victor Hugo... in 1925, "Les Miserables" gripped us even more than "Pickwick". Mr Wilson must have abridged it ruthlessly, but he made everything in nineteenth-century France sound as if it were happening in the England of our own day...The reading of "Les Miserables" bound us together in one common experience.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Wilson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Maud [and other poems?]
'So that, whatever may have been its deeper cause, the love which filled my imagination was of a kind that seemed, to me, to have little to do with what I meant by sex. "Love" was something I had learned about from "David Copperfield" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" and from the stories in "The Woman's Weekly", which my mother occasionally bought. And of course, from the poetry I was beginning to enjoy. I was naively oblivious to the sexual innuendoes of Keats and Tennyson but their romantic raptures set me trembling like a tuning fork. "Come into the garden, Maud" roused nothing of the derision, or even downright ribaldry, that it would surely rouse in a boy of today.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : [Tales]
'Tom... introduced me to Poe's "Tales", to my first detective stories and to the early novels of H.G. Wells.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Geoffery Chaucer : [unknown works]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : [unknown works]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Charles Lamb : [unknown works]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Old Mortality
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [poems extracts]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [poems extracts]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems extracts]
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Gilbert White : [natural history]
'I began now to borrow from the Sanatorium Library books on nature and the countryside -Hardy, Hudson, Jefferies, Gilbert White; books on birds, animals, snakes and trees. And all these presented a picture of an England which, except in a few secluded spots, no longer survived.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
Pelham Grenville Wodehouse : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Eric Linklater : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
John Jeffrey Farnol : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Mark Twain : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : [unknown]
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
Robert Blatchford : Merrie England
'When, a year later, a senior apprentice -a Clarion Scout -gave me a copy of the penny edition of Blatchford's "Merrie England" of which he had sold a large quantity "round the frames", its matter was so very different from what its title had led me to expect that I put it aside unread. Years later circumstances caused me to hunt out this copy of "Merrie England" and give it serious consideration. I read it with avidity from end to end. In less than an hour it had done my business completely. Why I would hardly so much as look at a book which, later on, had so enduring an effect on me is worth puzzling out.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [novels]
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some old volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book, Serial / periodical, weekly parts collected by father and bound into four volumes
Charles Dickens : [novels]
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book, Serial / periodical, weekly parts collected and bound into four volumes
Walter Scott : Waverley Novels
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley Novels
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Fennimore Cooper : [unknown]
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book, Serial / periodical, weekly parts collected by father and bound into volumes
George Grote : History of Greece
'I took Lubbock's List as a guide in my book hunting and persevered until I had acquired and read every single book in Lubbock's "hundred". It took time, of course: it was only after many years that I could happen upon and acquire, secondhand, Grote's "History of Greece". But as I found them, so, doggedly, I set myself to read them, and to puzzle out, as well as I could, why they had acquired the repute in which they stood. It was, at times, hard going; I got little pleasure or profit from Keble's "Christian Year", and, though his gorgeous word tapestry impressed me greatly, little of either from Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Holy Living
'I took Lubbock's List as a guide in my book hunting and persevered until I had acquired and read every single book in Lubbock's "hundred". It took time, of course: it was only after many years that I could happen upon and acquire, secondhand, Grote's "History of Greece". But as I found them, so, doggedly, I set myself to read them, and to puzzle out, as well as I could, why they had acquired the repute in which they stood. It was, at times, hard going; I got little pleasure or profit from Keble's "Christian Year", and, though his gorgeous word tapestry impressed me greatly, little of either from Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Holy Dying
'I took Lubbock's List as a guide in my book hunting and persevered until I had acquired and read every single book in Lubbock's "hundred". It took time, of course: it was only after many years that I could happen upon and acquire, secondhand, Grote's "History of Greece". But as I found them, so, doggedly, I set myself to read them, and to puzzle out, as well as I could, why they had acquired the repute in which they stood. It was, at times, hard going; I got little pleasure or profit from Keble's "Christian Year", and, though his gorgeous word tapestry impressed me greatly, little of either from Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Biographical History of Philosophy
'But by a lucky chance I happened upon a book included in Lubbock's "hundred" -George Henry Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy". It came just when I needed it and to my extreme delight and mounting excitement opened before me an entirely new world of adventure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
[probably] Isaac Hawkins Browne : [poems complete works]
'I devoured poetry and nothing but poetry until I became insensible to poetry. Take an example; I happened upon some fat volumes of Campbell's "British Poets", the complete works of from four to eight poets in each volume which cost me 6d. apiece. They had shabby worn leather bindings, and the type was on the small side and closely set. But I ploughed through them, doggedly, as if reading for a bet, or an imposed task. One volume I remember contained the poetical works of Samuel Daniel, Browne, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Ben Johnson, Drummond (of Harthornden), John Donne, and some more minor ones. Another contained along with "also rans" Cowley, Milton and "Hudibras" Butler. And, I repeat, I ploughed through them with a stout heart, but little sense, and a dwindling understanding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : [poems complete works]
'I devoured poetry and nothing but poetry until I became insensible to poetry. Take an example; I happened upon some fat volumes of Campbell's "British Poets", the complete works of from four to eight poets in each volume which cost me 6d. apiece. They had shabby worn leather bindings, and the type was on the small side and closely set. But I ploughed through them, doggedly, as if reading for a bet, or an imposed task. One volume I remember contained the poetical works of Samuel Daniel, Browne, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Drummond (of Ha[w]thornden), John Donne, and some more minor ones. Another contained along with "also rans" Cowley, Milton and "Hudibras" Butler. And, I repeat, I ploughed through them with a stout heart, but little sense, and a dwindling understanding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Wallenstein
'The colossal "Wallenstein" and Thekla the angelical, and Max her impetuous lofty-minded lover are all gone to rest; I have closed Schiller for a night; and what can I do better than chat for one short hour with my old, earliest friend?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de Sta?l-Holstein : De l'Allemagne
'Those latter volumes of the Allemagne will perplex you, I fear. The third in particular is very mysterious; now and then quite absurd. Do not mind it much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Sir Charles William Pasley : Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire
'We quite run over with Books. She [JA's mother] has got Sir John Carr's Travels in Spain from Miss B. & I am reading a Society-Octavo, an Essay on the Military Police & Institutions of the British Empire, by Capt. Pasley of the Engineers, a book which I protested against at first, but which upon trial I find delightfully written & highly entertaining. I am as much in love with the Author as I ever was with Clarkson or Buchanan, or even the two Mr Smiths of the city. The first soldier I ever sighed for; but he does write with extraordinary force & spirit.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
James and Horatio Smith : Rejected Addresses; or the new Theatrum Poetarum
'Upon Mrs Digweed's mentioning that she had sent the Rejected Addresses to Mr Hinton, I began talking to her a little about them & expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh! dear, yes, very much; - very droll indeed; - the opening of the House! - & the striking up of the Fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say? - I sought no farther.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
James and Horatio Smith : Rejected Addresses; or the new Theatrum Poetarum
'Upon Mrs Digweed's mentioning that she had sent the Rejected Addresses to Mr Hinton, I began talking to her a little about them & expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh! dear, yes, very much; - very droll indeed; - the opening of the House! - & the striking up of the Fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say? - I sought no farther.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Digweed Print: Book
James and Horatio Smith : Rejected Addresses; or the new Theatrum Poetarum
'The Papillons have now got the Book [J & H Smith's "Rejected Addresses"] and like it very much; their niece Eleanor has recommended it most warmly to them. - [italics] She [end italics] looks like a rejected Addresser.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Papillon Family Print: Book
James and Horatio Smith : Rejected Addresses; or the new Theatrum Poetarum
'The Papillons have now got the Book [J & H Smith's "Rejected Addresses"] and like it very much; their niece Eleanor has recommended it most warmly to them. - [italics] She [end italics] looks like a rejected Addresser.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Papillon Print: Book
Sir George Steuart Mackenzie : Travels in Iceland
'And what are their Biglands & their Barrows, their Macartneys & Mackenzies, to Capt. Pasley's Essay on the Military Police of the British Empire, & the Rejected Addresses?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Leonhard Schmitz : A History of Greece, from the earliest times to the destruction of Corinth, B.C. 146
'Worked for an hour to day at French and read some Grecian History, The latter is certainly rather dry.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Leonhard Schmitz : A History of Greece, from the earliest times to the destruction of Corinth, B.C. 146
'learnt some French from "Allendorff" read some of "La petite Fadette" a novel by George Sand, and also some of Schmitz "History of Greece", it all helps to pass away the time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
George Sand : La Petite Fadette
'learnt some French from "Allendorff" read some of "La petite Fadette" a novel by George Sand, and also some of Schmitz "History of Greece", it all helps to pass away the time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Leonhard Schmitz : A History of Greece, from the earliest times to the destruction of Corinth, B.C. 146
'Have been working at French & reading "History of Greece"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Leonhard Schmitz : A History of Greece, from the earliest times to the destruction of Corinth, B.C. 146
'I cannot work this weather it is too hot, I have read a chapter of the "History of Greece" to day and that is all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton : Stuart of Dunleath. A story of the present time
'there has been so much motion that it has been next to impossible for a person to work. I have read lately the "Newcomes" by Thackeray "Stuart of Dunleath" by Mrs Norton & "Coningsby" by Disraeli'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Richard Church : [unknown]
'When I grew into a youth and read everything I got my hands on, from Penny Dreadfuls to the Holy Scriptures, I came across phrases that puzzled me, such as "sans-culotte", "shiftless rabble", "dregs of humanity", "ignorant masses". I wondered where all these worthless people lived. I could only think it must be London or some such place outside my ken. Then one day it dawned on me, these scornful and superior writers were writing about me, and the people who lived in our street. It knocked me sideways for a little time, till the temperament I had inherited from my mother pulled me straight again... The latest I have come across is Richard Church, for whom, as a poet and novelist, I have full respect...'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Unknown
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : [novels]
'My mother used to read the novels of Miss Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, and those in a series called "The Family Story Teller", that she got from the public library. My father got her "East Lynne" through a pub Literary Society, she read it over and over again. I read it when I was about nine. Heavens, the tears I gulped back over the death of Little Willie!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper Print: Book
Mrs Henry Wood : [novels]
'My mother used to read the novels of Miss Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, and those in a series called "The Family Story Teller", that she got from the public library. My father got her "East Lynne" through a pub Literary Society, she read it over and over again. I read it when I was about nine. Heavens, the tears I gulped back over the death of Little Willie!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper Print: Book
Mrs Henry [Ellen] Wood : East Lynne
'My mother used to read the novels of Miss Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, and those in a series called "The Family Story Teller", that she got from the public library. My father got her "East Lynne" through a pub Literary Society, she read it over and over again. I read it when I was about nine. Heavens, the tears I gulped back over the death of Little Willie!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper Print: Book
Mrs Henry [Ellen] Wood : East Lynne
'My mother used to read the novels of Miss Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, and those in a series called "The Family Story Teller", that she got from the public library. My father got her "East Lynne" through a pub Literary Society, she read it over and over again. I read it when I was about nine. Heavens, the tears I gulped back over the death of Little Willie!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Charles Henry Ross : Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday
'None of the periodicals shown there are alive today. There was "Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday", my favourite comic. When Father had a spot of overtime in, he used to buy a copy on Saturday, coming home from work with his wages and give it to me. Ally Sloper was always front page and full page. He was a comical man with a great bulbous nose, a wide grin, and he wore a tall hat that had a definite waist. He had a ma-in-law, and other relatives who were always making difficulties for him, but he always scored off them in the end. R.I.P. Ally.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Serial / periodical
Edward L. Wheeler : Deadwood Dick
'Also on pink newsprint were "Sketchy Bits" and "Photo Bits". Most of the "bits" in these journals had huge nude thighs and huge, almost nude, bosoms, with the absolute minimum of clothing... These two "Bits" journals - that I sometimes bought for a halfpenny each at the second-hand periodical stall in the market -catered to some extent to masochists. There were pages of letters supposed to be written by readers to the editor -though it would not surprise me if they had all been written by the same journalist -that I did not quite understand as a boy. I read everything I came across, from the Bible to "Deadwood Dick", so I read these letters also.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Serial / periodical
Mrs Henry [Ellen] Wood : The Channings
'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret
'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret
'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper Print: Book
Mrs Henry [Ellen] Wood : The Channings
'Now that we had gas I found it much easier and pleasanter to read. When I had read all my own periodicals I used to read Mother's literature. Sometimes she bought a novelette; the "Heartsease Library" was one, a penny per week. She was in the public library, too. I read "The Channings" by Mrs Henry Wood, and "Lady Audley's Secret" by Miss Braddon, and others by these two who were my mother's favourite authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Stamper Print: Book
Henry Cockton : The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, Ventriloquist
'[Father] had joined the PSA at the YMCA. That is: the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon at the Young Men's Christian Association; a religious service with plenty of tuneful hymns, usually a couple of singers who gave "sacred" songs; and to which was attached a Book Club. By paying a few pence a week Father got all the books he could read; he was a slow reader, too. He got "Valentine Vox, Ventriloquist", "Sylvestre Sound", "Somnambulist"; "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and many others. Dolly has some of them at this date, sixty years later.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'[Father] had joined the PSA at the YMCA. That is: the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon at the Young Men's Christian Association; a religious service with plenty of tuneful hymns, usually a couple of singers who gave "sacred" songs; and to which was attached a Book Club. By paying a few pence a week Father got all the books he could read; he was a slow reader, too. He got "Valentine Vox, Ventriloquist", "Sylvestre Sound", "Somnambulist"; "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and many others. Dolly has some of them at this date, sixty years later.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenb?ttel : published letter about the status of her marriage to the Prince of Wales
'I suppose all the World is sitting in Judgement upon the Princess of Wales's Letter. Poor Woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her husband - but I can hardly forgive her for calling herself 'attached & affectionate' to a Man whom she must detest - & the intimacy said to subsist between her & Lady Oxford is bad...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Newspaper
Mary Brunton : Self Control
'I am looking over Self-Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its' [sic] being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura's passage down the American River is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she ever does.-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
George Crabbe : preface to The Borough
'No; I have never seen the death of Mrs Crabbe. I have only just been making out from one of his prefaces that he probably was married.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Edward Bellamy : Looking Backwards
'These artless idealists had their favourite authors, which I now proceeded to read...Their piece de resistance was Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", closely followed by the prose works of William Morris, "The Story of the Unknown Church", and the like. There was quite a spate of novels with this ideology, but the only one that has come down to the present day is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book
Francis Liardet : Professional Recollections on points of Seamanship, Discipline, etc.
'In the forenoon read Liardets book on Seamanship, so as to prepare myself for the duties of 1st Lieut which I expect will only come too soon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The Lottery of Marriage. A novel.
'I have been reading a book by Mrs Trollope called "the Lottery of Marriage" a very nice book for little girls to read, but hardly fit for a grown up man'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Antonine
'Reading a book by Alexr Dumas fils called "Antonine", a stupid book in my opinion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Edward Hamley : Lady Lee's Widowhood
'Lady Lee's Widowhood by Captain Hamley R.A. it is not so good a book as I expected, it has been praised too much; so that I do not think so much of it, as if I had never heard it spoken of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Xavier Aymon de, Count Montepin : Les Filles de platre. Les trois debuts
'Reading the "Les filles des platre" by M. Xavier de Montepin it is like the generality of French Novels, and does not give a very exalted notions of French morals; the more I read French books, the more I am struck at the immense difference there is between the two nations that are only seperated [sic] by a narrow channel, twenty miles across; Customs manners & morals are entirely different; there is no nation in the world so much in love with domestic happiness & domestic comfort as the English, and none less so, than the French; that which affords great pleasure to our neighbours, excites only disgust in an Englishman; this I gather not only from the Books I read, but also from what I saw myself during my stay in France, and the older I get, the more thankful I am that I was not born a Frenchman.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Martin le Roy de Gomberville : Polexandre
'Home and to bed, leaving my wife reading in "Polixandre".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Roger L'Estrange [? probably] : A plea for limited monarchy, as it was established in this nation, before the late war. In a humble address to his Excellency, General Monck
'...and with them to Marshes at Whitehall to drink, and stayed there a pretty while reading a pamphlet, well-writ and directed to Generall Monke in praise of the form of Monarchy which was settled here before the Warrs.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys
Robert Vansittart : Black Record
'I suppose I retained this view for about nine months. My thoughts have now radically changed, and this is due in a marked degree to the reading of Sir Robert Vansittart's "Black Record" that I really woke up, and eliminated from my system all the ridiculous ideas I had about the German man and woman being "a decent person just like you and me". There was a saying in the last war which should never have been forgotten "once a German always a German". This is [an] almost eternal truism, for I am convinced now that the average German revels in brutality and perfidiousness, taking the view that ends justify the means.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Eaton Stannard Barrett : The Heroine; or, Adventures of Cherubina
'I finished the Heroine last night & was very much amused by it. I wonder James did not like it better. It diverted me exceedingly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Eaton Stannard Barrett : The Heroine; or, Adventures of Cherubina
'I finished the Heroine last night & was very much amused by it. I wonder James did not like it better. It diverted me exceedingly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Austen Print: Book
Eaton Stannard Barrett : The Heroine; or, Adventures of Cherubina, third volume
'It is Eveng. We have drank tea & I have torn through the 3d vol. of the Heroine, & do not think it falls off. - It is a delightful burlesque, particularly on the Radcliffe style.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Francis Osborne : [works]
'I in my chamber all the evening, looking over my Osborns works and new Emanuel Thesaurus's "Patriarchae".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae sive Doctrina de ambitu vitae
'And in the garden reading "Faber fortunae" with great pleasure. So home to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Pepys : The Will of Robert Pepys of Brampton
'In the morning my father and I walked in the garden and read the Will; where though he gives me nothing at present till my father's death, or at least very little, yet I am glad to see that he hath done so well for us all - and well to the rest of his kindred.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Pepys : The Will of Robert Pepys of Brampton
'Home at noon, and there find Mr Moore and with him to an ordinary alone and dined; and there he and I read my Uncles Will and I had his opinion on it, and still find more and more trouble like to attend it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet
Richard Hooker : Of the lawes of ecclesiastical politie
'At night fell to read in Hookers "Ecclesiastical policy" which Mr Moore did give me last Wednesday, very handsomely bound; and which I shall read with great pains and love for his sake.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Mary Roberts : Annals of my Village
'Read November in "Annals of my Village".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
G.E.R. Gedye : Fallen Bastions
'Yes , I read more as have more time- but have gone onto novels and escapist literature- cannot read such books as The Mortal Storm and books like Fallen Bastions now. I also try to keep up with political reading but find it rather difficult- for example to follow the communist line- but still read the Daily worker, Tribune, New Statesman, week to try and get a composite picture but get depressed as the papers differ so from the daily papers such as the Telegraph, Mail and Express.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Francis Osborne : Advice to a son
'...which makes me remember my father Osborne's rule for a gentleman, to spare in all things rather than in that.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Corsair
'Do not be angry with me for beginning another Letter to you. I have read the Corsair, mended my petticoat, & have nothing else to do.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Poetry]
'Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - it is not fair. - He has Fame & Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, & do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must[...] I have made up my mind to like no Novels really, but Miss Edgeworth's, Yours & my own.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Caroline Austen : unpublished story
'My dear Caroline, I wish I could finish Stories as fast as you can. - I am much obliged to you for the sight of Olivia, & think you have done for her very well; but the good for nothing Father, who was the real author of all her Faults & Sufferings, should not escape unpunished.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Manuscript: Sheet
Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de St Albin Comtesse de Genlis : Olympe et Theophile
'My dear Caroline, I am very glad to have an opportunity of answering your agreable [sic] little Letter. You seem to be quite my own Neice [sic] in your feelings towards Mde de Genlis. I do not think I could even now, at my sedate time of Life, read "Olimpe et Theophile" without being in a rage. It really is too bad! Not allowing them to be happy together, when they are married. Don't talk of it, pray. I have just let your Aunt Frank the 1st vol. of Les Veilles du Chateau, for Mary Jane to read.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Walter Scott [anon] : review of Emma
'I return you the Quarterly Reveiw [sic] with many Thanks. The Authoress of "Emma" has no reason I think to complain of her treatment in it - except in the total omission of Mansfield Park. - I cannot but be sorry that so clever a Man as the Reveiwer [sic] of "Emma" should consider it as unworthy of being noticed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Serial / periodical
Caroline Austen : unpublished story
'I have been very much entertained by your story of Carolina & her aged Father, it made me laugh heartily, & I am particularly glad to find you so much alive upon any topic of such absurdity, as the usual description of a Heroine's father.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Manuscript: Sheet
James Edward Austen : unpublished story
'Edward is writing a Novel - we have all heard what he has written - it is extremely clever; written with great ease & spirit; - if he can carry it on in the same way, it will be a firstrate work, & in a style, I think, to be popular.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Manuscript: Sheet
George Chapman : Bussy D'Ambois
'and so home and to supper. And after reading part of "Bussy D'Ambois", a good play I bought today - to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Benick : letter
'In a letter addressed to me, dated Newcastle Jan 5 1829 from his son, Robert Elliot Benick, thanking me for a copy of 'The Scarborough Souvenir', he writes "this would have been done sooner by my late lamented father had he been able to have visited Scarborough, as he once intended to have done last summer".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Manuscript: Letter
Mary Roberts : Annals of my Village
'Looked over Rhind's "Studies in Natural History", read a portion of the month in "Annals of my Village".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Dr Tottie : Sermon 'On the resurrection'
'Read one of Dr Tottie's Sermons "On the resurrection".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Peter Quennell : Byron in Italy
'My library book now is "Byron in Italy" by Peter Quennell. I have not read much of Byron's poetry for many, many years. You probably remember the large volume of his work in C.V. with its voluptuous illustrations. I had that, but it has vanished with all my other books which were taken to Marten by my family. The book I am now looking at does not impress me with the bits of verse it quotes. I suppose that Byron could rhyme "beautiful" and "full" and "annul" and get away with it, but they don't seem to be right to me. I expect that he wrote "Don Juan" from his own experiences.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'I'm afraid I just pick any books. I go in for light reading mostly. I've get two detective books for light reading, one by Scott, and "Night club Murder" by Brandon, and then this ("Shabby summer," by Deeping) that's to spend Sunday afternoon with.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ruby M Ayres : unknown
'"I like books by Ruby M Ayres and Anne Duffield. The young lady usually chooses the books for me - she knows what I want. Something light to take my mind off the war - a straight romantic tale.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Bate : Elenchi motuum nuperorum in Anglia pars secunda
'This day I bought the second part of Dr Bates's "Elenchus", which reaches to the fall of Richard and no further, for which I am sorry.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
[I read] 'Good books - Dickens, and Scott, and all that, but I don't believe I've opened a book since I got married, and that's nearly 30 years now.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
[I read] 'Good books - Dickens, and Scott, and all that, but I don't believe I've opened a book since I got married, and that's nearly 30 years now.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Gerald Samson : Warning Light of Asia
'Just now I'm reading books [of] what I call Geography plus books that give great insight in [to] different places. I'm reading now the causes and conditions that brought about this war. (Warning Light of Asia, Samson)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Arthur Findlay : The Unfolding Universe
'Lately I've got interested in Spiritualism. I've read one book about it, I thought it was a lot of rubbish. That was written by a Minister; this one is just by an ordinary man - and I thought I'd hear the other point of view. (The Unfolding Universe: Findlay)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Doreen Swinburne : Hospital Nurse
'I'm taking up nursing, and I thought I would get a good inside knowledge from a book of this kind. (Hospital Nurse: Swinburne)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis : World's End
'I've nearly finished "World's End" by Sinclair Lewis. It's a grand book. I started it because I enjoyed 'Between Two Worlds' so much. I enjoy a good novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Pearl Buck : The Home Divided
'I can't be bothered reading heavy stuff. I don't seem able to concentrate for long. I like books of the romantic and family kind. Just now I've got at home the "Home Divided" by Pearl Buck - it's the simple love-story kind of book, but it holds your interest.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ernest Hemingway : For whom the Bell Tolls
'Oh, I like funny books, like Thorne Smith, you know, nothing too serious. ("For whom the Bell Tolls", Hemingway, was very good).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Francis Osborne : Advice to his son
'Up and spent the morning till the Barber came in reading in my chamber part of Osborne's "Advice to his Son" (which I shall not ever enough admire for sense and language)'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Thorne Smith : unknown
'Oh, I like funny books, like Thorne Smith, you know, nothing too serious. ("For whom the Bell Tolls", Hemingway, was very good).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Richard Llewellyn : How Green was My Valley
'I like good modern books - I'm very fond of American books - or Dorothy Conyer's - good racy stories. I hate detective stories, I like Naomi Jacobs' early ones. I read 'props' three times - I do like well written books. I hate anything in the first person....I won't read war books...I like 'How Green was My Valley"...and 'Conflict' by Faith Baldwin - it was really interesting: I read it about the time China came in the war with us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Dorothy Conyer : unknown
'I like good modern books - I'm very fond of American books - or Dorothy Conyer's - good racy stories. I hate detective stories, I like Naomi Jacobs' early ones. I read 'props' three times - I do like well written books. I hate anything in the first person....I won't read war books...I like 'How Green was My Valley"...and 'Conflict' by Faith Baldwin - it was really interesting: I read it about the time China came in the war with us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Richard Llewellyn : How Green was My Valley
'Oh, I like all kinds of books - historical, semi-biography, well written. I liked "How Green was My Valley": and "All this and Heaven Too" ....I must say I can't read novels when I'm all upset. Now what have I read lately? Oh, I loved "Portrait of a Village", Brett Young: it was enchanting - "Royal Escape", "Spanish Bride", Georgette Heyer; Frankau's "Royal Regiment', oh and "Elizabeth of Bohemia". I loved that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Rachel Field : All this and Heaven Too
'Oh, I like all kinds of books - historical, semi-biography, well written. I liked "How Green was My Valley": and "All this and Heaven Too" ....I must say I can't read novels when I'm all upset. Now what have I read lately? Oh, I loved "Portrait of a Village", Brett Young: it was enchanting - "Royal Escape", "Spanish Bride", Georgette Heyer; Frankau's "Royal Regiment', oh and "Elizabeth of Bohemia". I loved that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Brett Young : Portrait of a Village
'Oh, I like all kinds of books - historical, semi-biography, well written. I liked "How Green was My Valley": and "All this and Heaven Too" ....I must say I can't read novels when I'm all upset. Now what have I read lately? Oh, I loved "Portrait of a Village", Brett Young: it was enchanting - "Royal Escape", "Spanish Bride", Georgette Heyer; Frankau's "Royal Regiment', oh and "Elizabeth of Bohemia". I loved that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Georgette Heyer : Royal Escape
'Oh, I like all kinds of books - historical, semi-biography, well written. I liked "How Green was My Valley": and "All this and Heaven Too" ....I must say I can't read novels when I'm all upset. Now what have I read lately? Oh, I loved "Portrait of a Village", Brett Young: it was enchanting - "Royal Escape", "Spanish Bride", Georgette Heyer; Frankau's "Royal Regiment', oh and "Elizabeth of Bohemia". I loved that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Georgette Heyer : Spanish Bride
'Oh, I like all kinds of books - historical, semi-biography, well written. I liked "How Green was My Valley": and "All this and Heaven Too" ....I must say I can't read novels when I'm all upset. Now what have I read lately? Oh, I loved "Portrait of a Village", Brett Young: it was enchanting - "Royal Escape", "Spanish Bride", Georgette Heyer; Frankau's "Royal Regiment', oh and "Elizabeth of Bohemia". I loved that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
'I liked Rebecca and 'Gone with the Wind".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the wind
'I like anything good....something like "The Stars Looked Down" or "Gone with the Wind"...."Fame is the Spur" is a lovely book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Archibald Joseph Cronin : The Stars Looked Down
'I like anything good....something like "The Stars Looked Down" or "Gone with the Wind"...."Fame is the Spur" is a lovely book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Howard Spring : Fame is the Spur
'I like anything good....something like "The Stars Looked Down" or "Gone with the Wind"...."Fame is the Spur" is a lovely book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Howard Spring : Fame is the Spur
'"I don't read much - oh, a very mixed lot - "My Son Absalom" and "Fame is the Spur"' [then in response to question from interviewer] '- who, them? I enjoy travel books, that one there was so famous .!.. "Something in Tartary", extremely nice". (Fleming).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Peter Fleming : News from Tartary
'"I don't read much - oh, a very mixed lot - "My Son Absalom" and "Fame is the Spur"' [then in response to question from interviewer] '- who, them? I enjoy travel books, that one there was so famous .!.. "Something in Tartary", extremely nice". (Fleming).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
'I like Travel books - something uplifting - teaches you something. Of course, I like dirty books too....Have you read John Blunt - you ought to - 'Mein Kampf'. Oh, I liked 'Rebecca' and 'Gone with the Wind'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Eric Knight : This Above All
'"This Above All", Eric Knight. Believe me I lived and smelt through that book all the horrors of nights and days of bombing and Dunkirk conveys and putrid dressings and various limbs blown off and men coming out of other and talking and men talking their heads off to ease the strain. If I could write a book on what I went through, seeing, smelling and hearing those days it would sound very similar. I just lived that book in parts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Sir Balth. Gerbier : Counsel and advise to all builders; for the choice of their surveyours... Together with several epistles to eminent persons, who may be concerned in building
'At the Coffee-house in Exchange=alley I bought a little book, "Counsell to Builders", written by Sir Balth. Gerbier; it is dedicated almost to all the men of any great condition in England, so that the epistles are more than the book itself; and both it and them not worth a turd, that I am ashamed that I bought it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortune
'Up and to my office; and then walked to Woolwich, reading Bacon's "faber Fortune", which the oftener I read the more I admire.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Alexander Green : The Politician cheated
'walked to see Sir W. Penn at Deptford, reading by the way a most ridiculous play, a new one call[ed] "The Politician cheated".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir John Birkenhead : Cabala, or An impartial account of the non-conformists' private design
'Thence with Mr Moore to the Wardrobe and there sat while my Lord was private with Mr Townsend about his accounts an hour or two - we reading of a merry book against the Presbyters called "Cabbala", extraordinary witty.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir John Birkenhead : Cabala, or An impartial account of the non-conformists' private design
'Thence with Mr Moore to the Wardrobe and there sat while my Lord was private with Mr Townsend about his accounts an hour or two - we reading of a merry book against the Presbyters called "Cabbala", extraordinary witty.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Moore Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'Modern writers may not be up to the standard of the old writers, Dickens, Thackeray and Scott, but they're snappy-they're quick reading." (Man 45, borrowing Death in Downing Street, by J. G. Brandon.)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
[Robert] [Wild] : Iter boreale
'To church again; and so home to my wife and with her read "Iter boreale", a poem made just at the King's coming home but I never read it before, and now like it pretty well but not so as it was cried up.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
[Robert] [L'Estrange] : The Intelligencer
'and then abroad by water to White-hall and to Westminster-hall and there bought the first news-books of Lestrange's writing, he beginning this week; and makes methink but a simple beginning.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Newspaper
Beatrice Day : [Will]
'And then met my uncle Thomas by appointment, and he and I to the Prearogative Office in Paternoster Row and there searched and found my Uncle Day's will and read it over and advised upon it, and his wife's after him.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae
'and so after dinner, by water home, all the way going and coming reading "Faber fortunae", which I can never read too often.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Davenant : The first day's entertainment at Rutland House, by declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients
'and so up to my wife and with great mirth read Sir W Davenents two speeches in dispraise of London and Paris, by way of reproach one to the other, and so to prayers and to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Charles Cotton : Scarronides, or Virgile Travesty
'calling at St Pauls churchyard and there looked upon a pretty Burlesque poem called "Scarronides, or Virgile Travesty" - extraordinary good.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Black Veil
?I regret to see one or two errors in the first Volume, though I have the consolation of believing that none but practised eyes will observe them. I am glad you like The Black Veil. I think the title is a good one, because it is uncommon, and does not impair the interest of the story by partially explaining its main feature.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Book
Richard Bentley : Prospectus for Bentley?s Miscellany
?I shall certainly have the pleasure of seeing you tomorrow, and will turn over the prospectus in my mind, meanwhile.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Fielding : The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great
?I was seized last night with a violent pain in my head (fortunately, just as I had concluded my month?s work), and was immediately ordered as much medicine as would confine an ordinary-sized horse to his stall for a week. Whether it arises from the ?influentials?, or from close application, or from worry, or from the wind cholic, to quote King Arthur, I know not; but this I know-that surely against my will, much to my disappointment, here I am, and in a gloomy and miserable state, here I must remain.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Unknown
Major Pryse Lockhart Gordon : [articles]
?I have read the several articles by Major Pryse Gordon, which I herewith return. Although they would possess considerable interest for military or naval gentlemen, I fear that to the public generally ? our public at all events ? they would present few attractions. Perhaps you will do me the favor to present my best compliments and thanks to Major Gordon and to suggest that the United Service Journal would be the best medium he could select for the publication of his papers. Beg him to understand distinctly that in returning them, I by no means question their merit, but merely express my opinion that they are not adapted to the pages of the Miscellany.?
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Unknown
Sir Walter Scott : Waverley
'Readers of my generation owe a great debt of gratitude to the enterprise of Messrs. Dicks. My first introduction to great fiction dates from the publication by them of Scott's novels in threepenny paper-covered volumes, easily pocketable, when my apprenticeship, in its early days, consisted of sorting and picking - wearisome, dull, mechanical, solitary work. The appearance of "Waverley" marked an epoch. I read it and its succeeding volumes with absorbing interest, stealing at times scraps of hours which should have been devoted to my work.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Okey Print: Book
Bracebridge Hemyng : Jack Harkaway
'The favourite literary pabulum of us boys at school, however, was less classical: "penny bloods" and other Weeklies issued in penny sheets, such as "Sweeny Todd the Barber". Romantic stories of highwaymen circulated freely from boy to boy until reduced to rags: Dick Turpin, Spring-heeled Jack, the gallant Claude Duval, gracefully dancing on the greensward with the ladies he had robbed, Edith the Captive, Edith Heron, with what impatience we awaited the issue of the next number, with what absorbing interest we followed the thrilling adventure!... What it did was to evoke the reading habit, and to one boy at least that was a valuable endowment. Nor did the "Boys of England" proffer a much healthier pabulum to the hunger of the young barbarian for extra-lawful adventure. I can even today visualise the number I read with the lovely alliterate title of its opening story, "Alone in the Pirates' Lair" - and the front page illustration - Jack Harkaway, sitting before the pirate on the island, open-eyed, drinking in the recital of his hazardous deeds;...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Okey Print: Serial / periodical
Dr Carpenter : Notes and Observations on the Gospel History
"A work of Dr Carpenter's,begun but never finished,called "Notes and Observations on the Gospel history", which his catechuments used in class, first put me on this track of study.-the results of which appeared some years afterwards in my "Traditions of Palestine".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Dr Carpenter : Articles: Mental and Moral Philosophy & Systemic Education
"Dr Carpenter was inclined also to the study of philosophy,and wrote on it,-on mental and moral philosophy;and this was enough,putting all predisposition out of the question,to determine me to the study. He was of the Locke and Hartley school altogether, as his articles on 'Mental and Moral Philosophy' in Ree's Encyclopedia,and his work on 'Systemic Education' show."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mr Kendrick : Translation of 'Helons Pilgrimage from Jerusalem'
"It was while reading Mr Kendrick's translation from the German of 'Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem',with which I was thoroughly bewitched, that I conceived, and communicated to James, the audacious idea of giving a somewhat resembling account of the Jews and their country, under the immediate expectation of the Messiah, and even in his presence, while abstaining from permitting more than his shadow to pass over the scene.""I regard that little volume witha a stronger affection than any other of my works but one;-that one being"Eastern Life".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charles Ross : The Statistical Journal and Record of Useful Knowledge
'My dear Ross, Many thanks for your statistical Magazine, which contains some tables concerning juvenile delinquency that I was particularly anxious to see in a well-digested form. Reciprocating all your kind wishes most cordially, I rest Most sincerely yours, Charles Dickens.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens
William Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood
'I should have written to you to-day to thank you for your flattering and kind-hearted mention of myself in the new Preface to Rookwood; if the weather had been finer I intended riding out to tell you how warmly I felt it, and how much sincere delight your friendship affords me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Book
George Cox : [MS verses]
'I have many things to acknowledge, but let me take them in turn. Firstly, I have to thank you for your verses. Need I say that however much of truth there may be in them, I should be guilty of very bad taste if I placed them before the public eye; or that the reference to myself and the feelings upon which it is founded are better kept within my own heart?' Lastly, I beg you to accept my best thanks for your novel; I hope to read it with much pleasure.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Unknown
Grantley Berkely : Chariot versus coach
'There is also among the papers, one piece of absurdity by Mr. Grantley Berkely, called ?Chariot versus coach? which I had previously read and returned, and consequently suppose has been sent back to me by mistake.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Sheet
Edward Oliver : unknown
'Sir I very much regret that your note has so long remained unanswered. It was put aside among some answered letters, and so escaped me. I recollect very shortly after I received your two papers, writing you a note in which I ventured to say that I did not think the idea of a Surgeon?s Diary at all a promising one after the Physician?s; and that I did not consider your articles adapted to the Miscellany. I therefore declined these with many thanks for your preference.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Sheet, Unknown
Henry Power : Experimental philosophy...containing new experiments microscopical, mercurial, magnetical
'Thence home and to my office; wrote by the post, and then to read a little in Dr Powre's book of discovery by the Microscope, to enable me a little how to use and what to expect from my glasse.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Henry Power : Experimental philosophy...containing new experiments microscopical, mercurial, magnetical
'After dinner, to my chamber and made an end of Dr Powre's book of the Microscope, very fine and to my content'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Henry Power : Experimental philosophy...containing new experiments microscopical, mercurial, magnetical
'and so to supper anon and then to my office again a while, collecting observations out of Dr Powres book of Microscopes, and so home to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir John Sucklings : Aglaura
'After dinner I down to Woolwich with a galley, and then to Deptford and so home, all the way reading Sir J Suck[l]ings "Aglaura", which methinks is but a mean play - nothing of design in it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'Arthur recalls that he could not read "properly" until he began school at the age of 9; he preferred his sister Anna to read to him. On one occasion, when she read "Uncle Tom's Cabin", Arthur, who believed that "a boy must never show any emotion", burst into tears, then flew into a rage over revealing his deepest feelings and attacked her with his fists'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Symons Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'Coming upon a copy of "Don Quixote" in a warder's house, he thought it was "the most wonderful book [he] had ever seen". When he refused to give it up, the warder said he might keep it... "Don Quixote" awakened in Arthur a "passion for reading", and before long, he had read Scott, then Byron, who, he had been told was" a very, very great poet, and a very, very wicked man, an atheist, a writer whom it was dangerous to read".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : unknown
'Coming upon a copy of "Don Quixote" in a warder's house, he thought it was "the most wonderful book [he] had ever seen". When he refused to give it up, the warder said he might keep it... "Don Quixote" awakened in Arthur a "passion for reading", and before long, he had read Scott, then Byron, who, he had been told was" a very, very great poet, and a very, very wicked man, an atheist, a writer whom it was dangerous to read".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
George Borrow : Lavengro
'Arthur became interested in "humanity" when he discovered George Borrow's semi-autobiographical novel "Lavengro" (1851), which contains the author's adventures among gypsies; as a result Arthur began studying Romany. For the remainder of his life he was absorbed by both the gypsies and their language, perhaps because of their rootlessness and wanderings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Doge of Venice
'During Mr Montgomery's stay he read books from my library, and on his returning Byron's Doge of Venice.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Montgomery Print: Book
Henry Austin Dobson : Fanny Burney
On p. 206 (last page of text) 'Read Novr 13th/19th 1903 L A W' in pencil manuscript. In addition, a bookplate on inside front cover: 'Laurence A. Waldron.' with a coat of arm above, that carries the legend 'Spectemur Agendo'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Laurence A Waldron Print: Book
Baron Paul Henrich Dietrich d'Holbach : Le Systeme de la nature
'I am reading for the second [time] "The System of Nature", by Holbach and Diderot, if every one would read it, they would soon discover, by reasoning the most correct & conclusive that man has hitherto been taught nothing but the most pernicious [underlined] errors - the consequence of which is his present moral [underlined] degradation & deplorable wretchedness [underlined], alas! that the bandage cannot be torn from his eyes but by slow degrees - ~"bit-by-bit" reforms. It would seem that his prejudices [underlined] were his only sores [underlined] - & that he is willing to endure all that sensation can endure rather than have these sores touched'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Doyle Wheeler Print: Book
Bruce Barton : The Man Nobody Knows
' . . . as sentence follows sentence I marvel, and wonder, indeed, if the writer [Bruce Barton] is not himself an inspired seer and whether the spirit of the man he writes about [subject of the biography, "The Man Nobody Knows"] has not entered into him . . . '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dora Seimons Print: Book
Dante Gabriel Rossetti : 'Sister Helen'
'Before leaving BIdeford, he told Osborne, he had read Rossetti's poems "rapturously": "I am mad about Rossetti ever since and I solemnly declare that of all poems that I have read "Sister Helen" is the finest. Never in my life, not in Shakespeare, not even in Browning have I read such superbly passionate, such agonizingly intense accents of unfaltering revenge and implacable hate, creating, surely, a new shudder!"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Unknown
Herbert J C Grierson : Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the seventeenth century
Marginalia Many pencil sidelines in the Introduction. Donne, against l.52 "cf Good Friday" Herbert, The Collar "surrender to the will of God"; Aaron "old things are passed away"; Discipline "Consecration"; etc
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Robert Longworth-Dames Print: Book
George Meredith : Evan Harrington
'In discussing Meredith's "Evan Harrington" (1861) in a letter to Campbell, Arthur reveals his Victorian-orientated interst in the autobiographical element in novels: "... there is really a wonderful sympathy & tenderness towards the suffering Lady Dunstane. Does it not seem as if she may be, at least in some points, his wife? I should like to think so."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons Print: Book
Robert Persons (or Parsons) : [unknown]
'But the Mother ... coming one Morning early into her Chamber, she found her Reading in a Book in Bed, at which the Daughter being surprized, let it fall into the Bed, and denied that she was Reading, or had any Book, but upon search, it was found to be a Book wrote by Parsons the Jesuit; which so startled the Mother, that upon Searching the Daughter's Closet afterwards, she found other Popish Books ...
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Ann Ketelbey Print: Book
Keir Hardie : Labour Leader
In a notebook entry for 12 July 1896, Mattison expresses regret over the death of oscialist activist Caroline Martyn, mentioning that he has read of her illness in the Labour Leader and the Clarion.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alf Mattison Print: Broadsheet, Newspaper
Sir Henry Cole : The Home Treasury - Felix Summerly's Fairy Tale Book
From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's 'Memoir for Laura': 'One of the nicest things that ever happened to us when we were children at Paris was the arrival of a huge parcel, which my Grannie cut open and inside there were piles and piles of the most beautiful delightful wonderful fairy tale books all painted with pictures ? I thought they would never come to an end but alas! in a week we had read them all. They were called the Felix Summerly series'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray Print: Book
Sir Henry Cole : The Home Treasury - Felix Summerly's Fairy Tale Book
From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's 'Memoir for Laura': 'One of the nicest things that ever happened to us when we were children at Paris was the arrival of a huge parcel, which my Grannie cut open and inside there were piles and piles of the most beautiful delightful wonderful fairy tale books all painted with pictures ? I thought they would never come to an end but alas! in a week we had read them all. They were called the Felix Summerly series'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Thackeray Print: Book
Edward Meyrick Goulburn : An Introduction to the Devotional Study of the Holy Scriptures
J. H. Ewing's diary entry, April 10 1869: 'Goulburn's Study of the Holy Scriptures'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Juliana Horatia Ewing Print: Book
Rowland Elliott [?] : Tracts for the Times
J. H. Ewing Diary entry, Aug 15 1869: 'Tracts for the Times'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Juliana Horatia Ewing Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'Soon after, the old mamma hobbled to me,? and began a furious panegyric upon my Book,? saying at the same Time "I wonder, miss, how you could get at them low characters! ? as to the Lords and Ladies that?s no wonder at all, ? why as to t?other, ?why I have not stirred night nor morning while I?ve been reading it,? if I don?t wonder how you could be so clever! ? ... . . . you?ve writ the best and prettiest book? that Lord there, I forget his Name, that marries her at last, what a fine Gentleman he is! You deserve everything for Drawing such a Character, ? & then Miss Elena there? Miss Belmont as she is at last, ?what a Noble Couple of ?em you have put together! As to the t?other Lord, I was glad he had not her, for I see he had nothing but a bad design."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lawes Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
?Pray have you read Miss Burney?s Book?? Book? What Book is it?? cried the other. ? A Novel, answered Miss Lawes,? but indeed it?s very much above a Novel.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Maria Lawes Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
?Miss Burney I am come to thank you for the vast entertainment you have given me; ? I am quite happy to see you,? I wished to see you very much; ? it?s a charming book indeed, ? the Characters are vastly well supported,??
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Dobson Print: Book
Robert Hooke : Micrographia [?]
'Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr Hooke's "Microscopicall Observacions", the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Dr Henry King : A sermon preached the 30th of January...1664
'I sat down and read over the Bishop of Chichesters sermon upon the anniversary of the King's death - much cried up but methinks a mean sermon.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir William Coventry : [letter]
'and by and by comes a letter from Mr Coventry's own hand to him; which he never opened (which was a strange thing) but did give it me to open and read, and consider what was fit for our offce to do in it and leave the letter with Sir W. Clarke... I copied out the letter...'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Letter
Abraham Cowley : [poems]
'At night home and supped; and after reading a little in Cowley's poems, my head being disturbed overmuch with business today, I to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir William Davenant : The Seige of Rhodes
'We spent most of the morning talking, and reading of "The Seige of Rhodes", which is certainly (the more I read it I think so) the best poem that ever was wrote.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir William Davenant : The Seige of Rhodes
'So after supper Captain Cocke and I and Temple on board the Bezan, and there to Cards for a while, and then to read again in "Rhodes" and so to sleep.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Edward Stillingfleete : Origines Sacrae, or A rational account of the grounds of Christian faith, as to the truth and divine authority of the scriptures
'Thence back by water to Captain Cockes, and there he and I spent a great deal of the evening, as we had done the day, reading and discoursing over part of Mr Stillingfleete's "Origines Saacrae", wherein many things are very good - and some frivolous.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Henry Lawes : Ayres and dialogues
'Up, and after being trimmed, I alone by water to Erith, all the way with my song-book singing of Mr Laws's long recitative Song in the beginning of his book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Joseph Williamson : Oxford Gazette
'This day the first of the "Oxford Gazettes" came out, which is very pretty, full of news, and no folly in it - wrote by Williamson.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Newspaper
Jeremy Taylor : A collection of polemical discourses, wherein the Church of England in its worst as well as more flourishing condition, is defended
'but we had breakfasted a little at Mr Gawdens, he being out of town though; and there borrowed Dr Taylors Sermons, and is a most excellent book and worth my buying'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Hernan Cortes : Cartas de relacion [??]
'a very dry day. I have nothing to say. Wrote to Fries and read "The Discovery of America" by Cortes'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
'Mr Jaegle makes us read an English book that is called "The Vicar of Wakefield" which is very pretty, interesting, well wrote and where there are some very good characters'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
Marguerite de Valois : Memoires de la Reyne Marguerite
'I have read your Reyne Margerite and will retourne it you when you please. If you will have my opinion of her, I think she has a good deale of witt . . . But the storry of Mademoisell de Tournon, is soe sad that when I had read it I was able to goe noe further, and was faine to take up something else to divert my self withall'.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: Book
Robert Ashley : Almansor the Learned and Victorious King that Conquered Spaine, His Life and Death
'Almanzor is as fresh in my memory, as if I had visitted his Tombe but Yesterday, though it bee at least seven yeare agon since. . . . I made his Story such a one to mee, as I cryed an hower together for him, and was so angry with Alcidiana that for my life I could never love her after it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: Book
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle : (?) Poems and Fancies
'You need not send mee Lady Newcastles book at all for I have seen it, and am sattisfyed that there are many soberer People in Bedlam, i'le swear her friends are much to blame to let her goe abroade.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: Book
Roger Boyle : Parthenissa
'Parthenissa is now my company[,] my Brother sent it downe and I have almost read it, tis hansome Language you would know it to bee writt by a person of good Quality though you were not tolde it, but in the whole I am not very much taken with it, all the Story's have too neer a resemblance with those of Other Romances there is nothing of new or surprenant in them . . . '
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Fernao Mendes Pinto : Peregrinacao
'have you read the Story of China written by a Portuguese, Fernando Mendez Pinto I think his name is . . . tis as diverting a book of the kinde as ever I read, and is handsomly written.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Delarivier Manley : Secret memoirs and manners of several persons of quality of both sexes, from the new Atalantis, an island in the Mediterranean
'Ten thousand thanks to you for Madame de Noyer's Letters; I wish Signor Roselli may be as diverting to you as [italics] she [italics]has been to me. The stories are very extraordinary, but I know not whether she has not added a few [italics] agremens [italics] of invention to them: however, there is some truth. I have been told, in particular, that the history of the fair unfortunate Madame de Barbesierre is so, by people who could not be suspected of romancing. Don't you think that the court of England would furnish stories as entertaining? Say nothing of my malice; but I cannot help wishing that Madame de Noyer would turn her thoughts a little that way. I fancy she would succeed better than the authoress of the "New Atalantis". I am sure I like her method much better, which has, I think, hit that difficult path between the gay and the severe, and is neither too loose, nor affected by pride.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Maurice Barres : Le Jardin de Berenice
'Thanks for your letter & the book. A word in reference to the former. I can?t boast that I discovered what purports to be the "central idea" of the novel for myself. I first heard of Barr?s in an article bY Edward Delille in the "Fortnightly." Next I read a criticism of this very book in the latest volume issued of Anatole France?s "La Vie Litteraire". Lastly there was a rather striking article in a recent "Scribner" on new ideas in French Literature generally in which the name of Barr?s was prominent. So when I actually bought the book I knew just what to expect. As I understand the thing, the author is at direct variance with Flaubert, Zola & Guy de Maupassant, who at all costs aim at an impartial, impersonal presentment of life. He prefers to take a character & describe events and men solely in relation to their effect on that character. In a word his novel is all hero. He cares nothing for absolute perspective. He interests himself in nothing but what affects his hero. Everything is described through the hero?s eyes, & consequently everything is intentionally coloured & distorted. He utterly despises the "one-eyed apathetic insight of the camera". You mention his symbolism. I believe that the presence of numerous symbols & analogies in the actual writing is only a minor & unimportant manifestation of the symbolist theory. The whole book in its main outlines is a congeries of symbols. . . '
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Edward Delille : [article on Maurice Barres]
'I first heard of Barr?s in an article by Edward Delille in the Fortnightly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Lord Chesterfield : Modern Europe
'We began to read with Mr Jeagle[sic] instead of the modern history of the abbe Milliot "The Modern Europe" made I think by Lord Chesterfield'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Wynne sisters and tutor Mr Jaegle Print: Unknown
Friedrich Schiller : Don Carlos in German
[27th December]'I took my lessons and learnt part of a superb tragedy in german called "Don Carlos" with Mr Jaegle.' ... [28th December]'We finished the lecture of "Don Carlos" that interested me extremely it really is the finest trajedy I have ever read. How much do I hate the memory of the abominable Philip whilst I respected and admired that of the Marquis de Poso that faithful and tender friend who lets himself be thought a traitor in order to save the life of Don Carlos his friend to whom he was under a small obligation, who takes his own life in order to save his and what was my sorrow to see that charming man end his life in vain. The wicked Philip stabbed his son the same day through jealousy! Another thing that annoyed me was not to have the pleasure of seeing the abominable tyrant punished yet I think that he is and that certainly and already.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
Pierre Corneille : Cinna
'This evening we read a fine trajedy by Corneille where there are many noble characters Emily has such strength and such nobleness'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
Rudyard Kipling : Plain Tales from the Hills
'Saturday, 2nd January, Letter from Neill at Grimsby, Ontario: no other address. Nothing for Mother. Read: ?Plain Tales from the Hills? (R.Kipling)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Belfort Bax : Essays on Socialism
'Saturday, 9th January, Mother tells me Hanley is to write a thesis on ?An Unemployed Man in January 1926?. Talking with Mother re Cambridge Economics. Advertising is not now purely a competitive weapon but is used mainly by the Monopolists to keep people reminded of their particular line of goods. Otherwise they might discover how much there is that they could very well do without. Read: ?Essays on Socialism? (Belfort Bax)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
J. Ramsay Macdonald : Socialism: Critical and Constructive
'Saturday, 16th January, Left letter at Beechcroft for Milligan re continuance of Discussion Group through the summer. Also re donation from Club and Mr. Milligan?s date on syllabus. Read ? ?Socialism: Critical and Constructive? (J.R. McDonald)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
'Wednesday, 27th January, Smith spoke of having wished to be a school master. He would like, even now, to get a bursary to Oxford or Cambridge. We talked of the difficulty which the universities are said to find in filling up these studentships. Smith ascribed it mainly to economic reasons, family demands, the insufficiency of the allowances etc? Why is it a constant of history that the older generation must fail to make provision for the changed requirements of the younger. Read - ?Peer Gynt? (Ibsen)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Leonard Merrick : A Chair on the Boulevard
'Thursday,28th January, ?Peer Gynt? is good stuff. I hope the Beechcroft Players tackle it some time. Though I suppose it has been done too often. In any case Bensham have done it and Beechcroft must set the pace, not follow the lead. Read ? ?A chair on the Boulevard? (L. Merrick)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Brand
'Friday, 29th January, I do not like ?Brand?. A religion that takes no account of actuality is no use to humanity. And, after all I think that religion was made for man, and not man made for religion. Christ is dead, and infinitely more use as a tradition than in life. Christ was not like Brand ? he pitied humanity. Brand is inclined, if not to sneer, at least, to treat with impatience the odd ways of man. Read - ?Brand? (Ibsen)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Robert Herrick : unknown
'Monday, 8th February, Gave the Anno Domini a miss. Tired. Reading Herrick. Also Oppenheim ?The Great Impersonation?. How efficiently this stuff is written. Exciting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Herman Melville : Omoo
'Wednesday, 10th February, Wrote to Mr Robinson and to Mr. D. Paterson re lecture dates. Read ?Omoo? (Melville)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Hilaire Belloc : Path to Rome
'Friday, 19th February, Last night?s meeting was a drawn battle. The ?wants? and the ?don?t wants? did an immense amount of talking, and were theatrical than they ever manage to be on stage. Milligan and Mother stuck their tongues in their cheeks and waited ? until a plan was formulated which while presenting some outward appearance of novelty will leave essentials much as they were. Read ? ?Path to Rome? (H. Belloc)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Henry James : The American
'Sunday, 21st February, Discussion group ? nothing doing ? arrived late. Members busy with a game in which, with the help of a pin and a newspaper they lost or won pennies. Whisper it not in Gath ? I joined in and ? extreme of immorality ? lost ! Read ? ?The American? (Henry James)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
'Friday, 5th March, I worked late tonight which allowed me to get in a nice little talk with Pat on the value of the classic books of criticism, as apart from their literary value. It was my opinion that in nearly all cases, as the minds of readers has evolved with the changing times so the light in which the classic must be viewed has altered and therefore old criticism must, in nearly every case be superseded. At least, as regards the ?human? as distinct from the literary element in the book. I feel that we cannot ever completely reconstruct the life of a past age or enter into the minds of people who lived in other times. Pat remarked that he was constantly struck by the little progress made in thought and the things of the mind. Read ? ?The Autocrat of the breakfast table? (O. W. Holmes).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : Poems
'Monday, 8th March, Heavy day. Discussed the famous Parkin speech on Welsh sportsmanship, and the Glamorgan president?s reply. I think that such generalisations as that Nation is unsporting are merely vulgar exhibitions of sloppy thinking. Read ? ?Poems? (Rupert Brook)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Hilaire Belloc : The Eye-Witness
'Monday, 22nd March, Read ? ?The eye ? witness? (H. Belloc).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Serial / periodical
Honore de Balzac : La Peau de Chagrin
'Tuesday, 30th March, Club ? Annual meeting. All officers re-elected except Will Evans who stood down. The Players are taking up all his time. Bal. Lear takes his place. I look forward to a record year. We have adopted the course on the ?English Historical Novel? for our programme and intend to vary this on alternate weeks with single lectures, debates etc ? Read -- ?La Peau de Chagrin? etc, (Balzac)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Robert Southey : Life of Nelson
'Friday, 2nd April, Walking over the Walton Hall Housing Estate. The spread of the city goes on apace. I find myself hoping that someday the grass will grow again over the site of so much ugliness. Talking of ugliness, nothing adds so much to its horror as monotony. Here are embryo slums, unless trees and gardens save them. Read ? ?The life of Nelson? (Southey)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis : Our Mr Wrenn
'Thursday 3rd June ?Our Mr Wrenn? (Sinclair Lewis) I feel crushed with the amount of spare time work I have on hand but life is nothing without the fight. I feel I am slipping too much into cricket, and taking life too easily. Mr Milligan has asked me again to organise a Peace Week meeting on the 19th !!!' [Sinclair Lewis, the son of a doctor, was born in Minnesota in 1885. He entered Yale University in 1903 but left three years later to join Englewood, the socialist colony founded by the writer Upton Sinclair. In 1908 Lewis moved to New York where he became a freelance writer. His first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane was published in 1912 ? He died in Rome in 1951].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis : Martin Arrowsmith
'Friday 4th June ?Martin Arrowsmith? (Sinclair Lewis). How many of my own questionings, disillusionments and hungerings are illustrated in this book. It has given me one of the worst fits of depression I ever suffered from. With the certainty I feel of being equal to big things, my inability to fight the circumstances that prevent me studying and preparing myself, makes me ache. Economics, literature, drama, social reform are only so many words to me, and yet I know that I could, with courage, make myself both an educated man and a social teacher. Well, I will try again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Bret Harte : Jack Hamlin's Mediation
'Tuesday 22nd June ?Jack Hamlin?s Mediation?etc.. (Bret Harte) Wednesday 23rd June A quiet day today and then last thing, neurotic attack. Went and joined the Library today. They are hopelessly deficient in good stuff, either old or new, but still they carry lots of books otherwise inaccessible to me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
R.H. Mottram : The Spanish Farm
'Thursday 24th June. ?The Spanish Farm? ? (R.H. Mottram). Our ?Robin Hood? Pageant tonight (250 present). I see the ?Daily Post? criticism on poor casting. Quite right too.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Percy Wyndham Lewis : At the Sign of the Black Moon
'Saturday 26th June ?At the Sign of the Black Moon? ? (Wyndham-Lewis)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rose Macaulay : Orphan Island
'Wednesday 30th June. ?Orphan Island? ? (Rose Macaulay). Looked after the infants today while Teddie went to work. Then a walk in the evening and bringing my arrears of writing up to date. We must look Dad up tomorrow, he will be lonely and depressed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rose Macaulay : Orphan Island
'Thursday 1st July This has been one of those demoralising days when a late rising leaves one unable to make any use of the shortened day. We should have gone to see Dad but left it too late. However, I have finished ?Orphan Island? and so added a rich recollection to my sum of experience. It is a great book. Really Great. The whole idea is inimitably that of the author of ?Told by an Idiot?. Rose Macauley?s chief charm is the delightful sustained humour of her prose. Every word is charmingly quiet and sweet, and yet how devastating the satire and the irony. What a pity. I have to admit to being so hopelessly ?orphan? since she finds so little in them but noise and sentiment.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Mr Prohack
'Friday 2nd July Teddie and I have managed to get up this morning. Here it is 10.30 and we have tidied up washed the supper dishes and I am waiting for breakfast reading Bennett?s ? Mr Prohack?. We got over to see Dad. He was not in but he left a note for me and we found him at the big Gilmore house cutting down the timber. There being no coal he has managed to purchase some of the timber in the garden as the house has been bought by the corporation as a housing site. He has to cut his wood down roots and all ? haul it to the yard, saw it and load it before it is ready for sale.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Mr Prohack
'Monday 5th July I finished ?Mr Prohack? last night. A fine book but I did not take to Mrs P. nor even to Mr Bennett?s views on the feminine. I do not quarrel with them. I am not qualified to do so, knowing little of women, but if his representations are correct ? well, I hate the thought, it makes me a gloomy pessimist. Therefore I don?t think them correct.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
St Francis of Assissi : Little Flowers of St Francis
'Thursday 8th July I am enjoying ? between books - the ?Everyman? ?Little Flowers of St. Francis?, and find it very lovely if at times a little amusing. Cannot however stomach the bodily uncleanness of the ?out and out? Franciscans. It does not read well. The miracles are often very beautiful and often rather funny.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Reg Berkeley : Unparliamentary papers
'Thursday 22nd July. ?Unparliamentary Papers? (Reg Berkeley). I am on my own in the luncheon hours now and find it difficult to escape boredom. I am as fond of conversation, provided it is not merely aimless, that to have to confine myself solely to reading and lonely observation is rather tiresome. I have had a rather jolly trip round the book-stalls today, though, and had I been other than broke, might have picked up one or two bargains.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rebecca West : Return of the Soldier
'Sunday 25th July. ?Return of the Soldier? - (Rebecca West). A very sad book. The hero is rather imbecile as interpreted by the woman character who tells the story.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'Saturday 31st July. ?Nicholas Nickleby? - (Charles Dickens)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Walter Jerrold : A Book of Famous Wits
'Sunday 1 August. ?A Book of Famous Wits? ? (Walter Jerrold). To see Smith with Monica. He comes home this weekend and seems quite normal and comfortable. I took some books with me and recommended the ?Stickit Minister? to him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Hilaire Belloc : Pongo and the Bull
'Tuesday 3rd August. ?Pongo and the Bull? ? ( Belloc)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
George Moore : The Untilled Field
'Saturday 7th August ?The Untilled Field? ? (George Moore)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
[Mr] de Salis : L'Ecole aux Maris Malhonnetes
'I played the harpsichord most part of the evening. Then we began to read a play of Mr de Salis (made by him) entitled "L'Ecole aux Maris Malhonnetes". It is very badly wrote, in a very bad style, and not pretty at all it is so very ridiculous that we could not help laughing at hearing it read. I only heard two acts, we shall finish it tomorrow'. [the next day] 'We finished the play of Mr de Salis the end is worse than the beginning and it is very stupid'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wynne and others Print: Unknown
Walter Besant : For Faith and Freedom
'Thursday 19th August ?For faith and Freedom? ? (Walter Besant)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Dunciad
'Thursday 26th August Pope?s ?Dunciad? This is a week of work. Real graft. Diaries, even of small sketchy nature as this must remain to some extent neglected. One easily fills the spaces of course. But there is not the energy for choosing the peculiarity of the day?s happenings on thought, that will make the entry worth while.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Fortunes of Nigel
'Thursday 2nd September ?Fortunes of Nigel? (Walter Scott)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : The Heroes
'Friday 10th September Today my friend Pat bought Kingsley?s ?Heroes? for Monica. I am reading it myself and then it goes away, to be out on her shelf, which I am planning with some thought, and, I hope, taste for childish requirements. It would make a nice subject for an essay. Teddie and I already have following for our childrens? bookshelf ? Kinsgley?s ?Heroes?, ?Alice in Wonderland? and ?Through the Looking Glass?. A complete ?Hans Andersen? also a selection, beautifully illustrated by Dulac Lamb?s ?Tales from Shakespeare? and Hope-Moncrieff?s ?Classic Myth and Legend?. It is a fairly good beginning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Thursday 30th September ?Ivanhoe? (Walter Scott) Late work still the order of the ? night. All is still confusion and chaos. My life at present is a tale of mugging away at my desk. I read a book on my way down town. Have a little brisk conversation with Smith in the luncheon hour ? if he is in town, or a walk round the book shops if he is not. Another little talk with Pat over our evening coffee. A few laughs during the day at Blowers? profanity or Lauson?s buffoonery. Then home to a meal, a short read, a little writing and bed. I seldom see the children except on Sundays.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho!
'Monday 11th October ?Westward Ho!? (Charles Kingsley)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rev Lewis Tomlinson : Recreations in Astronomy
'We were told that a Bible and Testament were placed at the head of each bed; and we saw one convict reading "Recreations in Astronomy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Henry N. Brailsford : War of Steel and Gold
'Wednesday 3rd November. ?War of Steel and Gold? ? (Henry. N. Brailsford).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
J. Maynard Keynes : The End of Laissez Faire
Monday 6th November. ?The End of Laissez-Faire? - J. M. Keynes. Busy today as usual. My latest book,[Keynes] is very interesting; it is quite a declaration of belief and gives some typically tentative and nervous signs of Keynes position. I think he realises that his attitude requires considerable modification. He has found and knows the truth, but is afraid to realise it. He tries to cover it up from himself by ineffectual qualifications.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Sunday 28th November ?Decline and fall? (Edward Gibbon).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Tuesday 7th December. "Decline and Fall? ? Vol. 2'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Victor MacClure : The Boost of the Golden Snail: A Fantasy of London
'Monday 13th December ?The Boost of the Golden Snail? ? (Macclure)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne : The Rev. Captain Kettle
'Saturday 18th December. ?Rev. Captain Kettle? ? (Hyne)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Au dessus de la m?l
'Monday 20th December ?Au dessus de la m?l?e? ? (Romain Rolland). This is the first time I have managed to get hold of this book. Mother was very friendly with Madeleine Rolland, the author?s sister, during our stay in Paris, during the war. I find it interesting, but only as a good sketch of fine pacifist thought, but even more as a vivid reproduction of that almost forgotten period ? the war ? and the extraordinary chaos in which mind and intellect were swallowed up over three quarters of Europe.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Au dessus de la m?l
'Wednesday 22 December. I have just finished ?Au dessus de la M?l?e?. It revives all my anger at the treacherous laziness of those who experienced the war, in failing to preach the gospel of ?never? again. Why, why do we let the governments go on? Secret diplomacy, concession hunting, financial wrangling. Calculated ?inspiring? of the press. It is horrible. I used to believe the Press to be sincere, if misguided. But I have been reading the ?Mail? lately, and the easily recognizable note of sincerity is absolutely lacking.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Edward Whymper : Scrambles among the Alps
'Saturday 25th December. ?Scrambles among the Alps? (Whymper) Trying to get the proper atmosphere in a snow-less Christmas. Certainly, if any book could give it, it is this one. Today has been rather a bore. The usual heavyweight dinner made everybody too somnolent to allow of any attempt at enjoyment. So we slept and read and ate and ? finally ? slept.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Mary Johnston : By Order of the Company
'Monday 27th December. ?By Order of the Company? (Johnston)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Plain Tales from the Hills
[List of books read in 1926] '"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" (Holmes), "Plain Tales from the Hills" (Kipling), "History of Florence" (Machiavelli), "Essays in Socialism" (Belfort Bax), "Socialism: Critical and Constructive" (J.R. Macdonald), "Trimblerigg" (L. Houseman), "Peer Gynt" (Ibsen), "A Chair on the Boulevard" (L. Merrick), "Brand" (Ibsen), "The Long Roll" (M. Johnston), "Compleat Angler" (I. Walton), "Omoo" (H. Melville), "Shorter Poems" (M. Prior), "Notre Coeur" (G. de Maupassant), "Barry Lindon" (Thackeray), "Path to Rome" (Belloc), "The Americans" (Henry James), "Four Georges" (Thackeray), "Memoirs of the Crusades" (Villehardouin & de Joinville), "Journal to Stella" (Swift), "Hamlet" (Temple Shakespeare), "The Eye Witness" (Belloc), "Almayer's Folly" (Conrad), "Tartarin sur les Alpes" (Daudet), "The Tragedy of Education" (Edmond Holmes), "La Peur de Chagrin" etc (Balzac), "Life of Nelson" (Southey), "Les Fr?quentations de Maurice" (Sidney Place), "Journal of the Plague Year" (Defoe), "Figures in Modern Literature" (J.B. Priestley), "English Humourists" (Thackeray), "Frank Mildmay" (Marryat), "Polar Exploration" (Buck), "Cricket and Cricketers" (Philip [illegible]), "The Sowers" ([illegible]), "Our Mr Wrenn" (Sinclair Lewis), "Martin Arrowsmith" (ditto), "Short History of the World" (H.G. Wells), "Jack Hamlin's Mediation" etc (Bret Harte), "At the Sign of the Blue Boar" (Wyndham Lewis), "Orphan Island" (Rose Macaulay), "The Spanish Farm" (R.H. Mottram), "Mr Prohack" (Arnold Bennett), "Told by an Idiot" (Rose Macaulay), "Mr Waddington of Wyck" (May Sinclair), "English Comic Characters" (J.B. Priestley), "Henry IV" (Temple Shakespeare), "Lolly Willowes" ( ? ) [Sylvia Townsend Warner]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Harold Brighouse : Captain Shapely
'4th January ? Tuesday. ?Captain Shapely? Harold Brighouse. A well- written yarn this. Very, very entertaining, and in a style I like. No superfluous verbiage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Gerald Moore : [list of books read in 1926]
'5th January ? Wednesday. I have taken out a list of the books I read last year; they total 83. Not so bad, considering that I always read the books I start on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sidney and Beatrice Webb : The Decay of Capitalist Civilisation
'18th January, Tuesday. ?The Decay of Capitalist Civilisation? (S & B Webb) I was up till late last night finishing my paper for Wednesday.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
George Eric Paterson : poems [unspecified]
'20th January, Thursday. Pat has given me a number of his poems for the ?Two Houses?. [a magazine of which Gerald Moore was the editor] I had to smile at finding again the classic influence which inspires his every thought. He writes in the style of a man whose reading lies in the works of Shakespeare, Milton and the Golden Age.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Manuscript: Sheet
Israel Zangwill : King of the Schnorres
'2nd February, Wednesday. I have been reading Zangwills, ?King of the Schnorres? and some other yarns of his. He is a most ingenious, and a most humorous writer. He is another of those authors who make me wonder why the ordinary reader wastes time on cheap rubbish. Here is a book, one of hundreds, which is as entertaining, as quick moving, and dramatic as any one can desire, and yet I doubt if it can hold place with B.M. Bower, Ethel M. Dell, Elinor Glyn, Zane Grey and the other tripe-mongers.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Frances Kingsley : Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life
'I remember years ago reading the life of Charles Kingsley who has been called "a very perfect gentleman". Yet in that book, collated by his wife, one can read how, just as the family was sitting down to a well provided breakfast table, a poor vagrant woman called at Evesleigh Rectory for help. She had been out all night and, as Kingsley himself admits, was utterly wretched. Tired, hungry and in rags she appealed to this "very perfect Christian knight" for a little food! Did she get it? No! the "very perfect knight" sent her empty away to walk some miles to the nearest workhouse!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : Crime and Punishment
'19th September 1928 (Wednesday) I have got nearly all my books home from the office now. It is a lengthy job, bringing them in two?s and threes, but I have had enough of lugging suitcases full of books. Nothing in the papers today except ?last words? on the ?6? power conference. ?Le Crime et le Chatiment? - (Dostoivesky); translated Victor D?r?ly'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Letters of Travel
'22nd September 1928 (Saturday). I have started to read Kipling?s ?Letters of travel? again. I am very fond of this book although the slabs of jaunty, impatient, imperialism become rather monotonous. Still, the splendid descriptive power that the book betokens, make it excellent reading. The ?sentiments? are too well known, and too familiar to jar now to any appreciable degree. It is a curious contrast that in a book very slight in itself, with little thread or cohesion, the phrasing should be so powerful. I suppose Kipling?s long experience in ballad-mongering stands him in good stead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Jean Christophe
'30th September 1928 (Sunday) We saw the Clichy party to their tram, then [illegible] Henry and I had a coffee at the Express du Havre and finally parted for home at 11.45. A good day. I brought away the 1st book of Romain Rolland?s ?Jean Christophe? and devoured half of it before going to sleep.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Jean Christophe
'1st October 1928 (Monday). Dug further into ?Jean Christophe? in the Luncheon hour. Am thoroughly enjoying this great book. I hope the other volumes are as good as ?L?Aube? though Mme. Bisseux thinks not. ?Jean Christophe? (1st ?L?Aube?) Romain Rolland'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Jean Christophe
'2nd September 1928 (Tuesday) Sunday?s ?Observer? suggests a clean break with the line of diplomatic action brought to light by the revelations regarding the Anglo-French naval pact. Even the old ?Observer? admits that England has only just missed dealing the foulest blow at the cause of international peace since the war. America is wholly on the qui vive now especially as the Presidential elections are in full swing and the pact is getting the fullest possible publicity. It is curious that their note on the subject should be so restrained. Either they are in earnest in their pacifist pretensions or they are so sure of the failure of any negotiation that they are willing to risk a big bluff. England has not come off very well out of either the League session or the Pact fiasco so let?s hope that Chamberlain?s diplomacy has suffered a final setback. [...] Finished Rolland?s book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Letters of Travel
'3rd October 1928 (Wednesday). Late to work, naturally. Although tired, put in a good day?s work and returned home hungry as a hunter. Finished ?Letters of Travel? which has been hanging fire. To bed early.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Vie de Tolstoy
'Monday, 15th October 1928 ?Vie de Tolstoy? (Romain Rolland)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Back to Methuselah
'1st January 1929 (Tuesday) In the eveningthe usual German sing-song. I to bed early. Re-reading ?Back to Methuselah?. ?Back to Methuselah? (George Bernard Shaw)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Back to Methuselah
'4th January 1929. ?Back to Methuselah?. G. B. Shaw'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Henry Bordeaux : Robe de Laine
'12th January 1929. During the afternoon I read Bordeaux?s ?Robe de laine?, but not with much enjoyment. I do not care for Bordeaux though I do not know why.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Arthur W. Pollitt : The Enjoyment of Music
'16th February 1929. ?Appreciation of music? (Pollitt)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Les Amis
'17th February 1929 (Sunday). After a long and very cosy dinner I started for home. I missed the train owing to my having to climb the great gate as B. had forgotten his key. Stayed in a little caf? until 11.35, and then home very tired. I brought away (Jean Christophe)? ?Les Amis?. This is the second of this series which I have read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Les Amis
'24th February 1929 (Sunday) Finished reading ?Les Amis? before luncheon. Rolland is the most ?beautiful? writer I know and this book is as good as his best. I would like to have all his works and to read the whole of this ?Jean Christophe? series. After luncheon I read ?Dorian Gray? for a while, then a light tea, and off to Levallois. Stopped at Gare St. Lazare for my papers, ?Le Temps?, ?Observer? and ?Monde?.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : The Portrait of Dorian Gray
'24th February 1929 (Sunday) Finished reading ?Les Amis? before luncheon. Rolland is the most ?beautiful? writer I know and this book is as good as his best. I would like to have all his works and to read the whole of this ?Jean Christophe? series. After luncheon I read ?Dorian Gray? for a while, then a light tea, and off to Levallois. Stopped at Gare St. Lazare for my papers, ?Le Temps?, ?Observer? and ?Monde?.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Pierre Benoit : Atlandide
'5th March 1929. Papers from mother, with an account of the opening of the new girls? Secondary school. A very fine building. Photo of mother as one of the council notables. Finished ?Atlandide? (Pierre B?noit). It is a good story, excellently told, and an immense improvement on Rider Haggard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : unknown
'15th March 1929 Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : unknown
'15th March 1929 Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Artemus Ward : unknown
'15th March 1929 Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Sketches by Boz
'15th March 1929 Miss M?ndel and I inspect my little library. We read some Brooks, Kipling, Holmes, Artemus Ward, de Quincey -- in short, a browse. We looked at ?Phiz? illustrations to ?Sketches by Boz? and she talked of Wilhelm Busch as the greatest of German pencil artists.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sir Paul Rycaut : unknown
'Sir Paul Rycaut is mistaken (as he commonly is) in calling the sect [italics] muterin [italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Ibrahim Pasha : Turkish Verses
'They have what they call the [italics] sublime [italics], that is, a style proper for poetry, and which is the exact Scripture style. I believe you would be pleased to see a genuine example of this; and I am very glad I have it in my power to satisfy our curiosity, by sending you a faithful copy of the verses that Ibrahim Pasha, the reigning favourite, had made for the young princess, his contracted wife...Thus the verses may be looked upon as a sample of their finest poetry...I have taken abundance of pains to get these verses in a literal translation'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Manuscript: Sheet
Charles Dickens : [works]
'My pal was a typical Cockney recidivist who sold fruit on a coster's barrow between convictions and went crook when sales dwindled to vanishing point... I was attracted to him in the first place by his amazing knowledge of Dickens. He spent every moment of leisure reading Dickens and had, in the course of a dozen or more years in prison, read little else. There was no single scrap of Dickens' work that he hadn't read, not once, or twice, but many times. Mention any character you liked and little B- would give you a verbal picture of him and his setting in the story in which he appeared. More than once at exercise he has walked behind me spouting whole pages dealing with his favourite characters, accompanying his copious quotations with a running commentary on their virtues and failings in a vein so humorous that I have more than once had to fall out to avoid startling the whole exercise by going off into peals of laughter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George Sturt : Fruit Blossom Time
'What pleasure hast thou given me during the last few days! First your letter then your essay ?Fruit Blossom Time? & then your nameless novel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Letter, Sheet
George Sturt : [unnamed novel]
'What pleasure hast thou given me during the last few days! First your letter then your essay "Fruit Blossom Time" & then your nameless novel. ...I am in a fever to finish the novel. Ken made me turn it up when I was at part ten. I shall, Sturto volente, animadvert at length upon it at a future date, Now, I will only say that I like it very much. Its calm, unabashed realism charms me. You find fault with Maupassant for his wealth of irrelevant ... detail. Frankly, I think you would do well to follow him some way in this. I don't think all his detail is irrelevant. . . . No, I believe in detail.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Letter, Sheet
George Sturt : A Courting Umbrella
'But in the case of a story like yours, which is over the heads of the foolish, amiable readers of our "bright little paper", but which I should like, for the good of literature & the credit of Woman, to have in the paper, I should prefer to throw the responsibility for the acceptance on my Editor?s shoulders.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Sarah Trimmer : 'Selections [from the Bible]'
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at school: 'At Miss Crooke's [school] [...] we learned Pinnock's Catechisms of History and Geography [...] For religious instruction we read portions of the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles in a class every day, using Mrs. Trimmer's "Selections"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Miss Crooke's school, Newport, Isle of Wight. Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on reading at her Bath boarding school: 'We learned passages from the best authors, and my delight in Walter Scott made me add to the regular lesson large portions of "The Lady of the Lake".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830: 'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Walter Scott : [poetry and novels]
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830: 'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : poetry
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830: 'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Walter Scott : Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk
'In 1835, [James] Edwards [Sewell, reader's brother] [...] had the curacy of Hursley. Mr. Gilbert Heathcote held the living, and Ellen [reader's sister] and I were sent to Hursley [...] whilst Lucy [reader's friend] was ill. We were at the old vicarage [...] [Mr. Heathcote's books] were very kindly left for our use, and I made an acquaintance with Sir Walter Scott's "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk", and read Shakespeare to Ellen, and led a quiet life, seeing no one.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Mrs. Mary Sherwood : Tales
Elizabeth Missing Sewell, on the start of her writing career: 'I began "Amy Herbert"-- I scarcely know why -- only I had been reading some story of Mrs. Sherwood's, which struck me as having pretty descriptions, and I fancied I could write something of the same kind; and as a matter of curiosity I determined to make the attempt. I read both the few chapters of the intended tract ["Stories on the Lord's Prayer"], and the beginning of "Amy Herbert"to my sisters, and they liked them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
Bernardin de St Pierre : Paul et Virginie
'I began to read "Paul and Virginia" book that Mrs Braun brought here it is very pretty'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book
Bernardin de St Pierre : Paul et Virginie
'I read for the second time a novel that Madame de B. brought for us, "Paul and Virginia", that is charming, but though I was told I would weep many tears in reading it I did not shed a single one. I reread it thinking perhaps to have read it too fast the first time, but although the second time it did not interest me less than the first, it did not make me weep. It is of no use to say this is a sign of insensibility. If they will teach me to cry when I will and then everything will melt me and make me cry, for after all I am a woman as they are'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Book
[Mr] de Bressac : [account of French Rebellion]
'This evening I heard a lecture of a work made by Mr de Bressac which is the description of all the murders and horrors committed in France during the Rebellion. It is easily supposed that such a lecture is not at all agreeable especially to young folks. Indeed I found it well wrote but it was cruel to oblige to hear all them massacres'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
Mrs. Humphry Ward : The Story of Bessie Cottrell
'You may know that Mrs Humphry Ward is one of my literary bugbears. I have never really read any of her much-lauded works, but from casual glances into one or two of them & the perusal of copious reviews, I have felt instinctively that she was No Good. A new book of hers, a short one, The Story of Bessie Costrell, will appear in three months time & I have been promising myself the pleasure of scalping the woman. The tale runs through Cornhill in three instalments & in order that my onslaught might appear immediately after publication of the book, contemporaneously with the fulsome flatteries which the daily press is certain to shake out, I determined to read the thing carefully in serial form, and prepare a reasoned expos?. I have just returned from the Free Library. The mischief is, I find the first instalment damn well done. It is beautifully arranged and selected. The writing, without being great, is dignified and decent; and it is perfectly clear that she knows what she is talking about, to wit, village life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Arnold Bennett : reviews
'My book reviews find considerable favour. The eclectic Chapman has much encouraged me by the statement that he reads no criticism which he likes better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederic Chapman Print: Serial / periodical
Ivan Sergevich Turgenev : On the Eve
'(I am tempted, by the way, to say that 'On the Eve' is the finest novel I have ever read. I must lend it you. Its subtlety and restraint prevent it from ever being really popular.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
William Henry Lyttelton : [probably] A Monody to the Memory of lady Lyttelton. Written in the Year 1747
'I read several elegies today, two of Shore the one on the death of his wife, the other on the loss of his child. His tale of woe is expressed in the most moving and natural fashion, and though you greatly admire the poet yet you must yield to the soft and sympathising composition of the widowed Husband and childless father. It is not so when you read Lord Littleton's complaint on his Lady's death, the poetry is beautiful but less natural, less moving. He boasts with his grief, and indulges himself some digressions which show his extended knowledge but are not natural, I think, to a mind wholly occupied with despair'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Unknown
Christoph Martin Wieland : Agathon
'I read a great deal of "Agathon" a very fine German novel taken from a grecian manuscript written by Wieland. It is very interesting and expressed with equal grace, elegance and nature. One thing which shows that no man is free of a vanity in which he seeks to hide is that the Author takes every opportunity to mention himself and appears afraid that "Agathon" should make you forget Weiland'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Book
Richard Knolles : The Turkish History
'I could also, with little trouble, turn over Knolles and Sir Paul Rycaut, to give you a list of Turkish Emperors'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Sir Paul Rycaut : unknown
'I could also, with little trouble, turn over Knolles and Sir Paul Rycaut, to give you a list of Turkish Emperors'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Mr Hill : unknown
'I am more inclined, out of a true female spirit of contradiction, to tell you the falsehood of a great part of what you find in authors; as, for example, in the admirable Mr. Hill, who so gravely asserts, that he saw in Sancta Sophia a sweating pillar, very balsamic for disordered heads...'Tis also very pleasant to observe how tenderly he and all his brethren voyage-writers lament the miserable confinement of the Turkish ladies, who are perhaps freer than any ladies in the universe.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Sir Paul Rycaut : unknown
'But the Armenians have no notion of transubstantiation, whatever accounts Sir Paul Rycaut gives of them (which account I am apt to believe was designed to compliment our court in 1679).'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Sir Paul Rycaut : unknown
'I can only tell you, that if you please to read Sir Paul Rycaut, you will there find a full and true account of the viziers, the [italics] beglerbeys [italics], the civil and spiritual government, the officers of the seraglio, &c., things that 'tis very easy to procure lists of, and therefore may be depended on; though other stories, God knows - I say no more - every body is at liberty to write their own remarks; the manners of people may change, or some of them escape the observation of travellers, but 'tis not the same of the government; and for that reason, since I can tell you nothing new, I will tell nothing of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Mr Sandys : Unknown
'One of my countrymen, Mr. Sandys (whose book I do not doubt you have read, as one of the best of its kind), speaking of these ruins, supposes them to have been the foundation of a city begun by Constantine, before his building Byzantium.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : Ballad of Reading Gaol or De Profundis
'This book made a deep and lasting impression upon me because, apart from its profound human interest in the widest sense of the term, the agonising process of revaluation of regeneration, which it portrays, took place in the grim prison where my own initiation into the way of the transgressor first began.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'I am not ashamed to confess that during those weeks of imprisonment I too wept both by day and by night; not loudly or clamorously, but silently and with an intensity of misery that wasted my strength and filled my brain with hideous thoughts. The first library book issued to me was "David Copperfield"; and with the incipient ego-centrism of the budding criminal I imagined I could detect similarities between Dickens's early experiences and my own. For many nights I cried myself to sleep with "David Copperfield" hugged close, as if in him I had found a fellow sufferer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'At Winchester I was able to get the first volume of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall", but had no time to finish it. On another occasion at another prison I read the whole work through from beginning to end.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
George Eliot : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
George Meredith : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Edward Lytton : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charles Reade : [unknown]
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Obedience, the remedy for religious perplexity
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 20 June 1845: 'The Meyricks have been here today. Mr. Meyrick told Edwards [Sewell's brother] there was no doubt that Newman is going over to Rome, which agrees but little with an observation made by Dr. Pusey to G. F. a short time since that no one could know how devoted a servant of the Church Newman was till after his death. The Church though may mean the Catholic or Universal Church, and so Rome may be included. It is a horrid, startling notion, but a sermon of Newman's I was reading to-night would be a great safeguard against being led into mischief by it. "Obedience, the remedy for religious perplexity."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Tales on the Game Laws
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 26 November 1846: 'I read nothing scarcely [...] Miss Martineau's [italics]Tales on the Game Laws[end italics] I began, but they are so dull to me that I have scarcely patience to finish. The thing I like about them is their fairness. The rich people are not all wretches, though Miss Martineau's sympathies are evidently with the poor.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Unknown
Joseph Henry Shorthouse : John Inglesant
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
George Eliot : [unknown]
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : [unknown]
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Pierre Loti : [unknown]
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : [unknown]
'I often found peace in the pages of Ecclesiastes or Isaiah, or in the writings of men whom Barry has described as the heralds of revolt - John Inglesant, George Eliot, Carlyle, Heine, Loti, Nietzsche, etc. But in time even literature palls.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
George Berkeley : [unknown]
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : [unknown]
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling : [unknown]
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Arthur Schopenhauer : [unknown]
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Rudolph Hermann Lotze : [unknown]
'At Maidstone, both on this occasion and subsequently when I served several months in separate confinement as a convict preparatory to going to Parkhurst, I was able, through the chaplain's kindness, to study not only Greek philosophy, but also Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Lotze, etc. Being a very rapid reader and having some ability in getting at the gist of a book I got through a fair amount of really interesting reading. ... In the summer I grabbed a book as soon as it was light enough to read, say, four o'clock, read till and during breakfast, dinner, supper and continued till 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night, an average of 8 to 10 hours a day. There were times, of course, when the burden of prison life bred a spirit of discontent and restlessness which books could not assuage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Histoire ancienne des Egyptiennes, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Medes, des Perses, des Macedoniens, et des Grecs (6 vols)
'Now that you have finished Rollin, I think you ought to begin some other book on general literature, directed if possible like it, in some degree to the progress of your classical studies.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John A. Carlyle Print: Book
Richard Henry Dana : Two years before the mast
'The routine of the "Scourge" has grown familiar; and one tires of unbroken fine weather and smooth seas. No resource for me but the officers' little library. Therefore I must have been sleepily pouring over Dana's "Two Years before the Mast": a pleasant, rough kind of book, but with something too much hauling of ropes and "handing" of sails it in. ...I have been reading also "The Amber Witch", a most beautiful German story, translated into English, by Lady Duff Gordon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Mary Schweidler : The Amber Witch
'The routine of the "Scourge" has grown familiar; and one tires of unbroken fine weather and smooth seas. No resource for me but the officers' little library. Therefore I must have been sleepily pouring over Dana's "Two Years before the Mast": a pleasant, rough kind of book, but with something too much hauling of ropes and "handing" of sails it in. ...I have been reading also "The Amber Witch", a most beautiful German story, translated into English, by Lady Duff Gordon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Three Mousequetaires
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Marquis de Letoriere
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Windsor Castle
'Three weeks of sickness, sleepness nights, and dismal days: and the "light" reading that I have been devouring I find to weigh very heavy. Yet the "Three Mousquetaires" of Dumas is certainly the best novel that creature has made. How is it that the paltriest feuilletoniste in Paris can always turn out something at least readable (readable, I mean, by a person of ordinary taste and knowledge) and that the popular providers of that sort of thing in London - save only Dickens - are also so very stupid, ignorant and vicious a herd? Not but the feuilleton-men are vicious enough; but then vice wrapped decently in plenty of British cant, and brutified by cockney ignorance, is triply vicious. Dumas's "Marquis de Letoriere", too, is a pleasant enough little novelette: but I have tried twice, and tried in vain, to get through a mass of letterpress called "Windsor Castle", by Ainsworth; and another by one Douglas Jerrold, entitled "St Giles and St James".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
[George] [Allan?] : [biography of Walter Scott]
'I have omitted, of late, to set down the titles of - for want of a better name I must call them - books, that I have been reading these past months; chiefly because they are of such utter offal that there is no use in remembering so much as their names. Madame Pichler's "Siege of Vienna" ...; a life of Walter Scott, by one Allen, advocate, wherein the said advocate takes superior ground, looking down, as it were, ex cathedra, upon his subject, searching out the genesis, and tracing the development of this or the other power or faculty in that popular writer; and thus by philosophic histoire raisonnee, informing us how it fell out, to the best of his, the advocate's, knowledge that Walter Scott came to write the books he did, and at the times of his life, after the fashion he did... In truth the book is very presumptuous and very stupid;...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Dr Memes [pseud?] : [Life of William Cowper]
'I have omitted, of late, to set down the titles of - for want of a better name I must call them - books, that I have been reading these past months; chiefly because they are of such utter offal that there is no use in remembering so much as their names. Madame Pichler's "Siege of Vienna" ...; a life of Walter Scott, by one Allen, advocate, ... In truth the book is very presumptuous and very stupid; yet it is far excelled in both these respects by another I am reading now, a life of Cowper, by Dr Memes (bookseller's hack literator of that name). Not that the writer is without genius; for he has succeeded in making a book as repulsive as it is possible for a book giving anything like a narrative of Cowper's life to be.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Francois Rabelais : [unknown]
'And have I read no books, then, save bad ones? That I have. Amongst those sent to me from home is an old Dublin copy of Rabelais, in four volumes, imprinted by Philip Crampton, of Dame Street - and has kept me in good wholesome laughter for a fortnight - laughter of the sort that agitates the shoulders, and shakes the diaphragm, and makes the blood tingle; than which no medicine can be more cordial to me - I have read the cause of his effects in Galen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Sir Alexander Burnes : [Journey through Bokhara and Voyage up the Indus]
'One of the last books I have laid hands on is Lieutenant Burnes's (afterwards Sir Alexander Burnes) "Journey through Bokhara and Voyage up the Indus". And, not to speak of the intrinsic merits of the work as a narrative of travel, which merits are moderate, it has become remarkable on account of events which have befallen since its publication. This Burnes was sent to those countries (in plain English) as a spy, to make observations and get intelligence which should be available to the Anglo-Indian government, in the project they had of invading, civilising, plundering, clothing in cotton, and finally subduing Lahore and Cabool.' [diary entry includes extracts from the book]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Tired to death of reading books - at least all books of an instructive sort - and have now been devouring (for about the fifth time) "Ivanhoe" and "The Heart of the Mid-Lothian". My blessing on the memory of Walter Scott!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of the Mid-Lothian
'Tired to death of reading books - at least all books of an instructive sort - and have now been devouring (for about the fifth time) "Ivanhoe" and "The Heart of the Mid-Lothian". My blessing on the memory of Walter Scott!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 19 February 1856: 'I came here [Bournemouth] for a fortnight and have stayed a month. I have written a little, and read a good deal, -- the second volume of [italics]Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life[end italics], which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and [italics]Hypatia[end italics] and two sermons of Dr. Pusey's against Germanism, and part of [italics]Hero Worship[end italics], to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of [italics]The Times[end italics] every evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 'Tuesday Evening, 9th June [1857]': 'I have just finished Mrs. Gaskell's [italics]Life of Miss Bronte[end italics]. Years ago, when [italics]Jane Eyre[end italics] came out I read it. People said it was coarse, and I felt it was, but I felt also that the person who wrote it was not necessarily coarse-minded, that the moral of the story was intended to be good; but that it failed in detail. The life is intensely, painfully interesting. A purer, more high-minded person it seems there could scarcely be, wonderfully gifted, and with a man's energy and power of will and passionate impulse; and yet gentle and womanly in all her ways [goes on to reflect upon Bronte's depressive temperament, and to characterise her religious feeling as 'abstract belief not personal love']'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charles de Remusat : 'French Essays on Literature'
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 28 January [?1865]: 'I am reading [italics]French Essays on Literature[end italics] [sic] -- so clever they are! Charles de Remusat describes the French of the eighteenth century as "Des gens qui ne lisaient qu'afin de pouvoir parler". Could anything be more apt?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Jean Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire : Conferences de Notre Dame de Paris
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 7 November 1868: 'Began Lacordaire's [italics]Conferences de Notre Dame[end italics]. He starts with premises open to much discussion, and all his arguments fall to the ground unless one can accept the premises.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Richard Rowe : Episodes in an Obscure Life
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 15 August 1871, during visit to friends at Ashbourne Green, Derbyshire: 'I have been reading [italics]Episodes of an Obscure Life[end italics] [sic], and have made up my mind that I know as little of the life of the East End of London, or rather of the lives of the people, as I do of those of the angels. Write, or think, or work, as one may, there are thousands one could never reach, simply because one could not understand them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Unknown
Lord Grey : [Dispatch from the Government respecting fate of convicts on ship]
'Lord Grey's despatches have arrived...[prisoners gather to hear proclamation read aloud] when Captain Bance unfolded his papers the burliest burglar held his breath for a time. Neptune to proceed firthwith to Van Diemen's Land; on arrival there prisoners to receive (in compensation for the hardships of their long voyage and detention) her Gracious Majesty's "conditional pardon" - except "the prisoner Mitchel", whose case, Lord Grey says, being entirely different from all the others, is reserved for separate consideration, but special instructions respecting it are to be forwarded to the governor of Van Diemen's Land. When the reader came to the exception of "the prisoner Mitchel", he raised his voice, and spoke with impressive solemnity. In a moment all eyes, of officers, sailors, prisoners, soldiers, were fastened on my face; if they read anything but scorn [in italics], then my face belied my heart.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Captain Bance Manuscript: Sheet
Patrick O'Donohue (editor) : Irish Exile
'To my utter amazement, I had a letter to-day from Patrick O'Donohue, who has been permitted to live in the city of Hobart Town, informing me that he has established a newspaper called the "Irish Exile", enclosing me a copy of the last number, and proposing that [italics] I should join him [close italics] in the concern. ...The thing is a hideous absurdity altogether: but I am glad to learn that none of my friends takes anything to do with it; though I suppose it assumes to be a sort of "organ" for them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Marie Corelli : Sorrows of Satan
'I have just read Marie Corelli?s new book?my first of hers. I can now understand both her popularity & the critics? contempt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Some technical elements of style in literatue
'In my new vol. of the Edinburgh Stevenson, there is a luminous essay, reprinted for the first time from a Fortnightly Review of 1881, on ?some technical elements of style in literature.? You must read it when you come up; it is profoundly interesting to a craftsman. . . . I read the thing last night in bed?after an evening at Chapman?s?& was made to think thereby.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Dr Peter Mark Roget : Thesaurus
'. . . have you got Roget?s Thesaurus of English words and phrases? It is the most wonderful machine for getting at words that you know but can?t think of at the moment, that I have encountered. . . I bought it about a year ago, & wonder how I ever did without it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Ivan Sergevich Turgenev : On the Eve
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell! Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Moore : unknown
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell! Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : unknown
'My favourite masters & models: 1. Turgenev, a royal first (you must read 'On the Eve'?flawless I tell you. Bring back such books of mine as you have; I have others you must read). 2. de Maupassant. 3. de Goncourts. 4. George Moore?the great author who can neither write nor spell! Stevenson only helps me in minute details of style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Paston : A Modern Amazon, A Bread and Butter Miss, A Study in Prejudices
'My reviewing has been mixing me up with literary folk lately. One ?George Paston? (niece of John Addington Symonds) whose 3 books I have consistently belauded wants to behold me in the flesh, & she is going to; I like her work much.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Moore : A Modern Lover
'I couldn?t get her [?George Paston?] to give George Moore a good word. I have just been reading his first novel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : [Letters]
'I spent the whole afternoon reading some of Mde. de Sevigne's letters'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Wynne Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : [Letters]
'I read Mde. de Sevigne until I was quite tired'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Wynne Print: Book
Ivan Sergevich Turgenev : Smoke
'I have just read Turgenev?s Smoke. Man, we have more to learn in mere technique from Turgenev than from any other soul. He is simply unspeakable. I will ram this statement down your throat when I see you, with the book in front of us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Sarah Stickney Ellis : Family Secrets
'I am occupied a geat deal just now in reading a new novel called "Family Secrets", it is a compound of unnatural occurrences but being embarked on it I am dommed to wade through five volumes', it belongs to the Purser's Steward'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Fremantle Print: Book
Ivan Sergevich Turgenev : On the Eve
"'On the Eve' is more than a nice novel; it is a great novel. I think that if I could read it in Russian I should set it down as the greatest within my knowledge."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sturt : A Year's Exile
'For exercise I have just ridden over to Ken?s for your novel, though I am so busy I haven?t time to read it today. I have, however, snatched 20 minutes for the first two chapters. The first, to me, at first reading, is somewhat shadowy, but the second, my pippin, is positively masterly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Unknown
George Sturt : A Year's Exile
'Well, Sir, I have read your novel, & I am ready to bet a guinea to a gooseberry that, if read by Street, it will not be refused by John Lane for reasons artistic. ? It is one of the most genuinely original novels that I have ever read; I don?t mean original in design, but in the outlook of the author.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Ivan Sergevich Turgenev : A Sportsman's Sketches
'Turgenev has forestalled you. & a bit to spare, in ?A Sportsman?s Sketches?, which you shall take home with you next time you come to London. These sketches are obviously records of things seen & heard by the author during his sporting tours, records devoid of literary artfulness, but chocked full of the art of observation, I know that you will be both delighted & edified by them, I read some of them a few years ago, & thought they were tame and lacked form. Now I know better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Lawrence L. Lynch : Shadowed by Three: A Detective Story
One of them asked what he had been reading. 'Lynch, of course,' said Louis promptly, with a twinkling in his eye. 'Lynch? Lynch?' The name was jotted down in a notebook and on cuffs. There was a bewildered air among them as they glanced at each other. They were all of the intelligentsia and considered themselves well up in modern literature, yet here was a name they had never heard. Louis was being perfectly truthful. He had been reading 'Shadowed by Three' and 'Dashing Kate, the Female Detective', shilling shockers that amused him so much he had noted the author's name and was looking for more of his works.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Browning :
Taking a book of Browning's poems from his pocket he showed Louis a verse which he said he could not understand...bending forward, his hands clasped, he gazed expectant, while Louis read over the poem. Alas, for the hero worshipper! This is what the Master said: 'I'm damned if I know what it means. It reads like cat's meat to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Father Damien, an Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu
Louis announced that he had written something he wanted us to hear. When we had taken our seats round the centre table he stood before us with a manuscript in his hand...then in his deep voice vibrant with emotion, with heightened colour and blazing eyes he read aloud the 'Father Damien Letter.' Never in my life have I heard anything so dramatic, so magnificent. There was deep feeling in every sentence - scorn, indignation, biting irony, infinite pity - and invective that fairly scorched and sizzled. The tears were in his eyes when he finished. Throwing the manuscript on the table he turned to his wife. She who had never failed him, rose to his feet, and holding out both hands to him in a gesture of enthusiasm, cried: 'Print it! Publish it!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : Weir of Hermiston
After lunch was always a pleasant time at Vailima...that was the time Louis usually chose to read aloud something he had written. We were an eager, attentive audience, and when he had finished he welcomed suggestions and we were free to say whatever we liked. Usually we were unanimously enthusiastic, especially over chapters of 'Weir of Hermiston'...once, however, he read a story called 'The Witch Woman' that none of us cared for very much. My mother said it showed the influence of a Swedish author Louis had been reading, and was not in his own clear, individual style. She made no comment when he sent it to his publisher, and nothing more was heard of 'The Witch Woman'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Witch Woman
After lunch was always a pleasant time at Vailima...that was the time Louis usually chose to read aloud something he had written. We were an eager, attentive audience, and when he had finished he welcomed suggestions and we were free to say whatever we liked. Usually we were unanimously enthusiastic, especially over chapters of 'Weir of Hermiston'...once, however, he read a story called 'The Witch Woman' that none of us cared for very much. My mother said it showed the influence of a Swedish author Louis had been reading, and was not in his own clear, individual style. She made no comment when he sent it to his publisher, and nothing more was heard of 'The Witch Woman'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Thomas Skinner Surr : A Winter in London, or Sketches of Fashion
'I have finished "A Winter in Town", and think that if it was written in two volumes instead of three it would be a very good Novel - Some of the characters such as the Duchess of Devonshire, Duchess of Girdon, and Sir Walter Farquhar are admirably delineated in it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne Print: Book
Charles Bossut : Essai sur l'histoire generale des mathematiques
'It is very likely that I may send you some Mathematical thing or other, seeing I have got Bossut's history of mathematics, at this time, where perhaps there may be something new to you'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'Once, for instance, I recollect that to fill up one of those aweful hiatus in conversation that occur at times in spite of all one's efforts to the contrary - and to entertain Miss M., I took up a Tristram Shandy; and read her one of the very best jokes within the boards of the book - Ah-h-h-h! sighed Miss M. and put on a look of right tend[er] melancholy!! - Now. - Did the smallest glimmering of reason appea[r]? Never.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Francis Jeffrey : Edinburgh Review
'I have seen the last number of the Edinr review at Mount-annan. I regret, with you, that Jeffrey should bestow so much of his time on Politics; and I rejoice in the prospect [(for] this is one of the advantages of Peace!) that in a short [time] he will not have this in his power. He must be an extra-ordinary man. No subject however hackneyed, but he has the art of extracting some new thought out of it. The introduction to the Critiq[ue] on Byron is in my opinion admirable?so acute so philosophical: - None but a man of keen penetration, and deep research could have written such a thing - Even the present state of Europe is interesting in his hands.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Christoph Wieland : Oberon. Ein Gedicht in 14 Gesangen
'What are you reading? I am waiting for an account of "Waverl[e]y" from you. - The principal part of my reading in addition to Mathematics &c has been "the Exiles of Siberia", "Hoole's Tasso['s] Jerusalem", "Oberon" translated from the German by Southeby, "Beatties Minstrel", Savage's poems, Fenelons "lives of ancient Philosophers" and "the Miseries of Human life" 2 vols. If there is any of these that you have not seen - and want my sentiments about - you shall have them in my next'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Unknown
Richard Savage : [Poems]
'What are you reading? I am waiting for an account of "Waverl[e]y" from you. - The principal part of my reading in addition to Mathematics &c has been "the Exiles of Siberia", "Hoole's Tasso['s] Jerusalem", "Oberon" translated from the German by Southeby, "Beatties Minstrel", Savage's poems, Fenelons "lives of ancient Philosophers" and "the Miseries of Human life" 2 vols. If there is any of these that you have not seen - and want my sentiments about - you shall have them in my next'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Unknown
Francois Fenelon : Abrege des vies des anciens philosophes
'What are you reading? I am waiting for an account of "Waverl[e]y" from you. - The principal part of my reading in addition to Mathematics &c has been "the Exiles of Siberia", "Hoole's Tasso['s] Jerusalem", "Oberon" translated from the German by Southeby, "Beatties Minstrel", Savage's poems, Fenelons "lives of ancient Philosophers" and "the Miseries of Human life" 2 vols. If there is any of these that you have not seen - and want my sentiments about - you shall have them in my next'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Mitchell : [a mathematical paper]
'I did not tell you that when I left Edinr for Dumfries, I put your paper in my pocket - and whilst my right worthy compagnons de voyage (for I came in the Mail from Moffat) were sunk in politics, post-horses, farming &c &c. I took out my friend's theorem, and leaving the base clod-hoppers to welter on among drains and dunghills and bullocks and balances of power -I entered Dumfries wholly disengaged from sublunary things; and well nigh perswaded that an angle [underscored twice]might [end underscore] be trisected'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : [Poems]
'What Books have you been perusing - and how did you like Sha[ke]spea[re]? - Since I saw you I have toil'd thro' many a thick octa[vo] - many of them to little purpose. Byron's and Scott's "Poems" I have read and must admire - tho' you recollect, we used to give Campbell a de[cided] preference - and I still think, with justice. Have you ever seen Hoole's "Tas[so?]" I have among many others read, it, "Leonidas", "The Epigoniad", "Oberon", "Savage[e's] Poems" &.c. Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Waverl[e]y" have been the principal of my Novels - With regard to "Waverl[e]y" I cannot help remarking t[hat] in my opinion it is the best novel that has been published these thirty years. The characters of Ebenezer Cru[i]ckshank[s] mine host of the garter, the Reverend Mr. Gowk - thrapple and Squire Bradwardian display a Cervantic vein of humour which has seldom been surpassed - whilst the descriptions of the gloomy caverns of the Highlands, and the delineations of the apathic Callum Beg and enterprising Vich Ian Vohr show a richness of [italics]Scottean[end italics] colouring which few have equalled. Give me your opinion of it if you have read it; - and if not - endeavour by all means to procure it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Poems]
'What Books have you been perusing - and how did you like Sha[ke]spea[re]? - Since I saw you I have toil'd thro' many a thick octa[vo] - many of them to little purpose. Byron's and Scott's "Poems" I have read and must admire - tho' you recollect, we used to give Campbell a de[cided] preference - and I still think, with justice. Have you ever seen Hoole's "Tas[so?]" I have among many others read, it, "Leonidas", "The Epigoniad", "Oberon", "Savage[e's] Poems" &.c. Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Waverl[e]y" have been the principal of my Novels - With regard to "Waverl[e]y" I cannot help remarking t[hat] in my opinion it is the best novel that has been published these thirty years. The characters of Ebenezer Cru[i]ckshank[s] mine host of the garter, the Reverend Mr. Gowk - thrapple and Squire Bradwardian display a Cervantic vein of humour which has seldom been surpassed - whilst the descriptions of the gloomy caverns of the Highlands, and the delineations of the apathic Callum Beg and enterprising Vich Ian Vohr show a richness of [italics]Scottean[end italics] colouring which few have equalled. Give me your opinion of it if you have read it; - and if not - endeavour by all means to procure it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'What Books have you been perusing - and how did you like Sha[ke]spea[re]? - Since I saw you I have toil'd thro' many a thick octa[vo] - many of them to little purpose. Byron's and Scott's "Poems" I have read and must admire - tho' you recollect, we used to give Campbell a de[cided] preference - and I still think, with justice. Have you ever seen Hoole's "Tas[so?]" I have among many others read, it, "Leonidas", "The Epigoniad", "Oberon", "Savage[e's] Poems" &.c. Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Waverl[e]y" have been the principal of my Novels - With regard to "Waverl[e]y" I cannot help remarking t[hat] in my opinion it is the best novel that has been published these thirty years. The characters of Ebenezer Cru[i]ckshank[s] mine host of the garter, the Reverend Mr. Gowk - thrapple and Squire Bradwardian display a Cervantic vein of humour which has seldom been surpassed - whilst the descriptions of the gloomy caverns of the Highlands, and the delineations of the apathic Callum Beg and enterprising Vich Ian Vohr show a richness of [italics]Scottean[end italics] colouring which few have equalled. Give me your opinion of it if you have read it; - and if not - endeavour by all means to procure it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Richard Glover : Leonidas, A Poem
'What Books have you been perusing - and how did you like Sha[ke]spea[re]? - Since I saw you I have toil'd thro' many a thick octa[vo] - many of them to little purpose. Byron's and Scott's "Poems" I have read and must admire - tho' you recollect, we used to give Campbell a de[cided] preference - and I still think, with justice. Have you ever seen Hoole's "Tas[so?]" I have among many others read, it, "Leonidas", "The Epigoniad", "Oberon", "Savage[e's] Poems" &.c. Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs" and "Waverl[e]y" have been the principal of my Novels - With regard to "Waverl[e]y" I cannot help remarking t[hat] in my opinion it is the best novel that has been published these thirty years. The characters of Ebenezer Cru[i]ckshank[s] mine host of the garter, the Reverend Mr. Gowk - thrapple and Squire Bradwardian display a Cervantic vein of humour which has seldom been surpassed - whilst the descriptions of the gloomy caverns of the Highlands, and the delineations of the apathic Callum Beg and enterprising Vich Ian Vohr show a richness of [italics]Scottean[end italics] colouring which few have equalled. Give me your opinion of it if you have read it; - and if not - endeavour by all means to procure it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'? I had a sight of ?Waverley? soon after I received your letter, and I cannot help saying that, in my opinion, it is by far the best novel that has been written these thirty years - at least, that I know of. Eben. Cruickshanks, mine host of The Seven Golden Candlesticks, and Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, are described in the spirit of Smollett or Cervantes. Who does not shed a tear for the ardent Vich Ian Vohr, and the unshaken Evan Dhu, when perishing amid the shouts of an English mob, they refuse to swerve from their principles? And who will refuse to pity the marble Callum Beg, when, hushed in the strife of death, he finishes his earthly career on Clifton Moor, far from the blue mountains of the North, without one friend to close his eyes? 'Tis an admirable performance. Is Scott still the reputed author?' Editor's addition: [In this letter Carlyle mentions reading Euler's ?Algebra,? 1 Addison's ?Freeholder,? 2 Cuvier's ?Theory of the Earth,? 3 Moli?re's ?Comedies,? the monthly reviews, critical journals, etc.]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Leonhard Euler : Elements of Algebra
'? I had a sight of ?Waverley? soon after I received your letter, and I cannot help saying that, in my opinion, it is by far the best novel that has been written these thirty years - at least, that I know of. Eben. Cruickshanks, mine host of The Seven Golden Candlesticks, and Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, are described in the spirit of Smollett or Cervantes. Who does not shed a tear for the ardent Vich Ian Vohr, and the unshaken Evan Dhu, when perishing amid the shouts of an English mob, they refuse to swerve from their principles? And who will refuse to pity the marble Callum Beg, when, hushed in the strife of death, he finishes his earthly career on Clifton Moor, far from the blue mountains of the North, without one friend to close his eyes? 'Tis an admirable performance. Is Scott still the reputed author?' Editor's addition: [In this letter Carlyle mentions reading Euler's ?Algebra,?1 Addison's ?Freeholder,?2 Cuvier's ?Theory of the Earth,?3 Moli?re's ?Comedies,? the monthly reviews, critical journals, etc.]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Georges Cuvier : 'Discours preliminaire' to Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles des quadrupedes
'? I had a sight of ?Waverley? soon after I received your letter, and I cannot help saying that, in my opinion, it is by far the best novel that has been written these thirty years - at least, that I know of. Eben. Cruickshanks, mine host of The Seven Golden Candlesticks, and Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, are described in the spirit of Smollett or Cervantes. Who does not shed a tear for the ardent Vich Ian Vohr, and the unshaken Evan Dhu, when perishing amid the shouts of an English mob, they refuse to swerve from their principles? And who will refuse to pity the marble Callum Beg, when, hushed in the strife of death, he finishes his earthly career on Clifton Moor, far from the blue mountains of the North, without one friend to close his eyes? 'Tis an admirable performance. Is Scott still the reputed author?' Editor's addition: [In this letter Carlyle mentions reading Euler's ?Algebra,?1 Addison's ?Freeholder,?2 Cuvier's ?Theory of the Earth,?3 Moli?re's ?Comedies,? the monthly reviews, critical journals, etc.]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Henry Coventry : Philemon to Hydaspes: or the history of false religion in the earlier pagan world related in a series of coversations
'I also received great benefits from reading Coventry's Philemon to Hydaspes; it consists of dialogues on false religion, extravagant devotion, etc. in which are many very curious remarks on visionaries of various ages and sects. This work is complete in five parts octavo. There has also been a decent Scotch edition, published in twelves, both editions are now rather scarce.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Stewart Lewis : [Poems]
[Carlyle apologises for not having written sooner, saying he has been waiting until he has procured a copy of Stewart Lewis' poems which he now has] 'It is imperfect, but I believe wants only two pages at each end?and at any rate it [is] the best, indeed only one, I could get hold of.' Upon reperusing the volume, I feel more and more confident, that it contains poems, which if properly selected and given to the world along with the other productions of its Author, would secure him both honour and emoluments: - I am not going to enter into any critical detail of their merits; but I cannot help [ob]serving, that had Lewis never written any thing else, than [the] ?verses on the death of an only son? - and the song ?Wandering Ma[ry?-] his title to the name of poet would have been undisputed. The volume indeed abounds with a strain of original thought and fee[ling] which is not always to be met with in books of the kind. [And] for the want of which, a thousand ban-dogs and dun-[de]er and donjon-keeps and Ladyes fair can never compensate'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Sir John Leslie [or Playfair?] : review of Laplace's Essai philosophique sur les probabilites
'It is a considerable time since I saw Leslie's review of La Place'[s] essay on chances - and remarked with considerable surprise - the bold avowall of his sentiments on Hume's doctrine - "The Christian Instructor" attacks him with considerable asperity - and, I think, success. Hume's essays, I have not read - and therefore cannot condemn - The evidence of testimony, too, no doubt has its limits - But as far as I can judge, all that is urged either by La Place or His reviewer - does not at all affect Christianity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Pierre Simon Laplace : Essai philosophique sur les probabilites
'It is a considerable time since I saw Leslie's review of La Place'[s] essay on chances - and remarked with considerable surprise - the bold avowall of his sentiments on Hume's doctrine - "The Christian Instructor" attacks him with considerable asperity - and, I think, success. Hume's essays, I have not read - and therefore cannot condemn - The evidence of testimony, too, no doubt has its limits - But as far as I can judge, all that is urged either by La Place or His reviewer - does not at all affect Christianity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
'As an extraordinary instance of perseverance, I must mention my having read "Cicero de officiis". You must read it too Bob - You will get thro' it in a week - and cannot think your time mis[s]pent. It consists of letters addressed to his son - and if we compare the steady, affectionate, unbending precepts of the venerable Roman - with the only work of a similar kind in our own times - Chesterfield's advice - we shall blush for the eighteenth century!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
William Rowe Lyall : [review in the Quarterly Review of Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind]
'The first article in the last Quarterly review is [on] Stewart's second volume. The wise men of London are earnest in their censures of "the metaphysical heresies" of their northern neighbours: and notwithstanding the high admiration they pay to Stewarts talents, the[y] differ from him in almost all his results - because they disbelieve his principles - the "first principles" of Dr. Reid. Their opinion (and they give no reasons), on a point of this nature, is of little consequence. All the prejudices natural to Englishmen, they entertain in their full extent - and always modify their decisions accordingly[.] For my part, tho' far be it from me to attempt to disparage or vilipend this great man - I cannot help thinking, that, the perusal of his book has done me hurt. Perpetually talking about analysing perceptions, & retiring within ones self, & mighty improvements that we are to make?no one knows how, - I believe, he will generally leave the mind of his reader?crowded with disjointed notions & nondescript ideas - which the sooner he gets rid of, the better. I know you think differently; but de gustibus non est disputandum [concerning taste it is needless to dispute, ed. note]; and very probably, the fault is not with the Author - but his subject'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Russell Thorndyke : Dr Syn
'Two books I remember reading at one sitting are "Dr. Syn" and "The return of Dr. Syn" (Russell Thorndyke), these I read straight off, mainly because I could not take my eyes off the pages, nor my mind from unfolding the plot at express speed. Otherwise, apart from plays which I have to read straight off preferably after a large dinner in order to get full advantage of dramatic technicalities such as Irony, I like to read at leisure. I have said I read fairly slowly taking in each word. I dislike reading by snippets - just as I dislike reading with the wireless on - but I find it hard to read more than one half of a heavy book at one time, for slow reading makes it a long job and also gives you a lot to chew. Two hours is my optimum stretch, this does not apply to light reading or reading when ill in bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Russell Thorndyke : The return of Dr. Syn
'Two books I remember reading at one sitting are "Dr. Syn" and "The return of Dr. Syn" (Russell Thorndyke), these I read straight off, mainly because I could not take my eyes off the pages, nor my mind from unfolding the plot at express speed. Otherwise, apart from plays which I have to read straight off preferably after a large dinner in order to get full advantage of dramatic technicalities such as Irony, I like to read at leisure. I have said I read fairly slowly taking in each word. I dislike reading by snippets - just as I dislike reading with the wireless on - but I find it hard to read more than one half of a heavy book at one time, for slow reading makes it a long job and also gives you a lot to chew. Two hours is my optimum stretch, this does not apply to light reading or reading when ill in bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Robert Southey : [essay in the Quarterly Review on Lewis and Clarke's Travels]
'Have you seen the last Edinr review? There are several promising articles in it - Scotts "Lord of the Isles," Standard Novels, Lewis' & Clarke's travels up the Missouri, (of which a most delectable account is given in the Quarterly), Joanna Southcott, &c &c. I have been revising Akenside, since I saw you. - He pos[s]esses a warm imagination & great strength & beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not like Campbell's "Hope" consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner - & selected to illustrate his positions - it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers - He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles & had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity, he has been severely caricatured by Smollet[t] in his Peregrine Pickle - under the character of the fantastic English Doctor in Franc[e] - When we mention Shaftesbury - is his book in your pos[s]ession, and can you let me have a reading of it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Mark Akenside : Night Thoughts
'Have you seen the last Edinr review? There are several promising articles in it - Scotts "Lord of the Isles," Standard Novels, Lewis' & Clarke's travels up the Missouri, (of which a most delectable account is given in the Quarterly), Joanna Southcott, &c &c. I have been revising Akenside, since I saw you. - He pos[s]esses a warm imagination & great strength & beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not like Campbell's "Hope" consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner - & selected to illustrate his positions - it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers - He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles & had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity, he has been severely caricatured by Smollet[t] in his Peregrine Pickle - under the character of the fantastic English Doctor in Franc[e] - When we mention Shaftesbury - is his book in your pos[s]ession, and can you let me have a reading of it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Francesco Soave : Novelle Morali
'I had almost forgotten to thank [you] for my books - they are just such as I wanted. "Blair" is an excellent piece - and very cheap. I am only sorry you sent it at all: I was in no particular want of it & you ought certainly to have done with the money whatever your situation required. - One is apt to be put about, when obliged to equip for such an expedition as yours. - The Italian grammar is hardly calculated for me - but answers in the mean time. The Novelle morale is an excellent book for the purpose'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion
'I was re[a]ding lately, Stewart's "life of Robertson", Smith's "wealth of nations", and Kames' "Essays on the principles of morality". The first is a sensible sort of book - unworthy, however, of Stewart. Dr Smith is a man of much research, & appears to understand completely all the bearings of his complicated subject. I have read his first and second volumes with much pleasure. He always writes like a philosopher. With regard to Lord Kames - his works are generally all an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity and in this volume the latter quality it appears to me, considerably preponderates. It is Metaphysical; upon Belief, identity, Necessity &c &c and I devoutly wish that no friend of mine may ever come to study it - unless he wish to learn - To weave fine cobwebs fit for scull That's empty when the moon is full. - and in that case he cannot study under a more proper master.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
George Stewart Mackenzie : Travels in the Island of Iceland during the summer of 1810
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Friedrich von Humboldt : Essai politique sur la royaume de nouvelle espagne
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
George Berkeley : Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
'When I returned to Annan, it occurred to me, that it would be proper to see what was become of my Hall discourses. It occurred to me, much about the same time, that it would be proper to study Rumfords essays, Mackenzies travels, Humboldts New Spain, Berkeley's principles of knowledge, Stewarts essays, Simson's fluxions &c &c &c - It was some great man's advice, to every person in a hurry - never to do more than one thing at a time. Judge what progress I must have made - when I engaged in half-a-dozen. - Manufacturing theses - wrestling with lexicons, Chemical experiments, Scotch philosophy and Berkeleian Metaphysics - I have scarcely sufficient strength left, to write you even now. Upon consideration, therefore, of these egregious labours - I hope, you cannot refuse to forgive me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Charles Bossut : Essai sur l'histoire generale ds mathematiques
'When we speak of calculi - I brought home [some f]ew mathematical books, which I must tell you of - Bossuts "history [of] mathematics", Woods "optics", Cunn's "Euclid" and Newton's "principia" constitute my [stock] of this sort - I got Lucans "Pharsalia" also, and some little extracts of Fenelons "dialogues des morts". If there are any of these (except Newton for which you would be [obliged] to wait awhile) that you wish to see - they are ready for you. I had read Bossut before - and have not done much at him of late. Neither have I read any quantity of Wood yet, having been nibbling at the "Principia" (which with all my struggling, I come but ill at understanding - indeed in some places I don't understand it at all) ever since I came home. Of Lucan I have not read above seven lines.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
George Sturt : voyage diary
'P.S. I also return the voyage diary. It is excellent, & I was very pleased with it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer
'I saw Scott's "Waterloo" and "Guy Mannering" when I was in Edinr[.] The former has been so dreadfully abused already - that I have nothing to add to the Newspaper puns, &c with which it has been assailed. The[re] are (as Gray said of the "castle of Indolence") some good lines in it I have far too little room for speaking of Mannerings beauties and defects at present - I will discuss it next time I write, if I can find nothing better.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Field of Waterloo, A Poem
'I saw Scott's "Waterloo" and "Guy Mannering" when I was in Edinr[.] The former has been so dreadfully abused already - that I have nothing to add to the Newspaper puns, &c with which it has been assailed. The[re] are (as Gray said of the "castle of Indolence") some good lines in it I have far too little room for speaking of Mannerings beauties and defects at present - I will discuss it next time I write, if I can find nothing better.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to His Son
'It is about ten days since I got rid of a severe inflam[m]ation-of the throat, which confined me to the house for two weeks. During two or three days, I was not able to speak plainly; & you will easily conceive, that I passed my time very heavily. I endeavoured to read several things: I tried a book of modern Biography "The British Plutarch"; but soon finding it to be a very miserable book, I shut it for good and all. I next opened the "Spectator" - and tho' his ja[u]nty manner but ill accorded with my sulky humours, I toiled thro' a volume & a half, with exemplary patience. Lastly, I had recourse to Lord Chesterfield's "advice to his son"; and I think I never before so distinctly saw the pitiful disposition of this Lord. His directions concerning washing the face & paring the nails are indeed very praiseworthy: and I should be content to see them printed in a large type, and placed in frames above the chimneypieces of boarding-schools - for the purpose of enforcing the duties of cleanliness, upon the rising generation. But the flattery, the dissimulation & paltry cunning that he is perpetually recommending, leave one little room to regret that Chesterfield was not his father. Such was the result of my studies, in my sickness: - a result highly unfavourable to those feelings of prostration before high birth & weight of purse, which (many tell us) it is so eminently the duty of all men to cultivate. Indeed this is not the first time that I have noticed in my mind, a considerable tendency to undervalue the great ones of this world'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Iliad / Odyssey of Homer
'I am glad to hear that you are getting forward so well with Homer. I know almost nothing about him - having never read any thing but Pope's translation, and not above a single book of the original - & that several years ago. Indeed I know very little of the Greek at any rate. I have several times begun to read Xenophon's anabasis completely: but always gave it up in favour of something else - You complain that nothing that you do leaves a vestige behind it: - what do you make of Homer?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
George Crabe : Poems
'Out of a considerable quantity of garbage which I have allowed myself, at different intervals, to devour, I have only to mention Crabbes Poems as worthy of being read. In addition to great powers of correct description, he pos[s]esses all the sagacity of an anatomist in searching into the stormy passions of the human heart - and all the apathy of an anatomist in describing them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Thomas or William Belsham : [either Elements of the Philosophy of Mind or Essays in Philosophical Morality]
'I return always to the study of Physics with more pleasure - after trying "The Philosophy of Mind". It is delightful, after wandering in the thick darkness of metaphysics?to behold again the fair face of truth. When will there arise a man who shall do for the science of mind - what Newton did for that of matter - establish its fundamental laws on the firm basis of induction - and discard forever those absurd theories - that so many dreamers have devised? - I believe this is a foolish question - for its answer is - never. - I am led to talk in this manner - by having lately read M[r.] Sweart's [Stewart's] "History of Philosophy" in the supplement to the "Encyclopedia Britannica"[.] I doubt I am going to displease you - but I must say - that I do not recollect of ever having bestowed as much attention with so little effect - upon any author as upon Profr Stewart. Let me study his writings as I like - my mind seems only to turn on its axis - but without progressive or retrograde motion at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
'You have no doubt seen the "Tales of my Landlord". Certainly "Waverl[e]y" and "Mannering" and "the Black Dwarf" were never written by the same person. If I mistake not - Dr M'Crie's strictures are a little too severe, on some occassions - and his love of the Cameronians too violent. The Worthy Doctor's humour is as heavy as lead'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Christian Leopold, Baron von Buch : Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland
'Last week I perused von Buch's "travels in Norway & Lapland". Much of his attention is devoted to Mineralogy, of which I am very ignorant, and his movements are sometimes not a little mysterious, from the want of a proper map of the country. Nevertheless he communicates some valuable information respecting the natural productions - & the wandering inhabitants of those dreary regions. His manner is as clumsy & ponderous as that of German philosophers generally is - and no where is this [more ap]parent than when he attempts to be striking, or tries his powers in the pathetic lin[e].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Southey : [article in Quarterly Review]
'This same Doctor [Chalmers], as you will know wr[i]tes the first article in the late "Edinr review" - on the causes & cure of mendicity. After expatiating at considerable length on the evils of pauperism, he proposes as a remedy to increase the number of clergymen. They who know the general habits of Scottish ministers will easily see how sovereign a specific this is. The remainder of the review is good reading; but as you will have seen it before this time, I will not trouble you farther on the matter - I have seen the last Number of the "Quarterly review". It seems to be getting into a very rotten frothy vein. Mr Southey is a most unblushing character; & his political lucubrations are very notable. He has been sorely galled by "the Caledonian Oracle" poor man - I know nothing about Mr Duncan's controversy except thro the "Scotsman"; and they assign him the victory'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Anne Louise Germaine, Madame de Stael : De l'Allemagne
'What I deplore is that laziness and dissipation of mind to which I am still subject. At present I am quieting my conscience with the thought that I shall study very diligently this winter. Heaven grant it be so! for without increasing in knowledge what profits it to live? Yet the commencement has been inauspicious. Three weeks ago I began to read Wallace's "Fluxions" in the Encyclopaedia, and had proceeded a little way, when the "Quarterly Review", some problems in a very silly Literary and Statistical Magazine of which the the schoolmasters are supporters, Madm de Sta?l's "Germany", etc. etc., have suspended my operations these ten days. After all I am afraid that this winter will pass as others have done before it - unmarked by improvement; and what is to hinder the next, & its followers till the end of the short season allotted me to do so likewise?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Essays
'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Francois VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld : Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales
'Some time ago, I bought me a copy of La Rochefoucault. It has been said that the basis of his system is the supposition of selflove being the motive of all our actions. It rather seems, as if he had laid down no system at all. Regarding man as a wretched, mischievous thing, little better than a kind of vermin, he represents him as the sport of his passions, above all of vanity, and exposes the secret springs of his conduct always with some wit, and (?bating the usual sacrifices of accuracy to smartness), in general, with great truth & sagacity'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I have been reading little except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro' which he passed - Hume you know to be distinct & impartial: but he has less sympathy than might be expected with the heroic patriots - the Hampdens & the Sidneys that glorify the pages of English history. I fear Smollett is going to be a confused creature. I have read but a volume of Gibbon - and I do not like him - his style is flowery - his sarcasms wicked - his notes oppressive, often beastly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Frederic Jessup Stimson : King Noanett:A Story of Old Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay
'Dear Mr Lane, I must apologise for not returning 'King Noanett'. But I have been so awfully busy lately that I have not had time to finish it. I propose to take it into the country with me & let you have it next week certain.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Harold Frederic : Illumination, or, The damnation of Theron Ware
'I wait only for one little incident to shape itself and then I can march on up to, & right through, my great revival scene in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel, which is to beat Harold Frederic in his own chosen field.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : The Long Trail
'I have never (in his prose work) found a trace of the artist?s passion for words & loving care over them; & in his poetry I am convinced that the extraordinarily vivid images & similes that he gets hold of (?the thresh of the deep sea rain?, for instance,) are used in the rough just as they come to him. . . . I fancy he would rather scorn mere artistry, & when it was mentioned begin to talk about fighting or famine or fakirs.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Ernest Dupuy : Les Grand Maitres de la litterature russe
'I have Dupuy?s 'Les Grand Maitres de la literature russe', which strikes me as being platitudinous & not very informing or critical; also de Vog???s 'Le Roman russe'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Marie Eugene Melchior de Vogue : Le Roman russe
'I have Dupuy?s 'Les Grand Maitres de la literature russe', which strikes me as being platitudinous & not very informing or critical; also de Vog???s 'Le Roman russe'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : unknown
'My sole solaces have been Dumas, & Nolan?s delightful companionship at Brussels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Mrs H. H. Penrose : The Unequal Yoke
'I feel conscious of sin in regard to your manuscripts. With reference to An Unequal Yoke I knew that Young was bitten by it, & so asked him to supper & whiskey just in order to finish the matter up. Unfortunately some other men took it into their heads also to call that night & we couldn?t say a word together. . . . Touching Toddles: A Nuisance I have read this with great pleasure, & if Toddles is Claude, I want to know him instantly, forthwith, and immediately. . . . This book will sell all right: Constables; Hutchinsons; A.D. Innes? A. & C. Black ; J.M. Dent & Co; might be tried.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Mrs H. H. Penrose : Chubby, A Nuisance, A Study of Child-life
'I feel conscious of sin in regard to your manuscripts. With reference to An Unequal Yoke I knew that Young was bitten by it, & so asked him to supper & whiskey just in order to finish the matter up. Unfortunately some other men took it into their heads also to call that night & we couldn?t say a word together. . . . Touching Toddles: A Nuisance I have read this with great pleasure, & if Toddles is Claude, I want to know him instantly, forthwith, and immediately. . . . This book will sell all right: Constables; Hutchinsons; A.D. Innes? A. & C. Black ; J.M. Dent & Co; might be tried.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
William Edwards Tirebuck : Miss Grace of All Souls
'I am quite sure there is an aspect of these industrial districts which is really grandiose, full of dark splendours, & which has been absolutely missed by all novelists up to date. Tirebuck in 'Miss Grace of All Souls' was too much interested in his individual characters to note synthetically the general aspect, & Nevinson in 'Valley of Tophet' also let it escape him...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henry Woodd Nevinson : In the Valley of Tophet
'I am quite sure there is an aspect of these industrial districts which is really grandiose, full of dark splendours, & which has been absolutely missed by all novelists up to date. Tirebuck in 'Miss Grace of All Souls' was too much interested in his individual characters to note synthetically the general aspect, & Nevinson in 'Valley of Tophet' also let it escape him...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Captains Courageous
'Also to tell you that I have this morning read Kipling?s new book Captains Courageous, & that it is MAGNIFICENT.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sturt : A Note on Fiction
'With regard to your article, though admiring of the ingenuity of it, I yearned to tear the argument to rags. There is scarcely a single statement in that article to which I do not take violent exception. . . . Webster was intensely pleased with it, dreamed of it I believe, & only his modesty stopped him from addressing you thereon a note of congratulation. Marriott read it with awe; possibly it opened his eye to the strange fact that other arts than painting have their absorbing mysteries of technique.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
George Moore : unknown
'I reckon I can do something with Moore. . . I occupy the time of waiting in reading G.M. & making notes. The business has given me vague flitting shapes of ideas for a book on modern fiction.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
?Maria ?Edgeworth : 'To-morrow'
In Chapter XII [sic], "Letters on Daily Life": 'In my young days we used to read Miss Edgeworth's story of "To-morrow", in which the procrastinator gives the history of the misfortunes that his habit has involved him in, and breaks off abruptly, leaving it to his editor to say that the story was to be finished [italics]to-morrow[end italics]. I don't know that the tale actually prevented me from procrastinating when I was a child, but it imprinted firmly in my mind that procrastination was a dangerous fault, and the impression has remained with me and been very useful ever since.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
'Of Dickens, dear friend, I know nothing. About a year ago, from idle curiosity, I picked up The Old Curiosity Shop, & of all the rotten vulgar un-literary writing. . .! Worse than George Eliot?s. If a novelist can?t write where is the beggar?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sturt : A Year's Exile
'I read 'A Year?s Exile' during the three hours? journey down here on Thursday afternoon, & have passed it on to Frank to review in Woman. As for me, I shall review it in Hearth & Home. I have now read it twice, and come to a definite conclusion about it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henry Havelock Ellis : Affirmations
'You should get hold of Havelock Ellis?s new book Affirmations. It is all good; and there is an essay on Huysmans that I have found very inspiring indeed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
William Francis Patrick Napier : History of the Peninsular War
'I quite agree about Napier's book. I did not think that any man would venture to write so true, bold and honest a book; it gave me a high idea of his understanding, and makes me very anxious about his [italics]caractere[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Robert James Mackintosh : Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh
'I think you will like Sir James Mackintosh's Life; it is full of his own thoughts upon men, books and events, and I derived from it the greatest pleasure. He makes most honourable mention of your mother, whom I only know by one of her productions, - enough to secure my admiration'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Frances Milton Trollope : Tremordyn Cliff
'I am very desirous to read Mrs Trollope's Paris and the Parisians; her Tremordyn Cliff I read with considerable pleasure. She must be an amorous Old Dame; all these matters she describes with the most juvenile warmth and impetuosity'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Harpur Spry : Modern India
'Read Spry's account of India - and believe if you can (I do) that within 150 mles of Calcutta there is a nation of Cannibals living in trees. It is an amusing Book.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
William, Baron Stowell Scott : [reports of cases in the Admiralty Court]
'I am very deep in Lord Stowell's "Reports", and if it were wartime I should officiate as Judge of the Admiralty Court. It was a fine business to make a public law for all nations, or to confirm one; and it is rather singular that so sly a rogue should have done it so honestly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Unknown
(ed.) Mary Berry : [letters of Mme. du Deffand to Horace Walpole]
'I am reading again Madame du Deffand. God forbid I should be as much in love with anybody (yourself excepted) as the poor woman was with Horace Walpole!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
[Mrs] Crowe : Susan Hopley
'I have read Susan Hopley - the incidents are improbable but the Book took me on - and I kept reading it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Mountstuart Elphinstone : History of India
'Pray Read the first Vol of Elphinstone's India - the News from China gives me the greatest pleasure. I am for bombarding all the exclusive Asiatics who shut up the Earth and will not let me walk civilly and quietly through it, doing no harm, and paying for all I want'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Charles Napier : An account of the war in Portugal between Don Pedro and Don Miguel
'You should read Napier's two little volumes of the war in Portugal. He is an heroic fellow, equal to anything in Plutarch; and moreover a long-headed, clever hero, who takes good aim before he fires'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Pere Goriot
'Did you ever read Pere Goriot by Balzac or La Messe de L'Athee they are very good and perfectly readable for ladies and clergymen'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : La Messe de l'Athee
'Did you ever read Pere Goriot by Balzac or La Messe de L'Athee they are very good and perfectly readable for ladies and clergymen'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Martin Chuzzlewit
'You have been so used to these sort of impertinences, that I believe you will exuse me for saying how very much I am pleased with the first number of your new work. Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable, - quite first rate painting, such as no-one but yourself can execute. I did not like your genealogy of the Chuzzlewits, and I must wait a little to see how Martin turns out; I am impatient for the next number'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Serial / periodical
Leonard Horner : Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P.
'I hope you like Horner's "Life". It succeeds extremely well here. It is full of all the exorbitant and impracticable views so natural to young men at Edinburgh; but there is great order, great love of knowledge, high principle and feelings, which ought to grow and trive in superior minds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Life in the Sick Room
'I have just read Miss Martineau's "Sick Room". I cannot understand it. It is so sublime, and mystical that I frequently cannot guess at her meaning; all that I can find out is that in long chronical illnesses, a patient finds sources of amusement that do not at first occurr, but which have a tendency to engage the mind, and alleviate pain; all this however I could have conjectured without the assistance of an Octavo book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : [sermon on War]
'I think Channing an admirable writer, so much eloquence so much sense so much command of Language; yet admirable as his Sermon on War is, I have the Vanity to think my own equally good quite as sensible quite as eloquent as full of good parables and of fine Language, and you will be more inclined to agree with me in this Comparison when I tell you that I preached in St Paul's the identical Sermon which Ld Grey so much admires. - I thought I could not write anything half so good so I preached Channing'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Unknown
Arthur Stanley : Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold
'Read Stanleys Life of Arneld, Twiss Life of Ld Eldon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Horace Twiss : Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon
'Read Stanleys Life of Arneld, Twiss Life of Ld Eldon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Horace Twiss : Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon
'I think I have already mentioned to you the Life of Ld Eldon by Horace Twiss. It is not badly done, and I think it would very much amuse Ld Grey as it is the history almost of his times. He seems (Lord Eldon) to have been a cunning canting old Rogue whose object was to make all the money he [could] by office at any expence of the public happiness'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
(ed.) Richard Bourke : Correspondence of Burke
'I am beginning Burke's Letters or rather have gone through one volume but it is (I mean the Volume) full of details which do not interest me and there are no signs yet of that beautiful and fruitful imagination which is the great charm of Burke; and with the politics of so remote a period I do not concern myself'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Alexander William Kinglake : Eothen, or Traces of Travel brought home from the East
'Read Travels in the East called Eothen, they are by a Mr Kinglake of Taunton a Chancery Barrister, and are written in a very lively manner; they will amuse Lord Grey who I presume is regularly read to every day'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : The Settlers in Canada
'Read Captain Marryats Settlement in Canada'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
One day, as Louis was leaving the hotel, he stopped to send a message up to my mother by one of the 'Buttons', as they were called. The only boy present was sitting, deeply engrossed in a book. When Louis spoke to him, he made no answer but went on reading. Impatient, Louis plucked the book out of the boy's hand. It was 'Treasure Island'. Returning it instantly, he said: 'Go right on reading, my little man. Don't let anyone disturb you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
One day, as Louis was leaving the hotel, he stopped to send a message up to my mother by one of the 'Buttons', as they were called. The only boy present was sitting, deeply engrossed in a book. When Louis spoke to him, he made no answer but went on reading. Impatient, Louis plucked the book out of the boy's hand. It was 'Treasure Island'. Returning it instantly, he said: 'Go right on reading, my little man. Don't let anyone disturb you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Master of Ballantrae
On one occasion, he came to me, flourishing a paper wildly in the air...I thought he had suddenly inherited a fortune, or that something of an extreme value had fallen in his way. 'What in heaven's name is it?' I asked. 'This, my friend. For years a certain critic has practically damned my works - said there was nothing really in them - and now this person, whose ability I have always admired despite the fact that I have suffered, has declared: "Stevenson has at last produced one of the best books of the season, and the claim of his friends seems fully justified, for the work is full of genius."' His face was all aglow with feverish excitement. 'Who is this wonderful critic, Stevenson, whose praise you so enjoy? And what bitter things has he said of you before?' 'We will drop the severe things, Moors. You would never guess, if I gave you all morning, who it is who has at last admitted me to be in the front rank of my profession. It is Mrs Oliphant, my dear sir - Mrs Oliphant!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Margaret Oliphant : Review of The Master of Ballantrae
On one occasion, he came to me, flourishing a paper wildly in the air...I thought he had suddenly inherited a fortune, or that something of an extreme value had fallen in his way. 'What in heaven's name is it?' I asked. 'This, my friend. For years a certain critic has practically damned my works - said there was nothing really in them - and now this person, whose ability I have always admired despite the fact that I have suffered, has declared: "Stevenson has at last produced one of the best books of the season, and the claim of his friends seems fully justified, for the work is full of genius."' His face was all aglow with feverish excitement. 'Who is this wonderful critic, Stevenson, whose praise you so enjoy? And what bitter things has he said of you before?' 'We will drop the severe things, Moors. You would never guess, if I gave you all morning, who it is who has at last admitted me to be in the front rank of my profession. It is Mrs Oliphant, my dear sir - Mrs Oliphant!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Sir William Temple : Essays
'Read, in the evening, "Temple on the Origin of Government:" in which the source of political power is successfully traced....' [Green usually gives extensive summary comments about books, interspersed with his reactions.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Watson : Apology for the Bible
'Read Bp. Watson's "Apology for the Bible", in reply to Paine....'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Life of Warburton [in Warburton, Works]
'Read with interest and curiosity, Hurd's "Life of Warburton"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Miscellaneous Works
'Looked into Gibbon's "Miscellaneous Works"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Otranto
'Read the "Castle of Otranto", which grievously disappointed my expectations...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Memoirs
'Finished Gibbon's "Memoirs of himself"--an exquisite morceau of literature...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Steele : The Tatler
'Looked over the first Vol. of the "Tatlers"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Discourse concerning Imitation
'Read Hurd's "Discourse on Poetical Imitation": a critical disquisition of considerable depth and skill...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Mysterious Mother
'Read Sir Horace Walpole's "Mysterious Mother". There is a gusto of antiquity...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Dunciad, with annotations by Warton and Wakefield
'Read the "Dunciad", with Warton's and Wakefield's Annotations...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus
'Finished the "Memoirs of Scriblerus"; an exquisite piece of satire, of which the separate parts of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, are sometimes very distinguishable...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Robert Macfarlane : History of George III
'Read Macfarlane's "History of George III.": a strange amalgama of vulgarity, impudence, and scurrility, compounded into a specious and shewy mass, by a morbid vigour of intellect...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
George Campbell : The Philosophy of Rhetoric
'Began Campbell's "Rhetoric"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'Looked into Young's "Night Thoughts": debased throughout with many poor and puerile conceits...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Moral and political dialogues
'Read Hurd's "Dialogue" between Cowley and Sprat, on Retirement...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan : The History of Nourjahad
'Finished the 'Novel of "Nourjahad" in the evening. Nothing, I think, can be more happily conceived for its purpose, than the plan of this little romance...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Bertrand de Moleville : Memoires secrets pour servir a l'histoire
'Finished Bertrand De Moleville's "Memoirs of the Last Year of the Reign of Louis the 16th". They contain much curious, and I presume, authentic information relative to the crisis of the Revolution...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Sir John Dalrymple : Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland
'Began Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland"; and read the two introductory sections, containing a masterly review of our political affairs...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees
'Read Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees", and his "Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue
'Read Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees", and his "Enquiry into the Origin of Virtue"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Essays
'Dipped into Bacon's "Essays"; so pregnant with just, original, and striking observations on every topic which is touched, that I cannot select what pleases me most...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Augustus Henry Fitzroy : The serious reflections of a rational Christian
'Looked over "Serious Reflections by a rational Christian", from 1788 to 1798 written by the Duke of G-...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope : Characters of eminent personages of his own time
'Looked over Lord Chesterfield's "Characters": all of which are neatly, and some very finely, drawn...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
George Berkeley : A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge
'Read the Introduction to Berkeley's "Principles of Human Knowledge", in which he really seems to be serious and in earnest...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Historic doubts on the life and reign of King Richard the third
'Read Horace Walpole's "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard the 3d."--doubts, which he has in some measure transfused into my mind...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Works
'Looked over Horace Walpole's "Fugitive Pieces"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Sir James Mackintosh : A discourse on the study of the law of nature, and nations
'Perused, with delight and admiration, Mackintosh's "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Jerusalem Delivered
'Finished Tasso's "Jerusalem", in Hoole's Translation comparing it occasionally with the original, and with Fairfax's version...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise S?vign : Lettres choisies de Mesdames de Sevign? et de Main
'Looked over a Volume of "Lettres Choisies de Mesdames Sevigne et Maintenon"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Sir James Mackintosh : Vindiciae Gallicae
'Read Mackinosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae". His style and manner in the Piece are magnificent, but uniformly cumbrous, and occasionally coarse...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Essai sur l??tude de la litt?rature
'Read Gibbon's "Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature": an ostentatious performance...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Letters, speeches, charges, advices, &c. of Francis Bacon
'Finished Lord Bacon's Letters, edited by Birch. It is grievous to see this great man, who appears from various passages fully sensible of his vast powers and attainments, and impressed with a just confidence of the weight he would have with posterity, eternally cringing...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Hooker : Of the laws of ecclesiastical politie
'Read the 1st Book of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : An introduction to the study of the prophecies
'Finished Hurd's "Lectures on the Prophecies"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Sermons preached at Lincoln?s-Inn
'Read the first Vol. of Hurd's "Sermons at Lincoln's-Inn"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Owen Cambridge : The scribleriad: an heroic poem in six books
'Read Cambridge's "Scribleriad". The mock heroic is well sustained throughout; but the Poem is deficient in broad humour...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Pierre Mathurin : The memoirs of the Duke of Sully
'Read the 1st Vol. of Sully's "Memoirs". They open a scene of manners, which, to modern conception, appears perfectly romantic...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Archibald Alison : Essays on the nature and principles of taste
'Read the First of Alison's "Two Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste". Taste, he defines, That faculty by which we perceive and enjoy whatever is sublime and beautiful...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Henry Pemberton : A view of Sir Isaac Newton?s philosophy
'Looked over the Introduction to Pemberton's "View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy". He affirms (sec. 2.) that it is the gratification of our taste, which is the source of our desire of knowledge...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Moral Epistles
'Read Pope's five "Ethic Epistles" or "Moral Essays". There is an occasional pertness and flippancy in them, not to my taste...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Marguerite de Launay, Baronne de Staal : Memoires
'With Madame de Staal's Memoirs, so strongly praised by the excellent Baron Grimm, I was a good deal disappointed: she has nothing to tell and does not tell it very well. She is neither important, nor admirable for talents or virtues. Her life was not worth recording.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Archibald Constable [ed.] : Encyclopaedia Britannica
'I see your name mentioned among the writers in Constable's Encyclopaedia; pray tell me what articles you have written: I shall always read anything which you write. The travels of the Gallo-American gentleman alluded to by Mr Constable are I suppose those of Mr Simon. He is a very sensible man, and I should be curious to see the light in which this country appeared to him. I should think he would be too severe'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : [Letters]
'I have now read three volumes of Madame de Sevigne - with a conviction that her letters are very much overpraised. Mr Thomas Grenville says he has made seven vigorous attacks on Madame de Sevigne and been as often repulsed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
George Canning : [Canning's letter to newspapers attavking an anonymous pamphleteer (John Cam Hobhouse, it transpired), who had attacked him]
'My astonishment was very great at readind Canning's challenge to the anonymous pamphleteer. If it were the first proof of the kind it would be sufficient to create a general distrust of his sense, prudence and capacity for action... What does a politician know of his trade, when twenty years have not made him pamphlet-proof?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Newspaper
Jean Francois Georgel : M?moires pour servir ? l'histoire des ?v?nements de la fin du 18e si?cle depuis 1760 jusqu'en 1806?10
'I have read Georgel and must say I have seldom read a more stupid book. The first volume in which he relates what he had seen and observed himself is well enough, but the last three volumes are no more than a mere newspaper collection of the proceedings of the Convention, trite lamentations on the wickedness of the revolution, and common parsonic notions of the rights of kings. Does the book strike you in any other point of view? Such as it is, I shall write a review of it, and I should be obliged to you, to tell me if you think my opinion just. Is his explanation of the Story of the Necklace to be credited? Could a man of the Cardinal's rank, who had filled the situation of Ambassador at the Court of Vienna, be the dupe of such a woman as Madame La Motte. Or was he the rogue? or was he the dupe? and La Motte the agent of the Queen? If this is not the true version, where is the true version to be found? Is there any new information respecting the French Revolution in Georgel? there seems none such to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Jean Francois Georgel : M?moires pour servir ? l'histoire des ?v?nements de la fin du 18e si?cle depuis 1760 jusqu'en 1806?10
'I recommend you to read the first and second volumes of the Abbe Georgel's Memoirs. You will suppose, from this advice, that there is something improper in the third and fourth: but, to spare you the trouble of beginning with them, I assure you I only exclude them from my recommendation because they are dull. You will see, in the second volume, a detailed account of the celebrated Necklace Story, which regaled your mama and papa before you were born'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'There is a grat difference of opinion about Scott's new novel. At Holland House it is much run down: I dare not oppose my opinion to such an assay or proof-house; but it made me cry and laugh very often and I was very sorry when it was over, and so I cannot in justice call it dull'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'I am very desirous to hear what your Vote is about Walter Scott; I think it excellent, quite as good as any of his novels excepting that in which Claverhouse is introduced, and of which I forget the name. It made me laugh, and cry fifty times, and I read it with the liveliest interest. He repeats his characters but it seems that they will bear repetition'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Henry Brougham : A Letter to SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY, MP from H. BROUGHAM, Esq. MPFRS upon the Abuse of Charities
'Brougham's pamphlet accidentally happens to be very dull. It is not of much importance but there was no absolute necessity for its being so. Wit and declamation would be misplaced, but a clever man may be bright and flowing while he is argumentative and prudent. He makes out a great case in general: and nobody would accuse Lord Lonsdale and the Bishop of undue precipitation if they were to make some sort of reply to the charge of particular delinquencies levelled against them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith
Henry Fearon : Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles Through the Eastern and Western States of America
'I recommend you to read Hall, Palmer, Fearon and Bradburys Travels in America, particularly "Fearon". There is nothing to me so curious and intersting as the rapidity with which they are spreading themselves over that vast continent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Francis Hall : Journal of Travels in the United States of North America
'I recommend you to read Hall, Palmer, Fearon and Bradburys Travels in America, particularly "Fearon". There is nothing to me so curious and intersting as the rapidity with which they are spreading themselves over that vast continent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Morris Birkbeck : Notes on a Journey in America from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois
'Birkbeck's second book is not so good as his first. He deceives himself - says he wishes to deceive himself - and is not candid. If a man chuses to say: I will live up to my neck in mud, fight bears, swim in rivers, and combat with backwoodsmen that I may ultimately gain an independence for myself and my children, this is plain, and intelligible: but by Birkbeck's account it is much like settling at Putney or Kew, only the people are more liberal and enlightened'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Morris Birkbeck : Letters from Illinois
'Birkbeck's second book is not so good as his first. He deceives himself - says he wishes to deceive himself - and is not candid. If a man chuses to say: I will live up to my neck in mud, fight bears, swim in rivers, and combat with backwoodsmen that I may ultimately gain an independence for myself and my children, this is plain, and intelligible: but by Birkbeck's account it is much like settling at Putney or Kew, only the people are more liberal and enlightened'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great
'Read Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild"; a caustic satire, in Swift's coarsest manner...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Henry Fielding : The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews
'Read the 4th. and last Book of Fielding's "Joseph Andrews". I see no necessity for the marvellous in incident, at the conclusion of this Novel...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia
'Finished Fielding's "Amelia". There is a still stronger and more disgusting taint of vulgarity, in this Novel, than in Joseph Andrews...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Robert Bloomfield : The farmer?s boy
'Perused the "Farmer's Boy"; a rural Poem, by Robert Bloomfield; edited by Capel Lofft...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Edward Pearson : Remarks on the Theory of Morals
'Finished Pearson's "Remarks on the Theory of Morals"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Porson : Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis
'Finished Porson's "Letters to Travis", on the disputed passage in John...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Herbert Marsh : The history of the politicks of Great Britain and France
'Finished Marsh's "Tract on the Politics of Great Britain and France"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Discourse concerning Imitation
'Read again, and with more attention, Hurd's "Discourse on Poetical Imitation"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Charles Gildon : "An Essay" in Works of Shakespeare
'Read Gildon's "Essay", prefixed to Shakespear's poems, in which he largely discuses Dramatic Poetry...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
George Pretyman : Elements of Christian theology
'Looked into Prettyman's "Theology". The Dedication to Pitt is insufferably fulsome...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Johann Goffried Herder : Outlines of a philosophy of the history of man
'Began Herder's "Outlines of the Philosophy of the History of Man", of which I had heard high praise;--but was soon obliged to desist. He appears to write like a great child, eager to communicate its late acquirements, however trivial..'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Henry James Pye : A Commentary illustrating the Poetic of Aristotle
'Glanced over Pye's "Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
Reuben BURROW : Unknown from 'Ladies' and Gentleman's Diary'
Mathematics, I have absolutely never thought on - excepting some trifles from the Ladies' and Gentleman's diary - which I shall have conscience enough not to trouble you with at present.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Sir Isaac Newton : Institutes
'It occurred to me; much about the same time that it would be proper to study Stewart's Essays, Berkel[e]y's principes of knowledge, Rumfords Essays, Newton ['s] Institutes, Simpson's Fluxions &c &c - If to these overpowering engagements you add the numberless fits of indolence - and the perpetual visitations of spleen, to which one is subjected in this dirty little uncomfortable planet of ours - I presume you will have a sufficient excuse for my silence; and will rather wonder indeed that you have heard from me at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Sir John Leslie : Elements of Geometry
'With regard to the division of the circle into 360 parts,- I think it cannot be done by elementary Geometry - at least if M. Gauss is right - who (Leslie tells us) has demonstrated that a polygon can be inscribed in a circle - directly - by means of circles and straight lines - only - when the number of its sides is a prime number and can be denoted by 2n + 1.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Mitchell : 'theorems'
'I perused your theorems with some attention. They are well worthy of a place in the Courier - though not for the purpose you mention. Mr Johnston, if I mistake not, is a small gentleman, whom it would be no honour to demolish.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Grey Bennet : Letter to Viscount Sidmouth, Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the Transportation Laws, the State of the Hulks and of the Colonies in New South Wales
'Tell Lord Grey to read Bennet's pamphlet; it is a little long, but good and right in the main object. At the end is a very affecting letter from the Botany Bay Chaplain'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith
Edward Copleston : [Review in Edinburgh Review of Ricardo on Currency and Prinsep on Money]
'Lord Grey will like that article in the Edinburgh Review upon Universal Suffrage; it is by Sir James McIntosh. There is a pamphlet on Bullion by Mr Copplestone of Oxford much read; but bullion is not I think a favourite dish at Howick'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Serial / periodical
Arthur Hallam : History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
'Hallam's style does not appear to me so bad as it has been represented; indeed I am ashamed to say I rather think it a good style. He is a bold man and great names do not deter him from finding fault; he began with Pindar, and who has any right to complain after that? The characteristic excellencies of the work seem to be fidelity, accuracy, good sense, a love of Virtue and a zeal for Liberty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Ferdinando Galiani : [Letters]
'I have been reading Galiani's correspondence. I had no conception that Abbes and ladies wrote to each other in such a style and feel ashamed of my Simplicity and innocence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Ferdinando Galiani : [Letters]
'I have read Galiani's letters, but they are so utterly insignificant, that there is nothing more to be said of them than that they are not worth speaking about. I scarcely ever read a more insignificant collection of letters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'I am truly obliged by your kindness in sendng me the last novel of Walter Scott. It would be profanation to call him Mr Walter Scott. I should as soon say Mr Shakespeare or Mr Fielding. Sir William and Lady Ashton are excellent, and highly dramatic. Drumthwackett is very well done; parts of Caleb are excellent. Some of the dialogues between Bucklaw and Craigengelt are as good as can be, and both these characters very well imagined. [italics] As the Author has left off writing [end italics], I shall not again be disturbed so much in my ordinary occupations. When I get hold of one of these novels, turnips, sermons and justice business are all forgotten'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'Walter Scott seems to me the same sort of thing laboured in a very inferior way, and more careless, with many repetitions of himself. Caleb is overdone. Sir W. and Lady Ashton are very good characters, and the meeting of the two coaches and six the best scene in the book. The catastophe is shocking and disgusting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'I waited to thank you until I had read the novel. There is [italics] no doubt [end italics] of its success. There is nothing very powerful and striking in it; but it is uniformly agreeable, lively and interesting, and the least dull, and most easily read of any novels I remember. Pray make the author go on; I am sure he has five or six more such novels in him, therefore five or six holidays for the whole kingdom'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Have you read "Ivanhoe"? It is the least dull, and the most easily read through, of all Scott's novels; but there are many more powerful. The subject, in novels, poems, and pictures, is half the battle. The representation of our ancient manners is a fortunate one, and ample enough for three or four more novels'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Mary Berry : Some Account of the Life of Rachael Wriothesley, Lady Russell; followed by a Series of Letters from Lady Russell to her Husband
'I thank you very much for the entertainment I have received from your book. I should however have been afraid to marry such a woman as Lady Rachel; it would have been too awful. There are pieces of china very fine and beautiful, but never intended for daily use'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Monastery
'I am much obliged by your present of The Monastery, which I have read, and which I must frankly confess I admire less than any of the others - much less. Such I think you will find the judgement of the public to be. The idea of painting ancient manners in a fictitious story and in well-known scenery is admirable, and the writer has admirable talents for it; but nothing is done without pains, and I doubt whether pains have been taken in The Monastery, - if they have, they have failed. It is quite childish to introduce supernatural agency; as much of the terrors and follies of supersition as you please, but no actual ghosts and hobgoblins. I recommend one novel every year, and more pains. So much money is worth getting; so much deserved fame is worth keeping, so much amusement we ought all to strive to continue for the public good. You will excuse my candour - you know I am your wellwisher. I was the first to praise Ivanhoe, as I shall be to praise the next, if I can do so conscientiously'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Abbot
'I have just read "The Abbot"; it is far above common novels, but of very inferior execution to his others, and hardly worth reading. He has exhausted the subject of Scotland, and worn out the few characters that the early periods of Scotch history ould supply him with. Meg Merrilies appears afresh in every novel'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Horace Walpole : [Letters]
'Read, if you have not read, all Horace Walpole's letters, wherever you can find them; - the best wit ever published in the shape of letters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Life Of Wesley And Rise And Progress Of Methodism Including Remarks On The Life And Character Of John Wesley
'I have read Southey and think it so fair and reasonable a book, that I have little or nothing to say about it; so that I follow your advice and abandon it to any one who may undertake it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Pirate
'I am much obliged by your kindness in sending me The Pirate. You know how much I admire the genius of the author, but even that has its limits and is exhaustible. I am afraid this novel will depend upon the former reputation of the author, and will add nothing to it [...] I do not blame him for writing himself out, if he knows he is doing so, and has done his [italics] best [end italics] and his [italics] all [end italics]. If the native land of Scotland will supply no more scenes and characters, for he is always best in Scotland [...] pray (wherever the scene is laid) no more [italics] Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampson [end italics] - very good the first and second times, but now quite worn out, and always recurring. All human themes have an end (except Taxation); but I shall heartily regret my annual amusement if I am to lose it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Rienzi
Elizabeth Missing Sewell, describing travel from Pisa toward Spezzia in letter of 5 June 1861 to 'My Dear _____', headed 'Bugiasta or Pagiastra, or something of the kind; but we can't quite make out where we are, only it is half-way between Spezzia and Sestri, and on the road to Genoa.': 'We started after six [am], M and myself on the outside seat [?of coach]. What with pleasant conversation, the reading of "Rienzi" and the newspaper, and occasional little naps, I managed to spend an agreeable day.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Fortunes of Nigel
'Many thanks for Nigel; a far better novel than The Pirate, though not of the highest order of Scott's novels. It is the first novel in which there is no Meg Merrilies. There is, however, a Dominie Sampson in the horologer. The first volume is admirable. Nothing can be better than the apprentices, the shop of old Heriot, the state of the city. James is quite excellent wherever he appears. I do not dislike Alsatia. The miser?s daughter is very good; so is the murder. The story execrable; the gentlemanlike, light, witty conversation always (as in all his novels) very bad. Horrors on humour are his forte. He must avoid running into length?great part of the second volume very long and tiresome; but upon the whole the novel will do?keeps up the reputation of the author; and does not impair the very noble and honourable estate which he has in his brains'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : Peveril of the Peak
'A good novel, but not so good as either of the two last, and not good enough for such a writer. The next must be better or it will be the last. There is I see Flibbertigibbet over again. Bridgenorth is not new, Charles is the best done. My opinion is worth but little but I am always sincere. There is one comfort, however, in reading Scott?s novels, that his worst are better than what are called the successful productions of other persons'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Walter Scott : Peveril of the Peak
'You have read Peveril, a middling production between his best and worst - rather agreeable than not'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Lady] Grey Print: Book
Walter Scott : St Ronan's Well
'Many thanks for St Ronan, by far the best that has appeared for some time,?I mean the best of Sir Walter?s, and therefore, of course, better than all others. Every now and then there is some mistaken and over-charged humour?but much excellent delineation of character,?the story very well told, and the whole very interesting. Lady Binks, the old landlady, and Touchwood are all very good. Mrs Blower particularly so. So are MacTurk and Lady Penelope. I wish he would give his people better names: Sir Bingo Binks is quite ridiculous. I was very glad to find Dryasdust and Meg Merrilies excluded; one was never good, and the other too often good. The curtain should have dropped on finding Clara?s glove. Some of the serious scenes with Clara and her brother are very fine,?the Knife scene masterly. In her light and gay moments Clara is very vulgar; but Sir Walter always fails in well bred men and women,?and yet, who has seen more of both? and who in the ordinary intercourse of Society is better bred? Upon the whole, I call this a very successful exhibition'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Constantine Henry Phipps, Lord Normanby : Matilda
'Have you read Mathilda? If you have, you will not tell me what you think of it, you are as cautious as Wishaw. I mentioned to Lord Normanby, that it was the book selected as a victim for the next No of the Edinburgh Review, and that my brethren had complimented me with the Knife?Lady Normanby gave a loud shriek.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
George Combe : [probably] A System of Phrenology
'I can make nothing of Craniology, for this reason: [Smith then discusses why he is not convinced by the idea] But to state what are original propensities, and to trace out the family or genealogy of each, is a task requiring great length, patience and metaphysical acuteness; and Combe's book is too respectably done to be taken by storm.' Instead of this I will send you as you seem to be prest the review of [italics] Granby [end italics], a novel of very great merit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
George Agar-Ellis, Lord Dover : The true history of the state prisoner, Commonly called the Iron Mask
'Pray read Agar Ellis's ' Iron Mask;' not so much for that question [that of old age], though it is not devoid of curiosity, as to remark the horrible atrocities perpetrated under absolute monarchies; and to justify and extol Lord Grey, and, at the humblest distance, Sydney Smith and other men, who, according to their station in life and the different talents given them, have defended liberty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Henry Gally Knight : Foreign and Domestic View of the Catholic Question
'I have read Knight's pamphlet. Pretty good, though I think, if I had seen as much, I could have told my story better'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith
Anne Jean Marie Rene Savary : The Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo
'I have been reading the Duke of Rovigo - a fool, a Villain, and as dull as it is possible for any book to be about Buonaparte'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Jean-Fran?ois de Galaup de la Perouse : Voyage de la Perouse autour du monde
'You must get La Peyrouse's Voyage - and Vancouver's, and a book just come out on practical education by a Mr Edgeworth - [italics] Edgeworth on Practical Education [end italics] i vol. 4to I believe. It is written conjointly by Father and daughter, and is the result of 20 years reflection and Experiment. I have heard some extracts from it which delighted me very much'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
George Vancouver : A Voyage Of Discovery To The North Pacific Ocean And Round The World In Which The Coast of North-West America Has Been Carefully Examined And Accurately Surveyed. Undertaken by His Majesty's Command
'You must get La Peyrouse's Voyage - and Vancouver's, and a book just come out on practical education by a Mr Edgeworth - [italics] Edgeworth on Practical Education [end italics] i vol. 4to I believe. It is written conjointly by Father and daughter, and is the result of 20 years reflection and Experiment. I have heard some extracts from it which delighted me very much'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Richard Lovell AND Maria Edgeworth : Practical Education
'You must get La Peyrouse's Voyage - and Vancouver's, and a book just come out on practical education by a Mr Edgeworth - [italics] Edgeworth on Practical Education [end italics] i vol. 4to I believe. It is written conjointly by Father and daughter, and is the result of 20 years reflection and Experiment. I have heard some extracts from it which delighted me very much'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Robert Orme : History of Hindustan
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste. The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Rene Aubert Vertot : Revolutions of Portugal, The
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste. The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Rene Aubert Vertot : History of the revolutions in Sweden, occasioned by the change of religion, and alteration of the government in that kingdom
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste. The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Archibald Alison : Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste
'...Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures. Mitford's History of Greece. Orme's History of Hindoostan. Vertot's Revolutions of Portugal and Sweden. Bossuet's Oraisons Funebres, Petit Careme de Massillon. Select Sermons of Dr Barrow. Burke's Settlement of the English Colonies in America. Alison on Taste. The first book, though written on painting, full of all wisdom. The second, a good history. The third, highly entertaining, fourth ditto. The fifth, a splendid example of sound eloquence. The sixth, piety, pure language, fine style. The seventh, lofty eloquence. The eighth, neat and philosophical. The ninth, feeling and eloquence. Here I think is is much wisdom as you can get for eight guineas. But remember to consult your family physician, your mother. I only know the general powers of these medicines; but she will determine their adaptation to your particular constitution'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Unknown
Mary Berry (ed.) : [Letters of Mme du Deffand to Horace Walpole and to Voltaire]
'I think Miss Berry's introduction of matter so offensive to the living very injudicious and blameable. You may be right perhaps in calling her preface dull and stupid but I doubt it is hypocritical - because I do not think there is any hypocrisy in her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Robert Ker Porter : Account of the Last Russian Campaign
'after reading half thro' Porter's "Russian Campaign", I found it to be such an incorrigible mass of folly and stupidity, that nothing could be said of it but what was grossly abusive. I have read the controversy about the Auxiliary Bible Society, and will speedily send you an article upon it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Eunice
'I have not read Miss Edgeworth's novel nor have I much opinion of her powers of execution saving and excepting Irish characters. Everything else I have read of hers I thought very indifferent, even her tale called [italics] Eunice [end italics]. If she has put in her novels people who fed her and her odious father she is not trustworthy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Emilia Galotti
'in the evening talk with Shelley read Emilia Galotti'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Bryan Edwards : The history, civil and commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
'S. reads Bryan Edwards History of the West Indies. M. reads Ethwald and eats oranges - in the evening Shelley reads aloud the view of the French Revolution for a short time'. [text as far as Ethwald in PBS' hand, thereafter MG]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : An Historical and Moral View of the origin and progress of the French Revolution
'S. reads Bryan Edwards History of the West Indies. M. reads Ethwald and eats oranges - in the evening Shelley reads aloud the View of the French Revolution for a short time'. [text as far as Ethwald in PBS' hand, thereafter MG]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : An Historical and Moral View of the origin and progress of the French Revolution
'Read view of the French Revolution'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : An Historical and Moral View of the origin and progress of the French Revolution
'Not very well - Shelley very unwell - read de Montfort - and talk with S. in the evening read View of the French Revolution'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Remains of Henry Kirke White. With an account of his life
'read some of Kirke White's letters - slavish beyond all measure - begin History of the West Indies by Bryan Edwards'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Bryan Edwards : The history, civil and commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
'read some of Kirke White's letters - slavish beyond all measure - begin History of the West Indies by Bryan Edwards'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Bryan Edwards : The history, civil and commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
'Read Bryan Edwards's account of the West Indies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de St aubin, Marquise de Silley, Comtesse de Genlis : Les Veilles du Chateau
'read Tales of the castle'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Bryan Edwards : he history, civil and commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
'read Bryan Edwards all evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Southey : Roderick; the last of the Goths
'look over Roderick - very unwell'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : 'France: An Ode' [from] Fears in Solitude
'S reads Ode to France aloud and repeats the poem to tranquility'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Advancement of Learning, Part 2, P.47
"Consider what Lord Bacon says: 'Sense sends over to Imagination before Reason have judged...See Advancement of Learning, Part 2, P.47 of first Edition".
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'In the evening S[helley] C[lary] and H[ogg] sleep - read Gibbon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Shelley reads Gibbon alloud to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'read Gibbon (end of I vol) S. reads Livy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'talk with Hogg - and read Gibbon but very little (30) in the evening work & S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield (ed.) : Miscelaneous Works of Edward Gibbon Esquire, with memoirs of his life and writings composed by himself
'talk with Hogg - and read Gibbon but very little (30) in the evening work & S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield (ed.) : Miscelaneous Works of Edward Gibbon Esquire, with memoirs of his life and writings composed by himself
'S reads Gibbon aloud to me (160) - Weeks calls - Hogg comes - work - S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'S reads Gibbon aloud to me (160) - Weeks calls - Hogg comes - work - S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield : Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon Esquire, with memoirs of his life and writings composed by himself
'S reads Gibbon aloud to me (160) - Weeks calls - Hogg comes - work - S reads Gibbons memoirs aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[italics] 'The Maie 3th vol. of Gibbon 607. Virgils Georgics'. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara: a tale
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara: a tale
[italics] 'S. remains at home. reads Livy - [scored out] p.532 2d vol. [end scored out] Maie reads very little of Gibbon - We read and are delighted with Lara - the finest of Lord B's poems. S. reads Lara aloud in the evening. [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Bacon : [Works]
[italics]'S. Livy p.532 - Cumis, (adeo minimis etiam rebum prava religio inserit Deos) mures in aede Jovis aurum rosisse 556. 2 vol. Maie says that if we had met the Emperor Julian in private life he would have appeared a very ordinary man The fables of Aesop in Greek. - Boethius consolation of philosophy - how in the reign of Theodoric [underlined] a Christian? [end underlining] gr - Lord Bacon's works - Gibbon likes Boethius - [end italics] Mary reads Gibbon (100).' [italic text is by PBS, non-italic by MG]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[italics]'S. Livy p.532 - Cumis, (adeo minimis etiam rebum prava religio inserit Deos) mures in aede Jovis aurum rosisse 556. 2 vol. Maie says that if we had met the Emperor Julian in private life he would have appeared a very ordinary man The fables of Aesop in Greek. - Boethius consolation of philosophy - how in the reign of Theodoric [underlined] a Christian? [end underlining] gr - Lord Bacon's works - Gibbon likes Boethius - [end italics] Mary reads Gibbon (100).' [italic text is by PBS, non-italic by MG]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, Madame de Stael : Corinne, ou d'Italie
'read Corinne (42)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, Madame de Stael : Corinne, ou d'Italie
'Rise - talk and read Corinne' / 'nurse the baby and read Corinne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
R M Ballantyne : Martin Rattler or a Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil
'I have got the book from Mrs Bell it is Martin Rattler.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Le Vicomte de Bragelonne
'I have read Bragelonne'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
.'.. poor old Jack Sheppard. I doubt not Ainsworth meant to be moral.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
?Robert ?Wodrow : [MSS in the Advocates' Library]
'I spent most of yesterday in the Advocates' Library and got about half way through the catalogue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Kingsley : Mademoiselle Mathilde
'Do you know Henry Kingsley. Read Mademoiselle Mathilde by him, now coming out in the Gentleman's Magazine ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Poems and Ballads [first series]
'I suppose Poems and Ballads will stand in the way of a Laureateship.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : '1865-1866'
'... such cursed nonsense as the last thing in Good Words. Oh! Alfred Tennyson! Alfred Tennyson, oh!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : The Lotus Eaters/St Simeon Stylites
'By the way what awful trash Tennyson's serial poetry is just now. To think of the man who wrote the 'Lotus Eaters' 'St Simeon Stylites' et caetera.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : The Golden Legend
"Can you find and send to me the last lines of Longfellow's Golden legend, beginning 'It is Lucifer, son of the air,' and so on. 'Since God put him there, he is God's minister for some good end.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : unknown
'Hegel must either be frightfully clever, or a most egregious ass: I incline to the latter position.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Wodrow : The History of the Suffrings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution
'It contains more detailed accounts than anything I ever saw, except Wodrow ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Herbert : The Temple: The Church Porch xxii
'I have been reading a good deal of Herbert ... "Carve or discourse; do not famine fear, Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Humbert Wolf : The Uncelestial City
'A lady I know well was sitting by the fire one evening. She wanted something to read so she reached out a hand to the bookcase by her side and took out a book at random. It was Humbert Wolf's "The Uncelestial City". She read the entire book. Then she had finished she lay back in the chair thinking, and it seemed to her that Wolf came into the room and sat down opposite her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
William and Martha Dodd : Ambassador Dodd's Diary
'I got from my town head the idea that the world was made for us all and not for the few....so became a Socialist. But the war and its shocks and the good books I've read since have brought me out and shown me that I would have done my duty and my country much better that many. "Ambassador Dodd's Diary" helped me a lot. He was sincere and true. I've seen how the few good souls in all countries who warned us re Germany and Japan were ignored and fools went on their way rejoicing in their power luxuries and parties - and ignorance...I see that privilege got these fools into power...Books have helped a lot... this newest is fine, "your M.P." by Tiberius G......And I who know nothing am not satisfied with my education...know I'd have used the chances...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Tiberius G : Your M.P
'I got from my town head the idea that the world was made for us all and not for the few....so became a Socialist. But the war and its shocks and the good books I've read since have brought me out and shown mw that I would have done my duty and my country much better that many. "Ambassador Dodd's Diary" helped me a lot. He was sincere and true. I've seen how the few good souls in all countries who warned us re Germany and Japan were ignored and fools went on their way rejoicing in their power luxuries and parties - and ignorance...I see that privilege got these fools into power...Books have helped a lot... this newest is fine, "your M.P." by Tiberius G......And I who know nothing am not satisfied with my education...know I'd have used the chances...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Edward Young : Night thoughts
Reader makes several references to the work: V.1, p.9, p.19, p.167, p.192; V.2 p.145, p.162, p.177; V.3 p.145. eg.: V.1 p.9 'Well, now I was very sure I would not smile this summer, nor yet read any book but the Bible and Night Thoughts*; even the Odyssey was to be rejected'. *'The Night Thoughts, and the Odyssey, were favourite studies among these friends, to which they were wont to make many serious and playful allusions' [footnote, p. 9] from Letter II to Miss Harriet Reid of Glasgow, April 28 1773. eg. p.19 '"how populous, how vital is the grave;? says your favourite Young : ?how populous, how vital are the glens!? I should be tempted to say here' from same letter.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Arnold Bennett :
'. . . I am charmed with a serial of mine now running with great ?clat & Reginald Cleaver?s illustrations, in a sheet entitled the "Golden Penny". To read the instalments each week does me good, they are so exactly what they should be (& good English thrown in gratis).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Havergall Bates : The Believing Bishop
'If you have not read "The Believing Bishop" by Havergall Bates (whoever he may be) [George Allen] let me recommend it to you as a fine disturbing book'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'I have not even yet made up my mind about Dickens, & I am glad that so far I have never expressed an opinion about him, except playfully, in print. I got fairly stuck in "David Copperfield" & the same in "Pickwick". I am forced to admit that I am out of sympathy with those big Victorians. . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
'I have not even yet made up my mind about Dickens, & I am glad that so far I have never expressed an opinion about him, except playfully, in print. I got fairly stuck in "David Copperfield" & the same in "Pickwick". I am forced to admit that I am out of sympathy with those big Victorians. . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Fr Graz : in Die Zeit
'With my London-Matric knowledge of German I have struggled through the appreciation of you in 'Die Zeit.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
George Douglas (pseud. of George Douglas Brown, 1869-1902) : The House with the Green Shutters
'Have you read the fist Realistic Scotch Novel?The House with the Green Shutters? It is not first class but it is glorious after Barrie, Maclaren, Crockett & Co. You see Scotland in it for the first time in your life.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Sturt : Some Peasant Women
''I am glad to be able to praise your article in this month?s Cornhill with less reserve than you praise my novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey
Letter II to Miss Harriet Reid of Glasgow, April 28 1773 '?he shewed so much ingenuity in discovering faults in every thing, that I burst out a laughing, and said we were certainly haunted by the ghost of Smelfungus, of whom Sterne give [sic] such an amusing account. By the bye, we had just that morning passed, ?with reverence due?, the monument of the original Smelfungus, which rises near his native spot, beside his favourite lake, which he delights to describe in Humphrey Clinker.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : [Letters from Yorick to Eliza?]
Letter XLIII To Miss Dunbar, Boath/ Laggan April 11, 1803, 'Surely you have seen Sterne?s Letters to Eliza; if not, do without delay read them. It is her monument I am describing ?. '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Christian August Vulpius : Rinaldo Rinaldini, der Rauberhauptmann
'Finish Renaldini - talk with Shelley- in very bad spirits but get better'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Christian August Vulpius : Rinaldo Rinaldini, der Rauberhauptmann
'Hogg stays all day with us - talk with him and read the fall of the Jesuits and Rinaldo Renaldini - not in good spirits'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Bernard le Bouyer de Fontinelle : Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes
'Read and talk - still think about my little baby - 'tis hard indeed for a mother to loose a child - Hogg and C.[harles] C.[lairmont] come in the evening - CC goes at 11. Hogg stays all night - read Fontinelle Plurality of Worlds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'in the evening Hogg reads Gibbon to me (393)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de (Madame de) Stael : De la Litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales
'[italics to indicate Shelley's hand] S. has read the life of Chaucer - Ochley's History of the Saracens. Mad. du Stael sur la litteratur - to page 113. of the third Vol. of Livy. [end italics]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Hogg reads Gibbon to me - go to Bullocks Museum - see the birds - return at 4 - work and H reads Gibbon aloud (finish 4 volume)'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Shelley reads Livy and then reads Gibbon with me till dinner'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley Print: Book
Robert Bage : Hermsprong: Or Man as he is not. A novel. By the Author of Man as he is
'After dinner read Hermsprong'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Alain Rene Lesage : Le Diable boiteux
'read le diable boiteux [...] in the evening read le diable boiteux and play at chess'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'[italics to indicate Shelley's hand] Easter Monday. Maie finished the 5th vol. of Gibbon [...] In the evening read - S finishes Livy (p920 vol 3.) & 1/2 past 12 at night'.[end italics] [& a mistake for at??]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Bage : Man as He Is. A Novel
'read man as he is - Hogg comes and reads Rokeby to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rokeby; a poem
'read man as he is - Hogg comes and reads Rokeby to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rokeby; a poem
'go to the British Museum - see all the fine things - ores, fossils, statues, divine &c &c. - return - read Rokeby - go upstairs to talk with S. - read and finish Rokeby'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'after dinner read l'esprit des nations 132 Shelley read[s] Italian - read 15 lines of Ovids metamo[r]phosis with Hogg - [italics to indicate Shelley's hand] The Assassins - Gibbon Chap. LXIV - all that can be known of the assassins is to be found in Memoires of the Acad[e]my of Inscriptions tom. xvii p127-170'.[end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'read Ovid with Hogg (fin. 2nd fable). Shelley reads Gibbon and pastor fido with Clary - in the evening read Esprit des Nations (72). S. reads Pastor Fido (102) and Gibbon (vol 12 - 364) and the story of Myrrha in Ovid'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Giordano Bruno : unknown
"I shall not be able to avail myself of the assistance of Bruno's fairies." [Reference to writings of Giordano Bruno 1548-1600. Italian Heretic philosopher - according to editorial footnote]. Letter 21 to William Hayley
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'[italics to denote Shelley's hand] Mary reads the 3rd fable of ovid. S & Clare read Pastor Fido. S. Reads Gibbon - (To recollect the life of Rienzi - Fortifiocca)[end italics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles: a poem
'read 3 Canto's of the Lord of the Isles'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Jefferson reads Don Quixote - C. reads Gibbon - S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso - Read Voltaire's Essay on Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written During a Short Residence in Norway, Sweden and Denmark
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1814 - since all these titles are mentioned in journal entries, they are not given separate database entries from this source] 'Mary. Those marked x. S. has read also xLetters from Norway x Mary, A Fiction. x Wordsworth's Excursion. x. Madoc. by Southey. 2 vol x Curse of Kehama. x Sorcerer. a novel. x Political Justice. 2 x The Monk - by Lewis - 4 x Thaliba 2 x The Empire of the Nairs 4 x Queen Mab x St Godwin x Wrongs of Women 2 x Caleb Williams 3 x Zadig x Life of Alfieri, by himself 2 x Essay on Sepulchres x Louvet's Memoirs Carnot's Memorial x Lives of the Revolutionists by Adolphus 2 x Edgar Huntley. x Peregrine Proteus. x The Italian. x Prince Alexy Haimatoff. Philip Stanley. by Brown x Miss Bailly's plays x Moores Journal x Agathon x Mungo Park's Travels in Africa. 1st part x Barrow's Embassy to China Milton's letter to Mr Hartlib Emilia Galotti. x Bryan Edwards hist. of the W. Indies x View of the French Revolution by M.W.G. x Candide x Kirke White. 62 volumes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Mary: a Fiction
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1814 - since all these titles are mentioned in journal entries, they are not given separate database entries from this source] 'Mary. Those marked x. S. [Percy Bysshe Shelley] has read also xLetters from Norway x Mary, A Fiction. x Wordsworth's Excursion. x. Madoc. by Southey. 2 vol x Curse of Kehama. x Sorcerer. a novel. x Political Justice. 2 x The Monk - by Lewis - 4 x Thaliba 2 x The Empire of the Nairs 4 x Queen Mab x St Godwin x Wrongs of Women 2 x Caleb Williams 3 x Zadig x Life of Alfieri, by himself 2 x Essay on Sepulchres x Louvet's Memoirs Carnot's Memorial x Lives of the Revolutionists by Adolphus 2 x Edgar Huntley. x Peregrine Proteus. x The Italian. x Prince Alexy Haimatoff. Philip Stanley. by Brown x Miss Bailly's plays x Moores Journal x Agathon x Mungo Park's Travels in Africa. 1st part x Barrow's Embassy to China Milton's letter to Mr Hartlib Emilia Galotti. x Bryan Edwards hist. of the W. Indies x View of the French Revolution by M.W.G. x Candide x Kirke White. 62 volumes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Don Roderick
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles James, Lord Holland Fox : A history of the early part of the reign of James the Second
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles Brockden Brown : Wieland; or, the transformation
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : Don Carlos
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Paltock : The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Southey : Letters from England; by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella . . . Translated from the Spanish
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Gottfried August Burger : Lenore
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Anne Louise Germaine, Madame de Stael : De l'Allemagne
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Walter Scott : Waverley; or 'Tis Sixty Years Since
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Poems
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Paul Henri Dietrich, Baron d' Holbach : Systeme de la nature ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Alexander Pope : The Iliad of Homer
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales, The
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Francoise de Graffigny : Lettres d'une Peruvienne
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Richard Walter : Voyage round the World in the years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV, by George Anson Esq . . . Compiled from papers . . . of . . . Lord Anson . . . by Richard Walter (and Benjamin Robins)
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Charles Brockden Brown : Ormond; or, The Secret Witness
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
Alexander Pope : unknown
'I have perused the last lampoon of your ingenious friend, and am not surprised you did not find me out under the name of Sappho, because there is nothing I ever heard in our characters or circumstances to make a parallel, but as the town (except you, who know better) generally suppose Pope means me, whenever he mentions that name, which appears to be irritated by supposing her writer of the verses to the Imitator of Horace.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu
Henry William Weber (ed.) : Tales of the East: Comprising the most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin and the Best Imitations by European Authors
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Francis Bacon :
"Bacon & Newton would prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me, & Pitt would prescribe distress for a Medical potion;" in same letter he talks about Mr Hayley's library being nearly finished. Letter to Thomas Butts. Letter 31. 11th September 1801.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blake
Charles James Fox, Lord Holland : A history of the early part of the reign of James the Second
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Paltock : Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey [anon.] : Letters from England; by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella . . . Translated from the Spanish
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [Poems]
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database] 'Posthumous Works. 3. Sorrows of Werter Don Roderick - by Southey Gibbons Decline & fall. x Paradise Regained x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2 x Lara New Arabian Nights 3 Corinna Fall of the Jesuits Rinaldo Rinaldini Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds Hermsprong Le diable boiteux Man as he is. Rokeby. Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin x Wordsworth's Poems x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Life of the Philipps x Fox's History of James II The Reflector Wieland. Fleetwood Don Carlos x Peter Wilkins Rousseau's Confessions. x Espriella's Letters from England Lenora - a poem Emile x Milton's Paradise Lost X Life of Lady Hamilton De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael 3 vols. of Barruel x Caliph Vathek Nouvelle Heloise x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia. Waverly Clarissa Harlowe Robertson's Hist. of america x Virgil xTale of Tub. x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing x Curse of Kehama x Madoc La Bible Expliquee Lives of Abelard and Heloise The New Testament x Coleridge's Poems. 1st vol. Syteme de la Nature x Castle of Indolence Chattertons Poems. x Paradise Regained Don Carlos. x Lycidas. x St Leon Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud Burkes account of civil society x Excursion Pope's Homer's Illiad x Sallust Micromegas x Life of Chauser Canterbury Tales Peruvian letters. Voyages round the World Pluarch's lives. x 2 vols of Gibbon Ormond Hugh Trevor x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War Lewis's tales Castle of Udolpho Guy Mannering Charles XII by Voltaire Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here] 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here] 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Novum Organum
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here] 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : [Tragedies]
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1815, compiled by Mary Shelley. Only texts not referred to in journal entries are given separate database entries here] 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Carl Philipp Moritz : Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahr 1782
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Pierre Jean Baptiste Legrand d' Aussy : Fabliaux ou contes du XII et du XIII si?cle
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth: a poem; Parisina: a poem
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon : The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641; ed. with fourth volume, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Thomas, First Baron Erskine : [Collection of Speeches, perhaps Speeches of the Hon. Thomas Erskine, When at the Bar, on Subjects Connected with the Liberty of the Press, and Against Constructive Treason]
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: a Romaunt
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Johann Friedrich von Schiller : Der Geisterseher
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth: a poem; Parisina: a poem
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Carl Philipp Moritz : Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahr 1782
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini' 'Pastor Fido Orlando Furioso Livy's History Seneca's Works Tasso's Girusalame Liberata Tassos Aminta 2 vols of Plutarch in Italian Some of the plays of Euripedes Seneca's Tragedies Reveries of Rousseau Hesiod Novum Organum Alfieri's Tragedies Theocritus Ossian Herodotus Thucydides Homer Locke on the Human Understanding Conspiration de Rienzi History of arianism Ochley's History of the Saracens Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Cordell Hull : unknown
'Unconditional surrender. I don't think America will allow us to do anything different. I read the other day where Cordell Hull said there would be no peace talks, it would be settled on the battlefield; and we have to do what America says now, I think.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Unknown
Marcel Proust : unknown
'Then B. went shopping while I lay on the divan and read Proust, which I continued to do most of the evening, except when I read Ellis's Sunlight on Parnassus" to B. while she was ironing".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Border : Passport for a girl
'I had been reading Mary Border's book "Passport for a girl" and the day following my dream, I was interested to read in Page 201 describing the Austrian Anschluss, how old men and pregnant women were kept marching round till they dripped from exhaustion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Elegy 1]
Letter to Miss Ourry June 4 1791 'My dear, you will excuse this digressive tribute to departed excellence. What havoc has been lately made in the little circle of those I loved!' "Yes, even here, amidst these secret shades/The simple scenes of unreproved delight/Affliction?s iron hand my breast invades/And death?s dread dart is ever in my sight?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : [The traveller]
Letter to Miss Ewing June 10 1774 'Yet I should like none of these climates, where ?Winter lingering chills the lap of May? if I could help it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The vicar of Wakefield
Letter to Collector MacVicar, June 20 1773 'In the mean time I hope the best, and endeavour to pursue Oliver Cromwell through all his crooked paths. I have gone but a short way, my attention having been completely engrossed by a book that has bewitched me for the time; ?tis the Vicar of Wakefield, which you must certainly read. Goldsmith puts one in mind of Shakespear [sic]; his narrative is improbable and absurd in many instances, yet all his characters do and say exactly what might be supposed of them ?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Dunciad
Letter to Miss Ewing, August 10 1778 'When I am a czarina of some new discovered region, one of my first edicts shall be, that every one of my subjects, who is incapable of being amused in a rational and elegant manner, shall work hard from morning to night. And in this regulation I will consult the happiness of my said subjects ?Nor let their everlasting yawn express/The pain and penalties of idleness?'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Fortieth oration
Letter to MIss Ewing September 21, 1778 'Were I not afraid of the imputation of pedantic affectation, I could make this clear by a learned quotation from M.T. Cicero?s fortieth oration.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
[Edward?] [Young?] : [Satire VI?]
Letter to Miss Ewing October 3 1778 'He is an uncommon, indeed I may say, an exalted character; one of those of whom Pope says ?Great souls there are, who touch?d with warmth divine/ Give gold a price, and teach its beams to shine"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on man
Letter to Miss Ewing October 3 1778 'Modern history indeed refutes my wise conclusions, by presenting us with an almost similar character [ie to one in fiction], Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope distinguishes by the epithet of all-accomplished St. John. He addressed his Essay on Man to him, and speaks of him on all occasions with the most enthusiastic admiration. Swift does almost the same; and Chesterfield, who only saw him in extreme old age, when he might be thought to have outlived his talents and his graces, was yet dazzled with his person and address ?. ?. Thus, without heart, without truth or morals, this man [ie Lord Bolingbroke] was enabled to captivate and do mischief, not only all his life, but even after death. The deistical writings he left behind were not the result of self-conviction, or a desire to convince others, but the mere vanity of exploring the trackless wastes of speculation, of overthrowing established opinions, and thus creating a region in which to rule. It was like Satan?s expedition in search of some domain, where he might exercise power and produce misery'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
[Edward?] [Young?] : [?Night Thoughts]
Letter to Miss Ourry July 13, 1779 'The sublime and solid consolations which true religion and right reason afford, are all your own and, tho? well assured that there is indeed ?No pang like that of bosom torn/ From bosom, bleeding o?er the sacred dead? yet I trust those truths ?.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The traveller
Letter to Miss Ourry March 27 1791 'I am very fond of the lower class of people; they have sentiment, serious habits, and a kind of natural courtesy; in short, they are not mob, an animal which Smollet most emphatically says he detests in its head, midriff, and members; and, in this point, I do not greatly differ with him. You would wonder how many of the genteeler class live here. They are not rich to be sure; so much the better for us; For "Where no contiguous palace rears its head/To shame the meanness of the humble shed" people do very well, and keep each other in countenance."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Robert Burns : To ruin
Letter to Mrs Ourry September 8 1791 'The twin sister of my Petrina has been very unwell. I regarded her danger with composure that excited my own wonder. Perhaps like Burns, "With firm, resolv?d, despairing eye/ I view each aimed dart/ Since one has cut my dearest tie/ And quivers in my heart."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on man
Letter to Miss Ourry October 30 1791 'This, no doubt, forms no pleasant chain of dependences, but in this, as in many other instances ?What happier nature shrinks at with affright,/ The hard inhabitants contend is right.? '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecroft : unknown
Letter to Miss Ourry January 2 1794 'Then I have not put B. to school, or done half of what I meant.- I have seen Mary Wollstonecroft?s book, which is so run after here, that there is no keeping it long enough to read it leisurely, though one had leisure. It has produced no other convictions in my mind, but that of the authors possessing considerable abilities, and greatly misapplying them. To refute her arguments would be to write another and a larger book; for there is more pains and skill required to refute ill-founded assertions, than to make them. [and again on p. 272] 'Where a woman had those superior powers of mind to which we give the name genius, she will exert them under all disadvantages: Jean Jacques says truly, genius will educate itself, and, like flame, burst through all obstructions ?.' [p. 268-277 is a criticism of Mary Wollstonecroft's work]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : unknown
Letter to Mrs F--R (formerly Miss Ourry) April 11 1795 ??Innovation disconcerts us; new lights blind us; we detest the Rights of Man, and abominate those of Woman. Think then how I am prepared to receive your friend H.M.W.?s* new publication; though I admire her style, and confess that nobody embellishes absurdity more ingeniously. I am greatly inclined too to respect the purity of religious principles. Yet when I think of the associates with whom her political bigotry has connected her, I think I hear the Syrian leper entreating the prophet?s permission to bow a little occasionally in the house of their god Rimmon. [footnote] *Helen Maria Williams before she forsook her country and her principles'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone : [Sketches?]
Letter to Mrs Macintosh October 3 1796 'Have you read Lord Gardenstone?s Sketches, or detailed observations, I believe they are? It is very much the kind of reading that you like. I never met with one who thought exactly as I do of Shakspear, of David Hume, and of Queen Mary, but he. In politics we should never agree, I am &c., &c.? '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Robert Burns : [Poems]
Letter to Miss Dunbar April 25 1802 '?Now I have to satisfy you as to my favourite poem of Burns. Doubtless the Daisy is the most finished, and excels in simple elegance. ?The De?il himsel? in humour, exquisite, peculiar humour. I confess, if decorous people could be reconciled to blackguardism, John Hornbook is the very emperor of blackguards ?.' [ continues comments on Burns]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Peter Pindar : [Poems]
Letter to Miss Dunbar May 4 1802 'I cannot tell you how much I admire and despise Peter*. He is every way original, and most original in this respect, that I know not that ever any other object at once excited my contempt and admiration. His humour is most peculiar, most unaffected, most irresistible. Yet, for what end Providence entrusted a weapon so dangerous in the hands of one who avows his disregard to everything sacred and venerable, is very difficult for us to conjecture ?[continues comments] [footnote]*Peter Pindar, a witty, but low, and mischievous writer of verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Eloisa to Abelard
Letter to Miss Dunbar October 1802 'I don?t know whether I remarked to you before, that I never knew a creature who enjoys, in a higher degree that "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" which Pope gives to his vestals.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : [Letters from Yorick to Eliza?]
Letter to Miss Dunbar April 11 1803 'Surely you have seen Sterne?s Letters to Eliza; if not, do without delay read them. It is her monument I am describing ?. '
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'My brothers and I have lived the book ["Treasure Island"] many times and the Bois de Boulogne is full of places that we re-christened with Treasure Island names such as Skeleton Island ? Treasure Island itself is that inaccessible island in the fairly large lake at the back of the Jardin d?Acclimatation. I gave it that name because there are no boats on the lake and we were never able to get anywhere near it. We were only little boys. I peopled the Bois de Boulogne with many strange tribes. We used to wonder if there was a ?Ben Gunn? marooned on the Treasure Island and for many hours we have gazed at it lying in the grass hoping for a signal of distress. You have no idea how the B de B is full of imaginary perils, adventures, Indians, Pirates, Cannibals, Outlaws and all of the hundred and one things that come into a boy?s life through books of adventure. What virgin forests we have explored in this way. Some day I must show you the Grand Canyon of Colorado at St. Cloud. How many times was the coach held up here and the passengers taken captive, to be rescued after fierce fights with Outlaws, Redskins and Renegades. Our coach was a Swiss condensed milk packing case, two broomsticks for shaft, and two old pram wheels; all of it painted a gorgeous but rather horrible brown. My youngest sister, Ethel, was usually the fair lady passenger. To young boys the spot really seemed fraught with danger and romance because very few people ever pass that way. There is an old bridge over this canyon, and steep banks barely scalable in places. ?. I was always planning some new affair, getting up some wild scheme. It was a good life for us. We were very, very poor boys but few were as rich as we were in imagination and few rich boys ever got as much spice out of life as we did. It was a healthy life too, always trotting about in the open. I really love the B de B and St Cloud woods; B de B as a little kid up to 12 or 13, then St Cloud, which grew dearer still in all my strenuous cross country days. I can remember many a pleasurable thrill in cross country when the trail led us over old familiar spots where our camp fires had burned (not really) and where we had seen stirring scenes of ?daring do?'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
Pierre de Coulerain : Au Coeur de la Vie
'I try to read always with a very open mind, wide away [awake?] to assimilate all the author's knowledge. I have such a great admiration for authorship. After just finishing Pierre de Coulerain's book, "Au coeur de la Vie" I can't help exclaiming "wonderful woman". I have enjoyed her book so much because nearly all her ideas are mine, the thoughts that she has been able to so well express have often been mine, but mine were inarticulate. That I take it is the whole art of authorship, to be able to put on paper one's thoughts. The question of the quality of the "thought" remains entire so I take it a poor thinker can never be a writer. It is logical therefore to try to learn to think aright.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : Evan Harrington
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : Vittoria
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : Rhoda Fleming
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : Harry Richmans
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : The Egoist
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Book
Professor Seccombe : [articles in the "Bookman"]
'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson Print: Serial / periodical
Sinclair Lewis : Dodsworth
'The book which I had ordered had arrived and gives me the same exciting feeling when I glance into it - I have told you before how I want you to read ?Dodsworth?, and now you will be able to as I am sending it to you ? I daren?t get too enthusiastic about it in case you don?t like it. ???. I have been reading ?Mutiny on the Bounty?, but it seems tame after the film. ?? . I now have two books to read out of the library, ?Daughter to Philip? by Beatrice Kean Seymour, and ?Jake?, by Naomi Royde-Smith, which I have heard about somewhere, and is I think the story of a musician.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lesley Edna Moore Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis : Dodsworth
'I am well into ?Dodsworth? and am liking it. It is very interesting though I find that Lewis has rather a ?green?, a youthful way of talking about Europe which makes the book read rather like a first novel. The American touch, of course. It is rather painful to read, though. Fran is altogether too infuriating, too cold-bloodedly dishonoured. For she doesn?t believe her own talk however Lewis may be eager at odd moments to think her rather a poor little thing. It is great reading, though. Why does he not put in a little more about the contrasting women, the real, honest, dignified, courageous person that some women do manage to be ? ???.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Sinclair Lewis : Dodsworth
'I still like ?Dodsworth?, and now am a little sorry for Mrs. She certainly does seem to lose herself and he is something of a dunderhead though he is so honest and well meaning. If she were more honest with herself, and had more of his normal sort of simplicity she would do better for herself and perhaps get more out of him. She has him scared stiff.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
Christiane Benedicte Eugenie Naubert : Hermann von Unna, eine Geschicte aus den Zeiten der Vehmgerichte
'read Hermann d'Unna'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Christiane Benedicte Eugenie Naubert : Hermann von Unna, eine Geschicte aus den Zeiten der Vehmgerichte
'finish Hermann d'Unna and write - Shelley reads Milton - After dinner Lord Byron comes down and Clare and Shelley go up to Diodati - Read Rienzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Contes moraux
'read "Contes moreaux de Marmotel - Shelley reads the Germania of Tacitus'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Contes Moreaux
'Write & read "Contes Moreaux" - go down to the side of the lake to watch the waves - Lord Byron comes down - after dinner read Rienzi'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Honore Jean, Baron de Riouffe : Memoires d'un detenu pour servir a l'histoire de la tyrannie de Robespierre
'Shelley reads Germania and "memoire d'un Detenu".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : 'Christabel'
'Read Curt. and Caroline of Litchfield. Hobhouse and Scroop Davis come to Diodati - Shelley spends the evening there & reads Germania - Several books arrive among others Coleridges Christabel which Shelley reads aloud to me before we go to bed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth jeanne Isabelle Pauline, Baronne de Montolieu : Caroline de Lichtfield
'Read Curt. and Caroline of Litchfield. Hobhouse and Scroop Davis come to Diodati - Shelley spends the evening there & reads Germania - Several books arrive among others Coleridges Christabel which Shelley reads aloud to me before we go to bed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Elizabeth Jeanne Isabelle Pauline, Baronne de Montolieu : Caroline de Lichtfield
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Contes moraux
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles R. Maturin : Bertram; or, the Castle of St. Aldobrand, a tragedy
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : 'Christabel'
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : unknown
'I am better now; but it leaves me in a state of intellectual prostration, fit for nothing but smoking, and reading Charles Baudelaire.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Mary Robinson : Vancenza; or the Dangers of Credulity
'read Mrs Robinson's Valcenza'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'read the first vol. of the antiquary and work'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'read the Edinburgh Review and the second vol. of the antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Henry Carey : Chrononhotonthologos; the most tragical tragedy that ever was tragedized etc.
'read Chrononhotonthologus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Fazio: a tragedy
'Read Fazio - Love and madness. & some of Rienzi - work - in the evening finish the antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Herbert Croft : Love and Madness. A story too true. In a series of letters between parties, whose names would perhaps be mentioned, were they less known, or less lamented
'Read Fazio - Love and madness. & some of Rienzi - work - in the evening finish the antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'Read Fazio - Love and madness. & some of Rienzi - work - in the evening finish the antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Letters of a Solitary Wanderer
'in the evening walk out - read the Solitary wanderer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Margrave de Barieth : M?moires de Fr?d?rique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barieth; ?crits de sa main
'Write and read the memoirs of the princess of Bareith'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Margrave de Barieth : M?moires de Fr?d?rique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barieth; ?crits de sa main
'Read the Memoirs aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Margrave de Bareith : M?moires de Fr?d?rique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barieth; ?crits de sa main
'Read Curtius and work - Read the memoirs of the Prinsse of Bareith aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Peter Pindar [pseud.] : Works
'Shelley reads P.[eter] Pindars works aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Charles Jean Dominque de Lacretelle : Precis historique de la Revolution Francaise
'Read Clarendon all day - Shelley writes to Albe [Byron] and other things - he finishes Lacratelle's history of the French Revolution - we walk out for a short time after dinner S. reads Lucian'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641; ed. with fourth volume, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
'Read Clarendon all day - Shelley writes to Albe [Byron] and other things - he finishes Lacratelle's history of the French Revolution - we walk out for a short time after dinner S. reads Lucian'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mrs. Mary Beeton : [cookery book]
Mrs Hugh Fraser on her son (having just described his Chinese nursemaid's indulgent treatment of him): 'He retained his fine appetite till he was five or six years old. Then I found him one night slipping "Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book" under his pillow. On my asking the motive of his selection he replied, "It is nice to read about the plum puddings even if you can't always get them."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing : Laetus Sorte Mea or The Story of a Short Life
"Laetus cost me 2s. 6d. My wife bet me 2s. 6d. I couldn't read it aloud without crying. I thought I could. But after a page or two - I put my hand in my pocket. I said there! take your half-crown and let me cry comfortably when I want to!"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Revd. Going Print: Book
Henry Fielding : unknown
'Therefore, good-bye, I am going to take my beer and sardines; after which to bed and a chapter or two of Fielding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Margrave de Barieth : M?moires de Fr?d?rique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barieth; ?crits de sa main
'read the memoirs aloud and begin the life of Holcroft'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon : The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641; ed. with fourth volume, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
'Read Clarendon - finish the life of Holcroft - read Glenarvon in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Caroline Lamb (anon.) : Glenarvon
'Read Clarendon - finish the life of Holcroft - read Glenarvon in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Caroline Lamb (anon.) : Glenarvon
'Not well - read Glenarvon all day and finish it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon : The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641; ed. with fourth volume, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
'Read Clarendon and Curtius - walk with Shelley - S. read Tasso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : [unknwon]
'Read Clarendon and Curtius - walk with Shelley - S. read Tasso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Magrave de Bareith : M?moires de Fr?d?rique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barieth; ?crits de sa main
'S. reads Don Quixote - afterwards read mem. of the Prin/sse of Ba/th aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'Read Patronage & the Milesian chief - finish 5th vol of Clarendon - Shelley reads life of Cromwell'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles R. Maturin : The Milesian Chief
'Read Patronage & the Milesian chief - finish 5th vol of Clarendon - Shelley reads life of Cromwell'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'Finish Milesian & Patronage - read Holcrofts travels - S. reads life of Cromwell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Charles Maturin : Milesian Chief, The
'Finish Milesian & Patronage - read Holcrofts travels - S. reads life of Cromwell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Humphrey Davy : Elements of Chemical Philosophy
'Read the Introduction to Sir H. Davy's Chemistry - write. In the evening read Anson's voyage and Curt. Shelley reads Don Q. aloud after tea - Finish Anson's voyage before night.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Richard Walter : A Voyage round the World in the years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV, by George Anson Esq . . . Compiled from papers . . . of . . . Lord Anson . . .
'Read the Introduction to Sir H. Davy's Chemistry - write. In the evening read Anson's voyage and Curt. Shelley reads Don Q. aloud after tea - Finish Anson's voyage before night.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Humphrey Davy : Elements of Chemical Philosophy
'Read Davy's Chemistry with Shelley - read Curt. and Ides travels. Shelley reads Montaigne and Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy shelley Print: Book
E. Ysbrants Ides : Driejaarige reize naar China, te lande gedaan door den Moskovischen afgezant E. Ysbrants Ides
'Read Davy's Chemistry with Shelley - read Curt. and Ides travels. Shelley reads Montaigne and Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Francis Potter : An interpretation of the number 666
'Thence by coach, and falling by the way at my bookseller's for a book, writ about twenty years ago in prophecy of this year coming on, 1666, explaining it to be the mark of the beast. I home and there fell to reading, and then to supper and to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
[boys in the upper forms at Eaton] : De pests [Bacchus verses]
'To the hall, and there find the boy's verses "De peste"; it being their custom to make verses at Shrovetide. I read several, and very good they were, and better I think then ever I made when I was a boy - and in rolls as long and longer than the whole hall by much.' Editor's note: 'The "Bacchus verses": compositions by the upper forms, hung up from the hooks which may still be seen on either side of the hall.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae
'Thence to walk all alone in the fields behind Grays Inne, making an end of reading over my dear "Faber Fortunae" of my Lord Bacon's'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Rose Macauley : Keeping Up Appearances
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Olwen Ward Campbell : Shelley and the Unromantics
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Hermann Sudermann : The Song of Songs
'Yes I know Sudermann ? his play ?Magda? was one of Mrs Pat. Campbell?s great parts ? and I believe he was the author of a book called ?The Song of Songs? that Billie Wood lent me ? and that I was shocked to find you reading. I have just got through Susan Glaspell?s ?Road to the Temple?, and C.E.Montague?s ?Right off the Map?. For lighter reading I?ve had Rose Macauley?s ? Keeping up Appearances?, and I?m reading all sorts of things about Shelley for my possible literature class. The present one is ?Shelley and the Unromantics?. The author lives in Birkenhead.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Carl Van Vechten : Nigger Heaven
'Harold gave me the ?Definitive Edition? of the Week-end Book for Xmas. It has drawings by Rutherston, and will be very precious I understand as a first edition. Will Wood left me a Tauchnitz edition of ?Nigger Heaven? by a coloured writer Carl Van Vechten. ?Nigger Heaven? is Haarlem ? a New York district mostly inhabited by coloured people. One does not like American ?last living? any the better for being black rather than white ? and there is very little else to it, except one or two less mentionable points of biological interest whose significance, if grasped, might shake the complacency of the more stupid whites.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Rebecca West : The Strange Necessity
'I have been reading a very fine essay by Rebecca West, ?The Strange Necessity?. It is on the nature of Art ? and even Robert Lynd considers it difficult. I?ve just finished my second reading ? and will go through it again to copy out definitions. She has really a first class mind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Marcel Proust : Du Cote de Chez Swann
'I?m glad you like the Shaw. Stanley bought me one of the early editions ? I haven?t read it through yet ? I?m trying to get through Spengler?s second volume of The Decline of the West. Have just finished ? Du cot? de chez Swann?. By the way let me know a list of good modern French novels ? especially novels of ideas ? the Catholic movement, the socialists, etc?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Erich Maria Remarque : All Quiet on the Western Front
'I also have been reading ?All Quiet?. Stanley and I stood for an hour outside my hotel at midnight in Southampton Row ? and rowed about it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Katherine Mayo : Mother India
'I am really appreciating all the books and seem at the moment to be reading only French. I have not by any means exhausted them yet. ?Mahatma Gandhi? I am reading at the moment, but someone yesterday lent me Katherine Mayo?s ?Mother India?, and all my thoughts are boulevers?es [upset] by the horrors she pictures.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Theodore de Banville : Gringoire
'I enjoy thoroughly ?Les Nouvelles? ? it is most useful to me also ? and ?Gringoire? is good for me ? it tempers my Francophile complex. I have not yet had time to complete ?Le Blois Vert?, in this rush. But I must tell you that my little collection of French books is my most cherished possession.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Margaret Steen : Matador
'The book will give me the greatest delight. I am getting a bit past ?yarns? ? but I enjoyed ?Matador? because it is quite a document on Spain to day and apparently written on the spot. I believe Margaret Steen is a Liverpool woman and she is credited as a careful writer. I must try for ?Stallion? which made a big noise last year. But ?Tu viens? [Are you coming] seems to be the kind of thing I turn to best ? observation of life without the painted veil of fiction.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Oliver Onions : The Open Secret
'One must know Hemingway if one is to understand post war writing. I read too ?The Open Secret?. Oliver Onions was a great favourite of mine once. He was a past master of the topical novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Arthur Cecil Pigou : unknown
'I am busy also getting through the Keynes book, and chuckling over the fact that he wrote this book to make clear that Cambridge and London were a bit archaic as to the fundamentals of their economics. I stood for an hour arguing the main thesis (of course not worked out) with Harold one night at Euston. He had to walk home to Battersea Park in consequence. A year or so before I had covered reams with letters of vituperation against Prof: Pigou, till Stanley became furious ? also on the point. I don?t think it should need so large a book to get it over, I am also going to read Dodsworth when Gerry isn?t looking.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Francois Mauriac : Les Anges Noirs
'I have just read Gabouis ?Perfide Albion ? Entente Cordial?, quite good and informative ? this in English from the local library, and in French ?Les Anges Noirs? de Mauriac. Also Alexander Werth?s ?Before Munich? and a collection of the speeches of Daladier 1934 ? 1940, (these in English). At the moment I have ?Rond Point des Champs Elys?es? de Paul Maraud, and ?The French at Home? of Philip Carr.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Alexander Werth : Before Munich
'I have just read Gabouis ?Perfide Albion ? Entente Cordial?, quite good and informative ? this in English from the local library, and in French ?Les Anges Noirs? de Mauriac. Also Alexander Werth?s ?Before Munich? and a collection of the speeches of Daladier 1934 ? 1940, (these in English). At the moment I have ?Rond Point des Champs Elys?es? de Paul Maraud, and ?The French at Home? of Philip Carr.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Albert Guerard : French Civilisation; Foundations to end of Middle Ages
'I am very busy with small things ? but am hoping to keep more to my books in future. I am making a really exhaustive study of France ? something fundamental I mean. At present I am going through a life of Turgot ? the latest, and a book on ?French Civilisation; Foundations to end of Middle Ages? by Albert Guerard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Provence
'To return to my reading at the moment ? I have another book of Ford Madox Ford?s ? oh ! a lovely one, called ?Provence?. He died this year ? how sad he must have been in poor old London. But all you loved best in Provence comes out in that book ? and in the end the author says we must come back to it, learn to plant our cabbages ? and to cook them ? or we are doomed. How I regret that I could not send you that book ? but alas !! By the way I sent a ?Pied Piper? for Shirley. I hope it arrives.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Agnes Moore Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Strachey : A narrative of the mutiny of the officers of the army in Bengal in ... 1766
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East - [including] .. Strachey's "Narrative History of Persia" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
George Sale : Preliminary discourse to the Koran
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East - [including] .. Sale's "Preliminary Discourse to the Koran" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Mrs Marcet : Conversations on Chemistry
Elizabeth Missing Sewell recalls studies at the second school she attended (to the age of 15): 'Our subjects of study included -- besides English history and exercises in grammar -- lessons in mythology and upon the English Constitution learnt by heart from Mangall's Questions, the outlines of the rise of nations, with Roman, Grecian, and French history (the latter read in French), Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry and Political Economy, and Joyce's Scientific Dialogues.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Mrs Marcet : Conversations on Political Economy
Elizabeth Missing Sewell recalls studies at the second school she attended (to the age of 15): 'Our subjects of study included -- besides English history and exercises in grammar -- lessons in mythology and upon the English Constitution learnt by heart from Mangall's Questions, the outlines of the rise of nations, with Roman, Grecian, and French history (the latter read in French), Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry and Political Economy, and Joyce's Scientific Dialogues.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Petrus de Palude [?] : Sermones thesauri novi de tempore
Marginal notes appear throughout this book, on almost every page. These notes range from comments written in Latin shorthand, underlinings, numbers marking particular passages and sketches of pointing hands. There is an obvious engagement with the text, and certainly evidence of a very intensive reading experience. There appear to be several different hands marking the book, indicating it was read and used by more than one person, as well as different types of ink.
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
E. Ysbrants Ides : Driejaarige reize naar China, te lande gedaan door den Moskovischen afgezant E. Ysbrants Ides
'Read Ides travels. S. reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Humphrey Davy : Elements of Chemical Philosophy
'Write - read Davy - In the evening read Curt. and Les Incas'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Les Incas
'Write - read Davy - In the evening read Curt. and Les Incas'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Les Incas
'read Les Incas - Shelley reads Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Robert Parsons : Bunny's Resolution
'A poor day-labourer in the town ... had an old torn book which he lent my father, which was called "Bunny's Resolution"... And in the reading of this book (when I was about fifteen years of age) it pleased God to awaken my soul... And about that time it pleased God that a poor pedlar came to the door that had ballads and some good books; and my father bought of him Dr. Sib's "Bruised Reed". This I also read."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Baxter Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth (anon.) : Castle Rackrent, an Hibernian tale
'read Curt and Castle Rackrent aloud. S. finishes Castle Rackrent in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Dr Sibbes : Bruised Reed
'A poor day-labourer in the town ... had an old torn book which he lent my father, which was called "Bunny's Resolution"... And in the reading of this book (when I was about fifteen years of age) it pleased God to awaken my soul... And about that time it pleased God that a poor pedlar came to the door that had ballads and some good books; and my father bought of him Dr. Sib's "Bruised Reed". This I also read."
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Baxter Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth (anon.) : Castle Rackrent, an Hibernian tale
'read Curt and Castle Rackrent aloud. S. finishes Castle Rackrent in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Sir Thomas Ridley : A view of the civile and ecclesiasticall law
'after dinner I and my boy down by water to Redriffe; and thence walked to Mr Evelin's, where I walked in his garden till he came from church, with great pleasure reading Ridlys discourse all my way going and coming, upon the Civill and Ecclesiastical Law.... Thence walked back again, reading; and so took water and home'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Shelley reads Curt - & Plutarch - read Pamela and Shelley read[s] Gibbon after tea'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Jean Francois Marmontel : Les Incas
'work in the evening - & read Les Incas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy : L'histoire amoureuse des Gaules
'Thence by water to Redriffe, reading a new French book my Lord Brouncker did give me today, "L'histoire amoureuse des Gaules", being a pretty Libell against the amours of the French court.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'In the evening I finish Curtius. S. reads & finishes Plutarchs life of Alexander. After tea S. reads the XXth chapter of Gibbon to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Sir Thomas Ridley : A view of the civile and ecclesiasticall law
'Walked back again, reading of my civil law book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Thomas Ridley : A view of the civile and ecclesiasticall law
'I walked both going and coming, spending my time in reading of my Civill and Ecclesiastical law-book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae
'and so to Deptford to enquire after a little business there; and thence by water back again, all the way coming and going reading my Lord Bacon's "Faber Fortunae", which I can never read too often.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Francis Walsingham : Arcana aulica, or, Walsingham's manual of prudential maxims for the states-man and courtier : to which is added Fragmenta regalia, or, Observations on Queen Elizabeth, her times and favorites
'I left them there and walked to Deptford, reading in Wallsinghams "manuall", a very good book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir William Davenant : The Seige of Rhodes
'and after dinner, with my wife and Mercer and Jane by water all the afternoon as high up as Moreclacke, with great pleasure, and a fine day - reading over the second part of "The Seige of Rhodes" with great delight.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae
'and so away home by water, with more and more pleasure every time, I reading over my Lord Bacon's "Faber Fortunae".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Samuel Tuke : The Adventures of the five houres
'So down the River, reading "The Adventures of five houres", which the more I read the more I admire.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Samuel Tuke : The Adventures of the five houres
'Up, and betimes with Captain Erwin down by water to Woolwich, I walking alone from Greenwich tither - making an end of "The Adventures of five houres", - which when all is done, is the best play that ever I read in my life.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
[Torquato] Tasso : unknown
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ... : not much of books not connected with India. ... ; read the preface and seventy or eighty pages of Tasso; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Francis] Bacon : Essays
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ... : not much of books not connected with India. ... ; I also read all Bacon's "Essays" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[George] Berkeley : The principles of human knowledge
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India. ...;[but includes] Berkeley's essay on "The Principles of Human Knowledge" ; ..'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Edward Stillingfleet : A rational account of the grounds of Protestant religion
'And by coach home, where I spent the evening in reading Stillingfleetes defence of the Archbishop, that part about Purgatory, a point I had never considered before what was said for it or against it. And though I do believe we are in the right, yet I do not see any great matter in this book.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Faber Fortunae
'So home to dinner, and to discourse with my brother upon his translation of my Lord Bacon's "Faber Fortunae" which I gave him to do; and he hath done it but meanly, I am not pleased with it at all - having done it only literally, but without any life at all.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Pepys Print: Book
Francis Potter : An interpretation of the number 666
'and so home, and there begun to read Potters discourse upon 666, which peases me mightily; and then broke off, and to supper and to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Francis Potter : An interpretation of the Number 666
'and then home and read an hour, to make an end of Potters discourse of the Number 666, which I like all along, but his close is most excellent; and whether it be right or wrong, is mighty ingenious.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
[Conyers] Middleton : A free enquiry
'I have read since last October a good deal ot the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Conyers] Middleton : A letter from Rome
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Conyers] Middleton : [Dissertations in Latin and English]
'I have read since last October a good deal ot the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome, several dissertations of his Latin and English ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Conyers] Middleton : [Cicero]
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Middleton's "Free Enquiry" . his Letter from Rome, several dissertations of his Latin and English , one volume and a half of his "Cicero"...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de] Condorcet : The Human Understanding
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] a good deal of Condorcet on "The Human Understanding" ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Carlo] Denina : Revolutions of Literature
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] Denina's "Revolutions of Literature; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'read Locke & the life of Lorenzo - Shelley reads it and finishes it - In the evenng he reads 25th chap. of Gibbon - read several odes of Horace'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'read rights of women'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Read Rights of woman - Opuscula of Cicero'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Finish the Rights of Woman - begin Chesterfields Letters to his son'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters written by the . . . Earl of Chesterfield to his Son Philip Stanhope
'Finish the Rights of Woman - begin Chesterfields Letters to his son'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters written by the . . . Earl of Chesterfield to his Son Philip Stanhope
'Read Locke and Chesterfield - De Senectute and the wanderer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters written by the . . . Earl of Chesterfield to his Son Philip Stanhope
'read the Wanderer - read de Senectute & Chesterfield'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters written by the . . . Earl of Chesterfield to his Son Philip Stanhope
'Read Lord Chesterfield - part of the Lay sermon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best guide to political skill and foresight: a lay sermon
'Read Lord Chesterfield - part of the Lay sermon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Bred et de Montesquieu : Lettres persanes
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Fazio
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Fazio
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu : Lettres persanes
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.] x Moritz' tour in England Tales of the Minstrels x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa Peregrine Proteus x Siege of Corinth & Parasina. 4 vols. of Clarendon's History x Modern Philosophers opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu Erskines speeches x Caleb Williams x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Schiller's arminian Lady Craven's Leters Caliste Nouvelle nouvelles Romans de Voltaire Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau Adele et Theodore x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu Tableau de Famille Le vieux de la Montagne x Conjuration de Rienzi Walther par La Fontaine Les voeux temeraires Herman d'Una Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis x Christabel Caroline de Litchfield x Bertram x Le Criminel se[c]ret Vancenza by Mrs Robinson Antiquary x Edinburgh Review num. LII Chrononhotonthologus x Fazio Love and Madness Memoirs of Princess of Bareith x Letters of Emile The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe Clarendons History of the Civil War x Life of Holcroft x Glenarvon Patronage The Milesian Chief. O'Donnel x Don Quixote x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii Conspiration de Rienzi Introduction to Davy's Chemistry Les Incas de Marmontel Bryan Perdue Sir C. Grandison x Castle Rackrent x Gulliver's Travels x Paradise Lost x Pamela x 3 vol of Gibbon 1 book of Locke's Essay Some of Horace's odes x Edinburgh Review L.III Rights of Women De senectute by Cicero 2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon : Les Adventures de Telemaque
[Percy Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record of Shelley's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list.] 'Works of Theocritus Moschus &c - Greek Prometheus of Eschylus - Greek Works of Lucian - Greek x Telemacho La Nouvelle Heloise x Blackwell's His. of the Court of August De Natura Lucretius Epistolae Plinii Annals by Tacitus Several of Plutarchs Lives - Greek Germania of Tacitus Memoires d'un Detenu Histoire de la Revolution par Rabault and Lacretelle Montaignes Essays Tasso Life of Cromwell Lockes Essay Political Justice Lorenzo de Medicis Coleridges Lay Sermon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Lord Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1817. As far as possible texts mentioned in journal entries are not given separate database entries from this list. Texts marked with an x were read by Percy Shelley too] 'Two vols of Lord Chesterfields Letters. xColeridges Lay Sermon Memoirs of Count Gramont Somnium Scipionis Roderick Random Comus Knights of the Swan Cumberlands memoirs de se Junius' letters Journey to the World Underground D. of Buckinhams Rehearsal and the Restoration Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Sir P. Sidney Round Table by W. Hazlitt Cupids Revenge Martial Maid Wild Goose Chase [these three bracketed as by Beaumont and Fletcher] x Tales of my Landlord Rambler Waverley Amadis de Gaul Epistolae Plinii Secundi x Story of Phsyche [sic] in Apuleius Anna St Ives Vita Julii Caesari - Suetonius x Defoe on the Plague x Wilsons City of the Plague Miss Edgeworths Comic Dramas Fortitude and Frailty by F. Holcroft 3rd Canto of Childe Harold Quarterly Review x Lalla Rookh by T. Moore x Davis' travels in America x Godwin's Mecellanies x Spenser's Fairy Queen x Manuscrit venu de St Helene Buffon's theorie du terre Beaumont and Fletchers Plays x Volpone; Cynthia's Revels. The Alchymist. Fall of Sejanus. Catilines conspiracy La Nouvelle Heloise Lettres Persiennes Miss Edgeworths Harrington and Ormond Arthur Mervyn x Antony & Cleopatra - Othello Missionary; Rhoda. Wild Irish Girl; Glenarvon; The Anaconda; Pastors Fire side; Amelia; Sir Launcelot Greaves; Strathallan; Twopenny post bag; Anti Jacobin poetry. Miseries of human life x Moores odes & epistles Le Lettre d'Una Peruviana Confessions et Lettres de Rousseau x Lamb's Specimens Molliere's George Dandin - le Testament Family of Montorio - Querelles de famille German Theatre - Eugenie & Mathilde x Mandeville x Laon and Cynthia x Lady Morgan's "France". The three brothers First vol of Humes Essays Annalium C. Cornelii Taciti.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best guide to political skill and foresight: a lay sermon
'finish the lay sermon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon . . . written by himself
'read Life of Clarendon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Citizen of the World, The
'read Comus. Knight of the swan - 1st Vol of Goldth citizen of the world'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Kennan : Tent Life in Siberia
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's recommendations of non-fictional works 'which I can guarantee myself' in 'Hints on Reading': 'Tent Life in Siberia. -- Not a very new book, but interesting from its account of northern scenery and civilization.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Frederick William Robinson : Christie's Faith
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's recommendations of works 'which I can guarantee myself' in 'Hints on Reading': 'Christie's Faith, by the author of "Owen, a Waif," is a novel which I can guarantee myself. The scenes are not laid in a very elevated class of life, and some are extremely painful, but there is a noble religious tone throughout the book which carries one through all. If I were inclined to criticise, I should say that the author does not understand women as well as he does men, and one scene, in which a so-called lady offers to be the wife of a man much her inferior in position, would in other hands have been very unpleasant. As it is, it is merely unnatural. The author's sympathies are evidently not with the English Church, but he is no way antagonistic to it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
[Erasmus] Darwin : Botanic Garden
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... In poetry, ... Darwin's "Botanic Garden"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
[Friedrich] Schiller : The robbers [and two other plays]
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... ; "The Robbers" and two other plays of Schiller; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Horace Walpole : [Works]
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ...; I forgot to mention a good deal of Horace Walpole ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
George Fox : Historical Account of the Life, Travels,...of George Fox
'I am in Milton's prose works, Cromwell's life, George Fox's Wanderings &c day & night, when I have any leisure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Mary Stewart
'I thought to rise at five on Thursday morning, but fatigue made my head bad. I slept till nine - I opened "Mary Stewart" after breakfast but Dr Fiffe interrupted me, and teazed me to play at shuttlecock till I consented-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Henry More : An antidote against atheism, or, An appeal to the naturall faculties of the minde of man, whether there be not a God
'So home to supper, and then to read a little in Moore's "Antidote against Atheisme", a pretty book; and so to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : Third Advice to a paynter
'And a little to my Lord Chancellors, where the King and Cabinet met, and there met Mr Brisband, with whom good discourse; to White-hall towards night, and there he did lend me the "Third Advice to a paynter", a bitter Satyr upon the service of the Duke of Albemarle the last year. I took it home with me and will copy it, having the former - being also mightily pleased with it. So after reading it, I to Sir W. Penn to discourse a little'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown
Desiderius Erasmus : De conscribendis epistolis
'so did not enlarge, but took leave and went down and sat in a low room reading Erasmus "de scribendis Epistolis", a very good book; especially, one letter of advice to a Courtier most true and good - which made me once resolve to tear out the two leaves that it was writ in - but I forebore it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Dr George Hakewill : An apologie or declaration of the power and providence of God in the government of the world
'how[ever], I fell to read a little in Hakewill's "apology", and did satisfy myself mighty fair in the truth of the saying that the world doth not grow old at all, but is in as good condition in all respects as ever it was as to Nature. I continued reading this book with great pleasure till supper'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
George Mackenzie : Religio Stoici, with a friendly addresse to the phanaticks of all sects and sorts
'and so back home again, all the way reading a little piece I lately bought, call[ed] "The Virtuoso or The Stoicke", proposing many things paradoxicall to our common opinions; wherein in some places he speaks well, but generally is but a sorry man.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Richard Hooker : Works... in eight books of ecclesiastical polity
'So home to look on my new books that I have lately bought; and then to supper and to bed.' Pepys records the following in his diary the previous day (15 April): 'Thence I to my new bookseller's and there bought Hookers "Policy", the new edition, and Dugdale's history of the Inn's of Court, of which there was but a few saved out of the Fire - and Playford's new sketch-book, that hath a great many new fooleries in it.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Experiments and considerations touching colours
'After dinner by water, the day being mighty pleasant and the tide serving finely - I up (reading in Boyles book of Colours) as high as Barne Elmes'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Experiments and considerations touching colours
'and so home, and there to write down my Journall, and so to supper and to read and so to bed - mightily pleased with my reading Boyles book of Colours today; only, troubled that some part of it, endeed the greatest part, I am not able to understand for want of study.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : Etudes de la Nature [abstract of]
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East ... not much of books not connected with India. ... [but included] ; an abstract of St. Pierre's "Etudes de la Nature"; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : Memoirs of Richard Cumberland. Written by himself.
'Read Cumberlands memoirs'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : Memoirs of Richard Cumberland. Written by himself.
'Finish the memoirs - of Cumberland - read the Rambler'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Amadis of Gaul
'work and read Junius read Amadis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Amadis of Gaul
'read Junius - Somnium Scipionis & work - read Amadis of Gaul'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Amadis of Gaul
'Read & finish Junius - finish Somnium Scipionis - work read amadis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George, 2nd Duke of Buckingham Villiers : The Restoration; or Right will take place
'Read the Restoration'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George, 2nd Duke of Buckingham Villiers : Rehearsal, The
'Read the Rehearsal'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham (The Black Dwarf; Old Mortality)
'Read Tales of my Landlord'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham (The Black Dwarf; Old Mortality)
'Finish Tales of my Landlord'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Salmasis and Hermaphroditus
'Read Beaumonts Hermophroditus [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Love's Cure, or the Martial Maid
'Not well - read the Martial Maid & the Wild goose chase of Beaumont and Fletcher'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Wild-goose Chase, The
'Not well - read the Martial Maid & the Wild goose chase of Beaumont and Fletcher'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since
'Read Waverly - Pliny's letters - Political Justice & Miltons Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Shelley reads Waverly - Tales of my Landlord & several of the works of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since
'Read Waverly - Pliny's letters - Political Justice & Miltons Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Shelley reads Waverly - Tales of my Landlord & several of the works of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord [First Series - The Black Dwarf; Old Mortality]
'Read Waverly - Pliny's letters - Political Justice & Miltons Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Shelley reads Waverly - Tales of my Landlord & several of the works of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa
'Read Pliny - transcribe - read Clarke's travels - Shelley writes and reads Apuleius and Spencer in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa
'read Pliny and Clarkes travels - Shelley writes his poem [The Revolt of Islam] - reads Hist. of Fr. Rev. and Spencer aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Shelley : Frankenstein
'S. reads Hist. of [French]. Rev. and corrects F. write Preface'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown, Mary Shelley's MS
Maria Edgeworth : Comic dramas, in three acts
'Read Suetonius and Miss Edgeworths Comic dramas. F[anny] Holcrofts novel'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Frances Holcroft : Fortitude and Frailty: a novel
'Read Suetonius and Miss Edgeworths Comic dramas. F[anny] Holcrofts novel'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'Read 3rd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'I am melancholy with reading the 3rd Canto of Childe Harold. Do you not remember, Shelley when you first read it to me? One evening after returning from Diodati. It was in our little room at Chapuis - the lake was before us and the mighty Jura. That time is past and this will also pass when I may weep to read this words and again moralize on the flight of time. Dear Lake! I shall ever love thee. How a powerful mind can sanctify past scenes and recollections - His is a powerful mind. one that fills me with melancholy yet mixed with pleasure as is always the case when intellectual energy is displayed. I think of our excursions on the lake. how we saw him when he came down to us or welcomed our arrival with a goodhumoured smile - How very vividly does each verse of his poem recall some scene of this kind to my memory - This time will soon also be a recollection - We may see him again & again - enjoy his society but the time will also arrive when that which is now an anticipation will be only in the memory - death will at length come and in the last moment all will be a dream. Am I not very melancholy? Godwin is out and I shall finish the canto although I fear it will not raise my spirits.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Frances Holcroft : Fortitude and Frailty: a novel'
'Finish F[anny] H.[olcroft]'s novel - read Suetonius'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
J. Frederic Lullin de Chateauvieux : Manuscrit venu de St Helene d'une maniere inconnue
'S. reads St Helena Manuscript'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
J. Frederic Lullin de Chateauvieux : Manuscrit venu de St Helene d'une maniere inconnue
'Read Tacitus and St Helena manuscript'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire naturelle generale et particuliere
'Read Buffon in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire naturelle generale et particuliere
'finish 2nd book of Tacitus and read Buffon's Hist. Nat. - S. reads Arrian - Watson acquitted - read his trial'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles de Secondat, baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu : Lettres persanes
'Read Tacitus - The Persian letters - S. reads Homer & writes - reads a canto of Spencer and part of the gentle shepherdess aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire naturelle generale et particuliere
'Read Tacitus and Buffon. S. reads Homer and Plutarch'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa
'Read Tacitus - Clarkes travels - transcribe for S. - S writes - reads several of the plays of Aeschylus and Spencer aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harrington, a tale, and Ormond, a tale
'Read Miss E[dgesworth]'s Harrington and ormond - Arthur Mervyn - S. reads the Agamemnon of Aeschylus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles Brockden Brown : Arthur Mervyn
'Read Miss E[dgesworth]'s Harrington and ormond - Arthur Mervyn - S. reads the Agamemnon of Aeschylus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mountstuart Elphinstone : Account of the Kingdom of Caubul and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary and India
'S goes to Egham - he reads Aeschylus and tavels in the kingdom of Caubul - read Rasselas - make jellies and work'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mountstuart Elphinstone : Account of the Kingdom of Caubul and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary and India
'S. finishes the plays of Aeschylus - finishes the Hist. of Caubul - writes - reads three chap. of Gibbon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'S. finishes the plays of Aeschylus - finishes the Hist. of Caubul - writes - reads three chap. of Gibbon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Shelley writes - reads Plato's Convivium - Gibbon aloud - Read several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [Plays, with Fletcher]
'Shelley writes - reads Plato's Convivium - Gibbon aloud - Read several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [Plays]
'Read a little of Tacitus - Several of Beaumont and Fletchers Plays - S. reads Volpone and the Alchymist aloud and begins Lalla Rookh'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Hyde (1st Earl of Clarendon) : The True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'I am reading Clarendon's Hist. Rebell. at present with which I am more pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry George Bohn : unknown
'It is necessary to explain, O Argive youth, that I have been reading the translations of Bohn, cunningly written with a reed upon the well-prepared tablets'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Contes Drolatiques
'... et lisais les Contes Drolatiqe de nostre feu Maistre de Balzac ...' [and I was reading the amusing stories of our master Balzac]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Crime and Punishment
'I do not think "Romance" is good. In fact it isn?t & I don?t care who knows it. Ever read Dostoevsky?s "Crime and Punishment"? English translation damnable; but it is a novel. I?m just reading it again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Whom God Hath Joined
'. . . every evening after dinner he read "Whom God Hath Joined" . . . to Agnes and me. [Eleanor Green] I remember objecting to the daughter in the book, giving her father away . . . and having a heated argument with the author in consequence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: or published book?
Bart Kennedy : America Revisited
'What price Bart Kennedy on America in the Daily Mail?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Newspaper
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Maud; A Monodrama
?I have just been reading "Maud". Do not fear, dear; it has not been unpleasant to me; I see and know and accept all the limitations without a grudge.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [Plays, with Fletcher]
'Finish the 11th book of Tacitus - Read some of Beaumont & X Fletchers plays - work - S. write - reads some of the plays of Sophocles - & Antony & Cleopatra of Shakespeare and Othello aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'I am confined Teusday 2nd. Read Rhoda - Pastors Fire Side - Missionary - Wild Irish Girls - The Anaconda. Glenarvon - 1st Vol Percy's Northern antiquities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia
'Read Fielding's Amelia - Sir Launcelot Greaves. a little of Tacitus - Twopenny post bag.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Baruch de Spinoza : Tractatus Theologico-politicus
'write the trans. of Spinoza from S's dictation; translate Cupid & Psyche - read Tacitus and Rousseau's confessions'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare, with notes
'Read Lambs specimens.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare, with notes
'read Dante - finish Lambs specimens. walk to Mr Olliers. read Zapolya'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Address to the people on the death of the Princess Charlotte
'read Shelley's pamphlet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Zapolya: a Christmas tale in two parts
''read Dante - finish Lambs specimens. walk to Mr Olliers. read Zapolya'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles R. Maturin : Fatal Revenge; or the Family of Montorio
'read Family of Montorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles R. Maturin : Fatal Revenge; or the Family of Montorio
'Finish the Family of Montorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Laon and Cythna
'I read Tacitus - 3 of Hume's essays VIII IX X - some of the German theatre - write - walk - Shelleys [sic] reads Political Justice & 8 Cantos of his poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Laon and Cythna
'S. finishes reading his poem aloud. - read from the German theatre'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
'Struggling away at "Fables in Song" .'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Biographia Literaria; or Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions
'Shelley reads & finishes Coleridge's Liteerary [sic] life'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Berkeley : Works
'Shelley reads Berkeley'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Berkeley : Works
'S reads Berkeley and part of "Much ado about nothing["] aloud; read XI XII XIII Essays of Hume.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : The Night Walker, [or, the little Thiefe]
'Read the little thief - walk. S reads "France".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Read Tacitus and Hume. S reads Gibbon - read G[e]orgics - 194'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa
'Read 2nd book of the Aeneid - read Dr Clarke's travels'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer
'Read Tacitus - Clarke's travels & Guy Mannering - S reads Gibbon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer
'Finish Annals of Tacitus - begin Terence - read Guy Mannering'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Daniel Clarke : Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa
'Read part of the 7th book of Virgil - walk - finish the 3rd vol of Clarke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'S reads Gibbon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'read Sterne & the 2nd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : [probably] Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'read Sterne & the 2nd Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'Read Tristram Shandy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Frank Harris : The Bomb
'Orage has sent me your communication as to Frank Harris. Naturally I was the reviewer. Harris was much moved by the review, & came down to see me. He is certainly one of the most extraordinary men I ever met.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Edward Garnett : review of 'The Old Wives' Tale'
'Dear Edward Garnett, (For I suppose it is you who have written the very masterly review of my novel in the Nation.)...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Mrs Laurence Binyon : Nineteenth Century Prose
'Do you know the prose of Wilfred Whitten? If not read pp. 229-30 of Mrs. Laurence Binyon?s Nineteenth Century Prose (Methuens, 1907).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Edward Garnett : introductions to novels by Turgenev
'Your introductions to Turgenev?s novels were an event in my history?if that interests you.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frank Harris : Shakespeare and his Love
'I made the mistake of reading your Shakespeare play before your Shakespeare criticism. So I had to read the play again. I cannot expertly criticize the critical book because I don?t know enough. . . . What of Coleridge I have ever had the patience to read is not to be compared to it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Frank Harris : The Man Shakespeare
'I made the mistake of reading your Shakespeare play before your Shakespeare criticism. So I had to read the play again. I cannot expertly criticize the critical book because I don?t know enough. . . . What of Coleridge I have ever had the patience to read is not to be compared to it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Frank Harris : Unpath'd Waters
'I got your book & letter this morning, & another letter on Friday. To my regret I have already swallowed the book, & as we go to Switzerland tomorrow . . . I write at once. I think the book in the main wonderful, & I read it greedily.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
El?mir Bourges : La Nef
'I violently disagree with you as to El?mir Bourges. I defy you to put your hand on your heart & say you have read the 'Nef' all through.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Scott was the first great writer to draw me under his spell - the first to open for me the golden gates of poetry and romance. I can well remember the time when, a mere child, I would spend my half-holidays over "Ivanhoe" and "the Lay of the Last Minstrel", seated in rapt silence on a hassock in my father's library, in our old house at Bristol. I can well remember, too, how I would carry fragments of these enthralling stories to my fellows at school, resolved, with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, to make them willing or unwilling partakers of my pleasure. The men and women of whom I read and told were real figures to us then; and in the organization of our little school we lived out a kind of chivalrous life, even emulating, to the no small alarm of our elders, the scenes on sherwood forest, and the achievements at ashby-de-la-Zouche.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
'Scott was the first great writer to draw me under his spell - the first to open for me the golden gates of poetry and romance. I can well remember the time when, a mere child, I would spend my half-holidays over "Ivanhoe" and "the Lay of the Last Minstrel", seated in rapt silence on a hassock in my father's library, in our old house at Bristol. I can well remember, too, how I would carry fragments of these enthralling stories to my fellows at school, resolved, with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, to make them willing or unwilling partakers of my pleasure. The men and women of whom I read and told were real figures to us then; and in the organization of our little school we lived out a kind of chivalrous life, even emulating, to the no small alarm of our elders, the scenes on sherwood forest, and the achievements at ashby-de-la-Zouche.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
'Read Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey - Zadig and Clarke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, A
'Read Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey - Zadig and Clarke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Read Clarke & 1st vol of Rob. Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Finish Rob. Roy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Giaour, The: a fragment of a Turkish tale
'Read the Giaur[sic] & the Corsair'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Corsair, The: a tale
'Read the Giaur[sic] & the Corsair'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara: a tale
'Read Lara'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [critique of Rhododaphne]
'Copy S's critique on Rhododaphne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Brome : Jovial Crew, A; or the Merry Beggars
'Read the merry beggars. Elvira'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Digby : Elvira; or, the worst not always true
'Read the merry beggars. Elvira'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pietro Antonio Serassi : La vita di Torquato Tasso
'Read Aminta with Shelley - he reads Vita del Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'Read Aminta with Shelley - he reads Vita del Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
Pietro Antonio Serassi : La vita di Torquato Tasso
'Shelley has finished the life of Tasso & reads Dante - read Pamela'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francoise Clarisse Manson : M?moires de Madame Manson, explicatifs de sa conduite dans le proc?s de l'assassinat de M. Fuald
'Clare reads the memoir of Madme Ma[n]son aloud to us'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Aristppe und einige seiner Zeitgenossen
'read Aristippus of Wieland - Shelley read[s] Rob Roy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Roby Roy
'read Aristippus of Wieland - Shelley read[s] Rob Roy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Experiments and considerations touching colours
'I to boat again and to my book; and having done that, I took another book, Mr Boyles of Colours, and there read where I left [28 April?], finding many fine things worthy [of] observation.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Experiments and considerations touching colours
'Being weary and almost blind with writing and reading so much today, I took boat at the Old Swan, and there up the River all alone, as high as Puttny almost; and then back again, all the way reading and finishing Mr Boyle's book of Colours, which is so Chymicall that I can understand but little of it, but understand enough to see that he is a most excellent man.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
George Cavendish : The life and death of Thomas Woolsey, Cardinal ... written by one of his own servants, being his gentleman usher
'And there finding them all at church, and thinking they dined as usual at Stepny, I turned back, having a good book in my hand (the Life of Cardinal Wolsey, wrote by his own servant), and to Ratcliffe'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Hydrostatical Paradoxes
'But I fell to read a book (Boyle's "Hydrostatickes") aloud in my chamber and let her talk till she was tired, and vexed that I would not hear her'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Roger L'Estrange [translator] : The visions of Don Francisco de Quevedo
'and then to my boat again and home, reading and making an end of the book I lately bought, a merry Satyre called "The Visions", translated from Spanish by Le Strange; wherein there are many pretty things, but the translation is, as to the rendering it in English expression, the best that I ever saw, it being impossible almost to conceive that it should be a translation.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Hydrostatical Paradoxes
'So I homeward, as long as it was light reading Mr Boyles book of "Hydrostatickes", which is a most excellent book as ever I read; and I will take much pains to understand him through if I can, the doctrine being very useful.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Edward Coke : The third part of the Institutes of the Laws of England: concerning High Treason, and other pleas of the Crown
'Up, and I to my chamber, and there all morning reading in my Lord Cooke's "Pleas of the Crowne", very fine noble reading.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : The second and third advice to a painter, for drawing the history of our navall actions, the last two years
'and so away presently very merry, and fell to reading of the several "Advices to a Painter", which made us good sport; and endeed are very witty'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Hydrostatical Paradoxes
'and so with very much pleasure down to Gravesend, all the way with extraordinary content reading of Boyl's "Hydrostatickes", which the more I read and understand, the more I admire as a most excellent piece of philosophy.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Hydrostatical Paradoxes
'and so walked to Barne Elmes, whither I sent Russell, reading of Mr Boyles "Hydrostatickes", which are of infinite delight.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Aristipp und einige Zeitgenossen
'Read 1st ode of Horace - Aristippe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen
'Read Les Abderites. S. finishes Aristippe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Geschichte der Abderiten
'Read Les Abderites. S. finishes Aristippe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Carlo Gozzi : La Zobeide
'Read and finish Gozzi's play of Zobeide'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Carlo Gozzi : L'amore delle tre melerance
'Read Il tre Melerancie of Gozzi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Frank Harris : The Man Shakespeare
'He [Frank Harris] has written a book drawing the character of Shakespeare from the plays. Part of it has been privately printed, & it seems to me the most remarkable exegetical work of the kind ever done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Cedric Sharpe : Song
'The receipt of your song gave me very great pleasure. I cannot criticize it. In fact it took me all my time to read it, as I cannot easily decipher musical MS.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet
Pierre Corneille : Le Cid
'Read 13 Canto of Ariosto - Le Cid - Horace of Corneille'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pierre Corneille : Horace
'Read 13 Canto of Ariosto - Le Cid - Horace of Corneille'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pierre Corneille : Cinna
'Read 14th Canto of Ariosto and Cinna of Corneille'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pierre Corneille : Polyeucte
'Read 15th Canto of Ariosto & the Polieucte of Corneille'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Read 16th Canto of Ariosto - Read Gibbon - S. reads the Memorabilia of Zenophon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'Read 25 Canto of Ariosto - Gibbon & 6 & 7 odes of Horace - S. reads the Lysistratae of Aristophanes - finishes Gibbon - and reads Hume's England in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Some considerations touching the style of the Holy Scriptures
'and then my wife and I to my chamber, where through the badness of my eyes she was forced to read to me, which she doth very well; and was Mr Boyle's discourse upon the Style of the Scripture, which is a very fine piece.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : Poems
'and so parted at the New Exchange, where I stayed reading Mrs Phillips's poems till my wife and Mercer called me to Mrs Pierce's by invitation to dinner'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : Directions to a painter for describing our naval business ... by an unknown author
'Only, here I met with a fourth "Advice to the painter", upon the coming in of the Dutch to the River and end of the war, that made my heart ake to read, it being too sharp and so true.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : Some considerations touching the style of the Holy Scriptures
'and then home and my wife read to me as last night, and so to bed'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Richard Rhodes : Flora's Vagaries
'and here I read the Qu's to Knepp while she answered me, through all her part of "Flora's Figarys", which was acted today' [She = Nell Gwyn]
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Helen with the High Hand
'There is only one trouble about the proofs. That is: the title is wrong. (This not your fault, but some copyist?s.) It ought to be Helen with the High Hand. I really want this "with". I cannot imagine how the mistake arose. I shall put headings to the chapters, as I think these make a book more readable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Codex
Ren Ghil : unknown
'I don?t see how poetry can be "orchestral". I have only read a few things of Ren? Ghil?s. I am all for Verhaeren.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Richard Garnet : The book of oaths ... very useful for all persons whatsoever, especially those that undertake any office of magistracy or publique employment
'and so away back home again, reading all the way the book of the Collection of Oaths in the several offices in this nation, which is worth a man's reading'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Sir Edward Coke : Institutes of the laws of England
'By and by I got him to read part of my Lord Cooke's chapter of Treason, which is mighty well worth reading and doth inform me in many things; and for aught I see, it is useful to know what these crimes are.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Moore Print: Book
Sir Robert Cotton : An answer to such motives as were offer'd by certain military-men to Prince Henry, inciting him to affect arms more than peace
'and so home and there to read and my wife to read to me out of Sir Rob Cotton's book about Warr; which is very fine, showing how the Kings of England have raised money heretofore upon the people, and how they have played upon the kings also.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Sir Robert Cotton : An answer to such motives as were offer'd by certain military-men to Prince Henry, inciting him to affect arms more than peace
'So home, and my wife to read to me in Sir R. Cotton's book of Warr, which is excellent reading; and perticularly I was mightily pleased this night in what we read about the little profit of honour this Kingdom ever gained in its greatest of its conquests abroad in France.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Sir Robert Cotton : An answer to such motives as were offer'd by certain military-men to Prince Henry, inciting him to affect arms more than peace
'He gone, I home; and there my wife made an end to me of Sir R. Cottons discourse of Warr, which is endeed a very fine book. So to supper and to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Sir Fulke Greville : Life of the renowned Sir Phillip Sidney
'Here was mighty good discourse, as there is alway; and among other things, my Lord Crew did turn to a place in the "Life of Sir Ph. Sidny", wrote by Sir Fulke Grevill, which doth fortell the present condition of this nation in relation to the Dutch, to the degree of prophecy; and is so remarkable that I am resolved to buy one of them, it being quite through a good discourse.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Crew Print: Book
Peter Heylyn : Cyprianus Anglicus, or The history of the life and death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
'I walked to the Temple and stayed at Starky's my bookseller's (looking over Dr Heylins new book of the life of Bishop Laud, a strange book of church history of his time) till Mr Wren comes by'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Abraham Wright : Five sermons in five several styles
'Going down I spent reading of the "Five Sermons of Five Several Styles"; worth comparing one with another, but I do think when all is done, that contrary to the design of the book, the Presbyterian style and the Independent are the best of the five for sermons to be preached in; this I do by the best of my present judgement think.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
'All right, I'll see what I can do. Before I could answer, I had to see the book; and my good father, after trying at all our libraries, bought it for me. I like the book; that is, some of it; and I'll try to lick up four or five pages for the "Fortnightly."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin : letter
'Jenkin wrote to say he would second me in such a nice little notelet. I shall go in for it (the Savile I mean) whether "V.H." is accepted or not, being now a man of means.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Peter Heylyn : Cyprianus Anglicus, or The history of the life and death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
'and then he to read to me the "Life of Archbishopp Laud", wrote by D. Heylin; which is a shrowd book, but that which I believe will do the Bishop in general no great good, but hurt - it pleads for so much Popish.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Gibson Print: Book
Richard Flecknoe [?] : A letter from a gentleman to the Hon. Ed. Howard, Esq.
'And so to dinner alone, having since church-time heard my boy read over Dryden's reply to Sir R Howard's answer about his "Essay of Poesy" - and a letter in answer to that, the last whereof is mighty silly in behalf of Howard.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Peter Heylyn : Cyprianus Anglicus, or The history of the life and death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
'and there I made my boy to read to me most of the night, to get through the "Life of the Archbishop of Caterbury".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Peter Heylyn : Cyprianus Anglicus, or The history of the life and death of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
'He gone, my wife and I to supper; and so she to read and made an end of the "Life of Archbishop Laud", which is worth reading, as informing a man plainly in the posture of the Church, and how the things of it were managed with the same self-interest and design that every other thing is, and have succeeded accordingly. So to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Renatus Descartes : Compendium: Renatus DesCartes excellent compendium of musick: By a Person of Honour
'making the boy read to me the life of Julius Caesar and Des Cartes book of music - the latter of which I understand not, nor think he did well that writ it, though a most learned man.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Robert Boyle : The origin of formes and qualities
'and there hired my wife to make an end of Boyles book of Forms tonight and tomorrow'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : The origin of formes and qualities
'and I spent all afternoon with my wife and W. Battelier talking and then making them read, and perticularly made an end of Mr Boyl's book of Formes, which I am glad to have over; and then fell to read a French discourse which he hath brought over with him for me, to invite the people of France to apply themselfs to Navigacion; which it doth do very well, and is certainly their interest, and what will undo us in a few years if the King of France goes on to fit up his Navy and encrease it and his trade, as he hath begun.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Robert Boyle : The origin of formes and qualities
'and I spent all afternoon with my wife and W. Battelier talking and then making them read, and perticularly made an end of Mr Boyl's book of Formes, which I am glad to have over; and then fell to read a French discourse which he hath brought over with him for me, to invite the people of France to apply themselfs to Navigacion; which it doth do very well, and is certainly their interest, and what will undo us in a few years if the King of France goes on to fit up his Navy and encrease it and his trade, as he hath begun.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: William Battelier Print: Book
Edward Chamberlayne : Angliae Notitia; or The present state of England: together with divers reflections upon the ancient state thereof
'and after supper, and W. Battler gone, my wife begun another book I lately bought, a new book called "The State of England", which promises well and is worth reading; and so after a while to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Sir William Coventry : [record of discourse upon business of Lord Clarendon]
'But by this discourse he was pleased to show me and read to me his account, which he hath kept by him under his own hand, of all his discourse and the King's answers to him upon the great business of my Lord Clarendon'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Coventry Manuscript: Unknown
Gregorio Leti : Il nipotismo di Roma: or The history of the Popes nephews from the time of Sixtus the IV to the death of the last Pope Alexander the VII. In two parts. Written originally in Italian, in the year 1667 and Englished by W.A.
'and then home and got my wife to read to me again in "The Nepotisme", which is very pleasant, and so to supper and to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Gregorio Leti : Il nipotismo di Roma: or The history of the Popes nephews from the time of Sixtus the IV to the death of the last Pope Alexander the VII. In two parts. Written originally in Italian, in the year 1667 and Englished by W.A.
'So home and to supper; and my wife to read, and Tom, my "Nipotisme", and then to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book
Gregorio Leti : Il nipotismo di Roma: or The history of the Popes nephews from the time of Sixtus the IV to the death of the last Pope Alexander the VII. In two parts. Written originally in Italian, in the year 1667 and Englished by W.A.
'So home and to supper; and my wife to read, and Tom, my "Nipotisme", and then to bed.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards Print: Book
Robert Wild : Upon the rebuilding the city ... the Lord Mayor and the noble company of bachelors dining with him, May 5th, 1669
'in the evening, my wife and I all alone, with the boy, by water up as high as Putney almost with the tide, and back again, neither staying, going nor coming; but talking and singing, and reading a foolish copy of verses up[on] my Lord Mayors entertaining of all the Bachelors, designed in praise to my Lord Mayor.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Unknown
Hermann Sudermann : The Song of Songs
'I have already [read] The Song of Songs , and commented on it, a long time ago. As to the translation let me tell you at once what I think. It is a bad translation . . . '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Andre Gide : Nouveaux Pr?textes
'I am particularly glad to have, from you, your new book, with its inscription. I thank you very much. For years I have known a number of your friends, and of course I have been reading your books for a long time; so that I feel that somehow we ought to have been acquainted before this. What pleases me particularly in a book like "The New Pretexts" (I had already read a great deal of it in reviews etc.) is the proof it offers that an artist is interesting himself in the daily guerrilla of literature.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Dr Peter Mark Roget : Thesaurus
'I send by parcel post two other jobs: One is "Roget?s Thesaurus". This is a book that I use every day, fairly roughly. Please bind it how you like, bearing this rough & constant usage in mind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus
'Read 37 Canto - Virgil - & Perigrine Proteus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus
'finish the first book of Horace's odes - S reads and translates Plato's Symposium - he reads Peregrinus Proteus and Hume's England aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : The Maides Tragedy
'S. translates the Symposium and reads the Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Philaster; or Love lyes a-bleeding
'Read 42nd Canto - Livy - Anacharsis. Horace - and Shakespears Coriolanus - S. translates the Symposium & reads Philaster'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : A King and No King
'S. translates the Symposium - & reads a king and no king'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Laws of Candy, The
'S. translates the Symposium - and reads a part of it to me - he reads the Laws of Candy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'Read 2nd act of the Aminta - read Livy Finish Anacharsis - Transcribe the Symposium - S. reads Herodotus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'Finish 3rd Book of Livy - Read 3rd act of the Aminta'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'Finish the Aminta - Read Livy - Transcribe the Symposium - Read the Revolt of Islam'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Revolt of Islam, The
'Finish the Aminta - Read Livy - Transcribe the Symposium - Read the Revolt of Islam'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Margery Kempe : The Book of Margery Kempe
'Written by a scribe named Salthows between 1140 and 1450, probably in Norfolk, [British Library] MS Add. 61823 is considered to be an early copy [of The Book of Margery Kempe] of the original written by Margery's second amanuensis; it was owned and extensively annotated by the Carthusians at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire. The most prolific of these annotators, using red ink and in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century hand, has inscribed both in the margins and between the lines, a lively, fascinating and fully-engaged reading of the Book.'
Century: 1450-1499 / 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Carthusian monks of Mount Grace Priory Manuscript: Unknown
Margery Kempe : The Book of Margery Kempe
'Written by a scribe named Salthows between 1140 and 1450, probably in Norfolk, [British Library] MS Add. 61823 is considered to be an early copy [of The Book of Margery Kempe] of the original written by Margery's second amanuensis; it was owned and extensively annotated by the Carthusians at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire. The most prolific of these annotators, using red ink and in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century hand, has inscribed both in the margins and between the lines, a lively, fascinating and fully-engaged reading of the Book.'
Century: 1450-1499 / 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
From Claire Clairmont's account of voyage back from Switzerland to England with P. B. Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin: 'Tuesday August 30th. [...] About four o'clock we [la]nded at Brissac a town in Baden -- [The] Watermen said they could not proceed with so strong a wind against us [...] but in about an hour they came with the news that the wind was changed & we hastened on Board -- Shelley reads aloud the Letters from Norway -- This is one of my very favorite Books -- The language is so [...] very flowing & Eloquent & it is altogether a beautiful Poem'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
From Claire Clairmont's account of voyage back from Switzerland to England with P. B. Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin: 'Wednesday August 31st. [...] Shelley reads aloud Letters from Norway -- Read King Lear a second time -- Reach Strasburg about eleven [pm]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
From Claire Clairmont's account of voyage back from Switzerland to England with P. B. Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin during 1814: 'Thursday September 1st. Rise at 3 -- Proceed to a little town and change boats again [...] Shelley finishes the Letter[s] from Norway aloud'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
'Thursday Sept. 15th. Read Emile -- Write i[n] my Common Place Book [...] Shelley reads us the Ancient Mariner [...] Read in the Excursion -- the Story of Margaret very beautiful.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Notes to Queen Mab
'Friday Sept. 16th. Rise at nine -- Breakfast -- Read Rasselas -- & De l'origine de l'inegalite [d]es Hommes' [...] Voisey at tea [...] Departs about 1/2 past ten -- Mary retires Shelley is writing to Papa & I am readin[g] the notes to Queen Mab when we hear Stones at the Window -- Look out & there is Charles.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara
'Saturday Sept. 17th [...] Dine at 1/2 past six [...] Shelley reads aloud the Curse of Kehama. They [i.e. P. B. Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin] go to Bed at ten. Sit up till [...] one writing [...] Read the Lara of Lord Byron.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Curse of Kehama
'Monday Sept. 19th. Rise late [...] Read the Curse of Kehama & Emile [...] Read the [S]orcerer & Political Justice. Admire the Sorcerer very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Robert Southey : The Curse of Kehama
'Saturday Sept. 17th. [...] Shelley reads aloud the Curse of Kehama.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'Tuesday Sept. 20th. Rise late [...] Read Emile [...] Dine at Seven -- Shelley reads aloud Thalaba till Bed time.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : The Monk
'Thursday Sept. 22nd. [...] Return [from walking] at [...] 4. Read Greek [...] Sit up till one reading the Monk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : The Monk
'Friday Sept. 23rd. Finish the Monk [...] Buy a Greek Anacreon [...] Read Greek [...] Shelley reads Thalaba aloud in the evening. Write a little Gre[ek] & learn four tenses of the Verb to strike'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'Friday Sept. 23rd. Finish the Monk [...] Buy a Greek Anacreon [...] Read Greek [...] Shelley reads Thalaba aloud in the evening. Write a little Gre[ek] & learn four tenses of the Verb to strike'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Matthew Gregory Lewis : Tales of Wonder
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff
''Tuesday Oct. 4th. [...] Read Alexy [...] Haimatoff twice through -- more delighted with it [...] In the Evening read Political Justice -- Sit up till twelve.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
''Wednesday Oct. 5th. [...] Read Political Justice Shelley reads aloud the Ancient Mariner. & Mad [...] Mother.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : letters
''Thursday Oct. 6th. [...] Read a little of Political Justice [...] Dine at six [...] After dinner [Shelley] reads part of St Godwin aloud -- terrible nonsense [...] Read some of Mary Wollstonecraft's letters in the Evening.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Edward du Bois : St Godwin: A Tale of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Century
''Thursday Oct. 6th. [...] Read a little of Political Justice [...] Dine at six [...] After dinner [Shelley] reads part of St Godwin aloud -- terrible nonsense [...] Read some of Mary Wollstonecraft's letters in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Zastrozzi
'Monday Oct -- 10th. Read Political Justice [...] sit up till twelve [...] Read through Zastrozzi -- by Shelley.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Memoirs
'Monday Oct -- 17 [...] Read Memoires de Voltaire by Himself'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Memoirs
'Wednesday Oct 19th [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff again -- read also Political Justice [...] In the Evening read Memoires of Voltaire by himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff
'Wednesday Oct 19th [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff again -- read also Political Justice [...] In the Evening read Memoires of Voltaire by himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Memoirs
'Wednesday Oct 19th [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff again -- read also Political Justice [...] In the Evening read Memoires of Voltaire by himself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Memoirs
'Thursday Oct -- 20th [...] After dinner read Political Justice [...] read Memoires of Voltaire -- & the Life of Alfieri till late [...] I am much delighted with Alfieri -- He seems to have possessed much genius & enthusiasm -- but certainly he was never very far from raving Mad -- the anecdotes of his infancy are delightful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Victor Alfieri : Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Victor Alfieri: Written by Himself
'Thursday Oct -- 20th [...] After dinner read Political Justice [...] read Memoires of Voltaire -- & the Life of Alfieri till late [...] I am much delighted with Alfieri -- He seems to have possessed much genius & enthusiasm -- but certainly he was never very far from raving Mad -- the anecdotes of his infancy are delightful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : She Stoops to Conquer
'Monday Oct. 24th. Rise at eight [...] M. reads aloud She stoops to [C]onquer -- She sets out to see Shelley at eleven -- I stay at home & read Political Justice'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff
'Saturday -- 29th. [...] Read Comus. & Prince Alexy Haimatoff'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab
'Sunday Oct 30th. [...] Dine at four. Read Comus. S[helley] & M[ary Wollstonecraft Godwin] go away in a coach at 1/2 past 8 [...] Sit up till ten reading Queen Mab'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab
'Sunday Oct 31st [...] Get up at nine. Breakfast. Read a Canto of Queen Mab & Louvet's Memoirs. I am much interested in Louvet -- but like all French men he is so intolerably full of himself & never lets the reader find out the merit he may possess [goes on to discuss this text further, before recording activities later in day] [...] Sit up till eleven reading Louvet's Memoirs. I never remember be more interested in any book [sic]. So many fine instances of individual republican spirits displayed -- so many generous Women -- such constancy in misfortune.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Mary-Anne Radcliffe : Manfrone; or, the One-handed Monk
'Friday Nov. 4th. Rise at nine. Finish a novel called Manfrone or the one handed monk by Mrs. Radcliffe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Thomas Jefferson Hogg : Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff
'Sunday Nov. 6th. Rise at nine [...] Read Prince Alexy Haimatoff & King Richard III [...] Dine at four.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : Paul and Virginia
'Tuesday Nov. 8th. Rise at nine -- Read through the Man of Feeling who would have just suited Fanny [Godwin] for a husband [...] [Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin] dines at two & goes to meet Shelley [...] Read Political Justice [...] Read Paul & Virginia -- in the Evening. I admire the descriptions [...] The Story is [...] in itself trifling & uninteresting -- the speeches and Characters are inflated and unnatural.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The History of Greece, from the Earliest State, to the Death of Alexander the Great
'Thursday Jany. 23rd. Do an Italian exercise & read some of Moore's Anacreon [...] Read Anarcharsis [...] Begin Goldsmith's History of Greece p.40.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Friday. Feb 6th. Look at Work. Read Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Saturday. Feb 7th. [...] Finish Rob Roy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Rev. Joseph Berrington : A Literary History of the Middle Ages
'Sunday Feb. 22. [...] Read Berrington's History of the Middle Ages.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'Friday Feb. 27th. [...] Read Tristram Shandy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Andr Gide : Isabelle
'Many thanks for your letter and the book. I read the book at once, d?un trait. This is praise, I think! It reminds me of "Dominique".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
?Friday. I have got on rather better with the ?Fables?; perhaps it won?t be a failure, though I still fear...Saturday...I just finished some of the deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton?s ?Fables?, that an intelligent editor ever shot into his waste paper basket.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
"Je relis 'Tom Jones'. En effet, c'est ?patant". [I am re-reading "Tom Jones". In fact, it is astonishing']
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Russell Lowell : unknown
'It may astonish you to learn that even thirty years ago?and more?"Harper?s" used to penetrate monthly into the savage wilderness of the Five Towns, and that the first literary essays I ever read were those of W.D. Howells and Russell Lowell.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Lucas : The Infernal Quixote: A Tale of the Day
'Monday May 24th. [...] Read the Infernal Quixote.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault-Lebrun : 'Tableaux de Societe'
'Saturday May 29th. [...] Read Tableau de Societe de P-- [...] Le Baune [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Morris Birbeck : Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois
'Thursday June 10th. set out from Rome to Livorno [...] Arrive at Livorno Aquila Nera Thursday 17th. [June]. Stay there a week. [...] Remove to Villetta Valsovano near Monte nero Read Cobbett's Journal in America Birbeck's Notes on the Illinois Nightmare Abbey & the Heart of MidLothian by Walter Scott.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'Thursday June 10th. set out from Rome to Livorno [...] Arrive at Livorno Aquila Nera Thursday 17th. [June]. Stay there a week. [...] Remove to Villetta Valsovano near Monte nero Read Cobbett's Journal in America Birbeck's Notes on the Illinois Nightmare Abbey & the Heart of MidLothian by Walter Scott.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : Los Cabellos de Absalon
'Sunday Jan. 2nd. 1820 Florence Read a little Spanish -- Los Cabellos de [...] Absalon de Calderon de la Barca.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan [Cantos I and II]
'Monday Jany. 3rd. [...] Read Don Juan. Read the Life of Plutarch.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : Los Cabellos de Absalon
'Thursday Jany 6. [...] Finish reading los Cabellos de Absalon of Calderon. Read the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Theseus
'Thursday Jany 6. [...] Finish reading los Cabellos de Absalon of Calderon. Read the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'Wednesday Jany -- 5th. [...] Read Mazeppa.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Vida es Sueno
'Friday Jany. 7th. [...] Read -- the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon. Finish the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Theseus
'Friday Jany. 7th. [...] Read -- the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon. Finish the Life of Theseus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Vida es Sueno
'Saturday Jany. 8th. Read the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon -- Begin the Life of Romulus [...] Work in the Evening while Shelley reads the Gospel of Mathew [sic] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Romulus
'Saturday Jany. 8th. Read the Auto of La Vida es Sueno de Calderon -- Begin the Life of Romulus [...] Work in the Evening while Shelley reads the Gospel of Mathew [sic] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Lives of Romulus and Lycurgus
'Sunday Jany. 9th. Finish the Life of Romulus and half that of Lycurgus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Lives of Lycurgus and Numa
'Tuesday Jany. 11th. Finish the Life of Lycurgus -- Begin that of Numa'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Lives of Numa and Solon
'Wednesday Jany. 12. [...] Read & finish the Life of Numa -- Begin Solon [makes notes from this reading]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Solon
'Thursday Jany. 13th. Finish the Life of Solon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Poplicola
'Friday Jany. 14th. Read the Life of Poplicola -- 'Saturday Jany. 15th. Finish the Life of Poplicola'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Themistocles
'Sunday Jany. 16th. [...] Read the Life of Themistocles which a beautiful monument to the glory & virtue of the Athenians [goes on to comment in detail on text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Camillus
'Monday Jany. 17th. Read the Life of Camillus -- 'Tuesday Jany. 18th. [...] Finish the Life of Camillus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Plutarch : Life of Pericles
'Friday Jany. 21st. Begin Life of Pericles.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger : Travels Before the Flood. An Interesting Oriental Record of Men and Manners in the Antidiluvian [sic] World; Interpreted in Fourteen Evening Conversations between the Caliph of Baghdad and His Court
'Friday Jany 28th. Rainy -- Read Irish Pamphlet & Travels before the Flood -- Also two chapters in Schlegel's Dramactic [sic] Criticism'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
[probably] August Wilhelm von Schlegel : [probably] A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
'Friday Jany 28th. Rainy -- Read Irish Pamphlet & Travels before the Flood -- Also two chapters in Schlegel's Dramactic [sic] Criticism'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand : De Buonaparte, des Bourbons, et de la necessite de se rallier a nos princes legitimes
'Saturday Jany. 29th. [...] Read another Irish Pamphlet -- also one of Chateaubriand's -- De Buonaparte et des Bourbons'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger : Travels before the Flood. An Interesting Oriental Record of Men and Manners in the Antidiluvian [sic] World; Interpreted in Fourteen Evening Conversations between the Caliph of Baghdad and His Court
'Saturday Feb. 5th. [...] Read Paine's Letter to the Abbe Raynal. Read Travels before the Flood which I like much [makes detailed notes on this text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger : Travels before the Flood. An Interesting Oriental Record of Men and Manners in the Antidiluvian [sic] World; Interpreted in Fourteen Evening Conversations between the Caliph of Baghdad and His Court
'Monday Feb. 7th. [...] Read and finish Paine's Letter to the Abbe Raynal the feeling of this letter I admire exceedingly -- it is truly cosmopolitan -- Finish the travels before the Flood.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Friday Feb. 11th. [...] Begin La Cisma de Ingalaterra de Calderon della Barca [...] In the Evening read [...] the second part of Paine's Rights of Man [goes on to comment on this].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Saturday Feb. 12th. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra de Calderon de la Barca. Finish the second part of Paine's Rights of Man [goes on to comment on this].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Wednesday Feb. 16th. [...] Read a little of La Cisma de Ingalaterra.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Saturday Feb. 19th. Read 1 Scene in the Cisma de Ingalaterra. Begin Davanzati's Tacitus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi : Tacito volgarizzato
'Saturday Feb. 19th. Read 1 Scene in the Cisma de Ingalaterra. Begin Davanzati's Tacitus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi : Tacito volgarizzato
'Monday Feb. 21st. Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra. Also a little of Davanzati's Tacitus [...] Read Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi : Tacito volgarizzato
'Monday Feb. 21st. Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra. Also a little of Davanzati's Tacitus [...] Read Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi : Tacito volgarizzato
'Read Davanzati's Tacitus' [entered in Claire Clairmont's 1820 Journal on 22, 24, 27 Feb and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19 March (reading begun 19 February); 'Read a little of Davanzati's Tacitus' entered on 18 March.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Wednesday Feb. 23rd. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra -- in which the Queen Catterine tells Henry that [...] Jane Seymour can sing, Ana Bolena dance and the Infanta Maria knows the elements of Moral Philosophy'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Cisma de Ingalaterra
'Thursday Feb. 24th. [...] Read La Cisma de Ingalaterra [...] Also a little of Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
David Erskine Baker : Biographica dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse: Containing Historical and Critical Memoirs, and Original Anecdotes, of British and Irish Dramatic Writers
'Monday March 13th. [...] Read Dramatic Biography [makes detailed notes from vol. I part i in this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
David Erskine Baker : Biographia dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse: Containing Historical and Critical Memoirs, and Original Anecdotes, of British and Irish Dramatic Writers
'Tuesday March 14th. [...] Read Dramatic Biography'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : The Woman Hater
'Saturday March 18th. [...] Read the Woman Hater of Beaumont & Fletcher. Excellent Spy scene which would apply to the present ministers.' [...] 'Sunday March 19th. [...] Finish Woman-Hater of Beaumont & Fletcher. '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Gabriel Brotier : Chronological Supplement
Reading of Brotier, Chronological Supplement [to de la Malle's Tacitus] recorded by Claire Clairmont on 4, 5, 6 April 1820.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Memoirs
'Wednesday April 5th. [...] Read Memoires of Voltaire written by himself [notes anecdote from this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Baron Felix de Bock : Les Chevaliers des sept montagnes, ou aventures arrivees dans le XIIIe siecle, du temps ou le tribunal secret avait sa plus grande influence, avec une notice sur l'etat ancien et actuel de ce tribunal
'Sunday April 9. [...] Begin the Germany of Tacitus. Read Les Chevaliers des Sept Montagnes by Baron Bock [notes anecdote from this]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
George Farquhar : Love and a Bottle
'Thursday April 13th. [...] Read Farquhar's Love & a Bottle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tam'd
'Wednesday April [...] 19 [...] Finish the fall of Sejanus by Ben Jonson begin the Woman's prize or the Tamer tam'd by Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tam'd
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : Wit at Several Weapons
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : Wit Without Money
'Saturday April 22nd. Read Woman's Prize or Tamer tam'd Wit at several weapons also Wit without money of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : A Tour through Sicily and Malta. In a Series of Letters to William Beckford
'Sunday April 23rd. [...] Read Brydone's Letters [...] from Sicily. [...] 'Monday April 24 [...] Read Brydone's Letters from Sicily & Malta which are most delightfully interesting. [...] 'Tuesday April 25th. Read Brydone's Letters. [...] 'Wednesday April 26th. [...] Finish Brydone's Letters from Sicily & Malta.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : The Noble Gentleman
'Thursday April 27th. [...] Read Noble Gentleman of Beaumont & Fletcher.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Caroline Wohlzogen : Agnes de Lilien
'Wednesday May 3rd. [...] Read Agnes de Lilien by the sister in law of Schiller which seems to me to be a stupid Book. [...] 'Friday May 5th. Finish Agnes de Lilien.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La Virgen del Sagrario
'Saturday May 6th. [...] Read a little of De la Virgen del Sagrario de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca [quotes three lines from Act I]' [readings from this text also recorded on 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 May 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
George Farquhar : plays
'Tuesday May 16th. [...] Read Plays by Farquhar.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Monday May 29th. [...] Read Rights of Woman.' [records of readings from this text also appear in entries for 31 May, and 1, 2, 3 June 1820, with 'Finish [...] Rights of Woman' recorded on 4 June].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
'Thursday [...] June 1st. [...] Read Letters from Norway. [...] 'Friday June 2nd. [...] Read Rights of Woman & Letters from Norway. [...] 'Sunday June 4th. [...] Finish Letters from Norway & Rights of Woman.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Thursday June 8th. [...] Read 1st Vol of Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. [...] 'Friday June 9th. [...] Read Ivanhoe [...] 'Saturday June 10th. [...] Finish Ivanhoe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
'Thursday June 15th. [...] Go in a Calesse to Casa Ricci at Livorno. Read Vicar of Wakefield'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'Friday June 16th. [...] Read Bride of Lammermoor.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : A Legend of Montrose
'Saturday June 17th. [...] Read A Legend of Montrose.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
'Sunday July 2nd. Do a latin Excercise [sic]. Read a little of the [...] Enead [quotes Book I line 33].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
'Tuesday July 4th. [...] Read Virgil -- Lines 100. Read Aristippe by Wieland. [...] 'Wednesday July 5th. [...] Read 40 lines of Virgil'. [Report 'Read Virgil' also appears in entries for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 July 1820]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen
'Tuesday July 4th. [...] Read Virgil -- Lines 100. Read Aristippe by Wieland.' [subsequent readings from Aristippe recorded in entries for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 July 1820]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Alexandre L. B. Robineau : Jerome Pointu: Comedie
'Sunday July 16th. [...] Read Barber of Seville & Jerome Pointu.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Comic Dramas, in Three Acts
'Wednesday July 19th. [...] Read Comic Dramas by Miss Edgeworth [...] Read Essay on Irish Bulls.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth and R.L. Edgeworth : Essay on Irish Bulls
'Wednesday July 19th. [...] Read Comic Dramas by Miss Edgeworth [...] Read Essay on Irish Bulls. [...] 'Friday July 21st. Finish Essay on Irish Bulls'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Homer : Iliad
'Wednesday July 26th. [...] Read 1 Book of Pope's Homer's Iliad.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Homer : Iliad
'Friday July 28th. [...] Read 2 Books of Pope's Homer's Iliad.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Homer : Iliad (Book IV)
'Saturday July 29th. [...] Read Book IV of Iliad.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Homer : Iliad (Book V)
'Sunday July 30th. [...] read [...] half the V Book of the Iliad. [...] 'Monday [...] July 31st. [...] Finish the V Book of the Iliad.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
'Read Livy - The Revolt of Islam - 1st Canto of Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Revolt of Islam, The
'Read Livy - The Revolt of Islam - 1st Canto of Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
'Read a part of the 7 canto of Tasso - Livy - Montaigne and Eustace -S. reads Theocritus and Richard III aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue
'Copy S's Eclogue - Read Horace'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Iliad of Homer / Odyssey of Homer
'Finish Troilus and Cressida - read 3 books of Pope's Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Bernardin de St Pierre : Paul et Virginie
'Read Pope's Homer - finish it - read Paul et Virginie'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Iliad of Homer / Odyssey of Homer
'Read Pope's Homer - finish it - read Paul et Virginie'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Prisoner of Chillon, The, and other poems
'Read Prisoner of Chillon &c. to Mrs G'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
'Mr G. read 18 Canto of Tasso to me - read the Symposium to Mrs G'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [Mr] Gisborne Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Myrrha
'Read 7 Canto's of Dante - Begin to translate A.[lfieri] - Read Cajo Graccho of Monti & Measure for Measure'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Otranto
'Teusday [sic] August 8th. Ill all day. I dream I see a ghost [this sentence inserted above line]. Bathe. Read Castle of Otranto & Caleb Williams.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Clara Reeve : The Old English Baron: A Gothic Story
'Monday August 7th. [...] Read old English Baron.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
'Wednesday August 16th. [...] Read Christabel & the Saggio Storico.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
'Saturday August 19th. [...] Do a Latin exercise from the Odyssey.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Caroline Barnard : The Parent's Offering; or Tales for Children
'Saturday August 19th. [...] Read Parents Offering. [...] Do a Latin exercise from the Odyssey.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Charles Brockden Brown : Ormond; or, the Secret Witness
'Friday Sept. 1st. Read Ormond.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Charlotte Brooke : Reliques of Irish Poetry: Consisting of Heroic Poems, Odes, Elegies and Songs, Translated into English Verse
''Friday Sept. 15th. [...] Read Irish Poetry translated by Miss Brooke'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Charlotte Brooke : Reliques of Irish Poetry: Consisting of Heroic Poems, Odes, Elegies and Songs, Translated into English Verse
'Wednesday Sept. 20th. [...] Read Miss Brooke's Irish poetry. [...] '[...] finish Miss Brooke's Irish poetry'. [goes on to reproduce passages from the following pieces in this book: 'Moira Borb: A poem'; 'Elegy to the Daughter of Owen'; 'Elegy'; 'Song for Mable Kelly. By Carolan.']
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Virgil : unknown
'Wednesday Sept. 27th. Do some Latin from Virgil [...] Finish Keats' Endymion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Arthur O'Connor, T. A. Emmett, and W. J. McNevin : Memoir on the Objects of the Societies of United Irishmen
'Friday October 13 [...] Read Memoirs of O'Connor'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Phaedrus : fables
'Monday October 23rd. Do a fable and a half of Phaedrus. [...] '[Tuesday] October -- 24th. Do 5 and a half fables from Phaedrus.' [further readings in this author recorded in entries for 27, 28, 30, 31 October; and 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17 November 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke : 'Political Works'
'[Tuesday] October -- 24th. [...] Read a little of Bolingbroke's Political Works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Pietro Giannone : Dell'Istoria civile del regno di Napoli
'Friday October 27th. [...] Begin Istoria Civile di Napoli da Ginannone.' [records of reading this text also appear in journal entries for 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 14 November 1820].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
'Saturday Nov. 11th. [...] Read the 1st. Act of Prometheus unbound.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Belfegor da Machiavelli : Novella piacevolissima
'Thursday Nov. 30th. [...] Read the [...] Novella of Belfegor da Macchivelli.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Petrarch : sonnets
'Thursday Dec. 14th. [...] I read today some sonnets of Petrarch in an old edition -- Not the least attention was paid there to the concord of the gender & number of the substantive with the article, besides (as in Dante) many other grammatical errors in the persons & cases of Verbs. But so it is -- Liberty is essential to the nature of Poetry [goes on to discuss this idea further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Henry Coxe : Picture of Italy: Being a Guide to the Antiquities and Curiosities of That Classical and Interesting Country
'Sunday Dec. [...] 17th. [...] Rainy day Read Cox's [sic] Guide to Italy -- Mary reads aloud 1st Canto of Tasso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : La Gerusalemme liberata
'Sunday Dec. [...] 17th. [...] Rainy day Read Cox's [sic] Guide to Italy -- Mary reads aloud 1st Canto of Tasso'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : De L'Allemagne
'[Tuesday] Dec. 26th. [...] Read Allemagne by Madame de Stael.' [readings from this text also recorded in journal entries for 27, 28, 29 December 1820; and 3 and 5 January 1821]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Karl Baron de la Motte-Fouque : Sintram and his Companions: A Romance
'Wednesday Jany 10th. [...] Read Sintram by Baron de la Motte Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Joseph Francois Michaud : Histoire des croisades
'[Tuesday] March 13th. [...] In the Evening read Das Lied von der Glocke [Schiller] and begin the History of the Crusades by Michaud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : L'Avaro Fastoso
'Thursday March 29th. [...] Read L'Avaro Fastoso di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Vedova Scaltra
'Friday April 27th. Birthday 23. [...] Because it is my Birthday I amuse myself [...] lest the day should appear to [sic] odious to me so I read Goldoni. La Vedova Scaltra e la famiglia dell'Antiquario.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Famiglia dell'antiquario
'Friday April 27th. Birthday 23. [...] Because it is my Birthday I amuse myself [...] lest the day should appear to odious to me so I read Goldoni. La Vedova Scaltra e la famiglia dell'Antiquario.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Cameriera Brillante
'Sunday April 29th. [...] Read La [...] Cameriera Brillante by Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Moglie saggia
'Monday April 30th. [...] Read La Moglie Saggia ed Il Feudataria da Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : Il Feudatario
'Monday April 30th. [...] Read La Moglie Saggia ed Il Feudataria [sic] da Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Buona moglie
'Wednesday May 2nd. [...] Read La Buona Moglie di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue : Possen, die Zeit beachtend, bey Gelegenheit des Ruckzungs der Franzosen. Seitenstuck zum Flussgott Nieman
'Wednesday May 16th. [...] Begin Seitenstuck zum Flussgitt Niemen von Kotzebue. [...] 'Sunday May 20th. [...] Finish Possen von [...] Kotzebue.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : La Donna volubile
'Friday May 18th. [...] Read the Donna Volubile by Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : L'Adulatore
'Sunday May 20th. Read L'Adulatore, di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Filippo
'Read the Filippo of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Polinice
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Antigone
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Rosmunda
'Read Rosmunda - Polinice & Antigone of Alfieri'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Virginia
'Read Livy - & the Virginia of Alfieri - walk out in the evening - after tea S. reads L'Allegro and il penseroso to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : [Plays]
'This is the Journal book of misfortunes - Read Livy - A great many of the plays of Alfieri - S writes - he reads Oedipus Tyrannos to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Volume IV
'S. calls on Lord B - He [presumably Shelley] reads the 4th Canto of Childe Harold'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Volume IV
'Read 4th Canto'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'Transcribe Mazeppa'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Ode on Venice'
'Finish transcribing Mazeppa - Copy the ode'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Vittorio Alfieri : Saul
'read Saul - S. reads Malthus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Agide
'Read Livy - Alfieri's Agide - S. reads Malthus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : [Tragedies]
'finish the trajedies of Alfieri - Walk out with S. He reads Malthus & Cymbeline aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : My Novel
'Stopped at home all the evening really fascinated with Bulwer's "My Novel", got in fact so excited with the story that I became unable quietly to read on regularly, but leaving the details for another time gloated over the plot, and the Finish.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : My Novel
'Came home read a little of my Novel smoked a Cigar and went quietly to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Martin Chuzzlewit
'I read aloud several pages of Martin Chuzzlewit & rather flattered myself I gave expression to the author's nicest sentiments. I was extremely pleased with myself & unanimously rewarded my exertions with a glass of gin & water and the Hardest manilla I could find my cigar case, after which I tried on the smoking cap Emma gave me on my birthday, looked in the glass & wondered I was not more distinguished then went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'Read a little of Dombey & Son which I had lent me last evening by Mr Reed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'Read for an hour or so & then turned into bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Hendrik Conscience : The Poor Gentleman
'Attended the reading of The Poor Gentleman & was very pleased with the gentlemanly manners of most of the Amateurs. Agreed to play Gruff old Humphrey Dobbin and suppose I must do it. It is not a pleasing character to sustain, but if Sir Richard Bramble is up in his part & gives the Cue well, every word Dobbin says is a Growl & if Dobbin growls well every sentence he speaks is a point.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: men Print: Book
Hendrik Conscience : The Poor Gentleman
'Attended a meeting of the Amateur Society in the evening when the Play to be performed was read throughout.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: men Print: Book
Hendrik Conscience : The Poor Gentleman
'Attended rehearsal a little business done amidst a great deal of noise, my companions in the performance are in general very rowdy gents, after the play had been read four or five & amongst them myself went to a restaurant (sic) where we had oysters and Old Tom &c. I got home about half past eleven.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: men Print: Book
George Coleman : The Heir at Law
'Spent a good deal of to day in reading "The Heir at Law" a Comedy proposed to be played by the Garrick Club. I have expressed an opinion that it is very suitable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Coleman : Heir at Law
'Went home with Messrs Reed & then got back to my quarters. Studied a little of my part in the Heir at Law, saw all was right in the Gaol & then went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Coleman : The Heir at Law
'Called upon Nield in the evening and after a walk we came to my quarters and read the Parts we have in The Heir at Law.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Coleman : The Heir at Law
'Called upon Nield in the evening and after a walk we came to my quarters and read the Parts we have in The Heir at Law.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Neild Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'as soon as he was gone I finished Cigar read a few Pages of "Tom Jones" & went to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Johann Georg Zimmermann : Solitude
'Read a chapter or two of Zimmermann on Solitude, and with that & ordinary business employed myself till four o clock.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Harriette : [letter]
'Called upon Joe & chatted for some time with him, read a letter which Harriette had sent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Manuscript: Letter
Edgar Allan Poe : [Allan Poe]
'Sat at home in the evening mourning over my face and lazily reading the improbabilities of Allan Poe, went to bed very early.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Night and Morning
'Spent the evening at home reading "Night & Morning".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Maturin : Women, ou Pour et Contre
'Read "Women" of Mathuerin [for Maturin] - the Fudge Family - Beppo &c. S. begins the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Beppo: a Venetian story
'Read "Women" of Mathuerin [for Maturin] - the Fudge Family - Beppo &c. S. begins the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham (The Black Dwarf, Old Mortality)
'Read the Black dwarf'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle
'Return to Este. read Mrs C. Smiths novel of Emmeline'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle
'Finish Emmeline - S. reads Joseph Andrews'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews
'Finish Emmeline - S. reads Joseph Andrews'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews
'Read Joseph Andrews'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews
'finish Joseph Andrews'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV
'Sleep at Bologna - S. reads 4th Canto aloud to me - read Montaigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Alain-Rene Lesage : Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
'Read Gil Blas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Sophie Ristaud Cottin : Claire d'Albe
'Read Livy - Claire d'Albe - Gilblas - walk in the gardens - S reads Livy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Alain-Rene Lesage : Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
'Finish Gil Blas - read Livy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Lines written among the Eugenean Hills'
'Read Livy - write out Shelley's poem'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Jean Charles Leonarde Simonde de Sismondi : Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age
'S reads Livy & Winkhelmann aloud - read Dante - And Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi : Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age
'Finish the Inferno of Dante & the 9th book of Livy - S & I read Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi : Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age
'finish Sismondi'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Dominque Dufour de Pradt : Du Congres de Vienne
'Sunday May 27th. [...] Read Congres de Vienne de M. Pradt.' [also records 'Read Congres de Vienne' on 28 May 1821, and 'Finish Congres de Vienne' on 4 June].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : Il Cavaliere di buon gusto
''Monday June 18th. Pack up [for departure to Pisa next day] [...] Read the Cavaliere del buon Gusto da Goldoni [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Abbot
'Sunday June 24th. [...] Read the Abbot by Walter Scott'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth : Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq. Begun by Himself and Concluded by His Daughter, Maria Edgeworth
'Wednesday July 11th. Read Edgeworth's Memoirs. [...] 'Thursday July 12th. [...] Read Life of Edgeworth -- I think their system seems to aim at making the mind satisfied with little.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonais
'[Tuesday] July 24th. Shelley comes to breakfast. Read Adonais.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Pietro Metastasio : [unknown]
'Read Metastasio - S. reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pietro Metastasio : [unknown]
'Read Metastasio - S. reads the Hist. P.[lay]s of Shakespeare'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
'[Tuesday] August 28th. Read Kenilworth -- [...] 'Wednesday August 29th. Read Kenilworth. [...] 'Thursday August 30th. Finish Kenilworth. Begin Anastasius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Francisco Gomez de Quivedo y Villegas : Suenos y discursos de verdades
'Read the vision of Quivedo'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Thursday Oct. 4th. [...] Finish Ivanhoe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : Vita di Vittorio Alfieri ... scritta da esso
[Mary's second reading list for 1818. Most volumes mentioned here are also mentioned in the journal so database entries are based on those references. An x denotes Percy Shelley having read the text too] 'M Clarke's Travels Hume's dissertation on the passions Tristram Shandy - Sentimental Journey Letters & c 2 vols of Montaigne Schlegel on the drama Oeuvres de Moliere Aristippes de Wieland French trans. of Lucian Mille et une nuits Tragedies de Voltaire Trajedies de Corneille x Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire x Voyages du jeune Anacharsis Ben Jonson's Comedies Pope's Homer Joseph Andrews - Gil Blas - x Corinne Faublas Italian Pamela x Aminta of Tasso Monti's Tragedies x Orlando Furioso Giurusalemme [sic] Liberata tragedies of Alfieri x Inferno of Dante Vita di Alfieri Latin x The Aenied [sic] Terence's Comedies 2 books of Horace 10 books of Livy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Etienne Francois de Lantier : Les Voyages d'Antenor en Grece et en Asie, avec des notions sur l'Egypte, manuscrit grec trouve a Herculaneum, traduit par E-F Lantier
'Since I left Rome I have read several books of Livy - Antenor - Clarissa Harlowe - The Spectator - a few novels - & am now reading the Bible & Lucan's Pharsalia - & Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Christoph Martin Wieland : Menander und Glycerion
'Saturday Nov. 3rd. [...] After dinner [...] begin Wieland's novel of Menander & Glycera.' [reading/translation of this text also recorded in journal entries for 4, 5, 6, 8, 25 November 1821, with 'Finish Wieland's Menander and Glycera' recorded on 8 December].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Robert Burns : 'Tam O' Shanter'
In journal entry for Sunday 18 November 1821, Claire Clairmont transcribes several lines from 'Tam O'Shanter,' and "Lament for James Earl of Glencairn,' both by Robert Burns.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Robert Burns : 'Lament for James Earl of Glencairn'
In journal entry for Sunday 18 November 1821, Claire Clairmont transcribes several lines from 'Tam O'Shanter,' and "Lament for James Earl of Glencairn,' both by Robert Burns.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy : Gabrielle de Vergy, tragedie
'Friday December 22nd. [...] Read the tragedy of Gabrielle de Vergy by Belloi and False Delicacy an English Comedy translated into French.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Antoine Marin Lemierre : Hypermnestre
'Saturday Dec. 29th. [...] read Hypermnestre a tragedy by M. le Mierre and Rhadamiste et Zenobie by I. Crebillon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon : Rhadamisthe et Zenobie
'Saturday Dec. 29th. [...] read Hypermnestre a tragedy by M. le Mierre and Rhadamiste et Zenobie by I. Crebillon [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : I Due Pantaloni o i mercantanti
'[Tuesday] March 26th. [...] Read in the Evening I Mercanti [sic] and Le Donne Curiose di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : Le Donne Curiose
'[Tuesday] March 26th. [...] Read in the Evening I Mercanti [sic] and Le Donne Curiose di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : Il Poeta Fanatico
'Friday March 28th. [...] Read Il Poeta Fanatico di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carlo Goldoni : Il Matrimonio per concorso
'Sunday March 31st. Read Il Matrimonio per Concorso di Goldoni.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Friedrich Heinrich Karl Baron de la Motte Fouque : Die Cypressenkranze
'Friday May [...] 27th. [...] After dinner read Die Cypressenkranze de la Baronne la Motte Fouque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Chretien-Hermann Gambs : Skold
'Monday May [...] 30th. [...] After dinner Mr. Gambs reads aloud his tale of Skold. It pleases me very much -- Its principal charm is the naturalness of [...] its descriptions [...] and the extreme variety of the style.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Chretien-Hermann Gambs : Moses (Cantos 3, 4, 5, 6)
'Wednesday [...] June 1st. [...] After dinner M. Gambs reads aloud the 3, 4, 5, and 6th. Canto of Moses [goes on to comment upon this text in detail].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Revolt of Islam
'Sunday June [...] 19th. [...] Read the Revolt of Islam with M.G. [i.e. friend Chretien-Hermann Gambs]'. [readings from this text also recorded in journal entries for 20 and 26 June; 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 17, 24 July; 4, 7, 18, 28, 29 August; 3, 4 September 1825, some in company with Gambs].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Chretien-Hermann Gambs : Lecture on Modern History
'Friday [...] August 4th. [...] Read Life of Gothe [sic], Lecture on Modern History by M. Gambs.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
Jean Francois Regnard : Le Distrait
'Friday August [...] 19th. [...] Read Le Distrait by Regnier [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Charles Rollin : unknown
'Wednesday Sept. [...] 14th. [...] After dinner play with the children, & read Rollin. After tea [...] read Catholic deputation with Mr. Gambs in Hessey & Taylor's Monthly Review.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'story of the Basket Woman'
'Monday September [...] 26th. [...] Read the story of the Basket Woman to Johnny.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Ernst Christoph von Houwald : Das Bild: Trauerspiel in funf Akten
'[Tuesday] September [...] 27th. [...] Read all the morning Das Bild von Houwald with Mr. G[ambs]. It is a charming tragedy in the romantic style and the novelty of the invention & yet its naturalness is delightful [goes on to quote at length from Act I scene 5].' [also records reading this text, with Chretien-Hermann Gambs, in journal entries for 28 and 29 September 1825]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Tarlton'
'Friday September [...] 30th. [...] After dinner read to Johnny the story of Tarlton.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Tarlton'
'Saturday October 1st. [...] Begin Voltaire's Life of Charles XII. [...] Read Tarlton to Johnny in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Voltaire : Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suede
'Saturday October 1st. [...] Begin Voltaire's Life of Charles XII. [...] Read Tarlton to Johnny in the Evening. [...] 'Sunday [...] October 2nd. read the life of Charles the XII. [...] 'Monday [...] October 3rd. [...] Finish reading Charles XII.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Carl Friedrich Becker : life of Charles XII
'[Tuesday] [...] Octbr. 4th. [...] Begin reading the History of Charles the XII by Becker in German.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan : Memoires sur la vie privee de Marie Antoinette, reine de France ... suivis de souvenirs et anecdotes historiques sur les regnes de Louis XIV, de Louis XV et de Louis XVI
'Sunday [...] Oct. 9th. [...] I pack up [for family's departure from holiday home, following death of a child] & read the whole day Memoirs of Madame Campan.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Tarlton'
'Saturday October [...] 22nd. [...] Read Tarlton to Johnny. Read the lives of the Saints.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Tarlton'
'Sunday October [...] 23rd. [...] Read Tarlton with Johnny.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'The Barring Out'
'Monday October [...] 24th. [...] Read Barring out with Johnny in the Evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner : Die Templer auf Cypern
'Friday October [...] 28th. [...] After dinner read a little of Werner's Templers with M. G[ambs]. but not much for I am very stupid with a bad head-ach [previous day's journal entry marked X for start of menstrual period].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : Paul et Virginie
'Sunday October [...] 30th. [...] Read Paul & Virginia.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Simple Susan'
'Monday [...] Nov. 7th. [...] sit upon the divan & read Simple Susan with Johnny & M. G.' [also records reading this text in journal entries for 8, 10, 11 November 1825, with 'After dinner read aloud & finished Simple Susan' recorded on 15 November].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Mademoiselle Panache'
'Saturday [...] Nov. 5th. [...] After dinner [...] sit upon the divan in Marie Ivanovna's cabinet & read Madlle. Panache to Johnny.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Rosamond: A Sequel to Early Lessons
'Thursday Nov. [...] 17th. [...] Read after dinner Rosamond to the children.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'The Nine Days' Wonder'
'Sunday Nov. [...] 20th. [...] Read to John Nine days' wonder. Begin reading Segur upon women.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Alexandre Joseph Pierre de Segur : Les Femmes, leur condition et leur influence dans l'ordre social chez differents peuples anciens et modernes
'Sunday Nov. [...] 20th. [...] Read to John Nine days' wonder. Begin reading Segur upon women.' [also records reading latter text in journal entries for 23 November 1825].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'The Black Lane'
'Thursday Nov. [...] 24th. [...] a letter came from Mr. Baxter with english books for John. Read a little of the Black Lane in Rosamond to him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Amand Gottfried Adolph Mullner : Die Schuld: Trauerspiel in vier Acten
'Wednesday Nov. [...] 30th. [...] After tea [...] begin Mullner's Schuld with M. G[ambs]. We are interrupted by M. Baxter who spends the Evening.' [also records reading this text, sometimes with Gambs, in journal entries for 1, 2, 6 ('read till dinner time Die Schuld which we begin over again'), 7 (transcribes passages) December 1825].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Mary Shelley : Letter to Claire Clairmont
'Wednesday Jan 5th ... Then we went a-shopping. I called at Lehnhold's [music publisher's where Clairmont received all mail] and found a letter from Mary. Got into the carriage and read it [...] We went to Levy's Magazine. I read my letter whilst the Princess [Galitzin] walked round the shop. In came a tall man [...] He stared at the Princess and then at my letter -- its black seal seemed to startle him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Manuscript: Letter
Mary Shelley : Letter to Claire Clairmont
'Wednesday Jan 5th ... Then we went a-shopping. I called at Lehnhold's [music publisher's where Clairmont received all mail] and found a letter from Mary. Got into the carriage and read it [...] We went to Levy's Magazine. I read my letter whilst the Princess [Galitzin] walked round the shop. In came a tall man [...] He stared at the Princess and then at my letter -- its black seal seemed to startle him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Manuscript: Letter
Andrew Lang : letter
?You can tell Lang this. I heard from him, and will answer soon.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon : Les Aventures de Telemaque
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, c. December 1816: 'I have finished "Telemaque," and have read one, or two of Racine's plays, which I like very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, c. December 1816: 'every one here declares against [Southey] allowing him very few beauties [...] for my part he is one of my favorite poets [...] Bum [aunt] is the only person who agreed with me, indeed she only read "Thalaba," but she thought it both beautiful, and descriptive'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Graham-Clarke Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Manoeuvring
Elizabeth Barrett to her mother, Mary Moulton-Barrett, c.1817 (originally in French): 'My very dear Mama / Excuse me, I do not at all like Manoeuvring, it is not to my taste. I recognize that it is still Miss Edgeworth, but it is no longer the author of Patronage in reality [...] I agree that Mr. Palmer is a charming character [...] except that one the novels you choose for me always give me pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
Elizabeth Barrett to her mother, Mary Moulton-Barrett, c.1817 (originally in French): 'I agree that Caroline [in Edgeworth's Patronage] is perfection. I admit that she is not entirely made to be a heroine [...] she has too much sense of mind. 'The few novels I have read confirm this thought -- for example, [in] Rob Roy -- the lofty and noble soul of Diana Vernon strikes us with admiration [...] she forgets womanly duties in the personality of a man; she is a heroine, Caroline is not [...] [when] she chooses to fill the character she sustains [with] grief for her parents [...] it pleased me greatly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
Elizabeth Barrett to her mother, Mary Moulton-Barrett, c.1817 (originally in French): 'I agree that Caroline [in Edgeworth's Patronage] is perfection. I admit that she is not entirely made to be a heroine [...] she has too much sense of mind. 'The few novels I have read confirm this thought -- for example, [in] Rob Roy -- the lofty and noble soul of Diana Vernon strikes us with admiration [...] she forgets womanly duties in the personality of a man; she is a heroine, Caroline is not [...] [when] she chooses to fill the character she sustains [with] grief for her parents [...] it pleased me greatly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Works including The Corsair
Elizabeth Barrett to her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, c. November 1817: 'I have been reading Lord Byrons Corsair &c how foolish I have been not to read them before they did not entertain me much as I have perused the extracts and the reviews on them [...] I think many of the passages exquisitely beautiful the parting of Conrad and Medora & the intercessory between the hero and Gulnare are in my humble opinion two of the MOST beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Reviews of the Corsair
Elizabeth Barrett to her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, c. November 1817: 'I have been reading Lord Byrons Corsair &c how foolish I have been not to read them before they did not entertain me much as I have perused the extracts and the reviews on them [...] I think many of the passages exquisitely beautiful the parting of Conrad and Medora & the intercessory between the hero and Gulnare are in my humble opinion two of the MOST beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Frances Sitwell : letter
?Your letter came this morning. I own I am troubled about its contents: I fear for your health, dear friend, in such an ordeal as that to which you propose to subject yourself. Be wise, for all people?s sakes; and if there be real fear, as I imagine, for your precious life, rather front the ugliest alternative.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Frederick Sylvester North Douglas : An Essay on Certain Points of Resemblance between the Ancient and Modern Greeks
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, November 1818: 'I have read "Douglas on the Modern Greeks." I think it a most amusing book ... I have not yet finished "Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations." An admirable work indeed ... I do not admire "Madame de Sevigne's letters," though the French is excellent [...] yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so entirely FRENCH, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure -- the last Canto of "Childe Harold" (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that I ever read [...] All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in those lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Marquise de Sevigne : Letters
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, November 1818: 'I have read "Douglas on the Modern Greeks." I think it a most amusing book ... I have not yet finished "Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations." An admirable work indeed ... I do not admire "Madame de Sevigne's letters," though the French is excellent [...] yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so entirely FRENCH, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure -- the last Canto of "Childe Harold" (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that I ever read [...] All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in those lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, November 1818: 'I have read "Douglas on the Modern Greeks." I think it a most amusing book ... I have not yet finished "Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations." An admirable work indeed ... I do not admire "Madame de Sevigne's letters," though the French is excellent [...] yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so entirely FRENCH, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure -- the last Canto of "Childe Harold" (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that I ever read [...] All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in those lines'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : "Simple Susan"
Arabella Moulton Barrett to her sister Elizabeth Barrett, c. August 1819: 'do you rememb'r simple susan and whim and contradiction I have just read them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Moulton-Barrett Print: Book
Cicero : unknown
Edward Moulton-Barrett to his sister Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 8 March 1823: 'We are now doing Cicero in the evening instead of doing Homer both morning and evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moulton-Barrett and boys at Charterhouse Print: Book
Homer : unknown
Edward Moulton-Barrett to his sister Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 8 March 1823: 'We are now doing Cicero in the evening instead of doing Homer both morning and evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moulton-Barrett and boys at Charterhouse Print: Book
George Robert Gleig : The Subaltern
Uvedale Price to Elizabeth Barrett, 20 December 1826: 'I will ask you [...] whether you have ever read the Subaltern? It is said, by military men to be a very exact as well as lively account of the D. of Wellington's campaign in the Pyrenees [...] a great part of it is interesting even to so unmilitary a man as myself [...] the whole account of the attack & capture of St Sebastian at the beginning of the work, is most striking in all its circumstances and & all its detail [goes on to make detailed commentary, focusing especially upon description of thunderstorm in chapter 3]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Uvedale Price Print: Book
Petronius : Satyricon
Elizabeth Barrett to Uvedale Price, 30 December 1826, in response to his remarks on the description of a storm in George Robert Greig's The Subaltern: 'There is undoubtedly a new combination of striking circumstances in your Capture of St Sebastian [...] I cannot however allow that sulphur is only mentioned in [italics]Homer[end italics] when I find this expressive passage in Petronius Arbiter [slightly misquotes two lines from the Satyricon, followed by further relevant quotes from William Chamberlayne, Pharonnida (III canto 3); Beattie, The Minstrel, I v.54, and Shakespeare's Tempest I.2.203-204] [...] 'After some searching, I have only found "the alarming impression of the storm, while yet collecting, on all animals" mentioned in Chatterton's Excellent Balade of Charitie, -- which I am sure you must think poetically excellent [quotes line from verse 5] [...] but here the cattle have had a more ordinary indication of the aproaching storm [i.e. falling rain] than your awful circumstances of close oppressive heat, praeternatural stillness & silence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "On Lord Lytton's Fables in Song"
?Morley has accepted the "Fables" and I have seen it in proof and think less of it than ever.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Proof of the article
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Remorse: a tragedy in five acts
'Read the Quarterly review & Remorse - an unhappy day - S. reads one act of the alchemist to the G[isborne]'s in the evening - read 2 Canto of the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Wife for a Month, The
'Write. Read Lucan & the wife for a Month - & 2 Cantos of Purgatorio with S. - he reads Philaster - & copies his tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Philaster, or Love Lies Bleeding
'Write. Read Lucan & the wife for a Month - & 2 Cantos of Purgatorio with S. - he reads Philaster - & copies his tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [Plays]
'S. reads Beaumonts & Fletchers plays - and the Revolt of Islam aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Revolt of Islam, The
'S. reads Beaumonts & Fletchers plays - and the Revolt of Islam aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Cenci, The
'Copy S's Tragedy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Beaumont : [Plays]
'Read Beaumont & Fletcher - Dante and Lucan - S. reads the Greek tragedians and Boccacio [sic] [...] He reads Paradise Lost aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'S. reads Bocaccio [sic] - The Greek Tragedians & Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
'Copy Shelleys Prometheus - work - read Beaumont & Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Beaumont : [Plays]
'Copy Shelleys Prometheus - work - read Beaumont & Fletcher's plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'S. reads Calderon with C.[harles] C.[lairmont] & Bocaccio [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley and Charles Clairmont Print: Book
[Francesco] Petrarch [Petrarco] : Il trionfo della Morte
'[Shelley] reads the Trionfe della Morte aloud in the evening & Calderon with C.[harles] C.[lairmont] & Mrs G.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'[Shelley] reads the Trionfe della Morte aloud in the evening & Calderon with C.[harles] C.[lairmont] & Mrs G.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley, Charles Clairmont and Mrs Gisborne Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : unknown
'I am reading Herbert Spencer just now very hard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : [probably] History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'Arrive at Florence - Read Massinger - S. begins Clarendon - reads Massinger - & Plato's Republic'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [unknown]
'Read Horace - work - S. reads B[eaumont] & F.[letcher] & Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Homer :
'Homer I adore as more than human and I never read Popes fine translation without feeling exalted above my self'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'S. finishes the 1st vol of Clarendon - Read the little Theif [sic]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'S reads Clarendon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Richard Johnson : The Famous Historie of the Seven Champions of Christendom
'At four and a half my great delight was poring over fairy phenomenons and the actions of necromancers -- & the seven champions of Christendom in "Popular tales" has beguiled many a weary hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Baruch Spinoza : [unknown]
'S. visits the galleries - writes - reads Spinosa - Clarendon aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Friedich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouque : Undine, eine Erzahlung
'Read 2 book of Horace - Read Undine & c - S. finishes the 3 vol of Carendon aloud & reads Peter Bell - he reads Plato's republic'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Peter Bell the Third
'Read Horace - work - finish copying Peter Bell which is sent'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Homer : The Iliad
'At 7 [...] I read the History of England and Rome -- at 8 I perused the History of Greece and it was at this age that I first found real delight in poetry -- "The Minstrel" Popes "Iliad"[,] some parts of the "Odyssey" passages from "Paradise lost" selected by my dearest Mama and some of Shakespeares plays among which were "The Tempest," "Othello," and a few historical dramatic pieces constituted my studies!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
'At 7 [...] I read the History of England and Rome -- at 8 I perused the History of Greece and it was at this age that I first found real delight in poetry -- "The Minstrel" Popes "Iliad"[,] some parts of the "Odyssey" passages from "Paradise lost" selected by my dearest Mama and some of Shakespeares plays among which were "The Tempest," "Othello," and a few historical dramatic pieces constituted my studies!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : Lettres
'Read Horace and Lettres de Sevigne'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : Lettres
'I read little else than Madame de Sevignes letters - Shelley reads St Luke aloud to us - & to himself the New Testament'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La devocion de la Cruz
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : El Purgatorio de San Patricio
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Homer : unknown
'During these eight months [of striving for literary fame, aged eleven] I never felt myself of ore consequence or had a better opinion of my own talents -- In short I was in infinite danger of being as vain as I was inexperienced! During this dangerous period I was from home & the fever of a heated imagination was perhaps increased by the intoxicating gai[e]ties of a watering place Ramsgate where we then were and where I commenced my poem "The Battle of Marathon" [...] When we came home one day after having written a page of poetry which I considered models of beauty I ran downstairs to the library to seek Popes Homer in order to compare them that I might enjoy my OWN SUPERIORITY [...] I brought Homer up in triumph & read first my own Poem & afterwards began to compare -- I read fifty lines from the glorious Father of the lyre -- It was enough -- I felt the whole extent of my own immense & mortifying inferiority -- 'My first impulse was to throw with mingled feelings of contempt & anguish my composition on the floor -- my next to burst into tears! & I wept for an hour and then returned to reason and humility [...] From this period for a twelvemonth I could find no pleasure in any book but Homer. I read & longed to read again and tho I had it nearly by heart I still found new beauties & fresh enchantments'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : Los cabellos de Absalon
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Homer : unknown
'During these eight months [of striving for literary fame, aged eleven] I never felt myself of ore consequence or had a better opinion of my own talents -- In short I was in infinite danger of being as vain as I was inexperienced! During this dangerous period I was from home & the fever of a heated imagination was perhaps increased by the intoxicating gai[e]ties of a watering place Ramsgate where we then were and where I commenced my poem "The Battle of Marathon" [...] When we came home one day after having written a page of poetry which I considered models of beauty I ran downstairs to the library to seek Popes Homer in order to compare them that I might enjoy my OWN SUPERIORITY [...] I brought Homer up in triumph & read first my own Poem & afterwards began to compare -- I read fifty lines from the glorious Father of the lyre -- It was enough -- I felt the whole extent of my own immense & mortifying inferiority -- 'My first impulse was to throw with mingled feelings of contempt & anguish my composition on the floor -- my next to burst into tears! & I wept for an hour and then returned to reason and humility [...] From this period for a twelvemonth I could find no pleasure in any book but Homer. I read & longed to read again and tho I had it nearly by heart I still found new beauties & fresh enchantments'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : La cisma de Ingilterra
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : El principe constante
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : Cypriano
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : El magico prodigioso
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : Los dos amantes del cielo
[Mary Shelley's Reading List of Percy Shelley's reading, 1819. Most texts are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] 'Greek The Greek Tragedians Homers Iliad and Odyssey Plato's Republic Several of Plutarch's lives The Memorabilia of Xenophon Madame de Stael sur la Revolution Francaise Calderon - Several of the tragedies and Auto's'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Homer : unknown
'This year [when aged twelve] I read Milton for the first time [italics]thro[end italics] together with Shakespeare & Pope's Homer [...] I now read to gain idea's [sic] not to indulge my fancy and I studied the works of those critics whose attention was directed to my favorite authors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Homer : unknown
'At this period [aged thirteen] I perused all modern authors who had any claim to superior merit & poetic excellence. I was familiar with Shakespeare Milton Homer and Virgil Locke Hooker Pope -- I read Homer in the original with delight inexpressible together with Virgil.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Virgil : unknown
'At this period [aged thirteen] I perused all modern authors who had any claim to superior merit & poetic excellence. I was familiar with Shakespeare Milton Homer and Virgil Locke Hooker Pope -- I read Homer in the original with delight inexpressible together with Virgil.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Cicero : unknown
'we each [Elizabeth Barrett and her brother Edward] are blessed with abilities -- my dear Bro's are more solid & more profound -- mine are more refined & dazzling [...] He delights in the sober reasoning of the Historian! He feels greater interest in the noble Sallust while I have remained entranced over a page of the divine & animated Cicero!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Eliot : Middlemarch
'Have you yet seen Middlemarch? You would not be quite so unsophisticated a visitor to Rome as Miss Brooke.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Anley : Miriam; Or, the Power of Truth
Elizabeth Barrett to Henrietta Moulton-Barrett, from Eastnor Castle, 23-24 February 1827: 'As we were going down the stairs yesterday Lady M. said to me -- "I am reading a little book now called "Miriam"-- if you should happen to meet with it you will find in its early part, one page which puts me strongly in mind of you -- of your character -- but you shall not see it [italics]here[end italics]." I did not know what to say, but felt very uncomfortable & looked very foolish -- promising myself to lay hold of "Miriam" & of Lady Margaret's opinion respecting me, at the first opportunity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Margaret Maria Cocks Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harry and Lucy
Henrietta Moulton-Barrett to Elizabeth Barrett, 24 February 1827: 'About an hour after your departure [for Eastnor Castle on 23 February] [...] I was sitting alone in the morning room reading Harry & Lucy I was startled by the wheels of a carriage, turned round! who should it be but Lady Knowles, of course I ran away, this was about half past four, what a time to pay a morning visit!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henrietta Moulton-Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : 'A Day of Pleasure at Malvern'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 March 1827: 'I thanked you, in my last note, for sending me your works, -- & now, having read them, I have it in my power to thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me. As you desire me to mention which of the two poems on the calamity at Malvern, I prefer, I will frankly select the [italics]first[end italics], tho' the "Malvern tale" has many lines that interest me, together with a smoothness of versification which is common in your writings. Your prologue & epilogue to St Gregory's poems are elegant; & your preface to that translation, attractive on several accounts. I am not ungrateful to the [italics]Elegy[end italics]: but were I to say on what page I linger longest, I think I should turn at once to your translation from the [italics]Electra[end italics].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : A Malvern Tale
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 March 1827: 'I thanked you, in my last note, for sending me your works, -- & now, having read them, I have it in my power to thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me. As you desire me to mention which of the two poems on the calamity at Malvern, I prefer, I will frankly select the [italics]first[end italics], tho' the "Malvern tale" has many lines that interest me, together with a smoothness of versification which is common in your writings. Your prologue & epilogue to St Gregory's poems are elegant; & your preface to that translation, attractive on several accounts. I am not ungrateful to the [italics]Elegy[end italics]: but were I to say on what page I linger longest, I think I should turn at once to your translation from the [italics]Electra[end italics].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Prologue and Epilogue to poems of St Gregory
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 March 1827: 'I thanked you, in my last note, for sending me your works, -- & now, having read them, I have it in my power to thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me. As you desire me to mention which of the two poems on the calamity at Malvern, I prefer, I will frankly select the [italics]first[end italics], tho' the "Malvern tale" has many lines that interest me, together with a smoothness of versification which is common in your writings. Your prologue & epilogue to St Gregory's poems are elegant; & your preface to that translation, attractive on several accounts. I am not ungrateful to the [italics]Elegy[end italics]: but were I to say on what page I linger longest, I think I should turn at once to your translation from the [italics]Electra[end italics].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : 'Elegy'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 March 1827: 'I thanked you, in my last note, for sending me your works, -- & now, having read them, I have it in my power to thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me. As you desire me to mention which of the two poems on the calamity at Malvern, I prefer, I will frankly select the [italics]first[end italics], tho' the "Malvern tale" has many lines that interest me, together with a smoothness of versification which is common in your writings. Your prologue & epilogue to St Gregory's poems are elegant; & your preface to that translation, attractive on several accounts. I am not ungrateful to the [italics]Elegy[end italics]: but were I to say on what page I linger longest, I think I should turn at once to your translation from the [italics]Electra[end italics].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Translation from Sophocles' Electra
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 March 1827: 'I thanked you, in my last note, for sending me your works, -- & now, having read them, I have it in my power to thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me. As you desire me to mention which of the two poems on the calamity at Malvern, I prefer, I will frankly select the [italics]first[end italics], tho' the "Malvern tale" has many lines that interest me, together with a smoothness of versification which is common in your writings. Your prologue & epilogue to St Gregory's poems are elegant; & your preface to that translation, attractive on several accounts. I am not ungrateful to the [italics]Elegy[end italics]: but were I to say on what page I linger longest, I think I should turn at once to your translation from the [italics]Electra[end italics].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Reflections on the Atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, September 1827: 'I am [...] obliged to you for sending me your work on the Atonement [...] I have read your book with sincere respect both for your ability as a disputant & your elevated feelings as a Christian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Select Passages from the Writings of St Chrysostom, St Gregory Nazianzen, and St Basil
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 3 November 1827: 'You have extremely obliged me by lending me your Select Translations, -- passages from which, I have repeatedly read with increasing delight & admiration: particularly the Oration on Eutropius, which is a picture in motion , -- & that [italics]Homeric[end italics] description of a battle, contained in your extract from the 6th book of St Chrysostom "On the Priesthood".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : The Botanic Garden, a Poem
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, March 1828: 'I send you three notices of my poem [An Essay on Mind] [...] They are the only ones I have [italics]seen[end italics] [...] The flat contradiction between the Eclectic Review & Literary Gazette, with respect to [italics]Akenside[end italics], will amuse you [...] I was put out of humour for at least ten minutes, by the charge of my having imitated Darwin. I never could [italics]bear[end italics] Darwin! I have tried his Botanic Garden four or five times, & never could get thro' above twenty pages!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'S. reads D.[on] Juan aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'Read Don Juan'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'Read Livy - work - Read Mazeppa - S. reads Sophocles - & St Mathew [sic] aloud to me - Translate S.[pinoza]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Baruch Spinoza : Tractatus Theologico-politicus
'Read Livy - work - Read Mazeppa - S. reads Sophocles - & St Mathew [sic] aloud to me - Translate S.[pinoza]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Baruch Spinoza : Tractatus Theologico-politicus
'Translate S...a [Spinoza] with Shelley - He read [sic] Sophocles and the Bible - & King John & First Part Henry IV aloud. - Finish 31st book of Livy - Finish Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Solomon's Song'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and Percy Shelley Print: Book
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger : Reisen vor der Sundfluth
'Read Travels before the flood'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger : Reisen vor der Sundfluth
'Finish Travels before the flood'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices Publick Benefits
'Finish Julie. Read the Fable of the Bees.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Bartolome de las Casas : Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias
'[Shelley] finishes reading Isaiah to me & begins Jeremiah - He reads Las Casas on the Indies - Eschylus & Athenaeus'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Bartolome Las Casas : Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias
'S reads Las Casas & Jeremiah aloud. read the F. of the bees'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices Publick Benefits
'S reads Las Casas & Jeremiah aloud. read the F. of the bees'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Bartolomeo de las Casas : Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias
'Read Livy & the F. of the Bees. Read Las Casas - S. reads Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices Publick Benefits
'Finish Fable of the Bees - Read Catiline's Conspiracy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d' Argens : Lettres cabalistiques, ou correspondance philosophique, historique & critique, entre deux cabalistes, divers esprits elementaires & le Seigneur Astaroth
'Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza] with Shelley - Read Lettres Cabalistiques - S. finishes the Leviathan of Hobbes. reads the Bible aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d' Argens : Lettres cabalistiques, ou correspondance philosophique, historique & critique, entre deux cabalistes, divers esprits elementaires & le Seigneur Astaroth
'Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza]. Read Lettres Cabalistiques - S. reads Ezechiel aloud. Reads Political Justice -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Lady Mary Shepherd : Essays on the Perception of an External Universe
Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Mary Shepherd, c.July 1828: 'I am reduced to the necessity of offering my [italics]written[end italics] but warm thanks, for the valuable present, left for me by your Ladyship -- I have read several parts of the Essays with a [italics]curious[end italics] pleasure -- several with an entire mental satisfaction: and I have everywhere admired the originality, brilliancy, & power, which, -- whether your Ladyship's positions be questionable or the contrary, -- undeniably distinguish your mode of supporting them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : [unknown]
'Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza] - S. reads 1 1/2 Virgil aloud - he reads Political Justice - Read Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Henrietta Muschett : poem
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 11 July 1828: 'I will [italics]not[end italics] keep Miss Muschett's poem, -- notwithstanding your kind permission [...] My general impression of the poem is this, -- that it is very elegantly & feelingly & pleasingly written; but it is deficient in harmony, and the ideas seem to me to be diluted by a [italics]wordiness[end italics] in the expression [...] I like the 20th and 21st stanzas best.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : 'elegy'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 'Saturday Night,' 2 August 1828: 'It is late for me to be writing, -- but I have this moment received your elegy, -- & I do not wish our servant to go tomorrow [...] without taking a few lines from me on the subject [...] for its has [italics]particularly pleased me[end italics] [goes on to discuss in detail]'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Thoughts on an Illustrious Exile
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 26-27 September 1828: 'On opening your book to look for Joan of Arc, I came upon your translation of the beautiful episode in the Georgics [i.e. "The Death of Orpheus and Eurydice"] [...] Did I not once tell you how much I admired this translation? I believe I did -- but I must say it over again.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Heliodorus : Aethiopica
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 May 1829: 'I return Heliodorus, -- & [italics]keep[end italics] many pleasant recollections of him. The lamentation of Chariclia on the death of Calasiris, at page 171. book 7., appears to me the most [italics]eloquent[end italics] passage in the work [goes on to cite and discuss other passages]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : notes to the Agamemnon
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 May 1829: 'I never learnt anything about the rule [...] of the Greek Article, -- except what I learnt from [italics]you[end italics]: first, from your notes to the Agamemnon, & Select passages; & secondly, & more fully & clearly, from your essays in Dr Clarkes commentary.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : 'Essay on the Greek Article'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 May 1829: 'I never learnt anything about the rule [...] of the Greek Article, -- except what I learnt from [italics]you[end italics]: first, from your notes to the Agamemnon, & Select passages; & secondly, & more fully & clearly, from your essays in Dr Clarkes commentary.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Gregory Nazianzen : In laudem virginitatis
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 16 May 1829: 'I have actually & absolutely finished the seven hundred & thirty one lines of Gregory Nazianzen's poem In laudem virginitatis. It will be impossible for me to forget the exact number, as long as I live! I began the poem with the very best intentions of being pleased & interested. At the end of two hundred lines, my Patience became restless & uncomfortable, but took courage & toiled on; & then grew feverish & spasmodically affected, -- & finally sank under accumulations of dulness & dryness & heaviness & tediousness & lengthiness, between the 400th & 500th lines [goes on to discuss piece critically and in detail].]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : 'treatise on Geology'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 'Tuesday Evening,' October 1829: 'With regard to your treatise on Geology, I will say nothing about the science of it, for fear you should laugh at me, in which case I should not have even the satisfaction of complaining of your injustice. I assure you I have read it quite thro', & more than once [goes on to cite specific passages].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Greek epitaph 'On the death of a favourite Tom Cat'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, Monday 28 December 1829, thanking him for his epitaph on a cat, and following critical appraisal of it: 'You told me never to read anything of yours to anybody, because I read so badly. Notwithstanding this, I did transgress on Saturday by reading your [italics]feline[end italics] epitaph to Bro, because I thought it sounded better when read in [italics]our[end italics] way, than Carthusianly, as he would have read it. And as I read really very slowly (for [italics]me[end italics]!) & distinctly [...] you need not bewail yourself nor be severe upon me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Hugh Stuart Boyd : Annotations to St Chrysostom, 'In Epistolarum primam ad Corinthos'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 16 January 1830: 'Chrysostom has been staggering me lately by his commentary on those passages of the Epistles to the Corinthians, which relate to the Lord's Supper. I have felt every now & then, that he [italics]must[end italics] hold transubstantiation, -- & then I look at your pencil marks upon those very passages, & recollect your opinion of his holding no such doctrine -- & then I am in perplexity'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet : Vie de voltaire par le Marquis de Condorcet; suivie des memoires de Voltaire, ecrits par lui-meme
'Read Macchiavelli Hist. of Castruccio Castracani - Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza]. S. reads a part of 4th B. of the Aenied aloud - read Condorcet's life of Voltaire - S. reads Locke.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet : Vie de voltaire par le Marquis de Condorcet; suivie des memoires de Voltaire, ecrits par lui-meme
'Translate Sxxxxxa - Read life of Voltaire. finish life of Castruccio. - S. reads Political Justice - finishes the 4th Book & all we mean to read of 5th book of Virgil - Visit at Casa Silva. S. reads Locke'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : Tour through Sicily and Malta. In a Series of Letters to William Beckford
'Finish Bridones travels - read Livy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Tragedy of Bonduca
'S reads Fletcher's Tragedy of Bonduca aloud to me in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Tragedy of Bonduca
'Read Robinson Crusoe. S. finishes the tragedy of Bonduca to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Tragedy of Thierry King of France and his Brother Theodoret
'Read Livy and R Crusoe - S. reads Phaedon having read Phaedrus - reads the tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Tragedy of Thierry King of France and his Brother Theodoret
'S finishes the Trajedy to me'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Henry Reveley : Encyclopaedia
'Write - read Astronomy - Finish Robinson Crusoe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Read Vind. of the Right of Woman'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Read and finnish [sic] Vind. of the Rights of Woman - finish Sand. & Merton'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Posthumous Works of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
'Finish 38th Book of Livy. read Post. Letters.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
'read Letters from Norway'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
'Finish Letters from No[r]way'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Mary: a fiction
'Read Livy - Mary - a fiction'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord (3rd series: The Bride of Lammermoor, A Legend of Montrose)
'Read Legend of Montrose - Indicators'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord (3rd series: The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose)
'Read the Bride of Lammermoor'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Read Ivanhoe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Finish Ivanhoe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield, The
'Read Vicar of Wakefield'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, A
'Read Sterne's Sentimental Journey'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line
'Read Livy - Mrs Macauly's hist. of England - Lucretius with S. - he reads Greek Romances & Ricciardetto aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : History of the Life of marcus Tullius Cicero
'Read Middletons Cicero'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the accession of James I to that of the Brunswick line
'Ciceros 2nd oration - Hist. of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the accession of James I to that of the Brunswick line
'S. begins Hist of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Richard Bentley : A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 21 January 1831: 'You will lend me Phalaris (will you not?) at some future time -- -- i have read it [italics]once[end italics] thro', -- yet, as there are many things [italics]in[end italics] the book which I should like to read oftener than once, I do not feel quite satisfied, & would bespeak a second loan [...] It is certainly a wonderful work, -- & less wonderful in the extent & depth of its learning, than in the felicity & aptitude & vivacity of that learning's application.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Sir William Blackstone : Commentaries on the Laws of England
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 1 June 1831: 'I recollect many years ago when I read one whole volume of Blackstone through, I also read a little treatise by a Mr Hawkins an INFINITE Tory, entitled "Reform in Parliament, the ruin of Parliament"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Hawkins : 'Reform of Parliament the Ruin of Parliament'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 1 June 1831: 'I recollect many years ago when I read one whole volume of Blackstone through, I also read a little treatise by a Mr Hawkins an INFINITE Tory, entitled "Reform in Parliament, the ruin of Parliament"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Sir Humphrey Davy : Consolation in Travail
Arabella Graham-Clarke to Henrietta Moulton-Barrett, 14 Deecmber 1830: 'Ba [Elizabeth Barrett] read the last work of Sir Humphrey Davey "Consolation in travail" It is philosophical and I think would amuse her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Erskine : The Garb of Old Gaul
'Then there is Mr Brand's lantern and his Highland cloak; and the tale of how he, John Brand, right royally attired in the garb of old Gaul, presented a nosegay of roses to the Queen of the Netherlands.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers Chapter 34
'You may be interested to hear that the Miss Jaffrays are reading: having only eyes and not a 'pair of patent double magnifying microscopes' (or whatever it was that dear Sam Weller said) ...
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Homer : Carmina Homerica
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 24 March 1832: 'When I had Payne Knight here, I took the trouble of counting the number of lines he has thought proper to leave out of his Homer. If I make no mistake, about 2500 lines are left out of his Iliad, and 1926, out of his Odyssey. Is not this atrox [horrible]?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : Corinne, ou L'Italie
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 9 June 1832: 'I have been reading thro' the eight first chapters of Genesis in Hebrew [...] As I knew the character[s] or something of the grammar before, I have not been fagging hard -- or indeed [italics]at all[end italics] -- for Papa would not let me do so. Instead of fagging, I have read Corinne for the third time, & admired it more than ever. It is an immortal book, & deserves to be read three score & ten times.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alessandro Manzoni : I Promessi Sposi
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, July 1832: 'I have read Hebrew regularly every day since I told you of my beginning Genesis, -- and I am now more than half way through Genesis, & begin to relax a little from the lexicon. From its being a primitive language it is very interesting in a philosophical point of view. I like to find the roots of words & ideas at the same time [...] I am glad I thought of having recourse to it, for if it had no other advantage, it has at least given a change of air to my mind. I have been reading besides, two Italian novels -- one by Manzani [sic], entitled the Betrothed, which, tho' heavy enough sometime, is very well written & very amiably written. The other is a continuation of the story, by a different & an unequal writer'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, July 1832: 'Poor Sir Walter Scott! You have heard that he is dying [...] The other night Papa read a passage from the Lady of the Lake to me; and I did not like to hear it. It sounded like something unnatural -- as if you were looking at a broken instrument, & hearing its sweetest music at the same time. [...] You know I am not an admirer of Sir Walter's poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Moulton-Barrett sr Print: Book
Frances Anne Kemble : Francis the First, an Historical Drama
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 July 1832: 'I have read Miss Fanny Kemble's tragedy [...] It seems to me to be a very clever & indeed surprising production as from the pen of a young person; but I think that from any other pen, it would not find readers. The dialogue is sometime very spirited & ably done; but the poetry is seldom good as poetry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : Pelham, or The Adventures of a Gentleman
Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 30 August 1832: 'As soon as breakfast is over, I read a chapter from the Hebrew Bible [...] and then I hear my brothers read Greek; at two we are so patriarchal as to dine: and afterwards I go out upon a donkey [...] & read Pelham, & do many idle things'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Euripedes : Orestes
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 2 November 1832: 'I am glad you have been reading Euripedes. I have looked at the passages you referred me to, in my Euripedes, -- and I observe that I have marked them all three. A pencil line of admiration is drawn along the whole margin of the scene you speak of, in the Orestes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Pindar : Odes
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 2 November 1832: 'I have read, since I spoke to you last about my Greek reading, the last line of the last ode of Pindar, & have again gone thro' the Alcestis & the Troades; -- Besides this I have gone thro' the whole of the Aeneid except two books which I was familiar with, and half the Hebrew Bible. Forster's bible is in two quarto volumes, -- and one of them I have read regularly from beginning to end'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 2 November 1832: 'I have read, since I spoke to you last about my Greek reading, the last line of the last ode of Pindar, & have again gone thro' the Alcestis & the Troades; -- Besides this I have gone thro' the whole of the Aeneid except two books which I was familiar with, and half the Hebrew Bible. Forster's bible is in two quarto volumes, -- and one of them I have read regularly from beginning to end'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : novels including The Disowned
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 14 December 1832: 'I have been reading Bulwer's novels & Mrs Trollope's libels, & Dr Parr's works [...] [Mrs Trollope] has neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind [...] Bulwer has quite delighted me: he has all the dramatic talent which Scott has: & all the passion which Scott has not -- and he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of character. There are some very fine things in his Denounced [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Trollope : Domestic Manners of the Americans
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 14 December 1832: 'I have been reading Bulwer's novels & Mrs Trollope's libels, & Dr Parr's works [...] [Mrs Trollope] has neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind [...] Bulwer has quite delighted me: he has all the dramatic talent which Scott has: & all the passion which Scott has not -- and he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of character. There are some very fine things in his Denounced [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Dr Parr : 'works'
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 14 December 1832: 'I have been reading Bulwer's novels & Mrs Trollope's libels, & Dr Parr's works [...] [Mrs Trollope] has neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind [...] Bulwer has quite delighted me: he has all the dramatic talent which Scott has: & all the passion which Scott has not -- and he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of character. There are some very fine things in his Denounced [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Rosalind and Helen, a Modern Eclogue
Robert Browning to William Johnson Fox, ?28 March 1833: 'You must not think me too incroaching, if I make the getting back [of] "Rosalind & Helen" an excuse for calling on you some evening -- the said R. & H has I observe been well thumbed & sedulously marked by an acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock : The Messiah
Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 14 September 1834: 'Have you seen a poetical translation of Klopstock's messiah, the performance of a lady residing close to Honiton. I have read and been much pleased with it [goes on to comment upon specific passages].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Herbert : poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 15 November 1833: 'Do you know Herbert's poems? [Mr Hunter] lent them to me a week ago [...] His poetry has a more spiritually devotional character than any which I ever read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Lelia (chapter VIII)
Robert Browning to Andre Victor Amedee de Ripert-Monclar, 5-7 December 1834: 'Madame Dudevant has accomplished something it seems -- a certain "Jacques" [...] I read an analysis of her's of the mental constitution of a gambler, from Lelia [...] a much truer exposition may be found in "The young Duke" by young D'Israeli [goes on to comment further upon latter novel].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Martin Luther :
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 24 June 1835: 'I am reading Dr Brown's Philosophy -- shall have [italics]read[end italics] it tomorrow -- and like metaphysics better than ever, & am beginning to think it quite as [italics]demonstrative[end italics] as mathematics the beloved! -- I am reading besides, Anthony Collins, and Luther, [italics]on the will[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Peter Brougham, Lord Brougham : A Discourse upon Natural Theology
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 28 July 1835: 'I have been reading [...] Lord Brougham's Natural Theology, -- and have shaken my head over it [...] It seems to me to have its most valuable parts in its notes, -- in the observations there upon Hume's philosophy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Agricole Fortia d'Urban : works including Dissertation sur le Passage du Rhone et les Alpes par Annibal
Robert Browning to Andre Victor Amadee de Ripert-Monclar, 30 July 1835: 'I have you to thank [...] for some very clever books by the Marquis de Fortia which I have read with the greatest interest [...] I happen to have met with a work of his, since writing to you last, on the passage of Hannibal over the Alps, which delighted me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Ralph Wardlaw : A Dissertation on the Scriptural Authority, Nature, and Uses, of Infant Baptism
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, c.October 1835: 'Did you ever hear of Dr Wardlaw's treatise upon infant baptism? It is very clearly and forcibly written, -- and altho' I cannot bring my mind to agree with him on all points, yet I think that the main question is placed by him in a satisfying light [notes having copied remarks of Wardlaw's, concerning language in Greek testament, on flyleaf of own Greek testament]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling : autobiography
Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 9 December 1835: 'I have read lately Stilling's autobiography; & was by turns touched & amused by it. It is an instance of the durability of romance & sentiment. I read it in English of course'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets and Other Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 July 1836: 'You have not my dear kind friend thought me unkind and thankless in not writing my gratitude to you the moment I felt it, for your books [...] [explains having waited until had time to do justice to these, including one of Mitford's own] [...] My pencil has marked Emily and Fair Rosamund and Henry Talbot The bridal Eve, The Captive & The masque of the Seasons as chief favorites of mine. My pencil always does for me the prudent business which beans & pebbles did for the heroes of childish romance .. marking his footsteps in the wood [...] In these paths, these new paths -- thank you dear Miss Mitford for letting me walk in them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Crabbe : The Library
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 July 1836: 'I remember daring to say to Sir Uvedale Price that I could not like Crabbe; and I remember -- how well! his taking the "Library" from the table and reading from it a passage to which he said his own attention had been directed by [Charles James] Fox, and which I could not choose but acknowledge to be fine poetry. But [...] I annexed to the acknowledgement a clause -- -- that the passage was not written in Crabbe's usual style. And dear Sir Uvedale [...] admitted at once that I was right.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Uvedale Price Print: Book
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 August 1836: 'I can tell you [...] of [John Kenyon's] having given himself a great deal of kind trouble in finding the Countess of Essex for me and of my reading it and Paracelsus besides which he also lent me. As to the play, its talent may be both felt & seen -- but felt & seen [italics]in parts[end italics] [...] But have you seen Paracelsus? I am a little discontented even [italics]there[end italics], & wd wish for more harmony & rather more clearness & compression [...] but I do think that the pulse of poetry is full & warm & strong in it [...] There is a palpable power! a height & depth of thought, -- & sudden repressed gushings of tenderness which suggest to us a depth beyond, in the affections. I wish you wd read it, & agree with me that the author is a poet in the holy sense. And I wish that some passages in the poem referring to the divine Being had been softened or removed. They sound to me daringly; and [italics]that[end italics] is not the appropriate daring of genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Shepherd : The Countess of Essex
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 August 1836: 'I can tell you [...] of [John Kenyon's] having given himself a great deal of kind trouble in finding the Countess of Essex for me and of my reading it and Paracelsus besides which he also lent me. As to the play, its talent may be both felt & seen -- but felt & seen [italics]in parts[end italics] [...] But have you seen Paracelsus? I am a little discontented even [italics]there[end italics], & wd wish for more harmony & rather more clearness & compression [...] but I do think that the pulse of poetry is full & warm & strong in it [...] There is a palpable power! a height & depth of thought, -- & sudden repressed gushings of tenderness which suggest to us a depth beyond, in the affections. I wish you wd read it, & agree with me that the author is a poet in the holy sense. And I wish that some passages in the poem referring to the divine Being had been softened or removed. They sound to me daringly; and [italics]that[end italics] is not the appropriate daring of genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : 'Jesse Cliffe'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 August 1836: 'Jesse Cliffe -- I have read it! [italics]Thank you for it![end italics] and you must hear that from so many!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Mermaid'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ?24 August 1836: 'You have not read all Tennyson's poems -- neither have I -- but did you see his "mermaid" at the end of Leigh Hunt's paper on mermaids in the New Monthly Magazine? There is a tone in the poetry -- in the very extravagance of the poetry & language -- an abandonment & wildness -- which seemed to me to accord beautifully with the subject, & stayed with me afterwards -- a true sign of true poetry -- whether I would or not. And if there are [...] occasional perplexities & obscurations in the meaning -- still, no one could complain of them [italics]there[end italics] -- seeing that the language seems to have caught its strangeness with its music from the Mermaid's tongue.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836: 'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Victor Hugo : plays
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836: 'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Notre-Dame de Paris
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836: 'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Sheridan Knowles : The Wrecker's Daughter
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 7 December 1836: 'I have been reading [...] Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Wreckers" [sic]. It is full of passion and pathos, -- & made me shed a great many tears.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : plays (extracts)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 December 1836: 'How much ignorance I have to confess in sackcloth, with respect to the old dramatists! -- for indeed I have had little opportunity of walking with them in their purple & fine linen. Only [italics]extracts[end italics] from Bea[u]mont & Fletcher -- & Ford, -- have past before my eyes!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
William Charles Macready : annotations to Robert Browning, Strafford
Robert Browning to William Charles Macready, January 1837: 'I have taken a cursory look at your [italics]addissions[end italics] in "Strafford," seeing it on the table. I shall remedy every oversight I am sure out of an after crop of thoughts!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Unknown
George Combe : Elements of Phrenology
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 23 January 1837: 'I have read Coombs [sic] Phrenology [...] [It] is very clever, & amusing; but I do not think it logical or satisfactory.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Otto of Wittelsbach
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ?17 March 1837: 'I have read your play [Otto of Wittelsbach] my dearest Miss Mitford, & so you will be obliged to read my admiration upon it [goes on to discuss text in detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Anne Butler : The Star of Seville
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 May 1837: 'Yes! the extracts from Mrs Butler's play, in the Athenaeum, are very beautiful -- and so are some others which I have seen in another paper.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Russell Mitford : "The Widow's Dog"
Mary Hunter (aged 10) to Elizabeth Barrett, quoted in letter of Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 May 1837: '"I read today in a magazine a tale of Miss Mitford's about the widow's dog Chloe who was very faithful and would go back to the widow's house. If you do not know the story, I dare say she will tell it to you. I should like to know Miss Mitford very much -- for her writings are [italics]so[end italics] beautiful & affectionate, -- and I think she would not dislike children."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hunter Print: Serial / periodical
Lady Margaret Cocks : dramatic poems
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, mid-May 1837: 'I am very much obliged by your kindness in allowing me to read the MS dramatic poems -- it seems to me that the character of your writing is not sufficiently concentrated & passionate for tragic poetry -- and that the moral beauty of gentle & tender & holy feeling is not eminent enough with glaring light & angular shadow, to constitute of itself the dramatic. Such a moral beauty -- & it pervades what you write -- is however a better & happier thing than dramatic excellence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Barbarina Brand, Lady Dacre : Translations from the Italian
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, mid-May 1837: 'I have been much pleased lately in reading Lady Dacre's translations from Petrarch, which she has very kindly sent me. They are elegant & classical, -- & she has managed skilfully to double & redouble her rhymes in the manner of her original, & be graceful all the while.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 June 1837: 'I agree with you in thinking Pickwick admirable -- but I have not read every number [...] what is striking in him is his wonderful individuality -- He never or seldom sacrifices the natural to the comic -- but wins the jest from Nature without stealing it. No one could pass a character of his in the street without bowing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Frances Anne Butler : The Star of Seville
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 June 1837: 'I have read the Star of Seville [...] It [italics]is[end italics] unequal -- it appears as if its writer stopped to take breath after her finest things -- and she has written some very fine things. You will admire Estrella's apology for her appearance [italics]alone[end italics], at the trial scene. It touched me deeply'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line
'The Oration for Roscius the Comedian - Hist of Engd'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line
'Shelley writes an ode to Naples - Reads Mrs Macauly [sic]. finishes Appolonius [sic] Rhodius - Begins Swellfoot the Tyrant - suggested by the pigs at the fair of St Giuliano - Reads the double marriage aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Country Stories
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 17 July 1837: 'Why should we [']'mere balladmongers" have so much to say of ourselves, when the "Country stories" lie cut & read upon the table? They have the Mitford-charm all over them! [..] The characteristic of your mind seems to be -- the power of bringing from the surfaces of things that freshness of beauty, which others seek from in the profundities of nature [...] Indeed it is a beautiful book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Age of Bronze
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1837: 'I am sure I ought to be proud of my verses ["Victoria's Tears," about Queen Victoria's weeping during the Accession Proclamation on 21 June] finding their way into a Belford Regis newspaper! The young Queen is very interesting to me -- & those tears [...] are beautiful & touching to think upon. Do you remember Lord Byron's bitter lines [...] '"Enough of human ties in royal breasts! Why spare men's feelings when their own are jests?" 'They have never past from my memory since I read them. There is something hardening, I fear, in power [...] But our young Queen wears still a very tender heart! and long may its natural emotions lie warm within it!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Swellfoot the Tyrant
'Muratori - Greek - Queen's Letter - K.[ing] Swellfoot'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
'Muratori - Greek - Rebellion of Ireland'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick line
'S. finishes Mrs Macauly [sic] - Reads the Republic of Plato'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland
'Muratori - greek - finish the Rebellion of Ireland'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Letters of Charles Lamb, With a Sketch of His Life
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 19 August 1837: 'Has your Ladyship seen Lamb's letters, in Mr Talfourd's edition? I quite [italics]sighed[end italics] when I finished them. They are exquisite -- & the "gentle-hearted Charles" [quotes Coleridge] shows in them all his gentle heart, together with his very quaint sly brilliant (as [italics]star[end italics]light) fancies.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Lady Mary Wortley Montague : Letters
Elizabeth Barrrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 29 September 1837: 'I confess to you that I utterly dislike Lady Mary! [...] She had a hard shining imagination, instead of a heart -- and words studied into carelessness, beating up & down, where warm natural woman pulses ought to have beat. She had too little depth for manhood, -- & too little softness for womanhood. Take away the corner stone & the top stone from Horace Walpole's imagination -- or rather, take away what poetry he had -- & dress him up in a hoop -- & there is Lady Mary Wortley Montague ready for court!! ---- I never could bear her -- or Horace Walpole either -- and whenever I have looked at her letters, I have felt too much out of humour to be amused.' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Letter to Elizabeth Barrett
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 September 1837: 'You certainly shd write Dash [Mitford's dog]'s memoirs! My youngest brothers, to say nothing of my eldest, were delighted with the [italics]memorabilia[end italics], I read to them out of your letter.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Frances Trollope : The Vicar of Wrexhill (extracts)
Elizabeth Barrrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 12 October 1837: 'The village [i.e. (apparently) Mitford's] reminds me of the Vicar of Wrexhill -- at least of the extracts I have seen from it! -- What a lamentable book -- & to be written by a woman -- who from the weakness & softness of her nature should so feel the need & the beauty of that strength & surpassing tenderness found in the religion of Jesus Christ, & only there! -- It is very ill to hold up to scorn the most unsecular portion of the Church of England -- but to do so by misrepresen[ta]tion & perversion is most ill! [goes on to complain further regarding representation of religious characters, and quotation from Scripture, in text]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : Pauline
John Stuart Mill to W. J. Fox, c.25 June 1833: 'I send "Pauline," having done all I could, which was to annotate copiously in the margin and sum up on the fly-leaf. On the whole the observations are not flattering to the author -- perhaps too strong in the expression to be shown him'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Thomas Henry Lister : Granby
'I have been most shockingly idle, actually reading two novels at once. a good scolding would do me a vast deal of good, & I hope you will send one of your most severe one's.? What an entertaining book Granby is; do you remember Lady Harriet talking about inhaling [Ni]tric Oxide? Johnson has actually done it, & describes the effects as the most intense pleasure he ever felt. We both mean to get tipsey in the Vacation.?. The old Mr. Wedgwood, I see in Ure's Chem. Dic., did nothing else but hold his nose & kick.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
Humphry Davy : Researches, Chemical and Philosophical
'I have been most shockingly idle, actually reading two novels at once. a good scolding would do me a vast deal of good, & I hope you will send one of your most severe one's.? What an entertaining book Granby is; do you remember Lady Harriet talking about inhaling [Ni]tric Oxide? Johnson has actually done it, & describes the effects as the most intense pleasure he ever felt. We both mean to get tipsey in the Vacation.?. The old Mr. Wedgwood, I see in Ure's Chem. Dic., did nothing else but hold his nose & kick.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo : Antient Metaphysics; or, the Science of Universals
'S. reads Antient Metaphysics'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Jean-Charles-L?onard Simonde de Sismondi : Histoire des r?publiques italiennes du moyen ?ge
'Sismondi - B.[occaccio] - S. reads A.[ntient] M.[etaphysics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francesco Petrarch : [unknown]
'Sismondi - Greek - Petrarch - S. reads Gillies Greece & A.[ntient] M.[etaphysics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi : Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du moyen age
'Read Sismondi - Ride to Pisa - Georgics - B.[occaccio]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
'Read Don Juan'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
'Read Lambs Specimens'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
'Read Prometheus Unbound - papers - & Indicators'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
Barry Cornwall [pseud.] : Dramatic Scenes, and other poems
'Medwin reads Dramatic scenes to us & a part of his journal in India'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Medwin Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'Write - Read Homer - Targione - Spanish - A rainy day. S. reads Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Pedro Calderon de la Barca : [unknown]
'Don Quixote & Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Witch of Atlas, The'
'Copy the Witch of Atlas'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Friedrich Heinrich Karl : Sintram und seine Gefahrten
'Greek - Sintram - S. not well'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : [unknown]
'Read a book of Tasso to Shelley.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
[Mary Shelley's reading list for 1820, with texts also read by Percy Shelley marked with an x. Only texts not mentioned in the journal are given separate entries based on this list] 'M. (& (S with an x) - 1820 The remainder of Livy. x The Bible until the end of Ezekhiel x Don Juan x Travels Before the Flood La Nouvelle Heloise The Fable of the Bees Paine's Works Utopia x Voltaire's Memoires x The Aenied [sic] And Georgics Bridone's Travels Robinson Crusoe Sandford & Merton x Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia Vindication of the Rights of women x Boswell's life of Johnson Paradise regained & lost Mary - Letters from Norway & Posthumus [sic] Works Ivanhoe - Tales of my Landlord Fleetwood - Caleb Williams x Ricciardetto. x Mrs Macauly's [sic] Hist. of Engd x Lucretius The 3 first orations of Cicero Muratori Anti chita [sic] d'Italia Travels & Rebellion in Ireland Tegrino's life of Castruccio x Boccacio [sic] - Decamerone x Keats' poems x armata Corinne The first book of Homer. Oedippus [sic] Tyrannus A Little Spanish & much Italian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : [unknown]
'Greek - Tasso'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Abbot, The: a romance
'Read the Abbot'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
John Frederick William Herschel : Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy
'If you have not read Herschel in Lardners Cyclo ? read it directly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : A System of Synthetic Philosophy
'Part III is 'the reconciliation', in Spencer's phrase, - a mean term between I and II, a minimistic retrospect on both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Alford : poems
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, c. March 1838: 'Thank you for Alford's poems. There is much beauty in some of them -- but [italics]there is a want of abiding power[end italics]. Do you not think so? -- It might be a fault in my humour at the time I read them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : "The Exile"
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, March 1838: 'I have been reading the "Exile," from Marion Campbell, with much interest and delight'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Monckton Milnes : Memorials of a Residence on the Continent, and Historical Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 April 1838: 'I had to thank [John Kenyon] for [...] lending me Mr Milnes's Poems just printed for private circulation. They are of the Tennyson school [...] & very much delighted me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederick W Beechey : Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Strait to co-operate with the Polar Expeditions: performed in His Majesty's Ship Blossom. London
'Have you Cap. Beecheys voyage to the Pacific? if you have not, I will buy it, as it contains some most excellent Meteorological Journals?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
Henry Fothergill Chorley : letter (extract)
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 21 June 1838: 'I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr Chorley editor of the Athenaeum, which speaks [italics]huge[end italics] praises of my poems. If he were to say a tithe of them in print it wd be nine times above my expectation!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Richard Edwin Austin Townsend : Visions of the Western Railways
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 June 1838: 'Mr Townsend's poems have just reached me. I have had no time to read them, except at a rail road speed, & that not continuously. They seem to have much thought & poetic beauty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Edwin Austin Townsend : Visions of the Western Railways
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 July 1838: 'I have written to Mr Townsend. The more I read of his poems, the more deeply I feel their beauty. I [italics]did[end italics] read the romance of Mr Osggood [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Sargent Osgood : 'romance'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 July 1838: 'I have written to Mr Townsend. The more I read of his poems, the more deeply I feel their beauty. I [italics]did[end italics] read the romance of Mr Osggood [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alexander von Humboldt : unknown
'If you really want to have a [notion] of tropical countries, study Humboldt.? Skip th[e] scientific parts & commence after leaving Teneriffe.? My feelings amount to admiration the more I read him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Unknown
Francis Bond Head : Gallop: Rapid journeys across the Pampas
'I suppose you all well know Heads book.? for accuracy & animation it is beyond praise.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Beatrix ou les Amours Forces
Robert Browning to Euprhasia Fanny Haworth, ?25 April 1839: 'You read Balzac's "Scenes" etc -- he is publishing one, "Beatrix", in the feuilleton of the "Siecle", day by day -- I receive it from Paris two days old and usually post it off to a friend of mine, as soon as skimmed. But the four or five first chapters were so delightful that I hate myself for not having sent them to Barham [i.e. Barham Lodge, Haworth's home at Elstree]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Honore de Balzac : "Scenes"
Robert Browning to Euprhasia Fanny Haworth, ?25 April 1839: 'You read Balzac's "Scenes" etc -- he is publishing one, "Beatrix", in the feuilleton of the "Siecle", day by day -- I receive it from Paris two days old and usually post it off to a friend of mine, as soon as skimmed. But the four or five first chapters were so delightful that I hate myself for not having sent them to Barham [i.e. Barham Lodge, Haworth's home at Elstree]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Euphrasia Fanny Haworth Print: Unknown
Rosina, Lady Bulwer-Lytton : Cheveley, or the Man of Honour
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 May 1839: 'I am glad you have looked at Cheveley. [italics]Now[end italics] I can confess with one blush less that I have just read it through. People obliged to be dumb like me, & under a medical disciplinarian like Dr Barry have as good an excuse as any can have for reading it [...] The book, if not the reader, is without excuse. It is wonderful in unwomanliness [...] The book is a hard cold coarse book -- a bold impudent book -- & she who wrote it may have COUNTED many strifes but has [italics]felt[end italics] none'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
William Fullerton Cumming, M.D. : Notes of a Wanderer in Search of Health, Through Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey; Up the Danube and Down the Rhine
Elizabeth Barrett to Arabella Moulton-Barrett, 4 June 1839: ''[Dr Barry] has been lending me his friend & patient Dr Cummings book, to read -- "Wanderings in search of Health" [...] His adventures in wandering down the Nile in search of health inclined me to laugh as much as his confession that he was "a physician in search of it'"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Sir Edward Coke : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 17 June 1839: 'I mean to make an extract of your legal admirations and send them to my brother George who begins his circuits next year as a BARRISTER!! I shall be curious to observe how his enthusiasm for his profession, which actually set him down to read Coke among this exquisite scenery, when he came down with me last year [...] will bear up under the infliction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Goodin Moulton-Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 August 1839: 'I a personally quite unacquainted with Mr Horne [...] Have you not heard of his Cosimo de' Medici? He is a man of indubitable genius. I feel THAT quite distinctly, although I have read only a little of his poetry'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Henry Fothergill Chorley : The Lion, a Tale of the Coteries
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 11 August 1839: 'I have read Mr Chorley's Lion [...] it is a work highly indicative of ability [...] brilliant with allusion, yet not too dazzling to think by. A great part of the first volume & the greater part of the third struck & interested me much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Fothergill Chorley : Sketches of a Sea Port Town
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 11 August 1839: 'Mr Chorley's Sea port town was brought to me a little while ago -- but not as Mr Chorley's. Henrietta [sister] brought it from the circulating library -- The [italics] librarian had recommended it![end italics] -- & I am so forced to be dumb & to abstain from continuous attention to grave subjects, that amusing books of the class to which it belongs are necessary to me sometimes. Well! I did not like the name of the book -- & was turning listlessly to the title page with the words "I cant read this", -- when [italics]there[end italics], was Mr Chorley's name! Of course I [italics]cd[end italics] read it immediately, -- & was much struck by the power it indicated, & the constructiveness of the stories -- a rare characteristic, even in these story telling days.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Jean Theodore Lacordaire : M?moire sur les habitudes des Col?opt?res de l'Am?rique m?ridionale.
'Judging from the Pamphlet, you gave me & which I have found very useful, the insects of the Rio Plata are tolerably well-known.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin
Barry Edward O'Meara : Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from St Helena
'This unfortunate O'Meara, It was the merest chance he was not sent to extend his localities in the Highlands. I would have returned the book immediately, finding how long it had been here, had the subject been any other than Napoleon - however I made what haste I could with it; but though I read whenever a temporary cessation of civilities on the part of the inhabitants left a minute at my own disposal, I only finished it at twelve o'clock the night you wrote for it - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Samor, the Lord of the Bright City
'I liked Milman's books better than your scanty recommendation led me to expect- The gentleman is certainly a poet - he excells in description - the outlines of his pictures want charecter [sic] but his colouring is rich and brilliant, and on the whole his manner is very graceful - he fails sadly when he makes his personages speak and feel - however 'the Bright City' is not without heart - the episode of Lilian and Vortimer is very natural and pathetic, and Rowena's love is quite Byronical - I think if you have not read it, it is worth your time - How very presumptuous it is in me to attempt criticising such an Author as Milman!-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Samor, the Lord of the Bright City
'I have read the 'bright city' and rejoiced to find your criticism of it so agreeable to my own. Milman is certainly a poet, but he takes a flight higher than he can sustain. He paints too gorgeously and indistinctly, he also whines too much, he is sometimes even liable to cant. I am astonished at your diffidence in judging him: it were well if he always found even critics by profession so well qualified.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Charles Hughes Terot : Poems
'Did [Benjamin Bell] write these verses? If so, he seems young at the art like us, but not without powers of doing better; dactyls are always difficult to manage, and his accordingly are but a kind of flash in the pan - no damage is done; but the other piece has a sort of pococurante [little-caring] air about it which looks more like genius and truth, and answers greatly better. Except the last stanza, they are good. If he is only about twenty years of age or so, he may cultivate poetry with considerable hope: if nearer thirty I advise him never to write another line.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Sheet, Poems included in letter from Jane Baillie Welsh to TC
Frances Sitwell : letter
?I got a quiet seat behind a yew hedge and went away into a meditation. It [i.e. the windswept scene in the garden at Swanston Cottage] somehow reminded me of your letter from Bishopsbourne, now alas! in cinders. O I grudge those letters I burned.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter, Passage refers to various letters from Frances Sitwell to RLS, dates and subjects unspecified here. Letters received by RLS before 4 June 1874 [date ascribed by the editors to the cited passage].
Robert Louis Stevenson : Victor Hugo's Romances
?Yesterday, by the bye, I received the proof of "Victor Hugo"; it is not nicely written, but the stuff is capital, I think. Modesty is my most remarkable quality, I may say in passing.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay on ?Victor Hugo?s Romances?
George Sand : Comtesse de Rudolstadt
?I was out, behind the yew hedge, reading the "Comtesse de Rudolstadt" when I found my eyes grow weary and looked up from the book.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
George Sand : Consuelo
?By the way, dear, I must send you "Consuelo"; you said you had quite forgotten it, if I remember aright. And surely a book that that could divert me, when I thought myself on the very edge of the grave, from the work that I so much desired, and was yet unable to do, and from other thoughts both sweet and sorrowful, should somewhat support and amuse you under all the hard things that may be coming upon you. If it is to be had in Edinburgh you shall have it, dear, even before this letter.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'I remember, when a little boy, getting my first introduction to the novels of Walter Scott - then the "Great Unknown". One of my sisters, when an infant, was sent to the country to be nursed; and I used to accompany Peg Nielson, our servant, to see the child on Saturday afternoons... Peg was a capital story-teller and many a time did she entertain us with "auld warld" tales of brownies, fairies, ghosts and witches, often making our flesh creep. But she could also be amusing and cheerful in the adventures she narrated. While on the way to Clerkington Mains, I asked her to tell me a story. "Yes she would: it was a story of a gypsy woman and a little boy who was carried away in a ship by the smugglers." And then she began, and told me, in a manner that seemed most graphic, the wonderful adventures of Harry Bertram and Meg Merrilies, as related in the well-known novel of "Guy Mannering". Many years after I read the book and found that she had omitted nothing of the story: her memory was so good and her power of narration so excellent.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Smiles Print: Book
Catherine Gore : Preferment: or, My Uncle the Earl
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, late January 1840: 'Have you seen Mrs Gore & Mrs Trollope in their late avatars? "Preferment", with an undeniable cleverness, is dull & heavy [...] As to "One fault", with neither dulness nor heaviness, the book seems to [italics]me[end italics] far less clever than Mrs Trollope's books generally or always are [goes on to discuss aspects of this text, including plot, further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Trollope : One Fault. A Novel
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, late January 1840: 'Have you seen Mrs Gore & Mrs Trollope in their late avatars? "Preferment", with an undeniable cleverness, is dull & heavy [...] As to "One fault", with neither dulness nor heaviness, the book seems to [italics]me[end italics] far less clever than Mrs Trollope's books generally or always are [goes on to discuss aspects of this text, including plot, further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck : Select Memoirs of Port Royal
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, late January 1840: 'Did you ever meet with an account partly translated partly composed by Miss Schimmelpenninck, of the Port Royal? It is long since I read, will be longer before I forget that most interesting account of the most interesting establishment which ever owed its conventual name & form to the Church of Rome, & its purity & nobility to God's blessing & informing Spirit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard: A Romance
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 30 January 1840: 'I have been reading "Jack Sheppard," and have been struck by the great danger, in these times, of representing authority so constantly and fearfully in the wrong, so tyrannous, so devilish, as the author has been pleased to portray it in "Jack Sheppard" [...] Of course Mr Ainsworth had no such design, but such is the effect; and as the millions who see it represented at the minor theatres will not distinguish between now and a hundred years back, all the Chartists in the land are less dangerous than this nightmare of a book, and I, Radical as I am, lament any additional temptations to outbreak, with all its train of horrors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments
Elizabeth Barrett to Septimus Moulton-Barrett, 6 February 1840: ''Tell [Papa] too what I forgot to tell, that I have finished Shelley's volumes which, if it were not for the here & there defilement of his atrocious opinions [...] would have very deeply delighted me. As it is there are traces of my pencil "[italics]in a passion[end italics]" as dear Georgie [brother] would say. [goes on to criticise Shelley's translations from Plato in particular]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Captain Frederick Marryat, R.N. : novels
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 3 March 1840: 'I had a kind message from Captain Marryat once [...] but I have never seen him. Without being one of his indiscriminate admirers, I like parts of his books (some of which I have read to my father), and have been told that they have done good in the profession -- suggestions thrown out in them having been taken up and acted upon by the Lords of the Admiralty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
Walter Savage Landor to Robert Browning, c.18 March 1840: 'Three days have nearly slipped by me since I received your poem [Sordello] [...] You much overrate my judgement, but whatever it is, you shall have it, before I have redd it so often as I redd Paracelsus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Savage Landor Print: Book
George Darley : Sylvia; or, The May Queen
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 28 March 1840: 'I [italics]have[end italics] Sylvia or the May Queen among my books in London. Dont you remember telling me to read it, & did'n't I obey you & buy it directly? It overflows with poetry [...] but does as pastorals can scarcely choose but do, hold on to one by the skirts of one's fancy rather than by the imagination in a high sense'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Barry Edward O'Meara : Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from Saint-Helena
'I have just this instant finished the O'Meara - and have no time to write. You quite distress me by sending me so many books-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book, Volume 2 of 2Manuscript: Letter
Andrew Ure : Review of 'Description of Instruments, Designed for Extending and Improving Meteorological Observations' (1820)
'Have you seen Dr Ures notice of Leslie's Meteorology, in Brande's Journal? Some one shewed it to me and it seemed a very unpalatable morsel: I know not whether you will care for i[t].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodicalManuscript: Letter
Edward Hyde (Earl of Clarendon) : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England,
'There is no plainer way of testifying my entire approval of the matter contained in your last letter than rigidly adhering to the plan you have sketched for me. This I am endeavouring to do - I immediately commenced an active search through the libraries of my acquaintance for some of the books you named... I prefer[r]ed acqu[a]inting myself with the history of England through the medium of Clarendon. Clarendon however is 'out of fashion'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Charles Rollin : The Ancient History
'There is no plainer way of testifying my entire approval of the matter contained in your last letter than rigidly adhering to the plan you have sketched for me. This I am endeavouring to do - I immediately commenced an active search through the libraries of my acquaintance for some of the books you named... My next attempt was on Rollin and that proved more successful. I read his Ancient History in my infancy; but remembered no more of it than the number of volumes. I have already finished the first volume.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Friedrich Schiller : Maria Stuart
'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Vittorio Alfieri : Unknown
'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Publius Cornelius Tacitus : Unknown
'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Richard Hengist Horne : The History of Napoleon
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 15 May 1840: 'I had finished Napoleon & was about to write to you on the subject -- & I will still write.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Darley : Thomas a Becket
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 June 1840: 'Have you given up the idea of seeing Mr Darley's book again -- It chaperons or is chaperoned by some Devonshire cream -- but I beg you to remember that the stains upon its back came to me as they go, and proceeded from neither cream nor me -- The chronicle is very clever & spirited -- picturesque & racy -- & the character of Becket appears to me developped [sic] with no ordinary power: at the same time I confess myself disappointed in the absence of tragic passion & concentration'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Return of the Druses
William Charles Macready, in diary entry for 3 August 1840: 'Read Browning's play [The Return of the Druses], and with the deepest concern I yield to the belief that he will [italics]never write again[end italics] -- to any purpose. I fear his intellect is not quite clear.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village
Elizabeth Barrett, invalid, to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 December 1840: 'You cant guess what my business has been lately [...] my business has been retracing my steps in the Village, your village [...] You cannot realize, -- you the writer -- cannot, -- the peculiar effect of that delightful book, upon one in a prison like me, shut up from air & light [...] It frees me at once for the moment -- shows me the flowers & the grass they grow by, & pours into my face the sweetness & freshness & refreshment of the whole summer in a breath.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Jacques Fracois Paul Alphonse, Abbe de Sade : Memoires pour la vie de Francois Petrarch
'I have spent a stupid day reading the Abbe de Sade's Memoirs of Petrarch. What a feeble whipster was this Petrarch with all his talents! To go dangling about, for the space of twenty years, puffing and sighing after a little coquette, whose charms lay briefly in the fervour of his imagination, and the art she had to keep him wavering between hope and despondency - at once ridiculous and deplorable - that he might write sonnets in her praise!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Margaret A. Carlyle : Letter
'It is already past twelve o'clock, and I am tired and sleepy; but I cannot go to rest without answering the kind little note which you sent me, and acknowledging these new instances of your unwearied attention to my interests and comfort.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
Grant Allen : Physiological Aesthetics
Considerable marginalia in pencil in English, especially on the following pages: 30, 186, 216, 220-224.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Mary Arnold-Forster : Studies in Dreams
Considerable marginalia in pencil in English throughout.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Georges Hirth : Physiologie de l'art
Textual marginalia in pencil in French in the second half of the volume (Arreat's translation of Hirth) only.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
(Eduard) Benjamin Baillaud : De la methode dans les sciences
Some marginalia in pencil in English and French on the following pages: 97, 206, 241, 321.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
(Eduard) Benjamin Baillaud : De la methode dans les sciences, deuxieme serie
Marginalia in pencil in French on page 191 only; some vertical pencil marks in the margins elsewhere.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
James Mark Baldwin : Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes
Considerable marginal annotation in pencil in English throughout.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
James Mark Baldwin : Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: a study in social psychology
Considerable marginal annotation in pencil in English throughout.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Gilbert Ballet : Le langage interieur, et les diverse formes de l'aphasie
'Read Feb 1899' on flyleaf. Some marginalia in English and French on the following pages: 38, 47, 54, 65.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Albert Bazaillas : Musique et inconscience
Detailed notes at the front and considerable marginalia in both English and French throughout.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henri Etienne Beaunis : Les sensations internes
Some marginal notes in English and French throughout, especially pp.127-37
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henri Bergson : L'evolution creatrice
Considerable marginal notes in pencil in English and French throughout; summary index of notes on the title page and flyleaf.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Miscellaneous Poems
'My dear Miss Mitford, Your good and kind father has just given Nancy a copy of a little volume of poems, in which I find the verses on Maria's winning the cup at Ilsley inscribed to me, and for which honour I beg you to accept of my best thanks; an honour which I value the more because these verses are in company with those elegant and truly pathetic strains, addressed to your dear mother; which, unlike most other poetical effusions of praise, contain nothing but what is founded in truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Cobbett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Miscellaneous Poems
'My dear sir [...] Your daughter's very amiable and interesting book is quite a refreshment to my spirit, wearied on the one hand by labour and on the other by pain; for it would be in vain to tell you how I have occupied my mind on the before-mentioned theme, and this was the very volume to lead me sweetly and softly from myself to many charming scenes, conducted by the hand of virtue and genius. Where all are amiable, it is hard to select, but the poem addressed to yourself (page 70), and that part of the "Epistle to a Friend" which contains the subject beginning with the line, "How true the wish, how pure the glow," to the end of the passage, went nearest to my affections.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: S.J. Pratt Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Miscellaneous Poems
'Sir, I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of a volume of poems which Messrs. Longman transmitted to me a few days since, and for which I am indebted to your politeness. I have been very much pleased with Miss Mitford's poems generally, and many passages I think excellent. In particular I was delighted to see her muse busy in Northumberland, the scenery of which in many parts is well worthy of a poet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Mitford Print: Book
Dr Russell : Verses
'Dear Madam, Dr. Russell's verses are very highly welcomed. I like them very much. There is great simplicit, neatness and elegance in them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: R.A. Davenport Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Blanch of Castile and other poems
'The story of "Blanch", when the poem becomes fashionable, will be dramatized... I cannot help thinking it would make a good drama. The story is busy and pathetic. For the two small poems I thank you much. That to Lord Redesdale is most striking to me, and it is a just tribute to feeling where one would least expect it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: J.P. Smith Manuscript: Sheet
Mary Russell Mitford : Poems on the Female Character
'Madam, I am really ashamed of not having answered your very obliging and interesting letter, and not hving acknowledged the receipt of the pretty poem which you have done me the honour of submitting to my perusal. The fact is, I have been confined to my room for several days, and though I have run through your entertaining M.S., I have by no means given that attention to it which it deserves, and which alone would entitle me to give you an opinion upon it.... I can, from the very cursory perusal I have hitherto made of it, say very truly that it gave me great pleasure, and is both an elegant and poetical work...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Holland Manuscript: Sheet
Gilbert White : Selborne
'A fortnight ago, having employed myself in reading White's "Selborne", and being extremely fond of natural history, and, of course, highly delighted with that book, I was seized with an insuperable desire to see that village which Mr. White has, in the eye of a naturalist, made classic ground...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : The Sisters
'I have just finished your poem of "The Sisters", and tell you truly and fairly that I read it with an interest and delight which I cannot express. I like it better than anything you have done (am I right or wrong?) and you have contrived to mix up poetical imagery and expression with such a great degree of interest as I have never before found in any poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Tales of Fashionable Life
'I have been, and am now, in the midst of reading Miss Edgeworth's 4th, 5th, and 6th vols of "Tales of Fashionable Life". I don't enter into disquisitions about whether they come up to or fall short of her other works, but I am most highly entertained with them. Such admirable delineation of character and such excellent tendencies one seldom sees, and her stories are interesting, not from intricacy of plot, but from exact representations of Nature...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book
Sir H. Englefield : Verses on Waltzing
'I am happy that you think with me about waltzing. Have you seen Sir H. Englefield's verses? They appear to me perfect as far as touching forcibly the proper points. They are supposed to be indignantly addressed to the man who is found waltzing with the poet's mistress: What! The girl I adore by another embraced! What! The bakm of her breath shall another man taste? [etc] Is it not excellent? Before I had seen this I had written something to render the waltz odious, which I sent to a friend in town to get inserted in some newspaper.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Foscari
[He wishes to express] 'the high gratification I have received from the perusal of "Foscari". I must frankly tell you that the play has very much surprised me. I gave you credit for a great deal, but not for what you are mistress of. The drama is your proper walk, and I pray you heartily henceforth to make the right use of your great talents, and to contribute something to the solid, permanent literature of your age.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: P. Bayley Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : Foscari
'I was much better pleased with it ["Foscari"] than I expected, though I can truly add that my expectations were somewhat highly raised. The interest begins at once, and continues throughout, and there are a thousand little touches of great beauty, although (and this in a drama is perhaps the best praise) there is no one passage on which I can fix as possessing a distinct and paramount superiority... In your "Foscari" I find also a much greater strength than is usual from a female pen, accompanied with many a lambent spark of genuine heartfelt feeling... which none but a woman could have given.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden Manuscript: Unknown
George Crabbe : [poems]
'I think the public taste is not in any danger of relapsing into Arcadian pastorals, but I suspect these Caledonian pastorals to be almost as ideal. Crabbe, with his occasional coarseness and propensity to dwell upong hte disgusting "where there is no need of such vanity," is almost the only one who has dared to be correct, and he has given us some beautiful specimens of "lights" as well as "shadows."...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Rienzi
'I think it ["Rienzi"] extremely clever; some scenes are very powerful, and capable of being wrought into a most effective play.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: W.C. Macready Manuscript: Unknown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The
'S. reads the Antient Mariner aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Defence of Poetry, A
'copy for S. - he reads to me the tale of a Tub'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Marco Lastri : L'Osservatore Fiorentino sugli edifizi della sua patria per servire alla storia della medesima
'Osservatore Fiorentino'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Marco Lastri : L'Osservatore Fiorentino sugli edifizi della sua patria per servire alla storia della medesima
'Finish the Osservatore F.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Franco Sacchetti : Delle novelle
'Walk with S. - he reads some of the tales of Sacchetti aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Edward Williams : Promise, The; or, a Year, a Month, and a Day
'W. dines with us - walk with him - his play - S finishes Every Man in his Humour'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Rape of the Lock, The
'S. goes to Pisa. - finishes the Rape of the Lock to me in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Criticism, An
'S. reads Pope's Essay on Criticism aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott (ed.) : Ancient English Drama
'Old Plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Troilus and Criseyde
'S. reads the first book of Troilus & Cressida aloud in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : [Works]
'read greek - read Mackenzies works'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Richard Lovell Edgeworth : Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth
'read Edgeworths life.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott (ed.) : Ancient English Drama
'Read Homer - Old plays'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Henry Matthews : Diary of an Invalid; being the Journal of a Tour... in Portugal, Italy and France in the Years 1817-19
'Read Homer - Diary of an Invalid'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'The first thing which struck me in your essays was the exact accordance between your printed and epistolary style. Are you aware how very little the idea of writing of the public changes your mode of expression? Some of your sketches I like very much. "Hannah" I had read before, as well as the "Talking Lady," with whose portrait I was particularly struck...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Franklin Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Cromwell
'Thank you for it ["Cromwell"]. It is a strange, clever, absurd, lively, queer, farcical, indescribable production. It is impossible not to be amused - impossible not occasionally to admire. On the other hand, the Liston farce of part of it - even exceeds my notion of the liberty of the genre romantique.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Milman Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'Madam, I can hardly feel that I am addressing an entire stranger in the author of "Our Village", and yet I know it is right and proper that I should apologize for the liberty I am taking. But really, after having accompanied you, as I have done again and again, in "violeting," and seeking for wood-sorrel ? after having been with you to call upon Mrs. Allen in "the dell", and becoming thoroughly acquainted with May and Lizzie, I cannot but hope that you will kindly pardon my obtrusion, and that my name may be sufficiently known to you to plead my case. There are writers whose works we cannot read without feeling as if we really had looked with them upon the scenes they bring before us, and as if such communion had almost given us a claim to something more than the mere intercourse between authors and "gentle readers". Will you allow me to say that your writings have this effect up me, and that you have taught me, in making me know and love your "Village" so well, to wish for further knowledge also of her who has so vividly impressed its dingles and copses upon my imagination, and peopled them so cheerily with healthful and happy beings?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Fanny's Fairings
'We have not got a circulating library. It was too near Glasgow to thrive, and I am no ways acquainted in Glasgow. I am, therefore, famishing for the want of books. I have to pick up all my news of literature from the newspapers. I saw a delightful piece of yours quoted there lately from a book called "The Coronet, or Literary and Christian Remembrancer." It was entitled "Fanny's Fairings."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Newspaper
Mary Russell Mitford : Rienzi
'Dear Madam, Accept my best thanks for the copy of "Rienzi", and allow me to assure you that it has not been thrown away, for, as [Rev William] Harness can bear witness, I can repeat long passages of it by heart. I have now the pleasure of forwarding to you the volumes I mentioned...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Dyce Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'Let me tell you that I never see a paper professing to give literary news from England without anxiously looking for your name.. I have read whole pages of extracts from the Annuals and "Our Village" - so well do the savages know how to make their papers sell - but I have not seen, what I chiefly [sic] sought, any account of the noble tragedy, three acts of which you read to me when I last saw you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Trollope Print: Newspaper
Mary Russell Mitford : Tragedies
'Madam, Having understood from a friend that you wished to obtain the words of "The Bann of the Church of the German Empire," I take the liberty of sending them to you [...] You will find it in "Les Anecdotes Germaniques," page 151, and as I have experienced so much pleasure from the perusal and representation of your beautiful tragedies, I shall have great satisfaction in being of the smallest use to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G.E. Lynch Cotton Print: Book
Andre-Guillaume Contant-d'Orville : Les Anecdotes Germaniques
'Madam, Having understood from a friend that you wished to obtain the words of "The Bann of the Church of the German Empire," I take the liberty of sending them to you [...] You will find it in "Les Anecdotes Germaniques," page 151, and as I have experienced so much pleasure from the perusal and representation of your beautiful tragedies, I shall have great satisfaction in being of the smallest use to you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G.E. Lynch Cotton Print: Book
Mrs S.C. Hall : Sketches of Irish Character
'I think Mrs Hall's book beautiful, but am not in love with her dedicatory letter [to Mary Russell Mitford]. It is meagre.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Hofland Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'In your delightful sketch of Grace Nugent I was much amused by the donkey messengers. Such mercuries are common in Suffold, and I greeted your boys as old acquaintances.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Strickland Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'My dear Miss Mitford, I cannot employ the formal address of a stranger towards one who has inspired the vivid feeling of intimate acquaintance, a deep and affectionate interest in her occupations and happiness. You cannot be ignorant that your books are re-printed and widely circulated on this side of the Atlantic? your name has penetrated beyond our maritime cities, and is familiar and loved through many a village circle and to the borders of the lonely depths of unpierced woods ? that we eagerly gather the intimations of your character and history that we fancy are dispersed through your productions ? that we venerate "Mrs. Mosse", are lovers of "Sweet Cousin Mary" and have wept and almost worn mourning for dear bright little "Lizzie", that, in short, such is your power over the imagination that your pictures have wrought on our affections like realities.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine M. Sedgwick Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'My dear Miss Mitford,I cannot miss the opportunity my aunt allows me of writing to the author of "Our Village," to express my interest in her, and in the perusal of her charming book, one of the most valuable in my library, which I have read several times, and at each repetition have experienced increased delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Kate Sedgwick Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Inez
'She speaks of "Inez" as about to be produced. I have been long expecting to hear that it was out. Do you remember reading it to me (excepting the fourth act, which was not then born) just before I left England?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Trollope Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : works
'My dear Miss Mitford, May I be permitted to address thus familiarly a lady with whom, though not personally acquainted, I have long been on terms of intimacy, and for whom I have felt the most lively sentiments of regard and esteem. Ever since I had the pleasure of being a fellow contributor of yours in the Ladies? Magazine, I have most anxiously wished for an introduction to you, but was deterred from seeking an opportunity of making myself known by the consciousness of my own obscurity?When, however, I became an inhabitant of the house in Hans Place, which I knew to be the scene of your juvenile days, from the description given in the "Boarding School Recollections," and began to entertain a hope that my intimacy with Miss Landon and the acquaintance of Miss Skerrit would sanction my long-cherished wish?.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Roberts Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'It has made me extravagant, for I have ordered the four other volumes. the work is perfectly unique. I know nothing like it in any language, and it is among the few to which one can turn again and again with even new pleasure. The "Farewell" is one of the sweetest bits of writing that I know.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Trollope Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'I was reading your inimitable description of Dora Creswell the other day to a friend of mine who was confined to his bed by illness. He laughed and cried by turns, and averred there could not be a word changed for the better, except that of reaper applied to Dora.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine M. Sedgwick Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'Dear Miss Mitford, I rejoice in finding an occasion to address you, that I may express the very great pleasure both my husband and myself have always derived from your writing. We know your "village" and all its crofts, and lanes and people, and we wish we had the happiness of peronally knowing you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : works on political economy
'Shall I confess to you that I have some dread of this wonderful lady [Harriet Martineau]...I agree with a good, simple lady of my acquaintance that "political economy is an excellent thing," but, alas! when I read Miss M's books, I slip [possibly skip?] the political economy as a friend of mine did the muscles when he studied anatomy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine Sedgwick Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'The most truly English sketches in the language are your country volumes. Well, through these volumes we have been wending this winter. We had read them before, and many of the stories were as familiar to us as household words; but they have been read this time principally that William might trace out their localities, and a great additional charm has his knowledge of your part of the country given them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary and William Howitt Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Belford Regis, or, Sketches of a Country Town
'I have just finished Fanny Kemble's books, and when I say that I read them the next after your most charming volumes, and was amused, and on the whole much pleased with them. I am sure they are meritorious, let the critics say what they may.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Hofland Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Belford Regis, or, Sketches of a Country Town
'Our little community have been delighting themselves with your "Belford Regis"; accept their untied thanks for it [...] The book is republished rather shabbily by Carey. I am in great hopes that we shall get our ungracious laws altered at the next congressional session, so that you English contributors to our advantage shall get some remuneration for your pains.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Catharine Sedgwick Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Belford Regis, or, Sketches of a Country Town
'Your last book still rolls on, gathering golden opinions, and I for one thank you, for I have been passing the last fortnight in the country, and perhaps there is no book in the world so pleasant to be on the grass with and read to a charming woman. I have only grudged the transfer of leaves from my right hand to my left, and if you had heard the "Is that all?" of my listener as I closed the last volume, you would have felt that you had not lived in vain - as who has, who has given pleasure to the world, or beguiled weariness, or refined the aspect of life?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: N.P. Willis Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : response to article in the Monthly Critic
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, late January 1841: 'I have just read your reply to the Monthly Critic -- though not his attack'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Dr. Channing : Sermons
'I send you with this all Dr. Channing's works, and the little series of four small volumes, in whcih Miss Sedgwick's "Home" is to be found, and I send them very gladly, both because I think them good and because the last of them, "Gleams of Truth", is a practical illustration of the principles touching the relations of the more favoured and less favoured classes of society, which are so ably and so beautifully set forth in the separate sermon of Dr. Channing which I send with them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Ticknor Print: Book
Catharine M Sedgwick : Hope
'I send you with this all Dr. Channing's works, and the little series of four small volumes, in whcih Miss Sedgwick's "Home" is to be found, and I send them very gladly, both because I think them good and because the last of them, "Gleams of Truth", is a practical illustration of the principles touching the relations of the more favoured and less favoured classes of society, which are so ably and so beautifully set forth in the separate sermon of Dr. Channing which I send with them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Ticknor Print: Book
Robert Montgomery Bird : Nick of the Woods: A Story of Kentucky
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 February 1841: 'If you are looking out for romances to melt away the sense of snow & long evenings from your invalid [i.e. Mitford's father], there is the American Dr Bird's "Nick of the Woods" -- which for adventure & hair breadth escapes & rapid movement from the beginning to the end, will charm you far above the freezing point, though face to face with a thermometer. I recommend to you "Nick of the Woods". I read it lately myself, & went forthwith by metempsychosis into a pilgrim of those vast sighing forests'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Nicholls : Arouse the Soul
'Have you seen Robert Nicholls' poems? If you are a reader of "Tait's Magazine", you will see the review of them; that is a right manly and sterling volume of poetry, full of life, humour, and the noblest elements of poetry. I cannot tell you how such poems as "Arouse the Soul," "I Dare not Scorn," and others such of which this volume has many, affect me. It is such writing as this which makes one feel that talent is nobler than birth, and high-mindedness of more worth than gold.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Robert Nicholls : I Dare not Scorn
'Have you seen Robert Nicholls' poems? If you are a reader of "Tait's Magazine", you will see the review of them; that is a right manly and sterling volume of poetry, full of life, humour, and the noblest elements of poetry. I cannot tell you how such poems as "Arouse the Soul," "I Dare not Scorn," and others such of which this volume has many, affect me. It is such writing as this which makes one feel that talent is nobler than birth, and high-mindedness of more worth than gold.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : 'Orpheus'
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 10 March 1841: 'I have seen Orpheus, & write just to thank you for the pleasure of the vision [...] You have gathered power, intensity, freedom of versification -- But in my brain ---- "slow the Argo ploughs her way LIke a dun dragon spreading moonlit wings", to suggest certain unsurpassable lines.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'This new edition of "Our Village" I have been coveting ever since I saw the advertisement of it, and I will tell you why. It is one of those cheerful, spirited works, full of fair pictures of humanity, which, especially where there are children who love reading and being read to, becomes a household book, turned to again and again, and remembered and talked of with affection. So it is by our fireside; it is a work our little daughter has read, and loves to read, and which our little son Alfred, a most indomitable young gentleman, likes especially - not so much for its variety of character, which gives its charm to his sister's mind, but for its descriptions of the country... Such, dear Miss Mitford, being the case, when I saw the new edition advertised, I began to cast in my mind whether or not we could not buy it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Howitt Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
'This new edition of "Our Village" I have been coveting ever since I saw the advertisement of it, and I will tell you why. It is one of those cheerful, spirited works, full of fair pictures of humanity, which, especially where there are children who love reading and being read to, becomes a household book, turned to again and again, and remembered and talked of with affection. So it is by our fireside; it is a work our little daughter has read, and loves to read, and which our little son Alfred, a most indomitable young gentleman, likes especially - not so much for its variety of character, which gives its charm to his sister's mind, but for its descriptions of the country... Such, dear Miss Mitford, being the case, when I saw the new edition advertised, I began to cast in my mind whether or not we could not buy it...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Howitt Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Rienzi
'I have read Bulwer's "Rienzi" and yours also. I always thought your tragedy the best of your works, and I think so still. It is a glorious thing. I like Bulwer's too, very much, but unless there were historical ground for the love between a Colonna and the family of Rienzi, he has injured his work by the introduction. It is so palpably an imitation of the tragedy and with much less effect...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Rienzi
'i have read Bulwer's "Rienzi" and yours also. I always thought your tragedy the best of your works, and I think so still. It is a glorious thing. I like Bulwer's too, very much, but unless there were historical ground for the love between a Colonna and the family of Rienzi, he has injured his work by the introduction. It is so palpably an imitation of the tragedy and with much less effect...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Howitt Print: Book
Robert Browning : Sordello
Thomas Carlyle to Robert Browning, 21 June 1841: 'Many months ago you were kind enough to send me your Sordello; and now this day I have been looking into your Pippa passes, for which also I am your debtor [...] both Pieces have given rise to many reflections in me [...] you seem to possess a rare spiritual gift, poetical, pictorial, intellectual [...] to unfold which into articulate clearness is naturally the problem of all problems for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Browning : Pippa Passes
Thomas Carlyle to Robert Browning, 21 June 1841: 'Many months ago you were kind enough to send me your Sordello; and now this day I have been looking into your Pippa passes, for which also I am your debtor [...] both Pieces have given rise to many reflections in me [...] you seem to possess a rare spiritual gift, poetical, pictorial, intellectual [...] to unfold which into articulate clearness is naturally the problem of all problems for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Bury : The History of a Flirt: Related by Herself
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 July 1841: 'Before I forget again .. have you looked into the "History of a flirt"? The name may daunt you -- but the writer "leans to Miss Austen's side" [...] There is nothing high toned or passionate -- & supposing you safely over the monotony of the subject & the odiousness of the heroine, it may not prove heavy reading for your evenings [...] It did indeed strike me as one of the very best domestic novels which have fallen upon these evil days.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : Pippa Passes (Bells and Pomegranates, No. I)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 15 July 1841: 'I have read the Bells & Pomegranates! -- "Pippa passes" .. comprehension, I was going to say! [...] There are fine things in it -- & the presence of genius, never to be denied! -- At the same time it is hard .. [italics]to understand[end italics] -- is'nt it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Exposition of the False Medium and Barriers Excluding Men of Genius from the Public
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 4 August 1841: 'I have seen & read [italics]the book[end italics] [...] It is written by an enthusiast in the cause of genius upon the spectacle of its misery, lighted up to ghastliness by the torchlight of [Isaac] D'Israeli & other memorialists [...] Its thunderbolts are hurled against all false media -- such as interpose between men of genius & the public, in the form of [italic]readers[end italics] for publishers & Theatrical managers, &c &c [...] There is, in fact, with much talent & power, a sufficiency of acrimony & indiscretion [...] notwithstanding the sense forced upon me of the overweight of certain words -- I did feel myself taken off my feet & carried along in the brave strong generous current of the spirit of the book -- It is a fearless book, with fine thoughts on a stirring subject'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 August 1841: '[Crow] is an excellent young woman -- intelligent bright-tempered & feeling-hearted, -- more to me than a mere servant; since her heart works more than her hand in all she does for me! And her delight in your Village which I gave her to read, was as true a thing as ever was that of readers of higher degree. She says to me that if we go to Reading, she means to visit the Village, and will know every house in it just as if it were an old place to her!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Crow Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : 'On the Portrait of the Duchess of Burlington, Painted after her Death by Mr Lucas'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 August 1841: 'How glad I was to see the graceful stanzas in the Athenaeum! -- Lady Burlington's I mean!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Benjamin Robert Haydon : letters to Mary Russell Mitford
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 September 1841: 'Mr Haydon's letters shut up in the best letter of all [i.e. one from Mitford], I received this morning & will return to you in a day or two. I must let Papa just look at them. They interested me much [...] How fine this life of genius is! -- & its religion too! [...] I like these letters. They spring up like a fountain among the world's conventionalities'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
George Stephens : Martinuzzi
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 23 September 1841: 'Mr Horne set me Martinuzzi to read, a day or two ago [...] Martinuzzzi is in a course of performance still [...] After the fatal first night, sundry corrections & reformations were made in the tragedy [...] The tragedy has fine things in it, but not very frequently & always broken into chips [...] Mr Horne lent me the play -- & now I have to stutter out the truth to him in all courtesy.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
George Stephens : Martinuzzi
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 October 1841: 'I have not heard from Mr Horne since he wrote to me of Martinuzzi .. A friend of mine, Mrs Orme (who lived with us once as my governess & my sisters',) promised to procure for me from Dr Stone [friend of Horne's] a copy of Martinuzzi which he had marked the margin of, with "great laughter", "peals of laughter", as the spectators laughed where they ought to have cried [...] It was a transcript of the impressions of the first night.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Tom Stone Print: Book
Henri Bergson : Matiere et Memoire
Heavily annotated, mainly in pencil in French (though some summary notes in English), throughout. Summary index of notes on front and back inside covers, flyleaf, half-title page, title page, and last page (opposite the 'Table des Matieres'). This book was re-read in January 1923.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henri Bergson : Essai sur les donn?es imm?diates de la conscience
Heavily annotated, mainly in pencil in French (though some summary notes in English), throughout. Note on inside cover tells us that this book was re-read in February 1923.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Fr?d?ric Paulhan : Les ph?nom?nes affectifs et les lois de leur apparition
Some marginalia in pencil in French and English throughout. Bound together with Alexis Bertrand, 'La psychologie de l?effort: les doctrines contemporaines'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Theodor Billroth : Wer ist musikalisch?
Some considerable marginalia in pencil, mainly in English, but some in German throughout.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Alfred Binet : Les r?v?lations de l??criture d?apr?s un contr?le scientifique
Some marginalia in pencil in French on the following pages:147-8, 154-5.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Alfred Binet : La psychologie du raisonnement: recherches exp?rimentales par l?hypnotisme
Considerable marginalia in pencil in English and French throughout.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Pierre Bonnier : L'orientation
Some marginalia in pencil in French on the following pages: 14, 37, 44, 76, 88
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henry Noel Brailsford : A League of Nations
Some marginalia in pencil in English on page 5 only.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henry Noel Brailsford : The war of steel and gold: a study of the armed peace
Notes on flyleaf and marginalia in English in pencil throughout
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Theodor Dahmen : Die Theorie des sch?nen von dem bewegungsprincip abgeleitete ?sthetik
Some marginalia in English in pencil, especially on the following pages: 47, 51, 63, 177-8
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Adonais'
'read S's Adonais.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Unknown, editors mention that it was the poem printed on its own
Mary Shelley : Valperga
'Read to Mrs G.[isborne]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Shelley : Matilda
'read Matilda to Jane'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Kenilworth: a romance
'finish Kenilworth'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Cain
'read Cain'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Vision of Judgment, The
'Read the Vision of Judgement'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Lee : 'Kruitzner or the German's tale'
'Read the German's tale'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Shelley : Matilda
'Read Matilda to E.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Shelley : Valperga
'Finish C.A. to Jane'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Read Ivanhoe'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Heaven and Earth
'S. reads L.[ord] B.[yron]'s - Heaven and Earth in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Waverley, or 'tis Sixty Years Since
'Read Homer and Waverly'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'Read Homer and the Antiquary'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Read Rob Roy'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Werner
'dine with Jane - Read Albe's tragedy to her'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sardanapalus, a Tragedy
'read Sardanapalus'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Two Foscari, The
'Read the Two Foscari'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
Walter Scott : Pirate, The
'Read the 1st vol of the Pirate'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
'Read Letters from Norway'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman
'Read Wrongs of Woman'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francois Fenelon : Les Aventures de Telemaque, fils d'Ulysse, ou suite du quatrieme livre de l'Odyssee d'Homere
'Read Lindsays dramas & Telemaque'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand : Atala; ou les amours de deux sauvages
'At Sarzana - read Memoirs of the court of Charles II - Attala'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
'Begin Ion - Ludlow's memoirs. &c - The Rest of May a blank except that I read La Gerusalemme Liberata'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy : Le Siege de Calais
'It is not my interest to recommend it but in justice to what I owe to your amusement I must advise you to read the Lettres du Marquis de Roselle, if you have not yet seen them. They are written by the wife of Monsieur Beaumont who has got so much credit by defending the family of Calas. I do not recommend the boasted Siege of Calais to you, though it contains some good lines, but the conduct is woeful.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Sylva Sylvarum: or a Naturall Historie. In ten centuries.
'Read Homer & Virgil - And Bacon's Natural Hist. & Apothegms.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Apopthegmes New and Old
'Read Homer & Virgil - And Bacon's Natural Hist. & Apothegms.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
'I bought Darwin's last book in despair, for I knew I could generally read Darwin, but it was a failure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling : Theory of Pneumatology
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1841: 'Mrs Niven may keep the Pneumatology as long, just as long, as she pleases. I am glad she cares to look into it. I am pleased that the first glance into it has interested [italics]you[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
R. M. Milnes : One Tract More, or, The System Illustrated by "The Tracts for the Times," Externally Regarded: by a Layman
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 December 1841: 'What a singular movement is this Puseyite one [...] Mr Milnes is a Puseyite & wrote the "One tract more," which I read at Torquay by grace of Mr Kenyon's kindness, but thought little of.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Anna Brownell Jameson : writings including Conversations on the State of Art and Literature in Germany (1837)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 23-25 December 1841: 'Mrs Jameson's early writings -- the Ennuyee for instance -- have an adroit leaning to sentiment, which is [italics]sentimentality[end italics], & provokes one the more for the excellent taste observable & admirable even there. In her later books, I do, I confess, see much to admire. The conversations, for instance, on the state of art & literature in Germany .. oh surely, we cannot all but admire their acuteness & eloquence & high intonation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The Blue Belles of England
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 23-25 December 1841: 'Have you read the "Blue Belles"? Do -- it is very clever -- and besides I want you to send me the little key which belongs to the personalities. Who is Lady Dort? -- & Mrs Stewart Gardiner? Who is the painter? It is very clever -- good for its bad class!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling : Autobiography
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 23-25 December 1841: 'I have kept back my letter that I might send you Stilling's Autobiography! But [...] I cant get it anywhere [..] I [italics]am[end italics] so disappointed. Cant Mrs Cox get it for you from the place where she read it herself?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Cox Print: Book
Henry Alford : Chapters on the Poets of Ancient Greece
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1-6 January 1842: 'Did you see Mr Hunter's treatise upon the Tempest? Mr Kenyon "caused it to pass before my face" & I did not complain of the briefness of the vision [...] I have been reading too by the same grace .. of dear Mr Kenyon .. Mr Alford's Chapters on the Greek poets. I dont like them at all. Such criticism, on the surface & of long familiarity with the common eye, the sense of the world has outgrown. It wd have done for those days when poetry was considered a pretty play like skittles, but is not suitable to this [italics]now[end italics], when its popularity as a toy is passed, & its depth & holiness as a science more surely tho' partially regarded.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The Blue Belles of England
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 9 January 1842: 'My dear love -- I have just looked through the Blue Belles -- and so far as I can guess at Mrs Trollope's people [...] I should say that Lady Dort was Mrs Skinner of Portland Place -- who is really quite as absurd if not more so [goes on to identify possible originals of other characters in text]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Alsargis
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 18 January 1842: 'What can you have thought, my dear Mr Horne, of all this loitering with your tragedy? [...] Here it is all safe back for you [...] thank you, thank you, twice over, for all the -- -- -- [italics]pleasure[end italics] is the wrong word -- -- -- [italics]sensation[end italics] is not quite right -- the [italics]emotion[end italics], which this fine tragedy has given me [goes on to comment upon text in detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : Diary and Letters (Volume 1)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 February 1842: 'What an amusing book these Burneyana [italics]do[end italics] make! There is certainly a [italics]consciousness[end italics] which combined with the egoism & the Evelinaism "in saecula saeculorum", suggests no idea of modesty, real modesty [...] And thus I do not worship the "dear little Burney" as a fair incarnate modesty [...] But I do like her book -- I do think it full of living pulses & delightfulness, & my heart leaps up at the hum of work-day life issuing thus from the tomb-door of that dead generation. Oh -- do read the book -- I mean, at once -- read it at once.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Margaret Baron-Wilson : The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 31 February [sic] 1842: 'I have not very long done with Lewis's memoirs, -- & have actually scarcely laid aside Hayley's Autobiography [goes on to criticise these texts in detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Burney : Diary and Letters (Volume 1)
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1842: 'I have only read the first volume of Madame D'Arblay's "Diary." Dr Johnson appears to the greatest possible advantage [...] and Mrs Thrale -- oh that warm heart! that lively sweetness! My old governess knew her as Mrs Piozzi, in Wales [...] As to the little Burney, I don't like her at all [...] A girl of the world -- a woman of the world [...] thought clearly and evidently of nothing on this earth but herself and "Evelina."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Euripides : plays
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 March 1842: 'I had two volumes of Euripedes [sic] with me in Devonshire -- & have read him as well as Aeschylus & Sophocles [...] both before & since I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three tragedians, long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading. 'You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues of Plato: but when three years ago, & a few months previous to my leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume & went through the whole of his writings [...] one after another, -- & have at this time read all that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues & epistles which pass falsely under his name, -- everything except two books I think, or three, of that treatise "De legibus" which I shall finish in a week or two'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Aristotle : Poetics
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 March 1842: 'I have read of Aristotle, only His poetics, his ethics & his work upon rhetoric -- but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I finish Plato's last page.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Aristotle : Ethics
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 March 1842: 'I have read of Aristotle, only His poetics, his ethics & his work upon rhetoric -- but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I finish Plato's last page.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Aristotle : 'work upon rhetoric'
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 March 1842: 'I have read of Aristotle, only His poetics, his ethics & his work upon rhetoric -- but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I finish Plato's last page.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : A Room of One's Own
'Sunday 3 October. I am reading "A Room of One's Own". Most delightful and profound - if I had the time I would write an essay about life in the WRNS'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Barbara Pym Print: Book
Vere Hodgson : MS diary
'Gratifying letter from John Fossett: "Very many thanks for two instalments of diary. Joan and I derived hours of pleasure from reading it aloud to each other. How we laughted about the Mulberry Tree. We passed it over to the RAF and how they enjoyed it. It seemed like being at home again as we lived through your experiences.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Fossett Manuscript: Sheet
Mary Shelley : [letters to PB Shelley]
'I have received my desk today [shipped from England] & have been reading my letters to mine own Shelley during his absences at Marlow. What a scene to recur to! My William, Clara, Allegra are all talked of - They lived then - They breathed this air & their voices struck on my sense; their feet trod the earth beside me - & their hands were warm with blood and life when clasped in mine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Letter
Edward George Earle Bulwer Lytton : Paul Clifford
'I have been reading with much encreased admiration Paul Clifford - It is a wonderful, a sublime book - What will Bulwer become? the first Author of the age? I do not doubt it - he is a magnificent writer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Alessandro Manzoni : I Promessi Sposi
'I have tried to read Mme de Genlis' memoirs, but they are one large capital I from beginning to end; this amuses at first - but tires long before we get to the end of 8 vols. - Above all, dear, get the Promessi Sposi - at first you may lag a little, but as you get on the truth & perfect Italianism of the manners and desciptions - the beautiful language which differs from all other Italian prose - being really the Tusca[n] of the day that he writes, & not a bad imitation of the [ ] trecentisti - the pasion & even sublimity of parts rendered it to me a most delightful book - I can imagine a person who had not been to Italy not liking it but to [underlined] us [end underlining] it must be delightful.' [letter to Jane Williams Hogg]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Prosper Merimee : La Jacquerie
'[Merimee's] book has arrived yesterday. I have only begun reading it.' [letter to Venceslas-Victor Jacquemont]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Thomas Crofton Croker : Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland
'I am obliged to you for the books you were good enough to send me - Mr Crokers Volume was quite to my purpose' [letter to John Murray]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "Victor Hugo's Romances"
'"Victor Hugo" has come; I like all your alterations vastly, except one which I don?t like, tho? I own something was needed there also.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay on ?Victor Hugo?s Romances?
Robert Louis Stevenson : [material on John Knox]
?Goodbye. I am at "Knox and the Women", which seems good stuff when I come to put it down; but the arrangement cost me some trouble.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Presumably numerous works by, and of general and specific reference to, Knox
Edward Bulwer : Eugene Aram
' I was much gratified by your giving me Eugene Aram to do - & then just as I was setting to it "tooth and nail" - some events in the family of a friend of mine forced me to go out of town, & took all my attention forcibly away from my task. However my article is now in full progress - & I write to tell you so that you may expect it next week. One thing I am plagued about - Colburn has been too stingy to give me a copy - & getting it from a library it is continually sent for back It is a wonderful and divine book - though so very sad' [Letter to John Bowring]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquis of Normanby : Contrast, The
'Could you lend me any new publ. - you wd eternally oblige me - not the Contrast - I have read it - But the Fair of May Fair or Arlington -' [letter to Charles Ollier]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Bulwer : Godolphin
'Is Godolphin by Henry Bulwer? Pray tell me - Do you remember promising to lend me the letters of Horace Walpole when they came out - [Now] If you were very good and wished [much] to please me you would send them and [Trevyllian] Trevellian - which I should like to read as being by the person who wrote Marriage in High Life' [Letter to Charles Ollier]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Lady Caroline Lucy Scott [pseud.] : Marriage in High Life, A
'Is Godolphin by Henry Bulwer? Pray tell me - Do you remember promising to lend me the letters of Horace Walpole when they came out - [Now] If you were very good and wished [much] to please me you would send them and [Trevyllian] Trevellian - which I should like to read as being by the person who wrote Marriage in High Life' [Letter to Charles Ollier]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [translation of Homer's Hymn to Mercury and the Cyclops]
'he does not like any poetry except Percy's Ancient ballads and Shelley's translation of Homer's Hymn to mercury and the Cyclops - but he likes romances any marvellous tales & is a great story teller' [letter to Maria Gisborne; subject is Percy Shelley junior]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Shelley Print: Book
Caroline Norton : "The Wife" and "Woman's Reward"
'I have just been reading The Wife which pleases me greatly. I do not know which story I like best - They both contain such true observations - thoughts that come home to one's heart, even till it aches, as shew the Authoress to have the greatest sensibility joined to her acknowledged talent' [Letter to Elizabeth Stanhope]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Jeremiah Holmes Wiffin [ed. / trans.] : Works of Garcilaso de la Vega
' I have got Wiffin's Garcilaso - He mentions in it that he meant to publish a Spanish Anthology - did he ever?' [letter to John Bowring who was helpiing Mary with Spanis researches]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Richard Monckton Milnes : Poetry for the People
'Two of your love poems are supremely beautiful - O let not words, the callous shell of thought & I will not say my life was sad and I like infinitely They owned their passion without shame or fear. I hope some day you will come and read to me again' [Letter to Richard Monckton Milnes]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Monckton Milnes Print: Book
Alexander Andrew Knox : Heir of Cyprus, The
'You liked "St Thomas's Eve" which gave great promise - a promise which "The Heir Of Cyprus" redeems. The tory is far more artistically, & is indeed admirably managed, whilst the poetry is not less spirited and fervid. It is presumptuous, I fear, to speak thus - but I think that animated by your genius, the character of the Hero will have a very powerful effect on the stage' [letter to William Macready]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley
Abraham Hayward : [account of Euroipean travels]
'Do you object to my alluding to your delightful little account of your passage over the Splugen in /34 & mentioning your name?' [letter to Abraham Hayward. Mary is preparing her own acount of travels in Germany and Italy in 1841/2]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mary Shelley : Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843
'I am really frightened when I think that you are reading my book critically - It seems to me such a wretched piece of work - written much of it in a state of pain that makes me look at its pages now as if written in a dream. The second volume only tells anything new - I fear I shall be very much ashamed of it' [letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Leigh Hunt Print: Book
Ida Grafin Hahn-Hahn : Grafin Faustine
'I sent you Nina - & a Novel of the Countess Hahn by Miss R - [Ramsbottom] her best I believe - I am reading another now that I do not like so well - Fau[s]tina is very clever - all about Clement is excellent - two things I think erroneous - one is bad management on the part of the authoress the other unnatural - She ought to have accounted better for the absence of Andlau - In the situation she describes he wd have come back or sent for her - never have allowed so long a separation - the unnatural thing is Faustina ever wishing to leave her child - a woman of that directness of feeling is always I think maternal but I like the book & it is clever - lend it to Knox when you have read it' [letter to Claire Clairmont]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Ida Grafin Hahn-Hahn : [a novel]
'I sent you Nina - & a Novel of the Countess Hahn by Miss R - [Ramsbottom] her best I believe - I am reading another now that I do not like so well - Fau[s]tina is very clever - all about Clement is excellent - two things I think erroneous - one is bad management on the part of the authoress the other unnatural - She ought to have accounted better for the absence of Andlau - In the situation she describes he wd have come back or sent for her - never have allowed so long a separation - the unnatural thing is Faustina ever wishing to leave her child - a woman of that directness of feeling is always I think maternal but I like the book & it is clever - lend it to Knox when you have read it' [letter to Claire Clairmont]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Manuscript: Unknown
Jean Francois Marmontel : Memoires
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 March 1842: 'I [italics]have[end italics] read Marmontel's memoirs .. & a most amusing book it is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : Zanoni
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 17 March 1842: 'In regard to Zanoni, I think with you that there is much in it, one wd yearn to see cast out of it, in reverence to the unity of the whole [goes on to comment on text in further detail]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Edwin Austin Townsend : poem on the departure and farewell sermon of George Augustus Selwyn, on his being appointed Bishop of New Zealand
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 March 1842: 'I like this waste of the public money upon bishops of New Zealand!! [...] as little as you do, & have ventured to be open with Mr Townsend & tell him as much. The utter absurdity [...] of forcing out the forms & ceremonies of this Parliament church, out among the savages, I cd even cry over in utter vexation [...] let those who are sent, be [italics]missionaries[end italics]. The bishops are impotent [...] in all situations of the kind -- & as I ventured to tell Mr Townsend, the martyr soul of poor Williams was the true Bishop-soul for the South Seas. 'There is great sweetness in his little poem to be sure -- a few lines together which one smiles over to oneself as for pleasure. Still -- what a subject!'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher : plays
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27-28 March 1842: 'Do you know how Mr Macready has been attacked for trying [...] to suppress [italics]the saloons[end italics] [...] and how it has been declared that no theatre can exist at the present day without a saloon -- & how, if it could, the effect wd be to force vicious persons & their indecencies into full view in the boxes --!! Now this appears to me enough to constitute a repulsive objection! & I who have read hard at the old dramatists since I last spoke to you about them, -- Beaumont & Fletcher Massinger Ben Jonson all Dodsley's collection, -- can yet see that objection in all its repulsiveness! .. & read on!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles F. Darley : Plighted Troth
Wiliam Charles Macready, Journal, 6 August 1841: 'Finished the play of Plighted Troth -- a play written in a quaint style, but possessing the rare qualities of intense passion and happy imagination.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready
Charles Darwin : The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
Marginalia in pencil in English on the following pages: 59, 208, 211, 256.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Georges Dumas : La tristesse et la joie
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English and French throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Beatrice Edgell : Theories of Memory
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English throughout the volume; read January 1925
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henry Fawcett : Manual of Political Economy
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charles F?r : Sensations et Mouvement: ?tudes exp?rimentale de psycho-m?canique
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English and French throughout the volume; a brief summary of notes on the front flyleaf.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charles W. Ferguson : The Confusion of Tongues: a review of modernisms
Some marginal annotation in pencil in English on the following pages only: 256, 265-6, 274.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Guđmundur Finnbogason : L'intelligence sympathetique
Summary index in pencil in Vernon Lee's hand on page 244.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Henry Ford : My Life and Work
Much marginalia in pencil in English throughout the volume. 'Finished reading Giovedi Santi 1929' written on the half-title page. Received from Evelyn Wimbush, Christmas 1928.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Patrick Geddes : The Evolution of Sex
Brief marginal notes in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Patrick Geddes : Evolution
Brief marginal notes in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charlotte Perkins Gilman : Human Work
Brief summary of notes on inside front cover, and marginalia in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charlotte Perkins Gilman : The Home: Its Work and Influence
Some marginalia in pencil in English throughout the volume.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Rudolf Goldscheid : H?herentwicklung und Menschen?konomie: grundlegung der sozialbiologie
Detailed summary of notes on front inside cover, flyleaf, title page, half-title page, first page of text, and rear inside cover. Very heavily annotated, with marginalia in both English and German throughout. This book was also read by Mario Calderoni and his marginal annotations are also evident. Read by Vernon Lee in March 1913 and re-read in 1920.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Rudolf Goldscheid : Entwicklungswerttheorie, Entwicklungs?konomie, Menschen?konomie
Summary of notes on the half-title page and rear papers. Heavily annotated, with marginalia in both English and German throughout.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Karl Groos : Einleitung in die Aesthetik
Heavy marginal annotation in pencil, almost always in English, throughout the volume.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Karl Groos : Der Aesthetische Genuss
Heavy marginal annotation in pencil, almost always in English, throughout the volume. There are detailed notes with page references pasted into the volume opposite the title page, and this is continued on the rear inside cover.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Karl Groos : Die Lehre vom umfassenden Seelenein
Some marginal annotation in pencil and ink in English on the following pages only: 15, 17, 28.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Karl Groos : Die Befreiungen der Seele
Only one marginal gloss ('good') written in pencil on one page only. Note that this book does not have page numbers.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Karl Groos : Das Seelenleben des Kindes
Considerable marginalia, mainly in English but some in German, throughout the volume. Detailed notes on the rear inside cover.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett, 30 March 1842: 'I have been reading Emerson -- He does away with individuality & personality in a most extraordinary manner -- teaching that [...] every man's being is a kind of Portico to the God Over-soul -- with Deity for background [...] there are heresies as thick as blackberries. Still the occasional beauty of thought & expression, & the noble erectness of the thinking faculty gave me "wherewithal to glory".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : A Year's Life
Elizabeth Barrett to James Russell Lowell, 31 March 1842: 'I beg you at last to receive my very earnest thanks for the volume of graceful poetry which I received from you some months ago through the hands of our mutual friend Mr Kenyon [...] There is a natural bloom upon the poems, a one-heartedness with nature, which is very pleasant to me to recognize [...] I hope that you will write on'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Agnes Maria Bennett : The Beggar Girl and Her Benefactors
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 April 1842: 'I read the Beggar girl, when I was very young'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Southey (ed) : The Works of William Cowper, Esq., ... With a Life of the Author
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 April 1842: 'The best and fullest biography [of William Cowper] in all ways appears to be poor Southey's -- the life published together with the works a few years ago [...] I read the book some years ago -- Mr Kenyon lent it to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Duchesse de Montpensier : Memoires
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 April 1842: 'Of course you know Mademoiselle de Monpensier's [sic] Memoires. They are most characteristically delightful -- yet I am only just now reading them -- & the Duc de St Simon's also. I have a sort of Memoir brain fever at the present season-- Don't you think so?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'The Cardinal and the Dog'
William Charles Macready, Jr. to Robert Browning, May 1842: 'My dear Mr Browning 'I was very much obliged to you, for your kind letter. I liked exceedingly the Cardinal and the dog. I have tried to illustrate the poem, and I hope that you will like my attempt.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Charles Macready Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : letter to Elizabeth Barrett
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 May 1842: 'I cdnt help reading to Crow your beautiful story of your Flush [dog] [...] mine immediately took up the gesture of listening intently gathering his ears over his great eyes as if he saw a hare [...] & patting about his little paws everytime the word [...] "Flush" occurred. Be sure he thought I was reading about [italics]him[end italics]!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 15 May 1842: 'I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness about this divine Tennyson [...] But notwithstanding the poetry of the novelties -- & you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only one of which I had seen before .. having enquired for the other vainly) are included in these two, -- nothing appears to me quite equal to Oenone [...] That is not said in disparagement of the last, but in admiration of the first. There is in fact more thought, more bare brave working of the intellect in the later poems, even if we miss some of the high ideality, & the music that goes with it, of the older ones.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Catherine Crowe : Susan Hopley; or the Adventures of a Maid Servant
'In a short time after, I procured the "Life of Susan Hopley", and felt disappointed at finding it to be a work of fiction.' [However, Ashford was inspired by this work to write her own life story]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ann Ashford Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
'Before leaving the cotton mill I had the good fortune to make my first acquaintance with the earlier works of Charles Dickens. Our manager, who was a reading man, was subscribing to periodically issued numbers of the "Pickwick Papers"... and he generously offered me an early perusal of the "Pickwick Papers", on the condition that I fetched the numbers as they were due from a little stationer's shop near the Navigation Inn. This was a double pleasure to me, as in addition to reading the pamphlet I could have half-an-hour's breathing outside the mill. Dickens assisted in lightening the burden of a weary time. I gathered fresh life from his admirable writings; and even then began to look into the distant future, with the hope that at sometime I might be enabled to track his footsteps, however far I might be behind. This prospect constantly buoyed up my hopes; and, when at last I was taken away from the mill I felt a regret that by this proceeding I sacrificed a glorious opportunity of making myself known in the world.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Serial / periodical
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays: First Series
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 June 1841: 'Yes [...] to [having read] Emerson's letters [sic]. Or rather, yes, to the letters, & "no" to Carlyle's preface -- because I read the American edition. Mr Kenyon lent the book to me, the book belonging to Mr Crabbe Robinson whose hair stood on end when he heard of its being lent to me! "Why" he said "that book is too stiff even for myself -- and I am not very orthodox." In fact the book [...] is very extravagant in some of its views. It sets about destroying [...] the personality of every person, & speaks of the Deity as of a great Background to which every created individual forms a little porch!!! For the rest, there are beautiful & noble thoughts in the book, beautifully & nobly said.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
Robert Browning to Alfred Domett, 13 July 1842: 'I send this with Tennyson's new vol -- The alterations are insane. WhatEVER is touched is spoiled [...] Locksley Hall is shorn of two or three couplets I will copy out from the book of somebody who luckily transcribed from the proof-sheet -- meantime [italics]one[end italics] line, you will see, I [italics]have[end italics] restored'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : Eva; the Ill-omened Marriage, and Other Tales and Poems (extracts)
Robert Browning to Alfred Domett, 13 July 1842: 'Sir L. Bulwer has just published a set of sing-songs -- I read two, or one, in a Review -- & thought them abominable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1842: 'I read Mary Wolstonecraft [sic] when I was thirteen: no, twelve! .. and, through the whole course of my childhood, I had a steady indignation against Nature who made me a woman, & a determinate resolution to dress up in men's clothes as soon as ever I was free of the nursery'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna : 'little books'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 August 1842: 'As to Charlotte Elizabeth -- yes, I have read that little book you speak of, & several of her little books besides. Her bitterness & narrowness towards the R Catholics [...] I admit & lament to the roots of my heart. She is a very devoted woman, & lives to God nearly as if she lived with Him -- and I believe that in exciting religious feeling her books have done much good & especially among the young.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Benjamin Robert Haydon : letter to the Sheffield Mercury regarding formation of a School of Design in Sheffield.
Elizabeth Barrett to Benjamin Robert Haydon, 29 October 1842: 'I have to thank you [...] for the sight of a very interesting letter of the Sheffield paper which I seem to be bound to return to you, as you do not say "keep it".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Newspaper
Frances Trollope : The Barnabys in America
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 4 November 1842: 'I have been reading Mrs Trollope in the New Monthly. She is very clever there is no denying. But I do wonder whether the [italics]educated[end italics] quakers make use of [italics]Thee[end italics] in the nominative case -- whether they make use of such execrable grammar (for instance) as "Thee bee'st". I never heard a quaker talk, and yet I cd scarcely wonder or doubt at all about it, if I did not observe that Capt. Marryat & Mrs Trollope & other writers of at least supposed education, represent their quakers always talking so.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Frederick Marryat : A Diary in America, With Remarks on its Institutions
'E[lizabeth] B[arrett] B[arrett] had read Marryat's [...] A Diary in America, With Remarks on its Institutions (1839), in 1841'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 November 1842: 'Keep my secret -- but I have been reading a good deal lately of the new French literature [...] I was curious beyond the patience of my Eve-ship, & besides grew so interested in France & the French through my long apprentice ship to the old Memoirs that I felt pricked to the heart to know all about the posterity of my heroes & heroines. And besides I live out of the world altogether, & am lonely enough & old enough & sad enough & experienced enough in every sort of good & bad reading, not to be hurt personally by a French superfluity of bad [...] [George Sand] is eloquent as a fallen angel [...] Then there is Eugene Sue, & Frederic Soulie, & De Queile .. why the whole literature looks like a conflagration -- & my whole being aches with the sight of it [...] Full indeed of power & caprice & extravagance is this new French literature [...] The want is, of fixed principle [...] Now tell me, what you think? That it is very naughty of me to read naughty books -- or that you have done the same?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 November 1842: 'Keep my secret -- but I have been reading a good deal lately of the new French literature [...] I was curious beyond the patience of my Eve-ship, & besides grew so interested in France & the French through my long apprentice ship to the old Memoirs that I felt pricked to the heart to know all about the posterity of my heroes & heroines. And besides I live out of the world altogether, & am lonely enough & old enough & sad enough & experienced enough in every sort of good & bad reading, not to be hurt personally by a French superfluity of bad [...] [George Sand] is eloquent as a fallen angel [...] Then there is Eugene Sue, & Frederic Soulie, & De Queile .. why the whole literature looks like a conflagration -- & my whole being aches with the sight of it [...] Full indeed of power & caprice & extravagance is this new French literature [...] The want is, of fixed principle [...] Now tell me, what you think? That it is very naughty of me to read naughty books -- or that you have done the same?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : Bells and Pomegranates III (Dramatic Lyrics)
Joseph Arnould to Robert Browning, 27 November 1842: 'Finding it utterly impossible to express in prose the tumult of delight which your most noble Dramatic Lyrics have given me I have ventured as you will see to express, however imperfectly a tithe of what I felt in the following most crude and hasty lines [long poem in heroic couplets follows letter] [...] I wish you could have seen the delight with which my wife & myself devoured your "Pomegranate" & the ringing of "Bells" we set up afterwards [...] you must let me grasp your hand as a friend for "Waring": which I read & reread with tears in my eyes, I KNOW you can guess why [poem was based on Arnould and Browning's mutual friend Alfred Domett].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph and Maria Arnould Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Waring'
Joseph Arnould to Robert Browning, 27 November 1842: 'Finding it utterly impossible to express in prose the tumult of delight which your most noble Dramatic Lyrics have given me I have ventured as you will see to express, however imperfectly a tithe of what I felt in the following most crude and hasty lines [long poem in heroic couplets follows letter] [...] I wish you could have seen the delight with which my wife & myself devoured your "Pomegranate" & the ringing of "Bells" we set up afterwards [...] you must let me grasp your hand as a friend for "Waring": which I read & reread with tears in my eyes, I KNOW you can guess why [poem was based on Arnould and Browning's mutual friend Alfred Domett].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Arnould Print: Book
George Sand : Leila
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 November 1842: '"Leila" [...] made me blush in my solitude to the ends of my fingers -- blush three blushes in one .. for [italics]Her[end italics] who could be so shameless -- for her sex, whose purity she so disgraced -- & for myself in particular, who cd hold such a book for five minutes while a coal-fire burnt within reach of the other.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les derniers jours d'un condamne
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 November 1842: ''Have you observed what I have observed [...] that Charles Dickens has meditated deeply & not without advantage upon Victor Hugo, -- and that some of his very finest things .. (all for instance of the Jew's condemnation-hours in Oliver Twist) .. are taken from Victor Hugo, .. "Les derniers jours d'un condamne" & passim? I admire Boz very absolutely & gratefully [...] but my sense of his power & genius grew grey & weak [...] with reading Hugo.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 November 1842: 'I have just done reading a romance of Frederick Soulie's which begins with a violation & a murder, & ends consistently with a murder & a violation, -- the hero who is the agent of this "just proportion" being shut up at last & starved in a premature coffin, after having his eyelids neatly sowed [sic] up by the fair fingers of his lady-love.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Pollock : The Course of Time
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 November 1842: 'I have read through Pollock's Course of Time, -- & I confess it appeared to me an extroardinary [sic] work for a young poet -- full of grand conceptions half formed -- & tracked everywhere with unequal staggering footsteps of genius.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : review article on Tennyson and/or Browning
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 November 1842: 'Mr Leigh Hunt & Mr Horne have been reviewing Tennyson & Browning in the Church of England quarterly [...] Mr Horne is acute and generous as he always is, -- but Leigh Hunt's article, altho' honest in criticism, I do not doubt, & wise in many of the remarks, strikes me as a cold welcome from a poet to a poet -- & to such a poet as Tennyson! -- & I felt a little vexed while I was reading it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Frederika Bremer : The Neighbours: A Story of Everyday Life
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 December 1842: 'My thoughts have lately been of Frederica Bremer?s "Neighbours" instead of my own?I mean of the very charming novel which Mrs Howitt has just "done into English" from the Swedish ? or German peradventure ? it being probably a translation from the German ? Read it my dearest friend, & agree with me that it is delightful. "Like Miss Austen" says Mrs Howitt - & "like Miss Austen" being the best introduction to you possible, "I echo her" ? altho? in my private & individual opinion & saving your presence, I do consider the book of a higher & sweeter tone than Miss Austen had voice and soul for. There is more poetry, more of the inner life, more of the ideal aspiration more of a Godward tendency in the book than we need seek for or than even you my beloved friend, can, I think, imagine in any book or books of Miss Austen considered in a moment of your most enthusiastic estimation. I am pleased, & touched .. charmed for the better, by the book. The serenity, the sweetness, the undertone of Christian music, affect me the more for coming to me in the midst of my lion & tiger hunting with La jeune France [ie her reading of lurid, recent French fiction]; & the impression will not pass, it appears to me, with the reading of the last page.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Burney D'Arblay : Diary and Letters (Volume 5)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 5 December 1842: 'I did think the fifth volume [of Frances Burney D'Arblay's Diary and Letters] interesting & very interesting -- and yet, I dont give it the preference quite as you do [...] I believe I was [...] vexed at her wary conduct & cold policy & most provident distrust towards that noble woman Madme de Stael [goes on to comment upon and criticise text in detail].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Van Dyke : The Other Wise Man
'Headmistress takes Evensong in school because the church could not be blacked out. Instead of a sermon she read from books with a religious theme, e.g. "The Other Wise Man", "Who Moved the Stone?" and "In the Steps of the Master", which we all enjoyed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Frank Morrison : Who Moved the Stone
'Headmistress takes Evensong in school because the church could not be blacked out. Instead of a sermon she read from books with a religious theme, e.g. "The Other Wise Man", "Who Moved the Stone?" and "In the Steps of the Master", which we all enjoyed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Howitt : The Seven Temptations
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 7 December 1842: 'I like Mary Howitt's lyrical poetry -- ballad poetry, I shd say distinctively, -- and once thought, -- before I had read the "Seven Temptations", that I wd prefer having her genius to work with, than either Mrs Hemans's & [sic] Miss Landon's. The Seven Temptations changed my view, & checked my admiration. She cannot sustain a high song'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Oriana'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9 December 1842: 'Do you really object to the re-iteration of [italics]Oriana[end italics] [in Tennyson's poem of that name]? Do you think it affected? To my mind, it is highly artistic, & [italics]effective[end italics] instead! It rang all day in my head when first I read it [...] You hear the Norland wind wail in it!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Locksley Hall'
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 13 December 1842: 'I read Tennyson. "Locksley Hall" is very fine; but should it not have finished at '"I myself must mix with action, Lest I wither by despair"? 'It seems to me that all after that weakens the impression of the story, which has its appropriate finish with that line.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Robert Browning : Bells and Pomegranates III (Dramatic Lyrics)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 December 1842: 'Mr Browning's last "Bells and Pomegranates" I sigh over. There are fine things [...] But there is much in the little (for the publication consists of only a few pages) which I, who admire him, wish away -- impotent attempts at humour, -- a vain jangling with rhymes [...] and a fragmentary rough-edgedness about the [italics]mounting[end italics] of some high thoughts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 17 December 1842: 'I sent Pere Goriot [...] because it is my belief that I never mentioned to you the name of Balzac, & that he [italics]is[end italics], nevertheless, the most powerful writer of the French day next to Victor Hugo & George Sand! [...] Pere Goriot is a very painful book -- but full of moody power, dashed with blood & mud. It appears to me the most powerful work of its writer, I have read -- & also the most open to tenderness.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Leila
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 December 1842: 'Because I would not, [italics]could not[end italics] send you Leila a serpent book both for language-color & soul-slime & one which I could not read through for its vileness myself, .. I sent this Jacques, which seemed to me to stink less in the [italics]phrase[end italics], altho' the bearing & countenance & general moral tone are identically bad [...] Indiana, less revolting as a whole leans alike & with the bent of the author's peculiar womanhood, to the sensual & physical -- and yet that work does appear to me very brilliant & powerful, & eloquent beyond praising.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Jacques
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 December 1842: 'Because I would not, [italics]could not[end italics] send you Leila a serpent book both for language-color & soul-slime & one which I could not read through for its vileness myself, .. I sent this Jacques, which seemed to me to stink less in the [italics]phrase[end italics], altho' the bearing & countenance & general moral tone are identically bad [...] Indiana, less revolting as a whole leans alike & with the bent of the author's peculiar womanhood, to the sensual & physical -- and yet that work does appear to me very brilliant & powerful, & eloquent beyond praising.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Indiana
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 December 1842: 'Because I would not, [italics]could not[end italics] send you Leila a serpent book both for language-color & soul-slime & one which I could not read through for its vileness myself, .. I sent this Jacques, which seemed to me to stink less in the [italics]phrase[end italics], altho' the bearing & countenance & general moral tone are identically bad [...] Indiana, less revolting as a whole leans alike & with the bent of the author's peculiar womanhood, to the sensual & physical -- and yet that work does appear to me very brilliant & powerful, & eloquent beyond praising.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frances Trollope : Letter to Mary Russell Mitford
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 28 December 1842: 'I am bewitched, my beloved friend, to be sure! Do you know I could have been obstinate in my self-persuasion that I had returned to you Mrs Trollope's letter & here it is in my writing basket. And all this while I have been rewarding you for your kindness in letting me see it [...] & keeping you from sending your answer, by my carelessness.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Letter
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon fils : Le Sopha, Conte Moral
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 28 December 1842: 'Did you ever look at -- I dont say [italics]read[end italics] -- the "Sofa" of Crebillon fils. I sent for it once in the innocense [sic] of my ignorance, & after a quarter of an hour's turning of the leaves dropped it like a burning iron. It is the most disgusting sensual book I ever [italics]tried[end italics] to read -- but [italics]did'nt[end italics] read, I do assure you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : autobiography
Elizabeth Barrett to Benjamin Robert Haydon, 8 January 1843: 'Your autobiography my dear Mr Haydon is delightful! I have been deeply interested in it in all ways [...] you owe this M.S. to the world as you owe to it the productions of your Art [...] the descriptions of Northcote, Opie, & Fuseli are highly graphic & life-like'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Martin Chuzzlewit
Elizabeth Barrett to James Martin, 6 February 1843: 'Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us -- three doors from Mr Kenyon in Harley Place? The new numbers appear to me admirable, & full of life & blood .. whatever we may say to the thick rouging & extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness, too, in the organ-scene'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : The Last of the Barons (extract)
Robert Browning to Alfred Domett, 5 March 1843: 'Here we are sound asleep. Bulwer's new Novel, "The Last of the Barons," is to be, he says, the last of Bulwer's -- and seems a poor affair, if one may judge by the single extract I have seen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Thornton Hunt : Foster Brother, The
'I ought to have written before, dear Hunt, to thank you for the Foster Brother, which pleased me very much. The sincerity and earnestness of the author gives
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Forest and Game-law Tales
'How good of you to send me these books. I am ashamed to say that I forget whether I thanked you for the last - but I [underlined] do [end underlining] thank you. I liked the 3d tale, "Maude Chapel Farm" very much.' [letter to Edward Moxon]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : [biograpohical sketch in] Poems and Ballads of Schiller
'How detestably Sir Edward Bulwer speaks of Shelley in his life of Schiller. - he thinks to gain popularity by truckling to the times - and mistakes the spirit of the times, & casts an indelible stain on his own name, as long as it survives.' [letter to Edward Moxon]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'The Cherry Orchard'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 March 1843: '[The writings of Miss Edgeworth] are excellent & admirable -- but I cannot say, poetical or passionate [...] Still, after their kind, they are excellent [...] Why I learnt to read out of those first little books for children, & my child's heart has beat very fast in the "Cherry Orchard" & for Rosamond's "Purple vase"!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : 'Rosamond'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 March 1843: '[The writings of Miss Edgeworth] are excellent & admirable -- but I cannot say, poetical or passionate [...] Still, after their kind, they are excellent [...] Why I learnt to read out of those first little books for children, & my child's heart has beat very fast in the "Cherry Orchard" & for Rosamond's "Purple vase"!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, mid-March 1843: 'Thank you, my dear cousin, for Mr Longfellow's verses -- a [italics]whole book[end italics] of which I never saw before, & never liked him so little as in the same. But I suppose verses of this sort are meant to be light & insigni[fi]cative'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Leonard Horner : Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P. (volume I)
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, mid-March 1843: 'Here is the first volume of Horner -- thank you! It is very interesting -- but he seems to me to have had too wavering a will, or rather too many objects, .. to be a great man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Leonard Horner : Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P. (volume II)
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, mid-March 1843: 'This Mr Horner is very noble & strong -- & I like him better, my dear cousin, as a whole politician .. as he gathers himself into one slowly with all his energy & strength [...] And then what an admirable letter Sydney Smith's is, in the appendix -- quite perfect in its kind I think.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Southey : Roderick, the Last of the Goths
Francis Horner to his sister, 26 October 1815: 'I told you I was reading Don Roderick the Goth; and notwithstanding the romance of the original story, it was with fatigue that I got through it. I am not surprised that the book has had a run, because there [italics]is[end italics] a romantic story, and because it is seasoned with methodistical cant to the taste of the times; but that the work should be commended by any person of cultivated taste, as it has been, seems to me strange.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Horner Print: Book
Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas : [unknown]
'In looking over my note I find that I have not half said all I think of the admirable manner you treat the subject of your book in the preface. Did you ever read any of Quevedo? the Spanish wit? - whose dry humour is very pointed - His account of the different awakenings of different characters for the day of Judgement is one among many specimens' [letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : The Last of the Barons
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 21 March 1843: 'Notwithstanding my admiration of Bulwer, I had the hardest & most laborious work passing through his "Last of the Barons" (May it be the last of his romances wrought after such a fashion!) [...] There are threads of golden beauty [...] the sub-stuff being strong, & stiff, & useful -- very good stout history [...] but as for romance & poetic Art, the Goddess of useful knowledge has set her face against them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Abraham Hayward : Verses of Other Days
'I like your verses very much, they are marked by elegance, simplicity & feeling - they bear the stamp of reality being unaffected, & easy - Thank you for them very much'. [letter to Abraham Hayward]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Frances Trollope : Hargrave, or the Adventures of a Man of Fashion
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 March 1843: 'I have been reading to my amusement, Mrs Trollope's Hargrave. She has great skill in the construction of a story & shows it here; although I do not think that otherwise & generally, the work is of her cleverest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward Bulwer : Night & Morning
'I stumbled on the following in a work of Bulwer's published in /41 - it is curious. Speaking of France he says: "The vast masses of energy & life broken up by the great thaw of the imperial system, floating along the tide are terrible icebergs for the vessel of the state. Some think Napoleonism [he ought to say revolutionism - MS's comment] over - its effects are only begun [underlined by MS] Society is shattered from one end to the other, & I laught at the little rivers by which they think to keep it together.[end underlining] - the last is curious.' [MS does not close her quotation marks] [letter to Claire Clairmont]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Mrs Samuel Carter Hall : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Benjamin Robert Haydon, 21 April 1843: 'Mrs S. C. Hall is an agreeable & graceful writer, & I am one of her many readers [...] From her husband I had one or two kind notes once, when he had the editorship of Colburn's magazine & I was a contributor to the same.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Sarah Trimmer : Abridgement of Scripture History, consisting of Lessons selected from the Old Testament, for the Use of Schools and Families
'we learned Pinnock's Catechisms of History and Geography, and parsed sentences grammatically. For religious instruction we read portions of the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles in a class every day, using Mrs Trimmer's "Selections"; and on Sundays we repeated the Collect and learned Watts's hymns, besides going through the Church Catechism. We also had Crossman's Catechism given us as an explanation of the Church Catechism'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Richard Walter : Voyage Around the World by George Anson
'when we went to bed she [Sewell's mother] would go upstairs with us and read to us whilst we were being undressed, because she did not like us to run the risk of being frightened by ghost stories told by the nursery-maids, as she had been once frightened herself. I can recall now the pleasure with which (taking my turn with my sisters) I used to jump up into her lap and listen whilst she read to us "Anson's Voyages", or "Lemrier's Tour to Morocco", or the "History of Montezuma". When she had finished, we all, kneeling around her, said our prayers and went to bed happy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Sewell Print: Book
Gottfried August Burger : Lenore
'My first sight of German letters, and my first wish to know the language, was gained from being allowed to look at a beautiful copy of Burger's "Lenore", illustrated by striking line engravings, and having the German on one page and the English translation on the other.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'We learned passages from the best authors, and my delight in Walter Scott made me add to the regular lesson large portions of "The Lady of the Lake" which are fresh in my memory at this moment'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : journal
Benjamin Robert Haydon to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 April 1843: 'I have been sadly shocked at Reading Wilkie[']s life, -- to think that for 20 years of our earliest Friendship when daily I used to read to him my journal of my thoughts -- & he used to speak of the danger of all personal remarks in [a] journal [...] It [i.e. Haydon's] was only a journal of conclusions on Art, & Poetry which have been the foundation of my lectures -- I am shocked that I never knew [italics]he[ed italics] kept a journal of nothing but remarks on his Friends their weaknesses & follies'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Robert Haydon Manuscript: Unknown
Frederika Bremer : The Home: or, Family Cares and Family Joys
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 May 1843: 'Mary Howitt's last translation from Frederika Bremer's swedish, "The Home" charms me even more than "The Neighbours" did.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : article on Royal Commission on Children's Employment
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 29 May 1843: 'By the way [...] I have been reading you in the Illuminated Magazine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Giorgio Vasari : Delle vite de piu eccelenti pittori, scultori, ed archittetori
Benjamin Robert Haydon to Elizabeth Barrett, 6 June 1843: 'I read Vasari, all day -- yesterday[.] Why are Vasari's Lives so popular [--] why have they gone through so many Editions? -- because what is anecdotical & human is not sacrificed for the sake of the abstract & professional [...] The fact the Michael Angelo was liable to head aches -- is a Comfort! and when I read he had the cramp! -- my dear, I rise an inch taller as I walk'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Robert Haydon Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : unknown
Benjamin Robert Haydon to Elizabeth Barrett, 18 June 1843: 'My dear Child is varying but no cough -- What a dear sweet girl! [...] We go to Harrow today to see Byrons Tombstone [i.e. his favourite spot in the local churchyard] & autograph -- & to amuse her, as she reads him with such interest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Mordwinoff Haydon Print: Book
Mrs Coleridge : 'On Rationalism'
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 30 June 1843: 'I honor Mrs Coleridge for the readiness of reasoning & integrity in her reasoning, for the learning, energy & impartiality which she has brought to her purpose -- & I agree with her in many of her objects; & disagree, by opposing her opponents with a fuller front than she is always inclined to do [...] I have read the book in spite of prophecies. After all I shd like to cut it in two -- it wd be better for being shorter -- and it might be clearer also. There is in fact some dulness & perplexity [...] & what I cannot help considering a superfluous tenderness for Puseyism.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Orion
Katherine Cockell to Elizabeth Barrett, 30 June 1843: 'I could not put Orion out of my hands for my needful food, -- nor out of my head for my more needful sleep. I was wholly possessed, rapt away into some new sphere never before dreamt of, & all this, (& much more than all this) tho' I have no classical enthusiasm (of course not!) real or affected; & tho' I have a particular antipathy to Giants.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Cockell Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Orion
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 7 July 1843: 'Mr Kenyon was with me yesterday, and praised "Orion" most admiringly. He had read it only in parts yet, through a press of occupation, but he had from these parts, he said, the same sort of pleasure as from Keats's "Endymion" or "Hyperion;" and what particularly charmed him was the versification.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Kenyon Print: Book
George Payne Rainsford James : novels
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 July 1843: 'I like the spirit & courteous goodness of Mr James's books [...] I believe I have read almost everyone [sic] of his books .. either when I was ill or when I was well. They have much of what Chaucer calls "gentilesse" .. if not much passion & imagination -- and his scenic descriptions are admirable. I do not know better books for an invalid -- although the author may not be pleased with my reason for saying so -- viz that they seldom make the heart beat.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'The elements of botany on the Linnaean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, besides the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too, was a great favourite'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'The elements of botany on the Linnaean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, besides the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too, was a great favourite'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Duchesse de Montpensier : Memoires
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 July 1843: 'You must remember Mademoiselle de Montpensier's delightful memoirs. She was fifty or past it when she met Lauzun, & the tears ran down my cheeks as I read the recitation of her love sorrows.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk
'We were at the old vicarage, which had then only one sitting room, or at least only one which we could use, for the floor of the other room was covered with Mr Heathcote's books. They were very kindly left for our use, and I made an acquaintance with Sir Walter Scott's "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk", and read Shakespeare to Ellen, and led a quiet life, seeing no one'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
George Borrow : The Bible in Spain; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonment of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1843: 'Mr Borrow [italics]is[end italics] a very original & characteristic writer -- I was delighted with his book [...] the Bible Society committee was not satisfied with him. They call him wild I believe & wanting in gravity [...] but I admire Mr Borrow, & like him all the better for putting off the conventional demureness of a pattern missionary, & daring to be a [italics]man[end italics] in spirit & in truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Tracts for the Times
'I had seen some numbers of "Tracts for the Times" lying on the counter in a bookseller's shop in Newport, and they had excited my curiosity, and led to inquiry; and, as my brother William's opinions had by that time become marked, he soon succeeded in indoctrinating us all with them. A very great comfort it certainly was to myself to have my ideas cleared upon subjects which had long been floating about in my brain, and worrying me almost without my knowing it. Especially it was a relief to me to find great earnestness and devotion in a system which allowed of reserve in expression, and did not make the style of conversation, which I had met with in the only definitely religious tales I had read, a necessary part of Christianity. Mrs Sherwood's "Tales" and others of a similar kind, described children as quoting texts, and talking of their feelings in an unnatural way, or what seemed to me unnatural; and I had really suffered so much at school from things said to me which jarred upon my taste that it was perfect rest to be able to talk upon religious subjects without hearing or using cant phrases'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charles James Lever : Charles O'Malley
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ?late July 1843: 'As you praise Charles O'Malley so much, I really must try to get thro' the thorns & read him. I tried only once certainly -- & then my own humour might have been partly in fault. My conclusion then was, that I cdnt read him -- that he was a very clever fellow & the very fellow to be written & read between the smoke of a cigar & the steam of a glass of brandy [...] His noise made my head ache, & his loud laughing made me grave. In fact, the book appeared to me a view of Life by the light of strong, somewhat coarse & altogether unworn animal spirits .. & not that touching, solemn, holy thing which Life is, in the eyes of that God who died for its purification, & those human beings who have learnt nearly all they know in the depth of its agonies.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Martha Sherwood : [Tales]
'I had seen some numbers of "Tracts for the Times" lying on the counter in a bookseller's shop in Newport, and they had excited my curiosity, and led to inquiry; and, as my brother William's opinions had by that time become marked, he soon succeeded in indoctrinating us all with them. A very great comfort it certainly was to myself to have my ideas cleared upon subjects which had long been floating about in my brain, and worrying me almost without my knowing it. Especially it was a relief to me to find great earnestness and devotion in a system which allowed of reserve in expression, and did not make the style of conversation, which I had met with in the only definitely religious tales I had read, a necessary part of Christianity. Mrs Sherwood's "Tales" and others of a similar kind, described children as quoting texts, and talking of their feelings in an unnatural way, or what seemed to me unnatural; and I had really suffered so much at school from things said to me which jarred upon my taste that it was perfect rest to be able to talk upon religious subjects without hearing or using cant phrases'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charlotte Yonge : Daisy Chain, The
'In 1840 Miss Yonge was a bright attractive girl, at least ten years younger than myself and very like her own Ethel in "The Daisy Chain". Great interest was expressed by her and her mother in Mrs Mozley (Cardinal Newman's sister), the author of a tale called the "Fairy Bower", which had appeared shortly before. It was the precursor of the many tales, illustrative of the Oxford teaching, that were written at this period, and which were hailed with special satisfaction by young people, who turned fom the texts, and prayers, and hymns, which Mrs Sherwood had introduced into her stories, and yet needed something higher in tone than Miss Edgeworth's morality'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Mrs Mozley : Fairy Bower, The
'In 1840 Miss Yonge was a bright attractive girl, at least ten years younger than myself and very like her own Ethel in "The Daisy Chain". Great interest was expressed by her and her mother in Mrs Mozley (Cardinal Newman's sister), the author of a tale called the "Fairy Bower", which had appeared shortly before. It was the precursor of the many tales, illustrative of the Oxford teaching, that were written at this period, and which were hailed with special satisfaction by young people, who turned fom the texts, and prayers, and hymns, which Mrs Sherwood had introduced into her stories, and yet needed something higher in tone than Miss Edgeworth's morality'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Yonge and her mother Print: Book
Mary Martha Sherwood : [Tales based on Church Catechism]
'The idea of connecting it ["Laneton Parsonage", by Sewell] with the Church Catechism had been originally suggested to me by Mrs Sherwood's stories on the same subject, which in my childhood had been a great source of Sunday amusement'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
John Henry Newman : [a sermon]
'The Church though may mean the Catholic or Universal Church and so Rome may be included. It is a horrid, startling notion, but a sermon of Newman's I was reading to-night would be a great safeguard against being led into mischief by it, "Obedience, the remedy for religious pereplexity".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Cecilia Frances Tilley : Chollerton: A tale of our own times
'I took up "Chollerton" (a Church tale) and skimmed parts through the uncut leaves and was not fascinated. It seemed strained and the fasting was brought forward prominently, and there seemed too much womanish humility. In one place the authoress cannot follow a young clergman, by description, in his feelings, or intrude "into that sacred edifice which formerly a woman's foot was forbidden to profane". This is, if I remember rightly, the drift of the observation, and really my humility cannot reach that depth. I think I [italics] can [end italics] imagine something of what a clergyman might feel, and I should never consider it an intrusion to go wherever men go, taking them as men. Of course the altar is different; but there the distinction is not between men and women, but between God and man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Forest and Game-Law Tales
'I read nothing scarcely, all my spare time being given to German exercises. Miss Martineau's "Tales on the Game Laws" I began, but they are so dull to me that I have scarcely patience to finish. The thing I like about them is their fairness. The rich people are not all wretches,though Miss Martineau's sympathies are evidently with the poor'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Archibald Alison : History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in MDCCCXV to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in MDCCCLII
'I read a little now, and am almost afraid I am learning to do without reading. Napoleon's battles in Alison's history are so dreadfully dry, after one has been writing and working all day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Robert Southey : Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
'I have been reading "Southey's Life"; it does me a great deal of good. His life in a book and Mrs Charles Worsley's in actuality, have helped me more than any sermon. Southey's hard work and pecuniary anxieties come home to me'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia - or New Foes with an Old Face
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Edward Bouverie Pusey : [Sermons]
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Meyrick Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Orion
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 7 August 1843: 'I heard of Orion the other day being admired at the first glance, & carried away to be admired at leisure, by Mrs Jameson'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Brownell Jameson Print: Book
Cornelius Mathews : Motley Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Cornelius Mathews, 31 August 1843: 'I wrote immediately upon receiving your works in their reprint to acknowledge that kindness [...] Since then, I have read them with great attention & recognised the power & talent which are destined, I do not doubt, to develop themselves still farther & in more distinctive forms. There is an inclination to the grotesque which while it gives evidence of a ready fancy, disturbs the effect of the general impression to such readers as I am -- & the very faithfulness to American manners & associations while I consistently applaud it, does nevertheless occasionally in spite of myself increase this disturbance.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Cornelius Mathews : Behemoth, a Legend of the Moundbuilders
Elizabeth Barrett to Cornelius Mathews, 31 August 1843: 'I wrote immediately upon receiving your works in their reprint to acknowledge that kindness [...] Since then, I have read them with great attention & recognised the power & talent which are destined, I do not doubt, to develop themselves still father & in more distinctive forms. There is an inclination to the grotesque which while it gives evidence of a ready fancy, disturbs the effect of the general impression to such readers as I am -- & the very faithfulness to American manners & associations while I consistently applaud it, does nevertheless occasionally in spite of myself increase this disturbance.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Robert Browning : Pippa Passes
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 26 September 1843: 'Browning, I have read but little of -- indeed "Pippa passes" -- is almost the only poem of his that I have seen -- the commencement I thought very beautiful, & the [italics]design[end italics] of the poem altogether, -- but the interior is often so labyrinthine, that it is not the easiest matter in the world to thread one's way [...] Turning over some numbers of the Athenaeum, last night, I came upon a review of [R. H. Horne's Orion], which the first half- dozen lines proclaimed to be yours. How pleasant it is, all of a sudden, to turn round a corner, & be met by some familiar face [...] 'I read the "Brown Rosarie["] the other day to a young friend, an artist & he was so much delighted with it, that he determined forthwith to execute a set of designs from it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Robert Browning, Jr : 'On Bonaparte'
Robert Browning, Sr to Thomas Powell, 11 March 1843: 'I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. They were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundred of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having a great aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording every trifling incident that falls in their way [...] There was one amongst them "On Bonaparte" -- remarkably beautiful -- and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would have believed it to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning, Sr Manuscript: Unknown
Baron Jean du Potet de Sennevoy : An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism ... With an Appendix Containing Reports of British Practitioners in Favour of the Science
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 12 December 1843: 'I have read in Baron Dupotet's & Dr Stone's book upon Mesmerism, that in cases of the chest, it will not avail -- and that the spitting of blood has been brought on very violently by attempting to cast the patient into sleep'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Monckton Milnes : 'Lay of the Humble'
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 13 December 1843: 'I admired [Richard Monckton Milne's] first volume very much; but his later poetry seems to want fire and imagination, and to strain too much at the didactic [...] And then that exquisite "Lay of the Humble" which I was praising lately, and which affected me very much at the time I read it (it appeared in the first volume), somebody told me the other day that it was not original. Taken from the German I think they said it was. I wish I knew. It is very beautiful in any case.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Sarah Ellis (nee Stickney) : The Poetry of Life
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 23 December 1843: 'Either a Stickney or a Strictland wrote the "Poetry of Life", prose (very) essays, which I couldn't get to the end of'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Thomas Westwood, 26 December 1843: 'Although I have read rather widely the divinity of the Greek Fathers [...] & have of course informed myself in the works generally of our old English divines, Hooker's, Jeremy Taylor's & so forth, I am not by any means a frequent reader of books of theology as such [...] I read the Scriptures every day & in as simple a spirit as I can; thinking as little as possible of the controversies engendered in that great sunshine, & as much as possible of the heat & glory belonging to it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Caroline Bowles : The Birth-Day
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 December 1843: 'Although not agreeing with you that the poetry of Caroline Bowles (the Birthday & the minor verses) is "meretricious," -- nay, seeming to see in it much tender simplicity, freshness & moral sweetness, I do not class it or herself highly as poet & poetry, & am aware of the feebleness essentially, -- the want of reach of mind & imagination [goes on to comment upon specific passages of The Birth-Day].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Christmas Carol
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 December 1843: 'The Christmas Carol strikes me much as it does you. I dont like the machinery -- which is entangled with allegory & ghostery -- but I like & admire the mode of the working out -- & the exquisite scenes about the clerk & little Tiny [Tim]; I thank the writer in my heart of hearts for them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Orion
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 27 December 1843: 'I must not forget to thank you for your recommendation of "Orion" -- I have read it again & again, & like it exceedingly -- I thought it a little [italics]cold[end italics] at first, but lost sight of that in the second reading'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ode to a Skylark
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844: 'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the "Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Alastor
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844: 'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the "Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844: 'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the "Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Revolt of Islam (Canto I)
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 January 1844: 'Shelley, I have read, through & through, & love & admire him as much, as I can do a man who holds himself so far aloof from common feelings, & common sympathies -- There are poems of his, which I never tire of reading -- the "ode to a Skylark", & "Alastor", & part of the "Prometheus", & that magnificent first canto of the "Revolt of Islam", with the fight of the eagle & serpent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : Du hast Diamenten und Perlen
'I [...] was singing after my own fashion "Du hast diamentem und Perlen"[...]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: song
Charles Sarolea : 'Everyman' magazine
'I have been reading the singular article on myself, signed ?C.S.?, in your first issue.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
George Payne Rainsford James : novels
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 5-6 January 1844: '[George Payne Rainsford James] is a picturesque writer [...] Often when I have been very unwell, I have been able to read his books with advantage, when I cd not read better ones. You may read him from end to end without a superfluous beat of the heart -- & they are just the sort of intellectual diet fitted for persons "ordered to be kept quiet" by their physicians [...] I am grateful to Mr James for many a still serene hour.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton : poems
Richard Hengist Horne to Elizabeth Barrett, 27 January 1844: 'Do you know Mrs Norton's poetry? Much I have seen, I thought very good of its kind. More high-minded in its personal aggrievedness, and less reproachful & vindictive than Ld Byron.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Hengist Horne
Richard Hengist Horne : plays
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 January 1844: 'For the Dramas [of Richard Hengist Horne], we owe you many thanks -- we have read them all, & admired them all [...] I confess I have formed an almost higher opinion of Mr Horne's genius from them, than from "Orion" [poem] [...] "Delora["] too, has many fine passages, -- and I should be more particular in adverting to them & others, were it not that your own pencil has forestalled me, so that my encomiums would be, in most cases, but a reiteration of your own [goes on to reflect upon pleasures of reading annotations by others in books]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : The Ballad of Delora
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 January 1844: 'For the Dramas [of Richard Hengist Horne], we owe you many thanks -- we have read them all, & admired them all [...] I confess I have formed an almost higher opinion of Mr Horne's genius from them, than from "Orion" [poem] [...] "Delora["] too, has many fine passages, -- and I should be more particular in adverting to them & others, were it not that your own pencil has forestalled me, so that my encomiums would be, in most cases, but a reiteration of your own [goes on to reflect upon pleasures of reading annotations by others in books]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : The Ballad of Delora
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 January 1844: 'For the Dramas [of Richard Hengist Horne], we owe you many thanks -- we have read them all, & admired them all [...] I confess I have formed an almost higher opinion of Mr Horne's genius from them, than from "Orion" [poem] [...] "Delora["] too, has many fine passages, -- and I should be more particular in adverting to them & others, were it not that your own pencil has forestalled me, so that my encomiums would be, in most cases, but a reiteration of your own [goes on to reflect upon pleasures of reading annotations by others in books]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles James Lever : Harry Lorrequer
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 5 February 1844: 'I [italics]cannot read[end italics] Lever, ... honestly & without affectation, I [italics]cannot[end italics] [...] Over and over again have I tried to read his book -- and every time I came to the conclusion that he was a remarkably clever writer who was unreadable by me. [...] The chapters, I have read of him, make my head ache as if I had been sitting in the next room to an orgy [...] of gentlemen topers, -- with their low gentility, & "hip hip hurrahs," & wine out of wine-coolers [...] he is contracted & conventional, & unrefined in his line of conventionality -- and I cannot believe that he represents fairly even the social & jovial side of men of much refinement'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Taylor : Philip van Artevelde
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, letter postmarked 21 February 1844: 'I suppose by an opinion upon Taylor you mean nothing elaborate -- & indeed I am not qualified for it without a little study, having read Van Artevelde once in a hurry (once -- long ago!) & no work of his subsequently at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : Colombe's Birthday
Robert Browning to Christopher Dowson, Jr., 10 March 1844: 'Yesterday I read my play to [Charles Kean] and his charming wife (who is to take the principal part) -- and all went off au mieux -- [italics]but[end italics] -- he wants to keep it till "Easter next year" -- and unpublished all the time!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Unknown
George Burges : criticism on lines of Aeschylus attributed to Sophocles
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 16 March 1844: 'I return Mr Burges's criticism [...] which interested me much in the reading. Do let him understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a moment, according to his view of the question [...] I am delighted to be able to call by the name of Aeschylus, under the authority of Mr Burges, those noble electrical lines [...[ which had struck me twenty times as Aeschylean, when I read them among the recognized fragments of Sophocles.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
Sir Aurel Stein : unknown
'I have before me as I write a photo by Sir Aurel Stein showing the body of a man of Turfan buried fifteen centuries ago, and it is hard to belive that he is even dead. And the reason Sir Aurel suggests for this desiccation of Central Asia is, that not so much has the climate changed, as that in the past those areas subsisted in the main on the excess water given by the slow melting of the original ice-cap, since the actual snowfall must have been insufficient to produce glaciers of a size to give their requisite summer volume of water. And so it seems to me that that is to some extent the condition of Ladakh...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Louis Alan Gompertz ('Ganpat') Print: Unknown
Bartholomew Simmons : poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 22 December 1843: 'I never saw [John Sterling']s book, although I have read many of his poems in Blackwood. He falls, to my apprehension, into the class of respectable poets: good sense & good feeling, somewhat dry & cold, and very level smooth writing, being what I discern in him -- There are Mr Sterling, Mr Simmons, Lord Leigh [...] who have education & natural ability enough to be anything in the world EXCEPT poets -- & who choose to be poets "in spite of nature & their stars" [...] Moreover all these men, by a curious consistency, take up & use the Gallic- Drydeny corruption of versification [source eds believe by this Barrett means blank verse] -- so at least the passing glances I have had of their proceedings lead me to suppose.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Unknown
Robert Browning : Colombe's Birthday
Bryan Waller Procter to Robert Browning, ?26 March 1844: 'I got your play last night then read it with very great pleasure [...] Colombe is a charming creature. The play [...] is [italics]full[end italics] of interest & capital situations -- the language excellent. You have done well [...] to lay aside all mystery of language & speak direct'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bryan Waller Procter Print: In proof copy
Richard Hengist Horne : A New Spirit of the Age
Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, ?12 April 1844: 'I have just finished the second volume [of A New Spirit of the Age], dear Miss Barrett, & my fingers itch to tell you that I am quite positively sure that [italics]you are in more pages of the book than those headed by your name[end italics]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Westwood Print: Book
Alfred Domett : letter to Robert Browning
Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, c.8 November 1843: 'Browning & Sister[,] Dowson & wife dined with us a week back, Browning read us your letter, a capital one [...] Your advice to him as to his [poetic] language, r[h]ythm & c was admirable & he seemed [italics]really[end italica] grateful for it [...] he read it out to us himself & I can assure you there was not in his manner the slightest semblance of anything approaching to offence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Letter
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, c.8 November 1843: 'What a pity [Tennyson] has not the intense vigour of Robert Browning -- I still believe as devoutly as ever in Paracelsus & find more wealth of thought & poetry in it than [in] any book except Shakespeare. The more one reads the more miraculous does that book seem as the work of a man of five and twenty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Arnould Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : A New Spirit of the Age
Richard Hengist Horne to Elizabeth Barrett, 10 June 1844: 'Leigh Hunt has shown me his copy [of A New Spirit of the Age] all marked through. He has marked with great admiration various passages written violently of by [italics]others[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Leigh Hunt Print: Book
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton : The Dream, and Other Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 13 June 1844: 'The poem [of Caroline Norton's] which I called [italics]domestic[end italics] is one, I think, in an octave stanza, containing a story .. of a wife who becomes aware of the dishonour of her husband. It succeeds the Dream -- It has more [italics]power[end italics], than any composition of Mrs Norton's which I ever read. The name quite escapes me -- & I have so painful an association of a personal nature with the book, as to lose all courage to look into it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poetry
Harriet Martineau to Elizabeth Barrett, 11 July 1844: 'I read Tennyson with deep & high delight, yet with the mournful feeling that his operation & immortality must be restricted by the want of simplicity wh. is the curse of our poets now-a- days. None can live who do not speak out clear & substantial, well-rounded thoughts in the most lucid & direct expression. Scarcely one does this, -- & for want of it I do fear none will live.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Catherine Gore : Agathonia
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 12 July 1844: 'I heard the other day that "Agathonia" was Mrs Gore's! [...] Mr Crabbe Robinson told George [? i.e. Barrett's brother] at Mr Kenyon's the other day that he had been vexed at the dificulty he found in reading it through, [italics]as it was my book![end italics] -- Then the fame of it went over to Mrs Coleridge, .. & lighted at last on the right head .. Mrs Gore's.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Crabb Robinson Print: Book
Henry Fothergill Chorley : Memorials of Mrs Hemans
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1844: 'I have been reading for the second time, that interesting memoir of Mrs Hemans by Mr Chorley -- full of interest certainly. Still I stand by my position, that she was too conventionally a [italics]lady[end italics], to be a great poetess [...] I took up Blanchard's memoir of LEL just after Mr Chorley's book, & was struck by an undeniable vulgarity spreading all the way through it, in obvious contrast to the refinement of the other work.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to James Russell Lowell, 31 July 1844, thanking him for copy of his Poems (1844): 'Your "Legend of Brittany" is full of beautiful touches [...] Then among the miscellaneous poems my pencil has marked various beauties & felicities. Chief of all I like the [italics]ode[end italics], which has struck a deep string in me, as it must in all, to whom Poetry has been as to me, the Life-light of existence. 'If I ventured to make a remark in criticism on this new volume in a general point of view, it wd be that there is a certain vagueness of effect, through a redundant copiousness of what may be called poetical diction!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 9-10 August 1844: 'Do you remember, by the glance you had, my lovely little cousin Lizzie Barrett [...] Well -- that child is only ten years old, & not remarkable in any way for precocity, .. simply an intelligent child, and fond of reading -- and she delights, quite delights in your books!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lizzie Barrett Print: Book
Catherine Smith Pyer : Wild Flowers; or Poetic Gleanings from Natural Objects
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 September 1844: 'I have sent you Miss Pyer's volume of poems today .. & see in it an address to yourself. The subscription is all settled.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Lys dans la Vallee (including Preface)
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 3 September 1844: 'I read the preface to "Le Lis" & was delighted by it -- but I admire the romance far more than you seem to do, and as a love-romance, a nouvelle "nouvelle Heloise," think it quite exquisite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : La Vieille Fille
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 September 1844: 'The first book of Balzac's I ever read, disgusted me so, that I vowed to read no more of him, -- & it was by a mere accident that he met me again & overcame me. That first book was his "Veille [sic] fille," which I still think a prodigy of noisomeness.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henry Rogers : 'Recent Developments of Puseyism'
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 29 October 1844: 'There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the Edinburgh Review, .. by whom? -- and I have been reading besides the admirable paper by Macaulay in the same number.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Honore de Balzac : La Torpille
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 November 1844: 'I read "La Torpille" -- but I cannot give you any information, such as you ask for [...] As to Casimir Delavigne, I dislike his poetry so much that I dont think I [italics]can[end italics] try to read any more of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Jean Francois Casimir Delavigne : poetry
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 November 1844: 'I read "La Torpille" -- but I cannot give you any information, such as you ask for [...] As to Casimir Delavigne, I dislike his poetry so much that I dont think I [italics]can[end italics] try to read any more of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Edward Moxon : Sonnets
Elizabeth Barrett to Edward Moxon, 25 November 1844: 'I am grateful to you for the gift you have sent me [...] I have glanced through a good many of the sonnets already, & am able to appreciate their refined grace.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : [poems]
'Try two of Schubert?s songs ?Ich ungl?cksel?ger Atlas? and ?Du sch?nes Fischerm?dchen?. They are very jolly.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Friedrich von Matthisson : Adelaide
'Also I have been hearing ?Adelaide? many times; O! That is all I can say..'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Casimir Delavigne : Louis XI
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : Marino Faliero
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : Les Enfants d'Edouard
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : Don Juan d'Autriche, ou la Vocation
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : La Popularite
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : La Fille du Cid
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : Une Famille au temps de Luther
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 28 November 1844: 'What works of Casimir Delavigne have you read? [...] I have read "Louis the Eleventh [sic]," "Marino Faliero," "Les Enfans d'Edouard [sic]," "Don Juan d'Autriche," "La Popularite," "La Fille du Cid," "Une Famille du temps de Luther [sic]," forming the second and third series of his "Theatre." To me they seem full of talent; striking the just medium between the slowness and dullness of what they call the classical drama [...] and the unnatural and exaggerated contrasts and surprises of Victor Hugo'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Leonard Sylvain Jules Sandeau : Marianna
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: 'Of [italics]Sandeau[end italics] I have read very little. His "Marianna" has power in its way [...] but acclimatation is a necessary precaution -- for the passion of the book exceeds the comprehension of an Englishman by leagues of extravagance. It's a melancholy, desecrating book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : Don Juan d'Autriche, ou la Vocation
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: 'I read Don Juan d'Autriche -- & looked into a good deal, .. or perhaps not a good deal, .. of Casimir Delavigne's other plays -- but he seemed to me to pine after Racine & the ([italics]French[end italics]) classic abominations of desolation so obviously that I turned back.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Casimir Delavigne : plays
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: 'I read Don Juan d'Autriche -- & looked into a good deal, .. or perhaps not a good deal, .. of Casimir Delavigne's other plays -- but he seemed to me to pine after Racine & the ([italics]French[end italics]) classic abominations of desolation so obviously that I turned back.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Les Maitres Mosaistes
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: '"Les Maitres Mosaistes" I [italics]will[end italics] answer for [to friend seeking advice on choosing French fiction to read] -- it is perfectly pure, & very beautiful; and so also is "Les sept chords du lyre" -- a prose poem which delighted me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Les sept cordes de la lyre
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: '"Les Maitres Mosaistes" I [italics]will[end italics] answer for [to friend seeking advice on choosing French fiction to read] -- it is perfectly pure, & very beautiful; and so also is "Les sept chords du lyre [sic]" -- a prose poem which delighted me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Une tenebreuse affaire
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 December 1844: 'The only work of Eugene Sue which I have read among those you ask about, is "Le Salamandre" [...] The only remarkable thing is the preface, in which [...] he says that to represent good people as successful in this world and rogues as unsuccessful would take away the chief argument for a future life. Now I really do hold that virtue, although not always prosperous, is yet upon the whole far happier than vice [...] I am quite sure that to represent systematically vice as fortunate, and goodness as wretched, tends to make selfish people vicious; and it is really wicked in Balzac to give one the pain he does in this way. In "Une Tenebreuse Affaire," for instance, I was so provoked with him for making Napoleon kill Michu and forgive those dolts of gentlemen, that I could have flung the book at his (Balzac's) head, if luckily that wonderful head had been within reach.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Frederika Bremer : The Neighbours: A Story of Every-Day Life
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 December 1844: 'Ah! dearest love, Frederika Bremer! I did read half "The Neighbours," and really you are the only person of a high class of mind whom I have found liking her works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Horace Twiss : The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, with Selections from His Correspondence (vol. 1)
Elizabeth Barrett to James Martin, 10 December 1844: 'I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the Eldon memoirs, as Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume. Are English chancellors really made of such stuff? Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law lords perhaps.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Meredith : Letters vol 1
'Moreover I have been reading Meredith's letters - undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of English literature -especially the 1st vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Laurent Tailhade : Poemes aristophanesques
'I recommend to you Laurent Tailhade. (Such trifles as ?Place des Victoires? which I would give my head to have written originally in English.)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Theodore Dreiser : The Genius
'I think "The Genius" is a pretty good book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Friedrich von Matthison : Adelaide
'... I find I have nothing to say that has not been already perfectly said and perfectly sung in Adelaide.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'One gravestone was erected by Scott .. to the poor woman who served him as a heroine in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, and the inscription in its stiff Jedediah Cleishbotham fashion is not without something touching.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: gravestone
George Gordon Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'Try, by way of change, Byron?s "Mazeppa", you will be astonished. It is grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one?s own generation of better writers and ? I don?t know what to say; I was going to say ?smaller men?; but that?s not right; read it and you will feel what I cannot express. Don't be put out by the beginning; persevere; and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an end with it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Notes on the Movements of Young Children.
'Many thanks. I have received the 15 quid, and the "Portfolio" proof.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay
Charles Rollin : The History of the Arts and Sciences of the Ancients
'I finished Rollin before these people came. I am quite distressed about my memory - after all the time and pains I have bestowed on this ancient history I find my mind retains but a faint outline of it. - I did not read the dissertation on the arts and sciences it seemed lumpish stuff, and foreign to my present purpose[.] However if you think it for my good to spend a fortnight on these three volumes I will not grudge it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : William Tell
'I have finished William Tell - and mean to commence Turandot on Monday - I could read Schiller for ever - who but himself could have made such a play as Tell on such a plan?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonvantura Trapassi (AKA Metastatio) : Unknown
'Metastatio is improving I finish Themistocles and the second book of Annals today also - what tempted you to send me that deplorable (these blots are no work of mine) volume of calamities? it was enough to throw any one in my case into the blue devils for a twelvemonth to come.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Johann Gottfried Gruber : Christop Martin Wieland
'Meantime I am reading Grubers Wieland: he is about equal to Doctor Joralic our worthy friend: a more learned man, but at bottom another of the same.-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I have finished the second voluime of Gibbon the article on Christianity is real capital - Goethe gets no easier. I am near the end of Egmont which I like infinitely better than then two following pieces - At last I am beginning to recognise the Goethe you admire -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I am busy with the fourth volume of Gibbon and Machiavelli's discourses on Livy. He is the only Italian that has interested me - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
George Gordon Byron : The Age Of Bronze
'Byron has sent us a new poem the Age of Bronze: it is short, and pithy - but not at all poetical. Byron may still easily fail to be a great man. You shall see his Bronze (a poetical squib) when you arrive; and another Liberal which is on the way.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Germaine de Stael : Life of Necker [Jacques?]
'I am busy with Gibbon, my adorable's life of Necker (not yours) and Fiesko. Either Schiller's prose is much more difficult than his verse or my head is much thicker than it was in winter.- I hope it is not putting you to inconvenience my detaining these books so long[.] If you want them tell me instantly- '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Friedrich Schiller : Fiesco Or, The Conspiracy of Genoa: an Historical Tragedy
'I am busy with Gibbon, my adorable's life of Necker (not yours) and Fiesko. Either Schiller's prose is much more difficult than his verse or my head is much thicker than it was in winter.- I hope it is not putting you to inconvenience my detaining these books so long[.] If you want them tell me instantly-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Johann Karl August Musaeus : Volksmahrchen der Deutschen
'I finished your Musaeus ten days ago: it is a nice little book and will do very well. You shall have it at Had[dingto]n whenever you get there, with multifarious advices and palavers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Edward Irving : For The Oracles Of God, Four Orations
'I spent the day in reading part of Irving's sermons, which I have not finished. On the whole he should not have published it - till after a considerable time. There is strong talent in it, true eloquence, and vigorous thought: but the foundation is rotten, and the building itself is a kind of monster in architecture - beautiful in parts - vast in dimensions - but on the whole decidedly a monster.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Emery Tylney : (in) Foxe's Book of Martyrs
'You may remember that I used to desire to outlive you: I have changed my cue: I should be left to speak in the words of surely the most affecting historical document in the world ? Emery Tylney?s character of George Wishart: ? ?O that the Lord had left her to me, her poor boy, that she might have finished what she had begun!? I can?t tell you how beautiful that whole paper is from which those words are imitated: I was reading it again the other day, and my heart came into my mouth when I got to that passage: one is so little prepared for such a cry of the soul amid the succinct details of life and manners that surround it. And the saying in my mind attaches itself to you: I have had to explain all round that you might understand the full meaning of the words, and how they are not simply my words, but have been sanctified by the fire of martyrdom and the name of one of the good, pure, quiet, delicate spirits of the Earth; and you needed to know that, to know why I like to apply them to you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'?Miss Griffin? is capital stuff; not the least dull, a little ragged and loquacious, of course. Go on. Give me more types in the same style; and when I have the lot , I?ll tell you about the?[end of extract]'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : John Knox
'I have another letter from Groves [sic] about my ?John Knox?, which is flattering in its way: he is a very gushing and spontaneous person.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Grove Manuscript: Unknown
Laurent Angliviel de la Beaumelle : Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de Madame de Maintenon
'I have seen nothing new, & have been reading the Memoirs of Mde de Maintenon in French, which are exceedingly entertaining'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frances Burney : Camilla; or, a Picture of Youth
'My [underlined] vast [end underlining] dear Sister!
O why, instead of 5, not give us [underlined ten, twenty [end underlining], of such dear delicious people? - I have devoured the whole, - and now feel so forlorn, so grieved to have none for tomorrow, that I tremble lest some grievous melancholly malady should seize upon me! - One after another, and then almost all at once, I have loved every soul among them so much, that to part with them is quite dreadful. Dear Sir Hugh! - But to me, if not most dear, at least most amusing Sir Sedley - where did you pick up that delightful, ridiculous [underlined] vast [end underlining] enchanting creature? - and how could you be so cruell as to dismiss him to the Hebrides with such a stink and never let us hear of him again? - I missed him [underlined] ineffably [end underlining] - I love him [underlined] superlatively [ end underlining], and, at the last moment, must own, I hated him [underlined] inexpressibly [end underlining]! sweet good little Eugenia! - Shall I ever dare to grumble again at a [underlined] red nose [end underlining] and a [underlined] dwarfs height [end underlining! - I wish, however, I had, like her, a little Latin and greek to make it go down rather more palateably. Of Camilla herself what can I say sufficiently expressive of my rapturous fondeness for her! [Burney then continues for several paragraphs to analyse and admire characters and plot of her half-sister's novel...] [underlined] Enfin [end underlining], with blessings and thanks that (tho' not for [underlined] me [end underlining] singly in the world you have
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel, The
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Robert Southey : Thalaba the Destroyer
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Joseph Cooper Walker : Historical and critical essay on the revival of the drama in Italy, An
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book, Unknown
Robert Southey : Letters written during a short residence in Spain and Portugal
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Henry Fielding : History of Tom Jones, a foundling, The
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Pietro Metastasio : L'Olimpiade
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Demofoonte
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Giuseppe riconosciuto
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Gioas re de Giuda
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : La Clemenza di Tito
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Catone in Utica
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Attilio Regolo
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Ciro riconosciuto
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Pietro Metastasio : Zenobia
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Pietro Chiari : La bella Pellegrina
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Rinaldo di Capua : La zingara
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Hester Lynch Piozzi : Observations and Reflections made in the course of a journey through FRance, Italy and Germany
'So you are in correspondence with Mrs piozzi? Enviable Mortal! - Do you know I am, at this present writing, stark staring mad for love [of] her. I have been reading her Journey through France and Italy, and nothing that I ever luxuriously licked my lips over, ever delighted me half so much. The book is one huge mass of entertainment from beginning to end - And written in such an unaffected spirit of Christian charity for the errors of mankind - breathing such candour, chearfulness and good nature, that I quite adore her. She uses various quaint phrazes, very comical and expressive; but somewhat odd "somehow" (as she says) till one gets accustomed to her style. The original poetry thinly scattered through the work, I do not admire. But a woman cannot have every excellence of heart and genius. She has enough to satisfy a more fastidious spirit than mine'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Marie "Sophie" Cottin : Elisabeth, ou les Exiles de Siberie
'We have a little French story in the house, called [underlined] Elizabeth [end underlining], much admired and praised: but "somehow", I have taken it into my head that it is [underlined] too good [end underlining] for my palate,
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Wilbraham Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'Today we saw the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far away humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, and could put one in the right humour for seeing an old place, very much as, according to my favourite text, Scott's novels and poems do for one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Christmas Stories (2, unnamed)
I' wonder if you ever read Dickens?s [italics] Christmas Books [end italics] ? I don?t know that I would recommend you to read them, because they are too much perhaps. I have only read two of them yet, and I have cried my eyes out, and had a terrible fight not to sob. But O, dear God, they are [italics] good [end italics] − and, I feel so good after them, and would do anything, yet and shall do anything, to make it a little better for people. I want to go out and comfort someone; I shall never listen to the nonsense they tell one, about not giving money −I [italics] shall [end italics] give money; not that I haven?t done so always, but I shall do it with a high hand now. O what a jolly thing it is for a man to have written books like these books, and just [italics] filled [end italics] people?s hearts with pity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Burney : The exposition of the Creed, by J. Pearson... abridged for the use of young persons
'[Rev Charles Burney's] Abridgement of Pearson's Exposition of the Creed, is printed, though not yet published. He gave to my father & me each a Copy. His Motto, I think a most happy one, taken from some work of the great Bentley's - "The most excellent Bishop Pearson - the very dust of whose writings is gold". - I have read above half the volume; it is all fudge to call it a book for the use of [underlined] young persons [end underlining] - Unless they are such Young Persons as Moll, who reads Lock on Human Understanding in two days, & says it is easy, & fancies she understands it - And the same farce she played regarding Butler's Analogy, the toughest book (allowed by learned men) in the English language, which she spoke of with the familiar partiality I would speak of Tom Hickerthrift, & bamboozled me into trying to read - and, Good Lord! when I had pored over a dozen pages & shook my ears, and asked myself - "Well, Sal, how dost like it? Dost understand one word?" "O, yes; all the [underlined] words [end underlining], but not one of their meanings when put together." "Why, then, Sal; put the book away; and say nothing about it; but say thy prayers in peace, & leave the reasons [underlined] why [end underlining] thou art impelled to say them, and all the [underlined] fatras [end underlining] of analyzation, to those who have more logical brains, or more leisure to read what they do not comprehend". But, however, a great part of Dr Charles's abridgement, I flatter myself I [underlined] do [end underlining] understand; and what is too deep for me, Moll may explain. He has retained a heap of hard words, which send me to Dr Johnson's dictionary continually - Some of them, are expressive, & worth reviving, others, we have happier substitutes for, and it was ungraceful to admit them, and shewed a false and pedantic taste'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book, printed book not yet published
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'I have been reading, and am enchanted by The Lady of the Lake! It has all the spirit of either of its predecessors, (have you read it?) and ten times the interest. When I had finished it, I remained with such a relish for
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Marmion
'I have been reading, and am enchanted by The Lady of the Lake! It has all the spirit of either of its predecessors, (have you read it?) and ten times the interest. When I had finished it, I remained with such a relish for
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
Richard Westall : Day in Spring, A
'I have been reading, and am enchanted by The Lady of the Lake! It has all the spirit of either of its predecessors, (have you read it?) and ten times the interest. When I had finished it, I remained with such a relish for
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Charlotte Barrett : [a letter]
'The story of Julia and the daisies is beautiful - I read it to MF, (my father) and he liked it much'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Manuscript: Letter
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'As I chose that my recent course of extravagance should die a melodious death [...] the last indulgence I gave it was the purchase of "The Lady of the Lake". How sweet, and to my fancy, bewitching a poem it is!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Self-control
'I have not read "Self control", and am determined not to read it, till my own eternal rubbish is concluded. I was a week in the house, at John Street with the two first volumes, but never looked at them. Miss Jardine lent them there. She spent a sociable evening with us, and made me laugh by observing that the book began with a sort of ravishment that almost enclined her to shut it up after the first forty pages, and never to open it again. Sister Burney likes it; not the ravishment but the tout ensemble; but thinks the last volume flags.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanne Jardine Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Self-control
'I have not read "Self control", and am determined not to read it, till my own eternal rubbish is concluded. I was a week in the house, at John Street with the two first volumes, but never looked at them. Miss Jardine lent them there. She spent a sociable evening with us, and made me laugh by observing that the book began with a sort of ravishment that almost enclined her to shut it up after the first forty pages, and never to open it again. Sister Burney likes it; not the ravishment but the tout ensemble; but thinks the last volume flags.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Burney Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Self-control
'I read Self Countrol & like it extremely all except some vulgarity meant to be jocular which tired me to death. but I think the principal character charming & well supported & the book really gives good lessons'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Barrett Print: Book
Marie, marquise de Sevigne : [letters to her daughter - exact title uncertain]
'I have read some very delightful old books lately (for I now have just attained the wisdom to wish to make use of this ample library, and reject all borrowed or hired books) - Amongst others, two collections of letters, Sevigne's to her daughter, and Bussy Rabutin's to her and various others. The celebrity of these letters makes one ashamed to praise them; it is like saying Shakespear was a clever fellow: but I [underlined] will [end underlining] say, that their wit, their facility, their original humour; their arch simplicity, their every possible epistolary merit, surpass even their reputation. Having read a good many French Memoirs of that time, I enjoy the court details, and the scandal and gossip as much as Mde de Grignan could - and the witty stories occasionally inserted are [underlined] impayable [end underlining]. [SHB then describes at length the matter of some of the letters she has been reading, concluding...] It was a bright period for french intellects - Oh, how superior to the bright period of the Encyclopedists. at the time I am reading of, lived & wrote, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, La Rochfaucault [sic], Boilleau, celebrated Divines a million, and who were really good Christians; and Sevigne, and all her witty cluster of friends - and no jargon, & no frippery, & false philosophy among them - but sterling stuff, too good almost to be french'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy : [letters]
'I have read some very delightful old books lately (for I now have just attained the wisdom to wish to make use of this ample library, and reject all borrowed or hired books) - Amongst others, two collections of letters, Sevigne's to her daughter, and Bussy Rabutin's to her and various others. The celebrity of these letters makes one ashamed to praise them; it is like saying Shakespear was a clever fellow: but I [underlined] will [end underlining] say, that their wit, their facility, their original humour; their arch simplicity, their every possible epistolary merit, surpass even their reputation. Having read a good many French Memoirs of that time, I enjoy the court details, and the scandal and gossip as much as Mde de Grignan could - and the witty stories occasionally inserted are [underlined] impayable [end underlining]. [SHB then describes at length the matter of some of the letters she has been reading, concluding...] It was a bright period for french intellects - Oh, how superior to the bright period of the Encyclopedists. at the time I am reading of, lived & wrote, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, La Rochfaucault [sic], Boilleau, celebrated Divines a million, and who were really good Christians; and Sevigne, and all her witty cluster of friends - and no jargon, & no frippery, & false philosophy among them - but sterling stuff, too good almost to be french'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Richard Monckton Milnes : 'Projected Railways in Westmoreland. An Answer to Mr Wordsworth's Late Sonnet'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 16 December 1844: 'I saw the sonnet [of Wordsworth] [...] which gave me so much offence by the prose note attached to it beginning .. "This is not mere poetry, but truth" -- or something to that effect! So unworthy of a poet, as giving in to the vulgar notion of poetry & truth being different things! Also, I saw Mon[c]kton Milnes's sonnet in reply -- very good -- but not one of his best sonnets.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Newspaper
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 December 1844: 'I used to read Mary Wolstonecraft [sic], (the "Rights of woman",) .. when I was twelve years old [...] Her eloquence & her doctrine were equally dear to me at that time, when I was inconsoleable [sic] for not being born a man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 December 1844: '[Frederic Soulie] was one of the first of the new French school I ventured to approach, & he made me open my eyes very wide indeed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Anne Marie Louise Henriette d'Orleans Duchesse de Montpensier : Memoires
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 December 1844: 'If you do not remember the memoires of "La Grande Mademoiselle" as she was called, mind to read them again. They made me laugh and cry -- [italics]at[end itaics] her & [italics]with[end italics] her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le dernier Chouan
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 28 December 1844: 'I have just finished the "Chouans." Of a certain power, without any doubt, but very heavy in many parts, & exceedingly painful in all [goes on to comment further on this text] [...] nobody in the world could read it a second time [...] 'Also I am reading David Sechard [...] Balzac has bewitched me [...] His wonderful greatness in making the ideality, real, -- & the reality, ideal, I take to be unequalled among writers. The first volume I have not finished yet [goes on to comment further on text] [...] I delight in the book, as far as I have read! -- It is worth twenty "Chouans" to my particular taste at least.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : David Sechard, volume 1
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 28 December 1844: 'I have just finished the "Chouans". Of a certain power, without any doubt, but very heavy in many parts, & exceedingly painful in all [goes on to comment further on this text] [...] nobody in the world could read it a second time [...] 'Also I am reading David Sechard [...] Balzac has bewitched me [...] His wonderful greatness in making the ideality, real, -- & the reality, ideal, I take to be unequalled among writers. The first volume I have not finished yet [goes on to comment further on text] [...] I delight in the book, as far as I have read! -- It is worth twenty "Chouans" to my particular taste at least.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Chimes
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 29 December 1844: 'I have read the "Chimes." I don't like it [...] Mr Dickens wants the earnest good-faith in narration which makes Balzac so enchanting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Chimes
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844: 'The "Chimes" touched me very much! I thought it & still think it, one of the most beautiful of [Dickens's] works.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Confession generale
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844: 'With regard to "La Confession Generale," I am in just your case, -- having read only the first volume, & failed of the others [i.e. not been able to obtain them from library], -- there are three: & I was the more provoked because I was interested in the denouement [...] Do you know "Fernande" by Dumas? It was sent to me instead of "Un homme serieux", last night __ & I rather like the opening. But Dumas is a second-class writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Fernande
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844: 'With regard to "La Confession Generale," I am in just your case, -- having read only the first volume, & failed of the others [i.e. not been able to obtain them from library], -- there are three: & I was the more provoked because I was interested in the denouement [...] Do you know "Fernande" by Dumas? It was sent to me instead of "Un homme serieux", last night __ & I rather like the opening. But Dumas is a second-class writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : Sordello
John Westland Marston to Thomas Powell, c. October 1844: 'Mrs Marston has just read "Sordello" through. She accomplished it in 3 days, & pronounced it not only intelligible but deeply interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Marston Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places"
'I have the "PTFL" proof; and it is very fourth rate, I am afraid; not quite [italics] dead [end italics] you know, but ailing − very ailing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay.
Robert Louis Stevenson : ?John Knox and his Relations with Women??
'I found the proof of ?John Knox? waiting me here, and have despatched it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy.
Katharine de Mattos : Included "Miss Griffin"?
'My dear Katharine, I have gone over your paper at last (I would have done it sooner, had I found the time) [?].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, RLS calls it "your paper".
Francis Quarles : Emblems
'Then your simile about the spider and the King?s palace is very grim and good; like a sort of Quarles emblem; and that sentence begins admirably, although its feet are of clay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'Then your simile about the spider and the King?s palace is very grim and good; like a sort of Quarles emblem; and that sentence begins admirably, although its feet are of clay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
George Moulton-Barrett : letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October 1846, on receiving her father and brother's responses to her marriage: 'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...] Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...] And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from dearest Papa & dearest George'. '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Manuscript: Letter
Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett : letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October 1846, on receiving her father, brother's, and sisters' responses to her marriage: 'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...] Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...] And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from dearest Papa & dearest George [...] 'Now I will tell you -- Robert who had been waiting at the door [...] came in & found me just able to cry from the balm of your tender words -- I put your two letters into his hands, & [italics]he[end italics], when he had read them, said with tears in his eyes, & kissing them between the words -- "I love your sisters with a deep affection -- I am inexpressibly grateful to them -- It shall be the object of my life to justify their trust as they express it here."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Manuscript: Letter
Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett : letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella and Henrietta Moulton-Barrett (sisters), 2 October 1846, on receiving her father, brother's, and sisters' responses to her marriage: 'The delay of the week in Paris brought me to the hour of my death warrant at Orleans [...] Robert brought in a great packet of letters [...] He wanted to sit by me while I read them, but I would not let him [...] I got him to go away for ten minutes, to meet the agony alone [...] And besides it was right not to let him read -- -- They were very hard letters, those from dearest Papa & dearest George [...] 'Now I will tell you -- Robert who had been waiting at the door [...] came in & found me just able to cry from the balm of your tender words -- I put your two letters into his hands, & [italics]he[end italics], when he had read them, said with tears in his eyes, & kissing them between the words -- "I love your sisters with a deep affection -- I am inexpressibly grateful to them -- It shall be the object of my life to justify their trust as they express it here."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Letter
Marchese Massimo Tapparelli D'Azeglio : Niccolo de' Lapi
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 21 November 1846: 'We have seen your professor once since you left us [...] when he came in one evening & caught us reading, sighing, yawning over Nicolo de' Lapi [sic], a romance by the son in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it "excellent, tres beau," one of their very best romances .. upon which, of course dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary & national sensibilities by a doubt even. [italics]I[end italics], not being so humane, thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not, [italics]dont[end italics] [...] Robert in his zeal for Italy [...] tried to persuade me at first [...] that "really Ba, it was'n't so bad" [...] but after two or three chapters, the dulness grew too strong, for even his benevolence, & the yawning catastrophe overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Giorgio Vasari : unknown
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Cornelius Mathews, mid-January 1847: 'We live here in the most secluded manner, eschewing English visitors and reading Vasari'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Giorgio Vasari : Delle vite de piu eccelenti pittori, scultori, ed archittetori
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 4 February 1847: 'By the grace of M. Ferucci, we have Vasari from the library, & are ploughing through it [...] Really I do venture to think it a dull book. Perhaps when we reach his contemporaries, we may find more flesh & blood.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Les Aventures de Saturnin Fichet ou la Conspiration de la Rouarie
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 February 1847: 'The "Siecle" has for a feuilleton a new romance of Soulie's called "Saturnin Fichet," which is really not good .. & tiresome to boot. Robert & I began by each of us reading it, but after a little while he left me alone being certain that no good could come of such a work: so, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming & exclaiming as to the wonderful improvement & increasing beauty & glory of it, .. just to justify myself, & to make him sorry for not having persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy, I should give up too. Deplorably dull, the story is, .. & there is a crowd of people each more indifferent than each'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Newspaper
Frederic Soulie : Les Aventures de Saturnin Fichet ou la Conspiration de la Rouarie
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 February 1847: 'The "Siecle" has for a feuilleton a new romance of Soulie's called "Saturnin Fichet," which is really not good .. & tiresome to boot. Robert & I began by each of us reading it, but after a little while he left me alone being certain that no good could come of such a work: so, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming & exclaiming as to the wonderful improvement & increasing beauty & glory of it, .. just to justify myself, & to make him sorry for not having persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy, I should give up too. Deplorably dull, the story is, .. & there is a crowd of people each more indifferent than each'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Newspaper
Honore de Balzac : novels
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 February 1847: 'Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac & has read most of his books'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Hugh Stuart Boyd : letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Henrietta Moulton-Barrett, 31 March 1847: 'Thank you for the dear welcome letters [...] Tell [Arabel] to thank Mr Boyd for his kind one -- Mr Boyd's [...] came when I was ill [following miscarriage] & Robert read [it] to me -- Not that he reads my letters so in general, mind, .. but that my head swam so on that particular occasion & wd not let me read properly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Letter
Benjamin Nicolas Marie Appert : Dix Ans a la cour du roi Louis-Philippe et souvenirs du temps de l'Empire et de la Restauration
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Les Aventures de Saturnin Fichet ou la Conspiration de la Rouarie
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Alexandre Dumas : Les Deux Diane
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Alexandre Dumas : Memoires d'un Medecin: Joseph Balsamo
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet : Le Batard de Mauleon
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Unknown
Charles Saint John : Short Sketches of the Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter postmarked 2 October 1847: 'The most interesting [book] that I have read for many years is Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins [...] Also I am reading Appert's Dix Ans a la Cour de Louis Philippe, very pleasant esprit -- & have just finished Le Chien d'Alcibiade -- a Tale of some cleverness although too close an imitation of Gerfaut [...] I see by the papers that poor Frederic Soulie is dead -- I was just reading a novel of his on the wars of La Vendee (Saturnine Fichet [sic]) which was interesting -- only he had imitated a likeness between two persons from the old French Story of Martin Guerre, which story aforesaid [...] Dumas had been using in Les Deux Diane -- by the way I am reading 3 series by Dumas, Les Deux Diane -- Les Memoires d'un Medecin & Le Batard de Mouleon [sic] [...] Of English books I have been much pleased by Mr Jesse[']s Antiquities of London [sic] -- very pleasant gossip -- & St John[']s Wild sports of the Highlands a mixed Vol of Deerstalking & Natural History which is charming'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : Petits poemes en prose
'And yet I am going to send you a book that was written altogether in the spirit of that place. I send it however, because it is just one of those specimens of consummate polished perfection in that style, that I think you would do best to read at present: I mean Baudelaire?s "Petits Poemes". On second thoughts, I will not send it until I hear from you, in case you have it already. If you have it not, I shall send you mine, it has unfortunately been subjected to the outrages of an amateur expurgator, but the most of it is there, and I think you would do well to study it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Browning : Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession
Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Robert Browning, 17 October 1847: 'It is now two or three months ago that I met, at the British Museum, with a Poem published in 1833, entitled "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession," which elicited my warm admiration, and which, having failed in an attempt to procure a copy at the publisher's, I have since transcribed. It seems to me, in reading this beautiful composition, that it presents a noticeable analogy in style and feeling to your first acknowledged work, "Paracelsus": so much so indeed as to induce a suspicion that it might actually be written by yourself [goes on, very formally, to ask whether this is the case].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dante Gabriel Rossetti Print: Book
Franco di Benci Sacchetti : Trecento novelle
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, mid-December 1847: 'We are going through some of old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if somewhat dull elsewhere [...] We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola's poems the other day -- very flat & cold -- they did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the book, is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, 16 July 1847: 'I find myself reading Paracelsus and the Dramatic Lyrics more often than any thing else in verse'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Arnould Print: Book
Robert Browning : Dramatic Lyrics
Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett, 16 July 1847: 'I find myself reading Paracelsus and the Dramatic Lyrics more often than any thing else in verse'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Arnould Print: Book
Charles de Bernard : Le Gentilhomme campagnard
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 April 1847: 'At Pisa, Robert read to me while I was ill [following miscarriage], & partly by being read to & partly by reading I got through a good deal of amusing French book-work, & among the rest, two volumes of Bernard's new ["]Gentilhomme Campagnard." Rather dull I thought it, but clever of course -- dull for Bernard. Then we read "Le Speronare" by Dumas -- a delightful book of travels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliazbeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Le Speronare
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 April 1847: 'At Pisa, Robert read to me while I was ill [following miscarriage], & partly by being read to & partly by reading I got through a good deal of amusing French book-work, & among the rest, two volumes of Bernard's new ["]Gentilhomme Campagnard." Rather dull I thought it, but clever of course -- dull for Bernard. Then we read "Le Speronare" by Dumas -- a delightful book of travels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.
'I tried to read Tennyson?s Ode on the Dook of Wellington (which is the finest lyrical poem in the language in case you don?t know) aloud this morning, and I had a hand at my throat tightening steadily as I read, until I could articulate no more and had to throw the book away. That is one of the experiences in life worth having; so were the Elgin Marbles.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Mary Leadbetter : Cottage Dialogues Among the Irish Peasantry
'Have you seen the little book, "Cottage Dialogues", by Mrs Leadbetter? Edgeworths notes are lively and [nationally] characteristic as ever: but I own, I tired a little of the receipts to make cheap dishes. Without half so much ceremony & fuss and trouble, I had rather dine upon that cheap dish, an egg boiled in the shell - or a good mess of gruel and onions'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Louis-Pierre Anquetil : Louis XIV, sa cour et le Regent
'I have finished all dear old Sevigne's letters, and since then read Anquetils' "Louis XIV, Sa Cour, et le Regent". - a most admirably entertaining work, in four moderate little volumes. He stells a story of Le Regent truly characteristic - He was obliged to pass a few days in the country which he hated, & the people round him perceiving his ennui, proposed une partie de chasse - "Non, je n'aime pas la chasse" - A game at billiards - "Non, je n'aime pas le billiard" - Une lecture amusante - "Non, je n'aime pas la lecture". Then what [underlined] should [end underlining] they do? - Why nothing - for to own the truth, he had no pleasure in innocent amusements. [His] words were 'Je n'aime point les plaisirs innocents!" - [The] laughable though desperate profligacy of this answer, makes me shout.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Francois de la Rochefoucauld : Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales
'Anch'io have been reading La Rochefaucould [sic] - and he has furnished me with an excellet Motto for my third Volume - And what is more to the purpose, with some entertainment of the highest & most rational kind for my breakfast hours. I can only afford time now to read at my meals. Ah pauvre humanite - I am afraid he is a [underlied] very [end underlining] little too severe against it! [...] He seldom writes as if he was hardened enough to exult in human depravity, but often as if he sadly, yet irresistibly felt its existence to be true - and such a book, it strikes me, properly considered, is calculated to produce infinite benefit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Robert South : [unknown]
'I have, for Sunday reading, great delight in
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Stael-Holstein : De l'Allemagne
"I too am reading Mme de Staal [sic], and am such a Goth, that I catch myself yawning over it! Probably I am not formed to love "les plaisirs [underlined] dissertant [end underlining]." The book is like a long Review, and all about the same set of objects; and I tire for want of connection, and something either to interest my feelings or amuse my imagination. Yet, I have extracted some delightful, and some most wise little passages; and I read, though with fatigue, still with admiration, such a copious series of well-expressed reflections [...] I told my sister d'Arblay to-night, how glad I was that our best English writers, meaning Adison [sic], Swift, Johnson &c, had not written like Mde de Staal; for if they had, as sure as a gun, I should never have loved reading - I should never have opened a book. I have finished vol. I & shall probably read II and III, out of vanity, & just to say I have read them'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Anne-Louise-Germaine, Baronne de Stael-Holstein : De L'Allemagne
'I am not sufficiently fond of dissertations, of eternal analysis, of eloquent bubbles, to be a warm partizan of Mde de Staal [sic]. Between friends - but don't mention it - I yawned over her Allemagne - and yet, here and there, was electrified by a flash of sublimity. Do you agree with me in thinking, that with all her brilliant varnish, she is corrupt at heart? Had Satan himself written "Pauline", one of the stories published with "Zuma", he could have produced nothing more offensive to decency, more detestably disgusting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Anne-Louise-Germaine, Baronne de Stael-Holstein : Zulma, et trois nouvelles
'I am not sufficiently fond of dissertations, of eternal analysis, of eloquent bubbles, to be a warm partizan of Mde de Staal [sic]. Between friends - but don't mention it - I yawned over her Allemagne - and yet, here and there, was electrified by a flash of sublimity. Do you agree with me in thinking, that with all her brilliant varnish, she is corrupt at heart? Had Satan himself written "Pauline", one of the stories published with "Zuma", he could have produced nothing more offensive to decency, more detestably disgusting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Catherine Anne Dorset : Peacock "at home", The
'Yes I [underlined] have [end underlining] read the book you speak of, "Pride & Prejudice", and I could quite rave about it! How well you define one of its characterestics [sic] when you say of it, that it breaths [sic] a spirit of "careless originiality". - It is charming. - Nothing was ever better conducted than the fable; nothing can be more [underlined] piquant [end underlining] than its dialogues; more distinct than its characters. Do, I entreat, tell me by whom it is written; and tell me, if your health will allow you, [underlined] soon [end underlining]. I die to know. Some say it is by Mrs Dorset, who wrote that clever little [underlined] bijou [end underlining], "the Peacock at Home". is it so? Pray, pray tell me. I have the three vols now in the house, and know not how to part with them. I have only just finished, and could begin them all over again with pleasure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'I hope, that considering the thickness of the Volumes, and the impossibility of reading any work of Miss Edgeworth's with the carelessness and haste a common Novel may be skimmed over with, I shall not be thought to have detained "Patronage" a [underlined] very[end underlining] unreasonabe time. I thank you most cordially for the loan. Nobody more thoroughly venerates the admirable Author than I do - And in this last work, she really has excelled herself! Every young man ought particularly to study it - but it contains many hints useful and good for all ages, conditions, and characters. She is the pride of Englsh female writers - and I do positively believe, the most useful author, whether male or female, now existing'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'Have you seen Guy Mannering? I perfectly doat upon it. There is such skill in the management of the fable, & it is so eminently original in its characters and descriptions, that I think it bears the stamp of real genius'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Self Control
'"Discipline" people tell me to read, but I have no stomach to it, I believe because of the [underlined] name [end underlining], fool that I am! - But one thing is, I did not like the other book by the author, Self Control, and so I have no appetite to try the second'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty years Since
'I am [underlined] so [end underlining] glad you like what you have read of "Emma", and the dear old man's "Gentle selfishness". - Was there ever a happier expression? - I have read no story book with such glee, since the days of "Waverley" and "Mannering", and, by the same author as "Emma", my prime favourite of all modern Novels "Pride and Prejudice"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Pierre-Simon Pallas : Travels through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire in 1793 and 1794
'I have read both Scott's visits, and Mrs Hulse has just lent me the life of John Sobieski, K. of poland. I have only just begun it, but it promises facility of style, & I think I shall like it. I tried Pallas's Travels in Russia lately: but there was too much about progressive improvements in agriculture, & manufactuaries amongst the grown-up Muscovite babes, & I got tired, as I easily do of all that relates to half civilised nations. Give me a whole Savage or no Savage at all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll : The Reign of Law
'I somehow could not think the gulph so impassable and read him some notes on the Duke of Argyll.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : Die Heimkehr. XXXIX Buch der Lieder
[Transcription] 'Das Herz ist mir bedruckt und sehnlich Gedenke ich der alten Zeit; Die Welt war damals noch so wohnlich Und ruhig lebten hin die Leut. Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben Das ist ein Drongen eine Noth; Gestroben ist der herr Gott oben Und unten ist der Teufel todt. Und Alles schaut so gramlich trube, So krausvervirrt und morsch und kalt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Hallam : Constitutional History of England [?]
'I have been out reading Hallam in the garden ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Baxteriana
'Pray say for me many grateful & kind things to Mr Young, with thanks for his dear Baxter, which I brought here with me, & read with pleasure very frequently. My friends in the opposite parlour have lent me another abridged work of Baxter's, edited by Benjamin Fawcett, & entitled "Converse with God in Solitude". The chapter on friends taken from us by Death is worthy to be written in letters of gold; the rest, I have not yet read: but hope to like'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Of Coversing [sic] with God in Solitude
'Pray say for me many grateful & kind things to Mr Young, with thanks for his dear Baxter, which I brought here with me, & read with pleasure very frequently. My friends in the opposite parlour have lent me another abridged work of Baxter's, edited by Benjamin Fawcett, & entitled "Converse with God in Solitude". The chapter on friends taken from us by Death is worthy to be written in letters of gold; the rest, I have not yet read: but hope to like'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Catherine Hutton : Miser Married, The
'There is here a Mrs Hutton of Birmingham with whom I have struck up an acquaintance because she wrote a clever amusing little book called "The Miser Married"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Henry Ellis : Journal of the proceedings of the late embassy to China
'Read, read, read M.Leod's Narrative of the Voyage of the Alceste to China, & her wreck in coming home. Ellis's Account of the Embassy is comparatively dull, but I had it lent me, & was glad to swap.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Mary Delany : Letters from Mrs Delany... to Mrs frances Hamilton, from the year 1779, to the year 1788
'The Hulses have been reading Mrs Delany's Letters, & never were so interested, they say, nor even [underlined] affected [end underlining] in some parts of it, by any book in their lives'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: General Sir Samuel Hulse and his wife Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
'Of course you have read Kenilworth Castle, and i trust, liked it. I greatly prefer it to the Monastery, & am almost as much pleased with it as with the Abbot: but not quite; the catastrophe is painful, & Elizabeth figures not so appropriately in a Romance, as her beautiful Rival;
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Monastery, The
'Of course you have read Kenilworth Castle, and i trust, liked it. I greatly prefer it to the Monastery, & am almost as much pleased with it as with the Abbot: but not quite; the catastrophe is painful, & Elizabeth figures not so appropriately in a Romance, as her beautiful Rival;
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Abbot, The
'Of course you have read Kenilworth Castle, and i trust, liked it. I greatly prefer it to the Monastery, & am almost as much pleased with it as with the Abbot: but not quite; the catastrophe is painful, & Elizabeth figures not so appropriately in a Romance, as her beautiful Rival;
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Anna Maria Porter : Village of Mariendorpt, The
'I have just begun Belzoni, & like his simple style very much. Miss Porter (Anna Maria) has published a new Novel, The Village of Mariendorpt, full of the most touching passages, but, as a whole, it drags. Her knowledge of military details appears to me marvellous; the period at which she makes her people act and talk, is during the Protestant War in Germany; she carries you to the dreadful siege of Magdebourg, & takes you into the camp and tent of Forstenson, Konigsmark, and I cannot tell you how many others, & seems to know more of warriors and warfare than, as a woman myself, I can at all account for'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Fortunes of Nigel, The
'I have read the first volume of The Fortunes of Nigel, which I like much better than the Pirate. I never could feel perfectly reconciled to having a Freebooter for a Hero, and a romantic, half crazy girl falling in love with him from mistaking him for an honest bold man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Pirate, The
'I have read the first volume of The Fortunes of Nigel, which I like much better than the Pirate. I never could feel perfectly reconciled to having a Freebooter for a Hero, and a romantic, half crazy girl falling in love with him from mistaking him for an honest bold man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Stephanie Felicite Brulart, comtesse de Genlis : Memoires
'What paltry stuff the Memoirs of poor vain Genlis are!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Horatio Smith : Tor Hill
'Tor Hill, I have read - and was amused to find myself [underlined] en pays de connaissance [end underlining]. Many years ago, I walked with my poor brothers James & Martin, from a little village in Somersetshire called Uphill, to Glastonbury, and thence three miles further, to visit Glastonbury Tor, on the Summit of a high hill. The local descriptions are very accurate, at least as far as I remember - and there are some interesting sketches of character - of personages who attach - but the concluding part of the story is wretchedly huddled together -the attempts at facetiousness beneath contempt - and throughout, there is a hardness of manner which gives to the book what the earliest Masters gave to their paintings, dryness, meagerness, & want of gradual light and shade. [underlined] He [end underlining] cope with the Author of Waverley! - he be hanged!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : Spy, The
'The most spirit-stirring author, next to the Great Unknown [walter Scott], that I have met with, is the American who has written the spy, and the Last of the Mohicans, & various pothers. He copies nobody, & he has an energy, a power of developing what he has previously enveloped, and of keeping the interest upon the stretch, that is admirable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : Last of the Mohicans, The
'The most spirit-stirring author, next to the Great Unknown [walter Scott], that I have met with, is the American who has written the spy, and the Last of the Mohicans, & various pothers. He copies nobody, & he has an energy, a power of developing what he has previously enveloped, and of keeping the interest upon the stretch, that is admirable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Walter Scott : Life of Napoleon Buonaparte
'I have had the perseverance to read Sir W. Scotts Boney - and hackneyed as is the subject, I was lured on from page to page, with unwearied interest and entertainment. I am longing for Bishop Heber's Journal. Did you read, in one of the Quarterly's , an Article relating to him, remarkably well written, and worthy in all respects of its subject. - It must be now nearly a year ago that it appeared. I wish you could get it - and there is also a more recent article, published in the very last Review - quite excellent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Alberto Nota : Commedie
'If you want light easy Italian reading, get Giraud's Commedie - They are excessively amusing - Some are farcical & some are grave, but all full of action, & with a great deal of character well delineated and well supported - Books are so cheap here, that I bought Nota's Comedies, which are in great repute & often acted, and are printed in eight duodecimo volumes for six Pauls!'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Lorenzo Pignotti : Storia della Toscana sino al principato
'I really wonder at, and am sorry that our tastes differ so much that you do not like Pignotti, though I like him so very much. I have read as far as the beginning of the seventh vol: and every day my interest in the work encreases. His reflexions indeed are not very brilliant, deep, or new, but they are sagacious and just; and independently of the style, the subject is, to my thinking, highly curious, and chiefly from its extraordinary resemblance to the turbulent spirit of the little Grecian Republics, who, like the Florentines, the inhabitants of Pisa, Gennoa, and Venice, were always at daggers drawn, and yet flourishing, wealthy, and devotedy fond of the fine arts' [Burney then goes on to summarise further the content of the book]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Robert Wodrow : Analecta
'... but I suppressed it at once and kept on at Wodrow's Analecta (a Covenanting book) and made my notes as best I could.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus
Virginia Stephen to Thoby Stephen, 2 November 1901: 'I have been reading Marlow [sic], and I was so much more impressed by him than I should be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightnt be more in the great William than I supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to [the] company of worshippers -- though I still feel a little oppressed by his -- greatness I suppose [...] I read Dr Faustus, and Edward II -- I thought them very near the great man -- with more humanity I should say -- not all on such a grand tragic scale [comments further on points of comparison and contrast between Shakespeare and Marlowe].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Edward II
Virginia Stephen to Thoby Stephen, 2 November 1901: 'I have been reading Marlow [sic], and I was so much more impressed by him than I should be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightnt be more in the great William than I supposed. And I was quite upset! Really and truly I am now let in to [the] company of worshippers -- though I still feel a little oppressed by his -- greatness I suppose [...] I read Dr Faustus, and Edward II -- I thought them very near the great man -- with more humanity I should say -- not all on such a grand tragic scale [comments further on points of comparison and contrast between Shakespeare and Marlowe].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Walter Savage Landor : Pericles and Aspasia
'[Virginia Stephen] was reading Walter Savage Landor's Pericles and Aspasia (1836), and writing, as was her habit during this time [Spring 1906], a description of her surroundings (unpublished).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Stephen : short stories
'In her role as literary mentor, Madge [Vaughan] had been reading some of Virginia's short narratives, all apparently lost, unless one was "Phyllis and Rosamond", dated June 1906'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Madge Vaughan Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest Renan : Cahiers de Jeunesse
Virginia Stephen to Violet Dickinson, 25 December 1906: 'I am reading now a book by Renan called his Memories of Childhood [Cahiers de Jeunesse, 1906]: O my word it is beautiful -- like the chime of silver bells [...] I think it a virtue in the French language that it submits to prose, whereas English curls and knots and breaks off in short spasms of rage. Also I am reading my dear Christina Rossetti [...] the first of our English poetesses [...] Then I am reading your Keats, with the pleasure of one handling great luminous stones. I rise and shout in ecstacy, and my eyes brim with such pleasure that I must drop the book and gaze from the window. It is a beautiful edition.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Christina Rossetti : poems
Virginia Stephen to Violet Dickinson, 25 December 1906: 'I am reading now a book by Renan called his Memories of Childhood [Cahiers de Jeunesse, 1906]: O my word it is beautiful -- like the chime of silver bells [...] Also I am reading my dear Christina Rossetti [...] the first of our English poetesses [...] Then I am reading your Keats, with the pleasure of one handling great luminous stones. I rise and shout in ecstacy, and my eyes brim with such pleasure that I must drop the book and gaze from the window. It is a beautiful edition.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Henry James : The American Scene
Virginia Stephen to Clive Bell, 18 August 1907: 'I am reading Henry James on America; and feel myself as one embalmed in a block of smooth amber: it is not unpleasant, very tranquil, as a twilight shore -- but such is not the stuff of genius: no, it should be a swift stream.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : Crime and Punishment
Virginia Woolf, on her honeymoon, to Lytton Strachey, 1 September 1912: 'You can't think with what a fury we fall on printed matter, so long denied us by our own writing! I read 3 new novels in two days: Leonard waltzed through the Old Wives Tale like a kitten after its tail: after this giddy career I have now run full tilt into Crime et Chatiment, fifty pages before tea, and I see there are only 800; so I shall be through in no time. It is directly obvious that he [Dostoevsky] is the greatest writer ever born'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : An Old Wives Tale
Virginia Woolf, on her honeymoon, to Lytton Strachey, 1 September 1912: 'You can't think with what a fury we fall on printed matter, so long denied us by our own writing! I read 3 new novels in two days: Leonard waltzed through the Old Wives Tale like a kitten after its tail: after this giddy career I have now run full tilt into Crime et Chatiment, fifty pages before tea, and I see there are only 800; so I shall be through in no time. It is directly obvious that he [Dostoevsky] is the greatest writer ever born'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Philip Gilbert Hamerton (editor) : The Portfolio: An Artistic Periodical
'I had almost as soon have it in the Portfolio, as the Saturday; the P. is so nicely printed and I am gourmet in type.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
George Meredith : letters
Virginia Woolf to Violet Dickinson, 11 April 1913: '[italics]I've[end italics] never met a writer who didn't nurse enormous vanity, which at last made him unapproachable like Meredith whose letters I am reading -- who seems to me as hard as an old crab at the bottom of the sea'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Henry James : 'works'
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 October 1915: 'I should think I had read 600 books since we met. Please tell me what merit you find in Henry James. I have disabused Leonard [Woolf, husband] of him; but we have his works here, and I read, and can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar, and pale as Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it? I admit I can't be bothered to snuff out his meaning when it's very obscure. I am beginning the Insulted and Injured [Dostoevsky, 1862]; which sweeps me away. Have you read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Insulted and Injured
Virginia Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 October 1915: 'I should think I had read 600 books since we met. Please tell me what merit you find in Henry James. I have disabused Leonard [Woolf, husband] of him; but we have his works here, and I read, and can't find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar, and pale as Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it? I admit I can't be bothered to snuff out his meaning when it's very obscure. I am beginning the Insulted and Injured [Dostoevsky, 1862]; which sweeps me away. Have you read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Merrick :
Virginia Woolf to Saxon Sydney-Turner, 25 February 1918: 'Asheham is very lovely at the moment. I started upon Sophocles the day after we came -- the Electra, which has made me plan to read all Greek straight through [...] I found great consolation during the influenza in the works of Leonard Merrick, a poor unappreciated second-rate pot-boiling writer of stories about the stage, whom I deduce to be a negro, mulatto, or quadroon; at any rate he has a grudge against the world, and might have done much better if he hadn't at the age of 20 married a chorus girl, had by her 15 coffee coloured brats and lived for the rest of the time in a villa in Brixton, where he ekes out his living by giving lessons in elocution to the natives'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
Virginia Woolf to Molly MacCarthy, 20 June 1921: 'I am reading the Bride of Lammermoor -- by that great man Scott: and Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, lured on by the portrait of Ottoline [Morrell] which appears from time to time [...] There is no suspense or mystery: water is all semen: I get a little bored, and make out the riddles too easily. Only this puzzles me: what does it mean when a woman [Gudrun] does eurythmics in front of a herd of Highland cattle?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Katherine Mansfield : Bliss
Virginia Woolf to Janet Case, 20 March 1922: 'Literature still survives. I've not read K. Mansfield [The Garden Party], and don't mean to. I've read Bliss; and it was so brilliant, -- so hard, and so shallow, and so sentimental that I had to rush to the bookcase for something to drink. Shakespeare, Conrad, even Virginia Woolf.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Marcel Proust : A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Virginia Woolf to Roger Fry, 6 May 1922: 'I have the most violent cold in the whole parish. Proust's fat volume comes in very handy. Last night I started on vol 2 [A l'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs] of him (the novel) and propose to sink myself in it all day [...] Oh if I could write like that! I cry. And at the moment such is the astonishing vibration and saturation and intensification that he produces -- theres [sic] something sexual in it -- that I feel I [italics]can[end italics] write like that, and seize my pen and then I [italics]can't[end italics] write like that. Scarcely anyone so stimulates the nerves of language in me: it becomes an obsession. But I must return to Swann.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Rebecca West : The Judge
Virginia Woolf to Ottoline Morrell, 18 August 1922: 'Poor Rebecca West's novel bursts like an over stuffed sausage. She pours it all in; and one is covered with flying particles; indeed I had hastily to tie the judge tight and send it back to Mudies [Library] half finished. But this irreticence does not make me think any the worse of her human qualities [...] I do admire poor old Henry [James], and actually read through the Wings of a Dove [1902] last summer, and thought it such an amazing acrobatic feat, partly of his, partly of mine, that I now look upon myself and Henry James as partners in merit. I made it all out. But I felt very ill for some time afterwards. I am now reading Joyce, and my impression, after 200 out of 700 pages, is that the poor young man has got the dregs of a mind compared even with George Meredith. I mean if you could weigh the meaning on Joyces [sic] page it would be about 10 times as light as on Henry James'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : The Wings of a Dove
Virginia Woolf to Ottoline Morrell, 18 August 1922: 'Poor Rebecca West's novel bursts like an over stuffed sausage. She pours it all in; and one is covered with flying particles; indeed I had hastily to tie the judge tight and send it back to Mudies [Library] half finished. But this irreticence does not make me think any the worse of her human qualities [...] I do admire poor old Henry [James], and actually read through the Wings of a Dove [1902] last summer, and thought it such an amazing acrobatic feat, partly of his, partly of mine, that I now look upon myself and Henry James as partners in merit. I made it all out. But I felt very ill for some time afterwards. I am now reading Joyce, and my impression, after 200 out of 700 pages, is that the poor young man has got the dregs of a mind compared even with George Meredith. I mean if you could weigh the meaning on Joyces [sic] page it would be about 10 times as light as on Henry James'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Marcel Proust :
Virginia Woolf to Mary Hutchinson, c. 18 April 1923: 'I am reading Proust, I am reading Rimbaud. I am longing to write.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Rimbaud :
Virginia Woolf to Mary Hutchinson, c. 18 April 1923: 'I am reading Proust, I am reading Rimbaud. I am longing to write.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf to Gwen Raverat, 11 March 1925: 'I don't think you would believe how it moves me that you and Jacques should have been reading Mrs Dalloway, and liking it. I'm awfully vain I know; and I was on pins and needles about sending it to Jacques; and now I feel exquisitely relieved; not flattered: but one does want that side of one to be acceptable'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Unknown, In proof copy
Walter Raleigh : Letters
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 17 February 1926: 'Why are all professors of English literature ashamed of English literature? Walter Raleigh calls Shakespeare "Billy Shaxs" -- Blake, "Bill" -- a good poem "a bit of all right." This shocks me. I've been reading his letters.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gerald Brenan : A Holiday by the Sea
Virginia Woolf to Gerald Brenan, 3 October 1926: 'Ralph said he had read enough of your novel [A Holiday by the Sea] to perceive a masterpiece.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Partridge
Marcel Proust :
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928: 'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James :
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928: 'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 30 August 1928: 'I am happy because it is the loveliest August [...] I read Proust, Henry James, Dostoevsky'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Honore de Balzac :
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 8 January 1929: 'I've been reading Balzac, and Tolstoy. Practically every scene in Anna Karenina is branded on me, though I've not read it for 15 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Ronald Firbank :
Virginia Woolf to Mary Hutchinson, 6 May 1929: 'We are down here [Monks House, Rodmell] to see about making a new room -- this we have been seeing about for 3 months now, and not a stone is laid. But when the stones are laid you will have to brave the eternal sea mist and south west gale and come here. I should provide you with the works of Ronald Firbank which I am reading with some unstinted pleasure'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Rebecca West : Harriet Hume
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 17 September 1929: 'I've only read 30 pages of Rebecca [West] [...] I agree that the convention is tight and affected and occasionally foppish beyond endurance, but then it is a convention and she does it deliberately, and it helps her to manufacture some pretty little China ornaments for the mantelpiece. One could read some of it again'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Somerset Maugham : Cakes and Ale
Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, 8 November 1930: 'We had a terrific visitation from Hugh Walpole. If you want a book from the Times, get Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham. All London is ringing with it. For there poor Hugh [Walpole] is most cruelly and maliciously at the same time unmistakably and amusingly caricatured [as Alroy Kear]. He was sitting on his bed with only one sock on when he opened it. There he sat with only one sock on till 11 next morning reading it [...] He almost wept in front of Hilda Matheson, Vita [Sackville-West] and Clive [Bell], in telling us. And he couldn't stop. Whenever we changed the conversation he went back.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Princess Daisy of Pless : From My Private Diary
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 24 May 1931: 'I've wasted 4 days when I wanted to write. And I've spent them partly reading Princess Daisy of Pless, speculating upon her real character and life and longing for a full account of them from you -- who appear in a footnote as a distinguished author. What a chance the British aristocracy had and lost -- I mean if they'd only grafted brains on to those splendid bodies and wholesome minds -- for I can't help liking her, in her wild idiocy, and her frankness "7 days late -- can it be a child --" seems to me the highest human quality, if it werent [sic] combined with a housemaids [sic] sensibility and the sentimentality of a Surbiton cook.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Eliot : Middlemarch
Virginia Woolf to Hugh Walpole, 8 November 1931: 'I'm reading Middlemarch with even greater pleasure than I remembered: and Ford M. Ford's memoirs [Thus to Revisit] -- fascinating, and even endearing; but I long to know the truth about him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Thus to Revisit
Virginia Woolf to Hugh Walpole, 8 November 1931: 'I'm reading Middlemarch with even greater pleasure than I remembered: and Ford M. Ford's memoirs [Thus to Revisit] -- fascinating, and even endearing; but I long to know the truth about him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
'Hugh Walpole's The Apple Tree, a volume of reminiscences, was published for Christmas 1932. The first words of the book are: "There is a fearful passage in Virginia Woolf's beautiful and mysterious book The Waves, which when I read it, gave me an acute shock of unanticipated reminiscence." He then quotes a long passage in which he found his title: "The apple-tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Marcel Proust :
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 21 May 1934: 'So I came back lit the fire; and read Proust, which is of course so magnificent that I cant write myself within its arc'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf to Stephen Spender, 10 July 1934: 'I'm so happy that you read the Lighthouse with pleasure, when there are so many other books you might be reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stephen Spender Print: Book
Ernest Renan : St Paul
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 8 January 1935: 'We had a children's party and I judged the clothes. All the mothers gazed, and I felt like -- who's the man in the bible --? Which by the way, I have bought and am reading. And Renan. And the New Testament; so don't call me heathen in future.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Virginia Woolf to Hugh Walpole, 8 February 1936: 'I'm reading David Copperfield for the 6th time with almost complete satisfaction. I'd forgotten how magnificent it is [...] So enthusiastic am I that I've got a new life of him [Dickens]: which makes me dislike him as a human being.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette : Sido
'Virginia [Woolf] read at least three of Colette's books, two of autobiography (Mes Apprentissages, 1934, Sido, 1929), and one of fiction (Duo, 1934), and the two writers sent each other messages through mutual friends.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : Which Way to Peace?
Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell, 14 November 1936: 'Politics are still raging faster and fiercer [...] Leonard is trying to convince the labour party that the policy of isolation is now the only one. Berties book convinced him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
George Sand : Memoires (vol 5)
Virginia Woolf to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 27 June 1937: 'If you want sheer joy read [Congreve]; if you dont want anything so ecstatic, but broad and mellow and satisfactory, try the Memoires of George Sand. 10 little volumes; I'm in the 5th, and find it absorbing'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Patrice de MacMahon : unknown
'MacMahon's address is pasted up everywhere and political pictures fill the windows.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve : Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous l'Empire
'I have bought Sainte-Beuve's Chateaubriand and am immensely delighted with the critic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : unknown
'Dowson has lent me Clough, which I like a good deal ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Moral Tales for Young People
'I am reading Miss Edgeworth's Popular Tales for the Young with thorough gusto.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexander Buchan : Handy Book of Meteorology [?]
'Andrews seems very pleasant and we had a fierce forenoon of it over meteorology. He has Bookan (as he calls him)...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Lorenzo Pignotti : Storia della Toscana sino al principato
'I am much interested by Pignotti's history, which [underlined] though I bought [end underlining], I am reading, and have got into the seventh volume. The squabbles and turbulence of the little Italian Republics, puts one in mind of the Greeks, where so much of the same spirit reigned. The gradual progress to celebrity of the Medici family keeps up ones attention, and the little that is interspersed concerning the other Italian rulers, the Visconti, the Gonzagni, the Sforza family, & the great Condottieri of the day, is all very entertaining'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Joseph-Francois Michaud : Histoire des Croisades
'I am reading Michaud's Histoire des Croisades, well written and entertaining; and I have just finished Monti's fine Tragedy of Caius Gracchus. I like it much better than his Aristodemus - and I suspect I shall also prefer it to his Galeotto Manfredi, tho' the opening scene of this last is admirable. The story however is an odious one, and all the worse for being true'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Humphry Davy : Consolations in Travel, or the Last days of a Philosopher
'Mr Layard has lent me Sir Humphry Davy's "Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher". It is a posthumous publication, & the editor says that "Had his life been prolonged, it is probable that some additions and some changes would have been made". - There are many fanciful and unwarranted ideas on the subject of the creation of this world, & the state of existence in the next: but, on the whole, it is a most interesting work, and shews a mind anxious to discern the right, and well prepared to love and glorify its Creator.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Edward John Trelawney : Adventures of a Younger Son
'I have just finished Trelawney's Adventures of a Younger Brother. It is a book that excites whilst reading, and leaves behind it, many painful feelings. A true radical spirit runs thoughout it; - a contempt of all establishments, social, political, or religious; - a mad ferocity of disposition that causes the narrative to be filled with details of atrocious murders, so minutely described that ones flesh creeps upon ones bones whilst reading. Yet - to give even the devil his due, he has succeeded in drawing a female character of surpassing loveliness, purity, and tender faithfulness. He makes her an Arab however, that European women may take no pride to themselves from the favourable description he gives of her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938: 'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Night and Day
Virginia Woolf to Philip Morrell, 3 February 1938: 'I'm delighted with -- first: your liking Jacobs Room [...] second, that you should actually have read, still more marvellously have liked, Night and Day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 3 May 1938: 'I am reading for the first time a book which I think a very good book -- Mandeville's Fable of the bees [1714].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Lady Frederick Cavendish : The Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 29 August 1938: 'Just finished Lady Fred Cavendish's diaries: no vigour, no insight, no originality. All as drab and dowdy as Mabel's Sunday best (Mabel is our maid of all work.) [...] And such damned condescension to artists. Yet all else is fine flowing and thoroughbred - only the mind cluttered with curtains and ferns.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
John Maynard Keynes : article on the Munich Crisis
Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, Monday 3 October 1938: 'Yesterday the Keynes came to tea. Maynard had already summed up the situation [i.e. the Munich Crisis] in a very good article which he read us; I'll send you the N[ew]. S[tatesman] on Friday in which it appears. His view is that the whole thing was staged by Chamb[erlain].; that there was never any fear of war; that he never even consulted Russia; that it was a put-up job between him and Hitler [...] that we are sure of peace during our life time [...] and so on.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Virginia Woolf to May Sarton, 2 February 1939: 'I have been so steeped in modern manuscripts that I was losing all sense that one differed from another. I am reading Chaucer and hope in a year to have recovered my palate.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : study on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 1 February 1940: 'I'd like to look at South Riding [...] W[inifred]. H[oltby]. was a barrel organ writer [...] I'm judging WH only on her journalism [...] and the book on me, which I felt to be a painstaking effort rather to clear up her own muddles than to get the hang of mine. But I didnt want to be written about (not personally) and so never did more than whip through it with one eye shut.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Andre Gide : unknown
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 1 February 1940: 'Reading Burke. Reading Gide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : unknown
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 17 May 1940: 'D'you know what I find? -- reading a whole poet is consoling: Coleridge I bought in an old type copy tarnished cover, yellow and soft: and I began, and went on, and skipped the high peaks, and gradually climbed to the top of his pinnacle, by a winding unknown way.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Roger Fry
Virginia Woolf to Benedict Nicolson, 13 August 1940: '[opens] Just as I began to read your letter, an air raid warning sounded. I'll put down the reflections that occurred to me, as honestly as I can, as you put down your reflection of reading my life of Roger Fry while giving air raid alarms at Chatham [goes on to describe thoughts on reading letter, looking up at raiders overhead, etc].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Benedict Nicolson Print: Book
George Sand : unknown
'I have gone in for a course of George Sand with immense delight and good results to health, sprits and poor bemuddled brains.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : Francois le Champi
'Read, please read, Francois le Champi by George Sand; it is like a dream of goodness and virtue and gentle heroism.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin - Chantal, marquise de Sevigne : Letters of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter and her friends
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Carlo Botta : Storia d'Italia, continuata da quella del Guicciardini
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Andre Morellet : Memoires
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Baron E.L. de la Mothe - Houdancourt : Memoires de Madame la comtesse de Barri
'would you like, Ma'am, to know what I have been doing all alone and at home this winter? - I have, 'an please you, for the 2d time in my life read Mde de Sevigne, 9 vols. - Histoire de la Revolution, par Thiers, 10. vols. - Botta's Storia d'Italia, continued from Guicciardini; there are ten vols: I have read only 6 yet. Memoires de l'Abbe Morellet, very entertaining. Memoires de Mde Dubarry, very naughty, but very amusing, & she the best natured of the vicious, envious, spightful Court - and sundry other vols, dotted about, & lent me by one body or other. - I hope you are edified, Sister Emma.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : unknown
'I came up from Lincolnshire to town on Monday and went down that night to Magdalen to read my Catullus, but while lying in bed on Tuesday morning with Swinburne (a copy of) was woke up by the Clerk of the Schools to know why I did not come up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
William Hurrell Mallock : The New Republic, or Culture, Faith and Philosophy in an English Country House
'That reminds me of Mallock?s New Republic in Belgravia; it is decidedly clever ? Jowett especially. If you have the key to all the actors please send it to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Serial / periodical
Carlo Botta : Storia d'Italia
'I return your Italian volumes, my dear friend, with many thanks, owning honestly, that I have never looked into them; for the thread of my interest in Botta's History having been interrupted by my leaving Florence, I could not for the life of me connect it again; and I got hold of other books - read no Italian for ages - and, at last, pounced one fine day upon a good, clear edition of Ariosto, and have been and am reading him with even more delight than when he first fell into my hands. Here and there, he is a bad boy, and as the book is my own, & I do not like indecency, I cut out whole pages that annoy me, & burn them before the Author's face, which stands at the beginning of the first volume, and I hope feels properly ashamed. Next to Ariosto, by way of something new, I treat myself now and then with a play of one Wm Shakespear, and I am reading Robertson's Charles Vth which comes in well after that part of Botta's History at which I left off - viz: just about the time of the council of Trent. And, as I love modern reading, I was glad to find myself possessed of a very tidy edition of a Biographical work you may perhaps have heard tell of - Plutarch's Lives. If you should ever meet with it, I think I might venture to say you would not dislike it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Alexander Keith : Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, derived from the literal fulfilment of prophecy
'Amongst others, I have had Keith on the Evidences of Prophecy put into my hands, and a most masterly and striking performance it is. Totally dissimilar from Newton on the Prophecies, an excellent book, but not in any degree equal in force or in ability to the work in question, which has already gone through thirteen editions'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his Life
'All I can say at all likely to give you any pleasure is, that I read poor dear Charles Lamb's Memoirs and Letters with the utmost delight; & not the less so for seeing such continual allusions to one "H.C. Robinson". Do you know such a person? And my dear brother James too, and kind-hearted Martin - these reminiscences were very pleasant to me. But of Lamb himself - what an affectionate disposition - what originality, what true wit, & what a singular, and I must say, melancholy combination of the truest & warmest piety, with the most extraordinary and irreverent profaneness. I cannot understand the union of two such opposites: but I believe there have been many other instances of it. Amongst fools who may take up the work, the oaths and the levity might do harm, & therefore I regret their insertion: but those who knew him, can only regret, & love him [underlined] notwithstanding [ end underlining].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Edward William Lane : Account of the manners and customs of the Modern Egyptians
'Dr Nott has lent me a Work that I find very interesting, & which comes well after reading Wilkinson's Manners & Customs of the Ancient Egyptians; - It is, Lane's Manners & Customs of the Modern Egyptians: both works are full of Wood cuts in illustration of the subjects they describe, and in Wilkinson's work I found an ancient Egyptian Car, & a wooden pillow hollowed out for the head, which I immediately remembered having seen at Professor Roselini's Egyptian Museum at Florence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
John Gardner Wilkinson : Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
'Dr Nott has lent me a Work that I find very interesting, & which comes well after reading Wilkinson's Manners & Customs of the Ancient Egyptians; - It is, Lane's Manners & Customs of the Modern Egyptians: both works are full of Wood cuts in illustration of the subjects they describe, and in Wilkinson's work I found an ancient Egyptian Car, & a wooden pillow hollowed out for the head, which I immediately remembered having seen at Professor Roselini's Egyptian Museum at Florence'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
George Sand : La Petite Fadette
'I have the whole of her novels before me. Even La Petite Fadette, for as long as it was in the house, I had not read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Sketches by 'Boz'
'When you have time & spirits for it, pray read "Sketches by Boz" with Cruikshank's designs. Except ones daily Scripture reading, I like no books that do not make me laugh, provided the laugh is not provoked by anything bordering upon indecency. - A little innocent vulgarity or even coarseness, I do not mind, if accompanied by wit & humour. Dickens has edited a delightful Life of poor dear Grimaldi. Have you seen Benson Earl Hill's "Recollections of an Artillery Officer"? I was much amused by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi
'When you have time & spirits for it, pray read "Sketches by Boz" with Cruikshank's designs. Except ones daily Scripture reading, I like no books that do not make me laugh, provided the laugh is not provoked by anything bordering upon indecency. - A little innocent vulgarity or even coarseness, I do not mind, if accompanied by wit & humour. Dickens has edited a delightful Life of poor dear Grimaldi. Have you seen Benson Earl Hill's "Recollections of an Artillery Officer"? I was much amused by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Benson Earle Hill : Recollections of an Artillery Officer including scenes and adventures in Ireland, America, Flanders and France
'When you have time & spirits for it, pray read "Sketches by Boz" with Cruikshank's designs. Except ones daily Scripture reading, I like no books that do not make me laugh, provided the laugh is not provoked by anything bordering upon indecency. - A little innocent vulgarity or even coarseness, I do not mind, if accompanied by wit & humour. Dickens has edited a delightful Life of poor dear Grimaldi. Have you seen Benson Earl Hill's "Recollections of an Artillery Officer"? I was much amused by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi
'Pray do you now and then read modern Biography? I have been highly entertained, & even interested by the Memoirs of Mathews, edited & mostly written by his wife. Well, and another lively amusing book of the same class is the Life of Grimaldi, by Dickens. Both Mathews & Grimaldi, though considered as Buffoons, were full of good feeling, & excellent private characters. I arose from the perusal of each work, with respect & love for both men; and since the publication of Crabb's Memoirs, and Campbell's Life of Mrs Siddons, I have read no Biography I like half so well'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
George Crabbe : Poetical Works of the Rev. George Crabbe
'Pray do you now and then read modern Biography? I have been highly entertained, & even interested by the Memoirs of Mathews, edited & mostly written by his wife. Well, and another lively amusing book of the same class is the Life of Grimaldi, by Dickens. Both Mathews & Grimaldi, though considered as Buffoons, were full of good feeling, & excellent private characters. I arose from the perusal of each work, with respect & love for both men; and since the publication of Crabb's Memoirs, and Campbell's Life of Mrs Siddons, I have read no Biography I like half so well'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frances (Burney) d'Arblay : Diary and letters of Madame d'Arblay
'Have you seen the Journal & letters of my dear Sister? & Charlotte Barrett's pretty Introduction. I earnestly hope the work will be liked; and I think it stands a very fair chance, so many celebrated people will be brought forward. - This is a very tolerable place for getting books (English [underlined] s'entend [end underlining]) but my copy is a present, & will have a fine gauntlet to run, I promise it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frances (Burney) d'Arblay : Diary and letters of Madame d'Arblay
'Am charmed to find "The Diary" is approved by the General. The third vol: I think must be universally interesting - the [underlined] first [end underlining], to own the truth, contained too much about the
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frances (Burney) d'Arblay : Diary and letters of Madame d'Arblay
'You want to know what I think of the "Diary". I wil tell you fairly & impartially. after wading with pain and sorrow through the tautology and vanity of the first volume, I began to be amused by the second, and every suceeding volume has, to my thinking, encreased in power to interest & entertain. That there is still considerable vanity I cannot deny. In her life, she bottled it all up, & looked and generally spoke with the most refined modesty, & seemed ready to drop if ever her works were alluded to. But what was kept back, and scarcely suspected in society, wanting a safety valve, found its way to her private journal. Thence, had Mrs Barrett been judicious, she would have trundled it out, by half quires, and even whole quires at a time'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frederick Shoberl : Frederick the Great, His Court and Times
'Read Lady Vavasour's "Last Tour, and First Work, or a visit to the Baths of Wildbad, & Rippoldsau". - It is only one Volume, & is very entertaining and often clever, & lively, with considerable general information. Campbell's Editorship of the "Life of Frederick the Great" has also amused me much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Frederick Shoberl : Frederick the Great, His Court and Times
'Now I will quit these dreary subjects, and tell you of a few nice books for you to read & like - The 1st Vol. of Campbell's life of Frederic the Great. The others [underlined] I [end underlining] did not enjoy so much. They are chiefly about the seven year's [sic] war: but there are parts even of that, which interested me very much. - Then "Stevenson's Central South America". That is not the full title, but I forget exactly how the book is called. - I suppose you know the Life of Lord Howe. I was delighted with it; and it is only in one volume. There, if you chuse to try any of the above, I think I have cut you out work enough to last a good while'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : unknown "Tale"
'Piano again disentangled; and some hope, not for it only, but for the tale. I have read it to my mother, who thought it was the only one of mine she had ever heard, that promised any possible success: I have read some of it also to Baxter who was pleased and counselled me to go on with it. I suppose with these two opinions I should feel strengthened.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Seems to refer to one of a set of stories that RLS had at various stages of planning and completion, see Letter 329.
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
Saturday 2 January 1915: 'I read Guy Mannering upstairs for 20 minutes'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Idiot
Tuesday 19 January 1915: 'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Rape of the Lock
Tuesday 19 January 1915: 'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Criticism
Wednesday 20 January 1915: 'I read Essay upon Criticism waiting for my train at Hammersmith. The classics make the time pass much better than the Pall Mall Gazette.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
Thursday 21 January 1915: 'I went to the London Library [...] Here I read Gilbert Murray on Immortality, got a book for L[eonard]. & so home, missing my train, & reading the Letter to Arbuthnot on Hammersmith Station.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gilbert Murray : unknown
Thursday 21 January 1915: 'I went to the London Library [...] Here I read Gilbert Murray on Immortality, got a book for L[eonard]. & so home, missing my train, & reading the Letter to Arbuthnot on Hammersmith Station.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf : 'The Three Jews'
Saturday 30 January 1915: '[Leonard] was kept late at Hampstead: didn't get home till 10.15 [...] He read Janet "The Three Jews".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Leonard Woolf : The Wise Virgins, A Story of Words, Opinions, and a Few Emotions
Sunday 31 January 1915: 'After tea [...] I started reading The Wise Virgins, & I read it straight on until bedtime, when I finished it. My opinion is that it is a remarkable book; very bad in parts; first rate in others. A writer's book, I think, because only a writer perhaps can see why the good parts are so very good, & why the bad parts aren't very bad [...] I was made very happy by reading this: I like the poetic side of L. & it gets a little smothered in Blue-books, & organisations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Rosalind Murray : The Leading Note
Monday 12 November 1917: 'I went to Mudies, & got The Leading Note, in order to examine into R.T. more closely [...] I came home with my book, which does not seem a very masterly performance after Turgenev, I suppose; but if you dont get your touches in the right place the method is apt to be sketchy & empty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Captain Ronald A. Hopwood : 'The Old Way'
Friday 18 January: 'Toynbees & Kot. to dinner on Tuesday [15 January]; & that afternoon Lady Strachey read to us -- to me for the most part, as L[eonard]. was late. She read Ben Jonson's masques. They are short, & in between she broke off to talk a little [...] I enjoyed it [...] She read us a poem called The Old Way, of a swashing, patriotic kind, & exclaimed how fine it was, & how, as long as we had Hopwood for a poet we needn't complain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Maria, Lady Strachey Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh
'Many thanks for your delightful letter. I am glad you are in the midst of delightful scenery and Aurora Leigh.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Reginald Harding Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Common Reader
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
George Crabbe : unknown
'In bed I have been fuming over your assumption that my liking for the poet Crabbe is avowed. I assure you I bought a copy out of my own pocket money before you were weaned. What's more, I have read Peter Grimes I daresay 6 times in 10 years; "But he has no compassion in his grave" - That is where that comes from. There is also a magnificent description of wind among bulrushes which I will show you if you will come here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : Petits Poemes en Prose
'[?] I could not [?] pay the postage for the book. [?] The book, you will receive shortly. Do not run away with the idea that I think it specially commendable. Only I think he might be suitable at this moment for you. Note the following. III, VI, XIII, XIV (O admirable), XVII, XVIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII, XXXVII. Some of these are really very excellent; and (it was that paper of yours that made me think of the book) will show you I think how you must approach such slight and essentially exotic ideas in prose, and yet retain for them some of the immunities that go with verse.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'[?] it was that paper of yours that made me think of the book[Baudelaire's "Petits Poemes en Prose"]' (see RED ID18015)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Referred to here by RLS as "that paper of yours".
Robert Louis Stevenson : Desiderata
'I have found what should interest you dear. A paper in which I had sketched out my life, before I knew you. Here is the exact copy even to spelling.[?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet
Marcel Proust : Sodom et Gonorrhe
'The rest of the time I read Proust. As no one on board has ever heard of Proust, but has enough French to translate the title, I am looked at rather askance for the numerous volumes of Sodome et Gomorrhe which litter the decks.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Marcel Proust : unknown
'The parties of Proust gain in fantasy from being read in such circumstances, (I don't mean in the bath, but on deck;) they recede, achieve a perspective; they become historical almost, like Veronese banquets through which flit a few masked Longhi figures, and ruffled by the uneasy impish breeze of French Freud. I re-enter their company after struggling with the Persian irregular verbs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Marcel Proust : unknown
'I meant to have written such a lot, but somehow I haven't; there's always a whale or a murder to look at, (a tortoise or a theorbo!) so I have written a few letters, - precious few, - and read a lot of Proust, and that's all.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Ezra Pound : Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir
10 December 1917: 'My afternoon was very nearly normal; to Mudies, tea in an A.B.C. reading a life of Gaudier Brzeska'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : unknown
4 March 1918: 'I found a silent group at the [1917] Club, all men, & unknown to me, with the exception of Alix who sat still as a statue reading one of Berty Russell's books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alix Sargant-Florence Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : unknown
'I shall have, however, to give up reading your works at dinner, for they are too disturbing. I can't explain, I'll have to explain verbally some day. Unless you can guess. How well you write, though, confound you. When I read you, I feel no one has ever written English prose before, - Knocked it about, put it in its place, made it into a servant.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
Marcel Proust : Du Cote de chez Swann
18 April 1918: 'I went to Guildford. I don't see how to put 3 or 4 hours of Roger's conversation into the rest of this page [...] it was about all manner of things [...] Occasionally he read a quotation from a book by Proust (whose name I've forgotten), & then from his translation [of the Lysistrata]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry Print: Book
Aristophanes : Lysistrata
18 April 1918: 'I went to Guildford. I don't see how to put 3 or 4 hours of Roger's conversation into the rest of this page [...] it was about all manner of things [...] Occasionally he read a quotation from a book by Proust (whose name I've forgotten), & then from his translation [of the Lysistrata]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry Manuscript: Unknown
Bertrand Russell : unknown
6 June 1918: 'I've seen Alix [...] She is able to conceive the possibility of one day finding some book to read. She has tried Bertie's mathematics, relinquished it, but did not altogether dismiss my suggestion of legal history.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alix Sargant-Florence Print: Book
George Otto Trevelyan : The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay
2 July 1918: 'I was reading Macaulay's Life over my tea [...] when Mrs Woolf [husband's sister-in-law] was announced.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : Letter to Philip Morrell regarding his defence of his work against John Middleton Murry's review of Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-attack, and Other Poems, in The Nation 13 July 1918
29 July: 'I'm paralysed by the task of describing a week end at Garsington. I suppose we spoke some million words between us [...] There was Gertler; Shearman & Dallas for tea; Brett, Ottoline, 3 children & Philip. The string which united everything together was Philip's attack on Murry in The Nation for his review of Sassoon [...] to prove his case Philip read Murry's article, his letter, & his letter to Murry, three times over, so I thought, emphasising his points, & lifting his finger to make us attend. And there was Sassoon's letter of gratitude too. I think Ott. was a little bored.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell
Katherine Mansfield : 'Bliss'
7 August 1918: 'Our excitement [has been] the return of the servants from Lewes last night, with [...] the English review for me, with [...] Katherine Mansfield on Bliss. I threw down Bliss with the exclamation, "She's done for!" Indeed I don't see how much faith in her as as woman or writer can survive that sort of story [...] her mind is a very thin soil, laid an inch or two upon very barren rock [...] she is content with superficial smartness; & the whole conception is poor, cheap, not the vision, however imperfect, of an interesting mind. She writes badly too. And the effect was as I say, to give me an impression of her callousness & hardness as a human being. I shall read it again; but I dont suppose I shall change.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway
'Last night I went to bed very early and read Mrs Dalloway. It was a very curious sensation: I thought you were in the room - But there was only Pippin, trying to burrow under my quilt, and the night noises outside, which are so familiar in one's own room; and the house was all quiet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : Autobiography
'I lie in bed, and watch the fire on the ceiling, and hear the clock strike, and think how delicious it will be when you come to stay here - I read Haydon, and an excellent Cruickshank-ish book called Murder for Profit.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : To One in Paradise (1834)
'Is not this verse pretty? Thou wast that all [sic] to me, love, For which my soul did pine -- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Common Reader
'then the old problem: what shall I read at dinner, propped open by a fork? decide finally on Virginia, grab the common reader, a pair of spectacles, a pencil, go in to dinner,'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Andre Gide : Memoirs
'I am reading Gide's memoirs, very disappointing I think, so far; I have found hardly anything that pleased me except the marble that had been dropped into the hole in the door. I read Jesting Pilate and liked it. I have tried Arabia Deserta for the fiftieth time, but can't manage it. Yet no doubt it is a more monumental work than Jesting Pilate.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
' I've read a lot, Boswell, de Quincy, Tom Jones, Plutarch. One sits in the sun until the heat of it drives one indoors again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : King Pest: A Tale Containing An Allegory.
'I have made myself so ill with a story of Poe?s − ?King Pest?, by name. I did not sleep last night and I have scarcely been able to eat today.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : To the Lighthouse
'But everything is blurred to a haze by your book of which I have just read the last words, and that is the only thing which seems real. I can only say that I am dazzled and bewitched. How did you do it? how did you walk along that razor-edge without falling? why did you say anything so silly as that I 'shouldn't like it'?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : To the Lighthouse
'"I'm in the middle of the Lighthouse, ekeing it out so that it will last. Why doesn't she publish a book every day? and what fun to be in at the birth of books quite as important as Jane Austen. She is a genius and I would carry a thousand hair-shedding dogs to the gates of Hell for her did she wish it!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Walpole Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Sun and the Fish
'I can't tell you how much I like "The Sun and the Fish", (all the more because it is all about things we did together,) and I am ordering a copy of Time and Tide.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Serial / periodical
William Butler Yeats : Leda and the Swan
'I am grateful to you for having told me to buy Yeats' poems, they kept me happy in the train all the way. I like the one about Leda, How can those terrified vague fingers push That feathered glory from her loosening thighs?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Unknown
Leonard Woolf : Empire and Commerce in Africa. A Study in Economic Imperialism
7 January 1920: 'Reading Empire & Commerce to my genuine satisfaction, with an impartial delight in the closeness, passion & logic of it; indeed its a good thing now & then to read one's husband's work attentively.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Roger Fry : autobiographical essay
6 March 1920: 'On Thursday, dine with the MacCarthys, & the first Memoir Club meeting [hosted by MacCarthys]. A highly interesting occasion. Seven people read -- & Lord knows what I didnt read into their reading. Sydney [Waterlow] [...] signified as much by reading us a dream [...] altogether a queer, self-conscious, self analytic performance [...] Clive purely objective; Nessa starting matter of fact: then overcome by the emotional depths to be traversed; & unable to read aloud what she had written. Duncan fantastic & tongue -- not tied -- tongue enchanted. Molly literary about tendencies & William Morris, carefully composed at first, & even formal: suddenly saying "Oh this is absurd -- I can't go on" shuffling all her sheets; beginning on the wrong page; firmly but waveringly, & carrying through to the end [...] Roger well composed; story of a coachman who stole geraniums & went to prison.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry Manuscript: Unknown
Katherine Mansfield : unknown
Tuesday 25 January 1921: 'K. M. (as the papers call her) swims from triumph to triumph in the reviews; save that [J. C.] Squire doubts her genius -- so, I'm afraid, do I. These little points, though so cleanly collected, don't amount to much, I think. I read her at the Club last night'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Henry James : The Wings of a Dove
Monday 12 September 1921: 'I have finished the Wings of the Dove, & make this comment. His [Henry James's] manipulations become so elaborate towards the end that instead of feeling the artist you merely feel the man who is posing the subject. And then I think he loses the power to feel the crisis. He becomes merely excessively ingenious [goes on to comment further on text].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Katherine Mansfield : stories
Thursday 15 September 1921: 'I have been dabbling in K.M.'s stories, & have to rinse my mind -- in Dryden? Still, if she were not so clever she coudn't be so disagreeable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
Tuesday 14 February 1922: 'I am reading [in convalescence, following week of illness] Moby Dick: Princesse de Cleves; Lord Salisbury; Old Mortality; Small Talk at Wreyland; with an occasional bite at the Life of Lord Tennyson, of Johnson; & anything else I find handy. But this is all dissipated & invalidish. I can only hope that like dead leaves they may fertilise my brain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
Tuesday 14 February 1922: 'I am reading [in convalescence, following week of illness] Moby Dick: Princesse de Cleves; Lord Salisbury; Old Mortality; Small Talk at Wreyland; with an occasional bite at the Life of Lord Tennyson, of Johnson; & anything else I find handy. But this is all dissipated & invalidish. I can only hope that like dead leaves they may fertilise my brain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
Wednesday 15 February 1922: 'Of my reading I will now try to make some note. 'First Peacock; Nightmare Abbey, & Crotchet Castle. Both are so much better than I remember. Doubtless, Peacock is a taste acquired in maturity. When I was young, reading him in a railway carriage in Greece, sitting opposite Thoby [Woolf, reader's brother], I remember, who pleased me immensely by approving my remark that Meredith had got his women from Peacock [...] And now more than anything I want beautiful prose [...] And I enjoy satire more. I like the scepticism of his mind more [...] And then they're so short; & I read them in little yellowish perfectly appropriate first editions. 'The masterly Scott has me by the hair once more. Old Mortality. I'm in the middle; & have to put up with some dull sermons; but I doubt he can be dull, because everything is so much in keeping [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lord Byron's Correspondence
Saturday 18 February 1922: 'According to the papers, the cost of living is now I dont know how much lower than last year [...] You cant question Nelly [Woolf's cook] much without rubbing a sore. She threatens at once to send up a cheap meal [...] Not a very grievous itch; & quelled by the sight of the new Byron letters just come from Mudie's [library].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Works
'I am daily expecting a letter from you on the subject of the Life of Schiller. I have got a copy of his Works beside me, which I have been glancing over; and I feel anxious to commence the business fo remoulding and enlarging, in due form.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway
'I have been horribly remiss in writing to thank you for "Mrs Dalloway", but as I didn't want to write you the 'How-charming-of-you-to-send-me-your-book-I-am-looking-forward-to-reading-so-much' sort of letter, I thought I would wait until I had read both it and The Common Reader, which I am sorry to say I have now done.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : To my Mother.
'This is E. A. Poe: Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of "Mother," Therefore by that dear name I long have called you- You who are [italics]more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts.[end italics] [?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Mary Martha Sherwood : The Wishing Cap
'My present sojourn is the most distressing you can imagine: the weather is so bad that one cannot cross the threshold; there is not a book in the hou[se] besides "Rutledges's Sermons" and "Black's sermons" neither of which I have any relish for, and the "Juvenile Library" which, with the exception of "Jack the Gi[ant] Killer", ["]Blue Beard" and the "Wishing cap" that I read last night, does not appear to be particularly edifying...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Rene-Francois-Armand Sully-Prudhomme : unknown poetry
'Then again, I have nice books to read. The new French poets. Prudhomme is adorable − I shall have a lot of Sully Prudhomme to read when I come to you. Soulary better perhaps − better certainly, [italics]comme forme[end italics], but so unsympathetic when compared to Prudhomme in character and thought. Prudhomme is a [italics]good[end italics] man. Fancy! And a modern French poet! Wonders after that will never cease.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Orlando
'It seems to me the loveliest, wisest, richest book that I have ever read, - excelling even your own Lighthouse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Manuscript: Codex
Herbert Read : unknown
'I tried to read Read on poetry - Words words words, - and all polysyllabic. That isn't poetry; not even the explanation of it.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf : Orlando
'He [a friend] took me to a bar which he said was quite respectable, but the proprietor showed me pornographic photographs, which are things I absolutely loathe and abhor. So I went away in a dudgeon and read a chapter of Orlando to cleanse my mind. That book is the cleanest thing I know, - like very clear and deep crystal.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson
Virginia Woolf : Orlando
'I came in just now, having been to Wertheim's to buy a pair of gloves for 4 marks, and meant to go on with my story of the bank clerk who loses his memory, but having stopped at the book shop on the way and bought Orlando in Tauchnitz I began to read, and so lost myself that the evening is already nearly gone. Do you know, I never read Orlando without tears pricking my eyes?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Arnold Zweig : The Case of Sergeant Grisha
'But I did read one that I liked: Sergeant Grisha.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Unknown
Hans Christian Andersen : Fairy Tales
'Whenever she felt morose or lonely she looked into books, and, having an insatiable curiosity, by the time she was three she had taught herself to read. Hans Christian Andersen's "Fairy Tales" became an early favorite. Some of the tales that she read again and again, it must have seemed, mirrored her own life. Aware that she had not inherited her mther's beauty, she was intrigued in particular by "The Ugly Duckling".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Poems
'When it was discovered that she liked Swinburne's poetry, Sir George demanded that she forego such sensual verse. If she had to read poetry, he pontificated, she should read Tennyson for beauty, Austin Dobson for charm, and Kipling for strength'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Rape of the Lock, The
[Sitwell said] 'I used to read "The Rape of the Lock" at night under the bedclothes by the light of a candle. It's a wonder I didn't set myself on fire. I had memorized it by the time I was twelve'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Robert Browning : [poems]
'Browning was a little beyond her. Convinced that he was a great poet, she still found him a bore at times. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a major disappointment: she thought "Sonnets from the Portuguese" were beautiful in emotion but simply not good sonnets'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnets from the Portuguese
'Browning was a little beyond her. Convinced that he was a great poet, she still found him a bore at times. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a major disappointment: she thought "Sonnets from the Portuguese" were beautiful in emotion but simply not good sonnets'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Arthur Rimbaud : [poems]
[her governess Helen Roothman] 'introduced Edith to the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme. Though Edith had had a taste for Baudelaire through Swinburne's translations of the author of "Les Fleurs du mal", she found her governess' favorites even more to her liking'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : Les fleurs du mal
[her governess Helen Roothman] 'introduced Edith to the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme. Though Edith had had a taste for Baudelaire through Swinburne's translations of the author of "Les Fleurs du mal", she found her governess' favorites even more to her liking'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [unknown]
[Helen Roothman] 'brought Edith new poetry too - the French symbolists, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire - to enlarge her own rapt readings of Swinburne, William Morris, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Yeats'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : [unknown]
[Helen Roothman] 'brought Edith new poetry too - the French symbolists, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire - to enlarge her own rapt readings of Swinburne, William Morris, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Yeats'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Rebecca West : Harriet Hume
'I say, has Rebecca West's book come your way? It is unreadable. It is a brew of Meredith, 'Orlando' and Amanda Ross.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : unknown
Wednesday 15 September 1920: 'Blessed with fine weather, I could look from my window, through the vine leaves, & see Lytton sitting in the deck chair reading Alfieri from a lovely vellum copy, dutifully looking out words. He wore a white felt hat, & the usual grey clothes; was long, & tapering as usual; looking so mild & so ironical, his beard just cut short [...] For my own encouragement, I may note that he praised the Voyage Out voluntarily; "[italics]extremely[end italics] good" it seemed to him on re-reading, especially the satire of the Dalloways.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Voyage Out
Wednesday 15 September 1920: 'Blessed with fine weather, I could look from my window, through the vine leaves, & see Lytton sitting in the deck chair reading Alfieri from a lovely vellum copy, dutifully looking out words. He wore a white felt hat, & the usual grey clothes; was long, & tapering as usual; looking so mild & so ironical, his beard just cut short [...] For my own encouragement, I may note that he praised the Voyage Out voluntarily; "[italics]extremely[end italics] good" it seemed to him on re-reading, especially the satire of the Dalloways.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : unknown
Sunday 5 December 1920: 'My brain is tired of reading Coleridge. Why do I read Coleridge? It is partly the result of Eliot [i.e. The Sacred Wood] whom I've not read; but L[eonard]. has & reviewed & praised into the bargain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : The Waste Land
Friday 23 June 1922: 'Eliot dined last Sunday & read his poem. He sang it & chanted it rhythmed it. It has great beauty & force of phrase: symmetry; & tensity. What connects it together, I'm not so sure. But he read till he had to rush -- letters to write about the London Magazine -- & discussion thus was curtailed. One was left, however, with some strong emotion. The Waste Land, it is called'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Stearns Eliot
Katherine Mansfield : Bliss
Tuesday 22 August 1922: ''Boen [Hawkesford] came to tea on Sunday [...] She is changing; reading Bliss under [Edward] Shanks' orders'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Boen Hawkesford Print: Book
Clifford Kitchin : Death of my Aunt
'By the way, Harold and I both like Clifford Kitchin's murder book, and I shall recommend it on Thursday, so tell Leonard to notice if it affects sales.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Harold Nicolson : Peacemaking
'Tell Leonard to read Harold's new book. It is more in his line than yours, being political, but I think you would be amused by some passages in his diary, which is the second half of the book. I have a great admiration for Harold, - quite unprejudiced. I like his lucid mind, and his ease of expression. He is like a person who knows how to use a scythe, - rhythmic, sharp, and sure.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West
Gilbert Seldes : Review of James Joyce, Ulysses
Thursday 7 September 1922: 'L[eonard]. put into my hands a very intelligent review of Ulysses, in the American Nation, which, for the first time, analyses the meaning, & certainly makes it much more impressive than I judged.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
Hester Lynch Piozzi (Thrale) : Anecdotes of the Late Doctor Johnson
Tuesday 12 September: 'Lytton drove off an hour ago; I have been sitting here, unable to read or collect myself -- such is the wreckage dealt by 4 days of conversation [...] I told Lytton I should try to write down his talk -- which sprang from a conversation about Boswell [...] Lytton had of course read Mrs Thrale [...] One night he gave us a complete account of the prison system, based on reports which he has been reading -- thoroughly, with mastery, & a kind of political ability which impresses me.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
Richard Hakluyt : unknown
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Prosper Merimee : unknown
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Walter Scott : Letters
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : unknown
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Sunday 17 May 1925: 'Yesterday we had tea with Margaret in her new house [...] She is severe to Lilian [Harris, her companion], who [...] is not allowed to plant flowers, she said bitterly, because it worries Margaret, & so nothing is done to the garden, which too worries Margaret. For these worries, she takes Ethel M. Dell & Dickens.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Caroline Llewelyn Davies Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Common Reader
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Common Reader
Monday 1 June 1925: 'Now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, & hears the C[ommon]. R[eader]. read, with "great pleasure".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : diaries
'On 22 December the Woolfs went to Charleston for Christmas [...] Clive and Vanessa Bell [sister to Virginia Woolf] and the three children were there [...] Vanessa reported to Duncan Grant [...] that they had spent a fascinating evening reading V[irginia]W[oolf]'s diary recalling early days at 46 Gordon Square, with the four Stephens' very full and "rather high society life" there' (source ed.'s note).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell and family Manuscript: Unknown
Virginia Woolf : 1923 diary
Saturday 27 February 1926: 'Mrs. Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. I read some of 1923 this morning, being headachy again'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Beatrice Webb : My Apprenticeship
Saturday 27 February 1926: 'Mrs. Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. I read some of 1923 this morning, being headachy again'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gerard Manley Hopkins : [manuscripts]
Thursday 1 July: '[in library of Robert Bridges, during visit to Morrell family at Garsington] I asked to see the Hopkins manuscripts; & sat looking at them with that gigantic grasshopper Aldous [Huxley] folded up in a chair close by.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Maurice Baring : C
'Owing to his giving me the books, am now reading C by M. Baring. I am surprised to find it as good as it is. But how good is it? Easy to say it is not a great book. But what qualities does it lack? That it adds nothing to one's vision of life, perhaps. Yet it is hard to find a serious flaw.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Three Guineas
'In the meantime, let me say that I read you with delight, even though I wanted to exclaim, "Oh, BUT,Virginia..." on 50% of your pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Robert Bridges : unknown
Saturday 31 July [entry headed 'My Own Brain,' and beginning 'Here is a whole nervous breakdown in miniature']: 'A desire to read poetry set in on Friday. This brings back a sense of my own individuality. Read some Dante & Bridges, without troubling to understand, but got pleasure from them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Geoffrey Scott : The Architecture of Humanism. A Study in the History of Taste
Tuesday 28 September 1926: 'Intense depression: I have to confess that this has overcome me several times since September 6th [...] Somehow, my reading had lapsed [...] One night I got hold of Geoffrey Scott's book on Architecture, & a little spark of motive power awoke in me. This is a warning, then; never to cease the use of the brain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Maurice Baring : unknown
Saturday 18 June 1927: 'I read -- any trash. Maurice Baring; sporting memoirs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Puttenham : The Arte of English Poesie
'V[irginia] W[oolf] made notes (see Holograph Reading Notes, vols XI and XII in the Berg Collection) on George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589); on William Webbe's A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) -- both in Constable's English reprints of 1895; and on Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1884; his Commonplace Book, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1913; and his Letter Book, 1573-1580, ed. E. J. L. Scott, 1884.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gabriel Harvey : Works
'V[irginia] W[oolf] made notes (see Holograph Reading Notes, vols XI and XII in the Berg Collection) on George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589); on William Webbe's A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) -- both in Constable's English reprints of 1895; and on Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1884; his Commonplace Book, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1913; and his Letter Book, 1573-1580, ed. E. J. L. Scott, 1884.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gabriel Harvey : Commonplace Book
'V[irginia] W[oolf] made notes (see Holograph Reading Notes, vols XI and XII in the Berg Collection) on George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589); on William Webbe's A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) -- both in Constable's English reprints of 1895; and on Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1884; his Commonplace Book, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1913; and his Letter Book, 1573-1580, ed. E. J. L. Scott, 1884.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gabriel Harvey : Letter Book, 1573-1580
'V[irginia] W[oolf] made notes (see Holograph Reading Notes, vols XI and XII in the Berg Collection) on George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589); on William Webbe's A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) -- both in Constable's English reprints of 1895; and on Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1884; his Commonplace Book, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1913; and his Letter Book, 1573-1580, ed. E. J. L. Scott, 1884.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Richard Hakluyt : unknown
Sunday 8 December 1929: 'It was the Elizabethan prose writers I loved first & most wildly, stirred by Hakluyt, which father lugged home [from library] for me [...] He must have been 65; I 15 or 16, then; & why I dont know, but I became enraptured, though not exactly interested, but the sight of the large yellow page entranced me. I used to read it & dream of those obscure adventurers, & no doubt practised their style in my copy books. I was then writing a long picturesque essay upon the Christian religion, I think; called Religio Laici, I believe [...] & I also wrote a history of Women; & a history of my own family -- all very longwinded & El[izabe]than in style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Rosamund Lehmann : A Note in Music
Thursday 28 August 1930: 'I am reading R. Lehmann, with some interest & admiration -- she has a clear hard mind, beating up now & again to poetry; but I am as usual appalled by the machinery of fiction: its much work for little result. Yet I see no other outlet for her gifts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Archibald Hamilton Rowan : The Autobiography of Archibald Hamilton Rowan
Saturday 27 December 1930: 'We came down [to Rodmell] on Tuesday, & next day my cold was the usual influenza, & I am in bed with the usual temperature [...] I moon torpidly through book after book: Defoe's Tour; Rowan's auto[biograph]y; Benson's Memoirs; Jeans; in the familiar way [...] Oh & I've read Q[ueen]. V[ictoria]'s letters [...] Q.V. entirely unaesthetic; a kind of Prussian competence, & belief in herself her only prominences [...] Knew her own mind. But the mind radically commonplace.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
The Rev. John Skinner : The Journal of a Somerset Rector
Saturday 27 December 1930: 'We came down [to Rodmell] on Tuesday, & next day my cold was the usual influenza, & I am in bed with the usual temperature [...] I moon torpidly through book after book: Defoe's Tour; Rowan's auto[biograph]y; Benson's Memoirs; Jeans; in the familiar way. The parson -- Skinner -- who shot himself emerges like a bloody sun in a fog. a book worth perhaps looking at again in a clearer mood [goes on to remark further on this text] [...] Oh & I've read Q[ueen]. V[ictoria]'s letters [...] Q.V. entirely unaesthetic; a kind of Prussian competence, & belief in herself her only prominences [...] Knew her own mind. But the mind radically commonplace.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'I breakfasted luxuriously in my tent off porridge, fried ham and tea and afterwards read "Pickwick Papers", pausing now and then to anoint myself with face cream.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'I sat up late reading of Mr. Jingle's artifices, until at last I began to speculate drowsily as to that gentleman's proficiency on ski. It seemed that he was arguing fiercely with Mr.Snodgrass on the advantages`of the stem Christiania over the telemark, and I caught fragments such as, "Magnificent feeling-always use it-sharp swing-no bone breaker-good turn-very!" While Mr. Pickwick, clad in gaiters,smiled benignantly in the background.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book
Richard Aldington : Death of a Hero
'I lay in my sleeping bag reading Mr.Richard Aldington's cynical book "Death of a Hero". it is an admirable work but I would have preferred Mr. P.G.Wodehouse on this occasion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book
Marrie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand : Letters
'How do you like Thalaba? There are always so many nothings to be done in London daily, that I have not read ten lines for the last ten weeks, till I came to Holland House, where I have galloped through two volumes of Madame Du Deffand's Letters, and with much amusement, though the anecdotes are in themselves of no great value; still, being written on the spot, and at the moment, they have a vivacity and interest which make one read letter after letter without weariness. The extracts from Lord Orford's letters contain frequently excellent things; and indeed, in Madame Du Deffand's own general observations, there is much good sense and plain truth; but that sense and truth, being generally grounded upon knowledge of the world, it unfortunately follows, of course, that the information which it conveys must be of a disagreeable and humiliating complexion. [Lewis then talks about Lord Orfor'd treatment of a blind woman] Have you read these letters? You know, of course, that they were edited by your friend, Miss Berry, who has also written the Preface, the Life, and the Notes, all of which are most outrageously abused by many persons, though, in my opinion, without any just grounds'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Book
Charles Lamb : 'The Triumph of the Whale'
'I send you some verses which I read in the Examiner; I think them very witty, although very abominable'. [What follows is Charle's Lamb's poem, 'The Triumph of the Whale': Io! Paean! Io! sing To the funny people's King. Not a mightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not a fatter fish than he Flounders round the polar sea. See his blubbers--at his gills What a world of drink he swills, From his trunk, as from a spout, Which next moment he pours out. Such his person--next declare, Muse, who his companions are.-- Every fish of generous kind Scuds aside, or slinks behind; But about his presence keep All the Monsters of the Deep; Mermaids, with their tails and singing His delighted fancy stinging; Crooked Dolphins, they surround him, Dog-like Seals, they fawn around him. Following hard, the progress mark Of the intolerant salt sea shark. For his solace and relief, Flat fish are his courtiers chief. Last and lowest in his train, Ink-fish (libellers of the main) Their black liquor shed in spite: (Such on earth the things _that write_.) In his stomach, some do say, No good thing can ever stay. Had it been the fortune of it To have swallowed that old Prophet, Three days there he'd not have dwell'd, But in one have been expell'd. Hapless mariners are they, Who beguil'd (as seamen say), Deeming him some rock or island, Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, Anchor in his scaly rind; Soon the difference they find; Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. Name or title what has he? Is he Regent of the Sea? From this difficulty free us, Buffon, Banks or sage Linnaeus. With his wondrous attributes Say what appellation suits. By his bulk, and by his size, By his oily qualities, This (or else my eyesight fails), This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Serial / periodical
Mary Wells : Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sumbel, Late Wells; of the Theatres- Royal, Drury-Lane, Covent-Garden, and Haymarket: Including Her Correspondence
'I have heard of nothing good in the literary way; but I read three volumes yesterday of the strangest, dullest, and most incomprehensible trash imaginable, two or three passages in which made me laugh above measure, owing solely (I verily believe) to the writer's being half a fool and half a madwoman. It is the life of Mrs Wells, a ci-devant actress; in which, among other things, she proves that the Duke of [-] has given himself a vast deal of unnecessary trouble; a thing of which I never should have suspected him. [Lewis then criticise Wells's way of writing about marriage, her debts, etc].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Book
Princess Caroline Princess of Wales : [verbal sketches of well known people]
'One day, the Princess showed me a large book, in which she had written characters of a great many of the leading persons in England. She read me some of them. They were drawn with spirit, but I could not form any opinion of their justice; first, because a mere outline, however boldly sketched, cannot convey a faithful portraiture of character; and, secondly, because many of the persons mentioned therein wre unknown to me. Upon the whole, these characters impressed me with a high opinion of her discernment and power of expression. Not that it was good English, but that it was strong sense. But how dangerous! If that book exists, it would form a curious episode in the memoirs of those times.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Manuscript: MS book
Frederica Sophia Wilhelmina Princess Royal of Prussia : MEMOIRS OF FREDERICA SOPHIA WILHELMINA, Princess Royal of Prussia, Margravine of Bareith, sister of Frederick the Great
'The Princess often read aloud. It was difficult to understand her germanised French, and still more, her composite English. She was particularly amused at the Margravine de Bareith's Memoirs. This lady was the sister of Frederick the Great - devil. In truth, they were amusing, as all memoirs are that merely relate to facts'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Print: Book
Walter Arthur Keppel Craven :
'I was shown today some verses by an accomplished man, which made me wish to be a free agent, and to visit the scenes which he describes so well. Mr Keppel Craven addressed them to a lady, a friend of mine. The writer was one of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales's most intimate friends, and she valued his acquaintance'. [The verses (which are lengthy) follow, dated Scio, March 1812]
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury
Walter Scott : Rokeby
'I received Walter Scott's Rokeby. I gazed at it with a transport of impatience, and began reading it in bed. I am already in the first canto: - my soul has glowed with what he justly terms "the art unteachable". My veins have thrilled; my heart has throbbed; my eyes have filled with tears - during its perusal. The poet who can thus master the passions to do his bidding, must be indeed a poet'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson
'Talking of books, we have lately had a literary Sun shine forth upon us here, before whom our former luminaries must hide their diminished heads - a Mr Shelley, of University College, who lives upon arsenic, aqua-fortis, half-an-hour's sleep in the night, and is desperately in love with the memory of Margaret Nicholson. He hath published, what he terms, the Posthumous Poems, printed for the benefit of Mr Peter Finnerty; which, I am grieved to say, though stuffed full of treason, are extremely dull; but the author is a great genius, and, if he be not clapped up in Bedlam or hanged, will certainly prove one of the sweetest swans on the tuneful margin of the Charwell'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Print: Book, Unknown
Alexander Peden :
'A propos, our [italics] ladies [end italics] are greatly shocked with the free use of scriptural phrases in the ******, and very angry with the author on that account. For my part, as I have read a great many of the old Presbyterian sermons, I do not see those passages in so atrocious a light; for they are nothing to the wonderful things one meets with in the effusions of Peden and Cargill; whose favourite scriptural book appears to have been the song of Solomon: - which song, by the way, I lately found in MS. in the Advocates' library, translated into rhyme by Mistress Barbara Macky, and humbly dedicated to that most noble lady the Countess of Caithness, daughter to that thrice worthy marquess, my Lord Marquess of Argyll. And a conscientious translator Mistress Barbara was; for she leaves out not one word of her original: but her fidelity is superior to her meter by many degrees'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Vision of Don Roderick , The
'Since I have been in London I have read nothing but Miss Seward's letters and Miss Owenson's Missionary. Of Miss Seward I am bound to speak well, as she doth so of me; and her monodies are beauiful; but the letters are naught; they abound in false sentiment, and a great many other false things. As to the Missionary, Ambrosio is his father, and Matilde his mother; but, wanting the indelicacy of papa, and the delicacy of mamma, he's a dull fellow. I could think of nothing else but poor Margaret Stewart of Blantyre, and her presbyterian minister, while I read this. Miss Luxina brought her hogs to a bad market, for Hilarion was little better than a beast. Walter Scott's last poem I have also seen, but so hastily that I can be no competent judge of its merits. Talking of words, allow me to recommend to you Ford's plays, lately re-published. Some of them are excellent; the first in the series (which hath an awkward name, I must confess) and the Broken Heart, are particularly admirable. I am sure that you will be struck with them; for Ford is almost as moving as Otway or Lee, - who is the mad poet I adore, yet I can persuade nobody to read him. The History of the Somerville Family, which I have seen in MS., is soon to be printed, and that of Sutherland is to be out shortly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Print: Book
James Somerville Somerville : Memorie of the Somervilles being a history of the baronial House of Somerville
'Since I have been in London I have read nothing but Miss Seward's letters and Miss Owenson's Missionary. Of Miss Seward I am bound to speak well, as she doth so of me; and her monodies are beauiful; but the letters are naught; they abound in false sentiment, and a great many other false things. As to the Missionary, Ambrosio is his father, and Matilde his mother; but, wanting the indelicacy of papa, and the delicacy of mamma, he's a dull fellow. I could think of nothing else but poor Margaret Stewart of Blantyre, and her presbyterian minister, while I read this. Miss Luxina brought her hogs to a bad market, for Hilarion was little better than a beast. Walter Scott's last poem I have also seen, but so hastily that I can be no competent judge of its merits. Talking of words, allow me to recommend to you Ford's plays, lately re-published. Some of them are excellent; the first in the series (which hath an awkward name, I must confess) and the Broken Heart, are particularly admirable. I am sure that you will be struck with them; for Ford is almost as moving as Otway or Lee, - who is the mad poet I adore, yet I can persuade nobody to read him. The History of the Somerville Family, which I have seen in MS., is soon to be printed, and that of Sutherland is to be out shortly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Manuscript: MS book
Philip Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Chesterfield :
'So much for books - saving that Sir John Murray hath found the whole correspondence of the Earl of Chesterfield, who flourished in King Charles the Second's time, in Bath House, containing most curious letters of the Duchess of Cleveland, Lady Southesk, and many other personages whom Count Hamilton has rendered so interesting. I will try to get Sir John to publish them, for such things should not run the risk of fire, not to mention rats and mice. There is a sort of memoir of Lord Chesterfield at the beginning of the volume, in which he says his second wife died of the spotted fever or plague; but in fact he is said to have poisoned her in the wine of the sacrament, to be revenged for her gallantries, which were notorious: that old villain, Sir John Denham, having shown him the way, by getting rid of his wife after a fashion nearly similar'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Manuscript: Letter
Anna Maria Porter : Don Sebastian Or The House Of Braganza
'When Miss Porter's Don Sebastian came out, I expected to find the Margravine, Keppel Craven, (with whom the fair authoress was in love,) and many of my other friends there; in place of which I found nothing but such heroes and heroines as might have been fashionable and common formerly, but who are wonderfully out of date and rare now; so that circumstances gave me a disgust to the book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe Print: Book
Edward Felix Norton : despatch
'Before we turned in Raymond, at Hugh's suggestion, read aloud Norton's 1924 despatch, in which he summoned up the possibilities of climbing Everest.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: (Charles) Raymond Greene
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan
Tuesday 7 July 1931: 'I am reading Don Juan; & dispatch a biography every two days.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
Tuesday 1 September 1931: 'And so a few days of bed & headache & overpowering sleep, sleep descending inexorable as I tried to read Judith Paris, then Ivanhoe. A note on Judith Paris: its a London museum book. Hugh bouncing with spurious enthusiasm -- a collection of keepsakes bright beads -- unrelated. Why? No central feeling anywhere [...] All a trivial litter of bright objects to be swept up. 'Scott: a note. A pageant. And I know the man [Locksley] (I forget his name) will hit the mark. So I'm not excited. Almost incredible that my father [Leslie Stephen, in Hours in a Library vol. 1 p.158] shd. have taken this scene seriously. But I think some roots. A perfectly desire surely to amuse, now & then ruffled (but oh how seldom!) by some raid from the sub-conscious -- only in the humour tho. Rowena, Rebecca, hairdressers ornaments -- Madame Tussaud sham jewels [...] But I think I trust him & like him better than Hugh. Question of morality. That we are all moralists; with a temporary standard.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
'Vanessa [Bell] wrote [to her sister Virginia Woolf] from Charleston (n.d., Berg [Collection]): "I have been for the last 3 days completely submerged in The Waves -- & am left rather gasping, out of breath, choking, half drowned, as you might expect. I must read it again when I may hope to float more quietly -- but meanwhile I'm so overcome by the beauty ...'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vanessa Bell Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
Extract of letter to Virginia Woolf from E. M. Forster, copied by Woolf in diary entry of 16 November 1931: '"I expect I shall write to you again when I have re read The Waves. I have been looking in it & talking about it at Cambridge. Its difficult to express oneself about a work which one feels to be so very important but I've the sort of excitement over it which comes from believing that one's encountered a classic."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
'G. L. Dickinson wrote to V[irginia] W[oolf] in praise of The Waves on 23 October [1931], and again, after re-reading, on 13 November 1931.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Print: Book
Princess Charlotte : Letter
'The Princess received a letter of twenty-eight pages, from the Princess Charlotte, which looked like the writing of a chambermaid, and appeared to me wholly illegible; but she said she could decipher it, and so she did in regard to understanding the general meaning, but I defy her powers or her patience to have made out [italics] literally [end italics], what those twenty-eight pages contained'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Manuscript: Letter
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael Holstein : Petits Romans
'She read one of Madame de Stael's [italics] Petits Romans [end italics], which I had lent her, and which she told me had given her great pleasure'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte'
'I am sorry to mention that [Lord Byron's] last poem upon "The Decadence of Bonaparte", is worthy neither his pen nor his muse'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales
Frances Burney, Madame d'Arblay : Wanderer, The
'What do you think of the "Wardour", by Madame d'Arblais [sic]? It has only proved to us that she forgot her English; and the same suspicion has arisen again in my mind, that "Evelina" was written, or at least corrected, by Dr Johnson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'What do you think of the "Wardour", by Madame d'Arblais [sic]? It has only proved to us that she forgot her English; and the same suspicion has arisen again in my mind, that "Evelina" was written, or at least corrected, by Dr Johnson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline Princess of Wales Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael Holstein : De l'Allemagne
'"I do not consider at all", observed Madame de C[-], "the author of a book, but only the work itself abstractedly, and I think the work we are now speaking of is one of the most perfect and most extraordinary, to be a woman's writing, I ever read."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Madame de [C-] Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael Holstein : De l'Allemagne
'Madame de C[-], who appears to me to be a clever and deep-thinking person, admired the whole of it without reserve, and said, she thought nothing could be more luminous than the manner in which Madame de Stael spoke of the different systems of metaphysical philosophy; and the only thing she regretted, was, that some extracts of Kant's writings had not been inserted'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Madame de [C-] Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine Stael-Holstein : Treatise on the Influence of the Passions
'Read Madame de Stael sur les Passions. What a wonderful mind is hers! what an insight she has into the recesses of human feeling! How many secret springs does she unlock; and how much the woman - the tender, the kind, the impassioned woman - betrays herself even in all the philosophy of her writings.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine Stael-Holstein : Essai sur les fictions
'Madame de Stael's "Essai sur les fictions" delights me particularly: for every word in it is a beautiful echo of my own feelings'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Mary Berry : [historical work]
'I read several chapters of Miss Berry's work, a Comparative View of the English and French Nations, since the time of Charles II to the present day. I think this work a most sterling performance, and one, from the nature of its subject, as well as the grave and masterly way in which she treats it, likely to do honour to her memory. I hear Miss Berry has been reproached with its being too grave; but I think the sober chastened style in which it is written suits the dignity of the matter. A lighter pen might have found [italics] de quoi [end italics] to have made a continuation of that most amusing and immoral work, the Memoires de Grammont; but where a deeper tone of thought induces a higher aim than mere wit and entertainment, surely she has chosen more appropriate means to attain her object'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne : Letters
'of all the generations who have praised Madame de Sevigne, and commended her writings, I am certain no one has ever entered more completely into the sentiment of her delightful letters than myself. It is melancholy that no similar instance of so perfect a love between parent and child has since been upon record'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Charlotte Bury : Diary
'I am often ashamed when I read over what I have written, to see how I allow my mind to wander, and my pen to note down so many of its vagaries. Yet I never have resolution to amend the style of my diary. And why should I not indulge myself by giving way to my feelings?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Manuscript: MS journal
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
Thursday 21 July 1932: 'Alice Ritchie ringing me up [...] said "One thing I want to say. Please dont go so far away in your next book". She had just re-read The Waves: magnificent: but loneliness almost unbearable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Ritchie Print: Book
Lord Kilbracken : Reminiscences
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written: 'Reading this August: Souvenirs de Tocqueville Any number of biographies -- Coleridge -- one or two poems. Lord Kilbracken memoirs. Shaw Pen portraits. Ainslie memoirs. Vita's novel [...] Nothing much good -- except de T: Coleridges letters; but failed to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Pen Portraits and Reviews
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written: 'Reading this August: Souvenirs de Tocqueville Any number of biographies -- Coleridge -- one or two poems. Lord Kilbracken memoirs. Shaw Pen portraits. Ainslie memoirs. Vita's novel [...] Nothing much good -- except de T: Coleridges letters; but failed to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : poems
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written: 'Reading this August: Souvenirs de Tocqueville Any number of biographies -- Coleridge -- one or two poems. Lord Kilbracken memoirs. Shaw Pen portraits. Ainslie memoirs. Vita's novel [...] Nothing much good -- except de T: Coleridges letters; but failed to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : letters
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written: 'Reading this August: Souvenirs de Tocqueville Any number of biographies -- Coleridge -- one or two poems. Lord Kilbracken memoirs. Shaw Pen portraits. Ainslie memoirs. Vita's novel [...] Nothing much good -- except de T: Coleridges letters; but failed to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
R. Barry O'Brien : The Life of Charles Stuart Parnell
Sunday 15 January 1933: 'I am reading Parnell.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : The Sacred Fount
Sunday 14 May 1933: 'I am reading -- skipping -- the Sacred Fount [by Henry James] -- about the most inappropriate of all books for this din -- sitting by the open window, looking across heads & heads & heads -- all Siena parading in gray & pink & the cars hooting. How finely run along all those involuted thread [in James]? I dont -- thats the answer. I let 'em break. I only mark that the sign of a masterly writer is the power to break his mould callously [goes on to comment further on James].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Edward Whymper : Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator
'But instead of learning to sail, I read Edward Whymper's "Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator". The author is better known for his "Scrambles among the Alps", but this came later in my education.[...] I have not read the book again but I still have the most vivid impressions of it: the climbing of Chimborazo [...] the night spent on Cotopaxi [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eric Shipton Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : diaries
Friday 7 July 1933: 'Being headachy [...] I have spent the whole morning reading old diaries, and am now (10 to 1) much refreshed. This is by way of justifying these many written books [...] The diary amuses me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Florence Hardy : Life of Thomas Hardy
Wednesday 26 July 1933: 'When I cant write of a morning -- as now -- I try to tune myself on other books: couldnt settle on any save T. Hardy's life just now. Rather to my liking.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Geoffrey Cust Faber : A Character Study of the Oxford Movement
Saturday 12 August 1933: 'I've been reading Faber on Newman; compared his account of a nervous breakdown; the refusal of some part of the mechanism; is that what happens to me? Not quite. Because I'm not evading anything. I long to write The Pargiters [work in progress]. No. I think the effort to live in 2 spheres: the novel; & life is a strain'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Arsene Houssaye : Confessions
Thursday 24 August 1933: 'I have spent the morning reading the Confessions of Arsene Houssaye left here yesterday by Clive [Bell].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George D. Abraham : Swiss Mountain Climbs
'My early reading had been confined to the work of the pioneers, and in consequence it never occurred to me that big mountains coud be climbed without guides.[...] I had acquired a copy of Abraham's "Swiss Mountain Climbs" which set out in depressing detail the official tariffs of the great peaks, the study of which acted as a constant check on my ambitions.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eric Shipton Print: Book
Vera Brittain : Testament of Youth
Satirday 2 September 1933: 'I am reading with extreme greed a book by Vera Britain [sic], called The Testament of Youth. Not that I much like her. A stringy metallic mind, with I suppose, the sort of taste I should dislike in real life. But her story, told in detail, without reserve, of the war, & how she lost lover & brother, & dabbled her hands in entrails [as nurse] [...] runs rapidly, vividly across my eyes. A very good book of its sort. The new sort, the hard anguished sort, that I could never write [comments further] [...] I give her credit for having lit up a long passage to me at least. I read & read & read & neglect Turgenev & Miss [Ivy] C[ompton]. Burnett.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Margot Oxford : More Memories
23 September 1933: 'I am reading Margot [Oxford] -- "V W our greatest English authoress;" Molly Hamilton on Webbs: & Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Mary Agnes Hamilton : Sidney and Beatrice Webb
23 September 1933: 'I am reading Margot [Oxford] -- "V W our greatest English authoress;" Molly Hamilton on Webbs: & Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Marguerite Steen : Hugh Walpole: A Study
5 October 1933: 'I spent yesterday in bed; headache; infinite weariness up my back; clouds forming in my neck; half asleep; through the rift reading Steen (author of Stallion) on Hugh Walpole. My word -- how Hugh can let that rotten pear lie on his name God knows.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : study of Virginia Woolf
Thursday 5 October 1933: '[At Labour Party Conference, Hastings] I talked to Pethick L.; a frost-bitten blue eyed little old man now; & he was reading Holtby on V. W. You [italics]are[end italics] V. W.? Yes. I said'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence Print: Book
Maurice Wilson : [diary]
'About 300 yards above Camp III we found the body of Maurice Wilson, who had atempted to climb Mount Everest alone the previous year and about whom nothing more had been heard. From a diary we found on his body and from subsequent enquiries we were able to piece together his curious story.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Expedition members Manuscript: Codex, Diary
Lord John Russell : Life of William Lord Russell, with Some Account of the Times
'I employed myself in the evening, reading Lord John Russell's life of his ancestor Lord William Russell. The preface is modest, dignified, and forcible; the narrative is lucid; and the style is unaffected, and devoid of ornament, yet elegant. It is like the author. How much the sobriety of a sensible English book strengthens and refreshes the understanding, especially when we have lived some time in a dearth of English literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Francis Jeffrey : [ review of 'Essays on the superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland: to which are added, translations from the Gaelic...' by Anne Grant]
'Lady [-] lent me Mrs Grant's "Superstitions of the Highlands", and I like what I have read of it; but, above all things, I admire Mr Jeffrey's review of it, and also a review of Ford's plays, in which latter there are some beautiful pieces of writing, especially in "The Broken Heart". I am sorry they are disgraced with such coarseness. It does not do to tear off the drapery of a moral imagination, and expose our naked and shivering nature. But certainly those powerful pictures of the passions that were exhibitied in former days, make a good contrast to the tameness of modern performances. I do not like "Love's Melancholy" at all. The character of Penthea in "The Broken Heart" is very fine; but I could not see the advantages of making Calantha dance on when all her friends are dead'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Jeffrey : [ review of new edition of Ford's plays]
'Lady [-] lent me Mrs Grant's "Superstitions of the Highlands", and I like what I have read of it; but, above all things, I admire Mr Jeffrey's review of it, and also a review of Ford's plays, in which latter there are some beautiful pieces of writing, especially in "The Broken Heart". I am sorry they are disgraced with such coarseness. It does not do to tear off the drapery of a moral imagination, and expose our naked and shivering nature. But certainly those powerful pictures of the passions that were exhibitied in former days, make a good contrast to the tameness of modern performances. I do not like "Love's Melancholy" at all. The character of Penthea in "The Broken Heart" is very fine; but I could not see the advantages of making Calantha dance on when all her friends are dead'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'I happened by chance when in this mood [melancholy], to open "The Lady of the Lake", and I thought, as I read it, so long as there were such sublime poems in the world to elevate and abstract the mind, that I could never be quite unhappy in any situation. There are so many interests and pleasures independent of the world! Everybody must be disappointed that the heroine's lover is nothing, and derives no interest from any circumstances except in being the object of her love; and I was sorry Fitz-James kills Roderick. Fitz-James, perhaps, could not help it, but Walter Scott could. It gives an uneasy sensation'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Letters
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marie Anne de Vichy-Chambrond, Marquise du Deffand : Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to the Hon. Horace Walpole
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marie Anne de Vichy-Chambrond, Marquise du Deffand : [Letters to Voltaire]
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Sta?l-Holstein : De l'Allemagne
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I have been reperusing Madame de Stael's De l'Allemagne. I cannot very well express how much I am charmed with that work. As Midas's hand had the art of transmuting everything it touched into gold, so her pen illuminates every object, turning the rude ore of the mine into current coin, and rendering it useful to every one. It is certainly a most luminous emanation of the human mind, and proves the female intellect may perchance equal, if not surpass, that of the other sex. I never read any style I like so well, and the candour, liberality, and impartiality of her sentiments are truly admirable'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
'Our library too was a weighty affair. Shipton had the longest novel that had been published in recent years, Warren a 2,000-page work on physiology.[...] On Good Friday [...] the rest of us lay about, played chess or read the less technical portion of our curiously assorted library. This included "Gone with the Wind" (Shipton) "Seventeenth Century Verse" (Oliver), "Montaigne's Essays" (Warren), "Don Quixote" (self), "Adam Bede" (Lloyd), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Smythe), "Stones of Venice" (Odell) and a few others. Warren,who rejoined us that day, besides his weighty tome on Physiology -in which there were several funny anecdotes if one took the trouble to look - had with him a yet weightier volume on the singularly inappropriate subject of Tropical Diseases.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Eric Shipton Print: Book
George Eliot : Adam Bede
'Our library too was a weighty affair. Shipton had the longest novel that had been published in recent years, Warren a 2,000-page work on physiology.[...] On Good Friday [...] the rest of us lay about, played chess or read the less technical portion of our curiously assorted library. This included "Gone with the Wind" (Shipton) "Seventeenth Century Verse" (Oliver), "Montaigne's Essays" (Warren), "Don Quixote" (self), "Adam Bede" (Lloyd), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Smythe), "Stones of Venice" (Odell) and a few others. Warren, who rejoined us that day, besides his weighty tome on Physiology -in which there were several funny anecdotes if one took the trouble to look - had with him a yet weightier volume on the singularly inappropriate subject of Tropical Diseases. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Lloyd Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Martin Chuzzlewit
'Our library too was a weighty affair. Shipton had the longest novel that had been published in recent years, Warren a 2,000-page work on physiology.[...] On Good Friday [...] the rest of us lay about, played chess or read the less technical portion of our curiously assorted library. This included "Gone with the Wind" (Shipton) "Seventeenth Century Verse" (Oliver), "Montaigne's Essays" (Warren), "Don Quixote" (self), "Adam Bede" (Lloyd), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Smythe), "Stones of Venice" (Odell) and a few others. Warren, who rejoined us that day, besides his weighty tome on Physiology -in which there were several funny anecdotes if one took the trouble to look - had with him a yet weightier volume on the singularly inappropriate subject of Tropical Diseases. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : [unknown verses]
'Well, I was at the annual dinner of my old Academy schoolfellows last night. We sat down ten, out of seventy-two.[?] I read them some verses. It is great fun: I always read verses, and in the vinous enthusiasm of the moment they always propose to have them printed; [italics]ce qui n?arrive jamais, du reste[end italics]: in the morning, they are more calm.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Probably sheets of paper or pages from a notebook.
George Sand : Mademoiselle Merquem
'Have you read Mademoiselle Merquem? I have just finished it ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Marcel Proust : unknown
'I am reading Proust, and dislike his mentality more and more. I get the sense of that flabby, diseased, asthmatic man, all frowsty in bed till evening, and preoccupied with such contemptible things - nothing but women and snobbery.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : On Education
'I had a nice day yesterday lying out under the trees in a deck-chair reading Bertie Russell's "On Education". A good firm book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
Robert Browning : unknown
His reading this summer included much Browning, Turgenev's Smoke and Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age ('which surely is the most beautiful book published for many years').
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Mary Augusta (Mrs Humphry) Ward : Robert Elsmere
'At this precise moment I am feeling mightily morose, owing to my having foolishly embarked on Robert Elsmere and Tom Jones this afternoon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'At this precise moment I am feeling mightily morose, owing to my having foolishly embarked on Robert Elsmere and Tom Jones this afternoon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
Robert Southey : Roderick: The Last of the Goths
'Southey's long epic poem, called "Roderick the Last of the Goths", is the new work. Every one is busy reading it, or sleeping over it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Humphry Davy : unknown
'Sir H. Davy is going to publish a volume of poetry. I saw one of the poems; it is very abstruse, and metaphysical, on the nature and essence of man, beginning with him as a suckling at the living rill, and going on until death infuses the natural parts into the dew and the firmament. Yet it does not cover a sheet of paper all this process!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Cumberland : Memoirs of Richard Cumberland: written by Himself
'I have become acquainted with a Mr Cumberland, who must be agreeable, for he has an hereditary right to it. I have been reading his father's life. It explains the story of a paper in the Observer, written by him, that always interested me much, of his going to see a friend's place after his death, with the circumstance of his decease. It was the late Lord Sackville'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : Observer, The: Being a Collection of Moral, Literary and Familiar Essays
'I have become acquainted with a Mr Cumberland, who must be agreeable, for he has an hereditary right to it. I have been reading his father's life. It explains the story of a paper in the Observer, written by him, that always interested me much, of his going to see a friend's place after his death, with the circumstance of his decease. It was the late Lord Sackville'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Corsair, The
'Your descriptions of your travels do indeed set my feet moving, and my heart longing to see all you have seen; and this desire has been increased by reading the "Corsair" lately; it is indeed exquisite, the most perfect, I think, of all Byron's performances. What a divine picture of death is that of the description of Gulnare!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'I am now labouring very hard at "Patronage", which, I must honestly confess, is the greatest lump of cold lead I ever attempted to swallow. Truth, nature, life, and sense, there is, I dare say, in abundance, but I cannot discover a particle of imagination, taste, wit, or sensibility; and without these latter qualities, I never could feel much pleasure in any book. In a novel especially, such materials are expected, and, if not found, it is exceedingly disappointing to be made to pick a dry bone, when one thinks one is going to enjoy a piece of honeycomb'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
Humphry Davy : 'To the Glow-Worm'
[Charlotte Bury went to see Humphry Davy, hoping to enlist his support in a subscription for James Hogg] 'and the visit was productive to me of a great treasure; for seeing some verses lying on a table, I asked permission to read them, upon which I obtained a copy of the following lines, which are, apart from their own merit, invaluable as coming from so great a man. Lines by Sir Humphrey Davy To the Glow-worm THOU little gem of purest hue, That, from thy throne o'erspread with dew, Shedd'st lustre o'er the brightest green That ever clothed a woodland scene, I hail thy pure and tranquil light Thou lovely living lamp of night Thy haunt is in the deepest shade By purple heath and bracken made : By thee the sweetest minstrel sings, That courts the shady grove; O'er thee the woodlark spreads his wings, And sounds his notes of love Companion of the lights of heaven Thine is the softest breeze of even; For thee the balmy woodbine lives, The meadow-grass its fragrance gives. And thou canst make thy tranquil bower In Summer's sweetest, fairest flower. The hour of peace is all thy own ; Thy lamp is lit for one alone ; Shedding no transitory gleams. No rays to kindle or destroy ; Constant, innocuous, still it beams The light of life, of love, of joy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Manuscript: Sheet
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel : [probably] Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur
'I was glad to have the enjoyment of reading Schlegel's History of Literature. It is a fine work, built on a sure foundation; and though I do not always agree with his taste, his feelings and his principles are exactly what I believe it is right to square one's own by'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne : Letters
'Affectation is never more tiresome and ridiculous than in a letter. Madame de Sevigne was the best letter-writer that ever existed. I would rank Swift and Lord Chesterfield next. Voltaire to me is charming; but then I suspect he studied his epistles, as Lord Orford certainly did, and so had little merit. Heloise wrote beautifully in the old time; but we are very poor, both in England and Scotland, as to such matters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
'Affectation is never more tiresome and ridiculous than in a letter. Madame de Sevigne was the best letter-writer that ever existed. I would rank Swift and Lord Chesterfield next. Voltaire to me is charming; but then I suspect he studied his epistles, as Lord Orford certainly did, and so had little merit. Heloise wrote beautifully in the old time; but we are very poor, both in England and Scotland, as to such matters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Letters
'Affectation is never more tiresome and ridiculous than in a letter. Madame de Sevigne was the best letter-writer that ever existed. I would rank Swift and Lord Chesterfield next. Voltaire to me is charming; but then I suspect he studied his epistles, as Lord Orford certainly did, and so had little merit. Heloise wrote beautifully in the old time; but we are very poor, both in England and Scotland, as to such matters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'[Lady Caroline Lamb's] novel of Glenarvon showed much genius, but of an erratic kind; and false statements are so mingled with true in its pages, that the next generation will not be able to separate them; otherwise, if it were worth any person's while [italics] now [end italics] to write explanatory notes on that work, it might go down to posterity as hints for memoirs of her times. Some of the poetry scattered throughout the volumes is very mellifluous, and was set to music by more than one composer'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : 'Winter Amusements'
'Amongst various verses, which she insisted on my accepting, she gave me the following lines, which she said she had written as supposing them to be spoken by the Duchess of D[evonshire].' [the poem that follows is entitled WINTER AMUSEMENTS]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Manuscript: Sheet
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein : De l'Allemagne
'I happened to open Madame de Stael's "Allemagne", and passed the whole night in reading that delightful work over again. The great charm in all her writings is, that they are her own thoughts, set down with all the force of home-felt truth; and any person who has had the gratification of living in intimacy with this celebrated woman, must be aware that in reading her works they are holding conversation, as it were, with herself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bury Print: Book
Mary Wortley Montagu : Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
'Letters bring Lady M. W. M[ontagu] into my head, which I now do not confess in public ever to have read, for they are deemed so naughty by all the world, that one must keep up one's reputation for modesty, and try to blush whenever they are mentioned. Seriously dear [-], I never was more surprised with any publication in my life. It was, perhaps, no wonder that the editor, my Lord of W[harncliffe], cheated by the charms of his subject, might lose his head and in the last volume kick up his heels at Horace Walpole and Dr Cole, and print the letters about Reevemonde, &c. But how the discreet Lady Louisa S[tuart]t could sanction this, I cannot guess'. [he then comments at length on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis : Mademoiselle de La Fayette : ou le siecle de Louis XIII
'I send you a new novel of Madame de Genlis' 'Mademoiselle de la Fayette'. I think it will interest and amuse you at the same time. The subject is taken from the reign of Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche. The colouring of the characters has proved a very happy effort of genius, and, after my taste and my humble judgment, I think it one of the best that she ever wrote, except 'Les Voeux Temeraires'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline, Princess of Wales Print: Book
Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis : Les voeux temeraires : ou L' enthousiasme
'I send you a new novel of Madame de Genlis' 'Mademoiselle de la Fayette'. I think it will interest and amuse you at the same time. The subject is taken from the reign of Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche. The colouring of the characters has proved a very happy effort of genius, and, after my taste and my humble judgment, I think it one of the best that she ever wrote, except 'Les Voeux Temeraires'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline, Princess of Wales Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [possibly lines from 'The Corsair' =- 'Weep, Daughter of a Royal Line']
'As you like sometimes high treason, I send you a copy of the verses written by Lord Byron on the discovery of the bodies of Charles the First and Henry the Eighth: you may communicate it to any of your friends you please'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline, Princess of Wales Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'When my day's task is at an end, I keep my nightly vigils with Young, whose Night Thoughts I do think, next to Milton's, the most sublime poem in the English language. I know 'tis accounted gloomy, and for those who love an eternal glare of sunshine it may be so; but for such as seek the shade 'tis only a refreshing repose. have you read it of late years?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
Robert Morehead : A Series Of Discourses On The Principles of Religious Belief
'I am reading on Sundays "Morehead's Discourses on the Principle of Religious Belief", which are greatly admired, though I canot say I think there is either much strength or novelty in them. It seems to me as if he had taken some of the most striking passages in scripture and [italics] beat them out [end italics], and worked them up, as a [italics] cunning artificer [end italics] does a bit of pure gold'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss V[-] Print: Book
Frances Jacson : Rhoda
'works of imagination are really becoming too reasonable to be very entertaining. Formerly, in [italics] my time [end italics], a heroine was merely a piece of beautiful matter, with long fair hair and soft blue eyes, who was buffeted up and down the world like a shuttlecock, and visited with all sorts of possible and impossible miseries. Now they are black-haired, sensible women, who do plain work, pay morning visits, and make presents of legs of pork; - vide "Emma", which, notwithstanding, I do think a very capital performance: there is no story whatever, nor the slightest pretensions to a moral, but the characters are all so true to life, and the style is so dry and piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aides of mystery and adventure. "Rhoda" is of a higher standard of morals and very good and interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'I took a great pleasure in the "Antiquary", till I learnt who was the author. It is universally believed that it was written by a man of the name of Greenfield, once a popular clergyman, but whose name it is now a scandal to mention'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs [-] Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, marquise de Stael Holstein :
'[love letters represent the only subject women] 'should ever attempt to write about. Madame de Stael even I will not except from this general rule; she has done a plaguey deal of mischief, and no good, by meddling in literary matters, and I wish to heaven she would renounce pen, ink, and paper for ever more.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Lewis Print: Book
Walter Scott : Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, The
'I have been perusing your minstrelsy very diligently for a while past, and it being the first book I ever perused which was written by a person I had seen and conversed with, the consequence hath been to me a most sensible pleasure: for in fact it is the remarks and modern pieces that I have delighted most in, being as it were personally acquainted with many of the antient pieces formerly'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel, The
'I had a present of a very elegant copy of the "Lay" lately from a gentleman in Edin. to whom I was ashamed to confess that I had it not. This is g[TEAR] you a hint that the present should have [TEAR] from some other hand. I am delighted beyond measure with many of the descriptions and with none more than that of William of Deloraine but I have picked some faults which I have not now time to explain but in Stanza 3d 1.1st were the knights squires and yeomen all knights? Should it not be rather [italics] The knights were all of mettle true? [end italics] - I have not yet discovered what the terrible parade of fetching Michael Scott's black book from the tomb served or what was done with it of consequence before returned and fear it will be construed as resorted to for sake of furnishing the sublime and awefull description'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Unknown
Marguerite Poradowska : Yaga: esquisse de moeurs ruthenes
''I have finished "Yaga" - twice. I shall write nothing to you about it while I am still under its charm.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Marguerite Poradowska : La Madone de Busowiska, moeurs houtsoules
'Thank you for your letter and the "Revue [des deux Mondes"], which I received two days ago. I have read "La Madone [de Busowska]" and am pleased to have read it in French and in your adaptation, for I think it must be tiring indeed in Polish if [Ladislas] Lozinski - like the others - is in the habit of "marking time" as you put it. Naturally I do not find there the "relief", the distinct style one finds in "Yaga", but I recognise with very great pleasure the language, style, indeed almost all the purely literary pleasure the reading of "Yaga" gave me. The fact is that, restored in appetite (if I may express myself so), I have just reread "Yaga"-which I like more than ever.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Marguerite Poradowska : Yaga: esquisse de moeurs ruthenes
'Thank you for your letter and the "Revue [des deux Mondes"], which I received two days ago. I have read "La Madone [de Busowska]" and am pleased to have read it in French and in your adaptation, for I think it must be tiring indeed in Polish if [Ladislas] Lozinski - like the others - is in the habit of "marking time" as you put it. Naturally I do not find there the "relief", the distinct style one finds in "Yaga", but I recognise with very great pleasure the language, style, indeed almost all the purely literary pleasure the reading of "Yaga" gave me. The fact is that, restored in appetite (if I may express myself so), I have just reread "Yaga"-which I like more than ever.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Popes et popadias (published in book form as Les Filles du Pope)
'I threw myself (in a manner of speaking) on "Popes et popadias" with eagerness and high hopes. From the first lines my hopes were realised - and then very quickly surpassed. It is a marvel of observation, which gives the liveliest pleasure as such, not to mention the style,which I do not dare judge- but let me say it charmed me. You are very good at description. Beginning with the ferry crossing under a threatening sky, I read the entire series of scenes which make up your charming tale with avidity. It takes a small scale narrative (short story) to show the master's hand.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Marguerite Poradowska : Joujou
'I am charmed with "Joujou". It is altogether and delightfully shocking. Where the devil did you find it? Pardon the nautical language.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Marguerite Poradowska : Le Mariage du fils Grandsire
'Yesterday evening I escaped from the ship for the pilgrimage to the station. I have my parcel No.4000 and something. Just imagine a work of art called parcel No.4000, etc,etc,etc [...] It was late. I have read only the first chapter. I cannot judge even if I dared. But from the first pages I am in the presence of your chraming originality.It is really you! I do not have time to read the book at one sitting but I will really savour it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Le Mariage du fils Grandsire
'I am reading "Le fils Grandsire" with delight. It is charming and characteristic: it is alive. I shall finish the book tomorrow and speak of it in my next letter.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Le Mariage du fils Grandsire
'I finished the book [Le Mariage du fils Grandsire] a while ago; then I went over several passages while waiting the chance to reread it entirely.' [here follows Conrad's appreciative and detailed comments on the novel, which is set in Lille in the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian war and tells of Michel Grandsire who marries against the wishes of his family, his wife deserts him, he joins the army; gravely wounded he is nursed by his childhood sweetheart (from ed.footnote p.146 in source text)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Yaga: esquisse de moeurs ruthenes
''I reread "Yaga" only the other day. It gave me intense pleasure. I read slowly and mingled my dreams with these pages that I love so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical, not clear whether this was being read in the book version or that published in the Revue des Deux Monde
Andrew Marvell : unknown
Tuesday 16 January: 'I have let all this time -- 3 weeks at Monks [House, Sussex residence] -- slip because I was there so divinely happy & pressed with ideas [...] So I never wrote a word of farewell to the year [...] nothing about the walks I had ever so far into the downs; or the reading -- Marvell of an evening, & the usual trash.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Arthur Young : Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789
Tuesday 30 January 1934: 'Yesterday I went to Shapland about my watch bracelet [...] came back; sat; talked; Julian [Bell, nephew] came to tea; read Young;s French travels'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Arthur Young : Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789
Wednesday 14 February: '10 days recumbent [with headache], sleeping, dreaming, dipping into oh dear how many different books, how capriciously: Thackeray, Young's travels in France [...] then a book a day from the Times [Book Club], Berners, Selincourt & a stout life by Neale of Q. Elizabeth which pretending to impartiality emphasises the double chin & the wig of Mary at the critical moment: a fig for impartial & learned historians! All men are liars.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Arthur Young : Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789
Wednesday 14 February: '10 days recumbent [with headache], sleeping, dreaming, dipping into oh dear how many different books, how capriciously: Thackeray, Young's travels in France [...] then a book a day from the Times [Book Club], Berners, Selincourt & a stout life by Neale of Q. Elizabeth which pretending to impartiality emphasises the double chin & the wig of Mary at the critical moment: a fig for impartial & learned historians! All men are liars.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Lord Berners : First Childhood
Wednesday 14 February: '10 days recumbent [with headache], sleeping, dreaming, dipping into oh dear how many different books, how capriciously: Thackeray, Young's travels in France [...] then a book a day from the Times [Book Club], Berners, Selincourt & a stout life by Neale of Q. Elizabeth which pretending to impartiality emphasises the double chin & the wig of Mary at the critical moment: a fig for impartial & learned historians! All men are liars.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Ernest de Selincourt : Dorothy Wordsworth
Wednesday 14 February: '10 days recumbent [with headache], sleeping, dreaming, dipping into oh dear how many different books, how capriciously: Thackeray, Young's travels in France [...] then a book a day from the Times [Book Club], Berners, Selincourt & a stout life by Neale of Q. Elizabeth which pretending to impartiality emphasises the double chin & the wig of Mary at the critical moment: a fig for impartial & learned historians! All men are liars.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Barker : poems
Tuesday 24 July 1934: 'Dinner last night at the Hutchinsons [...] Tom [Eliot] read Mr Barker's poems, chanting, intoning. Barker has some strange gift he thinks & dimly through a tangle of words ideas emerge.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Stearns Eliot
Ex-Detective Sergeant B. Leeson : Lost London. The Memoirs of an East End Detective
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of startling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : Preface, Portrait of a Lady
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of stratling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Andre Gide : Pages de Journal, 1929-1932
Thursday 30 August 1934: 'No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I dont mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing: the walk; reading, Leeson, a detective, Saint Simon, Henry James' preface to P. of a Lady -- very clever, [word illegible] but one or two things I recognise: then Gide's Journal, again full of stratling recollection -- things I cd have said myself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles de Vigny : unknown
Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Andre Gide : unknown
Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
John Cowper Powys : Autobiography
Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sylvia Leonora Brook, Ranee of Sarawak : Good Morning and Good Night
Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Edward Sackville-West : The Sun in Capricorn
Sunday 14 October 1934: 'I cant write. When will my brain revive? in 10 days I think. And it can read admirably. I began [Thomson's] The Seasons last night; after Eddie [Sackville-West]'s ridiculous rhodomontade -- or so I judge it [...] a vast book called The Sun in Capricorn: a worthless book I think [...] No. I don't like him. Trash & tarnish; and this morbid silliness.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : diaries
Wednesday 17 October 1934: 'I am so sleepy. Is this age? I cant shake it off. And so gloomy. Thats [writing] the end of the book [The Years]. I looked up past diaries -- a reason for keeping them -- & found the same misery after Waves.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest Renan : St Paul
Tuesday 1 January 1935: 'I had a lovely old years walk yesterday [...] & then in to Lewes to take the car to Martins [garage], & then home, & read St Paul & the papers [...] I am reading the Acts of the Apostles. At last I am illuminating that dark spot in my reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Herbert Spenser : Principles of Biology
'It [a child relative?s speculations about the nature of fairies] was a good deal in the vein of Herbert Spencer?s description of the primitive man, all this.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : John Knox and the Controversy about Female Rule
'I have been working all the morning at my second ?John Knox? proof, and got it pretty right, I fancy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Proof copy of RLS's essay.
Robert Louis Stevenson : An Autumn Effect.
'I have also got ?An Autumn Effect? in proof: I shall send it to you to read, I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Proof copy of RLS's essay.
Marguerite Poradowska : Le Mariage du fils Grandsire
'I have just reread "Le fils Grandsire", opening the book at random, and continuing at random, I have read every single word. with an odd and entirely sentimental fondness,I truly love this book. On every page I find you at your most lovable.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : An Imagined World
'Now I only want to say that "An Imagined World " charmed my eyes with a charm of its own-distinc[t]ly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Wonderful Visit
'Strangely enough--about five months ago--when turning over the last page of the "Wonderful Visit" in the full impresion of the suggestive charm and full realism of that book, I remember reflecting--with contemptible bitterness--that a mind which could conceive and execute such a work was utterly beyond my reach.[...] I have only read the "Time Machine" the "Wonderful Visit" the "Bacillus" volume of short stories--and I am informed to day that "Dr Moreau " is just now on his way to my island. I expect to have the delight of his acquaintance tomorrow. Your book[s?] [presumably "Wonderful Visit" or all three texts mentioned as read] lay hold of me with a grasp that can be felt. I am held by the charm of their expression and of their meaning.' Thereafter follows several more lines of effusive commentary.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Time Machine
'Strangely enough--about five months ago--when turning over the last page of the "Wonderful Visit" in the full impresion of the suggestive charm and full realism of that book, I remember reflecting--with contemptible bitterness--that a mind which could conceive and execute such a work was utterly beyond my reach.[...] I have only read the "Time Machine" the "Wonderful Visit" the "Bacillus" volume of short stories--and I am informed to day that "Dr Moreau " is just now on his way to my island. I expect to have the delight of his acquaintance tomorrow. Your book[s?] [presumably "Wonderful Visit" or all three texts mentioned as read] lay hold of me with a grasp that can be felt. I am held by the charm of their expression and of their meaning.' Thereafter follows several more lines of effusive commentary.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
'Strangely enough--about five months ago--when turning over the last page of the "Wonderful Visit" in the full impresion of the suggestive charm and full realism of that book, I remember reflecting--with contemptible bitterness--that a mind which could conceive and execute such a work was utterly beyond my reach.[...] I have only read the "Time Machine" the "Wonderful Visit" the "Bacillus" volume of short stories--and I am informed to day that "Dr Moreau " is just now on his way to my island. I expect to have the delight of his acquaintance tomorrow. Your book[s?] [presumably "Wonderful Visit" or all three texts mentioned as read] lay hold of me with a grasp that can be felt. I am held by the charm of their expression and of their meaning.' Thereafter follows several more lines of effusive commentary.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Lewis (Louis) Becke : By Reef and Palm
'I am sorry to miss making the acquaintance of Mr Becke. Strangely enough I have been, only the other day, reading again his "Reef and Palm". Apart from the great interest of the stories what I admire most is his perfect unselfishness in the telling of them.[...] I haven't seen yet the "The First Fleet Family" and have a great curiosity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Lewis (Louis) Becke (and Walter Jeffrey) : A First Fleet Family
' I have read "The First Fleet Family"with interest tempered by disappointment.' Thereafter follow two pages of largely negative criticism.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry James : The Spoils of Poynton
'I had this morning a charming surprise in the shape of the "Spoils of Poynton" sent me by H. James with a very characteristic and friendly inscription on the flyleaf. I need not tell you how pleased I am. I have already read the book. It is as good as anything of his--almost--a story of love and wrongheadedness revolving around a houseful of artistic furniture. It's Henry James and nothing but Henry James.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
W.Someret Maugham : Liza of Lambeth
'I've just finished reading "Lisa of Lambeth" It is certainly worth reading--but whether it's worth talking about is another question. I at any rate have nothing to say except this--that I do not like society novels--and Liza to me is just a society novel--society of a kind.[...]It will be fairly successful I believe--for it is a "genre" picture without any atmosphere and consequently no reader can live in it. He just looks on-- and that is what the general reader prefers.' Conrad then compares the novel to George Du Maurier's illustrations.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : letter to John Maynard Keynes, 11 December 1935
Sunday 6 January 1935: 'We lunched with Maynard & Lydia [Keynes] [...] talked about [...] Wells -- [Maynard] had read his Au[tobiograph]y. Thought him a little squit [...] A lack of decency, said M. [...] Then he read us a long magnificently spry and juicy letter from Shaw, on a sickbed, aged 77. The whole of economics twiddled round on his finger, with the usual dives & gibes & colloquialities. The most artificial of all styles, I said, like his seeming natural speaking.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Manuscript: Letter
Humphry James : Paddy's Woman and Other Storiesries
'Humphry James is good. Is he very deep or very simple? And by the bye R.Bridges is a poet I'm damned if he ain't! There's more poesy in one page of "Shorter Poems" than in the whole volume of Tennyson. This is my deliberate opinion. And what a descriptive power! The man hath wings--sees from on high.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Vittorio Alfieri : unknown
Sunday 14 April 1935: 'Now for Alfieri & Nash & other notables: so happy I was reading alone last night [...] I read Annie S. Swan on her life with considerable respect. Almost always this comes from an Au[tobiograph]y: a liking, at least some imaginative stir: for no doubt her books, which she cant count, & has no illusions about, but she cant stop telling stories, are wash, pigs, hogs -- any wash you choose. But she is a shrewd capable old woman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Robert Bridges : Shorter Poems
'Humphry James is good. Is he very deep or very simple? And by the bye R.Bridges is a poet. I'm damned if he ain't! There's more poesy in one page of "Shorter Poems" than in the whole volume of Tennyson. This is my deliberate opinion. And what a descriptive power! The man hath wings--sees from on high.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Howard Overing Sturgis : Belchamber
'Belchamber (1904) by Howard ("Howdie") Overing Sturgis (1855-1920), a prosperous American expatriate, has for its principal character "Sainty" -- the Marquis and Earl of Belchamber. V[rginia] W[oolf] read the "World's Classics" edition of 1935, with an introduction by Gerard Hopkins which draws a portrait of the author.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Katherine Mansfield : The Letters of Katherine Mansfield
Sunday 26 May 1935: 'I'm writing at Aix-en-Provence on a Sunday evening [...] I'm dipping into K.M.'s letters, Stendhal on Rome [...] Cant formulate a phrase for K.M. All I think a little posed & twisted by illness & [John Middleton] Murry; but agonised, & at moments that direct flick at the thing seen which was her gift.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Ruth Gruber : Virginia Woolf: A Study
Friday 31 May 1935: 'Some good German woman sends a pamphlet on me, into which I couldnt resist looking, though nothing so much upsets & demoralises as this looking at ones face in the glass. And a German glass produces an extreme diffuseness & complexity so that I cant get either praise or blame but must begin twisting among long words.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Vittorio Alfieri : unknown
Saturday 7 September 1935: 'A heavenly quiet morning reading Alfieri by the open window & not smoking [...] I've stopped 2 days now The Years [novel in progress]:& feel the power to settle, calmly & firmly on books coming back at once. John Bailey's life, come today, makes me doubt though -- what? Everything [...] I've only just glanced & got the smell of Lit. dinner. Lit. Sup, Lit this that & the other -- & the one remark to the effect that Virginia Woolf, of all people, has been given Cowper by Desmond [MacCarthy], & likes it! I, who read Cowper when I was 15 -- d----d nonsense.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sir Charles Mallett : Anthony Hope and His Books
Friday 13 September 1935: 'Reading Love for Love, Life of Anthony Hope, &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Mrs Easdale : Middle Age: 1885-1932
[?] Sunday 29 September 1935: 'Yesterday I [...] read the Lovers Melancholy & skimmed the top of the words; & want to go on reading things miles away -- beautiful hard words. remote. Not Mrs Easdale, who is silly, egotistic, sloppy, & very conventional. I am shocked to find Rodmell patched onto those pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : A Room of One's Own
From Appendix ('Biographical Outlines of Persons Most Frequently Mentioned') to The Diary of Virginia Woolf vol.4: 'Reading V[irginia] W[oolf]'s A Room of One's Own fired [Ethel Smyth] with the desire to meet the author, which she did in 1930'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
Walter Scott : 'Glenfinlas; Or, Lord Ronald's Coronach'
'either I am grossly mistaken or there are more [italics] natural [end italics] beauties in Marmion than all your others and as long as that is admired (which it ever will be by a part) so will Marmion. You gave the truest picture of your manner of writing in the introduction to Mr Erskine that ever was given [SEAL] ever will and I am particularly partial to that epistle I think it extremely beautifull. I should like extremely well to see another poem of yours in the same stanza with Glenfinlas my first and I believe still greatest favourite'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
'either I am grossly mistaken or there are more [italics] natural [end italics] beauties in Marmion than all your others and as long as that is admired (which it ever will be by a part) so will Marmion. You gave the truest picture of your manner of writing in the introduction to Mr Erskine that ever was given [SEAL] ever will and I am particularly partial to that epistle I think it extremely beautifull. I should like extremely well to see another poem of yours in the same stanza with Glenfinlas my first and I believe still greatest favourite'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : 'To Henry Erskine, Esq'
'either I am grossly mistaken or there are more [italics] natural [end italics] beauties in Marmion than all your others and as long as that is admired (which it ever will be by a part) so will Marmion. You gave the truest picture of your manner of writing in the introduction to Mr Erskine that ever was given [SEAL] ever will and I am particularly partial to that epistle I think it extremely beautifull. I should like extremely well to see another poem of yours in the same stanza with Glenfinlas my first and I believe still greatest favourite'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Robert Southey : Curse of Kehama, The
'Kehama has not got justice take a bards word who never flatters he will live for ever'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Bridal of Triermain, The
'[italics] The Bridal [end italics] of Triermain is published. It is quite a romance of a lady that lay enchanted 500 years &c a servile imitation of Scott and possesses some poetical merit. It will not however be regarded'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : A Country Dance
'And now I have taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now rewritten all I had written of it then and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of course I am in another world now; but in some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my old story. I am going to call it ?A Country Dance?: the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the chapter, where the most of this changing goes on, is to be called: ?Up the Middle, down the Middle?. It will be in six, or (perhaps) seven, chapters. I have never worked harder in my life, than these last four days. If I can only keep it up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Earlier draft of one of his stories.
Charles Shaw : When I was a Child
'Thank you for sending me a copy of the United Methodist containing the article "Books and Bookmen", which deals with the close resemblances between an episode in Charles Shaw?s anonymous book, "When I was a Child" and an episode in Clayhanger. Let me remark that I am a fairly regular student of the columns of the United Methodist and other denominational organs, and I only wish that certain papers of a different stamp showed as keen an interest in literature as you do. As soon as I heard of it I bought the book with the full intention of using it if I could, as I have bought and used scores of historical books bearing on the district or period in which I happened as a novelist to be interested.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Gabriela Cunninghame Graham : Santa Teresa: Her Life and Times
'Yesterday I finfished the "Life" [the biography of Saint Teresa of Avila by Cunninghame Grahames's wife Gabriela.] Ca m'a laisse une profonde impression de tristesse [...] I can say no more just now.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : The Impenitent Thief
'The "Impenitent Thief" has been read more than once. I've read it several times alone and I've read it aloud to my wife. Every word has found a home.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Bernard Barton : 'To James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, author of The Queen's Wake. By A Gentleman of Suffolk'
'I recieved yours accompanying the beautifull complimentary verses, which are judged by the small circle of my friends to be the best that ever have appeared in our language addressed to any poet while alive. Goldie published them in the Courant the principal paper of this country as addressed to the Ettrick Shepherd by a gentleman of Suffolk. I admired the verses very much indeed for their poetical merit but much more for the spirit of enthusiasm and kindness that breathes throughout towards a friendless and un-noted Bard'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg
Bernard Barton : 'To James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, author of The Queen's Wake. By A Gentleman of Suffolk'
'I think the stanzas greatly improved and they are in the press as an introduction to the second edition of the [italics] wake [end italics]. There was one term which I was thinking should have been altered as it rather struck me to be bordering on the extravagant I think it was [italics] heaven-born [end italics] which I thought should only have been [italics] gifted [end italics] or something to that effect but you may trust that to me I will think of it when the proof comes to my hand'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : [pre-publication comments and marginal notes on Hogg's 'The Hunting of Badlewe'
'I inclose you Roscoe's and Mr. Scott's letters of criticism but besides this Scott has written the margin from beginning to end and his hints are most rational - these letters will well make up to you what is unfilled up in my sheet. I send you likewise a volume of poems by a young friend of mine of very great poetical powers. I have been greatly instrumental in bringing them forward, and subscribed for ten copies and I beg you will accept of this as a small present to the neat collection upstairs which has erst been free to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: presumably in MS
Walter Paterson : Legend of Iona, The
'I inclose you Roscoe's and Mr. Scott's letters of criticism but besides this Scott has written the margin from beginning to end and his hints are most rational - these letters will well make up to you what is unfilled up in my sheet. I send you likewise a volume of poems by a young friend of mine of very great poetical powers. I have been greatly instrumental in bringing them forward, and subscribed for ten copies and I beg you will accept of this as a small present to the neat collection upstairs which has erst been free to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Stuart P. Sherman : [article on Arnold Bennett]
'In the issue for December 23rd, 1915 of the NewYork "Nation" there is an extremely fine article on me by Stuart P. Sherman. On the whole I regard it as the best article I have seen on the subject. I should very much like to have seen this article reprinted, either with other by the same hand or alone, but I suppose that there is no chance of this.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltuikov : The Golovleff Family
'I don?t know whether the translation from the Russian, "The Golovleff Family", (published by Knopf out your way) is any good, but the book is great. I read it twice in French.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Theodore Dreiser : The Financier
'And I have read Dreiser?s "The Financier", which I could never get hold of till the other day. This book, despite its dreadful slovenliness in details of phrase, is an extremely remarkable affair indeed. It gave me intense pleasure. This is praise. I wish I knew Dreiser intimately. Wells?s new novel is very fine.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Lucretius : unknown
Tuesday 10 September 1918: 'My intellectual snobbishness was chastened this morning by hearing from Janet [Case] that she reads Don Quixote & Paradise Lost, & her sister Lucretius in the evenings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emphie Case Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Voyage Out
Saturday 15 March 1919: '[Mary Agnes Hamilton] told me a curious thing about the sensibilities of my family -- Adrian [Stephen] had asked her to tell me how much he'd liked The Voyage Out, which he has just read for the first time, & is too shy to write & tell me so himself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Adrian Stephen Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Diary
Sunday 20 April 1919: 'In the idleness which succeeds [writing] any long article [...] I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat. I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this hereafter that I can write very much better [...] And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash & vigour, & sometimes hits an unexpected bulls eye [goes on to discuss further reasons for, and artistic benefits of, keeping diary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Codex
Sir Thomas Browne : unknown
Thursday 12 September 1919: 'Writing has been done under difficulties. I was making way with my new experiment, when I came up against Sir Thomas Browne, & found I hadn't read him since I used to dip & duck & be bored & somewhow [sic -- misprint?] enchanted hundreds of years ago. Therefore I had to break off, send for his books (by the way, I have read him fairly often, now I come to think of it) & start little stories.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Mrs Humphry Ward : A Writer's Recollections
Sunday 21 September 1919: 'By paying 5/ I have become a member of the Lewes public library. It is an amusing place -- full of old ghosts; books half way to decomposition [...] I could not resist Mrs Ward, & I stand in her unconscionably long hours, as if she were a bath of tepid water that one lacks the courage to leave [goes on to comment further on Ward's autobiography].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Mrs Humphry Ward : A Writer's Recollections
'A Writer's Recollections, by Mrs Humphry Ward, had been published in the autumn of 1918. V[irginia] W[oolf] had read it then'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry Festing Jones : Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902): A Memoir
Sunday 28 December 1919, following illness with influenza: 'I've read two vast volumes of the Life of Butler; & am racing through Greville Memoirs -- both superbly fit for illness. Butler has the effect of paring the bark off feelings: all left a little raw, but vivid -- a lack of sap though [goes on to comment further on Butler and his biographer, Henry Festing Jones]]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Greville : Memoirs
Sunday 28 December 1919, following illness with influenza: 'I've read two vast volumes of the Life of Butler; & am racing through Greville Memoirs -- both superbly fit for illness. Butler has the effect of paring the bark off feelings: all left a little raw, but vivid -- a lack of sap though [goes on to comment further on Butler and his biographer, Henry Festing Jones]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Borrow : Wild Wales
Sunday 11 January 1936: 'A very fine day [...] I read Borrow's Wild Wales, into which I can plunge head foremost [...] then [...] to tea with Nessa [sister] [...] Home, & dine alone, & sleep over Mr Clarkson's memoirs. He had a sexual kink, & a passion for fish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Harry J. Greenwall : The Strange Life of Willy Clarkson
Sunday 11 January 1936: 'A very fine day [...] I read Borrow's Wild Wales, into which I can plunge head foremost [...] then [...] to tea with Nessa [sister] [...] Home, & dine alone, & sleep over Mr Clarkson's memoirs. He had a sexual kink, & a passion for fish'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Tuesday 25 February 1936: 'I've had headaches. Vanquish them by lying still & binding books & reading D. Copperfield.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Peter Quennell : Byron. The Years of Fame
Saturday 29 February 1936: 'I read Quennel [sic] on Byron: dont like that young mans clever agile thin blooded mind'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Homer : unknown
Friday 27 November 1936, following lunch at Claridges with others including Sir Ronald Storrs: 'Sir R. Storrs. [...] stolid, second rate, a snob, & very vain [...] Reads seasonally: Dante: Homer: Shakespeare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Ronald Storrs Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : letters
Friday 27 November 1936: 'Dined alone, read Sir T. Browne's letters.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Moliere : Le Misanthrope
Wednesday 24 February 1937: 'Started reading French again: Misanthrope & Colette's memoirs given me last summer by Janie [Jane-Simone Bussy]: when I was in the dismal drowse & cdn't fix on that or anything.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Howard Spring : review of Virginia Woolf, The Years
Friday 19 March 1937: '"They" say almost universally that The Years is a masterpiece [...] The praise chorus began yesterday: by the way I was walking in Covent Garden & found St Pauls, CG for the first time [...] then went to Burnets [of Garrick St.] [...] bought the E. Standard & found myself glorified as I read it in the Tube.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Newspaper
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [juvenile poems]
'if you have no [italics] odd things [end italics] lying about you which I daresay you do not lack there are many pieces among those you published in your youth which are I deem not much known and which I think extremely beautifull if you would deign to favour us with something of either the one class or the other you can hardly conceive how much it would oblige [italics] me [end italics] in particular and turn as it were every letter of our little repository into gold'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since
'[Scott] denies "Waverly" [sic] which it behoves him to do for a while at least; indeed I do not think he will ever acknowledge it; but with regard to the author there is not and cannot be a doubt remaining - the internal evidence is of itself sufficient - it may be practical enough to imitate either your lordship or him for a few verses but that the same turn of thought characters and expression in a word that the whole structure of mind sholud so exactly coinincide in two distinct individuals is not in nature. - By the by this seems to have brought a curious fact to light. I heard Ballantyne with my own ears attest when Waverly went first to the press which is now a long while ago that it was by the author of "The Bridal of Triermain" who in all the surmises [italics] had never yet been named [end italics] What are we to think here my Lord? However I like Waverly exceedingly and never was more diverted than by some of the pictures there of Scottish manners and I am much pleased to hear you commend it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Bridal of Triermain, The
'[Scott] denies "Waverly" [sic] which it behoves him to do for a while at least; indeed I do not think he will ever acknowledge it; but with regard to the author there is not and cannot be a doubt remaining - the internal evidence is of itself sufficient - it may be practical enough to imitate either your lordship or him for a few verses but that the same turn of thought characters and expression in a word that the whole structure of mind sholud so exactly coinincide in two distinct individuals is not in nature. - By the by this seems to have brought a curious fact to light. I heard Ballantyne with my own ears attest when Waverly went first to the press which is now a long while ago that it was by the author of "The Bridal of Triermain" who in all the surmises [italics] had never yet been named [end italics] What are we to think here my Lord? However I like Waverly exceedingly and never was more diverted than by some of the pictures there of Scottish manners and I am much pleased to hear you commend it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since
'[Scott] denies "Waverly" [sic] which it behoves him to do for a while at least; indeed I do not think he will ever acknowledge it; but with regard to the author there is not and cannot be a doubt remaining - the internal evidence is of itself sufficient - it may be practical enough to imitate either your lordship or him for a few verses but that the same turn of thought characters and expression in a word that the whole structure of mind sholud so exactly coinincide in two distinct individuals is not in nature. - By the by this seems to have brought a curious fact to light. I heard Ballantyne with my own ears attest when Waverly went first to the press which is now a long while ago that it was by the author of "The Bridal of Triermain" who in all the surmises [italics] had never yet been named [end italics] What are we to think here my Lord? However I like Waverly exceedingly and never was more diverted than by some of the pictures there of Scottish manners and I am much pleased to hear you commend it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Gabriela Cunninghame Graham : Santa Teresa: Her Life and Times
'Now the first sensation of oppression has worn off a little what remains with one after reading the Life of Santa Teresa is the impression of a wonderful richness; a world peopled thickly--with the breath of mysticism over all--the landscapes, the walls,the men,the women. Of course I am quite incompetent to criticise such a work; but I can appreciate it .[...] It is absorbing like a dream amd as difficult to keep hold of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Arthur Symons : [article in Saturday Review]
'[Arthur] Symons reviewing "Trionfo della Morte" (trans:) [Gabriele d'Annunzio's 1894 novel] in the last "Sat. Rev" went out of his way to damn Kipling and me with the same generous praise. he says that "Captains Courageous" and the "Nigger" have no idea behind them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Bristol Fashion Pt.2 in Saturday Review
'The "Bristol Fashion" business is excellently well put. You seem to know a lot about every part of the world and what's more you can say what you know in a most individual way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Israel Zangwill : Premier and the Painter
[in reference to Israel Zangwill's praise for "The Nigger of the Narcissus" Conrad expresses] 'a disinterested admiration for his [Zangwill's] work-- dating far back, to the days of "Premier and the Painter" which I read by chance of the Indian Ocean--a copy with covers torn off and two pages missing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Notes on the District of Menteith
'The Guide book simply magnificent Everlastingly good! [sic].I've read it last night having only then returned home.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Aurora la Cujini: A Realistic sketch in Seville
'This morning I had the "Aurora" from Smithers, No.2 of the 500 copies. C'est tout simplement magnifique yet I do not exactly perceive what on earth they have been making a fuss about.[...] I notice variations in the text as I've read it in the typewritten copy.This seems the most fnished piece of work you have ever done.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, see additional comments
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Preface to: Mogreb-el-Aksa: A Journey in Morocco
'I return the pages "To Wayfaring Men". I read them before I read your letter and have been deeply touched.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Sheet, Presumably typewritten pages
Harrison Cady : Jungle Jinks
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
George Macdonald : [probably] Princess and Curdie, The
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy : Scarlet Pimpernel, The
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [Works]
'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Henry Rider Haggard : She
'In a BBC talk of 1947 about the book that had most influenced her early years, she chose to talk about Rider Haggard's "She"; she came upon it at the age of twelve, "when I was finding the world too small". The descriptions of Kor, the great derelict city, caught her imagination. She "saw" Kor before she ever saw London: "Inevitably, the Thames Embankment was a disappointment".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Frank Harris : Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions
'Have you read Frank Harris?s privately published Life & Confessions of Oscar Wilde? It is a strange & powerful book, written by a man who is a curious mixture of impulses noble and ignoble. I am just finishing it. The best things I have read for ages are the Chekhov short stories in the new complete edition (2 vols out) published here by Chatto & Windus, translated by the eternal Constance Garnett. These stories are unmatched.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Patrick MacGill : The Great Push
'I think MacGill has written one or two excellent things on the Push. [Patrick MacGill, The Great Push , 1916] I do want you to realise that intelligent people here, though civilian, well understand that most of the stuff printed in the dailies about the army is largely tosh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Lara
'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them. [Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama] I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concluding that Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is. You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Corsair, The
'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them [Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama] I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concludoing thatg Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.'I have had such a pleasant morning perusing Lara to day that I cannot risist [sic] the impulse of writing to you and telling you so. The last Canto of it is much the best thing you ever wrote - there are many pictures in it which the heart of man can scarcely brook. It is besides more satisfactorily and better wind up [sic] than any of your former tales and the images rather more perceptible. You are constantly improving in this Your figures from the very first were strong without parallel but in every new touch of your pencil they are better and better relieved. In the first Canto there is haply too much painting of the same and too close on that so much dwelt on in the Corsair; Yet still as it excels the rest in harmony of numbers I am disposed to give it the preference to any of them. [Hogg then advises Byron not to attempt writing drama] I have been extremely puzzled to find out who Sir Ezzelin is sometimes I have judged him to be some sea captain at others Medora's uncle or parent from whom the Corsair had stole her but I have at last pleased myself by concluding that Lord Byron does not know himself - what a wretched poet Mr Rogers is. You are truly very hardly set for great original poets in England at present when such as he must be extolled. I could not help smiling at his Jacqueline'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Robert Southey : Roderick, The Last of the Goths
'Wilson who is one of the most noble fellows in existence swore terribly about the [italics] fishing [end italics] and challenges you fairly to a trial but after a serious perusal of "Wordsworth's excursion" together and no little laughter and some parodying he has with your assistance fairly confessed to me yesterday that he now holds the [italics]school [end italics] in utter contempt Wordsworth is really a fine intelligent man and one that must ever be respected but I fear the [italics] Kraken [end italics] has peppered him for this world - with its proportion of beauties (by the by they are but thin sown) it is the most heavy and the most absurd work that I ever perused without all exception - Southey's new work will be published in Novr. I have had the peculiar privilege of perusing it from end to end. It is much the best thing that was ever produced by the [italics] pond school [end italics] I assure you my lord it is and will raise Southey much in character as a poet The story moves a little heavily for some time but it is wild tragical and the circumstances in which the parties are placed extremely interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : Roderick, The Last of the Goths
'Roderick is safe depend upon it I venture my judgement on it very publickly that it is the first epic poem of the age - its great merit consists in the extent and boldness of the plan its perfect consistency and the ease with which it is managed - in these respects you are so far above your cotemporaries [sic] as not to admit of a comparison - I should like above all things to review it in some respectable work'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : Roderick, The Last of the Goths
'Wordsworth and Southey have each published a new poem price of each /2:2. Southey's is a noble work the other is a very absurd one but has many most beautiful and affecting passages - Scott is in the press - the beginning is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'Wordsworth and Southey have each published a new poem price of each /2:2. Southey's is a noble work the other is a very absurd one but has many most beautiful and affecting passages - Scott is in the press - the beginning is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Southey : Roderick, The Last of the Goths
'I have read Roderick over and over again and am the more and more convinced that it is the noblest Epic poem of the age I have had some correspondence and a good deal of conversation with Mr Jeffery [sic] about it who though he does not agree with me in every particular. He says it is too long and wants [italics] elasticity [end italics] and will not he fears be generally read though much may be said in its favours' [Hogg was trying to get Jeffrey to allow him to review the poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Hogg had also read the poem in MS
Robert Southey : Roderick, The Last of the Goths
'I have read Roderick over and over again and am the more and more convinced that it is the noblest Epic poem of the age I have had some correspondence and a good deal of conversation with Mr Jeffery [sic] about it who though he does not agree with me in every particular. He says it is too long and wants [italics] elasticity [end italics] and will not he fears be generally read though much may be said in its favours' [Hogg was trying to get Jeffrey to allow him to review the poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
Francis Jeffrey : [review of The Excursion in The Edinburgh Review]
'I suppose you have heard what a crushing review [Jeffrey] has given [Wordsworth]. I still found him persisting in his first asseveration that it was heavy but what was my pleasure to find he had only got to the 17 division I assured him he had the marrow of the thing to come at as yet'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Robert Halifax : He Looked in my Window
'You ought to read "He looked in my Window" by Robert Halifax (publ. by Chatto & Windus). It is really remarkable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frank Swinnerton : Nocturne
'A slight work, but just about perfect. In fact I do not know how to find fault with it. ["Nocturne", 1917] . . . And I left off "Wuthering Heights" in order to read it, which was a fairly clear test. (Never read W.H. before. Very fine.) . . . Marguerite is now reading "Nocturne", confound her!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'I have read "Ronald" with great care and much pleasure I think it is the most [italics] spirited [end italics] poem Scott ever wrote - He has availed himself of his particular forte, a kind of easy elastick rapidity which never once flags from beginning to end. It is a pity that the tale should be again butched the two females are but a clog upon it, and no one natural occurrence connected with them takes place - I likewise expected some finer bursts of feeling with regard to Scottish independence - the coaxing apology to England is below any Scot to have uttered - But these are quite subordinate matters and can never materially affect the poem and I have not a doubt, tho' the public seem to be receiving it with select caution, that it will finally succeed to the author's highest anticipation - If it do not none of his ever deserved to do so which is enough for you and me'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'I confess I was pleased with ['The Lord of the Isles'] save the plot and augured good of it but I have heard very different breathings of late and some of these from headquarters but the Scots are chagrined at the fear he has shown of giving offence to the English in his description of the final battle and they maintain that he is himself the English bard who was taken captive there and [italics] compelled [end italics] to celebrate the Scotish [sic] victory If a right strong effort is not made to support Scott at this time, Like the snow on the mountain Like the foam on the river Like the bubbles on the fountain, He is gone! and for ever.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
' I have got hold of the "Quarterly" but have not yet got far on with it. The review of Gibbon is certainly a first rate article as indeed I think all your principal articles are, but O I am grieved to see such an ignorant and absurd review of Mannering so contrary to the feelings of a whole nation for I certainly never saw high and low rich and poor so unanimous about any book as that [... Hogg berates the reviewer] Scott has been the most strenuous supporter of the character of your Miscellany as excellent, and there is an indelicacy in the the [sic] whole thing that cannot be thought of'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Years
Friday 2 April 1937: ''Maynard is reading The Years. & is enthusiastic.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : unknown
Sunday 4 April 1937: 'Reading Balzac with great pleasure. Novel reading power is coming back.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Sand : Elle et Lui
Tuesday 25 May 1937, in account of travels in France, 7-23 May 1937: 'At Rodez the best hotel in the world [...] Reading Elle et Lui, a very good best seller [by George Sand]. Cant stop reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Hebrew Melodies
'The "Melodies" bear a few striking marks of the master's hand but there are some of them feeble and I think they must be Lady B's. He is not equal to Moore for [italics] melodies [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Siege of Corinth, The'
'After an absence of 9 months in Yarrow I returned here the night before last when for the first time I found a copy of your two last poems kindly sent to me by Murray, the perusal of which have so much renewed my love and admiration of you as a poet that I can no longer resist the inclination of once more writing to you'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Parisina'
'After an absence of 9 months in Yarrow I returned here the night before last when for the first time I found a copy of your two last poems kindly sent to me by Murray, the perusal of which have so much renewed my love and admiration of you as a poet that I can no longer resist the inclination of once more writing to you'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Parisina' and 'The Siege of Corinth'
'I am highly dilighted [sic] with your two last little poems. They breathe a vein of poetry which you never once touched before and there is something in "The Siege of Corinth" at least which convinces me that you have loved my own stile of poetry better than you ever acknowledged to me. Some of the people here complain of the inadequacy of the tales to the poetry I am perfectly mad at them and Mr Jeffery [sic] among the rest for such an insinuation. I look upon them both as descriptive poems descriptive of some of the finest and boldest scenes of nature and of the most powerful emotions of the human heart. Perdition to the scanty discernment that would read such poems as they would do a novel for the sake of the plot to the disgrace of the age however be it spoken in the light romantic narrative which our mutual friend Scott has made popular this is the predominant ingredient expected and to a certainty the reviewers will harp upon the shortcoming of it in your poems as a fault'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto III)
'I have had a great treat this morning in perusing L. Byron's 3d Canto - Considered as a continuation of Child-Harold [sic] it has some incongruities and perhaps too much egoism still it is a powerful and energetic work and superior to every long poem of my noble friend's - I have had only time to read two articles of the Review which I was in a great hurry to do because I knew the authors of both and was informed of their being in Giffords hand before they were put to press, but I hope all the other articles are better'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto IV)
'I have got the fourth canto to day - It is a glorious morsel!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : unknown
'My poet writes good stuff; it is slack still and unequal, but I think some of it capital.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Surtees : History and Antiquities of the County Palatinate of Durham, The
'I received your splendid work the other day; and have placed it in my little library, having only looked over the plates, and some references from these; and read the general history, in which I have found many things that interested me in no ordinary degree.' [Later in the same letter, after recounting a local farmer's amazement at the size of the book, Hogg calls it 'your extraordinary work, in which the labour and research truly confounds me']
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Charles Howard : Historical Anecdotes of Some of the Howard Family
'The Howard book I had read, but had not a copy of it. I have the Sonnet to Sharpe, which I admired greatly for its simplicity, and truly antique style, long ere I knew who was the author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Charles Howard : Historical Anecdotes of Some of the Howard Family
'The Howard book I had read, but had not a copy of it. I have the Sonnet to Sharpe, which I admired greatly for its simplicity, and truly antique style, long ere I knew who was the author'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Henry Millon de Montherlant : [unknown]
'In 1937 she was having "a heavenly time" reading Montherlant, and writing a piece on him for the "New Statesman".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Marcel Proust : [unknown]
'Maupassant never meant as much to her as Flaubert, or as Proust. She was reading collections of Maupassant's stories in mid-winter at Bowen's Court when she wrote to Virginia Woolf: "I suppose he had sharp sense but really rather a boring mind. You soon get to know his formula, but there is always the fascination: it's like watching someone do the same card trick over and over again. I did feel the fascination so strongly that I wondered if I were getting brutalised myself. There is a particularly preposterous story called 'Yvette'...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Richard Middleton : Ghost Ship, The
'the short stories she did know, from Downe days, were Richard Middleton's colection "The Ghost Ship" and E.M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : 'Letter to Peter Morris, M.D. On the Sorts and Uses of Literary Praise'
'I do not rank this Maga very high but would like much to know who this new village poet is this juvenile Crab Coleridge's letter is great stuff but correspondence of the Pringles continues to be excellent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Higginson's Dream
'"Higginson's Dream" is super-excellent. It is much too good to remind me of any of my work, but I am immensely flattered that you discern some points of similitude. Of course I am in complete sympathy with the point of view. For the same accomplishmnet in expression I can never hope--and Robert [Cunninghame Grahame] is too strong an individuality [sic] to be influenced by anyone's writing. He desired me to correct the proofs but the "Sat. Rev" people did not send me the proofs.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
William Ernest Henley : [poems]
'I have a poet in stock here, a poor ass in the infirmary with one leg off and the other more than shaky − scrofula you know − but [italics]bougrement[end italics] intelligent, and he writes straight enough verses, I think. He?s learning, you know. But he makes good songs [and] here and there has a good idea. His hospital sonnets are very true and boldly real − not realistic, a word I have now learned to hate.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Henry James : The Two Magics
'PS I've read "Two Magics" Henry James's last. The first story ["The Turn of the Screw"] is all there. He extracts an intellectual thrill out of the subject. The second ["Covering End"] is unutterable rubbish.Quite a shock to one of the faithful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox (Hermann Ford) Ford (Hueffer) : Shifting of the Fire
'I have read "Shifting of the Fire". I have read it several times looking for your "inside" in that book; the first impression being that there is a considerable "inside" in you.The book is delightfully young.' [thereafter 30 lines of critical comment for what was Ford Madox Ford's first novel, written in his teens and later adapted by Edward Garnett.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Mogreb-el-Acksa
'Your photograph came yesterday (It's good!) and the book [Mogreb-el-Acksa] arrived by this evening's post. I dropped everything--as you may imagine and rushed at it paper knife in hand. It is with great difficulty I interrupt my reading at the 100th page -- and I interrupt it only to write to you. A man staying here has been reading over my shoulder; for we share our best with the stranger within our tent. No thirsty men drank water as we have been drinking in, swallowing, tasting, blessing, enjoying, gurgling, choking over, absorbing, your thought, your phrases, your irony [...Then follows ten lines of enthusiastic praise for the book.]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Mogreb-el-Acksa
'Just a word or two about Robert's book. It is a glorious performance.Much as we expected of him. [...] Nothing approaching it has appeared since Burton's "Mecca" ["Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah" 1855] [...] The Journey in Morocco is a work of art, a book of travel written like this is no longer a book of travel--it is a creative work.[...] The book pulled at my very heart strings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Invisible Man
'Thanks ever so much for "The Invisible Man". I shall keep him a few more days longer. Frankly--it is uncommonly fine.[Hence follows a long paragraph of appreciative comment comparing it favorably with "The War of the Worlds".] The letter ends with 'In reading this last ["The Invisible Man"], one is touched by the anguish of it, as by something that may one day happen to oneself.It is a great triumph for you'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Time Machine
'The trans: of the T.M.["The Time Machine"] is really first rate. What an admirably good thing it is, this T.M. How true,clever, ingenious, full of thought and beauty. I read on in the trans: neglecting my work.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : letter in Daily Chronicle "Pax Britannica"
'Today, from your kindness, I received the "Chronicle" with Robert's [Cunninghame Graham] letter. C'est bien ca -- c'est bien lui!' [Its good, that-- it's really him!]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : 'A Paheka'
'The thing ["A Paheka" ] in "West.Gaz." is excellent, excellent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Gertrude Stein : 'Sitwell, Edith Sitwell': a word portrait
'Dear Miss Stein, Thank you so much for your letter and the wonderful portrait, which followed me through Spain, and only reached me last night, on my return from Toledo. I read the portrait aloud at dinner to an audience of my two brothers, a young composer called William Walton, and a young painter called Richard Wyndham, and, tired as we were, it exhilerated, stimulated, at the same time calmed our nerves to the extraordinary degree. The sound and rhythm seem to me, if I may say so, inevitability itself - but nobody but you would have found this inevitability. You can have no idea what a delight it is to me that you are going to include this in the book. I am waiting for the appearance of that book with the greatest impatience, and I do hope Duckworth's will take it, because it is a nice firm, and it will be such a feather in their cap.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Manuscript: Letter, A 'word portrait' so possibly contained in a letter.
Alexander Pope : Life of Alexander the Great
'.....I've been ill with heart trouble - why I can't imagine, as it has always been quite strong so Sachie lent me his country house for a fortnight. I sat on the verandah all day, reading and sleeping. I read a lot of Dryden, in a lovely first edition ( Dryden was by bith a county neighbour, which accounts for the library being full of his work) - Pope, the life of Alexander the Great, of whom there is a portrait wearing a periwig, and delightful eighteenth century books about the moral worth of animals, praising the industry of the Bee, reproving the Ostrich for being a Bad Parent.....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Walter Scott : [letters in ] Edinburgh Weekly Journal
'It is amazing how many clever things are written about the embarrassments of the country there has one appeared in Blackwood and another in the weekly journal which I cannot but admire'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
R.P. Gillies : German Stories, selected from the works of Hoffmann, De la Motte-0Fouque, Pichler, Kruse, and others
'Of all the new works you have sent me I admire Gillies' stories by far the most. I have scarcely ever met with a work that pleased me better and was so truly congenial to my mind. The ease and simple elegance of the stile is exquisite. That work should certainly have a great circulation I have great faults with Mrs Johnston's work in which there is however great genius but the anachronisms are without end and the characters too much borrowed from Scott Beyond all the story is forced and confused beyond all measures. Our ladies were pleased with it beyond measure so it must have something very fascinating'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Christian Isobel Johnstone : Elizabeth de Bruce
'Of all the new works you have sent me I admire Gillies' stories by far the most. I have scarcely ever met with a work that pleased me better and was so truly congenial to my mind. The ease and simple elegance of the stile is exquisite. That work should certainly have a great circulation I have great faults with Mrs Johnston's work in which there is however great genius but the anachronisms are without end and the characters too much borrowed from Scott Beyond all the story is forced and confused beyond all measures. Our ladies were pleased with it beyond measure so it must have something very fascinating'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Gabriela Cunninghame Graham : Family Portraits
'I have just read "Family Portraits". I am a bad critic: it is difficult for me to express with the right words the pleasure that the reading of your charming sketch has given me; but when I raised my eyes from the page , it was with the very vivid feeling of having seen not only the long line of the portaits but also the beauty of the profound and tender idea which illuminated for you all the faces portrayed, the sad eyes of the dead with the flame of a gentle pity and a penetrating sympathy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Canterbury Tales
'In a little while came the books . [..] I've read Vathek at once. C'est tres bien. What an infernal imagination! The style is cold and I do not see in the work the immense promise as set forth by the introduction. Chaucer I have dipped into, reading aloud as you advised. I am afraid I am not English enough to appreciate fully the father of English literature. Moreover I am generally insensible to verse. Thereupon came "The Stealing of the Mare" This I delight in. I've read it at once and right through. It is quite inspiring most curious and altogether fascinating.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry Scott Ridell : 'Ode to the Harp of Zion'
'I enclose you two poems one by Mr Riddell which I have copied and corrected a sublime and beautiful thing, its only fault being a small shade of redundancy of thought but that I cannot help. It gives great promise and I want to bring him in as my [italics]assistant [end italics] and [italics]successor [end italics]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
Mr Brooks : [poem]
'I have received the foregoing little poem from a townsman of your's which I think so good I transmit it to you for insertion in the Juvenile Keepsake and hope you will oblige me by giving it a place'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Sheet
Caroline Bowles Southey : 'La petite Madelaine'
'The twin Magas are excellent with the exception of "La petite Madelaine" which to me is quite despicable! To slight your old friend for such feminine frible-frable! Wilson [TEAR] poem is most splendid but I have never been able to get straight through it nor I don't think any man ever will'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Newspaper
Robert Southey : [possibly] 'A true Ballad of St Antidius, the Pope, and the Devil'
'I send you two pieces which were sent me for the proposed Poetic Mirror long ago and which are not in print to my knowledge. Southey's is one of his very best'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
Honore de Balzac : unknown
Thursday 15 April 1937: 'Reading Balzac: reading A. Birrell's memoirs'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : unknown
Thursday 24 June 1937: 'A letter from Ott. [...] She has been [italics]very[end italics] ill [following stroke] [...] but is recovering at Tunbridge Wells. Pipsy reads Emma to her, & she reads H. James to herself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Ottoline Morrell Print: Book
Francois-Rene Vicomte de Chateaubriand : unknown
Tuesday 30 November 1937: 'Reading Chateaubriand now, bought in 6 fine vols for one guinea at Cambridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Three Guineas
Tuesday 24 May 1937: 'I'm pleased this morning because Lady Rhondda writes that she is "profoundly excited & moved by 3Gs." Theo Bosanquet who has a review copy read her extracts.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Theodora Bosanquet Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Three Guineas
Philippa Strachey to Virginia Woolf, 30 May 1938: 'I have read [Three Guineas] with rapture -- It is what we have panted for for years and years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philippa Strachey Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : unknown
Thursday 22 September 1938: 'I was just getting into the old, very old, rhythm of regular reading, first this book then that [...] bowls 5 to 6.30: then Madame de Sevigne; get dinner 7.30 [...] read Siegfried Sassoon; & so to bed at 11.30 or so.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Tuesday 15 November 1938: 'My one quiet evening since Thursday. Read Chaucer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Diary (17 May 1932)
Thursday 9 February 1939: 'Looking at my old Greek diary I was led to speculate [...] I won't budge from the scheme there (1932) laid down for treating decline of fame. To accept; then ignore; & always venture further.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Mont Blanc
Tuesday 28 February 1939: 'I have just read [Shelley's] Mont Blanc, but cant make it "compose": clouds perpetually over lapping [sic]. If a new poem, what should I say? I think a great idea somewhere; but the language so nebulous, or rather words overlapping, like ripples, each effacing the other, partly: & a general confusion results.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sir Edward Marsh : A Number of People
Wednesday 22 March 1939: 'Reading Eddie Marsh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Tuesday 11 April 1939: 'I am reading Dickens; by way of a refresher. how he lives; not writes: both a virtue & a fault. Like seeing something emerge; without containing mind. Yet the accuracy & even sometimes the penetration [...] Also I'm reading Rochefoucauld.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
Thursday 13 April 1939: 'I read about 100 pages of Dickens yesterday, & see something vague about the drama & fiction: how the emphasis, the caricature of these innumerable scenes, forever formng character, descend from the stage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
Saturday 29 April 1939: 'Yesterday I went out [...] to walk in London [makes various observations] [...] So into Cannon St. Bought a paper with Hitler's speech. Read it on top of Bus. Inconclusive -- cut up in Stop Press. Everyone reading it -- even newspaper sellers, a great proof of interest [...] Read Chaucer. Enjoyed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Walter Pater : unknown
Thursday 13 July 1939: 'A bad morning [...] 2 hours at M[ecklenburgh]S[quare].[...] A grim thought struck me: wh. of these rooms shall I die in? Which is going to be the scene of some -- oh no, I wont write out the tragedy that has to be acted there [...] So I read Pascal & Pater & wrote letters & cooked dinner & did my embroidery. But couldnt sleep sound.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Andre Gide : Andre Gide's Journal 1885-1939
Friday 28 July 1939: 'Reading Gide's diaries, recommended by poor death mask Eddie [Sackville-West]. An interesting knotted book. Its queer that diaries now pullulate. No one can settle to a work of art. Comment only.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Theophrastus : 'Characters'
Monday 11 September 1939: 'I have just read 3 or 4 Characters of Theophrastus, stumbling from Greek to English, & may as well make a note of it. Trying to anchor my mind on Greek. Rather successful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Ricketts : Self-Portrait, Taken from the Letters & Journals of Charles Ricketts, RA
Sunday 17 December 1939: 'We ate too much hare pie last night; & I read Freud on Groups [...] I'm reading Ricketts diary -- all about the war the last war; & the Herbert diaries & ... yes, Dadie's Shakespeare, & notes overflow into my 2 books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Lord Herbert : Letters and Diaries of Henry, Tenth Earl of Pembroke and his Circle, 1734-80
Sunday 17 December 1939: 'We ate too much hare pie last night; & I read Freud on Groups [...] I'm reading Ricketts diary -- all about the war the last war; & the Herbert diaries & ... yes, Dadie's Shakespeare, & notes overflow into my 2 books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
'I have brought Coleridge with me, & am [italics] doing [end italics] him & Wordsworth [-] [italics] fit place for the latter! [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
'I have done all my [italics] composition [end italics] of Ld B -, & done Crabbe outright since you left & got up Dryden & Pope - so now I'm all clear & straight before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
George Crabbe :
'I have done all my [italics] composition [end italics] of Ld B -, & done Crabbe outright since you left & got up Dryden & Pope - so now I'm all clear & straight before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
'I have done all my [italics] composition [end italics] of Ld B -, & done Crabbe outright since you left & got up Dryden & Pope - so now I'm all clear & straight before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Deserted House, The'
'I like your expression of 'an unwritten tragedy'. It quite answers to the sadness which fills my heart as I look on some of those deserrted old halls. Do they not remind you of Tennyson's 'Deserted House' - 'Life and thought are gone away', &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Robert Southey : Doctor, The
'All this has done me good like the word in 'The Doctor &c', which relieved the author so much.' ['all this' refers to a rhapsodic description of alpine scenery encountered on a recent trip]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Hour and the Man, The
'I have just finished Miss Martineau's new romance. Toussaint the hero is a magnificent character, - and all connected with his personal private character is very interesting, & the conversations (where we may suppose she speaks herself) are just like those in Deerbrook very interesting. The [italics] story [end italics] is too like reading a history - one knows all along how it must end, - & there's a map at the beginning [italics] like [end italics] a history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Deerbrook
'I have just finished Miss Martineau's new romance. Toussaint the hero is a magnificent character, - and all connected with his personal private character is very interesting, & the conversations (where we may suppose she speaks herself) are just like those in Deerbrook very interesting. The [italics] story [end italics] is too like reading a history - one knows all along how it must end, - & there's a map at the beginning [italics] like [end italics] a history.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'Read 'Jane Eyre', it is an uncommon book. I don't know if I like or dislike it. I take the opposite side to the person I'm talking with always in order to hear some convincing arguments to clear up my opinions. Tell me what Crix thinks - everybody's opinions'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Henry Taylor : Notes From Books, in Four Essays
'Mary Holland has just received 'Notes from Books' from her friend Henry Taylor and said she liked them as well as 'Friends in Council'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Holland Print: Book
Arthur Helps : Friends in Council: A Series of Readings and Discourse Thereon
'Mary Holland has just received 'Notes from Books' from her friend Henry Taylor and said she liked them as well as 'Friends in Council'.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Holland Print: Book
Catherine Crowe : Susan Hopley
'I don't think one does [italics] admire [end italics] (it is far too good a word to be used on the subject) 'Susan Hopley'; it is a series of most unnatural adventures, naturally told, in a common-place way; but some people can't even be common-place naturally. They just interest one in certain states of the mind in which one is too lazy for thought or any high feeling, and only [italics] up [end italics] to being a bit occupied by scenes passed before you without much connexion, like those unrolling views we show children. Oh dear!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
'I had the Sunday School girls here last Sunday, and Susanna came to help me, and I thought we went off gloriously, only - (everything has its only) - in repeating our subjects of conversation, I named an accidental five minutes conversation with one or two of the girls about Sir Walter Scott's novels (apropos of a picture of Queen Elizabeth, via 'Kenilworth', &c.) and Mrs J.J. Tayler is shocked at such a subject of conversation on a Sunday,- so there I am in a scrape'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Clifford Beer : A Mind That Found Itself
'I forgot in my last letter to say that I found Beer’s book very good, certainly useful to me. [Clifford Beer, "A Mind That Found Itself"]. . . . By the way, have you read "A Theory of the Leisure Class"? It is a wonderful book, damnably written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : Autobiography
Wednesday 3 January 1940: 'I have just put down Mill's autobiography, after copying certain sentences in the volume I call, deceptively, the Albatross.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : South Riding
Friday 9 February 1940: 'For some reason hope has revived. Now what served as bait? [...] I think it was largely reading Stephen [Spender]'s autobiography [published Spring 1940 by Woolf's Hogarth Press] [...] its odd -- reading that & South Riding both mint new, give me a fillip after all the evenings I grind at Burke & Mill. A good thing to read one's contemporaries, even rapid twinkling slice of life novels like poor W.H.'s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry Havelock Ellis : My Life
Thursday 7 March 1940: 'A fortnight -- well on Saturday it will be a fortnight -- with influenza [...] before getting into bed that bitter [previous Saturday] afternoon I read my epitaph -- Mrs W. died so soon, in the N.S. & was pleased to support that dismissal very tolerably [...] And read all Havelock Ellis, a cautious cumulative, teased & tired book; too pressed down with that very common woman, Edith [Lees, Ellis's wife]: so I judged her, but she was life to him [...] He's honest & clear but thick [illegible] & too like the slow graceful Kangaroo with its cautious soft leaps. But thats much due to influenza.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : letters
Wednesday 29 May 1940: 'Reading masses of Coleridge & Wordsworth letters of a night -- curiously untwisting & burrowing into that plaited nest [...] Reading Thomas A'Quinas [sic] [1933] by Chesterton. His skittish over ingenious mind makes one shy (like a horse). Not straightforward, but has a good engine in his head.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : unknown
Friday 31 May 1940: 'Began Balzac, Vautrin.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : unknown
Saturday 22 June 1940: 'On the down at Bugdean I found some green glass tubes [...] And I read my Shelley at night. How delicate & pure & musical & uncorrupt he & Coleridge read, after the left wing group [...] how they compact; & fuse, & deepen.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Biographia Literaria
Friday 5 July 1940: 'Why should I be bothering myself with Coleridge I wonder -- Biog. Lit. & then with father's essay on Coleridge, this fine evening, when the flies are printing their little cold feet on my hands? It was in order to give up thinking about economy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sir Leslie Stephen : essay on Coleridge
Friday 5 July 1940: 'Why should I be bothering myself with Coleridge I wonder -- Biog. Lit. & then with father's essay on Coleridge, this fine evening, when the flies are printing their little cold feet on my hands? It was in order to give up thinking about economy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Goodbye West Country
Saturday 14 September 1940: 'I am reading Sevigne: how recuperative last week [during heavy air raids]; gone stale a little with that mannered & sterile Bussy now [...] I'm reading Henry Williamson. Again I dislike him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry Williamson : Goodbye West Country
Monday 16 September 1940: 'Have been dallying with Mr Williamson's Confessions, appalled by his ego centricity [...] He cant move an inch from the glare of his own personality -- his fame. And I've never read one of those immortal works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : 'The Leaning Tower'
Friday 15 November 1940: 'I had a gaping raw wound too reading my essay in N.W. Why did I? Why come to the top when I suffer so in that light?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Herbert Read : Annals of Innocence and Experience
Friday 15 November 1940: 'I am reading Read's Aut[obiograph]y: a tight packed unsympathetic mind, all good cabinet making.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Herbert Read : Annals of Innocence and Experience
Monday 18 November 1940: 'These queer little sand castles, I was thinking; I was finishing Herbert Read's autobiography this morning at breakfast. Little boys making sand castles. This refers to H. Read; Tom Eliot; Santayana; Wells. Each is weathertight, & gives shelter to the occupant. I think I can follow Read's building; so far as one can follow what one cannot build. But I am the sea which demolishes these castles [...] meaning that owing to Read's article on Roger [Fry, or Woolf's biography of Fry], his self that built the castle is to me destructive of its architecture [comments further] [...] I am carrying on, while I read, the idea of women discovering, like the 19th century rationalists, agnostics, that man is no longer God. My position, ceasing to accept the religion, is quite unlike Read's, Wells', Tom's, or Santayana's. It is essential to remain outside; & realise my own beliefs: or rather not to accept theirs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Andre Gide : La Porte Etroite
Monday 20 January 1941: 'Reading Gide. La Porte Etroite [1909] feeble, slaty, sentimental.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'The dead lights [shutters used to protect ships' interiors during storms at sea]were no sooner up and a candle made fast to the table by many a knot and twist of small cord, than my young companion took up a book, and very composedly began to read to herself. I begged her to let me share her amusement by reading aloud. This she instantly complied with. She had however taken up the first book that came to hand, which happened to be not very apropos to the present occasion, as it proved to be Lord Kaims's Elements of Criticism. She read on however and I listen'd with much seeming attention, tho' neither she nor I knew a word it contained [...] The storm roared over and around us, the Candle cast a melancholy gleam across the Cabin, which we now considered as our tomb. We did not, however, assist each other's distress, for neither of us mentioned our own.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Rutherfurd Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'The dead lights [shutters used to protect ships' interiors during storms at sea]were no sooner up and a candle made fast to the table by many a knot and twist of small cord, than my young companion took up a book, and very composedly began to read to herself. I begged her to let me share her amusement by reading aloud. This she instantly complied with. She had however taken up the first book that came to hand, which happened to be not very apropos to the present occasion, as it proved to be Lord Kaims's Elements of Criticism. She read on however and I listen'd with much seeming attention, tho' neither she nor I knew a word it contained [...] The storm roared over and around us, the Candle cast a melancholy gleam across the Cabin, which we now considered as our tomb. We did not, however, assist each other's distress, for neither of us mentioned our own.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Rutherfurd Print: Book
Sir William Chambers : A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening
'I was yesterday at Belleim, the winter palace of the King [of Portugal] [...] The house is by no means fine, and did not the garden and other appurtenances atone for it, it would hardly be worth the trouble of going to see, but those indeed are well worthy of a traveller's Notice. This garden contains within it variety enough to satisfy a Sir William Chalmers [sic], and had I not read his account of what a garden ought to be, I should not venture to express all I saw under that single appellation, but tho' it is far from being so extensive as his plan, yet it contains a great deal more than his three natural notes of earth, air and water, water, earth and air.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw Print: Book
Robert Chalmers : Vestiges of the Natural HIstory of Creation
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 3 January 1845: 'I send back your "Vestiges of Creation" [...] it appears to me that I have read in my life few more melancholy books'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : extract from letter to Edward Moxon, reporting seance
Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin, 11 January 1845: 'Mr Kenyon has read to me an extract from a private letter -- addressed by H. Martineau to Moxon the publisher, .. to the effect that ... Lord Morpeth was down on his knees in the middle of the room a few nights ago, in the presence of the somnambule J__ & conversing with her in Greek & Latin -- that .. the four Miss Liddels were also present, .. & that .. they five talked to her during one seance in five foreign languages, .. viz .. Latin, Greek, French, Italian & German.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Kenyon Manuscript: Letter
Alexandre Dumas : Fernande
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 January 1845: 'Did I say anything to you of "Fernande" -- Dumases --? I fancy I did, during the reading of the first seven pages. Beware of it, I tell you now -- If Mr Lovejoy ordered it for his library, he will be taken to be disorderly by "prude Angleterre." As Schlegel said of the "Sad shepherdess," that it was "unchaste praise of chastity", so we might reverse the saying for "Fernande." At least -- the heroine is a courtezan [sic] by profession -- but you wd not guess it, except by her talking too much of modesty [...] for the rest, she is a Grace, a muse, a saint & martyr. No virtuous woman could have half her fascinations -- (& that's the moral of the whole!) [...] M. Dumas's "Fernande" will make some of your country gentlemen open their eyes, be certain, if Mr Lovejoy introduces her into Berkshire -- I advise you to advise against it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus
'Tomorrow I go on to Ben Jonson, but I shan't like him as much as Marlow. I read Dr Faustus...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Edward II
'Tomorrow I go on to Ben Jonson, but I shan't like him as much as Marlow. I read Dr Faustus, and Edward II...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Henry John Newbolt : Drake's Drum
'Father is rehearsing Drake's Drum for Wednesday'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Pierre Veron : Le Pantheon de Poche
'There is only one very good thing in the world: the acting of Sarah Bernhardt. I beg your pardon, there is another: Pierre Veron’s "Pantheon de Poche".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : Ambarvalia
'I send you back 'Ambarvalia' with many thanks; I am also much obliged to you for sending me Mr Espinasse's prospectus, which had before excited my attention'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Francis Espinasse : [prospectus]
'I send you back 'Ambarvalia' with many thanks; I am also much obliged to you for sending me Mr Espinasse's prospectus, which had before excited my attention'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
Sylvester Judd : Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal
'My copy of 'Margaret' is in such demand since the review in the Athenaeum; it is pledged 3 deep'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'I think I have behaved most abominably in never taking any notice of your great kindness in sending me David Copperfield, and your note. Oh, dear! I have been so whirled about {against} since I saw you last that I hardly know what to write. I do so like D. Copperfield; and it was a charming liberty you took in sending it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Alexander Crawford, Lord Lindsay : Lives of the Lindsays; Or, A memoir of the houses of Crawford and Balcarres
'If you want an agreeable book, read 'Lives of the Lindsays'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Oenone
[Gaskell tells John Forster of Samuel Bamford who knows many of Tennyson's poems by heart and recites them, but does not have his own copy - she later asks Forster if he could procure a copy for Bamford, signed by Tennyson] ''whenever he got into a house where there were Tennyson's poems he learnt as many as he could of[f] by heart; & he thought he knew better than twelve', - & he began Oenone, & then the Sleeping Beauty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Sleeping Beauty, The'
[Gaskell tells John Forster of Samuel Bamford who knows many of Tennyson's poems by heart and recites them, but does not have his own copy - she later asks Forster if he could procure a copy for Bamford, signed by Tennyson] ''whenever he got into a house where there were Tennyson's poems he learnt as many as he could of[f] by heart; & he thought he knew better than twelve', - & he began Oenone, & then the Sleeping Beauty'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
John Henry Newman : [possibly] Discourses to Mixed Congregations
'Suffice it to say that its who can revere Mr Newman most with Mr Darbishire, the Winkworths and myself, the book is absolutely simply the utterance of the man'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'Do you know Dr Epps - I think you do - ask him to tell you who wrote Jane Eyre and Shirley,- <...> Do tell me who wrote Jane Eyre'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Kingsley :
'I mean to copy you out some lines of my [italics] hero [end italics], Mr Kingsley'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Geraldine Jewsbury : [unknown review]
'[italics] Is [end italics] Miss Jewsbury's review shallow? It looked to me very deep, but then I know I'm easily imposed upon in the metaphysical line, and could no more attempt to write such an article than fly'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
John Henry Newman : [Sermons]
'I am going through a course of John Henry Newman's Sermons.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [Poems]
''Tennyson' has arrived safe, without a shadow of damage and thanks without end for it. I have been half-opening the pretty golden leaves, and peeping here and there at old favourites since it came. But I have shut it up close again, that it may all properly stick togeher like a new bound book, before I take it to Bamford'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Sleeping Beauty, The'
[Gaskell describes handing over the gift of a signed copy of Tennyson's poems to Samuel Bamford] 'I said, 'Look at the title page', for I saw he was fairly caught by something he liked in the middle of the book, & was standing reading it there in the street. 'Well! I am a proud man this day', he exclaimed, - then he turned it up and down, & read a bit, (it was a very crowded street), and his grey face went quite brown-red with pleasure [...] Then he dipped down into his book, and began reading aloud the Sleeping beauty, and in the middle stopped to look at the writing again, and we left him a sort of sleep[-]walking state, & only trust he will not be run over'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'she said to H M, 'What did you really think of "Jane Eyre"?' H M. I thought it a first rate book, whereupon the little spirite went red all over with pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'I think I told you that I disliked a good deal in the plot of Shirley, but the expression of her own thoughts in it is so true and brave, that I greatly admire her.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Caroline Emelia Stephen : Passages in the life of a Daughter at Home
'Do you know a little book written by a daughter of Sir Jas Stephens, called 'Passages in the life of a Daughter at Home'? It is very painful, and from the impression of pain which, despite its happy ending, it leaves upon one I think it must want some element of peace, but still it is very true, and [italics] very [end italics] suggestive; and a description to the life of the trials of many single women, who waken up some morning to the sudden feeling of the [italics] purposelessness [italics] (is there such a word) of their life. Do read it if it comes yr way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Frederick Denison Maurice : [Sermon on 'Religion versus God']
'But I think you are probably seeing more of what has never fallen in my way exactly, but of what I read of in that striking and curious sermon of Mr Maurice's, entitled 'Religion versus God'. In which he spoke of the falseness of that religious spirit which led people to disregard those nearest to them, to wound or leave those whom God had placed around and about and dependent on them, in search of some new sphere of action.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[Gaskell relates how Charlotte Bronte presented her father with 'Jane Eyre'] ''May I read you some reviews.' So she read them; and then she asked him if he would read the book. He said she might leave it, and he would see. But he sent them an invitation to tea that night, and towards the end of tea he said, 'Children, Charlotte has been writing a book - and I think it is a better one than I expected.''
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Bronte Print: Book
Catherine Cuthbertson : Santo Sebastiano: or, The Young Protector
'What novel did you choose (in default of one from me,) for your confinement reading. I am afraid you did not get hold of the Young Protector; it is too old a book to be met with easily'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'The difference between Miss Bronte and me is that she puts all her naughtiness into her books, and I put all my goodness. I am sure that she works off a great deal that is morbid [italics] into [end italics] her writing, and [italics] out [end italics] of her life; and my books are so far better than I am that I often feel ashamed of having written them and as if I were a hypocrite. However I was not going to write of myself but of Villette. I don't agree with you that {it is} one cannot forget that it is a 'written book'. My interpretation of it is this. I believe it to be a very correct account of one part of her life; which is very vivid & distinct in her remembrance, with all the feelings that were called out at that period, forcibly present in her mind whenever she recurs to the recollection of it. I imagine she [italics] could [end italics] not describe it {with} in the manner in which she would pass through it [italics] now [end italics], as her present self; but in looking back upon it all the passions & suffering, & deep despondency of that old time come back upon her. Some of this notion of mine is founded entirely on imagination; but some of it rests on the fact that many times over I recognized incidents of which she had told me as connected with that visit to Brussels. Whatever truth there may be in this conjecture of mine there can be no doubt that the book is wonderfully clever; that it reveals depths in her mind, aye and in her [italics] heart [end italics] too which I doubt if ever any one has fathomed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'The difference between Miss Bronte and me is that she puts all her naughtiness into her books, and I put all my goodness. I am sure that she works off a great deal that is morbid [italics] into [end italics] her writing, and [italics] out [end italics] of her life; and my books are so far better than I am that I often feel ashamed of having written them and as if I were a hypocrite. However I was not going to write of myself but of Villette. I don't agree with you that {it is} one cannot forget that it is a 'written book'. My interpretation of it is this. I believe it to be a very correct account of one part of her life; which is very vivid & distinct in her remembrance, with all the feelings that were called out at that period, forcibly present in her mind whenever she recurs to the recollection of it. I imagine she [italics] could [end italics] not describe it {with} in the manner in which she would pass through it [italics] now [end italics], as her present self; but in looking back upon it all the passions & suffering, & deep despondency of that old time come back upon her. Some of this notion of mine is founded entirely on imagination; but some of it rests on the fact that many times over I recognized incidents of which she had told me as connected with that visit to Brussels. Whatever truth there may be in this conjecture of mine there can be no doubt that the book is wonderfully clever; that it reveals depths in her mind, aye and in her [italics] heart [end italics] too which I doubt if ever any one has fathomed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Kay-Shuttleworth Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Villette
'She [Charlotte Bronte] has had an uncomfortable kind of coolness with Miss Martineau, on account of some [italics] very [end italics] disagreeable remarks Miss M. made on Villette, and this has been preying on Miss Bronte's mind as she says everything does prey on it, in the solitude in which she lives'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Frederick Perthes : Memoirs of Frederick Perthes or Literary, Religious and Political Life in Germany from 1789 to 1848
'Are you inclined to see the MS of a translation from the German done by my friend Miss Winkworth ('Life of Niebuhr') and her sister. They have together translated all that is yet published of the autobiographical life of Perthes; no, I see it is not [italics] all [end italics] translated - they have stopped, when we novelists do - at the end of the adventures, & when Perthes is re-instated in his business, & in a fair way of doing well for himself. You probably know enough of his history &c to enable you in some measure to judge for yourself of the kind of book it is. A young German bourgeois, who makes his own way from nothing to a station of great wealth & influence both commercial & political: (he was a bookseller, &c) the personal story is very interesting & includes an account of the French occupation of Hamburgh &c.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
Mrs Granville : [tales]
'She [a Mrs Granville, nee Wheler] had been a great friend of the Miss Porters (Jane and Anna Maria) in girlhood; and it was perhaps owing to their example that she had taken up the business of writing novels (at 10£ each) for the Minerva Press. I saw some of her tales, which were harmless enough, a weak dilution of Miss Porters in style and plot'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'Mr N. never knew, till long after Shirley was published, that she wrote books; and came in, cold & disapproving one day, to ask her if the report he had heard at Keighley was true &c. Fancy him, an Irish curate, loving her even then, reading that beginning of Shirley!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Bell Nicholls Print: Book
Henry Morley : 'Brother Mieth and his Brothers'
'I have a friend who was educated at Nieuwied, - & who is just crazy about 'Brother Mieth'. First she made me write to Mr Wills, and ask who wrote it; and now, as much would ever have more, she wants me to ask you if Brother Mieth was not Brother Andrup - (Anthrup?) and if you were there at the time of his death; and if you, like her, got a piece of wood shaving out of the bed on which he lay and kept it for a relic? and if you heard his Leben read? - and - and - I don't know how many more questions, all hinging on the one supposition that Brother Mieth was Brother Andrup - It is a charming paper, I, the exoteric may say. But she will hardly allow that I [italics] can [end italics] recognise it's merits, and has gone off upon Neuwied ever since, taking the bit between her teeth. Would you be so kind as to stop her with a hair of the dog that bit her, & give us all another paper on Neuwied in some shape. That reading the Diary & the confessions of sins over the coffin must have been most striking. I don't know half enough about the Moravians.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Patterson Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Morley : 'Brother Mieth and his Brothers'
'I have a friend who was educated at Nieuwied, - & who is just crazy about 'Brother Mieth'. First she made me write to Mr Wills, and ask who wrote it; and now, as much would ever have more, she wants me to ask you if Brother Mieth was not Brother Andrup - (Anthrup?) and if you were there at the time of his death; and if you, like her, got a piece of wood shaving out of the bed on which he lay and kept it for a relic? and if you heard his Leben read? - and - and - I don't know how many more questions, all hinging on the one supposition that Brother Mieth was Brother Andrup - It is a charming paper, I, the exoteric may say. But she will hardly allow that I [italics] can [end italics] recognise it's merits, and has gone off upon Neuwied ever since, taking the bit between her teeth. Would you be so kind as to stop her with a hair of the dog that bit her, & give us all another paper on Neuwied in some shape. That reading the Diary & the confessions of sins over the coffin must have been most striking. I don't know half enough about the Moravians.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Christian Charles Josias, Baron von Bunsen :
'She [Florence Nightingale] never reads any books now. she has not time for it, to begin with; and secondly she says life is so vivid that books seem poor. The latter volumes of Bunsen are the only books that she even looked into here'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Nightingale Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'I have looked for Mr Macarthey's character in Shirley, and I find it exactly corresponds with what you have told me of Mr Nicholls, & also with what she herself has said to me before now. Yet it shows something fine in him to have been able to appreciate her.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : [letters to Ellen Nussey]
'I have read [italics] once [end italics] over all the letters you so kindly entrusted me with, and I don't think even you, her most cherished friend, could wish the impression on me to be different from what it is, that she was one to study the path of duty well, and, having ascertained what it was right to do, to follow out her idea strictly. They gave me a very beautiful idea of her character'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Charles Dickens : Little Dorrit
'in the 'bus I sate next to somebody, whose face I thought I knew, & then I made out it was only that he was very like Mr Hensleigh Wedgwood; however he read 'Little-Dorrit' & I read it over his shoulder. Oh Polly! he was such a slow reader, you'll sympathise, Meta won't, my impatience at his never getting to the bottom of the page so we only got to the end of the page. We only read the first two chapters, so I never found out who 'Little Dorrit' is [Gaskell then summarises what happens in these chapters] By this time we got to Knutsford, & my friend got out, & now that I saw him no longer in profile but full-faced I recognized Mr Seymour, & was sorry I had not moved'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte : [letters to W.S. Williams]
'I am extremely obliged to you for the pacquet of Miss Bronte's letters which I found here on my return home, too late for Friday's post for me to acknowledge them. I have read them hastily over and I like the tone of them very much; it is curious how much the spirit in which she writes varies according to the correspondent whom she was addressing, I imagine. I like the series of letters which you have sent better than any other excepting one that I have seen. The subjects too are very interesting; how beautifully she speaks (for instance) of her wanderings on the moor after her sister's death.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte : [manuscripts]
'[Having visited Haworth, Gaskell acquired MSS of 'The Professor', 'Emma'], & by far the most extraordinary of all, a packet about the size of a lady's travelling writing case, full of paper books of different sizes, from the one I enclose upwards to the full 1/2 sheet size, but all in this indescribably fine writing. - Mr Gaskell says they would make more than 50 vols of print, - but they are the wildest & most incoherent things, as far as we have examined them, [italics] all [end italics] purporting to be written, or addressed to some member of the Wellesley family. They give one the idea of creative power carried to the verge of insanity. Just lately Mr M Milnes gave me some MS. of Blake's, the painters to read, - & the two MSS (his & C.B.'s) are curiously alike. But what I want to know is if a photograph could be taken to give some idea of the finness of the writing'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: books
Charlotte Bronte : Professor, The
'I have read the Professor, - I don't see the objections to its publication that I apprehended, - or at least only such, as the omissions of three or four short ppassages not altogether amounting to a page, - would do away with. I don't agree with Sir James that 'the publication of this book would add to her literary fame' - I think it inferior to all her published works - but I think it a very curious link in her literary history, as showing the [italics] promise [end italics] of much that was afterwards realized.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
Virginia Woolf : The Years
Tuesday 30 March 1937: 'Ethel rings up to say she has re-read Years, under Miss [Alice] Hudson [JP]'s direction, & finds it no longer unintelligible, but superb -- How can this be true of any mind?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
John Maynard Keynes : 'Memoir Club' paper
Monday 12 September 1937: '[At Memoir Club meeting] Maynard read a very packed profound & impressive paper so far as I could follow, about Cambridge youth; their philosophy; its consequences [...] The beauty & unworldliness of it. I was impressed by M. & felt a little flittery & stupid. Then he had to rest; it turned grey & cold. M. had to be slowly conveyed -- a bed made on the ground floor at Charleston. Nevertheless a very human satisfactory meeting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes Manuscript: Unknown
R. H. Tawney :
Sunday 3 September 1939: 'This is I suppose certainly the last hour of peace. The time limit is out at 11. P[rime]M[inister] to broadcast at 11.15 [makes various brief observations] [...] I believe little exact notes are more interesting than reflections -- the only reflection is that this is bosh & stuffing compared with the reality of reading say Tawney [...] One's too tired, emotionally, to read a page. I tried Tawney last night -- cd'nt concentrate [...] Its now about 10.33.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Francis Steegmuller : Flaubert and Madame Bovary. A Double Portrait
Friday 6 October 1939: 'I compose articles on Lewis Carroll & read a great variety of books -- Flaubert's life, R[oger Fry].'s lectures, out at last, a life of Erasmus & Jacques Blanche.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Roger Fry : Last Lectures
Friday 6 October 1939: 'I compose articles on Lewis Carroll & read a great variety of books -- Flaubert's life, R[oger Fry].'s lectures, out at last, a life of Erasmus & Jacques Blanche.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Little Dorrit
Wednesday 25 October 1939: 'As a journalist I'm in demand [...] To relax I read Little Dorrit [...] Gerald Heard's book spun me to distraction last night. So good & suggestive & firm for 200 pages: then a mere bleat bitter repetition contorsion [sic] & inversion [...] he's nothing to offer, once he's done his historical accounting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Gerald Heard : Pain, Sex and Time: A New Outlook on Evolution and the Future of Man
Wednesday 25 October 1939: 'As a journalist I'm in demand [...] To relax I read Little Dorrit [...] Gerald Heard's book spun me to distraction last night. So good & suggestive & firm for 200 pages: then a mere bleat bitter repetition contorsion [sic] & inversion [...] he's nothing to offer, once he's done his historical accounting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Allan Park Paton : poem
Elizabeth Barrett to Allan Park Paton, 18 January 1845: 'I take shame to myself in the confession, that the first newspaper you sent to me, was sent in vain for the verses -- inasmuch as, being occupied at the moment, & aware of the usual worthlessness of poetical insertions in journals, I was satisfied with barely running my eye down the four sides & with coming to a hasty conclusion that the paper had been sent to me in mistake for another [...] [italics]This[end italics] time, I have read & considered!, & I may assure you that it shall never happen to me again to throw aside unread, any poem with the signature "Heather" in connection with it. -- The poem which I [italics]have[end italics] read, is, to my mind & ear, full of promise [...] there is unity in the conception [...] What I least like, in the way of [italics]execution[end italics] [...] is the burden of the whole. Where the metre changes, some sense of artifice in construction & defect in harmony seems to force itself on the ear.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Newspaper
Honore de Balzac : Modeste Mignon
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20-21 January 1845: 'I put down "Modeste Mignon" to take up your letter. I read my French abomination at breakfast & dinner & tea time, .. so as to forget myself & be delighted to find that I have eaten a little more than usual in my trance (deeper than mesmeric) & happy state of physical unconsciousness [...] And your first words [in letter] [...] are still of Mignon, Mignon. It is a decided case of flint to flint -- & of electricity by coincidence. 'Well -- and I am delighted with the book just as you are [...] because charmed beyond the point of pleasure produced by mere artistic power in the writer. The truth is [...] that if I were to write my own autobiography, or rather, (much rather), if Balzac were to write it for me, he could not veritably have made it different from what he has written of Modeste. The ideal life of my youth was just [italics]that[end italics], .. line for line [goes on to comment further on text] [...] And that "satiete par la pensee."! -- [italics]There[end italics], lies the test of the morbidity -- for it is morbid -- it is dangerous! & worse romances than poor Modests's is likely to be (I have only read a third of the book) might come of it [comments further on own and Mitford's responses to text]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Modeste Mignon
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20-21 January 1845: 'I put down "Modeste Mignon" to take up your letter. I read my French abomination at breakfast & dinner & tea time, .. so as to forget myself & be delighted to find that I have eaten a little more than usual in my trance (deeper than mesmeric) & happy state of physical unconsciousness [...] And your first words [in letter] [...] are still of Mignon, Mignon. It is a decided case of flint to flint -- & of electricity by coincidence. 'Well -- and I am delighted with the book just as you are [...] because charmed beyond the point of pleasure produced by mere artistic power in the writer. The truth is [...] that if I were to write my own autobiography, or rather, (much rather), if Balzac were to write it for me, he could not veritably have made it different from what he has written of Modeste. The ideal life of my youth was just [italics]that[end italics], .. line for line [goes on to comment further on text] [...] And that "satiete par la pensee."! -- [italics]There[end italics], lies the test of the morbidity -- for it is morbid -- it is dangerous! & worse romances than poor Modests's is likely to be (I have only read a third of the book) might come of it [comments further on own and Mitford's responses to text]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Les Memoires du diable
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 4 February 1845: 'Do you think you cd. take courage & attempt the eight volumes of Frederic Soulie[']s Memoires du diable? eight rather thick volumes? I am in the midst & heat of them -- & though they stink in one's nostrils not infrequently & are full of the most gorgeous extravagances, the variety & power, the invention, (flash upon flash), & the vividness of life all through, render them to my mind, a most remarkable work [...] Much in it is most disgusting. But you [italics]must[end italics] be struck by the variety of power in it, -- & I cant keep back any new sight from you. Yes indeed! -- how nearer & nearer we are drawn in this "palpitating literature," as you call it so truly! palpitating is just the word! & it sets me palpitating too, whatever it may do by yourself'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 15 February 1845: 'I am not sorry you fell over "La veille Fille" [sic] at last -- & the "Physiologie" besides [...] remember that the "Fille" which is as disgusting a book as you represent it, was my "first fruits" of Balzac. I made my acquaintance with him in that iniquitous book, -- that beastly book -- for, as women, we cannot speak of it with too cogent an abhorrence. Is there any wonder that I made a vow deeply never to read a book by the writer of it any more. I did vow it. And it was a mere mistake of those librarians who are always making mistakes (but I forgive a thousand for the dear love of that one) which sent me "Le Pere Goriot" [...] I bore with him wonderfully; -- & began to sympathise so immorally besides, (as Mr Kenyon says of me) with the artistic power of the book, that I was tempted to throw my plummet down again into the depths of the artist's mind [...] I am struck just as you are, by this wonderful faculty of lifting up so high & clear above the social pollutions, which it is his delight to dabble in, images & creations most stainless & lovely. I do not say (or think) that such a faculty renders him less dangerous as a writer, -- but it is undeniably wonderful as a faculty, & proves him a poet .. minus, the sense of music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : La vieille fille
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 15 February 1845: 'I am not sorry you fell over "La veille Fille" [sic] at last -- & the "Physiologie" besides [...] remember that the "Fille" which is as disgusting a book as you represent it, was my "first fruits" of Balzac. I made my acquaintance with him in that iniquitous book, -- that beastly book -- for, as women, we cannot speak of it with too cogent an abhorrence. Is there any wonder that I made a vow deeply never to read a book by the writer of it any more. I did vow it. And it was a mere mistake of those librarians who are always making mistakes (but I forgive a thousand for the dear love of that one) which sent me "Le Pere Goriot" [...] I bore with him wonderfully; -- & began to sympathise so immorally besides, (as Mr Kenyon says of me) with the artistic power of the book, that I was tempted to throw my plummet down again into the depths of the artist's mind [...] I am struck just as you are, by this wonderful faculty of lifting up so high & clear above the social pollutions, which it is his delight to dabble in, images & creations most stainless & lovely. I do not say (or think) that such a faculty renders him less dangerous as a writer, -- but it is undeniably wonderful as a faculty, & proves him a poet .. minus, the sense of music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Confession generale, vols 1 and 2
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 26 February 1845: 'Tell me, was Soulie's "Confession Generale" never finished? Did it stop short for ever at the second volume with you as with me? Because it is interesting -- and I am suspended in the air in the case of an interesting book that wont end: it[']s a cruel punishment which Dante should have put into Hell, instead of this side the gate of it .. "that day they read no more." Perhaps he meant to hint it so -- & that the thought of the unfinished book tormented the damned lovers as one of the forms of their damnation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Claude Francois de Meneval : Napoleon et Marie Louise: souvenirs historiques
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 26 February 1845: 'Do you know the "Napoleon et Marie Louise" of M. de Meneval, the secretary of the emperor? The three little volumes have interest in them -- and if you require (which you dont I hope) any further impulse towards hating the Austrian [Marie Louise], you will find it there [makes further comments] [...] Well might Napoleon shrink from speakng of her .. & from analysing the motives of her conduct! -- His [italics]silence[end italics], as Meneval describes it, strikes me as very affecting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Early Lessons
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 26 February 1845: 'I do not know Charlotte Smith's books for children. I read myself Mrs. Barbauld's '"Come hither Charles -- Come to Mama --" 'oh! how I remember it, book & all! & Miss Edgeworth's Frank & Rosamond. They were my own classics, and those of my brothers and sisters.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : La Femme superieur
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 5 March 1845: 'I am in the midst of "La Femme superieure." [sic] The truth of this work & the subtlety & deepness of the [italics]life[end italics] in it .. for I will not call it portraiture, .. are wonderful -- but certainly it justifies the attribute of heaviness & slowness we talked of the other day [goes on to remark, as apparently Mitford has also done, upon importance attached by Balzac to details of costume].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Little Dorrit
'in the 'bus I sate next to somebody, whose face I thought I knew, & then I made out it was only that he was very like Mr Hensleigh Wedgwood; however he read 'Little-Dorrit' & I read it over his shoulder. Oh Polly! he was such a slow reader, you'll sympathise, Meta won't, my impatience at his never getting to the bottom of the page so we only got to the end of the page. We only read the first two chapters, so I never found out who 'Little Dorrit' is [Gaskell then summarises what happens in these chapters] By this time we got to Knutsford, & my friend got out, & now that I saw him no longer in profile but full-faced I recognized Mr Seymour, & was sorry I had not moved'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Seymour Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Bronte : Professor, The
'I dreaded lest the Prof: should involve anything with M. Heger - I had heard her say it related to her Brussels life, - & I thought if he were again brought before the public, what would he think of me? [Gaskell goes on to say that her fears were not fulfilled] so on that ground there would be no objection to publishing it. I don't think it will add to her reputation, - the interest will arise from its being the work of so remarkable a mind. It is an autobiography of a man the English Professor at a Brussels school, - there are one or two remarkable portraits - the most charming woman she ever drew, and a glimpse of that woman as a mother - very lovely; otherwise little or no story; & disfigured by more coarseness - & profanity in quoting texts of Scripture disagreeably than in any of her other works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Professor, The
'The Professor is curious as indicating strong character & rare faculties on the part of the author; but not interesting as a story. And yet there are parts one would not lose - a lovely female character - & glimpses of home & family life in the latter portion of the tale. - But oh! I wish Mr Nicholls wd have altered more!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Currer Bell [pseud.] : Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
'I thank you too for C.E. and A. Bell's poems (my copy has never turned up)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Francis James Child : Ballads
'Is Mr Child married? I am always wanting to write & thank him for his Ballads, which I delight in' [she then deprecates her own letter writing style and says she is put off by the thought of having to write 'properly']
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Eliot Norton : [articles in the 'Atlantic Monthly' on India and an exhibition]
'I mean to read the Atlantic soon; I find 2 numbers, one from you with names of authors, for the which thank you; the second no. has no such names, - & I'll tell you what I've read & liked. Your paper on India, - but then that was not fair, because I knew it was yours, - Floyd Ireson's ride VERY much. Turkey tracts, - yes, I did, & I just defy you, if you said you didn't; and Florentine Mosaics. I cd not read the other story, - and I did not care for Carlyle. I liked yr paper in the first no. on our Exhibition - only there [italics] was [end italics] one Duccio da Siena, & you say there was not.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
George Eliot [pseud.] : Scenes from Clerical Life
'Read 'Scenes of Clerical Life', published in Blackwood, for [italics] this [end italics] year, - I shd think they began as early as Janry or February - They are a discovery of my own, & I am so proud of them. [italics] Do [end italics] read them. I have not a notion who wrote them'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Monckton Milnes : 'Lucknow'
'Thanks for telling me about the articles. I always like to read anything of your writing, even when it is not of such supreme interest as 'Lucknow' because your style (may I say it?) has such a great charm for me. It is such pure beautiful English. I had heard of the forthcoming article on Buckle, without knowing whom it was by. Thank you for telling me'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
Francis Henry Egerton : Apercu Historique et genealogique
'Can you tell me anything of a book, published or rather printed, by the late Earl of Bridgewater at his press in Paris. It was in the French language - & contained all the Egerton traditions, and papers relating to the Lord Chancellor Egerton. The Egertons of [italics] Tatton [end italics] know nothing of it. I do not know the present Lord Ellesmere well enough to ask him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Louis Philippe : Bubu de Montparnasse
'I doubt if you ought to call France & Flaubert "dry". "L’Education Sentimentale" ought to be read with ease. Ditto "Thais", & "La Rotisserie". Personally, though, I think France over-rated. You ought to read "Bubu de Montparnasse" of Charles Louis Philippe. This is a great little novel, one of the finest modern French novels. I think "Coeur simple" is the best thing Flaubert ever wrote, except his correspondence, which is his best work, & ought to be read. I tell you that Lytton Strachey’s "Eminent Victorians" is a most juicy & devastating affair, I thoroughly enjoyed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'The weather is damnable, especially when one has neither car nor taxi. I read ¼ of "Nicholas Nickleby" yesterday because I had no brain left. It wasn’t so bad in its crude, posterish way. Anyhow, it could be read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henry James : The Real Thing
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart': 'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
Henry James : The Pupil
Referring to criticism of Henry James by John Galsworthy that James did not 'write from the heart': 'To me even "R.T." ["The Real Thing" 1892,1893] seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work approaching [sic] so near perfection yet does not strike cold.[...] The outlines are so clear the figures so finished, chiselled, carved and brought out[...]. The volume of short stories entitled I think "The Lesson of the Master" [1892] contains a tale called "The Pupil" if I remember rightly where the underlying feeling of the man --his really wide sympathy--is seen nearer the surface.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Unknown
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : The Ipane
''I hold "Ipane". Hoch! Hurra! Vivat! May you live! And now I know I am virtuous because I read and had no pang of jealousy. There are things in that volume that are like magic and though space and through the distance of regretted years convey to one the actual feeling, the sights, the sounds, the thoughts; one steps on the earth, breathes the air and has the sensation of your past. I know of course every sketch; what was almost a surprise was the extraordinarily good convincing effect of the whole. [...] I have read it already three times.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Christian Karl Josias Bunsen : Lyra Germanica
'you will receive a Lyra Germanica from me the day after you get this letter, - I always wanted you to have it, & wished for your appreciation of Kate Winkworth's translation when we were at Heidelberg'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Florence Nightingale : Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hosptal Administration of the British Army
'I read the [italics] Subsidiary Notes [end italics] first. It was so interesting I could not leave it. I finished it at one long morning sitting - hardly stirring between breakfast and dinner. I cannot tell you how much I like it, and for such numbers of reasons. First, because you know of a varnish that is as good or better than black-lead for grates (only I wonder what it is). Next, because of the little sentences of real deep wisdom which from their depth and true foundation may be real helps in every direction and to every person; and for the quiet continual devout references to God which make the book a holy one'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Mr Aide : Rita
'I tell [Mr Aide] my "honest opinion" of his [italics] first [end italics] volume at any rate: It introduces one just exactly into the kid of disrepuble [sic] society one keeps clear of with such scrupulous care in real life, - it is not merely [italics] one [end italics] character that is none of the best, - but every one we get a glimpse of is the same description of person. I don't think it is "corrupting" but it is disagreeable, - a sort of dragging one's peticoats through mud. I wish the little gentleman, - who really seems more than commonly good (for a man, - begging your & your son's pardon) had not written this book; because it gives one a sort of distrust of his previous life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Amos Barton
'I am going to make a request to you, Sir, which is of a slightly impudent nature. It is, that you will be so good as to give me a copy of "Adam Bede", - and I advance three pretexts for asking this favour from you. Firstly my delight in the book; and in the "Stories from Clerical Life", ever since the first part of "Amos Barton" in Blackwood. It almost seems presumptuous in me to express all the admiration I feel; you might be tempted to quote Dr Johnson'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'I am going to make a request to you, Sir, which is of a slightly impudent nature. It is, that you will be so good as to give me a copy of "Adam Bede", - and I advance three pretexts for asking this favour from you. Firstly my delight in the book; and in the "Stories from Clerical Life", ever since the first part of "Amos Barton" in Blackwood. It almost seems presumptuous in me to express all the admiration I feel; you might be tempted to quote Dr Johnson'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'I received the copy of "Adam Bede" which you were so kind as to send me quite safely; and I am very much obliged to you for it. - I thoroughly admire this writer's works - (I do not call him Mr Elliot, because I know that such is not his real name.) I was brought up in Warwickshire, and recognize the county in every description of natural scenery. I am thoroughly obliged to you for giving it to me; it is a book that it is a real pleasure to have, and if for every article in your Magazine, abusive of me, you will only be so kind as to give me one of the works of the author of "Scenes from Clerical Life", I shall consider myself your debtor'. [Later on the same page, Gaskell says 'One of Mrs Poyser's speeches is as good as a fresh blow of sea-air; and yet {it} she is a true person, and no caricature']
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley : Three Introductory Lectures on the study of Ecclesiastical History
'Read Arthur Stanley's Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Ecclesiastical History Parker Oxford - price [italics] perhaps [ed italics] 2s-6d, not more. I do so like them and so does Meta. And Dasent's Norse Tales, which are charming, & the introduction best of all and "Adam Bede" - you read Scenes from Clerical Life? did you not?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Emily Gaskell Print: Book
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley : Three Introductory Lectures on the study of Ecclesiastical History
'Read Arthur Stanley's Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Ecclesiastical History Parker Oxford - price [italics] perhaps [ed italics] 2s-6d, not more. I do so like them and so does Meta. And Dasent's Norse Tales, which are charming, & the introduction best of all and "Adam Bede" - you read Scenes from Clerical Life? did you not?)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Herbert Grey : Three Paths, The
'As you ask me for my opinion I shall try and give it as truly as I can; otherwise it will be of no use [...] In the first place you say you do not call The 3 paths a novel; but the work is in the form which always assumes that name, nor do I think it is one to be quarrelled with. I suppose you mean that you used the narrative form merely to {convey} introduce certain opinions & thoughts. If so you had better have condensed them into the shape of an Essay. Those in Friends in Council &c. are admirable examples of how much may be said on both sides of any question without any {dogma} decision being finally arrived at, & certainly without any dogmatism. [Gaskell then discusses the merits of the concise essay form] But I believe in spite of yr objection to the term 'novel' you do wish to 'narrate', - and I believe you can do it if you try, - but I think you must observe what is [italics] out [end italics] of you, instead of examining what is [italics] in [end italics] you. [Gaskell explains the merits of this at length]. Just read a few pages of De Foe &c - and you will see the healthy way in which he sets [italics] objects [end italics] not [italics] feelings [end italics] before you. [She advises Grey to use what he observes through every day contact with real people] Think if you can not imagine a complication of events in their life which would form a good plot. (Your plot in The Three paths is very poor; you have not thought enough about it - simply used it as a medium. [She discusses the advantages of tight plotting and advises] Don't intrude yourself into your description. If you but think eagerly of your story till [italics] you see it in action [end italics], words, good simple strong words will come. [she then criticises his overuse of epithets, overlong conversations and allusions, concluding] You see I am very frank-spoken. But I believe you are worth it.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Arthur Helps : Friends in Council
'As you ask me for my opinion I shall try and give it as truly as I can; otherwise it will be of no use [...] In the first place you say you do not call The 3 paths a novel; but the work is in the form which always assumes that name, nor do I think it is one to be quarrelled with. I suppose you mean that you used the narrative form merely to {convey} introduce certain opinions & thoughts. If so you had better have condensed them into the shape of an Essay. Those in Friends in Council &c. are admirable examples of how much may be said on both sides of any question without any {dogma} decision being finally arrived at, & certainly without any dogmatism. [Gaskell then discusses the merits of the concise essay form] But I believe in spite of yr objection to the term 'novel' you do wish to 'narrate', - and I believe you can do it if you try, - but I think you must observe what is [italics] out [end italics] of you, instead of examining what is [italics] in [end italics] you. [Gaskell explains the merits of this at length]. Just read a few pages of De Foe &c - and you will see the healthy way in which he sets [italics] objects [end italics] not [italics] feelings [end italics] before you. [She advises Grey to use what he observes through every day contact with real people] Think if you can not imagine a complication of events in their life which would form a good plot. (Your plot in The Three paths is very poor; you have not thought enough about it - simply used it s a medium. [She discusses the advantages of tight plotting and advises] Don't intrude yourself into your description. If you but think eagerly of your story till [italics] you see it in action [end italics], words, good simple strong words will come. [she then criticises his overuse of epithets, overlong conversations and allusions, concluding] You see I am very frank-spoken. But I believe you are worth it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Robert Chambers : Domestic Annals of Scotland: from the reformation to the revolution
'Reading your Domestic Annals of Scotland, warms up all my old Scottish blood, - and makes me wish heartily that our four girls could see something of Scotland'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Henrietta Jenkin : Cousin Stella
'You never no, [italics] never [end italics] - sent a more acceptable present than Cousin Stella & The Fool of Quality, - and that irrespective of their several merits. But books are books here [they are in rural Dumfriesshire and feel cut off from the world] I am sorry to say Meta lies at this present moment fast asleep with Cousin Stella in her hand; but that is the effect of bathing and an eight mile walk; not of the book itself. I know & like the Fool of Quality of old. I was brought up by old uncles & aunts, who had all old books, and very few new ones; and I used to delight in the Fool of Quality, & have hardly read it since.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Henrietta Jenkin : Cousin Stella
'You never no, [italics] never [end italics] - sent a more acceptable present than Cousin Stella & The Fool of Quality, - and that irrespective of their several merits. But books are books here [they are in rural Dumfriesshire and feel cut off from the world] I am sorry to say Meta lies at this present moment fast asleep with Cousin Stella in her hand; but that is the effect of bathing and an eight mile walk; not of the book itself. I know & like the Fool of Quality of old. I was brought up by old uncles & aunts, who had all old books, and very few new ones; and I used to delight in the Fool of Quality, & have hardly read it since.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Emily Gaskell Print: Book
Henry Brooke : Fool of Quality, The
'You never no, [italics] never [end italics] - sent a more acceptable present than Cousin Stella & The Fool of Quality, - and that irrespective of their several merits. But books are books here [they are in rural Dumfriesshire and feel cut off from the world] I am sorry to say Meta lies at this present moment fast asleep with Cousin Stella in her hand; but that is the effect of bathing and an eight mile walk; not of the book itself. I know & like the Fool of Quality of old. I was brought up by old uncles & aunts, who had all old books, and very few new ones; and I used to delight in the Fool of Quality, & have hardly read it since.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : On Liberty
'after reading the dedication of your Essay on Liberty I can understand how any word expressing a meaning only conjectured that was derogatory to your wife would wound you most deeply. And therefore I now write to express my deep regret that you received such pain through me.' [Gaskell is referring to the printing of a letter about John Stuart Mill's future wife in her Life of Charlotte Bronte, to which he had reacted angrily].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Frederick William Farrer : Eric
'Eric, - oh my dear Harrie I have always been meaning to read it,& never have. You see I was out of the house at Heidelberg when Marianne & Julia read it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Marianne and Julia Gaskell Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'Please say [if Marian Evans is really the author of Adam Bede...] It is a noble grand book, whoever wrote it, - but Miss Evans' life taken at the best construction, does so jar against the beautiful book that one cannot help hoping against hope'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Complete Guide to the English Lakes
'To go back to books. H. Martineau's is, I think, the best guide book [to the Lakes].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth : [MS narrative]
'Ask [Mrs Davy] to let you see Miss Wordsworth's MS. account of the two poor Greens who were lost in the snow. Wordsworth said it was the most perfect [italics] English [end italics] narrative he ever read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley : Historical Memorials of Canterbury
'(do you know how [italics] very [end italics] beautiful that Cathedral [at Canterbury] is, & do you know Arthur Stanley's memorials of Canterbury?)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Janet's Repentance
'I think I have a feeling that it is not worth while trying to write, while there are such books as Adam Bede & Scenes from Clerical Life - I set "Janet's Repentance" above all, still.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George Eliot [pseud.] : Scenes from Clerical Life
'Since I heard, from authority, that you were the author of Scenes from "Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede", I have read them again; and I must, once more, tell you how earnestly fully, and humbly I admire them. I never read anything so complete, and beautiful in fiction, in my whole life before. [She then writes a bit about the imposture of Mr Liggins as the books' author, concluding] I should not be quite true in my ending, if I did not say before I concluded that I wish you [italics] were [end italics] Mrs Lewes. However, that can't be helped, as far as I can see, and one must not judge others. Once more, thanking you most gratefully for having written all - Janet's Repentance perhaps most especially of all, - (& may I tell you how I singled out the 2nd No of Amos Barton in Blackwood, & went plodging through our Manchester Sts to get every number, as soon as it was accessible from the Portico reading table - )'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'Since I heard, from authority, that you were the author of Scenes from "Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede", I have read them again; and I must, once more, tell you how earnestly fully, and humbly I admire them. I never read anything so complete, and beautiful in fiction, in my whole life before. [She then writes a bit about the imposture of Mr Liggins as the books' author, concluding] I should not be quite true in my ending, if I did not say before I concluded that I wish you [italics] were [end italics] Mrs Lewes. However, that can't be helped, as far as I can see, and one must not judge others. Once more, thanking you most gratefully for having written all - Janet's Repentance perhaps most especially of all, - (& may I tell you how I singled out the 2nd No of Amos Barton in Blackwood, & went plodging through our Manchester Sts to get every number, as soon as it was accessible from the Portico reading table - )'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George Eliot [pseud.] : 'Amos Barton'
'Since I heard, from authority, that you were the author of Scenes from 'Clerical Life' and 'Adam Bede', I have read them again; and I must, once more, tell you how earnestly fully, and humbly I admire them. I never read anything so complete, and beautiful in fiction, in my whole life before. [She then writes a bit about the imposture of Mr Liggins as the books' author, concluding] I should not be quite true in my ending, if I did not say before I concluded that I wish you [italics] were [end italics] Mrs Lewes. However, that can't be helped, as far as I can see, and one must not judge others. Once more, thanking you most gratefully for having written all - Janet's Repentance perhaps most especially of all, - (& may I tell you how I singled out the 2nd No of Amos Barton in Blackwood, & went plodging through our Manchester Sts to get every number, as soon as it was accessible from the Portico reading table - )'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Mahoney : [Inaugural Ode for the Cornhill Magazine in the persona of 'Father Prout']
'thanks [...] most especially for those brilliant lines of Father Prout's; how we did delight in them, and how I should like to have written them. I think our Magazine promises to be a famous success; and I enjoy - now you know [italics] you [end italics] did, so you need not look moral - the Saturday's cutting up of 'Dead [?heart]; - oh [italics] how [end italics] stupid it was. - I don't think we shall ever be so stupid.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Mahoney : [Saturday Review - review of the play 'Dead Heart']
'thanks [...] most especially for those brilliant lines of Father Prout's; how we did delight in them, and how I should like to have written them. I think our Magazine promises to be a famous success; and I enjoy - now you know [italics] you [end italics] did, so you need not look moral - the Saturday's cutting up of 'Dead[?heart]; - oh [italics] how [end italics] stupid it was. - I don't think we shall ever be so stupid.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : All the Year Round [article]
'In last week's No of All the Year Round is a repudiation (by Mr Dickens,) of having intended Leigh Hunt by Harrold Skimpole'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Henrietta Camilla Jenkin : Cousin Stella
'Mr & Mrs Clarke & Ly Coltman were all full of "Cousin Stella" & I had quite a reflected lustre from the fact that I knew & could tell them all about the authoress'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Eliot Norton : New Life of Dante, An Essay with Translations
'my beautiful Vita Nuova, which only came yesterday, but which was more identified with [italics] you [end italics] and Italy than anything else; & which I so wished to have of my own, & in print, ever since you let me read it in MS. Thank you so [italics] very [end italics] much for it. I do so value it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
George Eliot [pseud] : Mill on the Floss, The
'only think of having the Mill on the Floss the second day of publication, & of my very own. I think it is so kind of you, & am so greedy to read it I can scarcely be grateful enough to write this letter'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Sir J.P.K. Shuttleworth : Scarsworth
'Sir J.P.K. Shuttleworth seeks your acquaintance & society [because] he has a novel, - partly read to Mrs Nicholls the last time she was at Gawthrop, - partly to me, - [italics] wholly [end italics] to many of his friends - a novel of Lancashire society, whh is at present in MS & which he wants you to publish I have no doubt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir J.P.K. Shuttleworth Print: Book
Thomas, Lord Macaulay : Biographies
'we are reading with [Florence] Macaulay's Biographies and Milman's Latin Xtianity and I don't think it is a bad thing for either Marianne, Meta, or myself to have an obligation to sit and settle to a little steady reading every day'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughters Marianne, 'Meta' and Florence Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : History of Latin Christianity
'we are reading with [Florence] Macaulay's Biographies and Milman's Latin Xtianity and I don't think it is a bad thing for either Marianne, Meta, or myself to have an obligation to sit and settle to a little steady reading every day'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughters Marianne, 'Meta' and Florence Print: Book
Charles Eliot Norton : Notes of Travel and Study in Italy
'that brings me to say how very much I enjoyed during Meta's invalid days reading again & with deliberation your Art & Study in Italy, - thank you [italics] so [end italics] much for it'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Edward Wilberforce : 'Purgatory'
'do you ever see Fraser's Magazine. If you do I wish you would look back to the number for (say either) August, Sepr, or Octr, 1860 for a short poem by 'Edward Wilberforce' the young man we all used to meet in Rome; a very odd-looking, and as [italics] we [end italics] thought conceited person. But the poem tho' unpleasing from it's subject - which some people would say 'removes it from the province of art', - (and then where would Dante go?) is very strong & fine, so much more so than I should have expected from the author.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner
'we have just been reading Elsie Venner & we were altogether [italics] very [end italics] American yesterday'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughter 'Meta' or Margaret Print: Book
Henry Vaughan : Silex Scintillans
'I do [italics] not [end italics] know all Henry Vaughan's poems, - I know well 'They are all gone into &c', and parts of Silex Scintillans.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Henry Vaughan : They are all gone into the world of light
'I do [italics] not [end italics] know all Henry Vaughan's poems, - I know well 'They are all gone into &c', and parts of Silex Scintillans.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Mr Laing : Pastoral Visits
'I never saw the book of Mr Laings ('Pastoral Visits') which you speak of; and I should much like to see it, if you have a copy to spare.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Kay Shuttleworth Print: Book
Charles Eliot Norton : [paper on 'The Advantages of Defeat]
'I have been so ungrateful in never thanking you for your last - and for that [italics] beautiful] end italics] noble paper of yours on the Advantages of Defeat, - a paper which I have circulated far & wide among my friends, - and I only wish I had more of the same kind to show, - in order to make us English know you Americans better.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : [Letters]
'(I think what gave me the start [ on wanting to write a life of Mme de Sevigne] was the meeting with a supposed-to-be well-educated young lady who knew nothing about Madame de Sevigne, who had been like a well-known friend to me all my life.)'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Frederick Harrison : [MS of impressions of manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire]
'I have dipped into Mr Harrison; in fact almost read it, here & there in bits - I feel as if in one or two places I could have told him more, or set him to rights; but there is an immense deal of truth in the whole, especially considering that it was gathered by one man in the short space of 3 weeks'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
William Wetmore Story : Cleopatra
'I hope that you will not measure my gratitude to you for so kindly sending the Cleopatra-poem, by my promptitude in writing to thank you for it. Please accept now my best thanks for it. I admired it as a whole quite as much as I had expected to do from the extracts that I had seen in the reviews. Cleopatra seems to be the special means of inspiration for Mr Story, for I think he has never in sculpture equlled his marble Cleopatra; and certainly this poem is by far the finest that he has ever written. Thanking you again for the pleasure I had in reading it'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Unknown
Spencer Wilkinson : Sunday Times articles
'Do you read the Sunday Times? It is a poor paper, but has great military articles by Spenser Wilkinson, one of the foremost European authorities. This man does not in the least hide his notions about the running of the British Army by the old cavalry crew at the War Office.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Newspaper
Dorothy M. Richardson : Backwater
'Have you read Dolly Richardson’s "Backwater"? If not, do. It is a book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : In a German Tramp
'[...] but now since I've received the "Sat. Review" I've something to write about. The "german Tramp" is not only excellent[...] but it is something more. Of your short pieces I don't know but this this is the one I like best. The execution has a vigour-the right touch-- and an ease that delight me.' Hence follows around ten lines of appreciative criticism including a reference to two other stories published in the Saturday Review in 1899.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Victor Hugo : Les Travailleurs de la Mer
'It was only a month before or perhaps it was only a week before, that I had read to him aloud from beginning to end, and to his perfect satisfaction, as he lay on the bed not being very well at the time, the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea". Such was[...] my first introduction to the sea in literature. [...] I am not likely to forget the process of being trained in the art of reading aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Codex, Sheet, Conrad's father's translation into Polish.
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Buta
'But as to "Buta" it is altogether and fundamentally good, good in matter--that's of course--but good wonderfully good in form and especially in expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Frank Swinnerton : Shops and Houses
'I should have read S.& H. [Shops and Houses] earlier, despite J. & P. , but I couldn’t get the book off Marguerite. Conjugal unpleasantness became so acute on the point that I was obliged to buy a second copy. I think this book shows marked development on the part of the author. There are about 150 pp. as good as the very best few pages of "On the Staircase", & some much better.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frank Swinnerton : On the Staircase
'I should have read S.& H. [Shops and Houses] earlier, despite J. & P. , but I couldn’t get the book off Marguerite. Conjugal unpleasantness became so acute on the point that I was obliged to buy a second copy. I think this book shows marked development on the part of the author. There are about 150 pp. as good as the very best few pages of "On the Staircase", & some much better.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henry W. Longfellow : "Footprints of Angels" in The Boston Book, being Specimens of Metropolitan Literature
'By the way, we all admire _very greatly_ your beautiful little poem in the Boston Book. I dare say you don't care for the opinion of we three "weaker vessels" [i.e. De Quincey's three daughters], though Papa, like the dutiful parent he is, and though a "vain man", admits that our judgment in such matters is equal if not sometimes better than his. However in this case we one and all came separately to the conclusion that there was exquisite poetic grace and beauty in the lines. Who is the Poet you sent the mosses too [sic]? for we don't know one who has spoken of Venice that has been living since you could have written this. My sister Florence says that with one or two exceptions in the case of Longfellow and that most beautiful of writers Hawthorne, yours is nearly the only good thing in the book. I have not had time to look it over yet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence De Quincey Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Pour Noemi
'I add a few words above all to talk to you about the book. I've read the novel for the third time, faithfully--from one end to the other. It's very good. It's very good! The characters are defined with a precision which I envy in you. [...] I love the book.There is a very gentle charm and also power in the style.' Hence follows five more lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Richard Doyle : Bird's-eye Views of Society
'Thank you extremely for your kind present of Doyle's clever "Bird's-eye Views of Society", which have already been highly approved of in this their new form by my daughters, who have been spending their time over it ever since its arrival'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Marianne, 'Meta' and Julia Gaskell Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : [poem]
'I was so sorry to see that Dr Wendell Holmes called England "The Lost Leader". - I went & read the poem to Meta, who did not know it; - & we did so grieve!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : [Letters]
'You remember Stanton Harcourt - in Pope's Letters'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
James Russell Lowell : Fireside Travels
'Will you ask Mr Lowell if he would [italics] give [end italics] me his Fireside Travels, with his writing inside? I was so entirely delighted with that book, and should [italics] so [end italics] like to have it [italics] from him [end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Charles Lever : Tony Butler
'I have beguiled myself into forgetfulness of my own story by reading "Tony Butler" - it is so clear! - and Lowell's "Fireside Travels".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Cruz Alta
'I've read "Cruz Alta" four days ago. c'est tout simplement magnifique. I know most of the sketches, in fact nearly all, except "Cruz Alta" itself.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
James R. Lowell : Fireside Travels
'You can't think how much I shall value Fireside Travels, (which only reached me during this past week,) now that I have got it of my "very very own" (as the children say,) and with that charming little bit of writing from you at the beginning. I don't mean that I did not delight in the book from the very first time I read a page in it; but the sense of property in it gives a double value, and the sense of successful beggary is very charming, though perhaps I ought to be ashamed. Only I am [italics] not [end italics], because I [italics] am [end italics] successful. I have known you so long! I knew serious poems of yours long ago, - twenty years or so; but my personal knowledge of you began in Rome 1857, - when (did you know it?) you and one other went about with the dear Storys, and me and mine up and down Rome [in the sense, it seems, that Charles Eliot Norton spoke much of Lowell - this is elaborated on...] Well then the Bigelow papers - I think I could stand a Civil Service Examination in them; and we had three copies of our own, till a little daughter married, and carried off one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
James R. Lowell : [poems]
'You can't think how much I shall value Fireside Travels, (which only reached me during this past week,) now that I have got it of my "very very own" (as the children say,) and with that charming little bit of writing from you at the beginning. I don't mean that I did not delight in the book from the very first time I read a page in it; but the sense of property in it gives a double value, and the sense of successful beggary is very charming, though perhaps I ought to be ashamed. Only I am [italics] not [end italics], because I [italics] am [end italics] successful. I have known you so long! I knew serious poems of yours long ago, - twenty years or so; but my personal knowledge of you began in Rome 1857, - when (did you know it?) you and one other went about with the dear Storys, and me and mine up and down Rome [in the sense, it seems, that Charles Eliot Norton spoke much of Lowell - this is elaborated on...] Well then the Bigelow papers - I think I could stand a Civil Service Examination in them; and we had three copies of our own, till a little daughter married, and carried off one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Unknown
James R. Lowell : Biglow Papers, The
'You can't think how much I shall value Fireside Travels, (which only reached me during this past week,) now that I have got it of my "very very own" (as the children say,) and with that charming little bit of writing from you at the beginning. I don't mean that I did not delight in the book from the very first time I read a page in it; but the sense of property in it gives a double value, and the sense of successful beggary is very charming, though perhaps I ought to be ashamed. Only I am [italics] not [end italics], because I [italics] am [end italics] successful. I have known you so long! I knew serious poems of yours long ago, - twenty years or so; but my personal knowledge of you began in Rome 1857, - when (did you know it?) you and one other went about with the dear Storys, and me and mine up and down Rome [in the sense, it seems, that Charles Eliot Norton spoke much of Lowell - this is elaborated on...] Well then the Bigelow papers - I think I could stand a Civil Service Examination in them; and we had three copies of our own, till a little daughter married, and carried off one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Cinque Ports
'Many thanks for the "Cinque Ports" which came today as a most agreeable surprise. In the matter of outward characteristics the book has substance, appearance an air of sober finish which to me is very pleasing. [...] Hueffer's talent has been from the first sympathetic to me. throughout his feeling is true and his expression genuine with ease and moderation.' Hence follow nine lines of restrained praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Frank Challice Constable : (letter)
'Many thanks for your letter. The enclosure was most intetesting. It reveals an original personality and to me attractive. It is at the same time a most flattering recognition of my qualities and shortcomings. I shall write to Mr Constable in a day or two.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Letter
William Robert Kennedy : Hurrah for the Life of a Sailor: Fifty Years in the Navy
'I have never had the pleasure of meeting him [Admiral Sir William Robert Kennedy] ; but I've read and admired his book.[...] I re-read Admiral Kennedy's book with gratitude and have a great affection for the man [...].' Interspersed are ten lines of rather nostalgic praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Vanished Arcadia
'I am altogether under the charm of that book ["The Vanished Arcadia"] in accord with its spirit and full of admiration for its expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Kubla Khan
'... some verses which I wrote turn out, on inspection, to be not quite equal to "Kubla Khan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Julia Mary Cartwright Ady : The Life and Works of Edward Burne-Jones, bart.
'I am just finishing the Life of B[urne-]. J[ones]. which begins to bore me slightly-not the Life, which is excellent, but the man.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Alice Stopford Green : Town Life in the Fifteenth Century
'I am reading, 'Your Life in 15 Century' Mrs J. R. Green.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Austen Henry Layard : Nineveh
'I am reading, ... Layard's Nineveh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Rhoda Broughton : Not Wisely but Too Well
'I am reading, ... "Not Wisely but too Well" by Miss Rhoda Broughton.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : The Golden Bowl
'...- I spend 5 days of precious time toiling through Henry James' subtleties for Mrs Lyttleton, and write a very hardworking review for her...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : The Discovery of the Future
'The lecture is splendid. It is striking in its expression [...]and in its eloquence too [...].I call it scientific eloquence--that is eloquence appealing not to the passions like the eloquence of the orator but to the reason..[...] All the criticism I've seen (now after reading the lecture) strike me as extremely unfair --[...] '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
(Enoch) Arnold Bennett : A Man from the North.
'The reading of the "Man from the North" has inspired me with the greatest respect for your artistic conscience. I am profoundly impressed with the achievement of style.[...] as you may suppose I've read the book more than once. Unfortunately I don't know how to criticise; to discuss however I am ready.' Hence follow about ten lines of constructive criticism of what Conrad calls the 'design' of the novel.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Making of Modern Verse
'Your paper in the "Academy" mutilated as it is by the mystic mind illustrates my meaning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : Rossetti
'Thanks for the "Rossetti". My opinion of it you know but I am reading it carefully. It is good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
(Enoch) Arnold Bennett : Anna of the Five Towns
'But if I could not find time to write to you [to acknowledge receipt of the presentation copy] I had found time to read your book. I read it once, twice,then kept it upstairs for dipping into when I came up to bed.' Hence follow twenty lines of praise and an invitation to Pent Farm to further discuss the work.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Success
'I feel so dull and muddle-headed that I daren't even attempt to give you now an idea of the effect the little volume ["Success"] had produced on me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Last of the Mohicans
'You have promised me to read these stories and I would recommend you to begin with "The Last of the Mohicans"-- then go on with "Deerslayer" and end with the "Prairie". I read them at your age in that order;[..] Thirty four years ago is a long long time to look back upon.' Hence follows further comments about the language and content.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Deerslayer
'You have promised me to read these stories and I would recommend you to begin with "The Last of the Mohicans"-- then go on with "Deerslayer" and end with the "Prairie". I read them at your age in that order;[..] Thirty four years ago is a long long time to look back upon.' Hence follows further comments about the language and content.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : The Prairie
'You have promised me to read these stories and I would recommend you to begin with "The Last of the Mohicans"-- then go on with "Deerslayer" and end with the "Prairie". I read them at your age in that order;[..] Thirty four years ago is a long long time to look back upon.' Hence follows further comments about the language and content.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charles Lamb : Essays of Elia
'Miss Jewsbury lay on the floor and read half through the Essays of Elia and called our drawing room "such an ugly room in which we should always be unhappy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Jewsbury Print: Book
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell : Bessy's Troubles at Home
'The children who like Bessy's Troubles are great geese, & no judges at all, which children generally are, for it is complete rubbish I am sorry to say'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: 'children', presumably known to Marianne Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
'I am afraid I never told you that I did not mind your reading Jane Eyre'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Marianne Gaskell Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : [letters]
'From what I can judge from the letters Mr Nicholls has entrusted me with, her [Charlotte Bronte's] very earliest way of expressing herself must have been different to common'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: NewspaperManuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte : [letters]
'The letters Mr Smith does send principally relate to the other Bronte's transactions with Newby, or else they are (very clever) criticism on Thackeray, man and writings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte : [letters]
'She has also received a packet of letters from Mr Williams (another London publisher, I believe), which she says are almost more beautiful than any others of Miss Bronte's that she has seen.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Manuscript: Letter
Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope, Lord Mahon : [unknown]
'All evening that I have been reading Lord Mahon aloud I have been thinking how I could rush home via Strasbourg & Paris to see her [Julia, her daughter, who was unwell] for myself.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Rime of the Ancient mariner, The
'[whilst watching a boat race at Eton] Meta said she thought of the verse in the Ancient Mariner "A Seraph band" &c, - for each figure was motionless and bright, & the smooth current bore them past so noiselessly & still.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Emily (Meta) Gaskell Print: Book
Sacheverall Sitwell : All Summer in a Day: An Autobiographical Fantasia
'The more I read the book, the more wonderful it seems to me. It is really a great book. Arthur says, and I more than agree with him, that the passage about Pyramus and Thisbe will, in the future, be regarded as one of the greatest passages in English literature. As I say, I agree, but the whole book in its entirety is to me like some wonderful and unspeakably moving music. It excites one, moves one, intoxicates one to an incredible degree. The worst is, it unfits one for daily life. To have to eat one's lunch in the middle of reading it is practically impossible. And I got, literally, no sleep after it, on Friday night. I couldn't sleep after it. This isn't talent - not even great talent- not even a great gift - it is genius. You know what my pride in you is. I am most terribly proud to be your sister.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Robert Chambers : Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 3 January 1845: 'I send back your "Vestiges of Creation". The writer has a certain power in tying a knot -- -- (in mating a system) -- but it is not a love-knot, & it appears to me that I have read in my life few more melancholy books -- Did the thought ever strike you of [italics]Mr. [Andrew] Crosse having anything to do with the writing[end italics]? I understand that Sir Richard Vivian [sic] denies it determinedly -- & his brother, who visits here, does it for him besides, by all manner of oaths.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Raymond Brucker and Michel Masson : Le macon
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 18 March 1845: 'Do you know "Le macon" by Michel Raymond --? It is not as vivid as most of these books from France, -- nor as passionate, -- but it is interesting as a picture of the life of the people in Paris & I have read it with pleasure.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Odes et Ballades (volume 1)
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 18 March 1845: 'I have the first volume of Victor Hugo's "Odes et Ballades," but they are slavishly loyal to those vile old Bourbons. What could he see in them? I suppose I shall like the second volume better.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : The Improvisatore: or, Life in Italy
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 19 March 1845: 'Mind you read Andersen's "Improvisatore." I have just finished it, -- & am charmed, -- though of story, there is none, & of character, not much more. But the sense of inner life throughout it, & the exquisite visions & breathings into Italy, quite take away one's breath for pleasure. And then, there is a memoir of the author which interests one in him, for a beginning. He is a real poet, .. this Andersen, -- & worthy of being a countryman of Hamlet ... the Dane par excellence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Jeanne
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 March 1845: 'Read George Sand's "Jeanne". It is full of beauty, of profound beauty & significance, .. & is pure besides [...] though the heroine is somewhat too divinely idiotic, -- of a stupidity, a little too gross. And yet I am scarcely sure now, .. although I felt so when I was reading the book -- it is a noble & singular conception, & gives proof of what may be called an heroic imagination.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Nichols : Don Juan
'Yesterday, I underwent one of the greatest experiences in my life - at a "Poets Reading" in aid of charity. The whole thing made one feel like a bird that has blundered into a room and is bumping its head against the ceiling in trying to get out. Bob Nichols read a whole Act (I suppose it was a whole Act, it certainly lasted for forty minutes) of his unpublished poetic drama "Don Juan" with appropriate face and gesture, but not, thank heavens, appropriate action. At moments one did not know if one was in Church or a Music-hall. But I expect Bob's "Don Juan" will do a lot of good, morally speaking, for if those who lead harum-scarum lives have got to be such a bore as that, nobody is going to risk it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Manuscript: Unknown
Frederic Soulie : Le Bananier
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 5 April 1845: 'A most singular book of Eugene Sue's [sic] I have read lately, the whole front of which is directed against slave-emancipation & the part which England has played in it [...] The scene is laid in a sugar plantation in the West Indies, & the book, from its very imbecility, is worth your looking into -- Very weak it is, to be sure, -- & outrageously absurd -- and you will see at once that a philanthropist & liberal who advocates the slave-trade, can scarcely be [italics]thorough[end italics] & consistently cordial in free opinions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne and Mary Gillies : A Story Book of Country Scenes
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 5 April 1845: 'For Mr Horne's storybook, I like some of the stories & think it a pretty book. A few children of six years old might be too old for it, -- but, in general, I do not quarrel with the fitnesses [...] I remember a little book which was a favorite in our nursery, called "A visit to a farm-house [by S.W.]," with precisely the same characteristics, & a better & more interesting general construction. There are a few touches more of poetry in this book, -- owing to Mr. Horne, of course, but the defect is the absolute want of reference to Deity, as creator, which the child looks for, .. which the first instinct of the child looks out to meet. Not that I advocate the teaching of theological systems to children of that early age; but that if the sense of beauty is to be educated, the sense of God should be educated also.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Bernard : Un homme serieux
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 April 1845: '[Charles Bernard] is a very worldly writer, to my mind; & really I like George Sand's wickedness better, -- it is of a higher order. Bernard's most magnificent idea of virtue is what you & I shd. call expediency -- now is'nt it? Though I was delighted with "Un homme Serieux," -- & also with "Le paravent," .. the "Aventure d'un magistrat," for instance, is in the latter, to illustrate my opinion. Did you ever read a more disgusting series of small cheateries? It almost spoilt my pleasure in the power. I had a reaction & grew "moral" [...] the "stink in one's nostrils" [Job 4:10] of all that falsehood & depravity, was so immense.' And not much better in its effect on me, was the story of the "Rose blanche" (though the pretty hoyden captivated me) where no man of honour [italics]could[end italics] have acted as the hero does'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Bernard : Le Paravent
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 April 1845: '[Charles Bernard] is a very worldly writer, to my mind; & really I like George Sand's wickedness better, -- it is of a higher order. Bernard's most magnificent idea of virtue is what you & I shd. call expediency -- now is'nt it? Though I was delighted with "Un homme Serieux," -- & also with "Le paravent," .. the "Aventure d'un magistrat," for instance, is in the latter, to illustrate my opinion. Did you ever read a more disgusting series of small cheateries? It almost spoilt my pleasure in the power. I had a reaction & grew "moral" [...] the "stink in one's nostrils" [Job 4:10] of all that falsehood & depravity, was so immense.' And not much better in its effect on me, was the story of the "Rose blanche" (though the pretty hoyden captivated me) where no man of honour [italics]could[end italics] have acted as the hero does'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Charles Bernard : Une Aventure de magistrat
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 April 1845: '[Charles Bernard] is a very worldly writer, to my mind; & really I like George Sand's wickedness better, -- it is of a higher order. Bernard's most magnificent idea of virtue is what you & I shd. call expediency -- now is'nt it? Though I was delighted with "Un homme Serieux," -- & also with "Le paravent," .. the "Aventure d'un magistrat," for instance, is in the latter, to illustrate my opinion. Did you ever read a more disgusting series of small cheateries? It almost spoilt my pleasure in the power. I had a reaction & grew "moral" [...] the "stink in one's nostrils" [Job 4:10] of all that falsehood & depravity, was so immense.' And not much better in its effect on me, was the story of the "Rose blanche" (though the pretty hoyden captivated me) where no man of honour [italics]could[end italics] have acted as the hero does'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
George Sand : Rose et Blanche
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 April 1845: '[Charles Bernard] is a very worldly writer, to my mind; & really I like George Sand's wickedness better, -- it is of a higher order. Bernard's most magnificent idea of virtue is what you & I shd. call expediency -- now is'nt it? Though I was delighted with "Un homme Serieux," -- & also with "Le paravent," .. the "Aventure d'un magistrat," for instance, is in the latter, to illustrate my opinion. Did you ever read a more disgusting series of small cheateries? It almost spoilt my pleasure in the power. I had a reaction & grew "moral" [...] the "stink in one's nostrils" [Job 4:10] of all that falsehood & depravity, was so immense.' And not much better in its effect on me, was the story of the "Rose blanche" [sic] (though the pretty hoyden captivated me) where no man of honour [italics]could[end italics] have acted as the hero does'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Henriette Etiennette Fanny Reybaud : Deux a deux
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 April 1845: 'We shall find no where on the earth, I believe, the climate of Paradise; -- not even at Hyeres. In Mdme. Charles Reybeaud's [sic] "Deux a deux," which interested me more than any book of hers I have read since, .. (I withdraw my praise of her, -- she is a weak commonplace writer, I think, --) there was some good praise of Hyeres & the orange trees.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Caroline Norton : 'The Child of the Islands' (extracts)
Elizabeth Barrett to Cornelius Mathews, 30 April 1845: 'You will see the announcement of Mrs. Norton's new poem on the "Child of the Islands", namely our little Prince of Wales, .. in which she exhorts him to all manner of righteousness & justice & proper kingliness. I have read the poem only in extracts as yet, -- but the melody of cadence & eloquence of thought & tongue seem very delectable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Hans Christian Andersen : The Improvisatore: or, Life in Italy (extracts)
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 30 April 1845: 'That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth & beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief -- that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more: pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even [...] strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Honore de Balzac : Esther, ou les Amours d'un vieux banquier
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 2 May 1845: 'I have found [...] the continuation of David Sichard [novel by Balzac] [...] It is "Esther" in two volumes, & to all appearance full of life, & interest, & most atrocious wickedness, .. to judge from the first two chapters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Gilbert Knowles : Materia medica botanica
'I read much, collected Extracts & translated Latin Books of physic with a view of double improvement; I studied the Materia Medica, & made some progress in Botany; I dissected Dogs & fancied myself an Anatomist, quitting entirely Poetry Novels & Books of Entertainment'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Francois de La Rochefoucauld : Maximes
'The Frenchman who wrote Maxims says 'there is hardly anyone who does not repay great obligations with Ingratitude'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : [funeral address for Duke of Rutland]
'I am desired by the Duchess of Rutland to Print a Discourse which I read at Belvoir-Chapel at the Funeral of the late Duke'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown
Arthur Young : Six Month's Tour Through the North of England, A
'With this parcel we return Messrs Marshall and Young. some Observations from the former I lay by as matters to be inquired into but have taken nothing by way of Extract, so that all you intend to take may be put in the proper Place in your work, without Danger of Repetition' [Crabbe is alluding to his work on the 'Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir', a collaboration with John Nichols]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Johan Christian Fabricius : Systema entomologiae
'I do not perfectly understand Fabricius always, but I think his Genera more natural than those of any other Author; it is indeed almost impossible to follow him in the smaller insects through all the minutia of his researches, but admitting him to be right in these, his Disposition and discriptions [sic] are accurate. I [grant his] obscurity and the greater Facility of the method of Linn[aeus], but I find much to be pleased with in the Systema Entomologica Fabia and frequently recur to it'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : Parish Register, The
'Having been upon a tour in Scotland I did not receive your book till my arrival at York & was unwilling to answer your very obliging letter till I had read the Parish register in print. I can assure you that its appearance in this dress has increased my opinion of its beauty & as you have done me very undeservedly the honour of calling me a judge of such matters I will venture to say that it seems to me calculated to advance the reputation of the Author of the Library & the Village which to any one acquainted with those two excellent poems is saying a great deal'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Vassal Fox, Lord Holland Print: Book
George Crabbe : Library, The
'Having been upon a tour in Scotland I did not receive your book till my arrival at York & was unwilling to answer your very obliging letter till I had read the Parish register in print. I can assure you that its appearance in this dress has increased my opinion of its beauty & as you have done me very undeservedly the honour of calling me a judge of such matters I will venture to say that it seems to me calculated to advance the reputation of the Author of the Library & the Village which to any one acquainted with those two excellent poems is saying a great deal'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Vassal Fox, Lord Holland Print: Book
George Crabbe : Village, The
'Having been upon a tour in Scotland I did not receive your book till my arrival at York & was unwilling to answer your very obliging letter till I had read the Parish register in print. I can assure you that its appearance in this dress has increased my opinion of its beauty & as you have done me very undeservedly the honour of calling me a judge of such matters I will venture to say that it seems to me calculated to advance the reputation of the Author of the Library & the Village which to any one acquainted with those two excellent poems is saying a great deal'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Vassal Fox, Lord Holland Print: Book
George Crabbe : Village, The
'[your letter] has gratified a wish of more than twenty years standing. It is I think fully that time since I was for a great part of a very snowy winter the inhabitant of an old house in the country in a course of poetical study so very like that of your very admirably painted young poet that I could hardly help saying "thats me" when I was reading the tale to my family. Among the very few books which fell under my hands was a volume or two of Dodsley's Register one of which contained copious extracts from the "Village" & the "Library" particularly the conclusion of Book I of the former and an extract from the latter beginning with the desription of the old Romancers. [Scott describes how he memorised these but could not afford to buy the books themselves] You may therefore guess my sincere delight when I saw your poems at a later period assume the rank in the public estimation which they so well deserve'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Crabbe : Library, The
'[your letter] has gratified a wish of more than twenty years standing. It is I think fully that time since I was for a great part of a very snowy winter the inhabitant of an old house in the country in a course of poetical study so very like that of your very admirably painted young poet that I could hardly help saying "thats me" when I was reading the tale to my family. Among the very few books which fell under my hands was a volume or two of Dodsley's Register one of which contained copious extracts from the "Village" & the "Library" particularly the conclusion of Book I of the former and an extract from the latter beginning with the desription of the old Romancers. [Scott describes how he memorised these but could not afford to buy the books themselves] You may therefore guess my sincere delight when I saw your poems at a later period assume the rank in the public estimation which they so well deserve'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Crabbe : Patron, The
'[your letter] has gratified a wish of more than twenty years standing. It is I think fully that time since I was for a great part of a very snowy winter the inhabitant of an old house in the country in a course of poetical study so very like that of your very admirably painted young poet that I could hardly help saying "thats me" when I was reading the tale to my family. Among the very few books which fell under my hands was a volume or two of Dodsley's Register one of which contained copious extracts from the "Village" & the "Library" particularly the conclusion of Book I of the former and an extract from the latter beginning with the desription of the old Romancers. [Scott describes how he memorised these but could not afford to buy the books themselves] You may therefore guess my sincere delight when I saw your poems at a later period assume the rank in the public estimation which they so well deserve'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Crabbe : Tales in verse
'My eldest girl begins to read well and enters as well into the humour as into the sentiment of your admirable descriptions of human life'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophia Scott Print: Book
Allan Park Paton : 'The Road Round by Kennedy's Mill'
Elizabeth Barrett to Allan Park Paton, 28 May 1845: 'For the newspapers, or rather for your verses in them, I thank you much [...] the stanzas on Kennedy's Mill road struck & pleased me so much, that I looked about vainly for your address contained in a mislaid note of yours, in order to write to you on the subject & advise you to choose some worthier medium with the public, than a provincial journal, .. though it were but a magazine. And now you write to tell me that you think of printing a book! -- to which I wish all manner of success [goes on to offer further advice on pursuing career as professional writer]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Newspaper
Ebenezer Elliott : poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 14 June 1845: 'I have seen Elliott's poems but not in the form you mention -- & I always estimated him highly as a true poet, earnest & heart-sound [...] of an imagination not imperiously creative, .. but bright & alive in its sphere & place.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett
George Sand : Le Compagnon du Tour de France
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 11 July 1845: 'Have you seen the "Compagnon du tour de France" by George Sand? I sent for it, with a fancy that it might be a traveller's book .. just [italics]that[end italics] -- & it is one of her best romances, & full of curious interest of different kinds.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Claret and Tokay'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15-17 July 1845: 'Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such a maze about the poems. It was assuredly the wine song & no other which I read of yours in Hood's [...] Do bring in all the Hood poems of your own -- inclusive of the Tokay, because I read it in such haste as to whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Edgar Allan Poe : 'The Raven'
Richard Hengist Horne to Edgar Allan Poe, 17 May 1845: 'Miss Barrett has read the "Raven" and says she thinks there is a fine lyrical melody in it. When I tell you that this lady "says" [...] I mean "writes" -- for although I have corresponded with Miss Barrett these 5 or 6 years, I have never seen her to this day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'We like you amuse ourselves with reading: we are familiar with the Scenery of the North & Court of King James: we could guess that Snowdoun, Knight was King but not that [the - Crabbe uses the 'eth' symbol] Hospitable Foe was Rod'rick-Dhu'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Crabbe family Print: Book
George Buchanan : [Latin poems and hymns]
'To my Gothic ear, indeed the "Stabat Mater", the "Dies Irae", and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church are more solemn and affecting than the fine classical poetry of Buchanan; the one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, and reminds us instantly of the worship to which it is dictated; the other is more like a Pagan temple, recalling to our memory the classical and fabulous deities.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Rokeby
'I derived a three fold Pleasure from the Receipt of Rokeby, first from the book itself, the Article, the thing sold and bought, & for this I know how much I am indebted [;] not so for the 2d part of the favour, the Pleasure of the perusal, nor for the 3d, the Honour of the present: but in more direct terms my dear Sir I do sincerely & heartily thank you & I beg of you likewise to accept the Thanks of my Household Mrs Crabbe & her Sons'. [Crabbe goes on to say how 'we had scarsely gratified our own Curiosity' when petitions from villagers to borrow the boook began]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel, The
'[Crabbe relates how he has had a letter from a Lady who] 'enjoins and adjures me to go instantly & climb the Mountains & penetrate the Defiles & in short embue my Mind with the grand northern Scenery that they may appear in my beautiful and ---- now if this anonymous Lady had read the "Lay" or any one of the four finest descriptive poems & of that very Scenery in our Language, with what kind of Taste & Judgment could she so call upon me & if she have not read them, she had only to enquire of the first reading Friend she met, but thus People judge, if a Man has acquired the Knack of painting a Tinkers Hov[el] how admirably would he describe the ruins of Balbu'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
'[Crabbe relates how he has had a letter from a Lady who] 'enjoins and adjures me to go instantly & climb the Mountains & penetrate the Defiles & in short embue my Mind with the grand northern Scenery that they may appear in my beautiful and ---- now if this anonymous Lady had read the "Lay" or any one of the four finest descriptive poems & of that very Scenery in our Language, with what kind of Taste & Judgment could she so call upon me & if she have not read them, she had only to enquire of the first reading Friend she met, but thus People judge, if a Man has acquired the Knack of painting a Tinkers Hov[el] how admirably would he describe the ruins of Balbu'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'[Crabbe relates how he has had a letter from a Lady who] 'enjoins and adjures me to go instantly & climb the Mountains & penetrate the Defiles & in short embue my Mind with the grand northern Scenery that they may appear in my beautiful and ---- now if this anonymous Lady had read the "Lay" or any one of the four finest descriptive poems & of that very Scenery in our Language, with what kind of Taste & Judgment could she so call upon me & if she have not read them, she had only to enquire of the first reading Friend she met, but thus People judge, if a Man has acquired the Knack of painting a Tinkers Hov[el] how admirably would he describe the ruins of Balbu'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rokeby
'[Crabbe relates how he has had a letter from a Lady who] 'enjoins and adjures me to go instantly & climb the Mountains & penetrate the Defiles & in short embue my Mind with the grand northern Scenery that they may appear in my beautiful and ---- now if this anonymous Lady had read the "Lay" or any one of the four finest descriptive poems & of that very Scenery in our Language, with what kind of Taste & Judgment could she so call upon me & if she have not read them, she had only to enquire of the first reading Friend she met, but thus People judge, if a Man has acquired the Knack of painting a Tinkers Hov[el] how admirably would he describe the ruins of Balbu'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Horace Smith : Horace in London
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Serial / periodical
Horace Smith : Rejected Addresses
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Unknown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The
'there is one Story if story it may be called, that Shape or Limb, Beginning or End has none, "The ancient Mariner or poets Reverie" written by a friend [of Wordsworth] (Mr Lambe?) & the Reason for my pointing it out to your notice if perchance you have not dwelt on its Singularities, is this that it does not describe Madness by its effects but by Imitation, as if a painter to give a picture of Lunacy should make his Canvas crazy, & fill it with wild unconnected Limbs & Distortions of features, & yet one or two of the Limbs are pretty'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : [Works]
'[Crabbe had sent Scott, who already had one, a set of his works - he explained later that he'd intended it for Mrs Scott. Scott responded to the present,] to say the truth the auxiliary copy arrived in good time for my original copy suffers as much by its general popularity among my young people as a popular candidate from the hugs and embraces of his democratical admirers. The cleanness and accuracy of your painting whether natural or moral renders I have often remarked your poetry generally delightful to those whose youth might render them insensible to the other poetical beauties with which they abound. There are a sort of pictures (surely the most valuable were it but for that reason) which strike the uninitiated as much as they do the connoisseur though the last alone can render the reasons for his admiration'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Crabbe : [Works]
'[Crabbe had sent Scott, who already had one, a set of his works - he explained later that he'd intended it for Mrs Scott. Scott responded to the present,] to say the truth the auxiliary copy arrived in good time for my original copy suffers as much by its general popularity among my young people as a popular candidate from the hugs and embraces of his democratical admirers. The cleanness and accuracy of your painting whether natural or moral renders I have often remarked your poetry generally delightful to those whose youth might render them insensible to the other poetical beauties with which they abound. There are a sort of pictures (surely the most valuable were it but for that reason) which strike the uninitiated as much as they do the connoisseur though the last alone can render the reasons for his admiration'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott's children Print: Book
George Crabbe : [Works]
'Our lord of the "cairn & the scaur" waste wilderness and hundred hills for many a league around is the Duke of Buccleuch the head of my clan a kind & benevolent landlord a warm and zealous friend and the husband of a lady comme il y'en a peu. They are both great admirers of Mr Crabbes poetry and would be happy to know him should he ever come to Scotland and venture into the Gothic halls of a Border Chief.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles William Montagu Scott and Harriet Katherine Townshend, Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch Print: Book
George Crabbe : [letters from Crabbe to Charlotte Ridout's friend Charlotte Williams]
[Crabbe relates how he had fallen in love with Charlotte Williams and written her various letters, before she revealed she loved another] 'there was all this Time a Friend, who read every Letter & every Verse, for I took every Method that was allowed me, & Strange Creatures are Men & Women! While I was thus attentive to raise some partial feelings in the Mind of the Gipsy who wrote to me, this other who only read what was written, became interested & engaged & at length You must give me Credit strange as it is! She caught my Disease: it did not Signify to her that I was as old as her father! I could write in just that Style which she had fancied to be that of genuine Affection & Truth'. [Crabbe and Charlotte Ridout became engaged, but it was broken off for financial reasons]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Ridout Manuscript: Letter
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'I will not mention my own nor my son's Judgment upon the Poem, which in spite of my Prohibition he stole for a solitary Perusal and came boasting, at the End of the first Book of the Discovery he made there in those admirable Verses but he soon found that he had no peculiar Discernment.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'I will not mention my own nor my son's Judgment upon the Poem, which in spite of my Prohibition he stole for a solitary Perusal and came boasting, at the End of the first Book of the Discovery he made there in those admirable Verses but he soon found that he had no peculiar Discernment.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Crabbe Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Garden Fancies: I, The Flower's Name; II, Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 21 July 1845, following remarks on Browning's reading of her published juvenile writings: 'I leave my sins & yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so -- & first to the St Praxede [sic] which is of course the finest & most powerful .. & indeed full of the power of life .. & of death [...] The "angel & child," with all its beauty & significance! -- and the "Garden Fancies" [...] with that beautiful & musical use of the word "meandering," [...] It does so mate with your "[italics]simmering[end italics] quiet" in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it [...] And the Laboratory is hideous as you meant to make it: -- only I object a little to your tendency .. which is almost a habit [...] of making lines difficult for the reader to read .. see the opening lines of this poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome, 15----.)'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 21 July 1845, following remarks on Browning's reading of her published juvenile writings: 'I leave my sins & yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so -- & first to the St Praxede [sic] which is of course the finest & most powerful .. & indeed full of the power of life .. & of death [...] The "angel & child," with all its beauty & significance! -- and the "Garden Fancies" [...] with that beautiful & musical use of the word "meandering," [...] It does so mate with your "[italics]simmering[end italics] quiet" in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it [...] And the Laboratory is hideous as you meant to make it: -- only I object a little to your tendency .. which is almost a habit [...] of making lines difficult for the reader to read .. see the opening lines of this poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : 'The Boy and the Angel'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 21 July 1845, following remarks on Browning's reading of her published juvenile writings: 'I leave my sins & yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so -- & first to the St Praxede [sic] which is of course the finest & most powerful .. & indeed full of the power of life .. & of death [...] The "angel & child," with all its beauty & significance! -- and the "Garden Fancies" [...] with that beautiful & musical use of the word "meandering," [...] It does so mate with your "[italics]simmering[end italics] quiet" in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it [...] And the Laboratory is hideous as you meant to make it: -- only I object a little to your tendency .. which is almost a habit [...] of making lines difficult for the reader to read .. see the opening lines of this poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : 'The Laboratory (Ancien Regime)'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 21 July 1845, following remarks on Browning's reading of her published juvenile writings: 'I leave my sins & yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so -- & first to the St Praxede [sic] which is of course the finest & most powerful .. & indeed full of the power of life .. & of death [...] The "angel & child," with all its beauty & significance! -- and the "Garden Fancies" [...] with that beautiful & musical use of the word "meandering," [...] It does so mate with your "[italics]simmering[end italics] quiet" in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it [...] And the Laboratory is hideous as you meant to make it: -- only I object a little to your tendency .. which is almost a habit [...] of making lines difficult for the reader to read .. see the opening lines of this poem.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : Timbuctoo
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 14 June 1845: 'When I ask my wise self what I really do remember of that Prize-poem -- the answer is -- both of Chapman's lines a-top, quite worth any prize for the quoter -- then, the good epithet of "green Europe" contrasting with Africa -- then, deep in the piece, a picture of a vestal in a vault [...] I read the poem many years ago, and never since -- tho' I have an impression that the versification is good.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : Alice, or The Mysteries
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 15 August 1845: 'I have read those novels [i.e. Alice, and Ernest Maltravers, mentioned by Barrett in letter postmarked 13 August] -- but I must keep that word of words, "genius" -- for something different -- "talent" will do here surely.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : Ernest Maltravers
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 15 August 1845: 'I have read those novels [i.e. Alice, and Ernest Maltravers, mentioned by Barrett in letter postmarked 13 August] -- but I must keep that word of words, "genius" -- for something different -- "talent" will do here surely.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
George Sand : Consuelo
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 15 August 1845: 'There lies Consuelo -- done with! 'I shall tell you frankly that it strikes [italics]me[end italics] as precisely what in conventional language with the customary silliness is styled a [italics]woman's[end italics]-book, in its merits & defects [goes on to comment extensively on text]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : 'The Raven'
Elizabeth Barrett to Thomas Westwood, 6 September 1845: 'I shd. have written long since to you, if but to thank you for Edgar Poe's ballad .. of which [...] [italics]two[end italics] copies were lying by me when yours came, .. one from some anonymous American, & one from the author himself [...] For the ballad [...] I do not exactly know how to make up my mind to a conclusion about it. There is a certain power in it, no doubt, -- but if the writer had been mad .. professedly mad you know .. I shd. have appreciated the power better. It is not the madness of [italics]passion[end italics], I think .. it is as of an intellect dis[t]raught. There is a ludicrousness which tickles me through & through the melancholy. The "Sir or Madam" for instance! -- how do you bear [italics]that[end italics]?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Newspaper
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley : Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 11 September 1845: 'Mrs Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy at Sorrento, she says. Oh that book -- does one wake or sleep? [...] Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and who surely was something better once upon a time [...] the intrepidity of the commonplace quite astounds me [goes on to criticise specific passages] [...] once she travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, [Samuel] Rogers in hand [...] I quarrel with her, for ever, I think.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Posthumous Poems
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 19 September 1845: 'I began to write last saturday to thank you for all the delight, I had in Shelley [...] Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not in my copy & were, so, quite new to me. "Marianne's Dream" I had been curious about to no end -- I only know it now.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : 'Marianne's Dream'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 19 September 1845: 'I began to write last saturday to thank you for all the delight, I had in Shelley [...] Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not in my copy & were, so, quite new to me. "Marianne's Dream" I had been curious about to no end -- I only know it now.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance. By a Gentleman of the University of Oxford
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 1 October 1845: 'I have read to the last line of your Rosicrucian; & my scepticism grew & grew through Hume's process of doubtful doubts, & at last rose to the full stature of incredulity .. for I never could believe Shelley capable of such a book, (call it a book!) not even with a flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution. Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date of the book, & to get up & travel to the other end of the room to confront it with other dates in the "Letters from Abroad" [...] & on comparing these dates in these two volumes before my eyes, I find that your Rosicrucian was "printed for Stockdale" in [italics]1822[end italics], & that Shelley [italics]died in the July of the same year[end italics]!! And unless the "Rosicrucian" went into more editions than one, & dates here from a latter one [...] the innocence of the great poet stands proved -- now does'nt it? For nobody will say that he published such a book in the last year of his life, in the maturity of his genius, & that Godwin's daughter helped him in it!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Oh to be in England'
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 4 October 1845: 'Your spring-song is full of beauty as you know very well [...] so characteristic of you [...] that I was sorely tempted to ask you to write it "twice over," .. & not send the first copy to Mary Hunter notwithstanding my promise to her. And when you come to print these fragments, would it not be well if you were to stoop to the vulgarism of prefixing some word of introduction, as other people do, you know, .. a title .. a name? You perplex your readers often by casting yourself on their intelligence in these things [...] Now these fragments ... you mean to print them with a line between .. & not one word at the top of it .. now dont you? And then people will read '"Oh, to be in England" & say to themselves .. "Why who is this? .. who's out of England?" Which is an extreme case of course, -- but you will see what I mean .. & often I have observed how some of the very most beautiful of your lyrics have suffered just from your disdain of the usual tactics of writers in this one respect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Manuscript: Sheet
Honore de Balzac : Les Paysans
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 October 1845: 'Balzac's "Paysans" in its one volume, (for [italics]I[end italics] have only seen that one volume) is another proof of the pressure of the times towards sympathies with the people [...] he is Balzac still in "Les Paysans" -- but story there is none, & so no interest -- & no unity, as far as that first volume indicates: & I found it rather hard reading, despite the human character, & the scenic effects. As to "Le Juif" I have done with him, and am not sorry to have done. The last volumes fall off step by step.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Robert Browning : Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
Walter Savage Landor to Robert Browning, letter postmarked 10 November 1845: 'Before I have half re[a]d through your Dramatic Romances, I must acknowledge the delight I am receiving [...] What a profusion of imagery, covering what a depth of thought!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Savage Landor Print: Book
Robert Browning : Luria (Act I)
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 12 November 1845: 'I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, & feel just as a bullet might feel [...] shot into the air & suddenly arrested & suspended. It ("Luria") is all life [comments in detail upon specific passages and phrases] [...] I am snatched up into "Luria" & feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a reader should.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Fothergill Chorley : Pomfret
Elizabeth Barrett to Henry Fothergill Chorley, ?14 November 1845: 'I have read your three volumes of "Pomfret" with interest & moral assent, & with great pleasure in various ways: -- it is a pure, true book without effort, which, in these days of gesture & rolling with the eyes, is an uncommon thing [...] The best character in the book I take to be "Rose" [...] He is so lifelike, with the world's conventional life, that you hear his footsteps when he walks'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett : 'Past and Future'
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, 16 November 1845: 'Since I wrote what is above, I have been reading [...] that sonnet -- "Past and Future" -- which affects me more than any poem I ever read [...] is not that sonnet to be loved as a true utterance of yours?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Astolphe Louis Leonard Marquis de Custine : Le Monde comme il est
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1845: 'I have been loitering over "Le monde comme il est" & think your thoughts of it. Good things, excellent things, admirable things are in it, but one cannot call it a success.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Ballad Romances
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 January 1846: 'I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to see that beautiful things are there -- I suppose "Delora" will stand alone still -- but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story [...] and there is good sailor-speech in the "Ben Capstan" [...] At one thing I wonder -- his not reprinting a quaint clever [italics]real[end italics] ballad, published before "Delora", on the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" -- the first of his works I ever read -- no, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line "When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold," .. good, is it not?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : 'The Merrie Devil of Edmonton'
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 January 1846: 'I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to see that beautiful things are there -- I suppose "Delora" will stand alone still -- but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story [...] and there is good sailor-speech in the "Ben Capstan" [...] At one thing I wonder -- his not reprinting a quaint clever [italics]real[end italics] ballad, published before "Delora", on the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" -- the first of his works I ever read -- no, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line "When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold," .. good, is it not?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Hengist Horne : 'Stanzas to a Ruined Windmill'
Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 January 1846: 'I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to see that beautiful things are there -- I suppose "Delora" will stand alone still -- but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story [...] and there is good sailor-speech in the "Ben Capstan" [...] At one thing I wonder -- his not reprinting a quaint clever [italics]real[end italics] ballad, published before "Delora", on the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" -- the first of his works I ever read -- no, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line "When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold," .. good, is it not?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Hengist Horne : 'The Monk of Swineshead Abbey'
Elizabeth Barrett to Roberrt Browning, 4 January 1846: 'When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading just the first & last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it [...] I did think & do, that the last was unworthy of him, & that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his facility. But last night I read the "Monk of Swineshead Abby" & the "Three Knights of Camelot" & "Bedd Gelert" & found them all different stuff, better[,] stronger, more consistent, & read them with pleasure & admiration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : 'The Three Knights of Camelott: a Fairy Tale'
Elizabeth Barrett to Roberrt Browning, 4 January 1846: 'When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading just the first & last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it [...] I did think & do, that the last was unworthy of him, & that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his facility. But last night I read the "Monk of Swineshead Abby" & the "Three Knights of Camelot" & "Bedd Gelert" & found them all different stuff, better[,] stronger, more consistent, & read them with pleasure & admiration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : 'Bedd Gelert'
Elizabeth Barrett to Roberrt Browning, 4 January 1846: 'When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading just the first & last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it [...] I did think & do, that the last was unworthy of him, & that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his facility. But last night I read the "Monk of Swineshead Abby" & the "Three Knights of Camelot" & "Bedd Gelert" & found them all different stuff, better[,] stronger, more consistent, & read them with pleasure & admiration.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Les Petits Menages d'une Femme verteuse
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 January 1846: 'Any more news of Balzac? "Les petits maneges" I have read & thought excellent -- but it is a continuation of that odious book .. "Les amours forces" -- "Beatrix," remember.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Edward Bulwer Lytton : 'Confessions and Observations of a Water-Patient'
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 January 1846: 'I forgot quite to quarrel with you a little about Sir E Lytton Bulwer [sic] -- because indeed I dislike his dissertation on cold water as much as anything I have read lately. I [italics]know[end italics] the Malvern Hills, you will be reminded -- & when I think of that peculiar climate where people with delicate chests stand upon the mountain-slopes (such a beautiful country!) & breathe razors [...] I do marvel that any man of common sense can keep his countenance & recommend that situation as a substitute for Italy & Madeira to pulmonary patients [comments further on same subject].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury : Zoe: The History of Two Lives
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ?7 January 1846: 'Zoe [...] I have been reading at last. An extraordinary book certainly. I should take the author to be a free-thinker, by a copious interpretation of the word. The power, & liberty of utterance, are undeniable generally -- but parts of the book are very inferior.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Forest and Game Law Tales
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 13-14 January 1846: 'Will you have Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this moment I [italics]dare not[end italics], because they are reading them here.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Moulton-Barrett family Print: Book
Voltaire : Philosophical Dictionary
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15 January 1846: 'Papa used to say .. "Dont read Gibbon's history -- it's not a proper book -- Dont read "Tom Jones" -- & none of the books on [italics]this[end italics] side, mind -- So I was very obedient & never touched the books on [italics]that[end italics] side, & only read instead, Tom Paine's Age of Reason, & Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, & Hume's Essays, & Werther, & Rousseau, & Mary Woolstonecraft [sic] .. books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, & which were not "on [italics]that[end italics] side" certainly, but which did as well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft :
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 15 January 1846: 'Papa used to say .. "Dont read Gibbon's history -- it's not a proper book -- Dont read "Tom Jones" -- & none of the books on [italics]this[end italics] side, mind -- So I was very obedient & never touched the books on [italics]that[end italics] side, & only read instead, Tom Paine's Age of Reason, & Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, & Hume's Essays, & Werther, & Rousseau, & Mary Woolstonecraft [sic] .. books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, & which were not "on [italics]that[end italics] side" certainly, but which did as well.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, Tis Sixty Years Since
'We talk of Waverly [sic] and Guy Mannering: Lady Jersey sent me the former [italics] as yours [end italics]. I vote with the Multitude, yet some pretend to know more & talk of revisals & amendments. I have a private Reason for my Opinion viz. my own Vanity. who but a friend would haved quoted me so often & once in a peculiar Manner? - I ask no Question! I ought not but I tell you what we say & think. Waverley may be best but Guy is most entertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'We talk of Waverly [sic] and Guy Mannering: Lady Jersey sent me the former [italics] as yours [end italics]. I vote with the Multitude, yet some pretend to know more & talk of revisals & amendments. I have a private Reason for my Opinion viz. my own Vanity. who but a friend would haved quoted me so often & once in a peculiar Manner? - I ask no Question! I ought not but I tell you what we say & think. Waverley may be best but Guy is most entertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'I have now read the remainder [underlined twice] nearly [end underlining] of Glenarvon! & should not give th[e Wr]iter as an Example of the good Ladies: the [wo]man absolutely holds forth the doctrine of [irre]sistable Passion, & that if Lady Avondale falls desperately in love with Lord Glenarvon, after marrying the Man of her own Choice, there is no help for it: if he spare her, well & good! if not she must fall! charming Morality & such as my dear Miss Houltons will never be taught.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : Village, The
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
George Crabbe : Library, The
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
George Crabbe : Newspaper, The
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Deserted Village, The
'my dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the [italics] deserted village [end italics]; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclamed it. He admired the Village, the Library, & the Newspaper exceedingly, & the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the Author, had he known the sound judgment & the exquisite taste which that excellent man possessed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Shackleton Print: Book
George Crabbe : Parish Register, The
'A spendid constellation of Poets arose in the literary horizon - I looked around for Crabbe - Why does not he, who shines as brightly as any of these, add his lustre? - I had not long thought thus when, in an Edinburgh Review, I met with reflections similar to my own, which introduced the Parish Register - Oh, it was like the sweet voice of a long-lost friend! - and glad was I to hear that voice again in the Burrough! - still more in the tales, which appear to me excelling all that preceded them - Every work is so much in unison with our own feelings, that a wish [underlined twice] for information [end underlining] concerning them & their author, received into our hearts, is strongly excited'. [Mary Leabeter later says that wishing to confirm her belief that 'the pictures are drawn from life' motivated her to write]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Leadbeter Print: Book
George Crabbe : Tales in Verse
'A spendid constellation of Poets arose in the literary horizon - I looked around for Crabbe - Why does not he, who shines as brightly as any of these, add his lustre? - I had not long thought thus when, in an Edinburgh Review, I met with reflections similar to my own, which introduced the Parish Register - Oh, it was like the sweet voice of a long-lost friend! - and glad was I to hear that voice again in the Burrough! - still more in the tales, which appear to me excelling all that preceded them - Every work is so much in unison with our own feelings, that a wish [underlined twice] for information [end underlining] concerning them & their author, received into our hearts, is strongly excited'. [Mary Leabeter later says that wishing to confirm her belief that 'the pictures are drawn from life' motivated her to write]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Leadbeter Print: Book
George Crabbe : Borough, the
'A spendid constellation of Poets arose in the literary horizon - I looked around for Crabbe - Why does not he, who shines as brightly as any of these, add his lustre? - I had not long thought thus when, in an Edinburgh Review, I met with reflections similar to my own, which introduced the Parish Register - Oh, it was like the sweet voice of a long-lost friend! - and glad was I to hear that voice again in the Burrough! - still more in the tales, which appear to me excelling all that preceded them - Every work is so much in unison with our own feelings, that a wish [underlined twice] for information [end underlining] concerning them & their author, received into our hearts, is strongly excited'. [Mary Leabeter later says that wishing to confirm her belief that 'the pictures are drawn from life' motivated her to write]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Leadbeter Print: Book
Mary Shackleton : [verses]
'Mary Leadbeter! - Yes indeed I do well remember You! not Leadbeter then, but a pretty demure Lass, standing a timid Auditor while her own Verses were read by a kind Friend but a keen Judge'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shackleton
Mary Leadbeter : [unknown]
'you can write: They really are very admirable Things and the Morality is as pure & useful as the literary merit is conspicuous: I am not sure that I have read all you have given us; but what I have read has really that rare and almost indifineable Quality Genius; that is to say, it Seizes on the Mind & commands Attention, & on the Heart & compels its feelings.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Maria Graham : Journal of A Residence in India
[present at dinner at Mr Murray's was] 'The Mrs Graham who wrote the lively India Journal, a delightful woman!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [Dramas]
'Read Miss Edgeworth's dramas'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Amelia Alderson Opie : Father and Daughter, The: a Tale in Prose, with an Epistle from the Maid of Corinth to her Lover, and Other Poetical Pieces
'I went to Norwich & past two Days with Mrs Opie who has written some pleasant books, particularly the [italics] Father & Daughter [end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : [verses]
'I assure you she [Mrs Murray] was a Shield to me on the Night when I read my Verses.' [to Murray and others, prior to agreeing on their publication]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown
George Crabbe : Tales from the Hall
'I received yours this Morning as I was reading pages 85-113 in the M.S.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Jeffrey : [review of Crabbe's 'Tales from the Hall']
'[Critics] have been as graciously disposed towards me as I could expect. The Edinborough more particularly who have praised me into some Reputation for writing Lyrical Verses, that is to say, Songs, a Talent with which I did not previously flatter myself that I was I possession of & it is marvelous how much even acute Readers are led & influenced by these periodical Critics who dictate to us all more than perhaps any of us are willing to allow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Gally Knight : Alashtar, an Arabian Tale [?]
'A Mr Gally Knight the Author of a Book of very fair Poetry, told me a Story which He thought would suit me [as the basuis of a poem]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : Man of Feeling, The
'Here is Mr Mackensie - with the Surprise I heard it - the Author of "the Man of Feeling" & indeed he is so called.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Patrick Keith : Systems of Physiological Botany
'I like the books which we purchased though the Physiological Botany is rather too minute & supposes the Reader a Learner indeed. The Travels are I think really good & good humoured. Faust was not so terrific as I apprehended from the seduction of a Philosopher by an evil Spirit. I verily think that Business is conducted better (than in far more ostentatious works) in the Arabian Tales, (not Nights) where a pious old Lady is wrought upon by her Vanity into Compliance with a Devil who takes the Character of a pious old Man:I want this second part of these strange Tales & to have done with the Subject of Books I treated myself with Warton's History of Poetry: I have long wished for it, but the Quarto edition was so dear £ 5 that I waited for a Octavo & it is just published: it has a great deal of dull Matter but with much Information & Amusement & moreover it is in the way of my Vocation. There is a good Print of the Author & John having seen that, I believe has no wish to look a page further.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Abraham Scott : Calvinistic Doctrines Refuted
'I thank you for your Letter & Mr Scott's Treatise. True! I agree with him in his principal Idea, though even there I do not like the Expression that Regeneration must precede Faith, but it is his Intricacy and his so strongly contending that Things must be as he has stated. There is too much of the Logician & though he is in Earnest, It is with the spirit of one who Fights for the Truth & loves the Fighting. He narrows the way & then what plain unlettered Christian is able to comprehend his Meaning? I do not say He is wrong, but I have no Doubt of there being many who differ very much from him & yet [5X] equal Reasons may be urged for them. In fact tho' I can but accord with Mr Scott on the Nature of saving Faith as distinguished from unproductive Belief, yet there is much in his tract which I do not understand & not a little which I cannot agreed to. see his Definition of Faith Page 9-10'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Horace Smith : Gaieties and Gravities; A Series of Sketches, Comic Tales, and Fugitive Vagaries
'How are you supplied with Books; I have some from Bath, but I begin to be weary of toil & Humour. yet Mr Reynolds was amusing: "not so Gayeties & Gravities" an affected work & here is the journal of a young Officer but not yet read: a pretty good Quarterly Review & John's Gentleman's Magazine'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg : Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche
Look here, you had better get hold of G.C. Lichtenberg’s "Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche": Gottingen, 1794 to 1816 (it was published in numbers seemingly. Douglas the publisher lent it to me: and tho’ I hate the damned tongue too cordially to do more than dip into it, I have seen some shrewd things. If you cannot get it for yourself, (it seems scarce), I daresay I could negotiate with Douglas for a loan.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas :
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 1 October 1849: 'We have had much quiet enjoyment here [...] read some amusing books, (Dumas & Sue! -- shake your head!) & seen our child grow fuller of roses & understanding day by day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : The Bothie of Toper-Na-Fuosich
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1 December 1849: 'We have had the sight of Clough & Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music .. but I am disappointed in the book as a whole. What I like infinitely better, is Clough's "Bothie of Topernafuosich" a "long-vacation pastoral" written in loose & more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour & freshness, & with whole passages & indeed whole scenes of great beauty & eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems [...] Oh, it strikes both Robert & me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, inartistic character. Arnold's volume has two good poems in it .. "The Sick King of Bokhara" [sic] & "The deserted Merman" [sic]. I liked them both -- But none of these writers are [italics]artists[end italics] whatever they may be in future days.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : (Probably) 'The Bugle Song' (opening 'The splendour falls')
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 18 February 1850: 'Such a magical act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred Tennyson, is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent enchantress. Thank you, thank you [...] But now ... you know how free and sincere I am always! .. now tell me [...] apart from a certain sweetness & rise & fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem. Is it [italics]new[end italics] in any way? [...] I do [italics]not[end italics] perceive much in this lyric, which strikes me, & Robert also (who goes with me throughout) as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the Princess. By the way, if he introduces it in the Princess, it will be the only [italics]rhymed[end italics] verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was thinking of the Rhine-echoes in writing it'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton : The Caxtons. A Family Picture
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett, 12 March 1850: 'Robert is reading "the Caxtons" & is much pleased with the book. [italics]I[end italics] am reading "Shirley", and am interested -- only it does not seem to me equally suggestive of power (so far) with Jane Eyre.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett, 12 March 1850: 'Robert is reading "the Caxtons" & is much pleased with the book. [italics]I[end italics] am reading "Shirley", and am interested -- only it does not seem to me equally suggestive of power (so far) with Jane Eyre.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 2 April 1850: 'I have read Shirley lately: it is not equal to Jane Eyre in spontaneousness & earnestness: I found it heavy, I confess, though in [...] the compositional savoir faire, there is an advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little circulating li[brary] which we had not tried -- and we have just been making ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's "Cousin Pons". But what a wonderful writer he is! Who could have taken such a subject, out of the lowest mud of humaity, & glorified & consecrated it?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Cousin Pons
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Anna Brownell Jameson, 2 April 1850: 'I have read Shirley lately: it is not equal to Jane Eyre in spontaneousness & earnestness: I found it heavy, I confess, though in [...] the compositional savoir faire, there is an advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little circulating li[brary] which we had not tried -- and we have just been making ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's "Cousin Pons". But what a wonderful writer he is! Who could have taken such a subject, out of the lowest mud of humaity, & glorified & consecrated it?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Robert Browning : Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
Joseph Arnould to Robert Browning, 25 April 1850: 'I have read re-read marked learned & [italics]]really[end italics] inwardly digested your last Poem [...] Well then I must say quite honestly that though your master hand has never dashed on the canvas the colours of poetry more grandly [...] yet, [italics]as a whole[end italics], it is less satisfactory to me than some of your earlier inspirations: call me limited, narrow, academic what you will, but I cannot quite like the grotesque, wonderful inventive & ingenious as it is of your opening; & then not so much on the ground of any mere individual dislike on my own part, as from the feeling that it may be a stumbling block to so many weaker brethren in the critic world'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Arnould Print: Book
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine : Les Confidences
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850: 'I return the "Confidences" with thanks upon thanks. Both Robert & I began with a sort of interest & pleasure, & ended with a sort of sickness of the book & the man. Weakness & falseness are two bad things indeed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas (pere) : Memoires d'un medecin: Joseph Balsamo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?27 July 1850: 'I am finishing the "Memoires d'un medecin"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Catherine Maria Fanshawe : poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 7 November 1850: 'Miss Fanshawe is well worth your writing of [...] as one of the most witty of our wits in verse, men or women. I have only seen M.S. copies of her verses, & that years ago, but they struck me very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Manuscript: Unknown, copied
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam (extracts)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 7 November 1850: 'I have seen extracts in the Examiner from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," which seemed to me exquisitely beautiful & pathetical.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Louisa Boyle, 5 December 1850: 'We live just as quietly as we used to do [...] One drawback is not being able to get new books till they are old -- in spite of which, we have just read "In Memoriam" -- how beautiful! -- how full of pathos, and subtle feeling & thought! [...] Then we have Carlyle's Latter day pamphlets .. powerful & characteristic -- and seventeen numbers of David Copperfield, which we both set down or rather set up as Dickens's masterpiece.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Louisa Boyle, 5 December 1850: 'We live just as quietly as we used to do [...] One drawback is not being able to get new books till they are old -- in spite of which, we have just read "In Memoriam" -- how beautiful! -- how full of pathos, and subtle feeling & thought! [...] Then we have Carlyle's Latter day pamphlets .. powerful & characteristic -- and seventeen numbers of David Copperfield, which we both set down or rather set up as Dickens's masterpiece.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 December 1850: 'As to "In Memoriam," I have seen it, I have read it, .. dear Mr [John] Kenyon had the goodness to send it to me [...] the book has gone to my heart & soul [...] All I wish away, is the marriage hymn at the end, & [italics]that[end italics], for every reason I wish away -- it's a discord in the music. The monotony is a part of the position -- the sea is monotonous, & so is lasting grief [...] So the effect of the book is artistic & true, I think'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett [sister], 16-19 December 1850, on 18 December: 'We have been reading together Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in the evenings. Most beautiful and pathetic. I read aloud, Robert looking over the page -- & we talked & admired & criticised every separate stanza. Now, we are going in like manner through Shelley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett [sister], 16-19 December 1850, on 18 December: 'We have been reading together Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in the evenings. Most beautiful and pathetic. I read aloud, Robert looking over the page -- & we talked & admired & criticised every separate stanza. Now, we are going in like manner through Shelley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning : sonnets ['from the Portugese']
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Moulton-Barrett [sister], 12 January 1851: 'Now I am going to speak to you about those sonnets [...] The truth is that though they were written several years ago, I never showed them to Robert till last spring .. I felt shy about them altogether .. even to him. I had heard him express himself strongly against "personal" poetry & I shrank back. -- As to publishing them, it did not enter my head. But when Robert saw them, he was much touched & pleased -- & [...] could not consent, he said, that they should be lost to my volumes: so we agreed to slip them in under some sort of veil, & after much consideration chose the "Portugese" [goes on to explain reasons for choice]'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Copleston : Inquiry into the Doctrines of Necessity & Predestination
'I think you do not mean the Treatise of Copplestone that I do, for I see nothing in his Discourses of Necessity and Contingency, of Predestination & Free-will, which are his Subjects,that I do not cordially assent to. He pretends not to see farther into the mill-stone than you & I do. I may read the Cardiophonia of Mr Newton as you recommend it, but the Title offends my Taste & who could guess what Cardiophonia was about? - I have been engaged by the confessions of St Augustine in Milner's History of the Church: the piety is impressive and the Story of his philosophic-Life & Conversation, curious: His "City of God" I expect to find very interesting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Christopher Benson : Hulsean Lectures for 1822: On Scripture Difficulties; Twenty Discourses
'Have you met with a Work called Scripture Difficulties? - C. Benson in the Hulsean Lectures?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : Lady Barbara
'So you have been reading my almost forgotten stories - Lady Barbara and Ellen! I protest to you their origin is lost to me, and I must read them myself before I can apply your remarks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : Ellen
'So you have been reading my almost forgotten stories - Lady Barbara and Ellen! I protest to you their origin is lost to me, and I must read them myself before I can apply your remarks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
George Crabbe : [sermons]
'I have not done much with the Sermons you sent me nor after the Bristol Huricanes Would you expect it, still I have not been altogether idle, for vamping old Sermons is to me no unpleasant kind of Employment.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown
Florence MacCunn : Sir Walter Scott's Friends
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair. Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [Letters]
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair. Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [works]
'(Florence MacCunn. [italics] Sir Walter Scott's Friends [end italics] Wm. Blackwood 1909) I have just finished this enchanting book which for a time has entirely seduced me from both Lawrence and Carlyle. I read the whole of D.H.L's letters last week when in bed with a cold; felt completely in sympathy with him and a passionate desire to be on his side, no matter whom I deserted or decried. Began the whole book again, marking passages,meaning to re-read all his works and try and make him out. All this prompted by an article in [italics] L[ife] and L[etters] [end italics] that annoyed me. J. Soames, comparing him with Rousseau. Probably everything she said was true, but the whole tone was patronising and self-righteous. I wanted to explode a squib under her chair. Now I want to find if there's any likeness or not between Lawrence and Carlyle. But at the moment I am in revolt against L. Why does one veer about so with him?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Charles Marriott : The Column
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 9 April 1901: 'I have been in the wilderness to-day but before I end I must tell you that I did live last week an hour or two -- which being interpreted is that I read The Column by Charles Marriott which if you have not, do. If I were a reviewer I should shout & scream "A New Great Author". But I'm not. Farewell.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Honore De Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 1 September 1901: 'London in August! [...] I like it because I choose it by refusing to fly London with the rest of the world [...] I like wandering through the deserted streets tawdry with painter's ladders & half starved cats & soiled fluttering tags of newspapers [...] It fascinates me by its bare brutality of ugliness, & produces the aesthetic titillation of a slum. During that season too I batten upon Balzac & his hold remains on me for weeks afterwards so that I am rereading Le Pere Goriot out on the cliffs & rocks here.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Robert Browning : Paracelsus
'L[eonard]W[oolf] had undertaken to write a play for the "X" Society, which had recently read Robert Browning's Paracelsus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: The 'X' Society Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 8 April 1902: 'I was glad to hear you had really read it [Le Pere Goriot] & I agree with you -- in the main -- about it. Of course personally I never or try never to compare it with Lear because though it challenges comparison all through on the face of it, I don't really think it is fair to do so.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lytton Strachey Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Turkish Tales'
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902: '[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Letters
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902: '[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Joris Karl Huysmans : A Rebours
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 July 1902: '[italics]I[end italics] dribble on among Aristotle, golf & Byron. The last is a stiff job -- my God I've never read such trash as those Giaours and Corsairs. I had never read them before & assumed that they were nauseous, but I never imagined such feeble banalite as they contain. The letters however make up for a great deal & on the whole there is some amusement in steadily plodding through a whole author & really for once getting to know about one [...] I have also at last read [Joris Karl Huysmans'] A Rebours ... it [italics]is[end italics] diseased magnificence. The words simply dazzle me. I rather thought that sentence in the colossal chapter on the flowers & des Essintes' [sic] nightmare was in a way an epitome of Huysmans if not of all France. "Tout n'est que syphilis." Pish! I suppose everything is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Arthur Schopenhauer :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Barry Pain :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Robert Browning :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Oscar Wilde :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
George Stout : [on Psychology]
Leonard Woolf to Saxon Sydney-Turner, 20 June 1903: 'Are you in London & are you going to bring your [cricket] team? I wish you would as I am in a raging temper, which I try to cure by reading Stout's Psychology.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Henry James :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 27 January 1905: 'I sit in the Kachcheri [a government office] most of the day & sign my name. I play tennis, dine, read Henry James (Jaffna has a library which contains him & [Dinah Craik's] John Halifax, Gentleman), & go to bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Alfred de Vigny :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 5 March 1905: 'De Vigny has come. I haven't read him all, but I'm rather disappointed: isn't he rather metallic? I read a good deal in odd moments, & a curious mixture, I think. A book I have always meant to do, I finished last week & could hardly put down at all, The Life of Parnell [...] Also the Life of Russell by the same man [R. B. O'Brien] & [Disraeli's] Coningsby which is absolutely preposterous, & [Voltaire's] La Dictionnaire Philosophique.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
R. B. O'Brien : The Life of Parnell
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 5 March 1905: 'De Vigny has come. I haven't read him all, but I'm rather disappointed: isn't he rather metallic? I read a good deal in odd moments, & a curious mixture, I think. A book I have always meant to do, I finished last week & could hardly put down at all, The Life of Parnell [...] Also the Life of Russell by the same man [R. B. O'Brien] & [Disraeli's] Coningsby which is absolutely preposterous, & [Voltaire's] La Dictionnaire Philosophique.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
R. B. O'Brien : The Life of Russell
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 5 March 1905: 'De Vigny has come. I haven't read him all, but I'm rather disappointed: isn't he rather metallic? I read a good deal in odd moments, & a curious mixture, I think. A book I have always meant to do, I finished last week & could hardly put down at all, The Life of Parnell [...] Also the Life of Russell by the same man [R. B. O'Brien] & [Disraeli's] Coningsby which is absolutely preposterous, & [Voltaire's] La Dictionnaire Philosophique.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Voltaire : La Dictionnaire Philosophique
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 5 March 1905: 'De Vigny has come. I haven't read him all, but I'm rather disappointed: isn't he rather metallic? I read a good deal in odd moments, & a curious mixture, I think. A book I have always meant to do, I finished last week & could hardly put down at all, The Life of Parnell [...] Also the Life of Russell by the same man [R. B. O'Brien] & [Disraeli's] Coningsby which is absolutely preposterous, & [Voltaire's] La Dictionnaire Philosophique.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Henry James : The Golden Bowl
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 23 July 1905: 'I have just finished The Golden Bowl & am astounded. Did he invent us or we him? He uses [italics]all[end italics] our words in their most technical sense & we can't have got them all from him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Voltaire : Letters
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906: 'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Joris Karl Huysmans :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906: 'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Henry James :
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 13 January 1906: 'I have practically settled down for two weeks here [...] it is one immense sea of hills [...] I walk out onto these & wander from about 7-9 every morning & from 4-6 every evening, the rest of the day I read Voltaire's letters, Huysmans & Henry James.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : [works]
'At present sunk deep in Harriet Martineau: very much attracted in spite of her complacent priggishness and self-righteousness. A very [italics] true [end italics] nature there; honest and unflinching and courageous. One gets nourished by the oddest people...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Santayana : Reason in Common Sense
'[included in diary entry] SANTAYANA ('Reason in Common Sense') "There may well be intense consciousness in the total absence of rationality. Such consciousness is suggested in dreams, in madness and may be found for all we know, in the depths of universal nature".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Humphrey Jennings : Little town in France
'Reading (except the Field book on child psychology...) too indigestible. Even H[umphrey] J[ennings]'s innocuous [italics] Little town in France [end italics] began by being sweet but sat heavily on my belly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Unknown
Marcel Proust : [works]
'Remember with great pleasure weeks recovering from abortion in 1924 and for once holding my life in suspension, not wanting anything, not even concerned with the future, but perfectly happy reading Proust...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Peter Warlock : [letters]
'For days I've been trying to copy out that passage - pages from Heseltine [Peter Warlock, the composer]'s letters: the book is on my table: I have the time. Why can't I do it?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Francis Thompson : [poems]
'On my First Communion day, November 21st 1914, I felt nothing at the actual receiving of the sacrament but in reading Francis Thompson's poems that day (my mother had bought them for me not knowing what she was giving me) I found something terrible, sweet and transforming which really did make me draw breath and pant after it...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : Captain's Doll, The
'Read [italics] The Captain's Doll [end italics] [D.H. Lawrence] again (about the 8th time I think) and like it better than ever. Odd how again, though, the woman is more real than the man. The man is a mouthpiece for the right ideas but he doesn't quite [italics] exist [end italics]. Hannele exists yet the doll is oddly more alive than the Captain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Charlotte d'Erlanger : [unknown]
'[she thinks her own writing] was almost always imitation of what I had read. I realised the immense difference between Charlotte's work and my own. Charlotte [d'Erlanger], I think was a born writer: forceful, economical and with a real eye. The [italics] quality [end italics] of her work showed through all the ignorance of childhood.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White
Rainer Maria Rilke : Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, The
'I have just been reading the record of a dangerous voyage, [italics] Malte Laurids Brigg [end italics]. Yet Rilke returned safely. I have seen a photo of him in a black coat and a watch chain standing in the gateway of a German castle. Where have I been from which there was any danger of not returning? Even from insanity I came back to find a name, a latchkey, a home, identifying friends. In writing I hug the shore all the time. Rilke's book hs affected me profoundly; given me the sense of being out of my depth, of a dazzling interconnection between two worlds in which one simultaneously moves. It has left me sensitised like a watch that has been too near a magnet. The effect was so violent that I had to lie down at intervals while I was reading it; I was shaking as if in a high fever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Rainer Maria Rilke : Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, The
'It is strange that in poetry, when I was eleven, I had what I can only call my first revelation from which I emerged dazed, unable to fit the two worlds together. It has happened again now with the Rilke book'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Rainer Maria Rilke : [works]
'When I read Rilke I seem to understand her ['Roberta's] death... she really had carried it about with her, nourished it, achieved it' [alluding to story about Rilke's death on p.70]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Eric Siepmann : [notebook]
'[in journal entry] from E.O. S[iepmann]'s notebook Free spirit liable to possession or obsession... Debauchery is the most frozen isolation to which man can condemn himself...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown
Fyodor Dostoevsky : Brothers Karamazov, The
'Reading the Father Zossima chapter ['The Brothers Karamazov'] I felt the confessor-saint fulfilled exactly the same function as the psycho-analyst. The psycho-analyst cuts a poor and shabby figure beside the saint but he is the best substitute an age of non-faith can produce.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Frances Grigson : [letters to Tom Hopkinson]
'By reading Frances' letters to Tom I have learnt a great deal about Frances and a great deal about Tom. They are not very agreeable things'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Letter
Andre Breton : Nadja
'I am surprised to find that though suspicious of surrealist dogma I like some of their work, notably and unexpectedly [Andre] Bretons's [italics] Nadja [end italics]. Attracted back to my old adolescent love [of] the magical.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Dejection: An Ode
'last night [Barker] read me Coleridge's "Ode on Dejection" which is very beautiful in parts. It exactly expresses those bad negative states in which one looks and sees nothing - the "grief without a pang".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Barker Print: Book
Charles Darwin : Voyage of the Beagle, The
'My chief pleasure at the moment is Darwin's [italics] Voyage of the Beagle [end italics]... it is so fresh, so clear, so solid, so modest, so alive. When I read a book like that I am full of admiration yet I feel so humiiated and despairing too...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Charles Darwin : Voyage of the Beagle, The
'Reading Darwin's [book] I wish I had loved objective things and looked at them when I was a child instead of feeding always on books and fancy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : [Poems]
'[Basil Nicholson] loves Marvell's poems and Durer's drawings. He has a great admiration for Keats but won't read the letters "because he feels they will probably annoy him".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Basil Nicholson Print: Book
Laura Riding : [unknown]
'Her [Laura Riding's] talent I cannot judge, having seen too little. Much of what I have seen seems a nervous and complacent exhibitionism; her criticism shrewd but patronising, some of the poems really deep and fine... There may be a good deal of the suppressed or unsuppressed Lesbian in her'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Unknown
Katherine Mansfield : [letters]
'I feel a curious kinship with, dislike of, yet pity for Katherine Mansfield, whose letters I am reading again. I see all my weaknesses in her, admire her for her frantic attempts to be honest and deal with them. I can now read her, feeling her equal not an awestruck inferior as I used to. I know all she knew.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Christine Botting : [diary]
'Down here with my mother I feel that nothing can be so preposterous, so undignified as "love". I have been reading her ludicrous, pathetic, nauseating diary about herself and Oswald Norton. "Cleopatra had a famous wriggle last night. Julia ull-ully". The sexual act is not indecent but almost any verbal description of it is. Interspersed with all this are prayers, recriminations, schoolgirl ravings, a kind of complacent self reproach.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown
George Eliot [pseud.] : Mill on the Floss, The
'I am so much enjoying [italics] The Mill on the Floss [end italics] but would so much like to earn the right to read it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Mill on the Floss, The
'I have just finished [italics] The Mill on the Floss[end italics]. Reading it and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] have given me the most extraordinary pleasure. I begin to think George Eliot is not only the greatest English woman novelist but perhaps the greatest English novelist. She has not the fiery poetry of Emily Bronte nor the exquisite surface of Jane Austen but she has a richness and sweep and depth that is Shakespearean. The one thing that maims or constrains her a little is some rigid moral sense which goes against her [italics] natural [end italics ] morality. She is haunted by an impossible ideal of purity and strictness. In [italics] Middlemarch [end italics] and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] she incarnates this in two women; one so impossibly good that she is repellent. I am in for a George Eliot bout as a drunkard goes on a jag. Over dinner I raced through a short life of her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'I have just finished [italics] The Mill on the Floss[end italics]. Reading it and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] have given me the most extraordinary pleasure. I begin to think George Eliot is not only the greatest English woman novelist but perhaps the greatest English novelist. She has not the fiery poetry of Emily Bronte nor the exquisite surface of Jane Austen but she has a richness and sweep and depth that is Shakespearean. The one thing that maims or constrains her a little is some rigid moral sense which goes against her [italics] natural [end italics ] morality. She is haunted by an impossible ideal of purity and strictness. In [italics] Middlemarch [end italics] and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] she incarnates this in two women; one so impossibly good that she is repellent. I am in for a George Eliot bout as a drunkard goes on a jag. Over dinner I raced through a short life of her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Middlemarch
'I have just finished [italics] The Mill on the Floss[end italics]. Reading it and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] have given me the most extraordinary pleasure. I begin to think George Eliot is not only the greatest English woman novelist but perhaps the greatest English novelist. She has not the fiery poetry of Emily Bronte nor the exquisite surface of Jane Austen but she has a richness and sweep and depth that is Shakespearean. The one thing that maims or constrains her a little is some rigid moral sense which goes against her [italics] natural [end italics ] morality. She is haunted by an impossible ideal of purity and strictness. In [italics] Middlemarch [end italics] and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] she incarnates this in two women; one so impossibly good that she is repellent. I am in for a George Eliot bout as a drunkard goes on a jag. Over dinner I raced through a short life of her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : Captain's Doll, The
'D.H. Lawrence draws so heavily on his own life - yet how often the best and freest part of his writing is his invention - like the wife in "The Captain's Doll".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Charles Montagu Doughty : Travels in Arabia Deserta
'[King] likes Doughty, Arabian Knights [sic], Froissart.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Cecil King Print: Book
Arthur Conan Doyle : [Sherlock Holmes Stories]
'I had hoped to have a clear head here - to get on with German, Italian, etc. and to read some history. But I have been so heavy and tired all the time that I can only manage snatches of [italics] War and Peace [end italics] and [italics] Sherlock Holmes [end italics]. I am supposed to have done a detailed criticism of Emily's book - I have skimmed through it but that is all.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Eliot : [unknown]
'I have been struck by finding the same thought within a few days in two very different places - in George Eliot and in an American magazine. That is the idea of a person's horror at a crime coming not from the crime but from the fact that [italics] they [end italics] have committed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Sand : [letters to and from Flaubert]
'Reading George Sand's and Flaubert's letters. Her warmth, geniality, tolerance compared to his anxiety, narrowness, fear of life. They really cared for each other. She is like the man, he like the woman'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : Jacob's Room
'I was idly looking at [italics] Jacob's Room [end italics] tonight. It exasperated yet charmed me. Here was an attempt to relate day and night. She [Virginia Woolf] lays her little strands side by side instead of working them into a patern. But perhaps it is because there is no solid structure underneath that it leaves me with this curious empty and dissatisfied feeling. In the last book it is beaten out so thin that it is threadbare.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
George Tyrrell : [Jesuit writings]
'There is a peculiar flavour about Catholic writings which I still find repellent. [George] Tyrell is the only modern one with whom I feel in sympathy and he was condemned by the Church.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Walter Hylton : Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection
'The more I read of theology, Church History, apologetics, philosophy, scripture interpretation, the more hopelessly at sea I find myself. I feel on firm ground with Walter H[ylton] and Dame Julian [of Norwich] and in the prayers of the Church.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
Walter Scott : Woodstock
'Colvin has brought home Woodstock from Nice and we have started reading it aloud, which is a huge institution.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Roger Fry : The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Leonard Woolf to Robert Trevlyan, 11 February 1906: 'Very many thanks for Fry's book [The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds]. It seems, though I have only had time to dip into it, extremely interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
Leonard Woolf to Saxon Sydney-Turner, 27 August 1906: 'I am camping out in a tent in the wilderness. I told you I believe I was coming for a month as A[ssistant]G[overnment]A[gent] Mannar. I am now on circuit which means that I ride about 10 miles each day through a desolation of sand to visit a few huts which are called villages [...] I ride through the sand from 6 A.M. to 9 & lie in my tent during the heat of the day & read Dickens whom of course I now consider the greatest of novelists. At any rate he is astonishingly amusing in Kaddukkarankudiyiruppu (which means the village of the man of the Jungle).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Sir George Otto Trevelyan : The Competition Wallah
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 28 April 1907: 'Today my head is whirring with slight fever. Since I wrote that I have for the first time read The Competition Wallah. It is extraordinary; it might be the Northern Province in 1907 instead of Bengal in the sixties.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Francis Cornford : Thucydides Mythistoricus
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 15 September 1907: 'I have just read [Francis Cornford's] Thucydides Mythistoricus. It seems to me rather good, except that as a book it has the almost universal fault of not ending.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Earl of Cromer : Modern Egypt
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, postscript to letter postmarked 1 February 1909: 'I never thanked you for the books [...] they are a godsend especially as I have just got to the end practically of the last batch I ordered out. I suddenly thought I must read Maupassant again & when I reread the tale about the child who is pinched on the buttocks by the adulterating captain I thought I was right. I also read [the Earl of Cromer's] Modern Egypt & you can deduce my state of mind by the fact that I think it is the greatest book written in the last 25 years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Brothers Karamazov
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 August 1911: 'Les Freres Karamazov is one of the greatest of novels [...] Have you read it? & the extraordinary speech of Ivan about Christ & Christianity & socialism which goes on without stopping for about 50 pages? I am halfway through. The Agamemnon is childish compared to it. I read it in trains & on steamers in inextricable fjords & on great lakes, very slowly, as befits it, in perpetual sunshine; I shall never finish it I think or perhaps it will never end. And Edgar [Woolf] is always sitting by me reading the Ordeal of Richard Feverel [...] We went up the coast from Gotenberg towards Norway [...] Then we wandered up a fjord to a detestable town called Uddevala [...] Then we took a toy steamboat & sailed over the lake [...] to Leksamd & thence here [Raatvik]. It was pleasant to sit on deck reading Les Freres at the rate of a page an hour, gliding past the shores from which the fair haired naked men & women perpetually waved their hands to us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : Les Freres Karamazov
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 August 1911: 'Les Freres Karamazov is one of the greatest of novels [...] Have you read it? & the extraordinary speech of Ivan about Christ & Christianity & socialism which goes on without stopping for about 50 pages? I am halfway through. The Agamemnon is childish compared to it. I read it in trains & on steamers in inextricable fjords & on great lakes, very slowly, as befits it, in perpetual sunshine; I shall never finish it I think or perhaps it will never end. And Edgar [Woolf] is always sitting by me reading the Ordeal of Richard Feverel [...] We went up the coast from Gotenberg towards Norway [...] Then we wandered up a fjord to a detestable town called Uddevala [...] Then we took a toy steamboat & sailed over the lake [...] to Leksamd & thence here [Raatvik]. It was pleasant to sit on deck reading Les Freres at the rate of a page an hour, gliding past the shores from which the fair haired naked men & women perpetually waved their hands to us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 August 1911: 'Les Freres Karamazov is one of the greatest of novels [...] Have you read it? & the extraordinary speech of Ivan about Christ & Christianity & socialism which goes on without stopping for about 50 pages? I am halfway through. The Agamemnon is childish compared to it. I read it in trains & on steamers in inextricable fjords & on great lakes, very slowly, as befits it, in perpetual sunshine; I shall never finish it I think or perhaps it will never end. And Edgar [Woolf] is always sitting by me reading the Ordeal of Richard Feverel [...] We went up the coast from Gotenberg towards Norway [...] Then we wandered up a fjord to a detestable town called Uddevala [...] Then we took a toy steamboat & sailed over the lake [...] to Leksamd & thence here [Raatvik]. It was pleasant to sit on deck reading Les Freres at the rate of a page an hour, gliding past the shores from which the fair haired naked men & women perpetually waved their hands to us.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Woolf Print: Book
Virginia Stephen : fiction MSS
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Stephen, 29 April 1912: 'I've read two of your MSS from one of which at any rate one can see that you might write something astonishingly good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Leonard Woolf : The Village in the Jungle
Maurice B. Wright to Leonard Woolf, 15 September 1913: 'I should like to thank you for your book The Village in the Jungle. I have enjoyed it more than anything I have read for many a day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Maurice B. Wright Print: Book
Leonard Woolf : The Wise Virgins
Marie Woolf to Leonard Woolf (reader's son), 11 December 1913: 'I am now returning you the Manuscript [of The Wise Virgins] [...] the reading of which has given me more pain than evidently you intended. ... You thought fit to hold us [Woolf family] all up [...] to ridicule, contempt and pity. ... You have not convinced me one jot that the people at Rickstead [i.e. Putney, Woolf family home] are one bit less valuable to the common working of the Universe, than are the people at Bloomsbury [...] this style of writing is unworthy of you [...] If you publish the book as it stands, I feel there will be a serious break between us'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marie Woolf Manuscript: Unknown
Hurrell Froude : Remains
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Woolf, 13 March 1914: 'Another amusing book I looked at here is Hurrell Froude's Remains. I have read partly Newman's Apologia; he seems to me a self-sentimentalist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Apologia pro vita sua
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Woolf, 13 March 1914: 'Another amusing book I looked at here is Hurrell Froude's Remains. I have read partly Newman's Apologia; he seems to me a self-sentimentalist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Dorothy Osborne : The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple
Leonard Woolf to Virginia Woolf, 25 September 1928: 'It began to rain [...] yesterday afternoon [...] Quentin [Bell, nephew] came and painted the gramophone and after tea I took him for a walk [...] Then I read Dorothy Osborne until bedtime.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Horace : Satires
Leonard Woolf to Robert Trevelyan, 8 January 1941: 'I want to say how much we enjoyed your Epistle. In these days of confused bitterness its form and content were both refreshing. Your translations and the two conversations were equally or even more refreshing. By a curious coincidence I had been reading Horace's satires after an interval of I don't know how many years. I never read the classics except in bed before I get up in the morning and I nearly always read Greek. But the other day I thought I would begin Horace again and began the Satires. I liked it better than I had expected for I had recollections of being bored by Horace's hexameters. Your translations are extraordinarily satisfactory and satisfying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Robert Trevelyan : Epistle
Leonard Woolf to Robert Trevelyan, 8 January 1941: 'I want to say how much we enjoyed your Epistle. In these days of confused bitterness its form and content were both refreshing. Your translations and the two conversations were equally or even more refreshing. By a curious coincidence I had been reading Horace's satires after an interval of I don't know how many years. I never read the classics except in bed before I get up in the morning and I nearly always read Greek. But the other day I thought I would begin Horace again and began the Satires. I liked it better than I had expected for I had recollections of being bored by Horace's hexameters. Your translations are extraordinarily satisfactory and satisfying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard and Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Marie Corelli : extracts from novels
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 September 1918: 'V[irginia]. induced me to buy The King's English, a book which teaches you exactly how not to write. The difficulty is that that is precisely what it does do, and now I cannot write a sentence, because as soon as I get one down, I see that it is exactly like some horror of Miss [Marie] Corelli [popular novelist]'s quoted as a warning in that damned book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Frank Hardie : 'Youth, Socialism and Peace'
Leonard Woolf to Frank Hardie, 11 October 1933: 'Many thanks for your letter and for the copy of your article which I had already read with great interest. I think we probably agree to the extent of about 95%. Even on the subject of isolation I have always been strongly drawn to the policy under certain conditions. But the conditions do not at present exist and I feel the gravest doubts as to their ever existing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
Leonard Woolf : article on 'the politician and the intellectual'
Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, Marquess of Crewe, to Leonard Woolf, 29 July 1940: 'I read your article on the Politician and the Intellectual, in the New Statesman of July 20th, and I hope that you will excuse a much older man who has enjoyed the company of many of both sorts for troubling you with a few observations on it [goes on to comment further].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes Print: Serial / periodical
Leonard Woolf : Empire and Commerce in Africa
Leonard Woolf to Margery Perham, 24 August 1955: 'Did you ever come across [Charles] Temple, who was in the Nigerian Civil Service [...] He read Empire and Commerce after his retirement and when he lived in Granada; hearing that Virginia and I were going to stay in the mountains above, he asked us to come and spend the night at his house. I had a long talk with him and he was very bitter against [Lord] Lugard [imperialist attacked by Woolf in text], claiming that a great deal of the credit for indirect rule etc., whicb Lugard claimed himself, ought to have gone to him, Temple.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Temple Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Sacred Eclogue in Imitation of Virgil’s 'Pollio'
'[her mother having forbidden her to learn to read due to her weak eyes] I was at this time about five Years of Age, and my Mother being one Day abroad, I had happily laid hold on "Alexander's Feast", and found something in it so charming, that I read it aloud; - but how like a condemned Criminal did I look, when my Father, softly opening his Study-door, took in the very Fact; I dropt my Book, and burst into Tears, begging Pardon, and promising never to do so again: But my Sorrow was soon dispell'd, when he bade me not be frighten'd, but read to him, which to his great Surprize, I did very distinctly, and without hurting the beauty of the Numbers. Instead of the whipping, of which I stood in Dread, he took me up in his Arms, and kiss'd me, giving me a whole Shilling, as a Reward, and told me, "He would give me another, as soon as I got a Poem by Heart"; which he put into my Hand, and prov'd to be Mr [italics] Pope[end italics]'s sacred Eclogue, which Task I perform'd before my Mother return'd Home. They were both astonish'd at my Memory, and from that Day forward, I was [permitted to read as much as I pleas'd'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia van Lewen Print: Book
Mary Barber : Poems on Several Occasions
'Whether it was owing to her own Desire, or the Envy of those who survived her, I know not; but of her various and beautiful Writings, except one poem of her's in Mrs [italics] Barber [end italics]'s Works; Ii have never seen any published; 'tis true, as her turn was chiefly to philosophical or divine Subjects, they might not be agreeable to the present Taste; yet could her heavenly Muse descend from its sublime height to the easy epistolary Stile, and suit itself to my then gay Disposition' [Pilkington then reproduces two poems by Constantia Grierson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Van Lewen Print: Book
Henry St John Bolingbroke : [letters to Swift]
'[Pilkington tells how Swift cut out many pages of an edition of Horace and made her paste letters between the covers instead] 'I told him, I was extreamly proud to be honoured with his Commands: "But, Sir, may I presume to make a request to you?" "Yes", says he, "but Ten to One I shall deny it". "I hope not Sir, 'tis this; may I have Leave to read the Letters as I go on?" "Why, provided you will acknowledge yourself amply rewarded for your Trouble, I don't much care if I indulge you so far; but are you sure you can read?" "I don't know Sir, I'll try". "Well then begin with this". It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters] Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. I then ventur'd to ask the Dean, whether he thought the Lines Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] addresses him with, in the Beginning of the [italics] Dunciad [end italics], were any Compliment to...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Alexander Pope : [letters to Swift]
'[Pilkington tells how Swift cut out many pages of an edition of Horace and made her paste letters between the covers instead] 'I told him, I was extreamly proud to be honoured with his Commands: "But, Sir, may I presume to make a request to you?" "Yes", says he, "but Ten to One I shall deny it". "I hope not Sir, 'tis this; may I have Leave to read the Letters as I go on?" "Why, provided you will acknowledge yourself amply rewarded for your Trouble, I don't much care if I indulge you so far; but are you sure you can read?" "I don't know Sir, I'll try". "Well then begin with this". It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters] Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. [cont. in a subsequent entry]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Alexander Pope : Dunciad
'[start of this passage found in database entries 9840-2] 'It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters] Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. I then ventur'd to ask the Dean, whether he thought the Lines Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] addresses him with, in the Beginning of the [italics] Dunciad [end italics], were any Compliment to him? [italics] viz O Thou! whatever Title please thine Ear. [end italics] 'I believe', says he, they were meant as such, but they are very stiff'; - 'Indeed, Sir, said I, 'he is so perfectly a Master of harmonious Numbers, that had his Heart been in the least affected with his Subject, he must have writ better'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad
'[start of this passage found in database entries 9840-2] 'It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters] Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. I then ventur'd to ask the Dean, whether he thought the Lines Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] addresses him with, in the Beginning of the [italics] Dunciad [end italics], were any Compliment to him? [italics] viz O Thou! whatever Title please thine Ear. [end italics] 'I believe', says he, they were meant as such, but they are very stiff'; - 'Indeed, Sir, said I, 'he is so perfectly a Master of harmonious Numbers, that had his Heart been in the least affected with his Subject, he must have writ better'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jonathan Swift Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [letter to Swift]
[reported speech of Jonathan Swift] 'In the first Place, Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics], she had the Insolence this Morning, not only to desire to read the Writings of the most celebrated Genius's of the Age, in which I indulged her; but she must also, forsooth, pretend to praise or censure them as if she knew something of the matter; indeed her Remarks were not much amiss, considering they were guess Work; but this Letter here of Mr [italics] Pope[end italics]'s she has absolutely condemned. Read it' (he did so)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Alexander Pope : [letter to Swift]
[Matthew Pilkington was in England and was staying with Pope, upon Swift's recommendation. Having received a letter in which he said Pope was treating him handsomely, Laetitia took it to show Swift] 'The Dean read it over with a fix'd Attention, and returning it to me, he told me, he had, by the same Pacquet, receiv'd a Letter from Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], which, with somewhat of a stern Brow, he put into my Hand, and walk'd out into the Garden [the letter is full of abuse from Pope of M. Pilkington's manner and behaviour] By the time I had read it thro', the Dean return'd, and ask'd me what I thought of it? I told him, I was sure Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] did not deserve the Character Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] had given of him; and that he was highly ungenerous to caress and abuse him at the same Time. Upon this the Dean lost all Patience, and flew into such a rage that he quite terrify'd me'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Alexander Pope : Essay on Criticism
[Pilkington having annoyed Swift by remembering one of his poems and reciting it to others, he decided to test her memory. She told him] 'I could repeat not only all his Works, but all [italics] Shakespear[end italics]'s, which I put to this Trial; I desir'd him to open any Part of it and read a Line, and I would engage to go on with the whole Speech; as we were in his Library, he directly made the Experiment: The Line he first gave me, he had purposely picked out for its singular Oddness: [italics] Put rancours in the Vessel of my Peace [end italics] MacBeth I readily went on with the whole Speech, and did so several times, that he try'd me with different Plays. The Dean then took down [italics] Hudibras [end italics], and order'd me to examine him in it, as he had done me in [italics] Shakespear [end itaics]; and, to my great Surprize, I found he remember'd every Line, from Beginning to End of it. I say, it surpriz'd me, because I had been misled by Mr [italics] Pope [end italics]'s Remark, That [italics] Where beams of warm Imagination play The Memory's soft Figures melt away [end italics] Essay on Criticism'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Various : Autographs
'On the other hand, the most pleasurable thing, which has befallen me was receiving two packets, from England, in the same night: the one a letter of fifteen pages from Mr Baillie; the other a collection of autographs from his Opposite. What do you think? among these were a letter from Goethe, and a fragment of a letter from Byron!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Autographs
Patrick Delany : Fifteen Sermons upon Social Duties
'in one of the Sermons on Social Duties, published lately by a [italics] real [end italics] Divine, he makes this Observation, That he believes, very few Women have either been so weak, or so wicked, to wrong the Marriage-bed, but when they have been provok'd to it, either by the ill Treatment they receiv'd from their Husbands, or in Revenge to their prior falsehoods. If I have not deliver'd the worthy Author's sentiments with his own Elegance of Style, I am sure he will pardon me, as I only quote from memory, not being mistress of his admirable Works.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury : Characteristics
'It is known to every learned Divine, that the Priests engross'd the whole Country of [italics] Egypt [end italics], as the eldest Son of ev'ry Priest was born a Priest, and therefore intitled to a tenth Part of the Land, upon which [italics] Joseph [end italics] who was not only an admirable Man, but an excellent Politician, and had a divine Revelation that the Land should suffer Famine ten Years, ordered the Priests to pay in all their Subsidies to the King, whereby in those ten Years of Dearth the King purchased at so low a Rate, as giving the People a little Corn, all the Lands in [italics] Egypt [end italics]. These are Remarks of the admirable Lord [italics] Shaftesbury [end italics], whose inimitable Style and clear Manner of Reasoning, carry Conviction with them. I never knew any Clergyman who quoted him, but to his prejudice, except Doctor [italics] Turnbull [end italics]: And yet I can't see why the Morality or the Preaching of it, should in any wise be offensive to a Christian'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Alexander Carlyle : Letter
'My dear Alick, No piece of news that I have heard for a long time has given me more satisfaction than the intelligence contained in your letter of yesterday. For several weeks I had lived in a total dearth of tidings from you; and both on account of your welfare, and of our mutual projects in the farming line, I had begun to get into the fidgets, and was ready to hasten homewards with many unpleasant imaginations to damp the expected joy of again beholding friends so dear to me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter : Leben Fibels
'Of Richter I yet know little; I have looked into his Herbst-Bluminen, his Flegaljahre, and am now reading his Fibel. It is easy to see already that next to Goethe (and Tieck?) he is the best man in Germany: but his extravagance and barbarism will render the task of selecting from him one of some difficulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter : Herbst-blumine oder gesammelte Wekchen aus Zeitschriften
'Of Richter I yet know little; I have looked into his Herbst-Bluminen, his Flegaljahre, and am now reading his Fibel. It is easy to see already that next to Goethe (and Tieck?) he is the best man in Germany: but his extravagance and barbarism will render the task of selecting from him one of some difficulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter : Die Flegeljahre
'Of Richter I yet know little; I havelooked into his Herbst-Bluminen, his Flegaljahre, and am now reading his Fibel. It is easy to see already that next to Goethe (and Tieck?) he is the best man in Germany: but his extravagance and barbarism will render the task of selecting from him one of some difficulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Anne Lefevre Dacier : [translations of and notes on Homer]
'And here give me Leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies who have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the Name of a [italics] Writer [end italics]; the first is Madam [italics] Dacier [end italics], whose Learning Mr [italics] Pope [end italiocs], while he is indebted to for all the notes on [italics] Homer [end italics], endeavours to depreciate; the second is Mrs. [italics] Catherine Philips [end italics], the matchless [italics] Orinda [end italics], celebrated by Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics], Lord [italics] Orrery [end italics], and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time. I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of the [italics] English[end italics] Numbers; Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics]'s, though full of Wit, have somewhat harsh and uncouth in them, while her Sentiments are great, and virtuous; her Diction natural, easy, flowing, and harmonious. Love she has wrote upon with Warmth, but then it was such as Angels might share in without injuring their oringinal purity. Her Elegy on her Husband's Daughter, is a Proof of the Excellency and Tenderness of her own Heart, rarely met with in a Stepmother; nor could I ever read it without tears, a Proof it was wrote from her Heart'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Katherine Philips : Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda
'And here give me Leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies who have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the Name of a [italics] Writer [end italics]; the first is Madam [italics] Dacier [end italics], whose Learning Mr [italics] Pope [end italiocs], while he is indebted to for all the notes on [italics] Homer [end italics], endeavours to depreciate; the second is Mrs. [italics] Catherine Philips [end italics], the matchless [italics] Orinda [end italics], celebrated by Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics], Lord [italics] Orrery [end italics], and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time. I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of the [italics] English[end italics] Numbers; Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics]'s, though full of Wit, have somewhat harsh and uncouth in them, while her Sentiments are great, and virtuous; her Diction natural, easy, flowing, and harmonious. Love she has wrote upon with Warmth, but then it was such as Angels might share in without injuring their oringinal purity. Her Elegy on her Husband's Daughter, is a Proof of the Excellency and Tenderness of her own Heart, rarely met with in a Stepmother; nor could I ever read it without tears, a Proof it was wrote from her Heart'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Katherine Philips : ''in Memory of F.P. who died at Acton the 24 May 1660 at 12 and a 1/2 of Age'
'And here give me Leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies who have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the Name of a [italics] Writer [end italics]; the first is Madam [italics] Dacier [end italics], whose Learning Mr [italics] Pope [end italiocs], while he is indebted to for all the notes on [italics] Homer [end italics], endeavours to depreciate; the second is Mrs. [italics] Catherine Philips [end italics], the matchless [italics] Orinda [end italics], celebrated by Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics], Lord [italics] Orrery [end italics], and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time. I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of the [italics] English[end italics] Numbers; Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics]'s, though full of Wit, have somewhat harsh and uncouth in them, while her Sentiments are great, and virtuous; her Diction natural, easy, flowing, and harmonious. Love she has wrote upon with Warmth, but then it was such as Angels might share in without injuring their oringinal purity. Her Elegy on her Husband's Daughter, is a Proof of the Excellency and Tenderness of her own Heart, rarely met with in a Stepmother; nor could I ever read it without tears, a Proof it was wrote from her Heart'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : [Poems]
'And here give me Leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies who have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the Name of a [italics] Writer [end italics]; the first is Madam [italics] Dacier [end italics], whose Learning Mr [italics] Pope [end italiocs], while he is indebted to for all the notes on [italics] Homer [end italics], endeavours to depreciate; the second is Mrs. [italics] Catherine Philips [end italics], the matchless [italics] Orinda [end italics], celebrated by Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics], Lord [italics] Orrery [end italics], and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time. I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of the [italics] English[end italics] Numbers; Mr [italics] Cowly [end italics]'s, though full of Wit, have somewhat harsh and uncouth in them, while her Sentiments are great, and virtuous; her Diction natural, easy, flowing, and harmonious. Love she has wrote upon with Warmth, but then it was such as Angels might share in without injuring their oringinal purity. Her Elegy on her Husband's Daughter, is a Proof of the Excellency and Tenderness of her own Heart, rarely met with in a Stepmother; nor could I ever read it without tears, a Proof it was wrote from her Heart'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Auguste Heinrich Julius Lafontaine : Raphael
'Could you learn for me which is Lafontaine's best novel in one moderate volume? I have read his Raphael (in French), his Rudolph von Werdenberg, and his Tinchen (in German): there is genius in all of these, but whether any of them is among the best of his half-a-century of works, I have no means of ascertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Auguste Heinrich Julius Lafontaine : Rudolph von Werdenberg
'Could you learn for me which is Lafontaine's best novel in one moderate volume? I have read his Raphael (in French), his Rudolph von Werdenberg, and his Tinchen (in German): there is genius in all of these, but whether any of them is among the best of his half-a-century of works, I have no means of ascertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Auguste Heinrich Julius Lafontaine : Tinchen oder die Mannerprobe
'Could you learn for me which is Lafontaine's best novel in one moderate volume? I have read his Raphael (in French), his Rudolph von Werdenberg, and his Tinchen (in German): there is genius in all of these, but whether any of them is among the best of his half-a-century of works, I have no means of ascertaining.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Mrs Grierson : [Poems]
'I cannot, except my own Countrywoman, Mrs [italics] Grierson [end italics], find out another female Writer, whose Works are worth reading, she indeed had a happy and well-improved Genius; I remember she wrote a very fine poem on Bishop [italics] Berkley's Bermudian [end italics] Scheme' [LP then summarises and quotes from the poem]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Mrs Montagu : Letter
'I have had a letter from Mrs Montague and, (which is still more extraordinary) I have answered it. What on earth did you say, to make her so good to me? She could not have written more frankly and affectionately if I had been her own child. I have never met with any thing like this from Woman before- I purpose loving Mrs Montague all my life; if I find her always the same as she has introduced herself to me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter : unknown
'It is many a weary year since I have been so idle or so happy. I have not done two sheets of Werter yet; I read Richter and Jacobi, I ride, and hoe cabbages, and like Basil Montague, am "a lover of all quiet things"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Mrs Montagu : Letter dated 13 June
'I am very curious to see Mrs Montagu's catalogue of duties: so take care that you do not light your pipe with the letter. I have heard from the "noble Lady" again, and written again - She will surely be satisfied that there is no worm of disappointment preying on my damask cheek; for I have told her in luminous EngLIsh that my heart is not in England but in Annandale!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
George Gordon, Lord Byron : unknown
'I went yesterday to Montreux and then changed and went in a funny funicular to a place called Gstaadt where we arrived at 7.30. I read Byron all the time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
Mrs Montagu : Letter dated 3 July
I had two sheets from Mrs Montagu the other day trying to prove to me that I knew nothing at all of my own heart (Mercy how romantic she is[.)] write presently to Templand.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Mrs Montagu : Letter dated 20 July
'My dearest I thought to write to you from this place with joy; I write with shame and tears. The enclosed letter, which I found lying for me, has distracted my thoughts from the prospect of our meeting-the brightest in my mind for many months, and fixed them on a part of my own conduct which makes me unworthy ever to see you, or be clasped to your true heart again. I cannot come to you cannot be at peace with myself:... I loved [Edward Irving]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Virginia Woolf : "memoir of Old Bloomsbury"
'After dinner, (a delicious dinner), Virginia read us her memoir of Old Bloomsbury. She had read it to me already at Saulieu, but I loved hearing it again; I want you to hear it.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf : Orlando
'My own darling, I write to you in the middle of reading "Orlando", in such a turmoil of excitement and confusion that I scarcely know where (or who!) I am. It came this morning by the first post and I have been reading it ever since, and am now half-way through. Virginia sent it to me in a lovely leather binding - bless her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book
Samuel Rutherford Crockett : The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion
E. M. Forster to Alice Clara Forster, 13 February 1898: 'Have you read Crockett's new book, the Adventures of Sir Toady Lion? It is splendid: a child's story, & reminds me of the times I used to have with Ansell & Frankie [neighbours].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster : "The Greek Feeling for Nature"
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 3 March 1898: 'I have just read a paper to the Classical Society on "The Greek Feeling for Nature"; everyone sat upon it very much, and disagreed with everything I said.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Unknown
Henry James : Portrait of a Lady
E. M. Forster to George Barger, 27 July 1899: 'I have had a good time in Scotland & here [Northumberland] & go home next week. I have just read James' "A portrait of a Lady" [sic]. It is very wonderful but there's something wrong with him or me: he is not as George Meredith. Now I'm reading the Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett, and am a little bored though there is lots of delightful writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : The Forest Lovers: A Romance
E. M. Forster to George Barger, 27 July 1899: 'I have had a good time in Scotland & here [Northumberland] & go home next week. I have just read James' "A portrait of a Lady" [sic]. It is very wonderful but there's something wrong with him or me: he is not as George Meredith. Now I'm reading the Forest Lovers by Maurice Hewlett, and am a little bored though there is lots of delightful writing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : plays
E. M. Forster to Alice Clara Forster, 5 November 1899: 'I have been reading Bernard Shaw's plays. Wonderfully clever & amusing, but they make me feel bad inside.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Macaulay Trevelyan : 'The Uses of History'
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 27 February 1900: 'Last Thursday I went to Mr Dickinson's to hear Trevelyan of Trinity read a paper on "The Uses of History", & very good it was.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Trevelyan Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Morgan Forster : paper
E. M. Forster to Leonard Woolf, 1 January 1905: 'I was up [at Cambridge] for a fortnight, and read the Society [i.e. the Apostles] a paper, which, if I find it, I will send you [...] No one thought there was much in it (Strachey, Sheppard, Keynes, present). You may throw it away.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Pater : Marius the Epicurean
E. M. Forster to Arthur Cole, 11 April 1905: 'Have you read Erewhon? Now I'm at Marius the Epicurean.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Joris-Karl Huysmans : La Cathedrale
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 3 Ocotber 1906: 'You would hardly know me, so violently has Chartres gothicised me [...] In or outside Chartres you can find every human passion. Huysman[s], amid much nonsense, does make this point -- that the middle ages did not shirk things [...] His is an interesting book -- I forget if you set me onto it: at all events you first told me his name.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Edward Garnett : A Censored Play: The Breaking Point
E. M. Forster to Edward Garnett, 28 October 1907: 'You said I might write to you about The Breaking Point. I think it wonderful, and unlike anything I have read before. One receives images from some books, and yours suggested a vase in the hands of a clumsy person which will be dropped sooner or later, but when, one cannot tell. I had this image even before I came to the broken glass in the first act.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Ernest B. Havell : Indian Sculpture and Painting ... with an Explanation of Their Motives and Ideals
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 10 February 1910: 'I left off the last [letter to Darling] saying that I was going to tell you something special in the next, and now for the life of me I can't remember what it is. It's a comment on our civilisation. This reminds me: of my story being read to the Rajah [...] I don't know why it should make me smile, but it does [...] Perhaps he would think it odd to read a book about Indian Art, as I have been doing -- by Havell. A little petulant in tone, but fascinating.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Brothers Karamazov
E. M. Forster to Ottoline Morrell, 2 April 1910: 'I am reading Les Freres Karamazov, but am so far a little disappointed. It seems sketchy, though I have no notion what I mean by that useful word; not "insincere" by any means.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Grace Baillie Welsh : Letter
'She sulked for four and twenty hours, and then wrote me a long epistle; wherein she demonstrated (not by geometrical reasonings) that I was utterly lost to all sense of duty; and towards you. "She had, indeed, given her consent to our union" (she said) "when you should have made yourself a name and a situation in life [entire phrase underscored twice]; but only because I asked it, with tears, upon my bended knees, at a time, too, when my life seemed precarious!!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
Mrs Montagu : letter
'I have had an answer from Mrs Montagu full of rhetoric, and kindness; but no matter for the rhetoric! She is good to me; and charity covereth a multitude of sins- She says "Mr Carlyle ought not to have stept in between you and your kind intention; nay more, he ought himself to have seen my boy"-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Manuscript: Letter
John Carteret Pilkington : To Samuel Foote, Esq. on seeing his Englishman in Paris
[Jack Pilkington gives an introduction to his now deceased mother's third volume of memoirs, relating how he wrote a poem 'To Samuel Foote Esq, on seeing his Englishman in Paris' and sent it to him, proposing to insert it in the 'Daily Advertiser'; he received the following reply] 'It is impossible for me to thank you as I ought, for your inclosed Favour; and full as impossible for me, to answer the Contents of your obliging Letter; there is at present, such a Conflict in me, between Modesty and Vanity, that as neither can get the better, I must leave the destination of your elegant Piece, to your own Discretion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Foote Manuscript: Unknown
Lord Kingsborough : [letters]
'Amongst all the Letters I have yet seen published, I never saw any so truly elegant, learned, and polite, as those with which your Lordship has condescended to honour your poor Servant'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Alexander Pope : Windsor Forest
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Ethic Epistles
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Eloisa to Abelard
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury : Philosophical Rhapsody, A
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : On the Death of Mr Crashaw
'I think I have scarce ever read Two better Lines than Mr POPE's Epitaph on this Prince of Philosophers [Newton; she then quotes the lines] His Inscription on Sir [italics] Godfrey Kneller's [end italics] Monument is as remarkably bad as this is excellent. [She quotes 8 lines] And bad as it is, 'tis but a lean Translation from the [italics] Italian [end italics], an enervate Language, well adapted to the soft Warblers of it, but incapable of manly Strength, Dignity or Grace.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : [Inscription on monument of godfrey Kneller in Westminster Abbey]
'I think I have scarce ever read Two better Lines than Mr POPE's Epitaph on this Prince of Philosophers [Newton; she then quotes the lines] His Inscription on Sir [italics] Godfrey Kneller's [end italics] Monument is as remarkably bad as this is excellent. [She quotes 8 lines] And bad as it is, 'tis but a lean Translation from the [italics] Italian [end italics], an enervate Language, well adapted to the soft Warblers of it, but incapable of manly Strength, Dignity or Grace.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Graffito
Mary Barber : [Poems]
'Mrs Barber, whose Name, at her earnest request, I omitted in my first Volume, and who was the Lady I mentioned to have been with me, at my first interview with the Dean at Dr [italics] Delany [end italics]'s Seat, was at this time writing a volume of Poems, some of which I fancy might, at this Day, be seen in the Cheesemongers, Chandlers, Pastry-Cooks, and Second-hand Booksellers Shops: however, dull as they were, they certainly would have been much worse, but that Doctor [italics] Delany [end italics] frequently held what he called a [italics] Senatus Consultum [end italics], to correct these undigested Materials.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Gibbon : Autobiography
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 15 April 1910: 'Just now I am enthralled by Gibbon's Autobiography. There are passages in it that are more than "correct", and on the border line of beauty. What a giant he is -- greatest historian & greatest [...] name of the 18th century [italics]I[end italics] say; whether it is his greatness or his remoteness that makes his goings on with religion so queer I do not know.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Sir Alfred C. Lyall : British Dominion in India
E. M. Forster to Syed Ross Masood, mid-January 1911: 'I am reading Lyall's hand book about the English in India -- the sort of thing I required [for preparation for travels in India]. Also I have failed to read another of Alice Parin's [sic] novels called Idolatry. The other I tried was good, but this is about missionaries & wicked Hindus and most tiresome.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Sir Alfred C. Lyall : Asiatic Studies: Religious and Social
'E[dward]M[organ]F[orster] was reading, as well, Lyall's Asiatic Studies: Religious and Social (1882) and G. F. I. Graham, The Life and Works of Syed Ahmed Khan (1909).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Puck of Pook's Hill
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 July 1911: 'I have been reading Kipling's child's history of England with mingled joy and disgust. It's a fine conception, but oh is it necessary to build character on a psychological untruth? In other words to teach the young citizen that he is absolutely unlike the young German or the young Bashahari -- that foreigners are envious and treacherous, Englishmen, through some freak of God, never --? Kipling and all that school know it's an untruth at the bottom of their hearts -- as untrue as it is unloveable. But, for the sake of patriotism, they lie. It is despairing [...] 'I couldn't on the other hand read the New Machiavelli, finding it too fretful and bumptious, and very inartistic, but must try again -- the more so as Wells, in an article in Le Temps has mentioned me among the authors qui meritent etre mieux connus en France [...] The best novels I have come across in the past year are Rosalind Murray's The Leading Note [...] and Wedgwood's Shadow of a Titan -- unfortunately written in an affected and unreadable style.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Rosalind Murray : The Leading Note
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 29 July 1911: 'I have been reading Kipling's child's history of England with mingled joy and disgust. It's a fine conception, but oh is it necessary to build character on a psychological untruth? In other words to teach the young citizen that he is absolutely unlike the young German or the young Bashahari -- that foreigners are envious and treacherous, Englishmen, through some freak of God, never --? Kipling and all that school know it's an untruth at the bottom of their hearts -- as untrue as it is unloveable. But, for the sake of patriotism, they lie. It is despairing [...] 'I couldn't on the other hand read the New Machiavelli, finding it too fretful and bumptious, and very inartistic, but must try again -- the more so as Wells, in an article in Le Temps has mentioned me among the authors qui meritent etre mieux connus en France [...] The best novels I have come across in the past year are Rosalind Murray's The Leading Note [...] and Wedgwood's Shadow of a Titan -- unfortunately written in an affected and unreadable style.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Forrest Reid : The Bracknels
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 31 January 1912: 'I have read The Bracknels, and wish to thank you for it [...] it does help one to distinguish between the superficial and the real, and to some minds there is something exhilarating in this [...] The book has moved me a good deal'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Moore : Ave
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912: 'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Andre Chevrillon : Dans L'Inde
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912: 'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Forrest Reid : The Bracknels
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912: 'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Walter de la Mare : The Return
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 12 March 1912: 'I seem to have read several good books -- William James's Memories and Studies, Walter de la Mare's The Return -- supernatural, profound, and fine --: The Reward of Virtue by Amber Reeves [...] Foemina is interesting on L'Ame des Anglais, though she theorises too much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Amber Reeves : The Reward of Virtue
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 12 March 1912: 'I seem to have read several good books -- William James's Memories and Studies, Walter de la Mare's The Return -- supernatural, profound, and fine --: The Reward of Virtue by Amber Reeves [...] Foemina is interesting on L'Ame des Anglais, though she theorises too much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Leonard Woolf : story
E. M. Forster to Leonard Woolf, before 24 May 1912: 'Dear Woolf 'It's a good story. Try the English Review -- I know of no other magazine that will pay for erections and excrement. Suggestions. New title. Shorten the Introduction and simplify its style [...] 'I enjoyed the story more the second reading, but still feel the touch of "scold" about it, that often goads me in Kipling [...] your man who has done & felt things is a little too anxious to give those who haven't a bad time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Barham Middleton : 'The Ghost Ship'
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912: 'The day before yesterday I read The Ghost Ship by R. Middleton [...] I thought it very good, and it added to the other qualities I want in a supernatural story, the quality of good nature. The others in the same book did not look as interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
Forrest Reid : Following Darkness
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 13 December 1912: 'I have read Following Darkness again, and am happier than I can tell you to be connected with it [as dedicatee]. Initials [in dedication] are of no importance -- it is the knowledge that I have helped in it. Besides, your books have a knack of opening in my hands when daily life has gone wrong [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Forrest Reid : Following Darkness
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 2 February 1913: 'I sent F[ollowing].D[arkness]. to a woman of another kind [i.e. than Alice Meynell, possibly reviewer of book in the Times Literary Supplement] and have just heard "I am still haunted by it -- it has interested me very much -- it is extraordinarily intimate and has a certain distinction and beauty that attract me [...] together with a certain brutal reality. My impressions are complex and I don't express them well. I do think it quite extraordinarily good."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Harold Nicolson : Public Faces
'"Face" is one of his favourite books; so there. He simply loves it. Also your book on your father.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Grant Print: Book
Mrs Meade : [letter to LP's son, Jack]
'I was one Day exceedingly surprised when the Penny-post brought a Letter, directed to my Son; as it was marked [italics] Teddington [end italics] I open'd it, judging it was some business that Mrs [italics] Meade [end italics] wanted to have transacted; when, O shameful! it was a Love-letter to the Child, who was but sixteen Years of Age, and she is four Years older than I am, with a Direction to him to meet her at a Coffee-house in [italics] London [end italics], and an Offer of Marriage to him'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Francis Hutcheson : Inquiry into the Originals of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, An
'Now I have mentioned this small but inimitable well wrote Book (Xenophon's 'Symposium'], which was recommended to me by Dr [italics] Swift [end italics], and which I in return commend to all such of my fair Readers as have a Taste for real Wit, in which the divine [italics] Socrates [end italics] as conspicuously shone, as he did in Purity of Life and Constancy in Martyrdom; that they peruse it with Care, as it will refine their Ideas and improve their Judgements, polish their Stile, shew them true Beauty, and lead them gently and agreeably to its prime Origin and Source. [LP then quotes from Milton's 'Comus' on beauty] I must here observe in my tracing Authors thro' each other, [italics] Zenophon [end italics] and [italics] Plato [end italics] borrowed from [italics] Socrates [end italics], whose disciples they were. [italics] Zenophon [end italics] acknowledges it as freely as I do the Instructions I received from Dr [italics] Swift [end italics]. Lord [italics] Shaftsbury's[end italics] Search after Beauty, is copied from [italics] Socrates [end italics]; Mr [italics] Pope's [end italics] Ethics stolen from both; and the leaned Mr [italics] Hutcheson[end italics]'s Beauty and Harmony, an Imitation of the great Philosophers and excellent Moralists first mentioned'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury : Characteristics
'Now I have mentioned this small but inimitable well wrote Book (Xenophon's 'Symposium'], which was recommended to me by Dr [italics] Swift [end italics], and which I in return commend to all such of my fair Readers as have a Taste for real Wit, in which the divine [italics] Socrates [end italics] as conspicuously shone, as he did in Purity of Life and Constancy in Martyrdom; that they peruse it with Care, as it will refine their Ideas and improve their Judgements, polish their Stile, shew them true Beauty, and lead them gently and agreeably to its prime Origin and Source. [LP then quotes from Milton's 'Comus' on beauty] I must here observe in my tracing Authors thro' each other, [italics] Zenophon [end italics] and [italics] Plato [end italics] borrowed from [italics] Socrates [end italics], whose disciples they were. [italics] Zenophon [end italics] acknowledges it as freely as I do the Instructions I received from Dr [italics] Swift [end italics]. Lord [italics] Shaftsbury's[end italics] Search after Beauty, is copied from [italics] Socrates [end italics]; Mr [italics] Pope's [end italics] Ethics stolen from both; and the leaned Mr [italics] Hutcheson[end italics]'s Beauty and Harmony, an Imitation of the great Philosophers and excellent Moralists first mentioned'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Ethic Epistles
'Now I have mentioned this small but inimitable well wrote Book (Xenophon's 'Symposium'], which was recommended to me by Dr [italics] Swift [end italics], and which I in return commend to all such of my fair Readers as have a Taste for real Wit, in which the divine [italics] Socrates [end italics] as conspicuously shone, as he did in Purity of Life and Constancy in Martyrdom; that they peruse it with Care, as it will refine their Ideas and improve their Judgements, polish their Stile, shew them true Beauty, and lead them gently and agreeably to its prime Origin and Source. [LP then quotes from Milton's 'Comus' on beauty] I must here observe in my tracing Authors thro' each other, [italics] Zenophon [end italics] and [italics] Plato [end italics] borrowed from [italics] Socrates [end italics], whose disciples they were. [italics] Zenophon [end italics] acknowledges it as freely as I do the Instructions I received from Dr [italics] Swift [end italics]. Lord [italics] Shaftsbury's[end italics] Search after Beauty, is copied from [italics] Socrates [end italics]; Mr [italics] Pope's [end italics] Ethics stolen from both; and the leaned Mr [italics] Hutcheson[end italics]'s Beauty and Harmony, an Imitation of the great Philosophers and excellent Moralists first mentioned'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Francis Hutcheson : Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue
'Had Mr [italics] Hutcheson [end italics] stop'd at this Book [his 'Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue'], by which he had acquired some Degree of Reputation, both as a Writer, a Divine and a Mathematician, he had done wisely; but O! his Essay on the Passions overturned his scarce established Praise; if it has any Meaning, it is like dark veil'd [italics] Cotyto [end italics], in her Ebon Chair, close curtained round, impenetrably obscure, or from his Flames, [italics] No Light but rather darkness visible [end italics; allusions to 'Comus' and 'Paradise Lost']. I really thought it was the Defect of my Head that made me not comprehend this Piece, till I heard the present Lord Bishop of [italics] Elphin [end italics], whose Learning or Judgment was never yet doubted, declare he did not understand it. After all, whether the Defect lay in the Book or the Bishop let the Reader determine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Francis Hutcheson : Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections
'Had Mr [italics] Hutcheson [end italics] stop'd at this Book [his 'Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue'], by which he had acquired some Degree of Reputation, both as a Writer, a Divine and a Mathematician, he had done wisely; but O! his Essay on the Passions overturned his scarce established Praise; if it has any Meaning, it is like dark veil'd [italics] Cotyto [end italics], in her Ebon Chair, close curtained round, impenetrably obscure, or from his Flames, [italics] No Light but rather darkness visible [end italics; allusions to 'Comus' and 'Paradise Lost']. I really thought it was the Defect of my Head that made me not comprehend this Piece, till I heard the present Lord Bishop of [italics] Elphin [end italics], whose Learning or Judgment was never yet doubted, declare he did not understand it. After all, whether the Defect lay in the Book or the Bishop let the Reader determine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
Francis Hutcheson : Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections
'Had Mr [italics] Hutcheson [end italics] stop'd at this Book [his 'Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue'], by which he had acquired some Degree of Reputation, both as a Writer, a Divine and a Mathematician, he had done wisely; but O! his Essay on the Passions overturned his scarce established Praise; if it has any Meaning, it is like dark veil'd [italics] Cotyto [end italics], in her Ebon Chair, close curtained round, impenetrably obscure, or from his Flames, [italics] No Light but rather darkness visible [end italics; allusions to 'Comus' and 'Paradise Lost']. I really thought it was the Defect of my Head that made me not comprehend this Piece, till I heard the present Lord Bishop of [italics] Elphin [end italics], whose Learning or Judgment was never yet doubted, declare he did not understand it. After all, whether the Defect lay in the Book or the Bishop let the Reader determine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Synge Print: Book
Charles Wogan : ['Adventures of Eugenius' - veiled Autobiography]
'the Dean received from [italics] Spain [end italics], from one Mr [italics] Wogan [end italics], a green Velvet Bag, in which was contained the Adventures of [italics] Eugenius [end italics]; as also an Account of the Courtship and Marriage of the Chevalier, to the Princess [italics] Sobiesky [end italics], wherein he represents himself to have been a principal Negotiator. It was wrote in the Novel Stile, but a little heavily. There was also some of the Psalms of [italics] David [end italics], paraphras'd in [italics] Miltonick [end italics] Verse, and a Letter to the Dean, with Remarks on the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics]; in which he says he believes the People of [italics] England [end italics] and [italics] Ireland [end italics] had quite lost all Remains of Elegance and Taste, since their top Entertainments were composed of Scenes of Highwaymen, and Prostitues, who all remain unpunish'd and triumphant in their Crimes: He concluded with paying the Dean the Compliment of intreating him to correct the Work. The Dean said, he did not care to be troubled with it, and bid Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] take it to [italics] London [end italics], and look over it at his Leisure, which accordingly he did.' [LP then relates how Swift changed his mind and there was a violent row]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Wogan : [Psalms of David in Miltonic verse]
'the Dean received from [italics] Spain [end italics], from one Mr [italics] Wogan [end italics], a green Velvet Bag, in which was contained the Adventures of [italics] Eugenius [end italics]; as also an Account of the Courtship and Marriage of the Chevalier, to the Princess [italics] Sobiesky [end italics], wherein he represents himself to have been a principal Negotiator. It was wrote in the Novel Stile, but a little heavily. There was also some of the Psalms of [italics] David [end italics], paraphras'd in [italics] Miltonick [end italics] Verse, and a Letter to the Dean, with Remarks on the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics]; in which he says he believes the People of [italics] England [end italics] and [italics] Ireland [end italics] had quite lost all Remains of Elegance and Taste, since their top Entertainments were composed of Scenes of Highwaymen, and Prostitues, who all remain unpunish'd and triumphant in their Crimes: He concluded with paying the Dean the Compliment of intreating him to correct the Work. The Dean said, he did not care to be troubled with it, and bid Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] take it to [italics] London [end italics], and look over it at his Leisure, which accordingly he did.' [LP then relates how Swift changed his mind and there was a violent row]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Wogan : [letter on the subject of 'The Beggar's Opera']
'the Dean received from [italics] Spain [end italics], from one Mr [italics] Wogan [end italics], a green Velvet Bag, in which was contained the Adventures of [italics] Eugenius [end italics]; as also an Account of the Courtship and Marriage of the Chevalier, to the Princess [italics] Sobiesky [end italics], wherein he represents himself to have been a principal Negotiator. It was wrote in the Novel Stile, but a little heavily. There was also some of the Psalms of [italics] David [end italics], paraphras'd in [italics] Miltonick [end italics] Verse, and a Letter to the Dean, with Remarks on the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics]; in which he says he believes the People of [italics] England [end italics] and [italics] Ireland [end italics] had quite lost all Remains of Elegance and Taste, since their top Entertainments were composed of Scenes of Highwaymen, and Prostitues, who all remain unpunish'd and triumphant in their Crimes: He concluded with paying the Dean the Compliment of intreating him to correct the Work. The Dean said, he did not care to be troubled with it, and bid Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] take it to [italics] London [end italics], and look over it at his Leisure, which accordingly he did.' [LP then relates how Swift changed his mind and there was a violent row]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
Charles Wogan : [various works sent to Jonathan Swift]
'the Dean received from [italics] Spain [end italics], from one Mr [italics] Wogan [end italics], a green Velvet Bag, in which was contained the Adventures of [italics] Eugenius [end italics]; as also an Account of the Courtship and Marriage of the Chevalier, to the Princess [italics] Sobiesky [end italics], wherein he represents himself to have been a principal Negotiator. It was wrote in the Novel Stile, but a little heavily. There was also some of the Psalms of [italics] David [end italics], paraphras'd in [italics] Miltonick [end italics] Verse, and a Letter to the Dean, with Remarks on the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics]; in which he says he believes the People of [italics] England [end italics] and [italics] Ireland [end italics] had quite lost all Remains of Elegance and Taste, since their top Entertainments were composed of Scenes of Highwaymen, and Prostitues, who all remain unpunish'd and triumphant in their Crimes: He concluded with paying the Dean the Compliment of intreating him to correct the Work. The Dean said, he did not care to be troubled with it, and bid Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] take it to [italics] London [end italics], and look over it at his Leisure, which accordingly he did.' [LP then relates how Swift changed his mind and there was a violent row]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Pilkington Manuscript: Unknown
Beatrix Potter : unknown
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Charles Dickens : unknown
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : unknown
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : unknown
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Puck of Pook's Hill
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : unknown
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
George John Whyte-Melville : The Gladiators
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Last Days of Pompeii
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Arthur Weigal : Egyptian Princess
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : Little Match Girl, The
'She did take to reading me The Little Matchgirl rather more frequently as time went on. Maybe she hoped that I would learn to read as a means of avoiding that particular story, but I have a nasty suspicion that it was done as a means of providing light relief for herself, because The Little Match Girl always made me cry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosemary Sutcliff Print: Book
Charles Lamb : unknown
'I think she thought I was French as I was reading the "Matin". But when I picked up Lamb which was obviously an English book, she began throwing out leading questions.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book
Pelham Grenville Wodehouse : unknown
'Moreover, her train had arrived one-and-a-half hours before luncheon, so she had gone to the Paddington Hotel and sat in the lounge reading P.G.Wodehouse.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Smyth Print: Book
Jean Baptise Honore Raymond Capefigue : Histoire de la Reforme, de la Ligue, et du Regne de Henri IV
'Imagine my delight to find a footnote in Capefigs thus conceived ... Immediately after, Capefigues talks of la grande flotte de Dracke.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : unknown
'I cannot tell how I feel, who can ever? I feel like a person in a novel of George Sand’s; I feel a desire to go out of the house, and begin life anew in the cool blue night. Never to come back here; never, never. Only to go on forever by sunny day and gray day, by bright night and foul, by highway and byway, town and hamlet, until somewhere by a roadside or in some clean inn, clean death opened his arms to me, and took me to his quiet heart forever.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Hospital Outlines: Sketches and Portraits
'My dear Henley, Sketches III line 11. More laughter comes from them than moan. IV As a whole. VII Both quatrains. VIII line 2. Extemporising a becoming gloom. IX Well, I don’t like it. Portraits I The sestett[sic] is not up to the mark, I think, but I don’t press this. IV Is a little broken, and the phrasing is a little imbecile. VII I don’t like. IX The first quatrain, and the words "does not feel his place" in the second. There is positively all I find….'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Probably proof.
Pierre de Ronsard : Sonnets pour Helene
'In years away from this when I am quite forgotten, maybe you will turn up some of these old letters & feel a little like saying "Ronsard m'a celebree Du temps que j'etais jeune!" But then i am not Ronsard! I never, indeed, remember to have read anything of R's, except that...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : [unknown article in French]
'I have just got my French article in print: it reads quite nicely'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Serial / periodical
Ford Madox Ford : [poems]
'The [underlined] whole [end underlining] trouble [in Bowen's relationships with her friends Phyllis and Clifford] is that Clifford doesn't admire your poetry!! so that somehow there is something lacking in their personal sympathy with me!!! And [underlined] I [end underlining] don't admire Clifford's, - tho' I try and dissemble a little - so you [underlined] see [end underlining]!! And this morning relations with P. were a trifle strained becaused she read me some poetry she'd written, for criticism, I said I thought there were always too many Stars & Pools & Buds in what she wrote, & she said I was so dreadfully sophisticated and affected!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clifford Bax Print: Unknown
Clifford Bax : [poems]
'The [underlined] whole [end underlining] trouble [in Bowen's relationships with her friends Phyllis and Clifford] is that Clifford doesn't admire your poetry!! so that somehow there is something lacking in their personal sympathy with me!!! And [underlined] I [end underlining] don't admire Clifford's, - tho' I try and dissemble a little - so you [underlined] see [end underlining]!! And this morning relations with P. were a trifle strained becaused she read me some poetry she'd written, for criticism, I said I thought there were always too many Stars & Pools & Buds in what she wrote, & she said I was so dreadfully sophisticated and affected!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn 'Stella' Bowen Print: Unknown
Ford Madox Ford : [letter to Stella Bowen]
'P.'s roving eye fell upon your letter of today, & read the beginning of the sentence about "Poor old Phyllis & her poems!" Which led to demands to know how it ended. Which led to strenuous refusals on my part & denials of her right to ask, and assurances of the trviality of the reference. Which led to really violent hysteria.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Phyllis Reid Manuscript: Letter
Herbert George Wells : Outline of History, The
As for me I am reading Wells on history! I think it wickeder than I did: but it's an amazing piece of book-making. When he gets past clerical & medieval times he's quite sound from a Left point of view till he gets to Napoleon! But [underlined] how [end underlining] jealous he is of all great men from Pericles and J. Caesar to everyone else. You see him saying: "No! I couldn't do what Alexander did. So I'll do for [underlined] his [end underlining] reputation!" And the joke of it is that he damns every one of them - Solomon, Mahomet, Alexander, Julius Caesar & the rest for being untrustworthy with women! I've never seen Satan so splendidly reprove sin.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Mr Bosphorus and the Muses
'I have been interrupted [in finishing a play] by getting back the m.s. of [underlined] Mr. Bosphorus [end underlining] which I have just gone through again, cutting it a little. I shall send it off again this afternoon.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Manuscript: Unknown
Herbert George Wells : Outline of History, The
'behind my back, E.J. is reading H.G.'s [underlined] Outline of History [end underlining] & making riotous comments on Amenhotep IV who she declares is a lidie with two heads'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Julia Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Holbein
'I had a long conversation in the tram yesterday with an old maid who had just come back from Florence & talked about pictures, & when I said that I thought Giotto was more decorative than Holbein she... quoted my own "Holbein" against me, without knowing my name... But I think she had a shrewd suspicion that I was... Maurice Hewlett. For she said that someone in the Hotel Montfleuris had pointed me out as "writing" & immediately began to rave about [underlined] "Little Novels from Italy" [end underlining]. So I got off at the next stopping place - at little Africa.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : Little Novels of Italy
'I had a long conversation in the tram yesterday with an old maid who had just come back from Florence & talked about pictures, & when I said that I thought Giotto was more decorative than Holbein she... quoted my own "Holbein" against me, without knowing my name... But I think she had a shrewd suspicion that I was... Maurice Hewlett. For she said that someone in the Hotel Montfleuris had pointed me out as "writing" & immediately began to rave about [underlined] "Little Novels from Italy" [end underlining]. So I got off at the next stopping place - at little Africa.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Marsden Case, The: A Romance
'I am rather dithered after writing nearly all night & [underlined] then [end underlining] reading the [underlined] Marsden Case [end underlining] - not without satisfaction.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford : [several poems]
'I read "The Old Houses of Flanders" & "Clair de Lune", first half, & "Thank Goodness the Moving is Over" last night after my speech... & I was signing copies of my books for an hour an a half afterwards!'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford
Getrude Stein : [art criticism]
'I've had [underlined] one [end underlining] violent set-too with Douglas on the subject of Gertrude Stein. He said her work was "purest bosh" & thought it "a shame" that undergraduates should be inveighed into listening & being influenced by her art propaganda.' [SB defended Stein's work]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Cole Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Good Soldier, The
'I was lately forced into the rather close examination of this book, for I had to translate it into French, that forcing me to give it much closer attention than would be the case in any reading however minute. And I will permit myself to say that I was astounded at the work I must have put into the construction of the book, at the intricate tangle of references and cross-references.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Good Soldier, The
'a fervent young admirer exclaimed: "By Jove, the [underlined] Good Soldier [end underlining] is the finest novel in the English Language!" whereupon my friend Mr John Rodker who has always had a properly tempered admiration for my work remarked in his clear, slow drawl: "Ah yes, it is, but you have left out a word. It is the finest French novel in the English language!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Good Soldier, The
'a fervent young admirer exclaimed: "By Jove, the [underlined] Good Soldier [end underlining] is the finest novel in the English Language!" whereupon my friend Mr John Rodker who has always had a properly tempered admiration for my work remarked in his clear, slow drawl: "Ah yes, it is, but you have left out a word. It is the finest French novel in the English language!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Rodker Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : [dedicatory letter to 'The Good Soldier']
'The last mail brought me your Dedicatory letter. I am [underlined] so [end underlining] touched & so very very proud. I don't know how to tell you how proud it makes me. It is lovely of you to want to pay me such a tribute. Of course I don't deserve a quarter of it. Some day I shall begin to tell you what [underlined] you [end underlining] have done for [underlined] me [end underlining]! I suppose you know me well enough however to guess that at the idea of your letter being [underlined] published [end italics] I am overcome by feelings of really awful - shyness, I suppose it is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Manuscript: Letter
Ford Madox Ford : [unknown article about Ezra Pound]
'I read about your earlier dinner quite by accident in "Books" - & by the way I have never had the copy with your Stephen Crane article. I liked [underlined] very [end underlining] much the article about Ezra - I have read Hemingway's book - It seems pretty good. I like that hard clean sort of effect - but I think it gives also the effect of brittleness - or is that nonsense? It is also rather dazzling & tiring. He has touched me off rather nastily - rather on Jean's lines - So I feel very discouraged! Even you don't quite escape. Still its all of no consequence. Jenny had Violet's book lying about yesterday, which really [underlined] did [end underlining] rather upset me - The Envoi appears to say, that with someone who has had so [underlined] many [end underlining] final grand Passions there will [underlined] never [end underlining] be [underlined] any [end underlining] means of knowing who was really "the" one!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Serial / periodical
Ernest Hemingway : Sun Also Rises, The
'I read about your earlier dinner quite by accident in "Books" - & by the way I have never had the copy with your Stephen Crane article. I liked [underlined] very [end underlining] much the article about Ezra - I have read Hemingway's book - It seems pretty good. I like that hard clean sort of effect - but I think it gives also the effect of brittleness - or is that nonsense? It is also rather dazzling & tiring. He has touched me off rather nastily - rather on Jean's lines - So I feel very discouraged! Even you don't quite escape. Still its all of no consequence. Jenny had Violet's book lying about yesterday, which really [underlined] did [end underlining] rather upset me - The Envoi appears to say, that with someone who has had so [underlined] many [end underlining] final grand Passions there will [underlined] never [end underlining] be [underlined] any [end underlining] means of knowing who was really "the" one!
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Thus to Revisit
'I have inspected all the work the binder has done for you and as far as I can rember it seems to be what you ordered. He has put 'Hueffer' on the back of 'Thus to Revisit' having copied the jacket - but I suppose that is of no great consequence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Last Post, The
'first let me say how splendid I think the "Last Post" is. (By the way, Duckworth has acknowledged receipt of MSS, so that's all safe). Mark's death is a lovely poem. And poor Valentine! But all that is a bit too near the knuckle. Still I'm the only person who is going to feel that, and it doesn't make it less wonderful art. I'm glad you didn't have a scene betwen Helen Luther and Valentine. I let Bradley read the MSS before sending it to Duckworth and he is awfully enthusiastic. He thinks it is a wonderfully sustained finish to the whole series. Only he expected a tragic denouement and was taken aback by the capitulation of Sylvia! So was I, rather. But I don't think you've ever in your life done anything better than you've done in this book. There is nothing better anywhere in Literature than Marie Leonie, Mark on Women, and the boy, and even Valentine's agonies even if she [underlined] is [end underlining] so beastly normal! Anyway that is my opinion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Manuscript: Unknown
Ford Madox Ford : Last Post, The
'first let me say how splendid I think the "Last Post" is. (By the way, Duckworth has acknowledged receipt of MSS, so that's all safe). Mark's death is a lovely poem. And poor Valentine! But all that is a bit too near the knuckle. Still I'm the only person who is going to feel that, and it doesn't make it less wonderful art. I'm glad you didn't have a scene betwen Helen Luther and Valentine. I let Bradley read the MSS before sending it to Duckworth and he is awfully enthusiastic. He thinks it is a wonderfully sustained finish to the whole series. Only he expected a tragic denouement and was taken aback by the capitulation of Sylvia! So was I, rather. But I don't think you've ever in your life done anything better than you've done in this book. There is nothing better anywhere in Literature than Marie Leonie, Mark on Women, and the boy, and even Valentine's agonies even if she [underlined] is [end underlining] so beastly normal! Anyway that is my opinion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Ford Madox Ford : New York is Not America
'I am not half so pleased [as with "The Last Post"] with "New York is not America", the American proofs of which I am now wading through. The sentences seem to be so dreadfully long.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: page proofs for American edition
Ford Madox Ford : Last Post, The
'on Saturday the English proofs of Last Post descended on me and on Monday the American one's and I literally could do nothing else as Boni's wanted the proofs back on Monday night. That however was impossible, but I got them finished yesterday and then was too exhausted to do anything. In addition I have any amount of reading to do for the Collier's serial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: page proofs for American edition
Ford Madox Ford : Last Post, The
'on Saturday the English proofs of Last Post descended on me and on Monday the American one's and I literally could do nothing else as Boni's wanted the proofs back on Monday night. That however was impossible, but I got them finished yesterday and then was too exhausted to do anything. In addition I have any amount of reading to do for the Collier's serial'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: page proofs for English edition
Ezra Pound : [early poems]
'[At his parents' house] We saw photos of Ezra as a baby and his first poems in an Idaho paper and no end of things that wd make poor Ezra squirm'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Newspaper
Edward Morgan Forster : Aspects of the Novel
'[After lunch] I shall come back and begin an article I am to write about the technique of the novel for Canby - suggested by a book of E.M. Forster's, which is pretty bad'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : Last Post, The
'I am very touched by all the tributes in your New Year's letter, & enormously pleased with The Last Post. I don't believe you have any last idea how much I admire your genius, & how proud it makes me of my association with you [Stella then talks about her own painting] But your letter, & the "Last Post" together, seem to mark the end of our long intimacy, which did have a great deal of happiness in it for me, & which did involve us in a great deal of decent effort.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
Harry Hensen : [untraced review of Ford's 'The Last Post']
'The Last Post has hitherto had rather a bad press. There were two most violent attacks - on that and N.Y.i. N. A. in the [underlined] Times [end underlining] last Sunday, for no discoverable reason, and the [underlined] Herald-Tribune [end underlining] was not very good. I have written nice things on everbody on that paper, so they can't very well employ their staff to write about me. So Irita - rather at my suggestion - got an English novelist called Macfee to do it, a sort of blighted person I wanted to give a job to. However, as a set off Harry Hensen of the World which has hitherto not liked me, gave it his column and as he is one of the most celebrated column-writers in the States that is not so bad.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Serial / periodical
Esther Julia Ford : [a short story]
'And you know she [Ford's daughter, Julie] acted about her story just like a grown-up I know: No, it was not good enough for me to see. She had not had enough experience. Perhaps one day when she had had experience. And she supposed no-one would print her silly story. And she went and read it to Fannie, and then to Mlle Renee and at last she let me see it and explained that it would look much better when she had made a clean copy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Manuscript: Unknown
Esther Julia Ford : [a short story]
'And you know she [Ford's daughter, Julie] acted about her story just like a grown-up I know: No, it was not good enough for me to see. She had not had enough experience. Perhaps one day when she had had experience. And she supposed no-one would print her silly story. And she went and read it to Fannie, and then to Mlle Renee and at last she let me see it and explained that it would look much better when she had made a clean copy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Julia Ford Manuscript: Unknown
Ford Madox Ford : [chapters from 'It Was the Nightingale']
'Many thanks for the 3 chapters - they look entrancing, but I haven't had time to do more than glance at them as I've had a sitter all day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Manuscript: Unknown
Ford Madox Ford : [early chapters of what would become 'It was the Nightingale']
'Cape has seen the first 4 chapters [of what Stella calls 'Towards Tomorrow']. He finds them full of charm but says he could not make a better offer than Gollancz's, nor indeed such a good one.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
W.R. Benet : 'Uncle Ford'
'Ray Postgate has given me some [underlined] excellent [end underlining] reviews of it was the Nightingale by Isabel Paterson & (better still) by W.R. Benet under the title "Uncle Ford". I expect you have seen them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Serial / periodical
Ford Madox Ford : Great Trade Route, The
'I've just received "The Great Trade Route" this morning, and there's a gentleman on the cover who tells me that it is "bland, ironic humurous [sic] discursive, always amusing, throughly convincing" & I've been trying to find the place where I left off in the proofs but have just realized how futile such a search is & have gone back to the beginning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Julia Ford Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford : March of Literature, The
'I am loving your book [The March of Literature]: in fact I'm enjoying it even more than Great Trade Route. I do hope it's doing as well as it deserves'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Julia Ford Print: Book
Frank Richards : [Billy Bunter stories]
'he swapped and shared books, especially Billy Bunter stories. ("[Bunter's] roars and squeaks of anguish were constantly imitated then and for years after", says Sutton; "Philip seemed to identify with Bunter up to a point.")'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [unknown]
'Sutton and Larkin grew steadily closer as they moved up through the senior school. Tiring of their childish reading, they turned to weightier matters, Larkin discovering D.H. Lawrence and Sutton "retaliating with Cezanne".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : [unknown]
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : [unknown]
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : [unknown]
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : [unknown]
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
Katherine Mansfield : [unknown]
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
John Cowper Powys : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Theodore Francis Powys : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Christina Rossetti : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Thomas Stearns Eliot : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Edward Falaise Upward : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Christopher Isherwood : [unknown]
'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Verlaine : [unknown]
'Throughout 1939 his reports speak of "improvements", and even though he still did "not much like" his English teacher he worked hard, widening his reading to include Verlaine and Lamartine as well as Auden and Eliot'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
George Sand : Nanon
'I have finished Nanon...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Ernest Dawson : The River of Cathay
'The River of Cathay is good; it is right; perfectly right; right in tone and in expression. It pleased me much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : A Vanished Arcadia: being some account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767
'I have been reading again the "[A] Vanished Arcadia" - from the dedication, so full of charm,to the last paragraph with its ironic aside about the writers of books "proposing something and concluding nothing" - and its exquisite last lines..'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry-Durand Davray : unknown
'The "Mercure de France" notice is agreeable - and as he [Henry-Durand Davray] reproduces what I have been lately talking at him as to French fiction I am flattered.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Marcelle Tinayre : La Maison du Peché
'The book ("Maison du Peché") has arrived and is now half read. Without going further my verdict is that it is good , but is not "fort".' Thence follows five lines of moderately negative criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Moore : [unknown]
'Larkin later admitted that he spent most of his time straying from the path Bone [his tutor] intended him to follow. "I was on a great [George] Moore kick at that time", he said; "probably he was at the bottom of my style, then".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Unknown
Henry Green : [unknown]
'This "new direction" [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Unknown
Virginia Woolf : Waves, The
'This 'new direction' [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Katherine Mansfield : [unknown]
'This "new direction" [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Christopher Isherwood : All the Conspirators
'Although Larkin had first read them [Auden and Isherwood] at KHS [his school], it wasn't until he reached Oxford that he began fully to appreciate their irony and ebullient detachment (he described Isherwood's first novel, "All the Conspirators", as being like "life photographed"). Eventually Larkin would praise Auden as "the first 'modern' poet, in that he could employ modern properties unselfconsciously". Reading him in St John's during his first term he felt: "Auden rose like a sun. It is impossibly to convey the intensity of the delight felt by a ... mind reared on 'Drake's Drum', 'Westminster Bridge' and 'Ode to a Nightingale, when a poet is found speaking a language thrilling and beautiful, and describing things so near to everyday life that their once-removedness strikes like a strange cymbal. We entered the land, books in hand, like travellers with a guidebook... 'Poems', 'The Orators' and 'Look, Stranger!' seemed three fragments of revealed truth... To read 'The Journal of an Airman' was like being allowed half an hour's phone conversation with God".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Henry Newbolt : 'Drake's Drum'
'Although Larkin had first read them [Auden and Isherwood] at KHS [his school], it wasn't until he reached Oxford that he began fully to appreciate their irony and ebullient detachment (he described Isherwood's first novel, "All the Conspirators", as being like "life photographed"). Eventually Larkin would praise Auden as "the first 'modern' poet, in that he could employ modern properties unselfconsciously". Reading him in St John's during his first term he felt: "Auden rose like a sun. It is impossibly to convey the intensity of the delight felt by a ... mind reared on 'Drake's Drum', 'Westminster Bridge' and 'Ode to a Nightingale, when a poet is found speaking a language thrilling and beautiful, and describing things so near to everyday life that their once-removedness strikes like a strange cymbal. We entered the land, books in hand, like travellers with a guidebook... 'Poems', 'The Orators' and 'Look, Stranger!' seemed three fragments of revealed truth... To read 'The Journal of an Airman' was like being allowed half an hour's phone conversation with God".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Vernon Watkins : Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, The
'Before the meeting, Larkin had no detailed knowledge of Watkins's work - what he had read, including the newly published "Ballad of the Mari Lwyd", seemed to him too full of symbols, too arty, too removed from the recognizably modern world described by Auden.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [unknown]
'Father was well read in politics and in the nineteenth century novelists, Dickens and Trollope being his favourites. But his reading nourished the sour scepticism that possesed him [and he suggested to Glasser that reading was a waste of time]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Glasser Print: Book
George Orwell : Road to Wigan Pier, The
'I marvelled that "The Road to Wigan Pier", to me naive, had made such a stir. I could think of nothing in it that was not obvious, but when I said so in the Cole Group it was as if I had uttered a mortal heresy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Rachel : [letters from Glasser's aunt]
'I read the letters [from Aunt Rachel] again and again as I strode furiously across the Parks, and the wind threw tears cold against my face. Often, reading her carefully rounded copperplate English - learnt at night school long ago - I heard again the words she had uttered through tears when I first told her of the scholarship: "If only your mother could have been spared to see you turn out like this..."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Manuscript: Letter
Mr Glasser : [letters to his son, Ralph]
'Father's brief lines were full of a sombre perplexity only too familiar. Indirectly, however, they carried a special shock, for to my amazement I had difficulty deciphering the words. He wrote in Yiddish, and following the common practice used the Hebrew cursive script. As a child I had learned to read and write Hebrew and Yiddish fluently; now the knowledge was fading fast.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Manuscript: Letter
Pierre Ronsard : Sonnets pour Helene
'With Mademoiselle Fleury that morning I had been struck by some lines in Ronsard's "Sonnets pour Helene", bittersweet, barbed, that drove home a feeling I had recognised and resisted long before, a sense of the intransigent flux of life, unappeasable in the midst of sweetness - intimations of mortality, of transient triumph. I tried out the thought on Bill: "Quand vous serez bien vielle, au soir, a la chandelle, Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous emerveillant, Ronsard me celebrait du temps que j'etais belle".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Rachel : [letter]
'Towards the end of the war I would receive a letter in her tiny, rounded hand, one of those wartime "pre-mission" letters, intended for onward transmission only if the writer did not return. Two sentences in particular would burn into my mind, and whenever I thought of them I would hear her voice in my head: "You suffer because you are the man you are. I did not always know how to give you the understanding you need."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Manuscript: Letter
Victor Gollancz : "Let my people go": some practical proposals for dealing with Hitler's massacre of the Jews
'In all seriousness he [Victor Gollancz] could flaunt a prophetic grandeur, or perhaps simply uncontrolled showmanship, which would have been comic in less traumatic contexts: for instance, in the title of his pamphlet on the Nazi brutality to Jews, apostrophising not only Hitler but all other rulers - "Let my People Go" - words befitting a Moses, not a Gollancz'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser
R.G. Collingwood : Speculum Mentis, or the Map of Knowledge
'An exception [to the intellectual triviality Glasser found at Oxford], far from generously recognised, was R.G. Collingwood in his luminous exposition of the proper business of philosophical enquiry, in lectures and in the Olympian sweep of his book "Speculum Mentis". Its opening sentences I would remember in all the years to come: "All thought exists for the sake of action. We try to understand ourselves and the world only in order that we may learn how to live".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Harold Joseph Laski : [unknown]
'When fairly launched into a subject, especially in a formal lecture in his favourite field, French political thought, these disquieting elements faded; and words and cadences flowed elegantly, engaging the imagination like themes in a romantic symphony - something not always present, alas, in his writing, which tended to be involuted and tantalisingly diffuse, defects of his supreme quality, a widely sweeping, impatient mind'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Harold Joseph Laski : [unknown]
'Writing on liberty, arguing that its attainment was an inborn duty, he said that in order to divine its proper use one must "Listen to the still, small voice within you." The image was not original. Poe, among others, had used it; and in Laski's usage it expressed the world view of the Philosophes. Still, it was an engaging one, despite its naive assumption that clear sight, and goodwill, resided eternally in the noble savage within us - if we would only set him free'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Charles Lamb : unknown
'Your mention of Hawthorne puts me in mind to tell you what rabid [underlined] admirers we are of his [...] There is no prose write of the present day I have half the interest in I have in him, his style, in my mind is so beautifully refined and there is such exquisite pathos and quaint humour, and such an awfully [underlined] deep knowledge of human nature, not that hard unloving detestable, and, as it is purely one sided (or wrong [underlined] sided) false reading of it that one finds in Thackeray. He reminds me in many things of Charles Lamb, and of heaps of our rare old English humourists, with their deep pathetic nature--and one faculty he possesses beyond any writer I remember (not dramatic, for then I would certainly remember Shakespeare, and others on further though perhaps) viz. that of exciting you to the highest pitch without on any [underlined] occasion that I am aware of making you feel by his catastrophe ashamed of having been excited. What I mean is, if you have ever read it, such a case as occurs in the "Mysteries of Udolpho" where your disgust is beyond all expression on finding that all your fright about the ghostly creature that has haunted you throughout the volumes has been caused by a pitiful wax image! [...] And no Author I know does [underlined] try to work upon them [i.e. the passions] more, apparently with no [underlined] effort to himself. I cannot satisfy myself as to whether I like his sort of Essays contained in the twice told tales best, or his more finished works such as Blithedale romance. Every touch he adds to any character gives a higher interest to it, so that I should like the longer ones best, but there is a concentration of excellence in the shorter things and passages that strike, in force like daggers, in their beauty and truth, so that I generally end in liking that best which I have read last [...] There are beautiful passages in Longfellow, above all, as far as my knowledge goes in the Golden Legend, some of which in a single reading impressed themselves on my memory.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret De Quincey
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : The Golden Legend
'Your mention of Hawthorne puts me in mind to tell you what rabid [underlined] admirers we are of his [...] There is no prose write of the present day I have half the interest in I have in him, his style, in my mind is so beautifully refined and there is such exquisite pathos and quaint humour, and such an awfully [underlined] deep knowledge of human nature, not that hard unloving detestable, and, as it is purely one sided (or wrong [underlined] sided) false reading of it that one finds in Thackeray. He reminds me in many things of Charles Lamb, and of heaps of our rare old English humourists, with their deep pathetic nature--and one faculty he possesses beyond any writer I remember (not dramatic, for then I would certainly remember Shakespeare, and others on further though perhaps) viz. that of exciting you to the highest pitch without on any [underlined] occasion that I am aware of making you feel by his catastrophe ashamed of having been excited. What I mean is, if you have ever read it, such a case as occurs in the "Mysteries of Udolpho" where your disgust is beyond all expression on finding that all your fright about the ghostly creature that has haunted you throughout the volumes has been caused by a pitiful wax image! [...] And no Author I know does [underlined] try to work upon them [i.e. the passions] more, apparently with no [underlined] effort to himself. I cannot satisfy myself as to whether I like his sort of Essays contained in the twice told tales best, or his more finished works such as Blithedale romance. Every touch he adds to any character gives a higher interest to it, so that I should like the longer ones best, but there is a concentration of excellence in the shorter things and passages that strike, in force like daggers, in their beauty and truth, so that I generally end in liking that best which I have read last [...] There are beautiful passages in Longfellow, above all, as far as my knowledge goes in the Golden Legend, some of which in a single reading impressed themselves on my memory.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret De Quincey Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'By the way do you like Maud. I cannot say I do. It strikes me that if John Smith or Bill Jones had written it, they would have been put into an asylum. There are only those two parts beginning "Oh that it were possible" and "I have lead her home, my love, my only friend" that are not like ravings of a lunatic it strikes me, and yet my friends the Sellars say they admire it more than anything he has written [...] By the way I admire Whittier very much, and am very grateful to you for introducing him to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily De Quincey Print: Book
John Greenleaf Whittier : unknown
'By the way do you like Maud. I cannot say I do. It strikes me that if John Smith or Bill Jones had written it, they would have been put into an asylum. There are only those two parts beginning "Oh that it were possible" and "I have lead her home, my love, my only friend" that are not like ravings of a lunatic it strikes me, and yet my friends the Sellars say they admire it more than anything he has written [...] By the way I admire Whittier very much, and am very grateful to you for introducing him to me.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily De Quincey
Henry Hope Reed : Lectures on History and Tragic Poetry as Illustrated by Shakespeare
'Did you ever happen to come across Professor Reed of Philadelphia. I think he was drowned in returning to America along with his sister-in-law. We have been reading his lectures upon "Shakspere," [sic] and upon "English Literature" and are all quite enchanted with them. I think his criticism of Shakspere [sic] is sometimes almost equal to Shakspere [sic] himself. I think Reed must have been a delightful person to have known. Since we have come across it, we have been hearing of it from all quarters. I suppose it must only have made its appearance in this country lately. I think that wherever he is read he must make a sensation as of the great lights of the world.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily De Quincey Print: Book
Henry Hope Reed : Lectures on English Literature from Chaucer to Tennyson
'Did you ever happen to come across Professor Reed of Philadelphia. I think he was drowned in returning to America along with his sister-in-law. We have been reading his lectures upon "Shakspere," [sic] and upon "English Literature" and are all quite enchanted with them. I think his criticism of Shakspere [sic] is sometimes almost equal to Shakspere [sic] himself. I think Reed must have been a delightful person to have known. Since we have come across it, we have been hearing of it from all quarters. I suppose it must only have made its appearance in this country lately. I think that wherever he is read he must make a sensation as of the great lights of the world.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily De Quincey Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : A Convert (?)
'Your Saturday Review fling is first rate. Nothing I liked more since the gold-fish carrier story'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Richard` Garnett : The Twilight of the Gods and Other tales
'He [Edward Garnett] gave me his father's book for you. He handed it to me because I wanted to look at some new stories in the vol:[...]I send it on now. E.G. thinks that the intelligence and irony of the book may appeal to H.G. I think so too.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Field of Waterloo, The
'Of his poem Waterloo she writes: "These are my honest opinions, just as I should give them to any third person: and let me fairly add that I by no means expected to be so much pleased. Whatever subject draws universal attention, sets 'every goose cackling', every newspaper declaiming, descanting, admiring, lamenting, exaggerating, it is harder for a poet to handle than Swift's broomstick itself, and I protest, I thought Waterloo such a hopeless one that I was almost vexed at your undertaking it. But you have wonderfully avoided the commonplace".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Unknown
Henry Mackenzie : Man of Feeling, The
'She comments, with discrimination, on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Rousseau and Cervantes, "Tom Jones", "Emma", "A Man of Feeling", Coleridge, Mrs Shelley, and Crabbe'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : [unknown]
'She comments, with discrimination, on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Rousseau and Cervantes, "Tom Jones", "Emma", "A Man of Feeling", Coleridge, Mrs Shelley, and Crabbe'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
George Crabbe : [unknown]
'She comments, with discrimination, on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Rousseau and Cervantes, "Tom Jones", "Emma", "A Man of Feeling", Coleridge, Mrs Shelley, and Crabbe'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Caroline Dawson : [journal]
'You need not be at all afraid that I should think your journal an odd composition. I am so much charmed with it that I long for the second part, and want to see the characters you have painted in action; but I pity you for being forced to spend so much of your time visiting and playing at cards by daylight'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Marmion
'Mr Scott must have thought me very ungrateful in returning no acknowledgements for being [italics] entrusted [end italics] with "Marmion", but I was prisoner with so severe a cold the last week I stayed at Dalkeith that I could not attempt writing. Lady Dalkeith undertook the care of the parcel, which I hope has been safely restored; but now my head is clear enough, I must tell you how much pleasure it gave me, and that this pleasure rose still higher on reading it over and over again. Like the "Lay", it carries one on, and one cannot lay it down. It is, I feel, a great piece of presumption in me either to commend or criticise; but one passage, I confess, strikes me as more feeble than the rest, though by itself, or in a less spirited poem, I should never have affix'd to it that epithet. What I mean is that part of the introduction to the third Canto where you begin to give Mr Erskine your reasons for not adopting his advice; it immediately follows the compliment to Miss Baillie. Yet even in this the picture of the old Highland drover is beautiful. What ensues upon Smailhome Tower, etc., I was particularly charmed with, but I shall not pretend to point out all the beauties in this note'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Lay of the Last Minstrel, The
'Mr Scott must have thought me very ungrateful in returning no acknowledgements for being [italics] entrusted [end italics] with "Marmion", but I was prisoner with so severe a cold the last week I stayed at Dalkeith that I could not attempt writing. Lady Dalkeith undertook the care of the parcel, which I hope has been safely restored; but now my head is clear enough, I must tell you how much pleasure it gave me, and that this pleasure rose still higher on reading it over and over again. Like the "Lay", it carries one on, and one cannot lay it down. It is, I feel, a great piece of presumption in me either to commend or criticise; but one passage, I confess, strikes me as more feeble than the rest, though by itself, or in a less spirited poem, I should never have affix'd to it that epithet. What I mean is that part of the introduction to the third Canto where you begin to give Mr Erskine your reasons for not adopting his advice; it immediately follows the compliment to Miss Baillie. Yet even in this the picture of the old Highland drover is beautiful. What ensues upon Smailhome Tower, etc., I was particularly charmed with, but I shall not pretend to point out all the beauties in this note'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'With the same amusement [of secret knowledge about Scott's authorship] I now sit by the fire, sucking in the sagacious remarks I hear. Says one, who has a favourite relation that writes - what nobody reads - "I am clear this is not by the author of "Waverley"; it is too good. "Waverley" was certainly Scott's: now Scott could not write this, it is above him, and there is not that constant description of scenery that makes him so tiresome".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: acquaintances of Louisa Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: acquaintances of Louisa Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Antiquary, The
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'In general the coterie here are disposed to think it not by the same author as "Waverley", etc., and to think it superior to all three. I myself place it above Guy and Monkbarns, but "Waverley" being my first love, I canot give him up. [italics] as a whole [end italics], however, I believe it does bear the palm, and it surprises me by not sinking into flatness, after the return of Morton from abroad; which was a very slippery place for [italics] you [end italics], who profess never knowing what you are going to write.... I must mention a remark Mrs Weddell has repeatedly made: "this has the [italics] nature [end italics] of Daniel Defoe's novels, tho' with a higher style of writing. I can hardly forbear fancying every word of it true". And we are all agreed that instead of perverting history, it elucidates it, and would give a person partially acquainted with it the desire to be more so'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Weddell Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : Mankind in the Making
'There is any amount of masterly pages. I have not read all of them as you may imagine. [...] Yes the "virtue" of the book is great.' Interspersed and following are several lines of warm praise for Wells's new book.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G. (George) Wells : Twelve Stories and a Dream
'An excellent volume. Last time I saw you , you spoke of it slightlingly-and this only adds to my envy of your astounding gift-for if this is the sort of thing you throw off while you whistle!-well!' Thence follow tweleve lines of praise for this collection of short stories.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
(Enoch) Arnold Bennett : Leonora
'You must think me a brute. I don't even attempt to palliate an inexcusable delay in thanking you for "Leonora".[...] Yes. you can do things; you present them with a skill and a language for which I wish to thank you as distinc[t]ly as possible, and with all the respect due to such a remarkable talent.[...] And here the first criticism that occurs is that there is not enough of Leonora herself. [...] And that's about the only objection that can be made to the book as a work. With the sheer pleasure of reading it, that-say-defect- does not interfere.' Thence follow sixteen more lines of constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Kazimierz Waliszewski : Un cas de naturalisation littéraire: Joseph Conrad
'A thousand thanks for the article you devote to me in the "Revue". I read it with lively interest, profound attention and much gratitude.' Thence follow six more lines of grateful appreciation of the article.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
E.(Edward) D.(Dene) Morel : The Congo Slave State.
'I have to thank you for Morel's pamphlet which reached me from L'pool a few days ago.There can be no doubt that his presentation of the commercial policy and the administrative methods of the Congo State is absolutely true. It is a most brazen breach of faith as to Europe. It is in every aspect an enormous and atrocious lie in action.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Hernando de Soto: together with an account of one of his captains, Gonçalo Silvestre.
'Next to tell you that "H.[Hernando]de Soto" is most exquisitely excellent: your very mark and spirit upon a subject that only you can do justice to-with your wonderful English and your sympathetic insight insto the souls of the Conquistadores.' Thence follows half a page of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Kazimierz Waliszewski : Ivan le Terrible
'It only remains for me to add that I am on page 24 of "Ivan the Terrible"; that is to say that I have been comforted 24 times by complete forgetfulness of my difficulties.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henri Jean François Borel : Wu Wei:A Phantasy Based on the Philosophy of Lao-Tse
'Arrived: A book with a Chinese title of Scandinavian authorship translated by Mrs Reynolds. I am touched and pleased indeed by the kind`attention. Have looked into it alreday with the translator alone in view. And that is all right. That's all I have to say. If I were to talk of skill and fluency and mastery and the rest of the journalese bosh you would not believe me and you would be right. But the thing will do and that's the most an honest man can say of any writing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Lewins : unknown
'I met a rum old army doctor, called Lewins, who sent me a paper of his, full of matter that would not be very gratifying to the elect: In which paper he has the following: "Healthy sensation .. is thus our only Heaven: morbid sensation, varying as it does from ennui or general malaise to mental and corporeal agony and anguish, our only Hell".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
W.(William) H.(Henry) Hudson : The London Sparrow in Kith and Kin: Poems of Animal Life ed. H.S.Salt
'Hudson's "Sparrow" is really first rate and just in the tone I expected. C'est une belle nature, which never falls short of its domain. One can depend upon him. The other volume I have been reading with a surprised admiration. It shall be an abiding delight-I see that much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
W.(William) H.(Henry) Hudson : Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest
'Hudson's "Sparrow" is really first rate and just in the tone I expected. C'est une belle nature, which never falls short of its domain. One can depend upon him. The other volume I have been reading with a surprised admiration. It shall be an abiding delight-I see that much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley novels
'I am still ... doing a pleasanter spell of work over the Waverley novels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Fortunes fo Nigel
'I have read one after another ... The Fortunes of Nigel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'Waverley is so poor and dull.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Margaret Symonds : Days Spent on a Doge's Farm
'Have you read your sister in laws Doges Farm? Well that describes much the same sort of country that this is; and you see how she, a person of true artistic soul, revels in the land.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Victor Hugo : various romances
#Last night I set to work and Bob wrote to my dictation three or four pages of "V. Hugo's Romances" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Cornelia Sorabji : 'Stray Thoughts of an Indian Girl
'Look at the 19th Century for October. It has an article in by me which the Editor has called “Stray Thoughts of an India Girl” – I called it Social India but found that changed in the proof. He is so pleased with it & entreats so earnestly that I would write often that I think next time I send him a contribution I will ask him to value it in coin of the realm. It will be a nice way of supplementing my allowance and the 19th Centy. pays rather well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Sheet
Cornelia Sorabji : unknown
'By the way the Mother gave him some of Miss Sorabji to read and he finds it as I did, very good – “splendid” he said in parts and is inclined to prophesy a great success for her. I feel sure of it for you see she knows so much more than other people and has many gifts as a writer.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rudyard Kipling
Mr Morritt : [account of Hampton Court, Herefordshire]
'By the bye, I think I read your Mr Morritt's account of Hampton Court in Herefordshire, one of the oldest baronial seats in the kingdom, lately purchased by Sir -- Arkwright, son of the cotton-mill inventor. I can now tell you the fate of Newstead Abbey'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart
Walter Scott : Bride of Lammermoor, The
'Do not suppose, however, that I am at present reading the ["Bride of Lammermoor" and "Legend of Montrose"] for the first time. I have had it by heart these five weeks. It possesses the same power of captivating the attention as its predecessors; one may find this or that fault but who does not read on? The Master of Ravenscroft is perhaps the best [italics] lover [end italics] the author ever drew; and oh! how glad I was to hear the true notes of the old lyre in Annot Lyle's matin song!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Works]
'I believe most people would say of the four-and-twenty volumes, what I have known parents of large families do of their children: "you may think them a great many, yet there is not one we could spare". For my own part I acknowledge I am not a fair judge; all these writings, all the author's works confessed and unconfessed, are so much associated in my mind with, not the earliest, but the pleasantest, part of my life, that they awaken in me many feelings I could hardly explain to another. They are to me less like books, than like the letters one treasures up, "pleasant yet mournful to the soul", and I cannot open one of them without a thousand recollections that as time rolls on, grow precious, although they are often painful. Independent of this, how many hours of mine have they soothed and softened! and still do soothe and soften, for I can read them over and over again'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Legend of Montrose, A
'Do not suppose, however, that I am at present reading the ["Bride of Lammermoor" and "Legend of Montrose"] for the first time. I have had it by heart these five weeks. It possesses the same power of captivating the attention as its predecessors; one may find this or that fault but who does not read on? The Master of Ravenscroft is perhaps the best [italics] lover [end italics] the author ever drew; and oh! how glad I was to hear the true notes of the old lyre in Annot Lyle's matin song!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Sir William Sleeman : Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 19 February 1913: 'Do you know Sleeman's Rambles & Recollections of an Indian Official? It is a charming book to read in, but the best chapter, about a Suttee on the Nerbudda, you would perhaps be inclined to skip. I have also been reading The Private Life of an Eastern King by E. W. Knighton who was librarian to one of the Kings of Oudh, a very entertaining and intersting little book, and it rings true. It is certainly out of print, but may be in the L[ondon] L[ibrary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Sir William Sleeman : Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster, 19 February 1913: 'Do you know Sleeman's Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official? It is a charming book to read in, but the best chapter, about a Suttee on the Nerbudda, you would perhaps be inclined to skip. I have also been reading The Private Life of an Eastern King by E. W. Knighton who was librarian to one of the Kings of Oudh, a very entertaining and interesting little book, and it rings true. It is certainly out of print, but may be in the L[ondon] L[ibrary].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
Forrest Reid : unidentified 'sketch'
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 5 October 1913: 'It's a good little sketch I think, and shows you can do a catastrophe if you choose. I never guessed he had murdered his wife, but my mother did. I have kept it longer than I ought, and not for any reason. The second time I read it, I enjoyed it more.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster
Pierre Louys : Byblis changee en fontaine
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 5 October 1913: 'We are here [Harrogate] till the 10th [...] It has been a dull month, but not boring. [...] I ordered Chanson de Billitis [sic] from the L[ondon] L[ibrary] and it came as Byblis whiich smelt of the boudoir rather than the forest, but I liked it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. M. Forster Print: Book
General Friedrich Adam Julius von Bernhardi :
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914: 'I am not a Pro-German [...] I have read the White Paper, and Cramb, and some Bernhardi, and I am sure we could not have kept out of this war.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'I am very glad you have enjoyed the court of Hayti, much the best part of the book in my opinion. I only barred your reading it out of propriety and for fear the other Lady Louisa should be scandalized; pray tell her so. My own notions are that comical books rarely do harm, unless when they try to throw ridicule on sacred subjects; and, I am tempted to say, "Have fixed principles deeply rooted, and then read what you please". I agree with her that Tardif de Courtrac, tho' always clever, is sometimes very tedious, especially in America, from one's indifference respecting the subject. For "Ivanhoe", make yourself easy, I am its sincere partisan and Rebecca's devoted admirer. I would rather the templar had burst a blood vessel, because that it really often the effect of a conflict of violent passions and tho' they may bring on an apoplexy also , it is not apt to ensue so immediately'. [LS then discusses several characters in Ivanhoe at length]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'I am very glad you have enjoyed the court of Hayti, much the best part of the book in my opinion. I only barred your reading it out of propriety and for fear the other Lady Louisa should be scandalized; pray tell her so. My own notions are that comical books rarely do harm, unless when they try to throw ridicule on sacred subjects; and, I am tempted to say, "Have fixed principles deeply rooted, and then read what you please". I agree with her that Tardif de Courtrac, tho' always clever, is sometimes very tedious, especially in America, from one's indifference respecting the subject. For "Ivanhoe", make yourself easy, I am its sincere partisan and Rebecca's devoted admirer. I would rather the templar had burst a blood vessel, because that it really often the effect of a conflict of violent passions and tho' they may bring on an apoplexy also , it is not apt to ensue so immediately'. [LS then discusses several characters in Ivanhoe at length]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Clinton Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'I know not what Prince Leopold will say to it [the character of Athelstane]. He had a bad cold and Sir Robert Gardiner went to keep him company and read "Ivanhoe" to him last Saturday. He was so delighted he would not let him leave off till one in the morning, and entered with the zeal of a contemporary into the Saxon cause'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Gardiner Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Waverley Novels]
'Your observation on the Waverley novels is perfectly just; instead of misleading one concerning the true history, or giving one a distaste for it, they make one relish it the better. Whereas Mrs Radcliffe's, for example, always abound with the most disgusting species of anachronism, the polished manners and sentimental cant of modern times put in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The enlightened philosophy likewise! young ladies arguing with their maids against their belief in ghosts and witches, when a judge durst not have expressed his doubts of either upon the bench. This [italics] palavering [end italics] style has crept into history through Miss Aitken, the language of whose memoirs of Elizabeth is so suited to modern notions that Mrs Scott has said it reminded her of Puddingfield's newspaper in the Anti-Jacobin German play. "Magna Charta was signed on Friday three weeks, and their Majesties, after partaking of a cold collation, returned to Windsor".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Waverley Novels]
'Your observation on the Waverley novels is perfectly just; instead of misleading one concerning the true history, or giving one a distaste for it, they make one relish it the better. Whereas Mrs Radcliffe's, for example, always abound with the most disgusting species of anachronism, the polished manners and sentimental cant of modern times put in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The enlightened philosophy likewise! young ladies arguing with their maids against their belief in ghosts and witches, when a judge durst not have expressed his doubts of either upon the bench. This [italics] palavering [end italics] style has crept into history through Miss Aitken, the language of whose memoirs of Elizabeth is so suited to modern notions that Mrs Scott has said it reminded her of Puddingfield's newspaper in the Anti-Jacobin German play. "Magna Charta was signed on Friday three weeks, and their Majesties, after partaking of a cold collation, returned to Windsor".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Clinton Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'This [talking about feuds between families] reminds me of "Ivanhoe". I take the introduction of Scripture phrases to be neither intentional profaneness in the author nor carelessness, but adherence to the strict letter of the time he describes. It was their constant language. They had few books to read, and they quoted [italics] a tort et a travers [end italics] the one they knew, just as in the 17th century they did the Classics. Even Jeremy Taylor cannot bid us do as we would be done by without bringing in a passage from Plato or Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, The
'This [talking about feuds between families] reminds me of "Ivanhoe". I take the introduction of Scripture phrases to be neither intentional profaneness in the author nor carelessness, but adherence to the strict letter of the time he describes. It was their constant language. They had few books to read, and they quoted [italics] a tort et a travers [end italics] the one they knew, just as in the 17th century they did the Classics. Even Jeremy Taylor cannot bid us do as we would be done by without bringing in a passage from Plato or Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : [Letters]
'The former [apparently a letter from Louisa Clinton, praising LS -or someone else? - extravagantly] discomposed me, trenching upon all the old forbidden ground. Even Madame de Sevigne's reiterated encomiums on her daughter and extreme professions of fondness, have in some degree this effect. And you may depend upon it, dear Lou, that exaggerated praise of any person, nay, of anything, is sure to leave on the mind of every hearer an impression rather unfavourable to that person or thing'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : [Waverley Novels]
'Mrs Scott (here) is as thorough-paced a lover of those books [The Waverley Novels] as either of us. I have been looking over the Ayrshire Legatees, which I do not like at all. Mme de Stael's "Dix Annees d'Exil" is here, but a lord of the creation has got possession of it and reads so slowly that I have no chance of it while I stay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Scott Print: Book
Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Stael : Dix Années d'exil
'Mrs Scott (here) is as thorough-paced a lover of those books [The Waverley Novels] as either of us. I have been looking over the Ayrshire Legatees, which I do not like at all. Mme de Stael's "Dix Annees d'Exil" is here, but a lord of the creation has got possession of it and reads so slowly that I have no chance of it while I stay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : Martyr of Antioch, The
'Have you read the "Martyr of Antioch"? I read it (aloud) at Ditton, and did not like it much - heavy and dragging, I think.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Peveril of the Peak
'We have begun "Peveril", but not gone far in it. It is read aloud, and, [italics] entre nous [end italics], ill-read, and I can yet form no judgement, only I am indignant at the liberties taken with so fine a character as the Countess of Derby, who was a heroine, but no virago'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Redgauntlet
'I ought to have thanked you for "Redgauntlet" a fortnight ago, but I stayed to read it, and then to read it again. It has taken my fancy very particularly, though (not to flatter you) I could almost wonder why: for there is no story in it, no love, no hero - unless Redgauntlet himself, who would be such a one as the Devil in Milton; yet in spite of all these wants, the interest is so strong one cannot lay it down, and I prophesy for it a great deal of mauling and abuse, and a second edition before the maulers know where they are'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Wandering Willie's Tale
'I read her [Miss Murray] the legend of Steenie Steenson the other night, and we agreed it was in the author's very best manner. I felt disappointed, though, at Wandering Willie's not coming forward more effectually after that very interesting scene of using old times as a sort of telegraph. I thought he was to be a prime agent, and then I heard no more of him; that is to say, the aforesaid author grew tired and flung the cards into the bag as fast as he could. I know his provoking ways.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Anon [Apprently the father of the dead child] : [memorial on grave]
'[…] I’ve been to church and am not depressed − a great step. I was at that beautiful church my P.P.P.[Petit Poeme en Prose] was about. It is a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string course to match, and a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old gravestones; one of a Frenchman from Dunquerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by. And one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw: a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father’s own hand.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Inscription carved on school slate.
Mary Shelley : Last Man, The
'I have lately had a long bad cold, such as reduces one to trash and slops, novels and barley water, and amongst the books my friends kindly sent me to while away time was the first volume of one puffed in the newspaper, "The Last Man", by the authoress of "Frankenstein". I would not trouble them for any more of it, but really there were sentences in it so far exceeding those Don Quixote ran mad in trying to comprehend, that I could not help copying out a few of them; they would have turned Feliciano de Silva's own brains. [LS then quotes passages beginning "Her eyes were impenetrably deep" and "The overflowing warmth of her heart"...] Since the wonderful improvement that somebody who shall be nameless, together with Miss Edgeworth and one or two more, have made in novels, I imagined such stuff as this had not ventured to show its head, though I remember plenty of it in the days of my youth. So for old acquaintance-sake I give it welcome. But if the boys and girls begin afresh to take it for sublime and beautiful, it ought to get a rap and be put down'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [Novels]
'I have lately had a long bad cold, such as reduces one to trash and slops, novels and barley water, and amongst the books my friends kindly sent me to while away time was the first volume of one puffed in the newspaper, "The Last Man", by the authoress of "Frankenstein". I would not trouble them for any more of it, but really there were sentences in it so far exceeding those Don Quixote ran mad in trying to comprehend, that I could not help copying out a few of them; they would have turned Feliciano de Silva's own brains. [LS then quotes passages beginning "Her eyes were impenetrably deep" and "The overflowing warmth of her heart"...] Since the wonderful improvement that somebody who shall be nameless, together with Miss Edgeworth and one or two more, have made in novels, I imagined such stuff as this had not ventured to show its head, though I remember plenty of it in the days of my youth. So for old acquaintance-sake I give it welcome. But if the boys and girls begin afresh to take it for sublime and beautiful, it ought to get a rap and be put down'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Gilbert White : Natural History of Selborne, The
'draw her [Harriet, a girl LC is teaching] to such books as White's "Natural History of Selborne", but do not bother and (though I hate the word) [italics] bore [end italics] her with what she has no relish for'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Walter Scott : Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
'I have been feasting upon the Demonology and Witchcraft; yet some stories freshly rung in my ears, and I am sure fully equal to any of those you tell, give me a longing to attack you for civilly supposing the present [italics] enlightened age [end italics] rejects the superstitions of our forefathers because they were absurd' [LS then talks about the vogue for 'Animal Magnetism', saying superstitions are a matter of fashion]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
George Anne Bellamy : Memoirs of George Anne Bellamy
'I take this opportunity of returning you A.K.'s fragments. I do believe it has been of material service... as for A.K.'s French pasage, you will be surprised at the impression it makes on my mind - as neither more nor less than [italics] commonplace [end italics] Perhaps she has not, but I have read so many descriptions of concentrated feelings, boiling passion under [italics] un froid exterieur [end italics], dark and gloomy minds, that this strikes me as only what I have seen fifty times before [LS then critiques 'The school of Sentiment'] By her further description I should pronounce it [italics] unwholesome [italics] reading. The smallest grain of [italics] amour physique [end italics] poisons the whole, renders it literally and positively [italics] beastly [end italics], for it is describing the sensations of a brute animal. And here lies the difference between even [italics] bad [end italics] English books and the French ones, which everyone reads without blushing. Mrs Bellamy and Mrs Baddeley, two women of the town, whom I remember as actresses, wrote their Memoirs. They painted their first false steaps either as the effect of seduction, they were victims to the arts employed to ruin them, or else they had been led away by their [italics] affections [end italics]; they had conceived a violent passion for such and such a man, whom they took pains to paint as formed to captivate the [italics] heart [end italics]. Madame Roland, one of the heroines of the French Revolution, a [italics] virtuous [end italics] woman, so far as chastity goes, writes her Memoirs and tells you what were her [italics] sensations towards the opposite sex in general [end italics] (without any particular object) at 14 or 15 years old!!! And young ladies were taught to read and admire this who would not have been allowed to open "Tom Jones", where Fielding does describe [italics] l'amour physique [end italics] between Tom and Molly Seagrim, but I daresay would as soon have given Sophia an inclination to commit murder as hinted that she ever had Madame Roland's [italics] sensations[end italics], or even that Tom had them towards her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Marie-Jeanne Roland : Memoirs of Madame Roland
'I take this opportunity of returning you A.K.'s fragments. I do believe it has been of material service... as for A.K.'s French pasage, you will be surprised at the impression it makes on my mind - as neither more nor less than [italics] commonplace [end italics] Perhaps she has not, but I have read so many descriptions of concentrated feelings, boiling passion under [italics] un froid exterieur [end italics], dark and gloomy minds, that this strikes me as only what I have seen fifty times before [LS then critiques 'The school of Sentiment'] By her further description I should pronounce it [italics] unwholesome [italics] reading. The smallest grain of [italics] amour physique [end italics] poisons the whole, renders it literally and positively [italics] beastly [end italics], for it is describing the sensations of a brute animal. And here lies the difference between even [italics] bad [end italics] English books and the French ones, which everyone reads without blushing. Mrs Bellamy and Mrs Baddeley, two women of the town, whom I remember as actresses, wrote their Memoirs. They painted their first false steaps either as the effect of seduction, they were victims to the arts employed to ruin them, or else they had been led away by their [italics] affections [end italics]; they had conceived a violent passion for such and such a man, whom they took pains to paint as formed to captivate the [italics] heart [end italics]. Madame Roland, one of the heroines of the French Revolution, a [italics] virtuous [end italics] woman, so far as chastity goes, writes her Memoirs and tells you what were her [italics] sensations towards the opposite sex in general [end italics] (without any particular object) at 14 or 15 years old!!! And young ladies were taught to read and admire this who would not have been allowed to open "Tom Jones", where Fielding does describe [italics] l'amour physique [end italics] between Tom and Molly Seagrim, but I daresay would as soon have given Sophia an inclination to commit murder as hinted that she ever had Madame Roland's [italics] sensations[end italics], or even that Tom had them towards her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Henry Fielding : History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
'I take this opportunity of returning you A.K.'s fragments. I do believe it has been of material service... as for A.K.'s French pasage, you will be surprised at the impression it makes on my mind - as neither more nor less than [italics] commonplace [end italics] Perhaps she has not, but I have read so many descriptions of concentrated feelings, boiling passion under [italics] un froid exterieur [end italics], dark and gloomy minds, that this strikes me as only what I have seen fifty times before [LS then critiques 'The school of Sentiment'] By her further description I should pronounce it [italics] unwholesome [italics] reading. The smallest grain of [italics] amour physique [end italics] poisons the whole, renders it literally and positively [italics] beastly [end italics], for it is describing the sensations of a brute animal. And here lies the difference between even [italics] bad [end italics] English books and the French ones, which everyone reads without blushing. Mrs Bellamy and Mrs Baddeley, two women of the town, whom I remember as actresses, wrote their Memoirs. They painted their first false steaps either as the effect of seduction, they were victims to the arts employed to ruin them, or else they had been led away by their [italics] affections [end italics]; they had conceived a violent passion for such and such a man, whom they took pains to paint as formed to captivate the [italics] heart [end italics]. Madame Roland, one of the heroines of the French Revolution, a [italics] virtuous [end italics] woman, so far as chastity goes, writes her Memoirs and tells you what were her [italics] sensations towards the opposite sex in general [end italics] (without any particular object) at 14 or 15 years old!!! And young ladies were taught to read and admire this who would not have been allowed to open "Tom Jones", where Fielding does describe [italics] l'amour physique [end italics] between Tom and Molly Seagrim, but I daresay would as soon have given Sophia an inclination to commit murder as hinted that she ever had Madame Roland's [italics] sensations[end italics], or even that Tom had them towards her'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G.(George) Wells : Kipps:The Story of a Simple Soul
'Your first inst[alment] [of "Kipps"] in the PMM [Pall Mall Magazine] is jolly good. It turns up [sic] remarkably well. Coming upon it unexpectedly (the No.of PMM was sent to me) I gave a great gasp to see the story of which I had heard first so long ago now beginning at last. I don't know that I will read the other instalments. I should think not. I've been pleased and now I can wait. There is in that opening, my dear boy, a quality.' Hence follow eight more lines of praise, including a resolution to read the second instalment after all.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
H.(Herbert) G.(George) Wells : A Modern Utopia
'All I can say is that I am quite enthusiastic about the work ["A Modern Utopia"]. From the first line of the preface to the closing sentence I feel in touch with a more accessible Wells - a Wells mellowed, as it were in the meditation of the three books of which this last one is certainly the nearest to my understanding and the most commanding to my assent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Progress and Other Stories
'This moment I receive "Progress", or rather the moment (last night) occurred favorably to let me read before I sat down to write. Nothing in my writing life[...] has give mre a greater pleasure, a deeper satisfaction of innocent vanity [...] than the dedication of the book so full of admirable things, from the wonderful preface to the slightest of the sketches between the covers.' Hence follow nine more lines of unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin : Hyperion
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915: 'I have not read Platen yet [...] German's a labour. I liked Holderlin's Hyperion -- I wish someone would translate it. Have you read The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence? If not, do not, because you cannot, but read one chapter in it called A poem of friendship, which is most beautiful. The whole book is the queerest product of subconsciousness that I have yet struck -- he has not a glimmering from first to last of what he's up to.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
James Arthur Balfour : 'What Our Fleet Has Done'
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 2 August 1915: 'I read (and sometimes write) the New Statesman [...] also the Morning Post [...] I enclose from it this jolly letter of Balfour's: it seems to me distinctly on the spot. Reventlow's was too much of a bore to send.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Newspaper
Count Ernst von Reventlow : 'A Year of Naval Warfare'
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 2 August 1915: 'I read (and sometimes write) the New Statesman [...] also the Morning Post [...] I enclose from it this jolly letter of Balfour's: it seems to me distinctly on the spot. Reventlow's was too much of a bore to send.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Newspaper
George Bernard Shaw :
E. M. Forster to Florence Barger, 2 July 1916: 'I talk to patients [at Red Cross centre, Alexandria]; with one of them -- a sensitive and intelligent fellow -- I have become real friends [...] He is, incongruously enough, a Ship's Steward [...] He is absolutely independent, but not with the theoretical independence of the Socialist. He devours masses of Dickinson [...] and Shaw.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Vicary Print: Book
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson : The Meaning of Good
E. M. Forster to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 28 July 1916: 'I still like my work [as Red Cross worker tracing missing soldiers] and do the motherly to Tommies as you say, and I hope in one case the brotherly [...] I lent him books by you, and though he stuck in The Meaning of Good as "unlikely to help", John Chinaman he liked so much as to read part of it aloud to the rest of the ward. "They said What do you want to read that for? I said it's very interesting about the opium as showing what Europe's like. They said But what does it matter? Who cares?" [...] he grew up in respectable circles in the west of England'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Vicary Print: Book
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson : Letters from John Chinaman
E. M. Forster to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 28 July 1916: 'I still like my work [as Red Cross worker tracing missing soldiers] and do the motherly to Tommies as you say, and I hope in one case the brotherly [...] I lent him books by you, and though he stuck in The Meaning of Good as "unlikely to help", John Chinaman he liked so much as to read part of it aloud to the rest of the ward. "They said What do you want to read that for? I said it's very interesting about the opium as showing what Europe's like. They said But what does it matter? Who cares?" [...] he grew up in respectable circles in the west of England'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Vicary Print: Book
Bridget McLagan (i.e. Mary Borden Turner) : 'Bombardment'
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 August 1916: 'I saw from the Hospital Lists that an officer from Lovats Scouts was here, and went round at once to get news of Jermyn [Moorsom]. But he was still in England [...] My only other link with our joint past is the Hot Stuff article in last month's English Review, which was provided by Mrs Turner. In fairness I must add that it contained more stuff than heat, stuff curiously disposed into metrical lengths. Quite three pages of the prose ran into the rhythm of Hiawatha. "There before us lay the village. Members of the etat-major walked around Celestine's garret." I cannot make out what she is up to, but then I never could. Some sort of effect is obviously intended.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Serial / periodical
Bridget McLagan (i.e. Mary Borden Turner) : 'Rousbrugge'
E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling, 6 August 1916: 'I saw from the Hospital Lists that an officer from Lovats Scouts was here, and went round at once to get news of Jermyn [Moorsom]. But he was still in England [...] My only other link with our joint past is the Hot Stuff article in last month's English Review, which was provided by Mrs Turner. In fairness I must add that it contained more stuff than heat, stuff curiously disposed into metrical lengths. Quite three pages of the prose ran into the rhythm of Hiawatha. "There before us lay the village. Members of the etat-major walked around Celestine's garret." I cannot make out what she is up to, but then I never could. Some sort of effect is obviously intended.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James : What Maisie Knew
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916: 'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry James : Portrait of a Lady
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 25 August 1916: 'Your welcome letter to Darkest Africa has been followed by a "real" Missionary magazine, which I have also enjoyed. Work here [as Red Cross officer tracing missing soldiers] is quieter again, which leaves me time for reading, and while you were at H. J.'s Portrait of a Lady I was tackling his latter and tougher end in the person of What Maisie Knew. I haven't [italics]quite[end italics] got through her yet, but I think I shall: she is my very limit -- beyond her lies The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and other impossibles. I don't think James could have helped his later manner -- is [sic] a natural development, not a pose. All that one can understand of him seems so genuine, that what one can't understand is likely to be genuine also.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Laura Mary Forster Print: Book
Walter Pater : Marius the Epicurean
E. M. Forster to Laura Mary Forster (aunt), 1 January 1917: 'For the last hour I have occupied myself with copying extracts into my "War Anthology" [...] I have put in "your" Milton passage and next to it a passage from Pater -- that in which he describes the longings of Marcus Aurelius for the Ideal City [...] (The passage is in Marius the Epicurean -- at the end of the chapter called Urbs Beata) [...] It is somehow very tranquil to copy out passages such as these, and the very labour of writing seems to bring one nearer to those who wrote them in the past.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Robert Bridges, ed. : [possibly] The Spirit of Man: An Anthology in English & French from the Philosophers and Poets made by the POet Laureate in 1915 & dedicated by gracious permission to His Majesty the King
E. M. Forster to Wilson Plant, 14 February 1917: 'Not many books here [...] I have been enjoying Bridges and sticking, as I always do, in a Zola.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Edward Gibbon :
E. M. Forster to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 5 May 1917: 'I am anxious to re-read a little history and see how its solemn arrangement of "movements", which, while they bored me, used to impress, look now, in the light of actual experience. I have only tried Gibbon, whom nothing can disintegrate, but expect that everyone and everything else will shatter into dust.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry James : The Middle Years
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 29 January 1918: 'I am already deep in The Piddle Years [sic]. I never find Henry James difficult to understand, though it [italics]is[end italics] difficult to throw off the interests of one's larger life, and flatten oneself -- flat flatter flattest -- to crawl down his slots.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Robert Trevelyan : Translations from Lucretius
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 29 January 1918: 'Lucretius has come -- I like him very much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Carpenter : My Days and Dreams: Being Autobiographical Notes
'Florence [Barger] has read Edward Carpenter's My Days and Dreams: Being Autobiographical Notes (1916).'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Barger Print: Book
Henry James : The Sense of the Past
E. M. Forster to Siegfried Sassoon, 2 May 1918: 'Have just finished The Sense of the Past, and though it's so obscure -- find it much nearer the work of other writers than is the rest of the later James. He is really interested in his subject [time travel] as well as in his treatment of it. And a topping subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Robert Graves :
E. M. Forster to Siegfried Sassoon, 3 August 1918: 'Re the poets you mention I have read some of them both. I liked Graves. Nichols not so much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Unknown
Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols :
E. M. Forster to Siegfried Sassoon, 3 August 1918: 'Re the poets you mention I have read some of them both. I liked Graves. Nichols not so much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Unknown
Robert Trevelyan :
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 23 August 1918: 'Thank you for your poem on Confuscius [sic]. It amused me very much.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
Forrest Reid : 'Kenneth'
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 10 January 1919: 'Some of your stories I have read before, but I am enjoying and admiring them all. "Kenneth" made me laugh so nicely. The "Trial of Witches" [...] seemed to me a most powerful [reminder] of the past.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Forrest Reid : 'The Trial of Witches'
E. M. Forster to Forrest Reid, 10 January 1919: 'Some of your stories I have read before, but I am enjoying and admiring them all. "Kenneth" made me laugh so nicely. The "Trial of Witches" [...] seemed to me a most powerful [reminder] of the past.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Ellis Cornelia Knight : Sir Guy de Lusignan. A tale of Italy
'I wish you would like my poor friend Miss Knight's "Guy de Lusignan" a little better: the style is very good, the descriptions very exact, the history very exact; but, alas! it is not "Trevelyan".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Ellis Cornelia Knight : Sir Guy de Lusignan. A tale of Italy
'I wish you would like my poor friend Miss Knight's "Guy de Lusignan" a little better: the style is very good, the descriptions very exact, the history very exact; but, alas! it is not "Trevelyan".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa Clinton Print: Book
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand : Moïse
'I always thought Chateaubriand had a great deal of the mountebank in him. I bought the play [which she also watched] so you will see it. In his preface he talks of Racine's sacred dramas, but, after all, the histories of Esther and Athalie, though in the Bible, are [italics] mere history [end italics; this is significant because LS is objecting to Chateaubriand representing Moses on stage - implicitly a different thing from what Racine did - this is elaborated on] When I got the book I could scarcely follow the actors, who ate half their words and bellowed the other half.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : Corinne, or Italy
'Or perhaps she [Madame de Stael] may wish to have it appear as if she thought so [that English women were less uncouth than they used to be] since she wrote the history of Lady Edgermond's Society "elles sont d'une grace d'une simplicite charmante et belles comme le jour", but I am not certain that she would not place us all or at least with a very few exceptions on Lady Cooke's bench of idiots'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'I was indeed surprised to find my name in "Patronage" but my surprise was principally caused by finding such honourable mention made of me and by seeing myself in company with those whom I have no pretensions to associate with. No person but Miss Edgeworth would call "Patronage" a trivial performance, but even she has not a right to call it so. Like most of her other works, under the form of a mere book of amusement it conveys the most important lessons. I hope that the publication of it will add greatly to the lively satisfaction she must feel when she reflects how greatly her writings have contributed to improve the condition of mankind, and what mischievous follies and frailties they have in numerous individuals corrected or repressed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Patronage
'The pleasure we had in reading "Patronage" has been even increased by reading the [torn and illegible] but I should not say we, for Sir Samuel could not get past the first volume. Surely it is vastly inferior to all her other publications and the only moral I can find out is that ladies should not go without pockets. It had to me all the defects of her other novels without any of their beauties, and the impression on my mind all the time I was reading it was similar to that of a tormenting dream, wherever you getg to the same disagreeable objects present themselves'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Henri-Benjamin Constant-de Rebecque : [pamphlet on press freedom]
'Benjamin Constant is writing some of the most successful pamphlets of the day, particularly one in favour of the liberty of the press which Lady Holland has just sent to Sir Samuel, together with a very excellent one of Gallois's on the same side'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque : [pamphlet on press freedom]
'Benjamin Constant is writing some of the most successful pamphlets of the day., particularly one in favour of the liberty of the press which Lady Holland has just sent to Sir Samuel, together with a very excellent one of Gallois's on the same side'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly
Maria Edgeworth : [various books]
'And now that I have finished all my foreign stock I may venture a few words as to your delightful little volumes which have been read with great avidity by all my elder children. I have not given "Harry and Lucy" to the younger ones. A boy of nearly nine is now reading it to me with the greatest satisfaction and interest and his elder brother of upwards of ten says, "really Mama that is a very useful as well as entertaining book. I have learnt a great many things from it that I did not know before". As you ask for their opinions I must tell you tho' from what cause I know not that "Rosamond" has always been a most distinguished favorite. Perhaps they feel a sympathy with her faults and feel that they resemble her in many things'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: elder children of Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harry and Lucy
'And now that I have finished all my foreign stock I may venture a few words as to your delightful little volumes which have been read with great avidity by all my elder children. I have not given "Harry and Lucy" to the younger ones. A boy of nearly nine is now reading it to me with the greatest satisfaction and interest and his elder brother of upwards of ten says, "really Mama that is a very useful as well as entertaining book. I have learnt a great many things from it that I did not know before". As you ask for their opinions I must tell you tho' from what cause I know not that "Rosamond" has always been a most distinguished favorite. Perhaps they feel a sympathy with her faults and feel that they resemble her in many things'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: a son of Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harry and Lucy
'And now that I have finished all my foreign stock I may venture a few words as to your delightful little volumes which have been read with great avidity by all my elder children. I have not given "Harry and Lucy" to the younger ones. A boy of nearly nine is now reading it to me with the greatest satisfaction and interest and his elder brother of upwards of ten says, "really Mama that is a very useful as well as entertaining book. I have learnt a great many things from it that I did not know before". As you ask for their opinions I must tell you tho' from what cause I know not that "Rosamond" has always been a most distinguished favorite. Perhaps they feel a sympathy with her faults and feel that they resemble her in many things'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: a son of Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Rosamond
'And now that I have finished all my foreign stock I may venture a few words as to your delightful little volumes which have been read with great avidity by all my elder children. I have not given "Harry and Lucy" to the younger ones. A boy of nearly nine is now reading it to me with the greatest satisfaction and interest and his elder brother of upwards of ten says, "really Mama that is a very useful as well as entertaining book. I have learnt a great many things from it that I did not know before". As you ask for their opinions I must tell you tho' from what cause I know not that "Rosamond" has always been a most distinguished favorite. Perhaps they feel a sympathy with her faults and feel that they resemble her in many things'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: children of Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [review of 'Les Peines et les Recompenses']
'If the Quarterly Reviewers should not think proper to publish it [an article by Edgeworth] Sir Saml wishes you would let it appear in the Philanthropist, a periodical Publication which is perhaps not much known in Ireland but which contains some very excellent articles.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, Tis Sixty Years Since
'I am afraid that we do not admire "Waverley" as much as it deserves. The praise you give it would almost induce me to change my opinion, but I must be honest above all things; I did not like the hero, and thought the whole more a portraiture of individual than of general manners, but this may have arisen from ignorance, and I find in general the Scotch pleased with it. Walter Scott, if he did not write it, certainly must have had a good deal to do with it, but there is a sort of notice prefix'd to the last edition which they seem to say makes it very improbable that it should have been written by him'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley; or, Tis Sixty Years Since
'I am afraid that we do not admire "Waverley" as much as it deserves. The praise you give it would almost induce me to change my opinion, but I must be honest above all things; I did not like the hero, and thought the whole more a portraiture of individual than of general manners, but this may have arisen from ignorance, and I find in general the Scotch pleased with it. Walter Scott, if he did not write it, certainly must have had a good deal to do with it, but there is a sort of notice prefix'd to the last edition which they seem to say makes it very improbable that it should have been written by him'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
Norman Douglas : unknown
'I've just read Nelson. It is very good. Some criticism can be made mainly on the point that you presuppose too much knowledge of facts in your readers. Still we shall try to place it where it may be judged sympathetically.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Maria Edgeworth : [children's books]
'I have just been beset by two of my little boys who are deep in your little books and who beg that I will give their very best love to you. One of them, 4 and a half, says, "tell Miss Edgeworth I do really think Rosamond was foolish not to choose the shoes, but her Mama made her go without them very long, I would not have made her go barefoot more than a week". You have you see produced a very young critic. He is just beginning to feel great pleasure in reading, and he never does it without making his remarks as he goes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: two sons of Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Rosamond
'I have just been beset by two of my little boys who are deep in your little books and who beg that I will give their very best love to you. One of them, 4 and a half, says, "tell Miss Edgeworth I do really think Rosamond was foolish not to choose the shoes, but her Mama made her go without them very long, I would not have made her go barefoot more than a week". You have you see produced a very young critic. He is just beginning to feel great pleasure in reading, and he never does it without making his remarks as he goes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [title page of a children's book]
'I wish you had been present when I opened the parcel and read the title page, the exclamations, the elevated voices, the "O Mama pray let me look" and "O Mama may [italics] I [end italics] read it?"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Richard Lovell Edgeworth : [a narrative]
'We were very much pleased with Mr Lovell Edgeworth's narrative which Mrs Marcet showed us, a very little addition from your pen would have made a very delightful fashionable tale'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly
Alexandre Dumas : Nouveaux Entre'actes
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charles Arthur Mercier : Sanity and Insanity
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Pierre Loti : Le Roman d'un Enfant
Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book
Charles Henri Ford ( with Parker Tyler) : The Young and the Evil
'Thank you for sending me your novel. I think that there is much good writing, and that you have a strong visual sense, but I do get tired of the perpetual pillow fights. Frankly, don't either of you young men know anybody who is capable of getting into his own bed and staying there? If you do for goodness sake cultivate his acquaintance, and write about him next time for a change. Also, calling a spade a spade never made the spade interesting yet. Take my advice, leave spades alone, or if you must mention them, then mention the garden too. All the miners round here - they are not an expressive race- use words which recur over and over again on your pages. But I don't find they add anything to my consciousness. No, no, you[should] develop your talent along different lines, and let us have some more writing like that page about the girl and the sailor - with the last phrase left out. P.S I mean that our forefathers, though an ignorant lot in some ways, were no more ignorant of the process of excretion than are their descendents today. But apart from medical treatises, these things do not in themselves make interesting reading. The prose rythms of your book really do deserve a more worthy subject, next time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Ronald Bottrall : Festival of Fire
'Now I'm reading Festivals of Fire, which I had sent for before I got your letter; it was most charming of you to offer to send it it to me, and I think it remarkable, and it is obvious that you are a real poet. As I said before, the rhythmical quality of "The Loosening" its fluidity and perfect control, was most remarkable, and I never doubted that you have a most remarkable mind; all I wanted was more sifting of the material. When I know Festivals of Fire properly, I shall write to you again...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Walter Greenwood : Love on the Dole
'I have just read Love on the Dole and His Worship The Mayor, books which were sent me by a friend a short time ago, for the second time, and I feel impelled to tell you that I know you to be, not only a born writer, but a great writer (and I never use that word lightly). I do not know when I have been so deeply, so terribly moved and so strongly impressed as I have been these two superb novels. How on earth you succeeded in combining the beauty and the unutterable tenderness of these books, their beautiful and inevitable form, with such an apalling indictment of our present damnable civilisation, I don't know. You are such a writer that the terrible tragedies of starvation, the people whose poignant and shining love, love between boy and girl, between husband and wife, love between friends, seem to me to have been known all my life.....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Walter Greenwood : His Worship the Mayor
'I have just read Love on the Dole and His Worship The Mayor, books which were sent me by a friend a short time ago, for the second time, and I feel impelled to tell you that I know you to be, not only a born writer, but a great writer ( and I never use that word lightly). I do not know when I have been so deeply, so terribly moved and so strongly impressed as I have been these two superb novels. How on earth you succeeded in combining the beauty and the unutterable tenderness of these books, their beautiful and inevitable form, with such an apalling indictment of our present damnable civilisation, I don't know. You are such a writer that the terrible tragedies of starvation, the people whose poignant and shining love, love between boy and girl, between husband and wife, love between friends, seem to me to have been known all my life.....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Friedrich Engels : Conditions of the Working Classess in England
'I have just been reading and digesting Engel's Conditions of the Working Classes in England, in intention, heaven knows, a noble work; but he can't write, so it raised anger in me, instead of grief. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Practical Education
'One amongst the innumerable excellent things I have learnt from Practical Education is to consider what is passing in the child's mind at the moment, and I am sure this is a thing which is seldom if ever attended to.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Germaine de Stael : [writings about England, never published as 'De L'Angleterre', as originally planned]
' have not yet seen him [Sir James Mackintosh], but I hear that he has read or has heard some chapters of "L'Angleterre". He says it is full of talent, but that there are some strange mistakes as to English Manners; but that a dinner at Lord Grey's is very well described'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mackintosh Manuscript: Unknown
Albert Jean Michel de Rocca : Mémoires sur la guerre des Français en Espagne
'Mr Rocca's "Memoirs sur la guerre Des Francois en Espagne" [sic] is just out. I have only read a very few pages but they give me a great desire to read more, particularly as Sophie who took it up could not lay it down again, and in general a girl of fourteen is a pretty good judge of the interest'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Albert Jean Michel de Rocca : Mémoires sur la guerre des Français en Espagne
'Mr Rocca's "Memoirs sur la guerre Des Francois en Espagne" [sic] is just out. I have only read a very few pages but they give me a great desire to read more, particularly as Sophie who took it up could not lay it down again, and in general a girl of fourteen is a pretty good judge of the interest'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophie Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'The "Edinburgh Review" will have praised "Waverley" to your hearts content. I think however they left out one of the most affecting parts of the work, which is the return of W. to the Barons, and the conduct of the poor innocent David Gellatley. Surely there is no doubt but that Walter Scott is the principal Author of it. The learned here do not affect to speak of it as belonging to anyone else -- I read "The Lord of the Isles" last night it being lent me for the Evening. There is some beautiful description indeed in it, particlarly to my fancy a barren scene in one of the Isles. I own I expected more from the two opening cantos than I afterwards found, and on the whole was disappointed. The story of the Page is so hackneyd, and there is nothing to redeem it but a greater power of holding the tongue than is commonly given to Women, and, as in every thing Walter Scott writes one can never feel great interest for the Lover, which one certainly ought to do, Malcolm Graeme in the "Lady of the Lake", "Waverley", and the Lover in "Marmion", and now Ronald, altho' I expected a great deal from him from the opening. I am however in love with the description of Robert Bruce, I think it beautiful. It is very presumptuous in me thus to give my opinion, [particularly as I have this morning heard that Sir James Mackintosh says it is by far the best thing Walter Scott has done, but then he is puffer general particularly to Scotsmen.] ' [Words inside brackets crossed out in original]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'The "Edinburgh Review" will have praised "Waverley" to your hearts content. I think however they left out one of the most affecting parts of the work, which is the return of W. to the Barons, and the conduct of the poor innocent David Gellatley. Surely there is no doubt but that Walter Scott is the principal Author of it. The learned here do not affect to speak of it as belonging to anyone else -- I read "The Lord of the Isles" last night it being lent me for the Evening. There is some beautiful description indeed in it, particlarly to my fancy a barren scene in one of the Isles. I own I expected more from the two opening cantos than I afterwards found, and on the whole was disappointed. The story of the Page is so hackneyd, and there is nothing to redeem it but a greater power of holding the tongue than is commonly given to Women, and, as in every thing Walter Scott writes one can never feel great interest for the Lover, which one certainly ought to do, Malcolm Graeme in the "Lady of the Lake", "Waverley", and the Lover in "Marmion", and now Ronald, altho' I expected a great deal from him from the opening. I am however in love with the description of Robert Bruce, I think it beautiful. It is very presumptuous in me thus to give my opinion, [particularly as I have this morning heard that Sir James Mackintosh says it is by far the best thing Walter Scott has done, but then he is puffer general particularly to Scotsmen.] ' [Words inside brackets crossed out in original]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lady of the Lake, The
'The "Edinburgh Review" will have praised "Waverley" to your hearts content. I think however they left out one of the most affecting parts of the work, which is the return of W. to the Barons, and the conduct of the poor innocent David Gellatley. Surely there is no doubt but that Walter Scott is the principal Author of it. The learned here do not affect to speak of it as belonging to anyone else -- I read "The Lord of the Isles" last night it being lent me for the Evening. There is some beautiful description indeed in it, particlarly to my fancy a barren scene in one of the Isles. I own I expected more from the two opening cantos than I afterwards found, and on the whole was disappointed. The story of the Page is so hackneyd, and there is nothing to redeem it but a greater power of holding the tongue than is commonly given to Women, and, as in every thing Walter Scott writes one can never feel great interest for the Lover, which one certainly ought to do, Malcolm Graeme in the "Lady of the Lake", "Waverley", and the Lover in "Marmion", and now Ronald, altho' I expected a great deal from him from the opening. I am however in love with the description of Robert Bruce, I think it beautiful. It is very presumptuous in me thus to give my opinion, [particularly as I have this morning heard that Sir James Mackintosh says it is by far the best thing Walter Scott has done, but then he is puffer general particularly to Scotsmen.] ' [Words inside brackets crossed out in original]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
'The "Edinburgh Review" will have praised "Waverley" to your hearts content. I think however they left out one of the most affecting parts of the work, which is the return of W. to the Barons, and the conduct of the poor innocent David Gellatley. Surely there is no doubt but that Walter Scott is the principal Author of it. The learned here do not affect to speak of it as belonging to anyone else -- I read "The Lord of the Isles" last night it being lent me for the Evening. There is some beautiful description indeed in it, particlarly to my fancy a barren scene in one of the Isles. I own I expected more from the two opening cantos than I afterwards found, and on the whole was disappointed. The story of the Page is so hackneyd, and there is nothing to redeem it but a greater power of holding the tongue than is commonly given to Women, and, as in every thing Walter Scott writes one can never feel great interest for the Lover, which one certainly ought to do, Malcolm Graeme in the "Lady of the Lake", "Waverley", and the Lover in "Marmion", and now Ronald, altho' I expected a great deal from him from the opening. I am however in love with the description of Robert Bruce, I think it beautiful. It is very presumptuous in me thus to give my opinion, [particularly as I have this morning heard that Sir James Mackintosh says it is by far the best thing Walter Scott has done, but then he is puffer general particularly to Scotsmen.] ' [Words inside brackets crossed out in original]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'The "Edinburgh Review" will have praised "Waverley" to your hearts content. I think however they left out one of the most affecting parts of the work, which is the return of W. to the Barons, and the conduct of the poor innocent David Gellatley. Surely there is no doubt but that Walter Scott is the principal Author of it. The learned here do not affect to speak of it as belonging to anyone else -- I read "The Lord of the Isles" last night it being lent me for the Evening. There is some beautiful description indeed in it, particlarly to my fancy a barren scene in one of the Isles. I own I expected more from the two opening cantos than I afterwards found, and on the whole was disappointed. The story of the Page is so hackneyd, and there is nothing to redeem it but a greater power of holding the tongue than is commonly given to Women, and, as in every thing Walter Scott writes one can never feel great interest for the Lover, which one certainly ought to do, Malcolm Graeme in the "Lady of the Lake", "Waverley", and the Lover in "Marmion", and now Ronald, altho' I expected a great deal from him from the opening. I am however in love with the description of Robert Bruce, I think it beautiful. It is very presumptuous in me thus to give my opinion, [particularly as I have this morning heard that Sir James Mackintosh says it is by far the best thing Walter Scott has done, but then he is puffer general particularly to Scotsmen.] ' [Words inside brackets crossed out in original]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mackintosh Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles, The
'Since I wrote the first two pages of this letter I have read Eugene and Guilliaume, and quite agree with you. Pray correct Sir James Mackintosh's opinion [about "Waverley"], and for [italics] best [end italics] read [italics] worst [end italics] which was his opinion, altho' I was told the contrary. He is now I understand a little softened, and says it comes before Rokeby but after all the others. Have you read "Discipline" by Mrs Brunton? With many defects it is much above the common class, and the last Volume is very pretty indeed some scenes nearly as good as "Waverley" who I might have added to my list of Lovers belonging to Walter Scott one can take no interest in. - Have you read La Baume's act. of the Campaign in Russia? I am told it is very well done. I am sure you will be pleased with Mr Rocca's Book if you read it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mackintosh Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rokeby
'Since I wrote the first two pages of this letter I have read Eugene and Guilliaume, and quite agree with you. Pray correct Sir James Mackintosh's opinion [about "Waverley"], and for [italics] best [end italics] read [italics] worst [end italics] which was his opinion, altho' I was told the contrary. He is now I understand a little softened, and says it comes before Rokeby but after all the others. Have you read "Discipline" by Mrs Brunton? With many defects it is much above the common class, and the last Volume is very pretty indeed some scenes nearly as good as "Waverley" who I might have added to my list of Lovers belonging to Walter Scott one can take no interest in. - Have you read La Baume's act. of the Campaign in Russia? I am told it is very well done. I am sure you will be pleased with Mr Rocca's Book if you read it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mackintosh Print: Book
Mary Brunton : Discipline
'Since I wrote the first two pages of this letter I have read Eugene and Guilliaume, and quite agree with you. Pray correct Sir James Mackintosh's opinion [about "Waverley"], and for [italics] best [end italics] read [italics] worst [end italics] which was his opinion, altho' I was told the contrary. He is now I understand a little softened, and says it comes before Rokeby but after all the others. Have you read "Discipline" by Mrs Brunton? With many defects it is much above the common class, and the last Volume is very pretty indeed some scenes nearly as good as "Waverley" who I might have added to my list of Lovers belonging to Walter Scott one can take no interest in. - Have you read La Baume's act. of the Campaign in Russia? I am told it is very well done. I am sure you will be pleased with Mr Rocca's Book if you read it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Albert Jean Michel de Rocca : Mémoires Sur La Guerre Des Français En Espagne
'Since I wrote the first two pages of this letter I have read Eugene and Guilliaume, and quite agree with you. Pray correct Sir James Mackintosh's opinion [about "Waverley"], and for [italics] best [end italics] read [italics] worst [end italics] which was his opinion, altho' I was told the contrary. He is now I understand a little softened, and says it comes before Rokeby but after all the others. Have you read "Discipline" by Mrs Brunton? With many defects it is much above the common class, and the last Volume is very pretty indeed some scenes nearly as good as "Waverley" who I might have added to my list of Lovers belonging to Walter Scott one can take no interest in. - Have you read La Baume's act. of the Campaign in Russia? I am told it is very well done. I am sure you will be pleased with Mr Rocca's Book if you read it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The; or, A Prospect of Society
'Goldsmiths description of the Appennines is exact - "Woods over Woods in [italics] gay theatric pride [end italics]". Never was epithet more appropriate to the whole scenery'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
Richard Lovell Edgeworth : Readings on poetry
'We have been much instructed by the readings on poetry and long for the Irish Tales'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Romilly Family Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Fare thee well
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life, A
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life, A
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Fare thee well
'I send you some lines which he [Lord Byron] printed but did not publish, and which were handed about [italics] confidentially everywhere [end italics]. The usual consequence has happened, they appeared in one of the Sunday newspapers, and of course were copied on Monday a hundred times over. I send you what were in the "Morning Chronicle" with an unintelligible preface, and a paragraph which appeared the next day, by which you will see what a persecution Lady Byron is enduring. Sir Samuel says that the "Farewell" is a greater instance of wickedness than he thought was possible could have existed in human nature - and that the "Sketch from Private Life" is a miserable blackguard production without merit. - Indeed I cannot help thinking that he has hurt himself more than Lady Byron by abusing the person of a Maid Servant who was Nurse to Lady Milbanke, and who is grown old in faithful service to the Family'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Unknown
Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis : [children's plays]
'For once I must think differently from Mr Edgeworth. I have none of the fears that he has for the fate of "Little Plays for Children". Those of Madame de Genlis have always been extremly [sic] successful, altho' not very good, and "Old Poz" has been most successful, and has been acted by many a happy little party'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Old Poz
'For once I must think differently from Mr Edgeworth. I have none of the fears that he has for the fate of "Little Plays for Children". Those of Madame de Genlis have always been extremly [sic] successful, altho' not very good, and "Old Poz" has been most successful, and has been acted by many a happy little party'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Fare thee well
'His [Byron's] "Farewell" is miserable poetry, and the allusions to the intimacy of marriage are not only ungentlemanly, but unmanly. "The Domestick Sketch" is powerfully written. I have seen in the reports on mendicity that there are persons who teach the arts of abuse - His Lordship seems to have studied in this school, with great success'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Unknown, either in newspaper or version circulated in society
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life, A
'His [Byron's] "Farewell" is miserable poetry, and the allusions to the intimacy of marriage are not only ungentlemanly, but unmanly. "The Domestick Sketch" is powerfully written. I have seen in the reports on mendicity that there are persons who teach the arts of abuse - His Lordship seems to have studied in this school, with great success'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Unknown, either in newspaper or version circulated in society
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'I imagine "Glenarvon" has lost much of its merit in your eyes from not being acquainted with the different persons intended to be portrayed. Many characters are drawn I think full as well as the Princess of Madagascar. The circle at Lady Oxford's is surely well drawn and faithful; Buchanan, Sir Godfrey Webster - and even Lady Byron's own character is not ill done. The letter is an original, the signature alone different, and I am a firm believer in the whole history as far as relates to Calantha and "Glenarvon". He did not quit her until he was tired, and the letter was actually sealed with Lady Oxford's seal and directed in her hand writing'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'Do you not think the contrast of the manners between Melbourne House and Devonshire House [in "Glenarvon"] well drawn? One of our friends, well read in Johnson, told me most of the serious parts were extracts from the "Rambler". I have not had time or patience to compare them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'[Maria Edgeworth's brother] talked a great deal of you and of "Glenarvon". Have you read the preface of the second edition? I took it up at the Library, having read an extract from it in the newspapers, I brought it home, and really think if Lady Caroline wrote it she deserves high place amongst the fair authors of the present day. I cannot think it is hers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Caroline Lamb : Glenarvon
'[Maria Edgeworth's brother] talked a great deal of you and of "Glenarvon". Have you read the preface of the second edition? I took it up at the Library, having read an extract from it in the newspapers, I brought it home, and really think if Lady Caroline wrote it she deserves high place amongst the fair authors of the present day. I cannot think it is hers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Edgeworth Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Manfred
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Darkness
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [poems]
'Have you read Lord Byron and his horrid Incantation? Can you doubt but that it is intended as a curse on his wife? Her nerves must be strong if she can read it without shuddering. He is in Italy travelling with two ladies in his Suite. In "Childe Harold" there is a novel enjoyment of a storm such I should think as a demon would feel, but I think that the stanza which describes the appearance of the morning after is beautiful. Sir Samuel says that he has lost his ear, and that his last poems are decidedly the worst he has written. Surely the man who wrote "Darkness" must be mad or nearly approaching to it. Is there not something exceptionally riduculous in the idea of the two men, who survived the rest, frightening each other to death at last by their ugliness, ''een of their mutual ugliness they died", that is the line I think'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Book, Unknown
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'Pray read "Tales of my Landlord". They are charming. I think there can be no doubt but that they are written by the Author of "Waverley" altho' it is not avow'd who that is. If it is not Walter Scott it is marvellous. I saw a gentleman the other day who told me that he had seen the manuscript in America in the hands of Walter Scott's Brother who there avow'd himself the Author'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of my Landlord
'Pray read "Tales of my Landlord". They are charming. I think there can be no doubt but that they are written by the Author of "Waverley" altho' it is not avow'd who that is. If it is not Walter Scott it is marvellous. I saw a gentleman the other day who told me that he had seen the manuscript in America in the hands of Walter Scott's Brother who there avow'd himself the Author'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [letters to his wife Harriet]
'His letters [PB Shelley's in relation to his desertion of his wife] were really curious. A more singular display of the total want of all moral feeling under the guise of liberality and enlightened sentiment I should suppose had never before been exhibited. The Cause was heard in the Chancellor's private room out of compassion to Mr Shelley and his family. The account which appeared in the papers must have been written by himself, or his friend Mr Hunt of the "Examiner" who was present, and they went so far that the Chancellor intimated that he would have a rehearing of the cause in public and they immediately became silent'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly
Jeremy Bentham : [works]
'What a pity it is that Mr B[entham] carries this oddity of language [which AR has just been joking about] into his works. It makes them unreadible [sic] and of much less use than they otherwise would be. He has just published a singular Book the title of which is "Bentham on Codification", a great deal very excellent, Sir Samuel says, but most injudicious and injurious to the good cause, not only from throwing a ridicule on it, but also from going so much too far, for it is scarcely attempted to be disguised that Republicanism is his great object'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book
Jeremy Bentham : Papers Relative to Codification and Public Instruction
'What a pity it is that Mr B[entham] carries this oddity of language [which AR has just been joking about] into his works. It makes them unreadible [sic] and of much less use than they otherwise would be. He has just published a singular Book the title of which is "Bentham on Codification", a great deal very excellent, Sir Samuel says, but most injudicious and injurious to the good cause, not only from throwing a ridicule on it, but also from going so much too far, for it is scarcely attempted to be disguised that Republicanism is his great object'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Romilly Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Notes on the Firth
'Will you allow me to recommend you the accompanying sonnets? They are by Mr Henley, who wrote the “Hospital Outlines” in this month’s "Cornhill" − poems which have made a great sensation here, where the portraits are easily recognized; and though these have not the same extrinsic interest, they seem to me better as workmanship and more agreeable altogether. Henley is a singularly fine fellow, whose constancy under great trouble is as remarkable as his verse. Let me add that he is not the richest person in the world, so (should these sonnets suit you for the magazine) an early publication will be of great service to him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Unknown
William Ernest Henley : Hospital Outlines: Sketches and Portraits.
'Will you allow me to recommend you the accompanying sonnets? They are by Mr Henley, who wrote the “Hospital Outlines” in this month’s "Cornhill" − poems which have made a great sensation here, where the portraits are easily recognized; and though these have not the same extrinsic interest, they seem to me better as workmanship and more agreeable altogether. Henley is a singularly fine fellow, whose constancy under great trouble is as remarkable as his verse. Let me add that he is not the richest person in the world, so (should these sonnets suit you for the magazine) an early publication will be of great service to him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Probably a proof copy.
Thomas Stearns Eliot : 'Burbank'
'I have been thinking about Eliot and Jew hatred - a compassionate man one would say, cultured, civilised? and yet he can write poison like this: "The rats are underneath the piles. The Jew is underneath the lot." ' [quotation from Glasser's friend Bill Werner]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bill Werner Print: Book
Henry Murger : Scenes de la Vie de Boheme
'The music of "La Boheme" having taken special hold of me, I read the libretto in the Mitchell Library, and as much as I could find about Murger and his world, and the people he knew who lived on black coffee and little else in romantic Paris, and was saddened and perplexed by the opera's alloy of sordidness and sentimentality'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Glasser Print: Book
Dr Warburton : [Letter to Thomas Birch]
'There is, in the B. Museum, a letter from Bishop Warburton to Dr Birch, on the subject of biography; which, though I am aware it may expose me to a charge of artfully raising the value of my own work, by contrasting it with that of which I have spoken, is so well conceived and expressed, that I cannot refrain from here inserting it: [the letter follows, including this passage] "Almost all the life-writers we have had before Toland and Desmaiseaux, are indeed strange inspid creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau, where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of disinteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter
Pierre Desmaiseaux : La vie de Boileau-Despréaux
'There is, in the British Museum, a letter from Bishop Warburton to Dr Birch, on the subject of biography; which, though I am aware it may expose me to a charge of artfully raising the value of my own work, by contrasting it with that of which I have spoken, is so well conceived and expressed, that I cannot refrain from here inserting it: [the letter follows, including this passage] "Almost all the life-writers we have had before Toland and Desmaiseaux, are indeed strange inspid creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau, where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of disinteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Warburton Print: Book
Melchor de Ortega : Felixmarte de Hircania
'Dr Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was long intimately acquainted with him, and has preserved a few anecdotes concerning him, regretting that he was not a more diligent collector, informs me, that "When a boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he retained his fondness for them through life; so that (adds his Lordship) spending part of a summer at my parsonage-house in the country, he chose for his regular reading the old Spanish romance of "Felixmarte of Hircania", in folio, which he read quite through. Yet I have heard him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profesion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius :
'His figure and manner appeared strange to them [the company on the night of Johnson's arrival in Oxford]; but he behaved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Messiah. A Sacred Eclogue, in Imitation of Virgil's Pollio
'Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr Jorden to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his College and, indeed, of all the University'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Allestree : Whole Duty of Man, The
'"Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read "The Whole Duty of Man", from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Jeronimo Lobo : Voyage to Abyssinia , A
'[referring to his translation of Lobo's "Voyage to Abyssinia"] Johnson upon this exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector wrote'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : [second series of] Hospital Poems
'Herewith you receive the rest of Henley’s hospital work. He was much pleased by what you said of him, and asked me to forward these to you for your opinion; the pencil marks are principally Payne’s. One poem at least, the “Spring Sorrow”, which seems to me the most beautiful, I hope you will communicate to Madame. I thank God for this [italics]petit bout de consolation[end italics], that by Henley’s own account, this one more lovely thing in the world is not altogether without some trace of my influence: let me say that I have been something sympathetic which the mother found and contemplated while she yet carried it in her womb. This, in my profound discouragement, is a great thing for me; if I cannot do good work myself, at least, it seems, I can help others better inspired; I am at least a skilful accoucheur.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
[following transcribed passage on 'gravity,' from Tristram Shandy I.ii] 'Insight vitiated by instinct of self defence -- probably typical of Sterne, whom I have begun to read. How did he discover the art of leaving out what he wanted to say? And why was it lost again until our own time. Can nothing liberate English fiction from conscientiousness? S. clearly a g[rea]t writer and his philosophy of life almost good and quite good in quotations: "Look at little me" spoils it in the bulk. 'But (now finishing T.S.): what character drawing! [goes on to comment further]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Frances Burney :
'More I reflect on the novel the higher I place it: attempts to read Swift, Miss Burney, Smollett, place it on a pinnacle.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Percy Lubbock : The Craft of Fiction
'[Percy Lubbock] thinks ["The Craft of Fiction" -- a sensitive yet poor spirited book] that the aim of a novel should be capable of being put into a phrase, "ten words that reveal its unity", and so boggles at War and Peace, though he "duly" recognises its vitality [...] Must I read him through?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Impossible to read a Meredith as simply and fairly as a Fielding, with one eye fixed on the author's interests and the other on his achievement. [read Tom Jones & Evan Harrington when I had chicken pox, 19, and felt this strongly]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Meredith : Evan Harrington
'Impossible to read a Meredith as simply and fairly as a Fielding, with one eye fixed on the author's interests and the other on his achievement. [read Tom Jones & Evan Harrington when I had chicken pox, 19, and felt this strongly]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry James : The Ambassadors
Among texts discussed and quoted from at length in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Henry James, The Ambassadors, with comments including 'Pattern exquisitely woven,' and 'However hard you shake his sentences, no banality falls out.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Norman Douglas : D. H. Lawrence and Maurice Magnus: A Plea for Better Manners
Among texts discussed and quoted from in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Norman Douglas, D. H. Lawrence and Maurice Magnus: A Plea for Better Manners (1924).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Herman Melville : Billy Budd
Among texts discussed and quoted from in 1926 Commonplace Book of E. M. Forster is Herman Melville, Billy Budd, with remarks including 'Billy Budd [...] has goodness, of the glowing aggressive sort which cannot exist unless it has evil to consume'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
'Great Expectations. Alliance between atmosphere and plot (the convicts) make it more solid and satisfactory than anything else of D[ickens]. known to me. Very fine writing occasionally ([italics]end of Pt.I[end italics].) [...] Occasional hints not developed -- e.g. [...] Jagger's [sic] character [italics]does[end italics] nothing, Herbert Pocket's has to be revised. But all the defects are trivial, and the course of events is both natural and exciting [goes on to comment further, and to quote at length from conclusion to 'the first stage of Pip's Expectations']'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
Remarks in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book of 1926 include 'Nearly all novels go off at the end,' with further comments including 'V. of W. gets out of his [depth] 1/2 way through -- after the painting of the family group with Mrs Primrose as Venus all the grace and wit vanishes [...] the happy ending to the tragedy makes all worse than ever.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'[editor's words] without literary pretensions, Mrs Marshall had a genuine love of reading, and when no other engagement intervened, it was one of her domestic regulations, that a book should be read aloud in the evening for general amusement; the office of reader commonly devolved on Miss Hamilton, who was thus led to remark that the best prose style was always that which could be longest read without exhausting the breath. These social studies were far from satisfying her avidity for information; and she constantly perused many books by stealth. Mrs Marshall, on discovering what had been her private occupation, expressed neither praise nor blame, but quietly advised her to avoid any display of superior knowledge by which she might be subjected to the imputation of pedantry. This admonition produced the desired effect, since, as she herself informs us, she once hid a volume of Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism under the cushion of a chair lest she should be detected in a study which prejudice and ignorance might pronounce unfeminine'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Preceptor, The
'Mr Dodsley this year brought out his "Preceptor", oned of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
'I remember when the [italics] Literary Property [end italics] of those letters [Lord Chesterfield's to his son] was contested in the Court of Session in Scotland, and Mr Henry Dundas, one of the counsel read this character [of the 'respectable Hottentot'], as an exhibition of Johnson, Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, one of the Judges, maintained with some warmth, that it was not intended as a portrait of Johnson, but of a late noble Lord, distinguished for abstruse science'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Dundas Print: Book
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke : Philosophical works
'On the 6th of March came out Lord Bolingbroke's works, published by Mr David Mallet. The wild and pernicious ravings, under the name of [italics] Philosophy [end italics], which were thus ushered into the world, gave great offence to all well-principled men.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Mr Wise : History and Chronology of the fabulous Ages, A
'Here was an excellent library; particularly, a valuable collection of books in Northern literature, with which Johnson was often very busy. One day Mr Wise read to us a dissertation which he was preparing for the press, intitled "A History and Chronology of the fabulous Ages".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Wise Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Barclay : Ship of Fools, The
'There is an old English and Latin book of poems by Barclay, called "The Ship of Fools"; at the end of which are a number of [italics] Eglogues [end italics]; so he writes it, from [italics] Egloga [end italics], which are probably the first in our language. If you cannot find the book I will get Mr Dodsley to send it to you'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Aristotle : Poetics
Entries in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1926) include passage on character in tragedy from Aristotle, Poetics.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
Under heading 'Peer Gynt': 'The main ideas of this great and bitter poem become clearer at this last hasty reading (3-1-28) though my former criticism stands [i.e. that it is a poem pretending to be a sermon [...]] [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
Under heading 'Peer Gynt': 'The main ideas of this great and bitter poem become clearer at this last hasty reading (3-1-28) though my former criticism stands [i.e. that it is a poem pretending to be a sermon [...]] [goes on to comment further on text]'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Francois Mauriac : Le Desert de l'Amour
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1928) include reflections on lovers' perceptions from Francois Mauriac, Le Desert de l'Amour (1925), and one line, 'La nuit etait vouee au vent et a la lune,' from Mauriac's La Pharisienne, added by Forster in 1942.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Francois Mauriac : La Pharisienne
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1928) include reflections on lovers' perceptions from Francois Mauriac, Le Desert de l'Amour (1925), and one line, 'La nuit etait vouee au vent et a la lune,' from Mauriac's La Pharisienne, added by Forster in 1942.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Letter to George Montagu, 13 November 1760
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1929) include section from Horace Walpole's letter of 13 November 1760 to George Montagu, describing the funeral of George II.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Ernest Hubert Lewis Schwarz : The Kalahari and its Native Races
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1929) include anecdotes on pigmies from Ernest Hubert Lewis Schwarz, The Kalahari and its Native Races (1928) p.153, p.155.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry Vaughan : 'Quickness'
'Raw February Afternoon 2-30 [...] Reading Vaughan [quotes two stanzas beginning 'Thou art a moon-like toil'] [...] Reading F. R. Lucas also [quotes seven lines beginning with 'Your quiet altar after all was best']'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Cyril Connolly :
'Raw February Afternoon 2-30 [...] Thought, after reading little Cyril Conolly [sic], of the new generation knocking at the door, and wondered whether it is more than a set of knuckle bones.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Unknown
Andre Maurois : Byron
'L'Heroisme consiste a ne pas permettre au corps de renier les impudences de l'esprit 'runs an epigram of Maurois which bowled me at the first reading; then, as so often, I thought "not really worth writing down." He is only saying that [italics]Byron[end italics] acted up to his theories. But he has written a very fine biography in which one always feels secure over the facts and has not to depend on the flashes of intuition cultivated by the Strachey school.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
John Cowper Powys : Wolf Solent
'Have been trying to read Solent Wolf [sic] again -- duck-weed and spittle unrelieved [...] No wonder that those Hardyesque fungi, the Powys [brothers T. F. and John Cowper], have never got anywhere. Patiently advertising their own decay and searching the hedgerows for simples. Can't go to bed with anyone, only talk and think it over, don't know that lust and tenderness bring relief.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Walter Scott : [unknown]
'At home there were daily Bible-readings in the family circle for many years, but secular reading aloud happily also found a place. Lucy was "A good reader" and gave them Scott and Thackeray and Tom Moore as well as Shakespeare; Edward read Pickwick.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Housman Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers, The
'At home there were daily Bible-readings in the family circle for many years, but secular reading aloud happily also found a place. Lucy was "A good reader" and gave them Scott and Thackeray and Tom Moore as well as Shakespeare; Edward read Pickwick.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Housman Print: Book
Frances Sheridan : Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, The
'Her [Mrs Sheridan's] novel, entitled "Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph", contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full of hope of "heaven's mercy". Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it: "I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Frances Sheridan : Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, The
'Her [Mrs Sheridan's] novel, entitled "Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph", contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanty, in the amiable and pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resgned, and full of hope of "heaven's mercy". Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it: "I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'Sir, this book ("The Elements of Criticism", which he had taken up,) is a pretty essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Churchill : [unknown]
'He talked very contemptuously of Churchill's poetry, observing, that "it had a temporary currency, only from its audacity of abuse, and being filled with living names, and that it would sink into oblivion".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Churchill : [poems]
'In this depreciation [by Johnson] of Churchill's poetry I could not agree with him. It is very true that the greatest part of it is upon the topicks of the day, on which account, as it brought him great fame and profit at the time, it must proportionally slide out of the publick attention as other occasional objects succeed. But Churchill had extraordnary vigour both of thought and expression. His portraits of the players will ever be valuable to the true lovers of the drama; and his strong caricatures of several eminent men of his age, will not be forgotten by the curious. Let me add, that there are in his works many passages which are of a general nature; and his "Prophecy of Famine" is a poem of no ordinary merit. It is, indeed, falsely injurious to Scotland, but therefore may be allowed a greater share of invention'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Charles Churchill : Prophecy of Famine, The. A Scots Pastoral
'In this depreciation [by Johnson] of Churchill's poetry I could not agree with him. It is very true that the greatest part of it is upon the topicks of the day, on which account, as it brought him great fame and profit at the time, it must proportionally slide out of the publick attention as other occasional objects succeed. But Churchill had extraordnary vigour both of thought and expression. His portraits of the players will ever be valuable to the true lovers of the drama; and his strong caricatures of several eminent men of his age, will not be forgotten by the curious. Let me add, that there are in his works many passages which are of a general nature; and his "Prophecy of Famine" is a poem of no ordinary merit. It is, indeed, falsely injurious to Scotland, but therefore may be allowed a greater share of invention'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Robert Jenkin : Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion
'Jenkin's is the most copious and the best work I ever read in defence of divine revelation. It treats in a clear manner of the necessity of a divine revelation, antiquity of the scriptures, God's dispensations under the Patriarchs, Moses, Judges, Kings, and Christ; the wisdom and goodness of God is excellently displayed in the manner of the promulgation and preservation of the scriptures; various difficulties are cleared and objections answered. The author has, through the whole, discovered great depth of thought, a thorough knowledge of the history of the four great monarchies mentioned in the Old Testament, and of other ancient nations; which he has brought forward in confirmation of the truth of divine revelation. In reading this excellent learned production I could not help remarking the wonderful difference that therre is between this work and the poor superficial works of freethinkers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Unknown
Henry Newbolt : The Year of Trafalgar: being an account of the battle and of the events which led up to it, with a collection of the poems and ballads written thereupon between 1805 and 1905
'The book ["The Year of Trafalgar"] arrived. Some day I will bring it to London for you to write your name and mine on the flyleaf, thus making it specially valuable apart from its intrinsic worth, which I have been eagerly absorbing.' Hence follow eight lines of unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : 'The Icelandic Sagas'
'Your article on [Icelandic] Sagas first rate and extracts quoted are good. I quite see how one could get dramas out of that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Newbolt : The Year of Trafalgar: being an account of the battle and of the events which led up to it, with a collection of the poems and ballads written thereupon between 1805 and 1905
'I have re-read your book on Trafalgar and can only repeat that your argumentation is absolutely convincing.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'My mother did her conscientious best to remedy the deficiencies of our literary education by reading Dickens aloud to us on Sunday afternoons. We ploughed through "David Copperfield" and "Nicholas Nickleby" in this manner, which perhaps explains why I have never been able to finish anything else by Dickens except "A Tale of Two Cities".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonais
'During Preparation one wild autumn evening in St Monica's gymnasium, when the wind shook the unsubstantial walls and a tiny crescent of moon, glimpsed through a skylight in the roof, scudded in and out of the flying clouds, I first read Shelley's "Adonais", which taught me in the most startling and impressive fashion of my childhood's experience to perceive beauty embodied in literature, and made me finally determine to become the writer that I had dreamed of being ever since I was seven years old.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930) include three stanzas (beginning 'Old warder of these buried bones') from Tennyson, In Memoriam (1870 edition).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'A Farewell'
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930) include Tennyson, 'A Farewell'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Pierre Corneille : Trois Discours
Texts discussed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1930) include Corneille, Trois Discours ('Sur le poeme dramatique'; 'Sur la tragedie'; 'Sur les trois unites').
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Pierre Corneille : Rodogune
'Rodogune 1646. Despite indistinct and I believe undistinguished diction, this is the most moving and exciting play of Corneille I've struck [...] Antiochus and Seleucus are devoted to each other, and there it is; their love for Rod[[ogune]. and the commands of Cleopatre doesn't contend with their devotion'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Walter Raleigh, ed. : Johnson on Shakespare
[under heading 'Johnson on Othello]: 'Consulted original ed. to see if Raleigh misses out much. Naturally J. is stupider than he suggests: but was not stupid.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Saint Joan
'Shaw's St Joan and Joyce's Ulysses into which I looked today (8-11-30) made me ashamed of my own writing. They have something to say, but I am only paring away insincerities.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry James : The Letters of Henry James (vol.I)
Texts quoted from at length in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1931) include Henry James, Letters, passages from which cover topics including the writings of Pater, Kipling and Hardy.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Voltaire : Des Singularites de la Nature
Texts from which passages quoted in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book, 1931-32, include remarks on animal genitalia in Voltaire, Des Singularites de la Nature (incorporating comments such as 'Ce mecanisme est bien admirable; mais la sensation que la nature a jointe a ce mecanisme est plus admirable encore').
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Charles F. Richardson : 'Critical Introduction'
Passages quoted in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book, 1932, include this remark from Charles F. Richardson 'Critical Introduction' to The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe: 'It may be added that Poe stands supreme, even in the only morally pure national literature the world has ever seen, in the absolute chastity of his every word.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Pierre Bayle : Historical and Critical Dictionary
'"Bayle's Dictionary is a very useful work for those to consult who love the biographical part of literature, which is what I love most." Talking of the eminent writers in Qneen Anne's reign, he observed, "I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour. Mr. Addison was, to be sure, a great man; his learning was not profound; but his morality, his humour, and his elegance of writing, set him very high."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Frederick II King of Prussia : [unknown]
'On Tuesday, July 18, I found tall Sir Thomas Robinson sitting with Johnson. Sir Thomas said, that the King of Prussia valued himself upon three things;—upon being a hero, a musician, and an author. Johnson. "Pretty well, Sir, for one man. As to his being an author, I have not looked at his poetry ; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you may suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who has been his amanuensis. He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works." [Boswell tells how he repeated this to Voltaire, who was amused as he was on bad terms with Frederick the great]. But I think the criticism much too severe; for the "Memoirs of the House of Brandenbergh" are written as well as many works of that kind. His poetry, for the style of which he himself makes a frank apology, "[italics] Jargonnant un francois barbare [end italics]", though fraught with pernicious ravings of infidelity, has, in many places, great animation, and in some a pathetick tenderness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Frederick II King of Prussia : Memoirs of the house of Brandenburg. From the earliest accounts, to the death of Frederick I.
'On Tuesday, July 18, I found tall Sir Thomas Robinson sitting with Johnson. Sir Thomas said, that the King of Prussia valued himself upon three things;—upon being a hero, a musician, and an author. Johnson. "Pretty well, Sir, for one man. As to his being an author, I have not looked at his poetry ; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you may suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who has been his amanuensis. He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works." [Boswell tells how he repeated this to Voltaire, who was amused as he was on bad terms with Frederick the great]. But I think the criticism much too severe; for the "Memoirs of the House of Brandenbergh" are written as well as many works of that kind. His poetry, for the style of which he himself makes a frank apology, "[italics] Jargonnant un francois barbare [end italics]", though fraught with pernicious ravings of infidelity, has, in many places, great animation, and in some a pathetick tenderness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Frederick II King of Prussia : [poems]
'On Tuesday, July 18, I found tall Sir Thomas Robinson sitting with Johnson. Sir Thomas said, that the King of Prussia valued himself upon three things;—upon being a hero, a musician, and an author. Johnson. "Pretty well, Sir, for one man. As to his being an author, I have not looked at his poetry ; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you may suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who has been his amanuensis. He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works." [Boswell tells how he repeated this to Voltaire, who was amused as he was on bad terms with Frederick the great]. But I think the criticism much too severe; for the "Memoirs of the House of Brandenbergh" are written as well as many works of that kind. His poetry, for the style of which he himself makes a frank apology, "[italics] Jargonnant un francois barbare [end italics]", though fraught with pernicious ravings of infidelity, has, in many places, great animation, and in some a pathetick tenderness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Martin Martin : Description of the Western Islands of Scotland
'He told me, that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Martin Martin : Description of the Western Islands of Scotland
'He told me, that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Michael Johnson Print: Book
George Buchanan : Nympha Caledoniae
'Buchanan, he said, was a very fine poet; and observed that he was the first who complimented a lady, by ascribing to her the different perfections of the heathen goddesses; but that Johnston improved upon this, by making his lady, at the same time, free from their defects. He dwelt upon Buchanan's elegant verses to Mary, Queen of Scots, "Nympha Caledoniae, &c" and spoke with enthusiasm of the beauty of Latin verse. "All the modern languages (said he) cannot furnish so melodious a line as 'Formosam resonare doces Amarillida silvas'".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Gisbert Japix : Rymelerie
'[Boswell to Johnson] Of the modern Frisick, or what is spoken by the boors at this day, I have procured a specimen. It is [italics] Gisbert Japix's Rymelerie [end italics], which is the only book that they have. It is amazing that they have no translation of the bible, no treatises of devotion, nor even any of the ballads and story-books which are so agreeable to country people. You shall have Japix by the first convenient opportunity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
'He said of Goldsmith's "Traveller," which had been published in my absence, "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Edward Cooper : Two Sermons Preached at Wolverhampton
'We do not much like Mr Cooper's new Sermons; they are fuller of Regeneration & Conversion than ever - with the addition of his zeal in the cause of the Bible Society.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Henry Austen : Sermons
'Uncle Henry writes very superior Sermons. You & I must try to get hold of one or two & put them into our Novels; it would be a fine help to a volume; & we could make our Heroine read it aloud of a Sunday Evening, just as Isabella Wardour in the Antiquary, is made to read the History of the Hartz Demon in the ruins of St Ruth - tho I beleive [sic], on reflection, Lovell is the Reader.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Antiquary
'Uncle Henry writes very superior Sermons. You & I must try to get hold of one or two & put them into our Novels; it would be a fine help to a volume; & we could make our Heroine read it aloud of a Sunday Evening, just as Isabella Wardour in the Antiquary, is made to read the History of the Hartz Demon in the ruins of St Ruth - tho I beleive, on reflection, Lovell is the Reader.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
James Edward Austen : unpublished manuscript story
'[James Edward Austen] read his two Chapters to us the first Evening; - both good - but especially the last in our opinion. We think it has more of the Spirit & Entertainment of the early part of his Work, the first 3 or 4 Chapters, than some of the subsequent...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Edward Austen Manuscript: Sheet
Caroline Austen : unpublished manuscript story
'Your Anne is dreadful - . But nothing offends me so much as the absurdity of not being able to pronounce the word Shift. I could forgive her any follies in English, rather than the Mock Modesty of that french word...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey : Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo
'We have been reading the "Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo," & generally with much approbation. Nothing will please all the world, you know; but parts of it suit me better than much that he has written before. The opening - the Proem I beleive [sic] he calls it - is very beautiful. One cannot but grieve for the loss of the Son so fondly described. Has he at all recovered it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
George, Lord Lyttelton : History of the Life of Henry the Second
'His Majesty then talked of the controversy between Warburton and Lowth, which he seemed to have read, and asked Johnson what he thought of it. Johnson answered, "Warburton has most general, most scholastic learning ; Lowth is the more correct scholar. I do not know which of them calls names best." The King was pleased to say he was of the same opinion; adding, "You do not think then, Dr. Johnson, that there was much argument in the case." Johnson said, he did not think there was. "Why truly, (said the King,) when once it comes to calling names, argument is pretty well at an end." His Majesty then asked him what he thought of Lord Lyttelton's history, which was then just published. Johnson said, he thought his style pretty good, but he had blamed Henry the Second rather too much.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Dr Hill : [unknown]
'The King then asked him what he thought of Dr. Hill. Johnson answered, he was an ingenious man, but had no veracity; and immediately mentioned, as an instance of it, an assertion of that writer, that he had seen objects magnified to a much greater degree by using three or four microscopes at a time than by using one. "Now, (added Johnson,) every one acquainted with microscopes, knows, that the more of them he looks through, the less the object will appear." "Why, (replied the King,) this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it clumsily; for, if that be the case, every one who can look through a microscope will be able to detect him."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'"Sir, (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and [italics] there [end italics] is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression ; "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : [unknown]
'"Sir, (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and [italics] there [end italics] is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression ; "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Archibald Allison : [unknown]
'[EDITOR'S WORDS] Although Mrs Hamilton never lost her relish for works of humour and imagination, she had, during the last six years of her life, a decided preference for compositions of a higher order. Dugald Stewart, Paley, and Allison, had long been the chosen companions of her private hours'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Richard Watson : An Apology for the Bible
'I also sent for Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in Letters to T. Paine; Bishop Porteus's Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity, Pilgrim's Good Intent, Pascal's Thoughts, Addison's Evidences of Christianity, Conibeare on Revealed Religion, Madam de Genlis's Religion the only Basis of Happiness and sound Philosophy, with Observations on pretended modern Philosophers, 2 vols. Jenkin's Reasonableness and Certainty of Christianity, and several others of the same tendency. Those excellent defences of revealed religion I read through, during which I had many struggles . . . '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Robert Jenkin : Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion
'I also sent for Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in Letters to T. Paine; Bishop Porteus's Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity, Butler's Divine Analogy, Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Pilgrim's Good Intent, Pascal's Thoughts, Addison's Evidences of Christianity, Conibeare on Revealed Religion, Madam de Genlis's Religion the only Basis of Happiness and sound Philosophy, with Observations on pretended modern Philosophers, 2 vols. Jenkin's Reasonableness and Certainty of Christianity, and several others of the same tendency. Those excellent defences of revealed religion I read through, during which I had many struggles . . . '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Humphrey Prideaux : The Old and New Testament connected in the history of the Jews and neighbouring nations
'I meant to inform you, that besides those books already mentioned, I sent for Bishop Horne's Sermons, 4 vols. Carr's Sermons, Blairs Sermons, 5vols. Scott's Christian Life, 5vols. several leaned and sensible expositions of the Bible; Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, with the Fragments; Josephus' Works, Prideaux's Connections, 4vols. Mrs H. More's Works, and various other excellent Works. For some time one sermon was read on every Sunday, but soon Mrs L. began to like them, and then two or three were read in the course of the week; at last one at least was ready every day, and very often part of some other book in divinity, as Mrs. L said that she preferred such kind of reading far beyond the reading of novels.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'When I talked of our [the Scots'] advancement in literature, "Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have written History, had not Voltaire written it before him. He is an echo of Voltaire." Boswell "But, Sir, we have Lord Kames." Johnson. "You [italics] have [italics] Lord Кames. Keep him; ha, ha, ha! We don't envy you him. Do you ever see Dr. Robertson?" Boswell. "Yes, Sir." Johnson. "Does the dog talk of me ?" Boswell. "Indeed, Sir, he does, and loves you." Thinking that I now had him in a corner, and being solicitous for the literary fame of my country, I pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robertson's "History of Scotland". But, to my surprise, he escaped.—" Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad, The
'After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well. He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the "Dunciad". While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poem:— a poem on what?" Johnson, (with a disdainful look,) "Why, on [italics] dunces [italics]. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst [italics] thou [italics] lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive, than it was then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's enquiring who was the author of his "London," and saying, he will be soon [italics] deterré [italics]. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten,) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in "The Mourning Bride," was the finest poetical passage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Pastorals
'After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well. He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the "Dunciad". While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poem:— a poem on what?" Johnson, (with a disdainful look,) "Why, on [italics] dunces [italics]. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst [italics] thou [italics] lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive, than it was then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's enquiring who was the author of his "London," and saying, he will be soon [italics] deterré [italics]. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten,) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in "The Mourning Bride," was the finest poetical passage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Voltaire : Histoire de Charles XII (Book 3)
Passages transcribed at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1932) include extract from Voltaire, Charles XII Book 3 (on the execution of Jean Reginald Patkul, ambassador of the Czar), accompanied by comment: 'Each time I read the magnificent passage above -- at last transcribed -- I am struck by the economy of the [italics]irony[end italics] and even of the [italics]pathos[end italics]. Yet the whole passage vibrates with both. There is a sort of religious grandeur -- cruelty and cowardice are both noted without contempt. 'When will there be such writing again, or even the leisure to transcribe it? Voltaire and I do speak the same language, vast though be the difference in our vocabularies, we are both civilised [...] We belong to the cultured interlude which came between the fall of barbarism and the rise of universal "education" [...] We believe in reason, in pity, and in not always coming out right -- that is to say I hope to be logical and compassionate'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Christopher Isherwood : Mr Norris Changes Trains
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935) include (from chapter 15 of Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains): 'Remorse is not for the elderly. When it comes to them it is not purging or uplifting, but merely degrading and wretched, like a bladder disease.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Ernest Hemingway : A Farewell to Arms
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935) include reflections on associations of placenames and other words, and on effects of 'the world' upon strong and weak characters, in Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Herman Melville : Mardi
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935-6) include two quotations from Herman Melville, Mardi.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Herman Melville : Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, ?1 June 1851
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935-6) include quotation from letter of Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne: ' "I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy him all brain like a watch' ".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Norman Douglas : Together
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1935-6) include quotation from Norman Douglas, Together, opening: 'How many avenues of delight are closed to the mere moralist or immoralist who knows nothing of things extra-human; who remains absorbed in mankind and its half-dozen motives of conduct, so unstable yet forever the same, which we all fathomed before we were twenty!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : passages from The Correspondence of Henrik Ibsen
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1937) include five extracts from letters of Ibsen, noted as 'Copied from some notes made for lecturing on I[bsen]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Manuscript: Unknown
Abraham Cowley : Essay no. 5 ('The Garden')
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1937) include extract from Cowley's Essay No. 5 ('The Garden'), dedicated to John Evelyn, and opening: 'I never had any other Desire so strong, and so like to Covetousness as that one which I have had always. That I might be Master at last of a small House and a large Garden, with very modern Conveniencies joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my Life to the Culture of them and the study of Nature.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Murphy Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Oliver Goldsmith Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'Johnson proceeded :— "The Scotchman has taken the right method in his 'Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way." Murphy. "He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomizing the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it." Goldsmith. "It is easier to write that book, than to read it." Johnson. "We have an example of true criticism in Burke's 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful'; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bouhours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart.— In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Buchanan : [poems]
'Buchanan (he observed,) has fewer [italics] centos [end italics] than any modern Latin poet. He not only had great knowledge of the Latin language, but was a great poetical genius. Both the Scaligers praise him.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'Boswell. "What do you think of Dr. Young's 'Night Thoughts,' Sir?" Johnson. "Why, Sir, there are many fine things in them".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson : History of the British Expedition to Egypt
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1938) include General R. T. Wilson's account of five British sailors' purchase of a woman sold at auction by Arabs.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Walter Harte : History of the life of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden
'[from an account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish london-based priest friend of Johnson] Speaking of Mr. Harte, Canon of Windsor, and writer of "The History of Gustavus Adolphus", he much commended him as a scholar, and a man of the must companionable talents he had ever known. He said, the defects in his history proceeded not from imbecility, but from foppery. He loved, he said, the old black letter books; they were rich in matter, though their style was inelegant; wonderfully so, considering how conversant the writers were with the best models of antiquity. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'[from an account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish london-based priest friend of Johnson] Speaking of Mr. Harte, Canon of Windsor, and writer of "The History of Gustavus Adolphus", he much commended him as a scholar, and a man of the must companionable talents he had ever known. He said, the defects in his history proceeded not from imbecility, but from foppery. He loved, he said, the old black letter books; they were rich in matter, though their style was inelegant; wonderfully so, considering how conversant the writers were with the best models of antiquity. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Dunciad (books I and II)
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1938-40) include three quotations from the Dunciad (addresses to and by the personification of 'Dulness', beginning in I.12, I.311, II.34, and II.83). These accompanied by comments opening: 'How undull! and how gay are Pope's ordures besides Swift's,' and continuing: 'Bk II [...] is grand and frolicsome, and belongs to that happy moment when aristocracy catches hold of ordinary experiences and common life, and plunges, retaining its own proper form.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : Dipsychus
'Dispsychus -- read after many hesitations -- is not clear what world it opposes to the spirit: the world of action or the world of ambition greed & snobbery. So its effect is fumbly [...] Don't expect to pursue Clough beyond the anthology-pieces.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Lord Acton : A Lecture on the Study of History
Passages quoted in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1940) include remarks on value of cultural works for successive generations of civilised people from Lord Acton's Lecture on the Study of History ('A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates [...] come nearer to our lives than the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the Hercynian acorns'). Forster responds with comment that 'Lord Acton is right, but [...] He forgot that that most people do not respond to culture or intellectual honesty [...] he appears to this generation as an old man lecturung in a cap and gown,' having also noted 'This afternoon (29-2-40) I was at Bishops Cross, where new born lambs were dying in the cold, and Hughie Waterson, a Nazi by temperament, was trying to save them [...] Him the ancestral wisdom inspired.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George, first Lord Lyttelton : Dialogues of the Dead
'Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues he deemed a nugatory performance. "That man, (said he,) sat down to write a book, to tell the world what the world had all his life been telling him".' [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Arthur Murphy : [unknown]
'Speaking of Arthur Murphy, whom he very much loved, "I don't know (said he) that Arthur can be classed with the very first dramatick writers; yet at present I doubt much whether we have any thing superiour to Arthur".' [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
R. W. Ketton-Cremer : Horace Walpole: A Biography
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1940-41) under heading 'Eighteenth Centuriana' include reported last words of Sir Robert Walpole and Sir Thomas Mann, from R. W. Ketton-Cremer's Horace Walpole: A Biography.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Voltaire : Zaide
[under heading Voltaire's Zaide] 'The warmth of feeling between Z. and Orasmane, the easiness of the action (except in the frigid double-recognition scene) suprised me, and as I cannot appreciate the badness of the French as Lytton [?Strachey] could; I enjoyed the play and should like to see it acted.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Ernest Hemingway : For Whom the Bell Tolls
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include remarks on bigotry (opening 'Bigotry is an odd thing') from chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1941).
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Eliot : Silas Marner
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include speech about Christmas by Dolly Winthrop in chapter 10 of George Eliot, Silas Marner, which followed by remark: 'G. E. shows her greatness in this minor interview. Who else in her century or in any could present simplicity and goodness without patronage [italics]end[end italics] without self-abasement? Atmosphere all through both thick and unforced; buried buried are we in the depths of a deeper England than Hardy's. [comments further on text]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Francois de Malherbe : 'Consolation a Monsieur du Perier, sur la Mort de sa Fille'
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include stanza 7 of Malherbe, 'Consolation a Monsieur du Perier, sur la Mort de sa Fille' (1607, followed by remark: 'If I admire this, do I like French poetry? I do admire it. And, mythology lost, what will become of poetry? Mythology gave a stiffening to the fabric.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Francois de Malherbe : 'Pour le Roi, allant chatier la Rebellion des Rochelois'
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include stanza 32 of Malherbe, 'Pour le Roi, allant chatier la Rebellion des Rochelois' (1628), followed by remark: 'If I admire this, do I like French poetry? I do admire it. And, mythology lost, what will become of poetry? Mythology gave a stiffening to the fabric.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Gerald Heard : The Creed of Christ: An Interpretation of the Lord's Prayer
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941) include remark that '[Christ] was the Son of Man, because, though greater than any of his generation, he was younger, he belonged, by the creative power which he allowed to keep flowing in renewal through him, to a generation of men, who even now after two thousand years, have yet to be born.' Forster then notes: 'Thus does Gerald Heard spice up his urge to prayer in The Creed of Christ. Have written (20-9-41) a letter to him which I ought to have transcribed. Like other priests, he so emphasises the perils of mis-prayer that one feels it was wise never to have started.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henry More : [theological works]
'What philosophy suggests to us on this topick [the possibility of life after death] is probable: what Scripture tells us is certain. Dr. Henry More has carried it as far as philosophy can. You may buy both his theological and philosophical works in two volumes folio, for about eight shillings'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Drelincourt : Christians Defense against the Fears of Death
'Boswell. "I do not know whether there are any well attested stories of the appearance of ghosts. You know there is a famous story of the appearance of Mrs. Veal, prefixed to 'Drelincourt on Death.'" Johnson. " I believe, Sir, that is given up. I believe the woman declared upon her deathbed that it was a lie".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Drelincourt : Christians Defense against the Fears of Death
'Boswell. "I do not know whether there are any well attested stories of the appearance of ghosts. You know there is a famous story of the appearance of Mrs. Veal, prefixed to 'Drelincourt on Death.'" Johnson. " I believe, Sir, that is given up. I believe the woman declared upon her deathbed that it was a lie".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Mark Akenside : Pleasures of Imagination, The
'[Johnson said] "I see they have published a splendid edition of Akenside's works. One bad ode may be suffered; but a number of them together makes one sick." Boswell. "Akenside's distinguished poem is his 'Pleasures of Imagination': but, for my part, I never could admire it so much as most people do." Johnson. "Sir, I could not read it through." Boswell. "I have read it through; but I do not find any great power in it".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Mark Akenside : Pleasures of Imagination, The
'[Johnson said] "I see they have published a splendid edition of Akenside's works. One bad ode may be suffered; but a number of them together makes one sick." Boswell. "Akenside's distinguished poem is his 'Pleasures of Imagination': but, for my part, I never could admire it so much as most people do." Johnson. "Sir, I could not read it through." Boswell. "I have read it through; but I do not find any great power in it".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Life of Parnell
'He [Dr Johnson] said, "Goldsmith's 'Life of Parnell' is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham : Rehearsal, The
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham : Rehearsal, The
'The conversation now turned on critical subjects. Johnson. "Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal', is a mighty silly character. If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only be diverting while that man was remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed were written since 'The Rehearsal'; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface is of a later date." I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very cheap.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead :" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." Boswell. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" Johnson. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all 'Tom Jones'. I indeed, never read 'Joseph Andrews.'" Erskine. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." Johnson. "Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." I have already given my opinion of Fielding ; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. "Tom Jones" has stood the test of publick opinion with such success as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead :" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." Boswell. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" Johnson. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all 'Tom Jones'. I indeed, never read 'Joseph Andrews.'" Erskine. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." Johnson. "Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." I have already given my opinion of Fielding ; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. "Tom Jones" has stood the test of publick opinion with such success as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Sentimental Journey, A
'A book of travels, lately published under the title of [italics] Coriat Junior [end italics], and written by Mr. Paterson, was mentioned. Johnson said, this book was in imitation of Sterne, and not of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical one. "Tom Coriat (said he) was a humourist about the court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Europe, and published his travels. He afterwards travelled on foot through Asia, and had made many remarks; but he died at Mandoa, and his remarks were lost".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Francis Osborne : [unknown]
'I expressed a liking for Mr. Francis Osborne's works, and asked him what he thought of that writer. He answered, "A conceited fellow. Were a man to write so now, the boys would throw stones at him." He, however, did not alter my opinion of a favourite authour, to whom I was first directed by his being quoted in "The Spectator," and in whom I have found much shrewd and lively sense, expressed indeed in a style somewhat quaint, which, however, I do not dislike. His book has an air of originality. We figure to ourselves an ancient gentleman talking to us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Francis Osborne : [unknown]
'I expressed a liking for Mr. Francis Osborne's works, and asked him what he thought of that writer. He answered, "A conceited fellow. Were a man to write so now, the boys would throw stones at him." He, however, did not alter my opinion of a favourite authour, to whom I was first directed by his being quoted in "The Spectator," and in whom I have found much shrewd and lively sense, expressed indeed in a style somewhat quaint, which, however, I do not dislike. His book has an air of originality. We figure to ourselves an ancient gentleman talking to us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : [apology for beating a bookseller]
'On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and sat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the "London Chronicle" Dr. Goldsmith's apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookseller, on account of a paragraph 5 in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. The apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson's manner that both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his; but when he came home, he soon undeceived us. When he said to Mrs. Williams, "Well, Dr. Goldsmith's manifesto has got into your paper;" I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though subscribed by Goldsmith. Johnson. "Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to write such a thing as that for him than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do any thing else that denoted his imbecility. I as much believe that he wrote it as if I had seen him do it".'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson
Gilbert Burnet : History of My Own Time
'On Thursday, April 8, I sat a good part of the evening with him, but he was very silent. He said, "Burnet's 'History of his own Times' is very entertaining. The style, indeed, is mere chit-chat. I do not believe that Burnet intentionally lyed; but he was so much prejudiced that he took no pains to find out the truth. He was like a man who resolves to regulate his time by a certain watch; but will not inquire whether the watch is right or not".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton : History of the Life of Henry the Second
'Boswell. "I rather think, Sir, that Toryism prevails in this reign." Johnson. "I know not why you should think so, Sir. You see your friend Lord Lyttelton, a nobleman, is obliged, in his "History", to write the most vulgar Whiggism".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Deserted Village, The
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Roman History From The Foundation of The City of Rom
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to His Son
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Rene Aubert Vertot : Révolutions romains
' [Johnson said of Goldsmith] "Take him as a poet, his 'Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet,—as a comick writer,—or as an historian, he stands in the first class." Boswell. "An historian! My dear sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age ?" Johnson. "Why, who are before him?" Boswell. "Hume, —Robertson,—Lord Lyttelton." Johnson. (His antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's 'History' is better than the [italics] verbiage [end italics] of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose 'History' we find such penetration—such painting?" Johnson. "Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history piece: he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his 'History'. Now Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,—would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Monsieur Menage : Menagiana Ou Les Bons Mots
'Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that species of wit, deigned to allow that there was one good pun in "Menagiana," I think on the word corps'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid (Book II)
'That detestable father [italics]St Jerome[end italics], thus reacts to the Fall of Rome:-- '[...] When the refugees [...] began to reach Palestine: "I was long silent, knowing that it was the time for tears. Since to relieve them all was impossible, we joined our lamentations with theirs [...]" [...] Virgil's "Urbas antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos" quoted, which I myself was to read 1500 [sic] later, after seeing the Docks on fire from my roof in Chiswick. '[Extracted from Hodgkin. Jerome has to leave Rome for the desert because he found the ladies too charming there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Eliot : Middlemarch
From Diary of E. M. Forster, 8 September 1940: 'London Burning! I watched this event from my Chiswick flat last night with disgust and indignation, but with no intensity though the spectacle was superb, I thought It is nothing like the burning of Troy. Yet the Surrey Docks were ablaze, at the back with towers and spires outlines [sic] against them, greenish yellow searchlights swept the sky in futile agony [...] Now and then tracts of the horizon flashed a ghastly electric green. Or the fire ahead burst up as I hoped it was dying down. "Oh!" I cried once faintly, then returned to my bed and read Middlemarch.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Socrates of Constantinople : Ecclesiastical History
[following heading Sophocles of Constantinople] 'I have run through his Ecclesiastical History with amusement and without contempt [...] Bk V ch. 18 on the purity campaign of Theodosius is very funny. There was a machine which lowered visitors to a brothel into a bakehouse, where they worked for the rest of their lives [....] Funny too is the bishop who trod on another bishop's foot, with the result that it festered and had to be amputated. Bk VI ch 19.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Marcel Proust : Le Temps Retrouve
Texts from which passages transcribed at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1942-1943) include Marcel Proust, Le Temps Retrouve.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Marcel Proust : Du Cote de chez Swann
'In his diary (1 March 1922) Forster recorded, while on the boat returning from India, his early impressions of Proust: "Bought Du Cote de Chez Swann at Marseilles and note how cleverly Proust uses his memories and experiences to illustrate his state of mind [...] His work impresses me by its weight and length, and sometimes touches me by its truth to my feelings."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Voyage of the Beagle
Passages transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1943) include reflections on Australia from Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Illusions perdues
'La Silence de la Mer by "Vercors" (Schlumberger?) was given me by Raymond Mortimer yesterday and read without much admiration though with plenty of sympathy: published secretly under the Nazis in France. Read also too slow a story by Giono of the coming of Pan: it quickens at the end where human beings and animals dance together, with regrettable results [...] Read too in Illusions Perdues [...] and in Gide's Journal [...] Gide aroused my envy by reading, reading, but if I kept a journal I too should appear to have read, read a lot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Andre Gide : Journal
'La Silence de la Mer by "Vercors" (Schlumberger?) was given me by Raymond Mortimer yesterday and read without much admiration though with plenty of sympathy: published secretly under the Nazis in France. Read also too slow a story by Giono of the coming of Pan: it quickens at the end where human beings and animals dance together, with regrettable results [...] Read too in Illusions Perdues [...] and in Gide's Journal [...] Gide aroused my envy by reading, reading, but if I kept a journal I too should appear to have read, read a lot.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Unknown
Charles Baudelaire : 'Hymne' ('A la tres-chere, a la tres-belle')
Poems transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1943) include Stefan George's verses opening 'Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme,' and Baudelaire's 'Hymne' ('A la tres-chere, a la tres-belle'), with accompanying comment: 'The George and the Baudelaire above express, the one with studied starkness, the other with studied affectation, the masculine and feminine of the same idealism [...] Given over to habits of comfort, I feel insincere when I enjoy these poems. They are not for me or for anyone who is not prepared to sacrifice comfort.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Lord Acton : A Lecture on the Study of History
[under heading 'Lord Acton Some "shining precepts" for the historical student] E. M. Forster transcribes passage opening 'Keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names,' and phrase 'The critic is one who, when he lights on an interesting statement, begins by suspecting it,' noting underneath: 'The above are from his lecture "The Study of History" [...] Transcribing them while the planes whirr, I wonder how far Liberalism might have progressed if the world had kept calm.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Arnold Toynbee : A Study of History (vol I)
Noted by E. M. Forster in his Commonplace Book (1944), beside quoted lines 'Thought shall be the harder / Heart the keener / Mood shall be the more / As our might lessens': 'The Lay of the Battle of Malden [sic] (date --) quoted by Arnold Toynbee on the title page of his History. Again the bombers whirr (14-3-44) as I transcribe it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Henri-Frederic Amiel : Fragments d'un Journal Intime
Passages in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1944) include two short quotations, from Bede ('Two most wicked spirits rising with forks in their hands[...]') and Amiel ('S'en aller toute d'un fois est un privilege; tu periras par morceaux'), accompanied by note: 'I encounter these two mournful small fry on the same day. Boo hoo down the ages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Charles Waterton : Wanderings in South America
Passages in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1944) include description of domestic life from Charles Waterton, Wanderings in South America, accompanied by comment 'His stupid obscene cruelty to the reptiles out there displeases me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Prisoner of Chillon
'[Alfred Tennyson's] grandmother, the sister of the Reverend Samuel Turner, would assert: "Alfred's poetry all comes from me." My father remembered her reading to him, when a boy, "The Prisoner of Chillon" very tenderly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Turner Print: Book
Horace :
'My father said that he [...] received a good but not a regular classical education. At any rate he became an accurate scholar, the author "thoroughly drummed into" him being Horace; whom he disliked in proportion. He would lament, "[...] It was not till many years after boyhood that I could like Horace. Byron expressed what I felt. 'Then farewell Horace whom I hated so.' Indeed I was so over-dosed with Horace that I hardly do him justice even now that I am old."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith :
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
Francois Rabelais :
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
Sir William Jones :
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
George Louis Leclerc de Buffon :
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'After reading the Bride of Lammermoor [Tennyson] wrote the following [reproduces juvenile poem "The Bridal"]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil :
'Whewell, who was [Tennyson's] tutor, he called "the lion-like man" and had for him a great respect. It is reported that Whewell, recognising his genius, tolerated in him certain informalities which he would not have overlooked in other men. Thus, "Mr Tennyson, what's the compound interest of a penny put out at the Christian era up to the present time?" was Whewell's good-natured call to attention in the Lecture Room while my father was reading Virgil under the desk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
George Berkeley :
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged] 'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
Jeremy Bentham :
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged] 'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
Rene Descartes :
[on the Apostles, Cambridge students' society to which Alfred Tennyson belonged] 'These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer and the Personality of God.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Apostles Print: Book
Rene Descartes :
'My father said of his friend: "Arthur Hallam could take in the most abstruse ideas with the utmost rapidity and insight [...] On one occasion, I remember, he mastered a difficult book of Descartes at a single sitting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Timbuctoo
'Matthew Arnold told G. L. Craik that when, as a youth, he first read "Timbuctoo" he prophesied the greatness of Tennyson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Arnold Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
S. T. Coleridge on Tennyson's Poems. Chiefly Lyrical (1830): '"I have not read through all Mr Tennyson's poems, which have been sent to me; but I think there are some things of a good deal of beauty in what I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Herodotus :
Arthur Hallam to Alfred Tennyson from Forest House, Leyton, Essex, 4 October 1830: 'I am living here in a very pleasant place, an old country mansion, in the depths of the Forest [...] I have been studious too, partly after my fashion, and partly after my father [historian Henry Hallam]'s; i.e. I read six books of Herodotus with him, and I take occasional plunges into David Hartley, and Buhle's Philosophie Moderne for my own gratification.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry and Arthur Hallam Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways
'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
George Meredith : [novels]
'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Joseph Marie Eugene Sue : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Henri Murger : Scenes de la Vie Boheme
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
George Sand [pseud.] : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Alfred de Musset : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : [unknown]
'In the late 1880s Gissing immersed himself in contemporary European fiction, as he had during previous periods of his life. Gissing's wide reading has been often noted but rarely assessed. Salient in any study of it would be his reading of Goethe and Heine in 1876 (and throughout his life), Eugene Sue and Henri Murger (in 1878 "Scenes de la Vie Boheme" was deepy influential), Comte (notably "Cours de Philosophie Positive" in 1878), Turgenev (in 1884 - but also constantly, for by the end of the decade he had read "Fathers and Sons" five times), Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, de Musset (whom he called indispensable" in 1885), Ibsen (in German, in the late 1880s), Zola, Dostoevski, the Goncourts (at least by the early 1890s). Gissing read with equal ease in French, German, Greek and latin, and these from an early age. Later he added Italian and late in life some Spanish'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Walter Scott : Redgauntlet
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Walter Savage Landor : Imaginary Conversations
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Johann Peter Eckerman : Conversations of Goethe
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : [unknown]
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : [unknown]
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Gissing Print: Book
Paul Charles Joseph Bourget : [unknown]
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Jens Peter Jacobsen : Niels lyhne
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Jens Peter Jacobsen : Marie Grube
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : [unknown]
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Hedda Gabler
'Now [after 1890] he [Gissing] read books that seemed to have had a direct impact on his development, turning him away from working-class subjects (to which he never returned) and making him more interested in the nihilistic or purely intellectual attitudes of his characters than in those of them who had a Walter Egremont type of social conscience. Thus, he re-read Bourget, on [his friend] Bertz's recommendation looked at J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and "Marie Grube", reread Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (for the seventh time), reread Dostoevski, whom he recomended to his brother but disliked himself, once again mulled over Hardy's "The Woodlanders" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (he later said that "Jude" was poor stuff by comparison with these), and began to ponder Ibsen, starting with "Hedda Gabler".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Sir William Blackstone :
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Lotos-Eaters'
'Charles Merivale [...] wrote to [W. H.] Thompson [...]: '"Though the least eminent of the Tennysonian Rhapsodists, I have converted by my readings both my brother and your friend (or enemy?) Richardson to faith in the "Lotos-Eaters."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Merivale Print: Book
Mrs Jameson : Characteristics
Arthur Hallam to Alfred Tennyson: 'I have been reading Mrs Jameson's Characteristics, and I am so bewildered with similes about groves and violets, and streams of music, and incense and attar of roses, that I hardly know what I write. Bating these little flummeries of style, it is a good book, showing much appreciation of Shakespeare and the human heart'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hallam Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Lady of Shalott'
'[Edward] Fitzgerald writes on "The Lady of Shalott": '"Well I remember this poem, read to me, before I knew the author, at Cambridge one night in 1832 or 3, and its images passing across my head, as across the magic mirror, while half asleep on the mail coach to London in the "creeping dawn" that followed."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : sonnets
'[W. H.] Brookfield writes [to Tennyson] from Sheffield: '"You and Rob Montgomery are our only brewers now! A propos to the latter, Jingling James, his namesake, dined with us last week [...] I sent him copies of both you and Charles [Tennyson] yesterday, and met him in the street this morning [...] 'I read,' he said, 'twelve of the sonnets last night, which if I had not liked them better than other sonnets I could not have done. There are great outbreaks of poetry in them.' Omitting my own interjectional queries, etc., which leave to Jemmy's remarks an over-pompous connectedness which they had not viva voce, I give you his words as nearly as I remember."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Montgomery Print: Book
George Sand [pseud.] : [unknown]
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : [unknown]
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : [unknown]
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : [unknown]
'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Frederika Bremer : Hertha
'Gissing read as widely as ever, with the same unbridled curiosity as during his youth but now with an intelligence tempered by experience. Of course he continued to read the Latin, Greek, English and French classics, but of the particular titles he noted in his diary during the second part of 1889 there are a number that indicate fairly and squarely the direction in which his thoughts were carrying him. Besides books like J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and Frederick [sic]Bremer's "Hertha", he also read Taine's "English Literature", Bourget's "Etudes et Portraits" as well as the "Essais Psychologiques", A.H. Buck's "Treatise on Hygiene", W. B. Carpenter's "Principles of Mental Physiology" and the books he just mentions as Ribot's "Hereditie".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Albert Henry Buck : Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health
'Gissing read as widely as ever, with the same unbridled curiosity as during his youth but now with an intelligence tempered by experience. Of course he continued to read the Latin, Greek, English and French classics, but of the particular titles he noted in his diary during the second part of 1889 there are a number that indicate fairly and squarely the direction in which his thoughts were carrying him. Besides books like J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and Frederick [sic]Bremer's "Hertha", he also read Taine's "English Literature", Bourget's "Etudes et Portraits" as well as the "Essais Psychologiques", A.H. Buck's "Treatise on Hygiene", W. B. Carpenter's "Principles of Mental Physiology" and the books he just mentions as Ribot's "Hereditie".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Theodule-Armand Ribot : Hérédité: étude psychologique
'Gissing read as widely as ever, with the same unbridled curiosity as during his youth but now with an intelligence tempered by experience. Of course he continued to read the Latin, Greek, English and French classics, but of the particular titles he noted in his diary during the second part of 1889 there are a number that indicate fairly and squarely the direction in which his thoughts were carrying him. Besides books like J.P. Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" and Frederick [sic]Bremer's "Hertha", he also read Taine's "English Literature", Bourget's "Etudes et Portraits" as well as the "Essais Psychologiques", A.H. Buck's "Treatise on Hygiene", W. B. Carpenter's "Principles of Mental Physiology" and the books he just mentions as Ribot's "Hereditie".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species
'[from Gissing's diary] Spent the evening in a troubled state of mind, occasionaly glancing at Darwin's "Origin of Species" - a queer jumble of thoughts'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
Henry Wharton : Defence of Pluralities, A
'Johnson said, I might see the subject [a controversy about the Church of Scotland] well treated in the "Defence of Pluralities".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo : Of the Origin and Progress of Language
'He [Johnson] attacked Lord Monboddo's strange speculation on the primitive state of human nature; observing, "Sir, it is all conjecture about a thing useless, even were it known to be true. Knowledge of all kinds is good. Conjecture, as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether men went upon all four [sic], is very idle." '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Webster : [census of Scotland]
'[Letter to Boswell] Dr. Webster's informations were much less exact and much less determinate than I expected: they are, indeed, much less positive than, if he can trust his own book, which he laid before me, he is able to give'. [A footnote says] 'A manuscript account drawn by Dr. Webster of all the parishes in Scotland, ascertaining their length, breadth, number of inhabitants, and distinguishing Protestants and Roman Catholicks. This book had been transmitted to government, and Dr. Johnson saw a copy of it in Dr. Webster's possession'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Codex
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
' [Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" are excellent. I agreed with you on every one of them. He himself objected only to the alteration of [italics] free [end italics] to [italics] brave [end italics], in the passage where he says that Edward "departed with the glory dne to the conqueror of a free people". He says to call the Scots brave would only add to the glory of their conqueror. You will make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send a few more leaves of the "Annals", which I hope you will peruse, and return with observations, as you did upon the former occasion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus: "Mr. Boswell will be pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : When the Devil Was Well.
'My discouragement is from many causes: among others the re-reading of my Italian story. Forgive me, Colvin, but I cannot agree with you; it seems green fruit to me, if not really unwholesome; it is profoundly feeble, damn its weak knees!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Pierre-Jean Beranger : unknown
I am very busy with Beranger for the "Britannica".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] I have at last sent back Lord Hailes's sheets, I never think about returning them, because I alter nothing. You will see that I might as well have kept them. However, I am ashamed of my delay; and if I have the honour of receiving any more, promise punctually to return them by the next post'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
'[Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Lord Hailes writes to me [...] "I am singularly obliged to Dr. Johnson for accurate and useful criticisms. Had he given some strictures on the general plan of the work, it would have added much to his favours". He is charmed with your verses on Inchkenneth, says they are very elegant, but bids me tell you he doubts whether " [italics] Legitimat faciunt pectora pura preces [end italics]" be according to the rubrick ; but that is your concern; for, you know, he is a Presbyterian.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Ward : Robert Elsmere
'Had I realised when I read it that its author was even then portentously engaged in rallying the anti-suffrage forces, it might have influenced me less, but I remained ignorant until some years later of Mrs. Ward's political machinations, and her book converted me from an unquestioning if somewhat indifferent church-goer into an anxiously interrogative agnostic.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : plays
'Yet when the War broke out, I did not clearly understand what was meant by homosexuality, incest or sodomy, and was puzzled by the shadow that clung to the name of Oscar Wilde, whose plays I discovered in 1913 and read with a rapturous delight in their epigrams.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Romola
'My desultory and totally unorganised reading of George Eliot, Thackeray, Mrs Gaskell, Carlyle, Emerson and Merejkowski made little impression upon this routine, though their writings offered occasional compensation for its utter futility. "The reading of 'Romola,'" enthusiastically records my diary for April 27th, 1913, "has left me in a state of exultation!"'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain
Philip Gilbert Hamerton : Art Essays
'I find here (of all places in the world) your Essays on Art, which I have read with signal interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
'In spite of my vague memories of the South African campaigns, Spion Kop and Magersfontein were hardly more real to me than the battles between giants and mortals in the Andrew Lang fairy-tale books that I began to read soon afterwards.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
'Uneasily I recalled a passage from Daniel Deronda that I had read in comfortable detachment the year before:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
George Bancroft : History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the American Continent
'Bancroft's History of the United States, even in a centenary edition, is essentially heavy fare ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : 1914
'Those famous sonnets, brought into prominence by the poet's death on the eve of the Dardanelles campaign, were then only just beginning to take the world's breath away, and I asked our tutor if she would read us one or two.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Moliere :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Morte d'Arthur'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Day-Dream'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Lord of Burleigh'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Dora'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Gardener's Daughter'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'In Memoriam' verses
[Edmund Lushington writes] 'At Xmas 1841 I went for a few days' holiday from Glasgow to Kent and spent the time mostly at Boxley, where A. T. was now settled with his mother and sisters [...] the number of the memorial poems had rapidly increased since I had seen the poet, his book containing many that were new to me. Some I heard him repeat before I had seen them in writing, others I learnt to know first from the book itself which he kindly allowed me to look through without stint.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Lushington Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
[The Dean of Westminster writes] 'In a letter from Arthur Stanley, written from Hurstmonceux Rectory in the September of 1834, he says to his friend W. C. Lake (afterwards Dean of Durham), still at Rugby, that Julius Hare, with whom he was staying, "often reads to us in the evening things quite new to me, for instance [...] A. Tennyson's Poems," and he goes on to name some which had greatly pleased him, and to advise his friend to get the volume and read it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julius Hare Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
Samuel Rogers to Alfred Tennyson, 17 August 1842: 'Every day I have resolved to write and tell you with what delight I have read and read again your two beautiful volumes [...] very few things, if any, have thrilled me so much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
Thomas Carlyle to Alfred Tennyson, 7 December 1842: 'I have just been reading your Poems; I have read certain of them over again [goes on to praise Poems further, citing examples from volume]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Theocritus : poems
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Savile Morton and Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil :
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Lady Georgiana Fullerton : Ellen Middleton
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Savile Morton and Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
['Miss Fox' writes, on Tennyson's 1848 tour of Cornwall]: 'At one place [...] where he arrived in the evening, he cried, "Where is the sea? Show me the sea." So after the sea he went stumbling in the dark, and fell down and hurt his leg so much that he had to be nursed six weeks by a surgeon there, who introduced some friends to him, and thus he got into a class of society totally new to him; and when he left they gave him a series of introductions, so that instead of going to hotels he was passed on from town to town, and abode with little grocers and shopkeepers along his line of travel. He says that he cannot have better got a true impression of the class, and thinks the Cornish very superior to the generality. They all knew about Tennyson, and had read his poems, and one miner hid behind a wall that he might see him.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Cornish 'grocers and shopkeepers' and working people Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
Elizabeth Gaskell to John Forster, on presentation of inscribed copy of Tennyson's poems to Samuel Bamford, 7 December 1849: 'I have not yet taken my bonnet off after hunting up Bamford. First of all we went to Blakeley to his little white-washed cottage. His wife was cleaning, and regretted her "master" was not at home. He had gone into Manchester [...] At last we pounced upon the great gray stalwart man coming out of a little old-fashioned public-house where Blakeley people put up. Whe I produced my book he said, "This is grand." I said, "Look at the title-page," for I saw he was fairly caught by something he liked in the middle of the book, and was standing reading it in the street. "Well, I am a proud man this day!" he exclaimed. Then he turned it up and down and read a bit (it was a very crowded street) and his gray face went quite brown-red with pleasure. Suddenly he stopped. "What must I do for him back again?" "Oh! you must write to him, and thank him." "I'd rather walk 20 mile than write a letter any day." "Well then, suppose you set off this Christmas, and walk and thank Tennyson." He looked up from his book, right in my face, quite indignant. "Woman! walking won't reach him. We're on the earth don't ye see, but he's there, up above. I can no more reach him by walking than if he were an eagle or a skylark high above my head." It came fresh, warm, straight from the heart, without a notion of making a figurative speech [...] Then he dipped down again into his book, and began reading aloud the "Sleeping Beauty," and in the middle stopped to look at the writing again. And we left him in a sort of sleep-walking state, and only trust he will not be run over.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Sleeping Beauty'
Elizabeth Gaskell to John Forster, on presentation of inscribed copy of Tennyson's poems to Samuel Bamford, 7 December 1849: 'I have not yet taken my bonnet off after hunting up Bamford. First of all we went to Blakeley to his little white-washed cottage. His wife was cleaning, and regretted her "master" was not at home. He had gone into Manchester [...] At last we pounced upon the great gray stalwart man coming out of a little old-fashioned public-house where Blakeley people put up. Whe I produced my book he said, "This is grand." I said, "Look at the title-page," for I saw he was fairly caught by something he liked in the middle of the book, and was standing reading it in the street. "Well, I am a proud man this day!" he exclaimed. Then he turned it up and down and read a bit (it was a very crowded street) and his gray face went quite brown-red with pleasure. Suddenly he stopped. "What must I do for him back again?" "Oh! you must write to him, and thank him." "I'd rather walk 20 mile than write a letter any day." "Well then, suppose you set off this Christmas, and walk and thank Tennyson." He looked up from his book, right in my face, quite indignant. "Woman! walking won't reach him. We're on the earth don't ye see, but he's there, up above. I can no more reach him by walking than if he were an eagle or a skylark high above my head." It came fresh, warm, straight from the heart, without a notion of making a figurative speech [...] Then he dipped down again into his book, and began reading aloud the "Sleeping Beauty," and in the middle stopped to look at the writing again. And we left him in a sort of sleep-walking state, and only trust he will not be run over.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : stanzas from In Memoriam
Aubrey de Vere on time spent with Alfred Tennyson in London during 1850: 'Few of the hours I spent with Alfred surive with such a pathetic sweetness and nearness in my recollection as those which are associated with that time and with "In Memoriam" [...] 'I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of those poems were to me greatly increased by the voice which rather intoned than recited them [...] Sometimes towards the close of a stanza his voice dropped; but I avoided the chance of thus losing any part of the meaning by sitting beside him, and glancing at the pieces he read. They were written in a long and narrow manuscript book, which assisted him to arrange the poems in due order by bringing many of them at once before his eye.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : stanzas from In Memoriam
Aubrey de Vere on time spent with Alfred Tennyson in London during 1850: 'Few of the hours I spent with Alfred surive with such a pathetic sweetness and nearness in my recollection as those which are associated with that time and with "In Memoriam" [...] 'I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of those poems were to me greatly increased by the voice which rather intoned than recited them [...] Sometimes towards the close of a stanza his voice dropped; but I avoided the chance of thus losing any part of the meaning by sitting beside him, and glancing at the pieces he read. They were written in a long and narrow manuscript book, which assisted him to arrange the poems in due order by bringing many of them at once before his eye.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey de Vere Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Henry Hallam to Alfred Tennyson, on reading In Memoriam: 'I know not how to express what I have felt [...] I do not speak as another would to praise and admire: few of them [the poems] indeed I have as yet been capable of reading, the grief they express is too much akin to that they revive. It is better than any monument which could be raised to the memory of my beloved son [Arthur Henry Hallam, to whose death the poems were Tennyson's response], it is a more lively and enduring testimony to his great virtues and talents that the world should know the friendship which existed between you, that posterity should associate his name with that of Alfred Tennyson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Hallam Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Alton Locke
'On the 21st February [1851] their [Alfred and Emily Tennyson's] diary reads: "We read Alton Locke"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Dr Wordsworth : Apocalypse
'Early in 1852 my father and mother went on a visit to one of his old College friends, Mr Rashdall the clergyman of Malvern [...] While they were there my father read Dr Wordsworth's Apocalypse to my mother.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Robert Hugh Benson : Vexilla Regis
'In my wooden hut, by means of a folding card-table and a remnant of black satin for tablecloth, I made a small shrine for a few of the books that Roland and I had admired and read together. "The Story of an African Farm" was there and "The Poems of Paul Verlaine", as well as "The Garden of Kama" and "Pecheur d'Islande". To these I added Robert Hugh Benson's Prayer Book, "Vexilla Regis", not only in honour of Roland's Catholicism, but because my mother had sent me some lines, which I frequently read and cried over, from Benson's "Prayer after a Crushing Bereavement":'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
Henry Taylor to Alfred Tennyson, 17 November 1852: 'I have read your ode ("Death of the Duke of Wellington") [...] It has a greatness worthy of its theme and an absolute simplicity and truth, with all the poetic passion of your nature moving beneath.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Taylor Print: Unknown
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia
Alfred Tennyson to Charles Kingsley (1853): 'Part of the conclusion [of Hypatia] seems to me particularly valuable. I mean the talk of the Christianized Jew to the classic boy. Hypatia's mistreatment by the Alexandrians I found almost too horrible. It is very powerful and tragic; but I objected to the word "naked." Pelagia's nakedness has nothing which revolts one... but I really was hurt at having Hypatia stript, tho' I see that it adds to the tragic, and the picture as well as the moral is a fine one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Coventry Patmore : The Angel in the House
[Aubrey De Vere writes] 'In 1854 I went [...] to Farringford, where the poet [Tennyson] then made abode with his wife and two children [...] in the afternoon we sometimes read aloud in the open air, or rather we listened to the Poet's reading [...] On one occasion our book, which we agreed in greatly admiring, was Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House, then recent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and Aubrey De Vere Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid VI
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Homer : 'description of Hades'
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : Hylas
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : The Island of Cos
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : The Syracusan Women
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (sections)
'On Jan. 10th 1855 my father had "finished, and read out, several lyrics of Maud.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'[from] April 25th [...] [Tennyson] "copied out 'Maud' for the press, and read 'The Lady of the Lake,' having just finished Goethe's 'Helena.'"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
From Tennyson's journal of 1855: 'October 1st. [...] I read "Maud" to five or six people at the Brownings (on Sept. 28th).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Henry Hallam : 'History'
'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : [article on Montaigne]
'From time to time, Lang writes charming articles in the "Daily News": witness one, a week or so past, on Montaigne: it was a little gem.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
'Lord Chesterfield's letters being mentioned, Johnson said, "It was not to be wondered at that they had so great a sale, considering that they were the letters of a statesman, a wit, one who had been so much in the mouths of mankind, one long accustomed [italics] virum volitare per ora [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Fifth Queen and how she came to court
'The blessed vol: ["The Fifth Queen"] arrived about 4 days ago - or is it a week? I've read it twice - thats all.[...] Here I'll add one more phrase bearing upon the most "sensible" general effect.[...] The pictorial impression of the whole is positively overwhelming.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Heart of the Country:A Survey of Modern Land
'[Ford's ] "The Heart of the Country" is out today and a very charming piece of writing it is.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G.(George) Wells : In the Days of the Comet
'The Comet appeared to my naked (and surprised) eye yesterday morning. By a great effort of will I stuck to my own task till lunchtime. I began my observations in the afternoon and continued at it far into the night. I've completed them this morning. It is indeed a phenomenon!' Hence follow 18 lines of preliminary commentary on the text.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G.(George) Wells : The Future in America: A search after realities
'And on the subject of Wells, his book on the United States is quite smart.He has understood a heap of fundamentally unintelligible things. That's the purpose of an imagination like his, aided by an intelligence as sharp as acid.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : The Breaking Point
'I got the play ["The Breaking Point"] at 9 this morning. I've shut myself up with it at once and I won't come out of the room. I will see no one, will let no word or thing come between it and me till I've written to you.' Hence follow five pages of commentary and praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: unclear whether MS or printed playscript
George Colman : Two Odes: To Obscurity and To Oblivion
'The "Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion," in ridicule of "cool Mason and warm Gray", being mentioned, Johnson said, "They are Colman's best things." [Boswell reports a conversation about their possible joint authorship] Johnson. "The first of these Odes is the best: but they are both good. They exposed a very bad kind of writing." Boswell. "Surely, sir, Mr. Mason's 'Elfrida' is a fine Poem: at least, you will allow there are some good passages in it." Johnson. "There are now and then some good imitations of Milton's bad manner".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Twiss : Travels through Portugal and Spain
'Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company. Johnson. "I have been reading Twiss's 'Travels in Spain', which are just come out. They are as good as the first book of travels that you will take up. They are as good as those of Keysler or Blainville: nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are not so good as Brydone's, but they are better than Pococke's. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse than what is in the open pages. It would seem (he added), that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for we do not find it introduced into his writings. The only instance that I recollect is his quoting '[italics] Stavo bene, per star meglio, sto qui' [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
John George Keysler : Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain
'Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company. Johnson. "I have been reading Twiss's 'Travels in Spain', which are just come out. They are as good as the first book of travels that you will take up. They are as good as those of Keysler or Blainville: nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are not so good as Brydone's, but they are better than Pococke's. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse than what is in the open pages. It would seem (he added), that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for we do not find it introduced into his writings. The only instance that I recollect is his quoting '[italics] Stavo bene, per star meglio, sto qui' [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville : Travels through Holland, Germany and Switzerland, but especially Italy, with maps
'Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company. Johnson. "I have been reading Twiss's 'Travels in Spain', which are just come out. They are as good as the first book of travels that you will take up. They are as good as those of Keysler or Blainville: nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are not so good as Brydone's, but they are better than Pococke's. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse than what is in the open pages. It would seem (he added), that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for we do not find it introduced into his writings. The only instance that I recollect is his quoting '[italics] Stavo bene, per star meglio, sto qui' [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : Tour Through Sicily and Malta: In a Series of Letters to William Beckford
'Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company. Johnson. "I have been reading Twiss's 'Travels in Spain', which are just come out. They are as good as the first book of travels that you will take up. They are as good as those of Keysler or Blainville: nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are not so good as Brydone's, but they are better than Pococke's. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse than what is in the open pages. It would seem (he added), that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for we do not find it introduced into his writings. The only instance that I recollect is his quoting '[italics] Stavo bene, per star meglio, sto qui' [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
R. (Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : His People
'I've read your book ["His People"] with the usual delight and more than the usual admiration.[...] Three times I've gone through your pages so vigorous, so personal and so exquisite. What a "Return of the Native" you have given us! "His People" is a wonderful piece of description and an amazing piece of analysis.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Richard Pococke : Description of the East and Some other Countries,
'Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company. Johnson. "I have been reading Twiss's 'Travels in Spain', which are just come out. They are as good as the first book of travels that you will take up. They are as good as those of Keysler or Blainville: nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are not so good as Brydone's, but they are better than Pococke's. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse than what is in the open pages. It would seem (he added), that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for we do not find it introduced into his writings. The only instance that I recollect is his quoting '[italics] Stavo bene, per star meglio, sto qui' [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick or The Whale
Years ago I looked into "Typee" and "Omoo" but as I didn't find there what I am looking for when I open a book I did go no further. Lately I had in my hand "Moby Dick". It struck me as a rather strained rhapsody with whaling for a subject and not a single sincere line in the 3 vols of it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I purpose to return all the next week: that his respect for my little observations should keep his work in suspense makes one of the evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode of history which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Renault without his constraint. Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your "Journal" that she almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Charles-Jean-François Henault : [history]
'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I purpose to return all the next week: that his respect for my little observations should keep his work in suspense makes one of the evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode of history which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Renault without his constraint. Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your [italics] Journal [end italics] that she almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : [article on Galsworthy]
'I've read Hueffer's portrait of Mr John Galsworthy several times. It is interesting mostly as a portrait of Mr Hueffer himself. I have my own strong conception of J.G. I can't say I've been greatly edified. Looked upon abstractedly the thing is distinctly good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland : [unknown text - letters?- presumably addressed to his associate George Sandys]
'Oct. 25. Wednesday. I went with the Prior to St. Cloud, to see Dr. Hooke.—We walked round the palace, and had some talk.—I dined with our whole company at the Monastery.—In the library, "Beroald",—"Cymon",—"Titus", from Boccace.—"Oratio Proverbialis" to the Virgin, from Petrarch; Falkland to Sandys;—Dryden's Preface to the third vol. of Miscellanies.' [Boswell's footnote: 'He means, I suppose, that he read those different pieces, while he remained in the library'.]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
'[Letter to Boswell] I Have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While I was in France, I looked very often into Henault; but Lord Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Jean François Henault : Abrege chronologique de l'histoire de France
'[Letter to Boswell] I Have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While I was in France, I looked very often into Henault; but Lord Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'[Johnson opined that] Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" is a valuable work. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is a great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Bentley : [edition of Horace with commentary]
'Boswell. "But, Sir, may there not be very good conversation without a contest for superiority." Johnson. "No animated conversation, Sir; for it cannot be but one or other will come off superior. I do not mean that the victor must have the better of the argument, for he may take the weak side; but his superiority of parts and knowledge will necessarily appear: and he to whom he thus shows himself superiour is lessened in the eyes of the young men. You know it was said, [italics] 'Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio recte sapere [end italics]' In the same manner take Bentley's and Jason de Nores' Comments upon Horace, you will admire Bentley more when wrong than Jason when right."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Lyttelton, First Baron Lyttelton : Dialogues of the Dead
' [Johnson said] "When Lord Lyttelton's 'Dialogues of the Dead' came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.'" Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of the "Biographia Britannica" Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so much in his great work, "A Political Survey of Great Britain," as the world had been taught to expect'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Dodsley Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy
'I censured some ludicrous fantastick dialogues between two coach horses and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published. He joined with me and said, "Nothing odd will do long. 'Tristram Shandy' did not last".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'[At the home of the Quaker Mr Lloyd] I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of "Barclay's Apology", Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, "He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism in the scriptures; that is false." Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good Quakers had the advantage of him; for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of infant baptism; which they calmly made him perceive'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'[At the home of the Quaker Mr Lloyd] I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of "Barclay's Apology", Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, "He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism in the scriptures; that is false." Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good Quakers had the advantage of him; for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of infant baptism; which they calmly made him perceive'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Nelson : Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, A
' [Johnson said] The excellent Mr. Nelson's "Festivals and Fasts," which has, I understand, the greatest sale of any book ever printed in England, except the Bible, is a most valuable help to devotion; and in addition to it I would recommend two sermons on the same subject [of Christian holidays] by Mr. Pott, Archdeacon of St. Albans, equally distinguished for piety and elegance'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : Tour Through Sicily and Malta. In A Series of Letters to William Beckford Esq.
'Mr. Seward mentioned to us the observations which he had made upon the strata of earth in volcanoes, from which it appeared, that they were so very different in depth at different periods that no calculation whatever could be made as to the time required for their formation. This fully refuted an antimosaical remark introduced into Captain Brydone's entertaining tour, I hope heedlessly, from a kind of vanity which is too common in those who have not sufficiently studied the most important of all subjects. Dr. Johnson, indeed, had said before, independent of this observation, "Shall all the accumulated evidence of the history of the world;—shall the authority of what is unquestionably the most ancient writing be overturned by an uncertain remark such as this?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Patrick Brydone : Tour Through Sicily and Malta. In A Series of Letters to William Beckford Esq.
'Mr. Seward mentioned to us the observations which he had made upon the strata of earth in volcanoes, from which it appeared, that they were so very different in depth at different periods that no calculation whatever could be made as to the time required for their formation. This fully refuted an antimosaical remark introduced into Captain Brydone's entertaining tour, I hope heedlessly, from a kind of vanity which is too common in those who have not sufficiently studied the most important of all subjects. Dr. Johnson, indeed, had said before, independent of this observation, "Shall all the accumulated evidence of the history of the world;—shall the authority of what is unquestionably the most ancient writing be overturned by an uncertain remark such as this?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Francisco de Morais : Il Palmerino d'Inghilterra
'Johnson had with him upon this jaunt, "Il Palmerino d'Inghilterra", a romance praised by Cervantes; but did not like it much. He said, he read it for the language, by way of preparation for his Italian expedition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of the Earth and Animated Nature
'I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's uneasiness on account of a degree of ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's "History of Animated Nature", in which that celebrated mathematician is represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no reparation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Maclaurin Print: Book
George Cheyne : English Malady, The: or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds
'He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books. I said, I thought Cheyne had been reckoned whimsical. "So he was, (said he,) in some things; but there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some objection or other may not be made." He added, "I would not have you read anything else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his 'English Malady'".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Cheyne : Essay on Health and Long Life
'He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books. I said, I thought Cheyne had been reckoned whimsical. "So he was, (said he,) in some things; but there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some objection or other may not be made." He added, "I would not have you read anything else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his 'English Malady'".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : Selected Works
'[Dr Johnson] expressed his disapprobation of Dr. Hurd, for having published a mutilated edition under the title of "Select Works of Abraham Cowley". Mr. Murphy thought it a bad precedent; observing that any authour might be used in the same manner; and that it was pleasing to see the variety of an authour's compositions, at different periods'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Murphy Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : Selected Works
'[Dr Johnson] expressed his disapprobation of Dr. Hurd, for having published a mutilated edition under the title of "Select Works of Abraham Cowley". Mr. Murphy thought it a bad precedent; observing that any authour might be used in the same manner; and that it was pleasing to see the variety of an authour's compositions, at different periods'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : 'Dying Christian to his Soul, The'
'We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had partly borrowed from him "The dying Christian to his Soul". Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe: "Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And rides a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins". I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it stamps a value on them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
Mark Akenside : [Poems]
'Mr. Murphy said, that "The Memoirs of Gray's Life" set him much higher in his estimation than his poems did; "for you there saw a man constantly at work in literature". Johnson acquiesced in this; but depreciated the book, I thought, very unreasonably. For he said, "I forced myself to read it, only because it was a common topick of conversation. I found it mighty dull; and, as to the style, it is fit for the second table". Why he thought so I was at a loss to conceive. He now gave it as his opinion, that "Akenside was a superiour poet both to Gray and Mason".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Grove : 'Novelty' [essay in The Spectator]
'Talking of "The Spectator", he said, "It is wonderful that there is such a proportion of bad papers, in the half of the work which was not written by Addison; for there was all the world to write that half, yet not a half of that half is good. One of the finest pieces in the English language is the paper on Novelty, yet we do not hear it talked of. It was written by Grove, a dissenting [italics] teacher [end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Fielding : Amelia
'He told us, he read Fielding's "Amelia" through without stopping'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : [Odes]
'Sir Joshua [Reynolds] mentioned Mr. Cumberland's "Odes", which were just published. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, they would have been thought as good as Odes commonly are, if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his "Odes" subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name, but has made them carry double".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail : Les Exploits de Rocambole
'When last observed, he was studying with apparent zest the exploits of one Rocambole by the late Viscount Ponson of Terrail.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Blair : 'The Grave, a Poem'
'He told me that "so long ago as 1748 he had read 'The Grave, a Poem', but did not like it much." I differed from him; for though it is not equal throughout, and is seldom elegantly correct, it abounds in solemn thought, and poetical imagery beyond the common reach. The world has differed from him; for the poem has passed through many editions, and is still much read by people of a serious cast of mind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Robert Blair : 'The Grave, a Poem'
'He told me that "so long ago as 1748 he had read 'The Grave, a Poem', but did not like it much." I differed from him; for though it is not equal throughout, and is seldom elegantly correct, it abounds in solemn thought, and poetical imagery beyond the common reach. The world has differed from him; for the poem has passed through many editions, and is still much read by people of a serious cast of mind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown
Francis Hutcheson : System of Moral Philosophy
' [Johnson said] "There is much talk of the misery which we cause to the brute creation; but they are recompensed by existence. If they were not useful to man, and therefore protected by him, they would not be nearly so numerous". This argument is to be found in the able and benignant Hutchinson's [sic] "Moral Philosophy".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to his Son
' [Johnson said] Lord Chesterfield's "Letters to his Son", I think, might be made a very pretty book. Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland
' [Johnson said] Lord Hailes's "Annals of Scotland" have not that painted form which is the taste of this age; but it is a book which will always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with certainty.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Hammond : A Paraphrase and Annotations Upon All the Books of the New Testament
'I asked him whether he would advise me to read the Bible with a commentary, and what commentaries he would recommend. JOHNSON. "To be sure, Sir, I would have you read the Bible with a commentary; and I would recommend Lowth and Patrick on the Old Testament, and Hammond on the New".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : An English Girl
'In many respects and from an absolute point of judgement - the book ["An English Girl"] is simply magnificent.' Hence follows a page of almost unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Gabriela Cunninghame Graham : Santa Teresa: Her Life and Times
' I have had the new edition of Sta. Teresa sent down for a leisurely re-reading. It seems no end of years since I read first this wonderful book--the revelation for the profane of a unique saint and a unique writer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.(Herbert) G.(George) Wells : The War in the Air
'The first instalment of your story in the PMM ["Pall Mall Magazine"] opens the year brilliantly. How good you are in presenting the human interest of a story in terms of jesting.' Hence follow about eight lines of praise and encouragement.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
George Cheyne : English Malady, The
'[Boswell having complained that he was suffering from melancholy, Johnson wrote] 'Read Cheyne's "English Malady"; but do not let him teach you a foolish notion that melancholy is a proof of acuteness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Memoirs and Last Letters
' [letter from Boswell to Johnson] What do you say of Lord Chesterfield's "Memoirs and last Letters"?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Patrick Murdoch : [Life of Thomson, prefixed to an edition of 'The Seasons']
'[ letter from Boswell to Johnson, responding to the latter's contention that there existed no adequate 'Life' of Thomson] Since I received your letter I have read his [Thomson's] "Life", published under the name of Cibber, but as you told me, really written by a Mr. Shiels; that written by Dr. Murdoch; one prefixed to an edition of the "Seasons", published at Edinburgh, which is compounded of both, with the addition of an anecdote of Quin's relieving Thomson from prison; the abridgement of Murdoch's account of him, in the "Biographia Britannica", and another abridgement of it in the "Biographical Dictionary", enriched with Dr. Joseph Warton's critical panegyrick on the "Seasons" in his "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope": from all these it appears to me that we have a pretty full account of this poet.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
George Forster : Voyage Round the World in his Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, A
'I talked to him [Johnson] of Forster's "Voyage to the South Seas", which pleased me; but I found he did not like it. "Sir, (said he,) there is a great affectation of fine writing in it". BOSWELL. "But he carries you along with him". JOHNSON, "No, Sir; he does not carry me along with him: he leaves me behind him: or rather, indeed, he sets me before him; for he makes me turn over many leaves at a time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
George Forster : Voyage Round the World in his Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, A
'I talked to him [Johnson] of Forster's "Voyage to the South Seas", which pleased me; but I found he did not like it. "Sir, (said he,) there is a great affectation of fine writing in it". BOSWELL. "But he carries you along with him". JOHNSON, "No, Sir; he does not carry me along with him: he leaves me behind him: or rather, indeed, he sets me before him; for he makes me turn over many leaves at a time".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Plott : Natural History of Staffordshire
'We viewed a remarkable natural curiosity at Islam; two rivers bursting near each other from the rock, not from immediate springs, but after having run for many miles under ground. Plott, in his "History of Staffordshire", gives an account of this curiosity; but Johnson would not believe it, though we had the attestation of the gardener, who said, he had put in corks, where the river Manyfold sinks into the ground, and had catched them in a net, placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed, such subterraneous courses of water are found in various parts of our globe.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : Some passages of the life and death of the Right Honourable John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
'Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing witty) observed, that "if Rochester had been castrated himself, his exceptionable poems would not have been written". I asked if Burnet had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. "We have a good [italics] Death [end italics]: there is not much [italics] Life[end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : Some passages of the life and death of the Right Honourable John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
'Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing witty) observed, that "if Rochester had been castrated himself, his exceptionable poems would not have been written". I asked if Burnet had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. "We have a good [italics] Death [end italics]: there is not much [italics] Life[end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
John Wilmot, Lord Rochester : [Poems]
'Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing witty) observed, that "if Rochester had been castrated himself, his exceptionable poems would not have been written". I asked if Burnet had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. "We have a good [italics] Death [end italics]: there is not much [italics] Life[end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
John Wilmot, Lord Rochester : [Poems]
'Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing witty) observed, that "if Rochester had been castrated himself, his exceptionable poems would not have been written". I asked if Burnet had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. "We have a good [italics] Death [end italics]: there is not much [italics] Life[end italics]".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor Print: Book
Francis Bacon :
'He [Johnson] told me that Bacon was a favourite authour with him; but he had never read his works till he was compiling the "English Dictionary", in which, he said, I might see Bacon very often quoted.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Service : Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
'The letter began with a keen criticism of Robert Service's "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man", which had just been sent out to him from England. He particularly resented, it seemed, a line in the poem called "Pilgrims" which described death as "the splendid release".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor unknown Print: Unknown
Florentius Volusenus [pseud.] : De Animi Tranquillitate
'[letter from Boswell to Johnson] Did you ever look at a book written by Wilson, a Scotchman, under the Latin name of Volusenus, according to the custom of literary men at a certain period. It is entitled "De Animi Tranquillitate" I earnestly desire tranquillity'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Robert Sibbald : [manuscript Life]
'I mentioned that I had in my possession the Life of Sir Robert Sibbald, the celebrated Scottish antiquary, and founder of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, in the original manuscript in his own hand-writing ; and that it was, I believed, the most natural and candid account of himself that ever was given by any man'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Atterbury : [Funeral Sermon for Lady Cutts]
'[in a conversation about journals, Boswell said] "And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirrour, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal." I next year found the very same thought in Atterbury's "Funeral Sermon on Lady Cutts" where, having mentioned her diary, he says, " In this glass she every day dressed her mind." This is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism ; for I had never read that sermon before'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Dr Kennedy : [a tragedy]
'On Saturday, April 4, I drank tea with Johnson at Dr. Taylor's, where he had dined. He entertained us with an account of a tragedy written by a Dr. Kennedy (not the Lisbon physician). "The catastrophe of it (said he) was, that a King, who was jealous of his Queen with his prime-minister, castrated himself. This tragedy was actually shewn about in manuscript to several people, and, amongst others, to Mr. Fitzherbert, who repeated to me two lines of the Prologue : " Our hero's fate we have but gently touch'd ; The fair might blame us, if it were less couch'd"."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Fitzherbert Manuscript: Unknown
Martin Martin : Description of the Western Isles of Scotland
'I had lent him "An Account of Scotland, in 1702," written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. "It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's "Account of the Hebrides" is written, A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do better".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Gibbon : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'I told him, that I had been present the day before when Mrs. Montagu, the literary lady, sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture ; and that she said, "she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's 'History' without the last two offensive chapters; for that she thought the book so far good, as it gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers medii aevi, which the late Lord Lyttleton advised her to read." [Johnson retorts that she has not read these authors]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Sketches of the History of Man
'I looked into Lord Kaimes's "Sketches of the History of Man"; and mentioned to Dr. Johnson his censure of Charles the Fifth, for celebrating his funeral obsequies in his life-time'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Francis Atterbury : [Sermons]
'Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson's opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him. "Atterbury?" Johnson. "Yes, Sir, one of the best". Boswell. "Tillotson?". Johnson. "Why, not now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's style: though I don't know; I should be cautious of objecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages. — South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language. — Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. — Jortin's sermons are very elegant. — Sherlock's style too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. — And you may add Smallridge. All the latter preachers have a good style. Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: everybody composes pretty well. There are no such inharmonious periods as there were a hundred years ago. I should recommend Dr. Clarke's sermons, were he orthodox. However, it is very well known where he is not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned heretic: so one is aware of it." Boswell. "I like Ogden's "Sermons on Prayer" very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty of reasoning. "Johnson. "I should like to read all that Ogden has written." Boswell. "What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence." Johnson. "We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Robert South : [Sermons]
'Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson's opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him. "Atterbury?" Johnson. "Yes, Sir, one of the best". Boswell. "Tillotson?". Johnson. "Why, not now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's style: though I don't know; I should be cautious of objecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages. — South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language. — Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. — Jortin's sermons are very elegant. — Sherlock's style too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. — And you may add Smallridge. All the latter preachers have a good style. Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: everybody composes pretty well. There are no such inharmonious periods as there were a hundred years ago. I should recommend Dr. Clarke's sermons, were he orthodox. However, it is very well known where he is not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned heretic: so one is aware of it." Boswell. "I like Ogden's "Sermons on Prayer" very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty of reasoning. "Johnson. "I should like to read all that Ogden has written." Boswell. "What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence." Johnson. "We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
George Smallridge : [Sermons]
'Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson's opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him. "Atterbury?" Johnson. "Yes, Sir, one of the best". Boswell. "Tillotson?". Johnson. "Why, not now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's style: though I don't know; I should be cautious of objecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages. — South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language. — Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. — Jortin's sermons are very elegant. — Sherlock's style too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. — And you may add Smallridge. All the latter preachers have a good style. Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: everybody composes pretty well. There are no such inharmonious periods as there were a hundred years ago. I should recommend Dr. Clarke's sermons, were he orthodox. However, it is very well known where he is not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned heretic: so one is aware of it." Boswell. "I like Ogden's "Sermons on Prayer" very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty of reasoning. "Johnson. "I should like to read all that Ogden has written." Boswell. "What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence." Johnson. "We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Patrick Delany : Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift
'I found him at home in the morning. He praised Delany's "Observations on Swift ;" said that his book and Lord Orrery's might both be true, though one viewed Swift more, and the other less favourably; and that, between both, we might have a complete notion of Swift.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
John Boyle, 5th earl of Orrery : Remarks on the life and writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift
'I found him at home in the morning. He praised Delany's "Observations on Swift ;" said that his book and Lord Orrery's might both be true, though one viewed Swift more, and the other less favourably; and that, between both, we might have a complete notion of Swift.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Young :
'The Bishop said, it appeared from Horace's writings that he was a cheerful contented man. Johnson. "We have no reason to believe that, my Lord. Are we to think Pope was happy, because he says so in his writings? We see in his writings what he wished the state of his mind to appear. Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, talks with contempt of it in his writings, and affects to despise everything that he did not despise".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Bennet Langton Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : Traveller, The
'Langton. "There is not one bad line in that poem [Goldsmith's 'The Traveller']— no one of Dryden's careless verses." Sir Joshua. "I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language." Langton. "Why were you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before." Johnson. "No ; the merit of 'The Traveller' is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." Sir Joshua. "But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Fox Print: Unknown
Gilbert Frankau : The City of Fear
'As the winter grew colder and colder I spent the deep trough of the early hours in a huddled heap beside the stove, drinking sample bottles of liqueur from Paris-Plage out of a tin egg-cup, and reading an impressive poem called "The City of Fear" by a certain Captain Gilbert Frankau, who had not then begun to dissipate his rather exciting talents upon the romances of cigar merchants:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Robert Burns : unknown
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Robert Fergusson : Poems
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon :
'JOHNSON. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded". Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. "He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty. Every [italics] substance [end italics], (smiling to Mr. Harris,) has so many [italics] accidents [end italics].--To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically". GARRICK. "Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's 'Martial' the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn.' I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Bennet Langton Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon :
'JOHNSON. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded". Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON. "He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty. Every [italics] substance [end italics], (smiling to Mr. Harris,) has so many [italics] accidents [end italics].--To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically". GARRICK. "Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's 'Martial' the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn.' I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Collection of Poems by Several Hands
' [Johnson said] "Sir, you know the notion of confinement may be extended, as in the song, "Every island is a prison." There is, in Dodsley's 'Collection', a copy of verses to the authour of that song". Smith's Latin verses on Pococke, the great traveller, were mentioned. He repeated some of them, and said they were Smith's best verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Sheridan : History of the late revolution in Sweden , A
'Before dinner Dr. Johnson seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan's "Account of the late Revolution in Sweden", and seemed to read it ravenously, as if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. "He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it". He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which has been thrown to him.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Poems
'That wonderful edition of Pope has appeared: and I can never thank you enough. You cannot know what a delight it is to me. It is truly wonderful for me to have all his works in this singularly beautiful edition. And apart from the joy of having it, it has come at a moment when I am about to collect, enlarge, and put together all my notes about his poetry, for this book on poetry I am working at. I am very glad, too, to have it from you. I hope you will inscribe it for me, when we meet. I have not nearly finished looking through it,even yet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Sacheverall Sitwell : Sacred and Profane Love
'I comforted myself last night when I couldn't sleep, by reading those truly wonderful passages about the shells and sea -nymphs in Sacred and Profane Love. What miraculous beauty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Charge of the Light Brigade
'The following tribute was received [by Tennyson] from Scutari: '"We had in hospital a man of the Light Brigade, one of the few who survived that fatal mistake, the Balaclava charge [...] This patient had received a kick in the chest from a horse long after the battle of Balaclava, while in barracks at Scutari. He was depressed in spirits, which prevented him from throwing off the disease engendered by the blow. The doctor remarked that he wished the soldier could be roused. Amongst other remedies leeches were prescribed. I tried to enter into a conversation with him, spoke of the charge, but could elicit only monosyllablic replies. A copy of Tennyson's poem having been lent me that morning, I took it out and read it. The man, with kindling eye, at once entered upon a spirited description of the fatal gallop between the guns' mouths to and from that cannon-crowded height. He asked to hear it again, but, as by this time a number of convalescents were gathered around, I slipped out of the ward. The chaplain who had lent me the poem, understanding the enthusiasm with which it had been received, afterwards procured from England a number of copies for distribution. In a few days the invalid requested the doctor to discharge him for duty, being now in health; but whether the cure was effected by the leeches or the poem it is impossible to say."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'At the end of the year [1855] an unknown Nottingham artizan [sic] came to call. My father asked him to dinner and at his request read "Maud." It appears that the poor man had sent his poems beforehand. They had been acknowledged, but had not been returned, and had been forgotten. He was informed that the poems, thus sent, were always looked at, although my father and mother had not time to pass judgement on them. A most pathetic incident of this kind, my father told me, happened to him at Twickenham, when a Waterloo soldier brought twelve large cantos on the battle of Waterloo. The veteran had actually taught himself in his old age to read and write that he might thus commemorate Wellington's great victory. The epic lay for some time under the sofa in my father's study, and was a source of much anxiety to him. How could he go through such a vast poem? One day he mustered up courage and took a portion out. It opened on the head of a canto: "The Angels encamped above the field of Waterloo." On that day, at least, he "read no more." He gave the author, when he called for his manuscript, this criticism: "Though great images loom here and there, your poem could not be published as a whole." The old man answered nothing, wrapt up each of the twelve cantos carefully, placed them in a strong oak case and carried them off. He was asked to come again but he never came.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'I shall never forget his [Tennyson's] last reading of "Maud," on August 24th, 1892. He was sitting in his high-backed chair, fronting a southern window which looks over the groves and yellow cornfields of Sussex towards the long line of South Downs that stretches from Arundel to Hastings (his high-domed Rembrandt-like head outlined against the sunset-clouds seen through the western window). His voice, low and calm in everyday life, capable of manifold and delicate intonation, but with "organ-tones" of great power and range, thoroughly brought out the drama of the poem.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
Henry Taylor to Alfred Tennyson, 31 July 1855: 'I thank you much for sending me "Maud." I have only read it twice, but I have already a strong feeling of what it is [...] I felt the passion of it and the poetic spirit that is in it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Taylor Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Curse of Boadicea
'When Fanny Kemble heard that my father read his "Maud" finely, she wrote: "I do not think any reading of Tennyson's can ever be as striking and impressive as that "Curse of Boadicea" [sic] that he intoned to us, while the oak trees were writhing in the storm that lashed the windows and swept over Blackdown the day we were there." (Unpublished MS.)'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson :
'Mrs Vyner, a stranger,' to Alfred Tennyson, from River, New South Wales, 1855: 'I fancy a poet's heart must be so large and loving that he can feel for and forgive even folly. Folly it may be, and yet I [italics]must[end italics] write and thank you with a true and grateful heart for the happy moments your thoughts and your pen have given me. I am in the wildest bush of Australia, far away from all that makes life beautiful and endurable excepting the strong and stern sense of duty, the consciousness that where God has placed us is our lot to be, and that our most becoming posture is to accept our destiny with grateful humility. You must let me tell you how in a lonely home among the mountains, with my young children asleep, my husband absent, no sound to be heard but the cry of the wild dog or the wail of the curlew, no lock or bolt to guard our solitary hut [...] I have turned (next to God's book) to you as a friend, and read far into the night till my lot seemed light and a joy seemed cast around my very menial toils: then I have said, "God bless the poet and put still some beautiful words and thoughts into his heart," and the burthen of life becomes pleasant to me or at least easy.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Vyner Print: Book
Homer : The Odyssey
'During the winter evenings of 1855 my father would translate the Odyssey aloud into Biblical prose for my mother, who writes, "Thus I get as much as it is possible to have of the true spirit of the original."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poems
'In April [1857] a report reached us that old Tom Moore was dying. A friend writes: "This darling old poet is only just alive, mind and body. X goes over frequently to see him and read him your poems, which he cries over and delights in."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Print: Book
Charles Dickens :
'His books, over three hundred of which are preserved as he left them in 1918, show the range - and limitations - of his interests at school and later. Shakespeare, Scott, Keats and Dickens predominate, but he also worked on Milton, several eighteenth-century authors, and some Elizabethan and late Medieval poets. About two thirds of his library can be classified as "English literature", including biographies of at least twenty authors [explanatory sentence about dominance of biography not criticism in those days]. There are also nearly fifty books in or about French, a high proportion for someone of Owen's respectable but ordinary educational background. the rest are mostly botany, history and classics. The imprints are often those of the popular "libraries" of the time - Everyman's Library, the People's Books, the Home University Library, Penny Poets - cheap editions aimed at the growing market of young people like himself who were keen on self-improvement'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'His books, over three hundred of which are preserved as he left them in 1918, show the range - and limitations - of his interests at school and later. Shakespeare, Scott, Keats and Dickens predominate, but he also worked on Milton, several eighteenth-century authors, and some Elizabethan and late Medieval poets. About two thirds of his library can be classified as "English literature", including biographies of at least twenty authors [explanatory sentence about dominance of biography not criticism in those days]. There are also nearly fifty books in or about French, a high proportion for someone of Owen's respectable but ordinary educational background. the rest are mostly botany, history and classics. The imprints are often those of the popular "libraries" of the time - Everyman's Library, the People's Books, the Home University Library, Penny Poets - cheap editions aimed at the growing market of young people like himself who were keen on self-improvement'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Revolt of Islam, The
'He became especially interested in Shelley [and felt he could hear his 'music' in the Dunsden area] The "music" which he heard must have been that of "The Revolt of Islam", for he discovered in January 1912 from a biography of Shelley that "The Revolt" had been composed in a boat "under the beech groves" not far away. This poem was to remain in his mind for the rest of his life, providing him with the theme and title of 'Strange Meeting' in 1918'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Harold Monro : Before Dawn: Poems and Impressions
'Another, much less predictable [than that of Shelley] influence on Owen's thinking at Dunsden and much later began in October 1911 when he happened to buy a book of new poems by "A modern aspirant (Unknown to me)... I am idly-busy trying to discover the talent of our own days, and the requirements of the public". This book was undoubtedly "Before Dawn: Poems and Impressions" by Harold Monro. Owen read it carefully and could still quote from it two months later'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Laurent Tailhade : Poemes elegiaques
'[Laurent Tailhade] must have lent him one of his two volumes of collected poems because Owen soon started a translation of a [italics] ballade elegiaque [end italics] from it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Alfred de Vigny : Chatterton
'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Ernest Renan : Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse
'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Robert Browning : Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
'I remembered once, years before, when I was a child of thirteen, listening in half-fascinated terror to a mistress at St. Monica's reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came":'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Henri Martin : History of France
'I read […] Martin’s "History of France"[…]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Olivier Basselin : A Son Nez
'I read […] Olivier Basselin […] "On dit qu’il nuit aux yeux; mais seront-ils les maistres? Le vin est guarison De mes maux; J’aime mieux perdre les deux fenestres Que toute la maison" (That’s O. Basselin; [italics]c’est assez choite, n’est-ce pas?[end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
James Walter Ferrier : Forrester
'Many thanks for your letter and the instalment of Forrester which accompanied it, and which I read with amusement and pleasure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Florence Nightingale : Cassandra
'For years I continued to detest the founder of modern nursing and all that she stood for - a state of mind which persisted until, quite recently, I read her essay "Cassandra" in the Appendix to Ray Strachey's "The Cause", and realised the contrast between her rebelliious spirit, her administrator's grasp of the essentials, and the bigoted narrowness of some of her successors.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Poems and Ballads
'Owen seems to have started reading Swinburne in earnest in 1916. When he returned to the front in 1918, knowing that he would kill and probably be killed, he took volumes of both Shelley and Swinburne with him, but after he had been in action he sent the Shelley back to Shrewsbury, keeping only Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads", the one book of poetry still in his kit at his death'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : [Poems]
'Owen seems to have started reading Swinburne in earnest in 1916. When he returned to the front in 1918, knowing that he would kill and probably be killed, he took volumes of both Shelley and Swinburne with him, but after he had been in action he sent the Shelley back to Shrewsbury, keeping only Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads", the one book of poetry still in his kit at his death'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Harold Monro : Children of Love
'[Owen] bought [Harold] Monro's latest book, "Children of Love", and became a familiar visitor [at the Poetry Bookshop]. He was impressed by the war poems in "Children of Love"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
William Butler Yeats :
'Monro gave [Owen] access to new work that was to be invaluable to him in 1917-18 and may have drawn his attention to several established writers whom he had hitherto neglected (Yeats, Housman and Tagore, for instance, are mentioned in 1916 letters for the first time)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore :
'Monro gave [Owen] access to new work that was to be invaluable to him in 1917-18 and may have drawn his attention to several established writers whom he had hitherto neglected (Yeats, Housman and Tagore, for instance, are mentioned in 1916 letters for the first time)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman :
'Monro gave [Owen] access to new work that was to be invaluable to him in 1917-18 and may have drawn his attention to several established writers whom he had hitherto neglected (Yeats, Housman and Tagore, for instance, are mentioned in 1916 letters for the first time)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman :
'the two poets [Owen and Sassoon] probably talked more about literature than anything else. Owen found that they had been "following parallel trenches all our lives" and "had more friends in common, authors I mean, than most people can boast of in a lifetime". By chance, Sassoon was reading a small volume of Keats which Lady Ottoline [Morrel] had sent him. He shared Owen's interest in the late-Victorian poets, including Housman, whose influence is often apparent in his war poems, but Owen was surprised to discover that he admired Hardy "more than anybody living". No doubt Sassoon persuaded him to start reading Hardy's poems. In return, Owen showed him Tailhade's book'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : Amours de Voyage
'I was pleased to see your quotation from Clough. I used it myself in an approximate form, and with doubtful attribution to C., in another article ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Harold Monro : Strange Meetings
'He [Owen] bought Monro's latest collection "Strange Meetings" (1917), with its interesting title, and "Georgian Poetry 1916-1917". This new volume of the anthology, published by the Bookshop in November, included work by Sassoon, Graves, Monro, Robert Nichols, John Masefield, W.W. Gibson, Walter de la Mare and John Drinkwater. Owen eventually possessed at least fifteen volumes by these Georgians and their original leader, Brooke; this was by far the largest representation of modern verse in his shelves, and most of it was bought and read in November-December 1917.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'He [Owen] bought Monro's latest collection "Strange Meetings" (1917), with its interesting title, and "Georgian Poetry 1916-1917". This new volume of the anthology, published by the Bookshop in November, included work by Sassoon, Graves, Monro, Robert Nichols, John Masefield, W.W. Gibson, Walter de la Mare and John Drinkwater. Owen eventually possessed at least fifteen volumes by these Georgians and their original leader, Brooke; this was by far the largest representation of modern verse in his shelves, and most of it was bought and read in November-December 1917.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Henri Barbusse : Under Fire
'Nothing before "Le Feu" had given such an appallingly vivid description of trench warfare or combined it with such passionate political conviction. The English translation, "Under Fire", appeared in June 1917 and Sassoon was reading it by mid-August; he lent it to Owen, who seems to have read it at Craiglockhart and again in December'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Henri Barbusse : Under Fire
'Nothing before "Le Feu" had given such an appallingly vivid description of trench warfare or combined it with such passionate political conviction. The English translation, "Under Fire", appeared in June 1917 and Sassoon was reading it by mid-August; he lent it to Owen, who seems to have read it at Craiglockhart and again in December'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried sassoon Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'Owen met H.G. Wells in November, one of the leading writers about the war and its politics, an advocate of internationalism, efficiency, the defeat of militarism by military means. Owen read at least two of his books in December'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
Edward Bruce Hamley : Operations of War
'Gen. Robertson called and presented me with Hamley's Operations of War in which I am now drowned a thousand fathoms deep.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville : Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits
'JOHNSON. "The fallacy of that book [Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees"] is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it eat better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice. Having a garden, which we all know to be perfectly innocent, is a great pleasure. [Johnson discusses Mandeville at length, concluding] I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe, fifty years ago. He did not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life very much".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Tickell : Project, The
'On Saturday, April 25, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with the learned Dr. Musgrave, Counsellor Leland of Ireland, son to the historian, Mrs. Cholmondeley, and some more ladies. "The Project", a new poem, was read to the company by Dr. Musgrave. JOHNSON. "Sir, it has no power. Were it not for the well-known names with which it is filled, it would be nothing: the names carry the poet, not the poet the names." MUSGRAVE. "A temporary poem always entertains us". JOHNSON. "So does an account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Musgrave Print: Unknown
Richard Tickell : Project, The
'On Saturday, April 25, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with the learned Dr. Musgrave, Counsellor Leland of Ireland, son to the historian, Mrs. Cholmondeley, and some more ladies. "The Project", a new poem, was read to the company by Dr. Musgrave. JOHNSON. "Sir, it has no power. Were it not for the well-known names with which it is filled, it would be nothing: the names carry the poet, not the poet the names." MUSGRAVE. "A temporary poem always entertains us". JOHNSON. "So does an account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Torquato Tasso : Gerusalemme Liberata
'He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of the first book of Tasso's "Jerusalem", which he did, and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem. The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote. JOHNSON. "I recollect but one passage quoted by Thucydides from Homer, which is not to be found in our copies of Homer's works; I am for the antiquity of Homer, and think that a Grecian colony, by being nearer Persia, might be more refined than the mother country.".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Filippo Antonio Pasquale di Paoli Print: Book
Edward Gee : A Treatise of Prayer and of Divine Providence as relating to it
'they lent me Mr Gee's booke concerninge prayer; he was minister at Eccleston. And upon the 15th day, Tusday, I was readinge in his booke, and in consideracion of the man's person and gravitie I was posesd with sadnes and composd these verses' [12 lines of verse extolling 'Renowned Gee' follow]
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Lowe Print: Book
John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquess of Lorne : Guido and Lita: A Tale of the Riviera.
'Figure to yourself, I wrote a review of Lord Lorne for "Vanity Fair" − a few pages of scurrility that I wrote laughing in an hour or two − and I got − guess! − I got five pounds for it and the price of the book! That was jolly, wasn’t it? Long live "Vanity Fair"!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Inn Album
'I have done rather an amusing paragraph or two for "Vanity Fair" on the "Inn Album". I have slated R.B. pretty handsomely.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Theodore William Alois Buckley : unknown
'It is truly not for nothing that I have read my Buckley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
George Bernard Shaw : Back to Methuselah
'Staying for a fortnight with Miss Heath Jones in Cornwall - where I read aloud to her a large selection of the works of Bernard Shaw, including the newly published "Back to Methuselah", but otherwise had plenty of time for reminiscent meditation - I realised that the past two years at Oxford were going to take a good deal of getting over; they had meant an effort so great that I had not calculated its cost until it was finished.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope :
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron :
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood Print: Book
Edward Young :
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood Print: Book
Virgil :
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Grandmother'
'In July [1858] we stayed at Little Holland House, Kensington, with the Prinseps; and here my father began "The Fair Maid of Astolat," and read aloud "The Grandmother."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alexander Pope : The Rape of the Lock
From Emily Tennyson's diary: 'Oct. 17th. [1858] He [Alfred Tennyson] read aloud "The Rape of the Lock," and noted the marvellous skill of many of the couplets.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam A. H. H.
'The sudden death of Henry Hallam was a great grief to my father, for the historian had been a good friend through thirty years. On hearing of Mr Hallam's last days he read some of "In Memoriam" aloud and dwelt on those passages which most moved him.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species
'In November [1859] [Tennyson] was reading with intense interest an early copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, sent him by his own desire'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Idylls of the King
W. M. Thackeray to Alfred Tennyson, [September-] October [1859]: 'I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the "Idylls of the King," and I thought, "Oh I must write to him now, for this pleasure, this delight, ths splendour of happiness which I have been enjoying." But I should have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on one's back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the post-office and how comes it now? 'D'abord, a bottle of claret [...] Then afterwards sitting here, an old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of "The Princess" which says "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing blowing," no its "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" [...] and reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair [...] You have made me as happy as I was when a child with the Arabian Nights [...] I have had out of that dear book the greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to write and think about it makes me almost young'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The splendour falls...'
W. M. Thackeray to Alfred Tennyson, [September-] October [1859]: 'I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the "Idylls of the King," and I thought, "Oh I must write to him now, for this pleasure, this delight, ths splendour of happiness which I have been enjoying." But I should have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on one's back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the post-office and how comes it now? 'D'abord, a bottle of claret [...] Then afterwards sitting here, an old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of "The Princess" which says "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing blowing," no its "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" [...] and reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair [...] You have made me as happy as I was when a child with the Arabian Nights [...] I have had out of that dear book the greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to write and think about it makes me almost young'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
The Duke of Argyll to Alfred Tennyson, 14 July 1859: 'I think my prediction is coming true, that your "Idylls of the King" will be understood and admired by many who are incapable of understanding and appreciating many of your other works. 'Macaulay is certainly not a man incapable of [italics]understanding[end italics] anything but I knew that his tastes in poetry were so formed in another line that I gave him a good test, and three days ago I gave him "Guinevere." 'The result has been as I expected, that he has been [italics]delighted with it[end italics]. He told me that he has been greatly moved by it, and admired it exceedingly. Altho' by practice and disposition he is eminently a critic, he did not find one single fault. Yesterday I gave him the "Maid of Astolat" with which he was delighted also.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Maid of Astolat
The Duke of Argyll to Alfred Tennyson, 14 July 1859: 'I think my prediction is coming true, that your "Idylls of the King" will be understood and admired by many who are incapable of understanding and appreciating many of your other works. 'Macaulay is certainly not a man incapable of [italics]understanding[end italics] anything but I knew that his tastes in poetry were so formed in another line that I gave him a good test, and three days ago I gave him "Guinevere." 'The result has been as I expected, that he has been [italics]delighted with it[end italics]. He told me that he has been greatly moved by it, and admired it exceedingly. Altho' by practice and disposition he is eminently a critic, he did not find one single fault. Yesterday I gave him the "Maid of Astolat" with which he was delighted also.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Maid of Astolat
Benjamin Jowett to Alfred Tennyson, 17 July 1859: 'Thank you many times for your last: I have read it through with the greatest delight, the "Maid of Astolat" twice over, and it rings in my ears. "The Lily Maid" seems to me the fairest, purest, sweetest love-poem in the English language [...] It moves me like the love of Juliet in Shakespeare'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Jowett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Lily Maid
Benjamin Jowett to Alfred Tennyson, 17 July 1859: 'Thank you many times for your last: I have read it through with the greatest delight, the "Maid of Astolat" twice over, and it rings in my ears. "The Lily Maid" seems to me the fairest, purest, sweetest love-poem in the English language [...] It moves me like the love of Juliet in Shakespeare'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Jowett Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Idylls of the King
H. R. H. Prince Albert to Alfred Tennyson, 17 May 1860: 'Will you forgive me if I intrude upon your leisure with a request which I have thought some little time of making, viz. that you would be good enough to write your name in the accompanying volume of your "Idylls of the King"? You would thus add a peculiar interest to the book, containing those beautiful songs, from the perusal of which I derived the greatest enjoyment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Prince Albert Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Boadicea
'The Duke and Duchess [of Argyll] spent some days at Farringford [...] My father [...] read aloud his "Boadicea," which he had now quite finished.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The Two Voices
Herbert Spencer to Alfred Tennyson [1855]: 'I happened recently to be re-reading your Poem "The Two Voices," and coming to the verse 'Or if thro' lower lives I came -- Tho' all experience past became Consolidate in mind and frame -- 'it occurred to me that you might like to glance through a book which applies to the elucidation of mental science, the hypothesis to which you refer. I therefore beg your acceptance of Psychology which I send by this post.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Spencer Print: Book
Homer : The Iliad
'In the summer of 1861 we travelled in Auvergne and the Pyrenees [...] At Mont Dore, while my father was reading some of the Iliad out aloud to us, little boys came and stood outside the window in open-mouthed astonishment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Dedication, Idylls of the King
'Jan. 19th. [1862] Princess Alice wrote to my father about the Dedication of the "Idylls" to [her father] the Prince Consort: '[...] Mr Tennyson could not have chosen a more beautiful or true testimonial to the memory of him who was so really good and noble, than the dedication of the "Idylls of the King" which he so valued and admired. Princess Alice transmitted these lines to the Queen, who desired her to tell Mr Tennyson, with her sincerest thanks, how much moved she was on reading them, and that they had soothed her aching, bleeding heart. She knows also how [italics]he[end italics] would have admired them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Queen Victoria Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
The Crown Princess of Prussia to Alfred Tennyson, 23 February 1862: 'The first time I ever heard the "Idylls of the King" was last year, when I found both the Queen and Prince quite in raptures about them. The first bit I ever heard was the end of "Guinevere," the last two or three pages: the Prince read them to me, and I shall never forget the impression it made upon me hearing those grand and simple words in his voice!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Prince Albert Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Alfred Tennyson to the Duke of Argyl, 3 March 1862: 'Your letter a little dismayed me, for, as you in the prior one had bound me by no promise of secrecy, I, in talking of Her Majesty and her sorrow [at death of her husband], did say to two friends, whom I bound by such a promise, that she had found comfort in reading "In Memoriam," and had made the private markings therein. 'I don't suppose much harm would result even if these broke their promise, for that is all that could be reported; still I am vexed, because if the Queen heard of the report she might fancy that her private sentiments were public prey.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Queen Victoria Print: Book
Arthur Hallam : Essay on Alfred Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
Aubrey De Vere, on how he 'first made acquaintance with Alfred Tennyson's poetry': 'Lord Houghton, then Richard Monckton Milnes, a Cambridge friend of my eldest brother's, drove up to the door of our house at Curragh Chase one night in 1832 [...] He had brought with him the first number of a new magazine entitled The Englishman containing Arthur Hallam's essay on Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The day on which I first took the slender volume into my hands was with me a memorable one. Arthur Hallam's essay had contrasted two different schools of modern poetry, calling one of these classes Poets of Reflection, and the other class Poets of Sensation, the latter represented by Shelley and Keats. Of Keats I knew nothing, and of Shelley very little; but the new poet seemed to me, while he had a touch of both the classes thus characterized, to have little in common with either. He was eminently original, and about that originality there was for me a wild, inexplicable magic and a deep pathos [goes on to discuss further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey De Vere Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
Aubrey De Vere on his first 'acquaintance' with Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical: 'I remember most of them by heart still. Day after day my sister and I used to read them as we drove up and down the "close green ways" of our woods. Our pony soon detected our abstracted mood. Several times he nearly upset us down a bank; and often choosing his path according to his private judgement, stood still with his head hanging over a gate.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey de Vere and sister Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poetry
From William Allingham's 'Reminiscences' of Tennyson (1863-64): 'Oct. 3rd, 1863. Saturday. We drove to Farringford [...] Drawing-room tea [...] I wandered to the book-table where Tennyson joined me [...] In a book of Latin versions from his own poetry he found some slips in Lord Lyttelton's Cytherea Venus, etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Rebecca West : The Judge
'It was at this meeting, where she was one of the speakers, that I first saw Rebecca West, whose novel "The Judge", which had recently been published, I had read with a disturbed and passionate interest.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Vera Brittain : The Dark Tide
'The note announced, a little defiantly, that the writer had read, "with the utmost pleasure," my novel "The Dark Tide", and asked me in return to accept "the enclosed" - which, it said, there was no necessity to acknowledge.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Frederick the Great of Prussia : Testament Politique
'"I have just put down the "Testament Politique,"" G. was writing to me, as though by telepathy, only a week later, "and I turn to think ... of you reading it to enlighten you on the War, of you telling me of it in the punt on that day down stream on the Cher."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Sketches of the History of Man
'He [Johnson] said, "I have been reading Lord Kames's 'Sketches of the History of Man'. In treating of severity of punishment, he mentions that of Madame Lapouchin, in Russia, but he does not give it fairly; for I have looked at 'Chappe de l'Auteroche', from whom he has taken it. He stops where it is said that the spectators thought her innocent, and leaves out what follows; that she nevertheless was guilty".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Sketches of the History of Man
'Looking at Messrs. Dilly's splendid edition of Lord Chesterfield's miscellaneous works, he laughed, and said, "Here now are two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were written by me: and the best of it is, they have found out that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero". He censured Lord Kames's "Sketches of the History of Man" for misrepresenting Clarendon's account of the appearance of Sir George Villiers's ghost, as if Clarendon were weakly credulous; when the truth is, that Clarendon only says, that the story was upon a better foundation of credit, than usually such discourses are founded upon; nay, speaks thus of the person who was reported to have seen the vision, "the poor man, if he had been at all waking"; which Lord Kames has omitted.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon : History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'Looking at Messrs. Dilly's splendid edition of Lord Chesterfield's miscellaneous works, he laughed, and said, "Here now are two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were written by me: and the best of it is, they have found out that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero". He censured Lord Kames's "Sketches of the History of Man" for misrepresenting Clarendon's account of the appearance of Sir George Villiers's ghost, as if Clarendon were weakly credulous; when the truth is, that Clarendon only says, that the story was upon a better foundation of credit, than usually such discourses are founded upon; nay, speaks thus of the person who was reported to have seen the vision, "the poor man, if he had been at all waking"; which Lord Kames has omitted.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Horne : Letter to Mr Dunning on the English Particle
'This year the Reverend Mr. Horne published his "Letter to Mr. Dunning on the English Particle"; Johnson read it, and though not treated in it with sufficient respect, he had candour enough to say to Mr. Seward, "Were I to make a new edition of my Dictionary, I would adopt several of Mr. Horne's etymologies; I hope they did not put the dog in the pillory for his libel; he has too much literature for that".'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield
'[Johnson said] "I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield", which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: 'I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing'." BOSWELL. "That was a fine passage". JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: 'When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false'."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Allestree : Government of the Tongue, The
'On Friday, April 2, being Good-Friday, I visited him in the morning as usual; and finding that we insensibly fell into a train of ridicule upon the foibles of one of our friends, a very worthy man, I, by way of a check, quoted some good admonition from "The Government of the Tongue", that very pious book.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden
'A district visitor was delivering tracts among a large meeting of some poor folk to whom she had lately read part of "Enoch Arden." "Thank you ma'am," one old lady said, "but I'd give all I had for that other beautiful tract which you read t'other day (a sentiment which was echoed by the others), it did me a power of good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden
Robert Browning to Alfred Tennyson, 13 October 1864: 'I have been two months away, and only just find your book now [...] "Enoch" continues the perfect thing I thought it at first reading; but the "Farmer," taking me unawares, astonished me more in this stage of acquaintanceship.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
Robert Browning to Alfred Tennyson, 13 October 1864: 'I have been two months away, and only just find your book now [...] "Enoch" continues the perfect thing I thought it at first reading; but the "Farmer," taking me unawares, astonished me more in this stage of acquaintanceship.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Lucretius :
From Emily Tennyson's diary (1865): 'Oct. 6th. A. read me some Lucretius, and the 1st Epistle of St Peter. (At work on his new poem of "Lucretius.")'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
W. G. Clark, on a reader of Tennyson's 'The Northern Farmer': '[?W. H.] Thompson has been staying at Fryston, where he met a Mr Creyke, a Yorkshireman, with a talent for recitation. This Mr Creyke had been staying at a farmhouse in Holderness, where in the evening the neighbouring farmers used to come and smoke. One evening, he repeated "The Northern Farmer." When it was done, one of them said, "Dang it, that caps owt. Now, sur, is that i' print, because if it be I'll buy t' book, cost what it may?" Creyke said, "The book contains things you mayn't like as well, so I'll write it out for you." 'This he did: the farmer put it in his breast-pocket; and next day when out shooting Creyke saw him from time to time taking it out to read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Unknown, In hand of 'Mr Creyke.'
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
'May 2nd. [1866] Marlborough [...] In the evening the Bradleys had a large dinner-party. [George] Bradley [headmaster] knowing my father's love of science had asked masters interested in geology, botany and archaeology to meet him [...] At the request of Mrs Bradley he read "The Northern Farmer," and then criticised amusingly some of the boys' Prize Poems which Bradley had asked him to look through.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pupils at Marlborough College : Prize Poems
'May 2nd. [1866] Marlborough [...] In the evening the Bradleys had a large dinner-party. [George] Bradley [headmaster] knowing my father's love of science had asked masters interested in geology, botany and archaeology to meet him [...] At the request of Mrs Bradley he read "The Northern Farmer," and then criticised amusingly some of the boys' Prize Poems which Bradley had asked him to look through.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
'May 3rd. [1866] After dinner the Upper Sixth came in, and at their petition [Tennyson] read "Guinevere," refusing however enthronement in a large arm-chair, and asserting it was "too conspicuous."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Man
'shall insert as a literary curiosity. [The letter is given. It begins as follows] "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. DEAR SIR, In the year 1763, being at London, I was carried by Dr. John Blair, Prebendary of Westminster, to dine at old Lord Bathurst's; where we found the late Mr. Mallet, Sir James Porter, who had been Ambassadour at Constantinople, the late Dr. Macaulay, and two or three more. The conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us, that "The Essay on Man" was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own hand-writing; and remembered well, that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse..."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst Print: Book
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke : [alleged MS prose version of Pope's 'Essay on Man']
'shall insert as a literary curiosity. [The letter is given. It begins as follows] "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. DEAR SIR, In the year 1763, being at London, I was carried by Dr. John Blair, Prebendary of Westminster, to dine at old Lord Bathurst's; where we found the late Mr. Mallet, Sir James Porter, who had been Ambassadour at Constantinople, the late Dr. Macaulay, and two or three more. The conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us, that "The Essay on Man" was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own hand-writing; and remembered well, that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse..."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst Manuscript: Unknown
Georgii Pasoris : Lexicon Graeco-Latinum in Iesu Christi Domini Nostri N. Testamentum
'Having regretted to him that I had learnt little Greek, as is too generally the case in Scotland; that I had for a long time hardly applied at all to the study of that noble language, and that I was desirous of being told by him what method to follow; he recommended to me as easy helps, Sylvanus's "First Book of the Iliad"; Dawson's "Lexicon to the Greek New Testament"; and "Hesiod", with "Pasoris Lexicon" at the end of it.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : Harking Back to Long Ago
'In a short vignette called "Harking Back to Long Ago", Winifred describes how she and Grace, aged four and six and a half, lay awake on Christmas Eve gazing through the square uncurtained window at the frosty constellations of the winter stars.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain
Lord Elibank : [Epitaph on his Lady]
'[from Bennet Langton's collection of 1780 Johnsoniana, passed to Boswell] 'One night at The Club he produced a translation of an Epitaph which Lord Elibank had written in English, for his Lady, and requested of Johnson to turn into Latin for him. Having read "Domina de North et Gray", he said to Dyer, "You see, Sir, what barbarisms we are compelled to make use of, when modern titles are to be specifically mentioned in Latin inscriptions." When he had read it once aloud, and there had been a general approbation expressed by the company, he addressed himself to Mr. Dyer in particular, and said, "Sir, I beg to have your judgement, for I know your nicety." Dyer then very properly desired to read it over again; which having done, he pointed out an incongruity in one of the sentences.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Lord Elibank : [Epitaph on his Lady]
'[from Bennet Langton's collection of 1780 Johnsoniana, passed to Boswell] 'One night at The Club he produced a translation of an Epitaph which Lord Elibank had written in English, for his Lady, and requested of Johnson to turn into Latin for him. Having read "Domina de North et Gray", he said to Dyer, "You see, Sir, what barbarisms we are compelled to make use of, when modern titles are to be specifically mentioned in Latin inscriptions." When he had read it once aloud, and there had been a general approbation expressed by the company, he addressed himself to Mr. Dyer in particular, and said, "Sir, I beg to have your judgement, for I know your nicety." Dyer then very properly desired to read it over again; which having done, he pointed out an incongruity in one of the sentences.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Dyer Manuscript: Unknown
Jeremy Taylor : unknown
'I read also Dr Taylour of practical repentance, and Dr Preston of faith, and found good by them'.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Richard Rogers : Certain Sermons . . . to establish and settle all such as are converted in faith and repentance
'November 30. I was reading, and meditating upon what I read in Mr Rogers his book of faith, viz. that there must be legall preparations before faith is wrought in the soule; I examined my selfe, and could not find that orderly proceeding of God with my soule by humiliation, contrition, etc. as I desired . . . '
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Richard Baxter : The Saints Everlasting Rest
'October 19. I was reading the preface to Baxter's Rest, where he writes that we should mind our inheritance, and that because God tossed and tumbled us about in this world to make us weary of it. And this have I often experienced . . . '
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Richard Baxter : The Saints Everlasting Rest
'[I was] not constant in meditation, I was loath to begin, but if I once began I found it so sweet that I could scarce leave of[f]; I read Mr Baxter's Rest about meditation, and was much affected with his way; I perused Bishop Hall's book, and that pleased mee; but I found diversions, and I could not fixe my thoughts long upon one subject . . . '
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Publick Virtue, a Poem
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] 'Of Dodsley's "Publick Virtue, a Poem", he said, "It was fine blank (meaning to express his usual contempt for blank verse); however, this miserable poem did not sell, and my poor friend Doddy said, Publick Virtue was not a subject to interest the age."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Cleone, a Tragedy
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] Mr. Langton, when a very young man, read Dodsley's "Cleone, a Tragedy", to him, not aware of his extreme impatience to be read to. As it went on he turned his face to the back of his chair, and put himself into various attitudes, which marked his uneasiness. At the end of an act, however, he said, "Come let's have some more, let's go into the slaughter-house again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is more blood than brains." Yet he afterwards said, "When I heard you read it, I thought higher of its power of language: when I read it myself, I was more sensible of its pathetick effect;" and then he paid it a compliment which many will think very extravagant. "Sir, (said he,) if Otway had written this play, no other of his pieces would have been remembered": Dodsley himself, upon this being repeated to him, said, "It was too much": it must be remembered, that Johnson always appeared not to be sufficiently sensible of the merit of Otway'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Bennet Langton Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Cleone, a Tragedy
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] Mr. Langton, when a very young man, read Dodsley's "Cleone, a Tragedy", to him, not aware of his extreme impatience to be read to. As it went on he turned his face to the back of his chair, and put himself into various attitudes, which marked his uneasiness. At the end of an act, however, he said, "Come let's have some more, let's go into the slaughter-house again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is more blood than brains." Yet he afterwards said, "When I heard you read it, I thought higher of its power of language: when I read it myself, I was more sensible of its pathetick effect;" and then he paid it a compliment which many will think very extravagant. "Sir, (said he,) if Otway had written this play, no other of his pieces would have been remembered": Dodsley himself, upon this being repeated to him, said, "It was too much": it must be remembered, that Johnson always appeared not to be sufficiently sensible of the merit of Otway'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Bentley :
'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] Johnson one day gave high praise to Dr. Bentley's verses in Dodsley's "Collection", which he recited with his usual energy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Mr Grove : [articled in 'The Spectator']
[from Bennet Langton's collection of Johnsoniana passed to Boswell in 1780] 'He mentioned with an air of satisfaction what Baretti had told him; that, meeting, in the course of his studying English, with an excellent paper in the "Spectator", one of four that were written by the respectable Dissenting Minister, Mr. Grove of Taunton, and observing the genius and energy of mind that it exhibits, it greatly quickened his curiosity to visit our country; as he thought if such were the lighter periodical essays of our authours, their productions on more weighty occasions must be wonderful indeed!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti Print: Serial / periodical
Herbert Croft : Life of Young
'[Croft's 'Life of Young, adapted by Johnson for his 'Life'] has always appeared to me to have a considerable share of merit, and to display a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. When I mentioned this to a very eminent literary character [Edmund Burke], he opposed me vehemently, exclaiming, "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength". This was an image so happy, that one might have thought he would have been satisfied with it; but he was not. And setting his mind again to work, he added, with exquisite felicity, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the inspiration".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Burke Print: Book
Herbert Croft : Life of Young
'[Croft's 'Life of Young, adapted by Johnson for his 'Life'] has always appeared to me to have a considerable share of merit, and to display a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. When I mentioned this to a very eminent literary character [Edmund Burke], he opposed me vehemently, exclaiming, "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength". This was an image so happy, that one might have thought he would have been satisfied with it; but he was not. And setting his mind again to work, he added, with exquisite felicity, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the inspiration".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
''It gives me much pleasure to observe, that however Johnson may have casually talked, yet when he sits, as "an ardent judge zealous to his trust, giving sentence" upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. "The 'Universal Passion' (says he) is indeed a very great performance,--his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of resistless truth." But I was most anxious concerning Johnson's decision upon "Night Thoughts", which I esteem as a mass of the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced; and was delighted to find this character of that work: "In his 'Night Thoughts', he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions; a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhime but with disadvantage". And afterwards, "Particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity". But there is in this Poem not only all that Johnson so well brings in view, but a power of the [italics] Pathetick [end italics] beyond almost any example that I have seen. He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart pierced by many passages in this extraordinary work, particularly by that most affecting one, which describes the gradual torment suffered by the contemplation of an object of affectionate attachment, visibly and certainly decaying into dissolution, must be of a hard and obstinate frame. To all the other excellencies of "Night Thoughts" let me add the great and peculiar one, that they contain not only the noblest sentiments of virtue, and contemplations on immortality, but the Christian Sacrifice, the Divine Propitiation, with all its interesting circumstances, and consolations to "a wounded spirit" solemnly and poetically displayed in such imagery and language, as cannot fail to exalt, animate, and soothe the truly pious. No book whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of seasoning their minds with [italics] vital religion [end italics], than Young's "Night Thoughts".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
''It gives me much pleasure to observe, that however Johnson may have casually talked, yet when he sits, as "an ardent judge zealous to his trust, giving sentence" upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. "The 'Universal Passion' (says he) is indeed a very great performance,--his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of resistless truth." But I was most anxious concerning Johnson's decision upon "Night Thoughts", which I esteem as a mass of the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced; and was delighted to find this character of that work: "In his 'Night Thoughts', he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions; a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhime but with disadvantage". And afterwards, "Particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity". But there is in this Poem not only all that Johnson so well brings in view, but a power of the [italics] Pathetick [end italics] beyond almost any example that I have seen. He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart pierced by many passages in this extraordinary work, particularly by that most affecting one, which describes the gradual torment suffered by the contemplation of an object of affectionate attachment, visibly and certainly decaying into dissolution, must be of a hard and obstinate frame. To all the other excellencies of "Night Thoughts" let me add the great and peculiar one, that they contain not only the noblest sentiments of virtue, and contemplations on immortality, but the Christian Sacrifice, the Divine Propitiation, with all its interesting circumstances, and consolations to "a wounded spirit" solemnly and poetically displayed in such imagery and language, as cannot fail to exalt, animate, and soothe the truly pious. No book whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of seasoning their minds with [italics] vital religion [end italics], than Young's "Night Thoughts".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Young : Love of Fame, The Universal Passion
''It gives me much pleasure to observe, that however Johnson may have casually talked, yet when he sits, as "an ardent judge zealous to his trust, giving sentence" upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. "The 'Universal Passion' (says he) is indeed a very great performance,--his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of resistless truth." But I was most anxious concerning Johnson's decision upon "Night Thoughts", which I esteem as a mass of the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced; and was delighted to find this character of that work: "In his 'Night Thoughts', he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions; a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhime but with disadvantage". And afterwards, "Particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity". But there is in this Poem not only all that Johnson so well brings in view, but a power of the [italics] Pathetick [end italics] beyond almost any example that I have seen. He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart pierced by many passages in this extraordinary work, particularly by that most affecting one, which describes the gradual torment suffered by the contemplation of an object of affectionate attachment, visibly and certainly decaying into dissolution, must be of a hard and obstinate frame. To all the other excellencies of "Night Thoughts" let me add the great and peculiar one, that they contain not only the noblest sentiments of virtue, and contemplations on immortality, but the Christian Sacrifice, the Divine Propitiation, with all its interesting circumstances, and consolations to "a wounded spirit" solemnly and poetically displayed in such imagery and language, as cannot fail to exalt, animate, and soothe the truly pious. No book whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of seasoning their minds with [italics] vital religion [end italics], than Young's "Night Thoughts".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Zachariah Mudge : Sermons
'[Johnson said of Rev. Zacariah Mudge] The general course of his life was determined by his profession; he studied the sacred volumes in the original languages; with what diligence and success, his "Notes upon the Psalms" give sufficient evidence. He once endeavoured to add the knowledge of Arabick to that of Hebrew; but finding his thoughts too much diverted from other studies, after some time desisted from his purpose. His discharge of parochial duties was exemplary. How his "Sermons" were composed, may be learned from the excellent volume which he has given to the publick'. [article by Johnson in 'the London Chronicle', 2nd May 1769]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Zachariah Mudge : [notes on the Psalms]
'[Johnson said of Rev. Zacariah Mudge] The general course of his life was determined by his profession; he studied the sacred volumes in the original languages; with what diligence and success, his "Notes upon the Psalms" give sufficient evidence. He once endeavoured to add the knowledge of Arabick to that of Hebrew; but finding his thoughts too much diverted from other studies, after some time desisted from his purpose. His discharge of parochial duties was exemplary. How his "Sermons" were composed, may be learned from the excellent volume which he has given to the publick'. [article by Johnson in 'the London Chronicle', 2nd May 1769]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Walter Harte : History of the life of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden
'Mr. Eliot, with whom Dr. Walter Harte had travelled, talked to us of his "History of Gustavus Adolphus", which he said was a very good book in the German translation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Eliot Print: Book
Zachariah Mudge : Sermons
'Sir Joshua Reynolds praised "Mudge's Sermons". JOHNSON. "'Mudge's Sermons' are good, but not practical. He grasps more sense than he can hold; he takes more corn than he can make into meal; he opens a wide prospect, but it is so distant, it is indistinct. I love "Blair's Sermons". Though the dog is a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian, and every thing he should not be, I was the first to praise them. Such was my candour." (smiling.)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Book
Zachariah Mudge : Sermons
'Sir Joshua Reynolds praised "Mudge's Sermons". JOHNSON. "'Mudge's Sermons' are good, but not practical. He grasps more sense than he can hold; he takes more corn than he can make into meal; he opens a wide prospect, but it is so distant, it is indistinct. I love "Blair's Sermons". Though the dog is a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian, and every thing he should not be, I was the first to praise them. Such was my candour." (smiling.)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle : Tragedies and Poems
'Johnson praised the Earl of Carlisle's Poems, which his Lordship had published with his name, as not disdaining to be a candidate for literary fame. My friend was of opinion, that when a man of rank appeared in that character, he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed. In this I think he was more liberal than Mr. William Whitehead, in his "Elegy to Lord Villiers", in which under the pretext of "superiour toils, demanding all their care," he discovers a jealousy of the great paying their court to the Muses:-- "------to the chosen few Who dare excel, thy fost'ring aid afford, Their arts, their magick powers, with honours due Exalt;--but be thyself what they record".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Watson : Chemical Essays
'He talked little to us in the carriage, being chiefly occupied in reading Dr. Watson's second volume of "Chemical Essays", which he liked very well, and his own "Prince of Abyssinia", on which he seemed to be intensely fixed; having told us, that he had not looked at it since it was first published. I happened to take it out of my pocket this day, and he seized upon it with avidity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
George Crabbe : Village, The
'Soon after this time I had an opportunity of seeing, by means of one of his friends, a proof that his talents, as well as his obliging service to authours, were ready as ever. He had revised "The Village", an admirable poem, by the Reverend Mr. Crabbe. Its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with his own; and he had taken the trouble not only to suggest slight corrections and variations, but to furnish some lines, when he thought he could give the writer's meaning better than in the words of the manuscript'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
George Crabbe : Village, The
'Soon after this time I had an opportunity of seeing, by means of one of his friends, a proof that his talents, as well as his obliging service to authours, were ready as ever. He had revised "The Village", an admirable poem, by the Reverend Mr. Crabbe. Its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with his own; and he had taken the trouble not only to suggest slight corrections and variations, but to furnish some lines, when he thought he could give the writer's meaning better than in the words of the manuscript'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Burney : Continental Travels 1770-72
'He [Johnson] gave much praise to his friend, Dr. Burney's elegant and entertaining travels, and told Mr. Seward that he had them in his eye, when writing his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : French Peasant Songs.
'Lang’s French ballads is neatly enough ticked off.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Grandmother
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In the Valley of Cauteretz
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1866: 'We took Lionel [son] to school at Hastings [...] We then left for Park House, Maidstone [...] In the evening, at the Lushingtons' request, A. read "The Victim, or The Norse Queen," "The Voyage," and "All Along the Valley."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Virgil : Georgics I
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 18 May 1867: 'He [Tennyson] read the new version of one of the "Window Songs," "Take my Love"; Heine's "Songs"; and some of the Reign of Law. The chapter on "Law in Politics" was especially interesting to us. The quotations from A. expressed some of the deepest truths [...] With the boys he was reading Flodden Field, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and the 1st Georgic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson and sons (Hallam and Lionel) Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge :
F. T. Palgrave on a tour of the West Country with Tennyson in late summer 1867: 'Our way lay right across Dartmoor, desolate and eerie even under the brightest sun, to Princetown: a village gloomy in itself [...] The inn, rough and small but clean, was in accord with the surroundings. One bedroom with two huge four-posters was allotted us: and Tennyson lay in his with a candle, reading hard the book which on this trip he had taken for his novel-companion, and at every disengaged moment whilst rambling over the Moor. This chanced to be one of Miss Yonge's deservedly popular tales, wherein a leading element is the deferred Church Confirmation of a grown-up person. On Tennyson read, till I heard him cry with satisfaction, "I see land! Mr ** is just going to be confirmed, after which, darkness and slumber.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1868: 'Dr Hook asked A. to read "Enoch Arden." He replied he could not to-day. Dr Hook thereupon began in fun to read it so badly that A. clutched the book, "No, I cannot stand that," and read it all to them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1868: 'Dr Hook asked A. to read "Enoch Arden." He replied he could not to-day. Dr Hook thereupon began in fun to read it so badly that A. clutched the book, "No, I cannot stand that," and read it all to them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Hook Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 9th. [1868] A. read me a bit of his "San Graal," which he has now begun. 'Sept. 11th. He read me more of the "San Graal": very fine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 9th. [1868] A. read me a bit of his "San Graal," which he has now begun. 'Sept. 11th. He read me more of the "San Graal": very fine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 23rd. [1868] We took Lionel [son] to Eton, and left him in Mr Stone's house. At Mr Warre's request A. read the "San Graal" MS complete in the garden.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Torquato Tasso : Aminta
'Thank you for Herder which came in the nick of time; as I had just heard the last oracle of Nathan, and was ennuying myself with Tasso's Aminta- '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Moral and Political Dialogues: being the substance of several conversations between divers eminent persons of the past and present age
'That learned and ingenious Prelate [Dr Hurd] it is well known published at one period of his life "Moral and Political Dialogues", with a woefully whiggish cast. Afterwards, his Lordship having thought better, came to see his errour, and republished the work with a more constitutional spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Delarivier Manley : Adventures of Rivella, or the History of the Author of The New Atalantis
'BOSWELL. "Pray, Sir, is the 'Turkish Spy' a genuine book?" JOHNSON. "No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her 'Life', says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, 'Dunton's Life and Errours', we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'I have been reading a letter from my father in which he offers me to come to London, [underline] what [end underline] a temptation, but I believe it to be much better for me to be where I am ... then I walked in and went into the study to look for a book to read, and what should I think of reading but Barclay's "Apology".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'I first wrote to my father then wrote a little journal, read two chapters in the Testament, had a good lesson of French, went to see Bob, read in Barclay's Apology for some hours upon Revealed Religion. The part I most disapprove of is the harsh manner in which he speaks of other sects, it seems to me want [underline] Charity [end underline] and [underline] Without Charity is nothing [end underline] - some parts that he says are beautiful, clear and capable of being understood, other parts are not so much so, and I think all might have been expressed in a more [underline] concise [end underline] manner.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'I went to see Mrs Norman and read in Barclay's Apology'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'read in Barclay's Apology in the evening'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Barclay : Apology for the True Christian Divinity
'read a little in Barclay'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Richard Baxter :
'I asked him what works of Richard Baxter's I should read. He said, "Read any of them; they are all good".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Reasons of the Christian Religion, The
'Baxter's "Reasons of the Christian Religion", he thought contained the best collection of the evidences of the divinity of the Christian system.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Hester Lynch Thrale : Letters
'A pleasing instance of the generous attention of one of his [Dr Johnson's] friends has been discovered by the publication of Mrs. Thrale's collection of "Letters". In a letter to one of the Miss Thrales, he writes,-- "A friend, whose name I will tell when your mamma has tried to guess it, sent to my physician to enquire whether this long train of illness had brought me into difficulties for want of money, with an invitation to send to him for what occasion required. I shall write this night to thank him, having no need to borrow".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle : Father's Revenge, The
'The Earl of Carlisle having written a tragedy, entitled "The Father's Revenge", some of his Lordship's friends applied to Mrs. Chapone to prevail on Dr. Johnson to read and give his opinion of it, which he accordingly did, in a letter to that lady. [the text of the letter is then given. The relevant parts of it follow:] "The construction of the play is not completely regular; the stage is too often vacant, and the scenes are not sufficiently connected. This, however, would be called by Dryden only a mechanical defect; which takes away little from the power of the poem, and which is seen rather than felt. A rigid examiner of the diction might, perhaps, wish some words changed, and some lines more vigorously terminated. But from such petty imperfections what writer was ever free? The general form and force of the dialogue is of more importance. It seems to want that quickness of reciprocation which characterises the English drama, and is not always sufficiently fervid or animated. Of the sentiments I remember not one that I wished omitted. In the imagery I cannot forbear to distinguish the comparison of joy succeeding grief to light rushing on the eye accustomed to darkness. It seems to have all that can be desired to make it please. It is new, just, and delightful. With the characters, either as conceived or preserved, I have no fault to find; but was much inclined to congratulate a writer, who, in defiance of prejudice and fashion, made the Archbishop a good man, and scorned all thoughtless applause, which a vicious churchman would have brought him".' 'The catastrophe is affecting. The Father and Daughter both culpable, both wretched, and both penitent, divide between them our pity and our sorrow.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Burton : Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, and Wonders in England
' [letter from Johnson to bookseller Mr Dilly] There is in the world a set of books which used to be sold by the booksellers on the bridge, and which I must entreat you to procure me. They are called "Burton's Books"; the title of one is "Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, and Wonders in England". I believe there are about five or six of them; they seem very proper to allure backward readers; be so kind as to get them for me, and send me them with the best printed edition of "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Baxter : Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live
' [letter from Johnson to bookseller Mr Dilly] There is in the world a set of books which used to be sold by the booksellers on the bridge, and which I must entreat you to procure me. They are called "Burton's Books"; the title of one is "Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, and Wonders in England". I believe there are about five or six of them; they seem very proper to allure backward readers; be so kind as to get them for me, and send me them with the best printed edition of "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : Ode on the Peace, An
'He had dined that day [30th May 1784] at Mr. Hoole's, and Miss Helen Maria Williams being expected in the evening, Mr. Hoole put into his hands her beautiful "Ode on the Peace": Johnson read it over, and when this elegant and accomplished young lady was presented to him, he took her by the hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the finest stanza of her poem; this was the most delicate and pleasing compliment he could pay.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown
Richard Savage : Wanderer, The
'Next morning at breakfast, [10th June 1784] he pointed out a passage in Savage's "Wanderer", saying, "These are fine verses". "If (said he) I had written with hostility of Warburton in my "Shakspeare", I should have quoted this couplet:-- 'Here Learning, blinded first and then beguil'd, Looks dark as Ignorance, as Fancy wild'. You see they'd have fitted him to a T" (smiling.)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Richard Hurd : Sermons
'I brought a volume of Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester's "Sermons", and read to the company some passages from one of them, upon this text, "Resist the Devil, and he will fly from you". James, iv. 7. I was happy to produce so judicious and elegant a supporter of a doctrine, which, I know not why, should, in this world of imperfect knowledge, and, therefore, of wonder and mystery in a thousand instances, be contested by some with an unthinking assurance and flippancy.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Golden Grove; or a Manuall of daily prayers and litanies
'I mentioned Jeremy Taylor's using, in his forms of prayer, "I am the chief of sinners", and other such self-condemning expressions. "Now, (said I) this cannot be said with truth by every man, and therefore is improper for a general printed form. I myself cannot say that I am the worst of men; I will not say so".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Jeremy Taylor : Golden Grove; or a Manuall of daily prayers and litanies
'JOHNSON. "I do not approve of figurative expressions in addressing the Supreme Being; and I never use them. Taylor gives a very good advice: 'Never lie in your prayers; never confess more than you really believe; never promise more than you mean to perform'. I recollected this precept in his "Golden Grove"; but his [italics]example [end italics] for prayer contradicts his [italics] precept [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Herbert Croft : [Family Discourses]
'[present at tea on June 12th was] the Reverend Herbert Croft, who, I am afraid, was somewhat mortified by Dr. Johnson's not being highly pleased with some "Family Discourses", which he had printed; they were in too familiar a style to be approved of by so manly a mind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'[letter to Mrs --] 'books, for a certain length of time, are a charming substitute for common conversation. I do not know that I ever read one from which my mind received a higher degree of pleasure than "Currie's life of Burns". To me, its charm was enhanced by a thousand pleasing recollections - a thousand associations, that gave a strong additional interest to every word. The strength of Burns's feelings, the character of his mind, had excited an enthusiastic admiration, at a period when my own enthusiastic feelings were in perfect unison with those of the poet; and in him alone did I meet with the expression of a sensibility with which I could perfectly sympathise: in his emotions there was a strength, an energy, that came home to my heart; while the tender sorrows of other poets had to me appeared mawkish and insipid. Even the strong light in which he saw the ridiculous, was, I fear, too agreeable to me. The idea I then formed of his mind has been confirmed by Dr Currie's delineation of it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Burns : [poems]
'[Letter to H.M. Esq.] I have purchased your friend "Currie's Life of Burns"; which, I confess, has operated like a charm on my benumbed imagination. Never have I been more highly gratified than by the perusal of his inestimable work, which is a [italics] chef-d'oeuvre [end italics] of cultivated and discriminating taste. On reading the poems that are added to the collection, I once more tasted of all that delicious enthusiasm with which the first productions of this child of nature and genius had feasted my soul'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Hector Macneil : [poems]
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] 'it appears to me, that even in your slighter pieces, this illusion [hiding judgment under imagination] is kept up; while, in your more finished producions, it is preserved in an uncommon degree. This, my feelings tell me; and to them, in this instance, judgment delegates her authority. Had I, previously to publication, known of your intention of paying a compliment to Lord N., I should certainly have remonstrated. I confess I was revolted by the idea of your virtuous muse binding her laurels round the brow of one of the most profligate and worthless of the human race; but that single passage excepted, I found so much pleasure in the perusal of the whole, that I would not have taken a thousand pounds to have gone critically over every if and and, purposely to pick out some faults'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Hector Macneil : Harp, The
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Hector Macneil : Harp, The
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss H. Print: Book
Hector Macneil : The Waes of War or the Upshot of the History of Will and Jean
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] [EH says she has received a note from 'Miss H'.] along with your volume, of which she had begged the perusal. She is (as I am) pleased with the whole; but with the "Harp", and the "Waes o' War" , she is particularly charmed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss H. Print: Book
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism
'[letter to Hector MacNeil - H.M.] Do I not well remember hiding "Kaims's Elements of Criticism", under the cover of an easy chair, whenever I heard the approach of a footstep, well knowing the ridicule to which I should have been exposed, had I been detected in the act of looking into such a book?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
R.H. Cromek : Reliques of Robert Burns
'[letter to Miss J-B-] I have just been looking over the fifth volume of poor Burns. it contains much that he would have been sorry to imagine before the public eye; but his letter to Mr Erskine, and some others, are invaluable'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
Robert Wodrow : The Correspondence of the Rev Robert Wodrow
'I have read one half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's Correspondence, with some improvement but great fatigue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Mr Lewis : [verses on Pope in notes to the 'Dunciad']
'[speaking of some verses in the notes to Pope's Dunciad, Boswell and Miss Seward wonder who they are by] He was prompt with his answer: "Why, Sir, they were written by one Lewis, who was either under-master or an usher of Westminster-school, and published a Miscellany, in which "Grongar Hill" first came out". Johnson praised them highly, and repeated them with a noble animation. In the twelfth line, instead of "one establish'd fame", he repeated "one unclouded flame", which he thought was the reading in former editions: but I believe was a flash of his own genius. It is much more poetical than the other.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Henry Brooke : Gustavus Vasa The Deliverer Of His Country
'Johnson was present when a tragedy was read, in which there occurred this line:-- "Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free". The company having admired it much, "I cannot agree with you (said Johnson). It might as well be said,-- "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Hester Lynch Thrale : Letters
'Mr. Walpole thought Johnson a more amiable character after reading his "Letters to Mrs. Thrale": but never was one of the true admirers of that great man'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Horace Walpole Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : Ciceronianus
'[letter from Johnson to Dr Brocklesby] Tell Dr. Heberden, that in the coach I read "Ciceronianus" which I concluded as I entered Lichfield. My affection and understanding went along with Erasmus, except that once or twice he somewhat unskilfully entangles Cicero's civil or moral, with his rhetorical, character'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burrowes : [Essay on Johnson's style]
'I shall now fulfil my promise of exhibiting specimens of various sorts of imitation of Johnson's style. In the "Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1787", there is an 'Essay on the Style of Dr. Samuel Johnson,' by the Reverend Robert Burrowes, whose respect for the great object of his criticism is thus evinced in the concluding paragraph:-- "I have singled him out from the whole body of English writers, because his universally-acknowledged beauties would be most apt to induce imitation; and I have treated rather on his faults than his perfections, because an essay might comprize all the observations I could make upon his faults, while volumes would not be sufficient for a treatise on his perfections". Mr. BURROWES has analysed the composition of Johnson, and pointed out its peculiarities with much acuteness; and I would recommend a careful perusal of his Essay to those, who being captivated by the union of perspicuity and splendour which the writings of Johnson contain, without having a sufficient portion of his vigour of mind, may be in danger of becoming bad copyists of his manner.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : [imitation of Johnson]
'A distinguished authour in "The Mirror", a periodical paper, published at Edinburgh, has imitated Johnson very closely. Thus, in No. 16,-- "The effects of the return of spring have been frequently remarked as well in relation to the human mind as to the animal and vegetable world. The reviving power of this season has been traced from the fields to the herds that inhabit them, and from the lower classes of beings up to man. Gladness and joy are described as prevailing through universal Nature, animating the low of the cattle, the carol of the birds, and the pipe of the shepherd." The Reverend Dr. KNOX, master of Tunbridge school, appears to have the [italics]imitari aveo [end italics] of Johnson's style perpetually in his mind; and to his assiduous, though not servile, study of it, we may partly ascribe the extensive popularity of his writings. In his "Essays, Moral and Literary", No. 3, we find the following passage:-- "The polish of external grace may indeed be deferred till the approach of manhood. When solidity is obtained by pursuing the modes prescribed by our fore-fathers, then may the file be used. The firm substance will bear attrition, and the lustre then acquired will be durable." There is, however, one in No. 11, which is blown up into such tumidity, as to be truly ludicrous. The writer means to tell us, that Members of Parliament, who have run in debt by extravagance, will sell their votes to avoid an arrest, which he thus expresses:-- "They who build houses and collect costly pictures and furniture with the money of an honest artisan or mechanick, will be very glad of emancipation from the hands of a bailiff, by a sale of their senatorial suffrage". But I think the most perfect imitation of Johnson is a professed one, entitled "A Criticism on Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-Yard", said to be written by Mr. Young, Professor of Greek, at Glasgow, and of which let him have the credit, unless a better title can be shewn. It has not only the peculiarities of Johnson's style, but that very species of literary discussion and illustration for which he was eminent. Having already quoted so much from others, I shall refer the curious to this performance, with an assurance of much entertainment'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Ulysses'
[the curriculum at the Dragon School] included much memorizing of poetry, particularly Tennyson's 'Ulysses' and 'Morte d'Arthur'. John learned a lot of poetry by heart and won a prize for recitation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Morte d'Arthur'
[the curriculum at the Dragon School] included much memorizing of poetry, particularly Tennyson's 'Ulysses' and 'Morte d'Arthur'. John learned a lot of poetry by heart and won a prize for recitation'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
'The poets John read at Highgate Junior School included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Campbell and Edgar Allan Poe'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe :
'The poets John read at Highgate Junior School included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Campbell and Edgar Allan Poe'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Alfred Douglas :
'John was not only reading and quoting Lord Alfred Douglas at Marlborough. Ernest Betjeman [his father] was scandalized to discover that he was also corresponding with the former lover of Oscar Wilde'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Ebeneezer Elliott :
'[quotation from Maurice Bowra's Memoirs] The first time I met him [John Betjeman] he talked fluently about half forgotten authors of the nineteenth century - Sir Henry Taylor, Ebeneezer Elliott, Philip James Bailey, and Sir Lewis Morris'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Henry Taylor :
'[quotation from Maurice Bowra's Memoirs] The first time I met him [John Betjeman] he talked fluently about half forgotten authors of the nineteenth century - Sir Henry Taylor, Ebeneezer Elliott, Philip James Bailey, and Sir Lewis Morris'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Betjeman Print: Book
Hester Lynch Thrale : [verses on a dog named Pompey]
'When Doctor Parker had read the foregoing Poem [given - a long poem by Mrs Thrale on his dog Pompey] he wrote these verses upon it Impromptu. [the verses are given]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Parker Manuscript: Unknown
Dr Parker : 'To Miss Salusbury'
'[having given the text of Parker's poem 'To Miss Salusbury', Mrs Thrale writes] For a long Time I believed this Conceit original; but it is not - There is an old Greek Epigram on Dercylis only of two Lines which the Doctor has here spun into Length. Vide Anthol: Lib: 7.2 & there is some account of it too in Bouhours'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Salusbury Manuscript: Unknown
Laurence Sterne : ife and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
'the famous Tristram Shandy itself is not absolutely original: for when I was at Derby in the Summer of 1774 I strolled by mere chance into a Bookseller's Shop, where however I could find nothing to tempt Curiosity but a strange Book about Corporal Bates, which I bought & read for want of better Sport, and found it to be the very Novel from which Sterne took his first Idea: the Character of Uncle Toby, the Behaviour of Coporal Trim, even the name of Tristram itself seems to be borrowed from this stupid History of Corporal Bates forsooth'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : Collection of Poems by Various Hands
'the Verses written by Bentley upon Learning & publish'd in Dodsley's Miscellanies - how like they are to Evelyn's Verses on Virtue published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a Plagiarisme; old Bentley would have scorned such Tricks, besides what passed once between myself and Mr Johnson should cure me of Suspicion in these Cases. We had then some thoughts of giving a Translation of Boethius, and I used now & then to shew him the Verses I had made towards the Work: in the Ode with the Story of Orpheus in it - beginning "felix qui potuit &c" he altered some of my Verses to these which he [italics] thought [end italics] his own. "Fondly viewed his following Bride Viewing lost, and losing died." Two Years after this, I resolved to go through all th Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in one of them - Bonduca, I found two Lines so like these of Johnson's that one would have sworn he had imitated them: that very Afternoon he came, & says I, did you ever delight much in Reading Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays - I never read any of them at all replied he, but I intend some Time to go over them, here in your fine Edition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : Bonduca
'the Verses written by Bentley upon Learning & publish'd in Dodsley's Miscellanies - how like they are to Evelyn's Verses on Virtue published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a Plagiarisme; old Bentley would have scorned such Tricks, besides what passed once between myself and Mr Johnson should cure me of Suspicion in these Cases. We had then some thoughts of giving a Translation of Boethius, and I used now & then to shew him the Verses I had made towards the Work: in the Ode with the Story of Orpheus in it - beginning "felix qui potuit &c" he altered some of my Verses to these which he [italics] thought [end italics] his own. "Fondly viewed his following Bride Viewing lost, and losing died." Two Years after this, I resolved to go through all the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in one of them - Bonduca, I found two Lines so like these of Johnson's that one would have sworn he had imitated them: that very Afternoon he came, & says I, did you ever delight much in Reading Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays - I never read any of them at all replied he, but I intend some Time to go over them, here in your fine Edition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Francis Beaumont : [Plays]
'the Verses written by Bentley upon Learning & publish'd in Dodsley's Miscellanies - how like they are to Evelyn's Verses on Virtue published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a Plagiarisme; old Bentley would have scorned such Tricks, besides what passed once between myself and Mr Johnson should cure me of Suspicion in these Cases. We had then some thoughts of giving a Translation of Boethius, and I used now & then to shew him the Verses I had made towards the Work: in the Ode with the Story of Orpheus in it - beginning "felix qui potuit &c" he altered some of my Verses to these which he [italics] thought [end italics] his own. "Fondly viewed his following Bride Viewing lost, and losing died." Two Years after this, I resolved to go through all the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in one of them - Bonduca, I found two Lines so like these of Johnson's that one would have sworn he had imitated them: that very Afternoon he came, & says I, did you ever delight much in Reading Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays - I never read any of them at all replied he, but I intend some Time to go over them, here in your fine Edition'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Walter Scott : unknown
'She announced among other things that Longfellow was her favourite poet. “Byron is nice too” she added “Especially his Elegy on the death of a mad dog.”!!! Shakespeare she has some little knowledge of – His fairies & pucks are nice – but he can’t come up to Longfellow. I nearly died with inward mirth. She vows she is going to devote herself to Literature when she grows up: but she really does appreciate good poetry – I read her some Scott one afternoon, & she understood & liked it – and then I found her an Austin-Dobson – and read her things for nearly an hour, out of his Idylls – and you should have seen how her eyes glistened as she took it all in. She expressed a wish to have something of his – and in half an hour she had mastered both the spirit & matter of “the little blue Mandarin”.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Cornelia Sorabji Print: Book
Theodore Leighton Pennell :
'My dear Miss Sorabji My husband & I were so distressed at the sad news contained in our paper today that I cannot refrain from sending you a few lines of sincere sympathy with you & yours in this great loss. I remember reading your brother in law’s book with much interest. Truly her & his wonderful influence will be most widely missed. Was your sister with him at the end? With my kind love Yours very sincerely Sibyl W Roffes'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sybill Roffes Print: Book
Dr Marriott : [French poems]
'Doctor Marriott wrote the prettiest Verses in French of any Englishman I know'.[she then gives lengthy examples]
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
Alexander Pope : Odyssey
'How difficult it is to come at petty Literature! the long Note at the end of Pope's Odyssey is it seems written purposely to mislead one; Pope translated but two of the books as Doctor Warburton himself told Mr Johnson, when they met at Mrs French's Rout'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Maurice Morgan : Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff
'Here is an odd Book come out to prove Falstaff was no Coward, when says Dr Johnson will one come forth to prove Iago an honest Man?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Mr Pepys : [verses on Mrs Greville and Mrs Crewe]
'[Mr Pepys] is admirably described by the same Words with which Menage describes Mr de Costar; C'est (dit il), le Galant le plus Pedant, et le Pedant le plus galant qu'on puisse voir. His verses on Mrs Greville and Mrs Crewe I think are very [italics] smart [end italics] ones, and have a Turn remarkably elegant at the End'. [she gives the verses]
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
Henry Wooton : 'Ye meaner beauties of the night'
'The Famous Sonnet of Sir H: Wooton beginning. Ye meaner Beauties of the Night is likewise exquisitely pretty, and I shall never forget Baretti's Critique upon it as I think it was a capital one - and for a Foreigner - astonishing. The last Stanza says he ought to be the first, for it is now A Climax Down Stairs, beginning with the Stars; and ending with the Roses'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
Henry Wooton : 'Ye meaner beauties of the night'
'The Famous Sonnet of Sir H: Wooton beginning. Ye meaner Beauties of the Night is likewise exquisitely pretty, and I shall never forget Baretti's Critique upon it as I think it was a capital one - and for a Foreigner - astonishing. The last Stanza says he ought to be the first, for it is now A Climax Down Stairs, beginning with the Stars; and ending with the Roses'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti Print: Unknown
Hester Lynch Salusbury : 'Irregular Ode on the English Poets'
'[Mrs Thrale is about to give 'an Ode written when I was between sixteen and seventeen Years old'] As I read it over this Moment I resolved once to burn it, but recollecting that my poor Father had in his foolish Fondness given Copies to a Friend or two, I thought it might as well have a place here'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Hester Lynch Salusbury : 'Irregular Ode on the English Poets'
'[Mrs Thrale is about to give 'an Ode written when I was between sixteen and seventeen Years old'] As I read it over this Moment I resolved once to burn it, but recollecting that my poor Father had in his foolish Fondness given Copies to a Friend or two, I thought it might as well have a place here'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Salusbury Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
Read for the fist time June 1865. Macaulay took this volume more than once on our Easter trips.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : The life and letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero
Copious MS notes, some correcting translation, others commenting on world affairs or noting events in Trevelyan's own life. MS dates of reading up to 1921 and list of 8 men selected for University Scholarship in 1850, incl. Trevelyan. Notes include: "August 18 1887" "Oct. 15. 1919" Page 573: "George's convoy have reached Udine [i.e. G.M. Trevelyan, his son]. How extraordinarily interesting the notes written during this crisis are!" P. 469: "Aug 16 1915 Warsaw has fallen. Rige in dire peril" P. 511: " Aug 16 1915 Runciman and Massingham visited us yesterday." "P. 560: "Aug 14 1889. Rain and no grouse, having spoiled the day's shooting".
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Cicero : The treatises of M.T. Cicero
MS date of reading by G.O. Trevelyan: Sep 2 1922. Also: "The pencil notes in this volume, which are cut off partially in the re-binding of it, are by a previous possessor. I have rubbed these out as we went along".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The Laurringtons; or, superior people
Vol. III: "Sept 10 1922 A jolly book with all its faults and absurdities. The social manners and ways of three generations ago are illustrated cheerfully in its pages." "Read again, with the same amusement, in the winter of 1927-8". Vol.II p.137: "The whole novel is burlesque. It is to me, as it was to my mother, uncle [Lord Macaulay], and to my sister Margaret, supremely and singularly readable. Dec 5 1927 Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The ward of Thorpe-Combe
"What an admirable and clear type this most readable book is printed in! June 18 1928". "Perhaps the last time this amazing, but most amusing, book has been read, and reread, by many Macaulays and Trevelyans. June 9 1928". With a note by this in the hand of Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "Only nine weeks before he died."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The ward of Thorpe-Combe
"Read June 19 1947".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Philips Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry Gunning : Reminiscences of the university, town and county of Cambridem from the year 1780
"Oct 23 1913 Excellent book. The best account of the great Tory re-action that I know, - except in Scotland, Cockburn's". Vol. II has date of reading: "June 29 1914". Volumes contain several marginal references to "Uncle Tom" [i.e. Lord Macaulay].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Alfred Lord Tennyson : Princess, The
'Oddly, I remember little of what must have been read to us in the 'poetry' lessons. Apart from a fragment or two of strictly abbreviated nursery rhymes, there was the fact that Young Lochinvar came out of the west, and through all the wide Border his steed was the best. If anyone suggested just where in the west Young Lochinvar came out of, I don't recall it. As we were children in a Cornish school, I had a hazy notion that it might have been Penzance, or possibly Land's End. Then there were the lines of Tennyson: The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy ummits old in story.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Walter Scott : Lochinvar
'Oddly, I remember little of what must have been read to us in the 'poetry' lessons. Apart from a fragment or two of strictly abbreviated nursery rhymes, there was the fact that Young Lochinvar came out of the west, and through all the wide Border his steed was the best. If anyone suggested just where in the west Young Lochinvar came out of, I don't recall it. As we were children in a Cornish school, I had a hazy notion that it might have been Penzance, or possibly Land's End. Then there were the lines of Tennyson: The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy ummits old in story.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'It was at this time, too, in the 'silent' reading periods at school, that - conventionally enough, I suppose, for a bookish child - I came upon Stevenson's "Treasure Island", "Don Quixote", "David Copperfield", all in abridged versions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'It was at this time, too, in the 'silent' reading periods at school, that - conventionally enough, I suppose, for a bookish child - I came upon Stevenson's "Treasure Island", "Don Quixote", "David Copperfield", all in abridged versions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Florence L. Barclay : Following of the Star, The
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Sorrows of Satan, The
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Marie Corelli : Sorrows of Satan, The
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Causley Print: Book
Florence L. Barclay : Following of the Star, The
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Causley Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : War Poems
'Later in my teens, on a first visit to London, I bought for one-and-six in the Charing Cross Road, a red-covered copy of "The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon". it was my first clear view of my father's world of 1914-18, and I went on to read Graves, Blunden, Owen'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Robert Graves : [war poetry]
'Later in my teens, on a first visit to London, I bought for one-and-six in the Charing Cross Road, a red-covered copy of "The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon". it was my first clear view of my father's world of 1914-18, and I went on to read Graves, Blunden, Owen'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Wilfred Owen : [war poetry]
'Later in my teens, on a first visit to London, I bought for one-and-six in the Charing Cross Road, a red-covered copy of "The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon". it was my first clear view of my father's world of 1914-18, and I went on to read Graves, Blunden, Owen'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
George Orwell : Road to Wigan Pier, The
'I had by this time [his mid-teens] also struck up a friendship with a young, unemployed, linotype operator, six or seven years older than myself. He lived in a street at the back of the Lodging House, was a member of the Left book Club, and lent me (among much else) his copy of Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier". Somehow, too, I came upon the poems of Auden, Spender, Day-Lewis, MacNeice; Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Christopher Isherwood : Goodbye to Berlin
'I had by this time [his mid-teens] also struck up a friendship with a young, unemployed, linotype operator, six or seven years older than myself. He lived in a street at the back of the Lodging House, was a member of the Left book Club, and lent me (among much else) his copy of Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier". Somehow, too, I came upon the poems of Auden, Spender, Day-Lewis, MacNeice; Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
Hester Lynch Salusbury : 'Verses on the Fall of the Great Ash Tree in Offley Park'
'[Mrs Thrale gives her 'Verses on the Fall of the Great Ash Tree in Offley Park'] This trifling performance brought Tears into my Uncle's Eyes, and Money into my Pocket for having celebrated so artfully I will own the virtues of a Woman he rememberd with Gratitude and Esteem. He read 'em to every body he saw I believe'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Salusbury Manuscript: Unknown
Sarah Fielding : 'To Miss Salusbury'
'[Having given some verses 'To Miss Salusbury', thought to be by Sarah Fielding] These verses are nothing extraordinary God knows, but I dare say they are hers; though there seems to be no great attention to Grammar in them considering she was an able Scholar both in the Latin Language and the Greek'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Hester Lynch Salusbury : 'Offley Park'
'[Mrs Thrale gives her long poem entitled 'Offley Park'] This little poem will be easily seen to have been written by way of Flattery to Sir Thomas Salusbury with whom I then lived - he was I well remember exceedingly pleased with it, and made me a handsome present'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Salusbury Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Ethic Epistles
'An Officer in the Army once asked old Major Markham how he could make any Pleasure out of such a Book, it was Pope's Ethic Epistles - why says the Major did you ever try? Not [italics] this very [end italics] Book replies the Friend: then take and read it now says Markham, and read the Notes too for that explains the Text: Our Officer sate awhile with the Book in his Hand - why now Major says he after a Quarter of an hour's Study - what Stuff this is - explain quotha - why the Notes as you call 'em only make t'other more unintelligible. The Truth was he read fairly down the Page without ever stopping - Text - Notes and all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Major Markham Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Ethic Epistles
'An Officer in the Army once asked old Major Markham how he could make any Pleasure out of such a Book, it was Pope's Ethic Epistles - why says the Major did you ever try? Not [italics] this very [end italics] Book replies the Friend: then take and read it now says Markham, and read the Notes too for that explains the Text: Our Officer sate awhile with the Book in his Hand - why now Major says he after a Quarter of an hour's Study - what Stuff this is - explain quotha - why the Notes as you call 'em only make t'other more unintelligible. The Truth was he read fairly down the Page without ever stopping - Text - Notes and all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Homer : Iliad
Many MS dates of reading incl. "Began reading the Odyssey in summer of 1902, continued it during summer of 1903."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Herodotus : Works
Copious MS notes; multiple dates of reading , incl. "Sept 15 1915 Wallington"; "July 3 1922 A glorious winter"; "Finished Herodotus, all of him, once again this day Sept. 10 1925. He is a cordial in old age, and an anodyne in poor health. But I shall now pass willingly enough to Thucydides with a fine, clear legible type. My old copy was bought 73 years ago, at Harrow! I am reading, side by side with my two Greek historians, the Annals and the Histories of Tacitus. Macaulay found in the three of them "something he could find in no one else"; and my experience is the same as his. G.O. Trevelyan"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Martin Madan : A new and literal translation of Juvenal and Perseus
This book, originally owned and read by Lord Macaulay in June-Oct 1836, was given to his nephew who wrote on flyleaf: "Given me when at Harrow, by Macaulay to prepare for the examination for the Gregory Scholarship Summer 1856".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Horace : Works; ed by Macleane
MS notes and dates of reading include: "Top of Beamerside while electioneering at Melrose, July 6th, 1868"; p.40: "Weybridge 1872. St. George's Hill, returning from taking Charley and Carry [son and wife] for a row on the Mole"; p.170: "In train to Wells with my father, May 22 1874." Titlepage verso: GO Trevelyan The companion of a lifetime which was never dull in Horace's company." Note in the hand of his son, Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "It was by his bedside when he died."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : Portraits of places
MS notes and marks throughout, including: "May 2 1919. Exquisite book! I seem to hear my dear friend [Henry James] talk, - oh so slowly - as we stroll arm in arm in the Warwickshire meadows which he loved so long and well - as I loved him, and he me". On t-p: "Trevelyan Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
Dates of reading given in MS as being between June 22 1897 "Jubilee Day" and July 7 1897.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Mark Twain : A tramp abroad
MS notes and marginalia throughout book, including the thoughts of Sir George Otto Trevelyan on visiting the grave who had died young while climbing p.425.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Plays: pleasant and unpleasant
MS note at the end of "The man of destiny": "Dec 5 1926 Read aloud to C, [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] - as I once did to poor George Vanderbilt".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Sir Robert Thomas Wilson : Private diary of travels, personal services, and public events ...
Marginal marks show signs of George Otto Trevelyan's close reading, as of a proof - he corrects errors, e.g. where the text says "many would prefer expatriating themselves forever to America to serving under the Buonaparte dynasty", GOT crosses through "Buoanparte" and substitutes "Bourbon".
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Oliver Cromwell : Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches; with elucidations by Thomas Carlyle
Copious MS notes and marginal marks, including some showing signs of irritation: v.5 p.96 "Oh do have done!"; v.4: "Oh do shut up". Several dates of reading noted including: "Read aloud Nov 7 1904. Charles Dalrymple came this evening"; "Read aloud June 28 1923".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : The old wives' tale
Copious MS notes, including a chronology explaining the ages of the characters: "Samuel born 1833, 29 in 1862/ Constance born 1846, 16 in 1862/ Sophia born 1847, 15 in 1862 [etc.]". Dates of reading: "Read aloud Wallington Oct 13 1915"; "Finished Dec. 13 1922".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : These twain
MS notes including dates of reading, e.g.: "July 18 1916 Welcombe"; "March 29 1923 with Anna [i.e. Anna Philips, George Otto Trevelyan's sister-in-law]; "Read aloud to C [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and most of it to her and Anna. Dec 23 1923 Welcombe".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The better sort
Various MS notes and marks including date of reading: June 23 1923 and a note on p.311 "The birthplace": "This was based on the story of Mr. Skipsey, told to Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] by the Spence Watsons, and by her to Henry James."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Holy Grail
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, January 1869: 'A. read "The Holy Grail" to the Bradleys, explaining the realism and symbolism, and how the natural, if people cared, could always be made to account for the supernatural.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'birth and marriage of "Arthur"'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Feb. 13th. A. read what he had done of the birth and marriage of "Arthur."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The Coming of Arthur
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Before the end of February A. had read me all "The Coming of Arthur" finished, and was reading at night Browning's "Ring and the Book" -- "Pompilia" and "Caponsacchi" are the finest parts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : The Ring and the Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Before the end of February A. had read me all "The Coming of Arthur" finished, and was reading at night Browning's "Ring and the Book" -- "Pompilia" and "Caponsacchi" are the finest parts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : "The San Graal"
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'May 18th. A. read the "San Graal." I doubt whether the "San Graal" would have been written but for my endeavour, and the Queen's wish, and that of the Crown Princess. Thank God for it. He has had the subject on his mind for years, ever since he began to write about Arthur and his knights.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'I once met Tennyson at dinner at the Conservative Club, in company with Dicky Doyle, Sir J. Emerson Tennent, Sir Arthur Buller [...] and others whom I have forgotten. Tennyson read "Maud" to us and was very gay and companionable.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Idylls of the King
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Sept. 13th. [...] Read the "Idylls" through in their proper sequence during these months, also Tom Hughes' Alfred the Great, Pressense's Life of Christ, Martineau's Endeavours After a Christian Life, and Lecky's European Morals.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Tennyson
Virgil : Aeneid IV
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1870: 'March 1st. Aldworth. Hallam read the 4th Aeneid with A.; they study Virgil together daily.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Hallam Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Tristram'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'May 21st. He [Tennyson] read me his "Tristram" ("Last Tournament"), the plan of which he had been for some weeks discussing with me. Very grand and terrible.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Guinevere'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'Aug. 31st. [...] A. drove to the Lewes'. He read to them, and last of all at G. H. Lewes' request "Guinevere," which made George Eliot weep.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Robert Browning : Balaustion
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'Sept. 4th. We both read Browning's Balaustion. Heracles the free, the joyous, the strong, the self-sacrificer, a grand creation.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred de Musset :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Henry James : The reverberator
Marginal marks and MS notes. Dates of reading on final page and the note: "What was the year when we saw so much of the American family who so much reminded us of the Dossons? It could not be 1913; as we spent Christmas with them in Rome; and in 1913 Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] never left her bed!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The Aspern Papers - Louisa Pallant - The modern warning
Various marginal marks and MS dates of reading including: "Welcombe. Read to C[Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and Anna [his sister-in-law]. Feb 14 1910"; "Feb 21 1924".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
This book has marginal marks and dried acanthus leaves, with the MS note: "Acanthus leaves from Shelley's grave. Rome. Nov 21 1886".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The ambassadors
This book has copious notes and marginal marks, including many unrelated to the text written on pastedown and fly-leaf: "I used to note down sentences for my history, that had ocurred to me in the watches of the night, in the flyleaf of the novel which I had in hand at that time."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Mary Boykin Chesnut : A diary from Dixie
Marginal marks and MS notes throughout,including p.xiii: "[The author's husband] deeply disapproved of her pleasure-seeking ways at such a time [...] Her hospitality had in it a strong dah of sheer gluttony; and she was a reckless, and most ill-natured gossip." Also, very critical of the editing: "The editing is bad. Chapter X ought to end about page 143." Dates of reading: "Oct 25 1910 Uncle Tom's birthday [i.e. Lord Macaulay] - the battle of Agincourt"; August 8 1921; March 15 1925; Jan. 4 1924; July 4 1928.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : History of the United Netherlands
MS annotations and marginal marks incl. v.1 p.503, in reply to the author's comment "we must now throw a glance to the external", Sir George writes: "High time that you did. Seldom has so able a writer been so swamped and mastered by his materials." Describes ch. 6 as "Terribly lengthy. Such masses of extracts ... are out of place in such a book as this." V.4 p.530 in reply to the author's wish to have fostered through his work a "love of freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" Sir George writes "This is a true claim on the part of Motley, and is the prime merit of his history". "Motley on the whole has raised himself by this volume [2]. He has a fine enthusiasm for liberty and public right." "The fourth volume ... is deeply interesting, and, in some respects, better constructed and written than the other three. Welcombe. May 26. 1916". Dates of reading include: "Nov 3 1915 - Wallington" and "June 28 - with C[aroline] Wallington 1921."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Charles James Fox : Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox
MS notes throughout, mainly taken for Sir George's own research into Charles James Fox. One reads (v.2.p.376): "I am glad he liked shooting as much as I do."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : The rise of the Dutch republic: a history
MS notes and marginal marks throughout the book, in the hand of Sir George Otto Trevelyan. Dates of reading include "Sept. 21 1914 Aloud to C[aroline]"; "Dec 30 1920 with C". One note alludes to the First World War: when Motley writes of a "train of unforeseen transactions", Sir George comments: "We have enough of that just now. Aug . 31 1915".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Marcus Tullius Cicero : M. Tullii Ciceronis Opera
MS notes in all vol. other than I, XI and XVI. Some are copied from Macaulay's own copy of Cicero which he read between 1835-7: "transferred by me from his Bipontine edition [to] the outside margin of the Delpin"; "Macaulay's notes are marked with M". Sir George's dates of reading incude: 1899; 1903; "June 18 1904 Chamonix"; "Nov 17 1909 Rome A heavy day of rain & the break up of our long spell of fine weather"; "Wallington Oct 12 1916"; "Christmas Day 1918 Welcombe"; 1919; "June 21 1921 Wallington"; 1923. Sir George responds to Macaulay's comments: "I understand my uncle's feelings about it in India, and his reservations twenty years afterwards." V.3: "On the whole I agree with Macaulay about the comparative value of the Third Book [...]". Vol. 12 draws historical parallels: "It is strange to read these letters. Cicer's cruel anxiety about the course to be taken [...] were like out anxieties about America, the Balkans, and the Scandinavian States. Then, as now, the whole civilised world was in question" [written in 1915].
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Cornelius Tacitus : Opera omnia
Many MS notes, some of which are transcribed from those of Lord Macaulay in another edition: "Macaulay's notes and marginal lines (on the outside margins) are transferred from his Bipontine edition. His notes are marked with an "M"." Sir George's dates of reading include: "Florence Jan. 22 1901. The day of Queen Victoria's death"; Jam 25 1901 "On way from Florence to Rome, Edward the Seventh proclaimed yesterday"; June 22 1920; Aug 2 1924 "Read with unceasing zest and admiration. May I live to finish him! But I was 86 last month"; p.740: "a rare good writer. But a very difficult one to read, I must confess, as a student of very mature age (1924)"; Dec 24 1924 "With Herodotus and Thucydides, he appertains to the first three historians of the Ancient World. I am reading them all again, with Suetonius if indeed I can live to finish them. This is the 4th time in this century that I have read them all through"; Jan 17 1925. P.1629, Sir George writes: "The development of Nero is a marvellous story, marvellously told; - as Carlyle would have written it, had he been a Roman of the age of Tacitus. I read it as I read the "French Revolution" in the Trinity backs in the summer of 1858, when I ought to have been reading Pindar and Thucydides. That summer I read the French Revolution three times on end [underlined twice]; besides devouring the Third Volume of "Modern Painters" and "Men and Women". As far as a place in the classical Tripos was concerned I doubt if I could have been better employed." P.2750: "As fine history, and as much to my mind, as any I ever read. Tacitus was much the same age as Carlyle, when he wrote the French Revolution, - which I read as an undergraduate at Trinity; reading three times through one end, with no book between. I did very much the same by this volume of Tacitus in the course of this winter, at 87 years of age."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Herbert Lawrence : [poems]
'he [Herbert Lawrence] wrote some pretty Verses and said some clever Things and I have a Loss of his Acquaintance. The following Song he wrote in my Praise forsooth is not a bad one.' [the Song is given]
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
Frances Greville : Ode to Indifference
'the Ode to Indifference is a most superior Piece of elegant Writing The Occasion of it was however dreadfully unhappy'. [Mrs Thrale then tells of Mrs Greville's son's death]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
Richard Cumberland : [Odes]
'Cumberland had written two Odes, what says Mrs Montagu to me do you think of them? I think said I they are as like Gray's Odes as he can make them, Ay, replied She, as like as a little Thing can be to a big Thing, Why to be sure Madam said I he is not the great Mr Gray - he is only the [italics] Petit Gris [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Richard Cumberland : [Odes]
'Cumberland had written two Odes, what says Mrs Montagu to me do you think of them? I think said I they are as like Gray's Odes as he can make them, Ay, replied She, as like as a little Thing can be to a big Thing, Why to be sure Madam said I he is not the great Mr Gray - he is only the [italics] Petit Gris [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
Robert Nelson : Companion for the festivals and fasts of the Church of England: With collects and prayers for each solemnity , A
'A Mother was making her Little Son read Nelson's Feasts and Fasts - this says he is a very good book to be sure Mama, all about our Saviourand the Apostles - but surely it is [italics] monstrous dull fun [end italics] '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Fortune Hippolyte Auguste Castille (Boisgobey) : L'Equipage du Diable (Equipage of the Devil)
'Fortune has written another book, the Equipage of the Devil, which is fully worse than words can describe.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : The Library
'Lang's Library is very pleasant reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Grant Robertson : Kurum, Kabul and Kandahar: being a Brief Record of Impressions in Three Campaigns under General Roberts
'I have not finished re-reading your book, so I cannot say whether all is improved; but much is.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Super Flumina Babylonis
'One late evening in the dim firelight of our rooms at Oxford after the War, she turned from reading aloud to me Swinburne's "Super Flumina Babylonis" - a favourite poem associated in her mind with war-time loss and all premature death - and opened the notebook which contained her copies of Bill's verses.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Crime and Punishment
'His injury had not been permanent, and he now sat day after day beside Winifred's bed, talking to her about Russian literature and reading aloud from "Crime and Punishment".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George de Coundouroff Print: Book
George Sand : Lelia
From Emily Tennyson's Journal (1873): 'Sept. 5th. [...] Bauer-Sierre. Returned through Domo d'Ossola over the Simplon. The coming over was a great disappointment. Thick mist the whole of the way except the first half-hour when we started from the Simplon Inn [...] During the evening we consoled ourselves by reading Lelia by George Sand'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Unknown
Arthur Murphy : Contest
'At the time when Owen Ruffhead was writing the "Contest" in opposition to Murphy's "Test"; Gilbert Cooper it seems thought so highly of the performance that he would persuade himself Mr Pitt was the Authour'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gilbert Cooper Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Raleigh : unknown
'Before that illumined moment of rich inspiration, Winifred had been experimenting with other kinds of writing, and studying such treasure-troves of style as the travel books of Sir Walter Raleigh and the prose works of Milton.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
Mary Ward : Robert Elsmere
'Just after leaving school, I had been plunged into the same tumult of agonised inquiry by reading Mrs. Humphry Ward's "Robert Elsmere".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
Dr Dillingham : A Hymne to our Creator
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, "A Hymne to our Creator" by Dr Dillingham.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Richard Steele : [Essays]
'It was on the 18: day of July 1773 that we were sitting in the blue Room at Streatham and were talking of Writers - Steele's Essays were mentioned - but they are too thin said Mr Johnson; being mere Observations on Life and Manners without a sufficiency of solid Learning acquired from Books, they have the flavour, like the light French wines you so often hear commended; but having no Body, they cannot keep. Speaking of Mason Gray &c. he said The Poems they write must I should suppose greatly delight the Authors; they seem to have attained that which themselves consider as the Summit of Excellence, and Man can do no more: yet surely such unmeaning & verbose Language if in the Morning it appears to be in bloom, must fade before Sunset like Cloe's Wreath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book, Serial / periodical
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham : Rehearsal, The
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham : Rehearsal, The
'We talked of Dryden - Buckingham's Play said I has hurt the Reputation of the Poet, great as he was; such is the force of Ridicule! - on the contrary my dearest replies Doctor Johnson The greatness of Dryden's Character is even now the only principle of Vitality which preserves that play from a State of Putrefaction'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Young :
'We were speaking of Young as a Poet; Young's works cried Johnson are like a miry Road, with here & there a Stepping Stone or so; but you must always so dirty your Feet before another clean Place appears, that nobody will often walk that way. in this however said I as well as in his general Manner of writing he resembles your favourite Dryden - & to this no Answer was made: The next Morning we were drawing Spirits over a Lamp, and the Liquor bubbled in the Glass Retort; there says Mr Johnson - Young bubbles and froths in his Descriptions like this Spirit; but Dryden foams like the Sea we saw in a Storm the other day at Brighthelmstone'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Young :
'We were speaking of Young as a Poet; Young's works cried Johnson are like a miry Road, with here & there a Stepping Stone or so; but you must always so dirty your Feet before another clean Place appears, that nobody will often walk that way. in this however said I as well as in his general Manner of writing he resembles your favourite Dryden - & to this no Answer was made: The next Morning we were drawing Spirits over a Lamp, and the Liquor bubbled in the Glass Retort; there says Mr Johnson - Young bubbles and froths in his Descriptions like this Spirit; but Dryden foams like the Sea we saw in a Storm the other day at Brighthelmstone'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Burney : History of Music
'Burney likewise has experienced his [Johnson's] sportive Humour; when he shewed him his Book about Musick and enquired his Opinion concerning it; the Words are well arranged Sir replies Johnson but I don't understand one of them'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Bernard Mandeville :
'He had in his Youth been a great Reader of Mandeville, and was very watchful for the Stains of original corruption both in himself & others'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Charles Churchill : Prophecy of Famine, a Scots Pastoral
'He was however very much nettled by Churchill's Satire that's certain; for he rejected him from among the Poets when the Booksellers begged him a Place in the Edition they are now giving in small volumes - this was I think the only unjust or resentful Thing I ever knew him do, for as to despising Churchill as a Writer - no Man has Pretensions to do it - and Johnson had more Wit to be sure than not to taste the "Prophecy of Famine".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Churchill : Ghost, The
'He was however very much nettled by Churchill's Satire that's certain; for he rejected him from among the Poets when the Booksellers begged him a Place in the Edition they are now giving in small volumes - this was I think the only unjust or resentful Thing I ever knew him do, for as to despising Churchill as a Writer - no Man has Pretensions to do it - and Johnson had more Wit to be sure than not to taste the "Prophecy of Famine".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Churchill : Ghost, The
'He was however very much nettled by Churchill's Satire that's certain; for he rejected him from among the Poets when the Booksellers begged him a Place in the Edition they are now giving in small volumes - this was I think the only unjust or resentful Thing I ever knew him do, for as to despising Churchill as a Writer - no Man has Pretensions to do it - and Johnson had more Wit to be sure than not to taste the "Prophecy of Famine".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Edward Reynolds : When our Emmanuell from his Throne came down
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Edward Reynolds 'When our Emmanuell from his Throne came down'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Unknown
Edward Reynolds : A Treatise of the Passions and Facvlties of the Soule of Man
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, two couplets from Edward Reynolds, 'A Treatise of the Passions and Facvlties of the Soule of Man'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Philip Woodhouse : Some Essays of Morality in prozaick Ryme upon Aristotles definition of friendly Loue
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Sir Philip Woodhouse, 'Some Essays of Morality in prozaick Ryme upon Aristotles definition of friendly Loue'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Philip Woodhouse : an Essay of Morall fortetude according to Aristotle
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Sir Philip Woodhouse, 'an Essay of Morall fortetude according to Aristotle'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Philip Woodhouse : Moralistic reflections in verse
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Sir Philip Woodhouse, 'Moralistic reflections in verse'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Of Consumptions
Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Sir Thomas Browne, 'Of Consumptions'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Alfred Tennyson : Gareth
Edward Fitzgerald to Alfred Tennyson (1873): 'I have a word to say about "Gareth" which your publisher sent me as "from the author." I don't think it is mere perversity that makes me like it better than all its predecessors, save and except (of course) the old "Morte." The subject, the young knight who can endure and conquer, interests me more than all the heroines of the 1st volume.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Higher Pantheism
'The first meeting after the formation of the [Metaphysical] Society took place at the Deanery, Westminster, June 2nd, 1869, under the presidency of Sir John Lubbock, when my father's poem "The Higher Pantheism" was read.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Knowles
Rev. F. D. Maurice : paper on meanings of words 'nature,' 'natural,' 'supernatural.'
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society: 'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...] 'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following: 'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter. 'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.) 'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison. 'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot. 'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison. Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson. Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick. Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rev. F. D. Maurice
Frederick Harrison : 'The relativity of Knowledge'
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society: 'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...] 'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following: 'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter. 'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.) 'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison. 'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot. 'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison. Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson. Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick. Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Harrison
Walter Bagehot : 'The emotion of Conviction'
James Martineau to Hallam Tennyson (1893), recalling meetings of the Metaphysical Society: 'I remember a special interest shown by your father in a paper contributed by the Rev. F. D. Maurice on the meaning of the words "Nature," "Natural," "Supernatural," November 21st, 1871 [...] 'The other subjects on which papers were read in your father's presence were the following: 'July 14, 1869. The commonsense philosophy of causation: Dr W. B. Carpenter. 'June 15, 1870. Is there any Axiom of Causation? Myself. (Mr Tennyson in the chair.) 'July 13. The relativity of Knowledge: Mr Fred. Harrison. 'Dec. 13. The emotion of Conviction: Mr Walter Bagehot. 'July 11, 1871. What is Death? Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 'July 9, 1872. The supposed necessity for seeking a solution of ultimate Metaphysical Problems: Mr F. Harrison. Nov. 12. The five idols of the Theatre: Mr Shadworth H. Hodgson. Dec. 16, 1873. Utilitarianism: Professor Henry Sidgwick. Feb. 12, 1878. Double truth: Rev. M. Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Bagehot
Alfred Tennyson : Queen Mary
Edward Fitzgerald to Alfred Tennyson, 9 July 1875: 'I had bought your Play a few days before your gift-copy reached me. I have not had sufficient time to digest either you see, though I have read through twice.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Queen Mary
Sir Henry Bedingfield, Bart., to Alfred Tennyson, 20 August 1875: 'As a great admirer of your genius, I eagerly read your drama "Queen Mary," but was so surprised and pained at the ignoble part which is allotted to Sir Henry Bedingfield, that I cannot refrain from addressing you on the subject. I feel justified in so doing, for I am the direct descendant of Sir Henry [...] The millions who will read "Mary Tudor," or witness the play on the stage, will carry away the impresson that my ancestor was a vulgar yeoman in some way connected with the stables, whereas he was a man of ancient lineage, a trusted friend and servant of the Queen, who confided to him in time of danger the Lieutenancy of the Tower, and the custody of the Princess Elizabeth [continues] [...] I trust therefore to your high feeling of justice, that you will, if possible, strike out Sir Henry's name from future editions, or allott him a more dignified part on the stage, and one which will convey a more correct view of his character and position.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Henry Bedingfield, Bart. Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
Robert Browning to Alfred Tennyson, 21 December 1876: 'True thanks again, this time for the best of Christmas presents, another great work, wise, good, and beautiful. The scene where Harold is overborne to take the oath is perfect, for one instance.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
Aubrey de Vere to Alfred Tennyson, 28 December 1876: 'I do not like to defer longer sending you my most cordial thanks for sending me your "Harold." I have already read the whole of it twice, and many parts much oftener [...] You know how heartily I admired it when you read it aloud to me: and I can honestly assure you that the admiration has not been less on reading it to myself. On that first occasion it may have derived an advantage from your reading; but if so, the more careful attention one gives to what one reads with one's own eyes fully compensated for whatever was lost. The great characteristic of this drama is to me that of an heroic strength blended with heroic simplicity, and everything in it harmonious with that predominant characteristic [goes on to discuss in detail].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Aubrey de Vere Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
Aubrey de Vere to Alfred Tennyson, 28 December 1876: 'I do not like to defer longer sending you my most cordial thanks for sending me your "Harold." I have already read the whole of it twice, and many parts much oftener [...] You know how heartily I admired it when you read it aloud to me: and I can honestly assure you that the admiration has not been less on reading it to myself. On that first occasion it may have derived an advantage from your reading; but if so, the more careful attention one gives to what one reads with one's own eyes fully compensated for whatever was lost. The great characteristic of this drama is to me that of an heroic strength blended with heroic simplicity, and everything in it harmonious with that predominant characteristic [goes on to discuss in detail].'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
A. P. Stanley to Alfred Tennyson, 25 December 1876: 'I will gladly contrive if you wish to transmit your poem [Harold] to the Queen. I know that Her Majesty is expecting it. 'I ought ere this to have thanked you for my own copy. It cheered some mournful winter evenings for me, and it will, I trust, for the country at large, revive or rekindle the dying touch of Truth and the belief that there is something greater and nobler than the capricious Norman Saints.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A. P. Stanley Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
G. H. Lewes to Alfred Tennyson, 18 June 1877: 'We have just read "Harold" (for the first time) and "Mary" (for the fourth) [...] It is needless for me to say how profound a pleasure both works have given us -- they are great contributions!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. H. Lewes and George Eliot Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Queen Mary
G. H. Lewes to Alfred Tennyson, 18 June 1877: 'We have just read "Harold" (for the first time) and "Mary" (for the fourth) [...] It is needless for me to say how profound a pleasure both works have given us -- they are great contributions!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. H. Lewes and George Eliot Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Becket
'The play [Becket] is so accurate a representation of the personages and of the time, that J. R. Green said that all his researches into the annals of the twelfth century had not given him "so vivid a conception of the character of Henry II. and his court as was embodied in Tennyson's 'Becket.'"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: J. R. Green Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Becket
The Right Honourable J. Bryce to Alfred Tennyson: 'As I have been abroad for some time it was only a little while ago that I obtained and read your "Becket." Will you, since you were so kind as to read me some of it last July, let me tell you how much enjoyment and light it has given me? Impressive as were the parts read, it impresses one incomparably more when studied as a whole. One cannot imagine a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and of Thomas. Truth in history is naturally truth in poetry; but you have made the characters of the two men shine out in a way which, while it never deviates from the impression history gives of them, goes beyond and perfects history [continues].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Bryce Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Becket
The Right Honourable J. Bryce to Alfred Tennyson: 'As I have been abroad for some time it was only a little while ago that I obtained and read your "Becket." Will you, since you were so kind as to read me some of it last July, let me tell you how much enjoyment and light it has given me? Impressive as were the parts read, it impresses one incomparably more when studied as a whole. One cannot imagine a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and of Thomas. Truth in history is naturally truth in poetry; but you have made the characters of the two men shine out in a way which, while it never deviates from the impression history gives of them, goes beyond and perfects history [continues].'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
'On this journey [to the Western Pyrenees] he took Balzac's novels with him, especially delighting in Le pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Eugenie Grandet
'On this journey [to the Western Pyrenees] he took Balzac's novels with him, especially delighting in Le pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson :
Lady Cardwell to Alfred Tennyson, 9 April 1878: 'It may interest you to know another instance of the solace you have given those in distant lands severed from all those with whom they could hold converse. 'You know all about Col. Gordon (Chinese Gordon) and the immense pressure upon him and the heroic services he is rendering to the cause of humanity in putting down the slave trade, as Governor of the Soudan [sic], by a wonderful sacrifice of himself. I often hear from him of his long solitary rides of hundreds of miles in the desert and wilderness, and wished to find the most acceptable companion I could send to him. 'It must be in a very small compass. Happily I found the beautiful edition of all your books in the small green case, and I sent it a few months ago. 'He is intensely delighted with it and mentions it in every letter. In his last, lately received from Khartoum, he says: "I find the reading of Tennyson is my great relief, and the volumes are so small and of such clear print that they will always go with me. I have long wanted a small copy, but never knew that he had published one," etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: C. E. Gordon Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Welcome to Alexandra
'My father's first meeting with the Princess of Wales took place at Mrs Greville's in Chester Square. The Princess asked him to read the "Welcome to Alexandra." When he had read it, the fact of his reading his own complimentary poem to the Princess herself suddenly struck both of them as being so ludicrous, that he dropt the book on the floor and both went into fits of uncontrollable laughter.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Revenge
'My father was fond of asking Joachim [celebrity violinist] to play to him in his own house. One particular evening I remember, at 86, Eaton Square. My father had been expressing his wonder at Joachim's mastery of the violin, -- for Joachim had been playing to us and our friends numberless Hungarian dances, -- and by way of thanks for the splendid music I asked him to read one of his poems to Joachim. Accordingly after the guests had gone he took the great musician to smoke with him in his "den" at the top of the house [...] my father read "The Revenge." On reaching the line 'And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, he asked Joachim, "Could you do that on your violin?" -- the peace of nature after the thunder of battle. There was no more reading however that night, for he suddenly turned round to me, saying, "I must not read any more, else I shall wake up the cook who is sleeping next door."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : 'Bones'
[Mary Brotherton writes] 'I told him [Tennyson] the story [of the eighteenth-century woman soldier Phoebe Hessel] one day at Farringford, knowing it would touch him, and he came up to see my husband and me next day, and asked me to tell it him again: on whch I gave him the little penny magazine I found it in. It was an unpretentious account of "Old Brighton." Many months after he took me up to his library, after a walk, and read me what he called "Bones." That was before it was called "Rizpah" and published.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Hester Lynch Thrale : [MS 'character' of Johnson]
'When I shewed him [Johnson] his Character next day - for he would see it; he said it was a very fine Piece of Writing; and that I had improved upon [italics] Young [end italics] who he saw was my [italics] Model[end italics] he said; for my Flattery was still stronger than [italics] his [end italics], & yet somehow or other less [italics] hyperbolical [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Burney : [poem about Mrs Thrale]
'I shall transcribe some Verses of Doctor Burney's on the same unworthy Subject [herself]; on which Verses Johnson made this remark when he saw them. These says he are some of the few Verses which have as much Truth as Wit, and as much Wit as Truth' [the verses are given]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Burney : [verses modelled on 'The Dunciad']
'[Dr Burney] could write admirable Verses had he Leisure and Inclination so to do. He has shewn me in Confidence a little Poem partly on the Plan & in the Spirit of the Dunciad in which are some exquisite Strokes of Satire well express'd, with great fertility of Allusion too, & his personified Characters of Science, Wit, and Taste, are as happily finished as 'tis possible'. [some speciumens of the verse are given]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Fielding :
'I myself like Smollet's Novels better than Fielding's; the perpetual Parody teizes one; - there is more Rapidity and Spirit in the Scotsman: though both of them knew the Husk of Life perfectly well - & for the Kernel - you must go to either Richardson or Rousseau'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon : Continuation of the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon
'For Sublimity & at the same time Familiarity with Life Nothing strikes one more than Clarendon's Account of the Fire of London - De Foe's Plague is still stronger but that is a Romance'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Arthur Murphy : Grecian Daughter, the: A tragedy
'Mr Murphy's Grecian Daughter is I think unquestionably the best of all our modern Tragedies, & all its Merit is the Power it has over our Passions too; for nobody I believe ever dreamed of repeating a line on't: Now though to move Terror & Pity those two throbbing Pulses of the Drama, be the first Thing required in a Tragedy; there are others which are necessary to make it complete, as Sentiment Diction &c. 'tis entertaining enough to observe the effect of each style separately - & we shall have Cato and Irene at one End; the Earl of Essex and George Barnwell at the other'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
George Lillo : London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell
'Mr Murphy's Grecian Daughter is I think unquestionably the best of all our modern Tragedies, & all its Merit is the Power it has over our Passions too; for nobody I believe ever dreamed of repeating a line on't: Now though to move Terror & Pity those two throbbing Pulses of the Drama, be the first Thing required in a Tragedy; there are others which are necessary to make it complete, as Sentiment Diction &c. 'tis entertaining enough to observe the effect of each style separately - & we shall have Cato and Irene at one End; the Earl of Essex and George Barnwell at the other'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Henry Jones : Earl of Essex, The, a tragedy
'Mr Murphy's Grecian Daughter is I think unquestionably the best of all our modern Tragedies, & all its Merit is the Power it has over our Passions too; for nobody I believe ever dreamed of repeating a line on't: Now though to move Terror & Pity those two throbbing Pulses of the Drama, be the first Thing required in a Tragedy; there are others which are necessary to make it complete, as Sentiment Diction &c. 'tis entertaining enough to observe the effect of each style separately - & we shall have Cato and Irene at one End; the Earl of Essex and George Barnwell at the other'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Mr Paterson : [verses written to Kitty Parker]
'[at a gathering on the Isle of Wight] it fell to Paterson's Share [in a rhyming contest] it seems to celebrate Kitty Parker, then a reigning Beauty: he promised not to leave the Room, nor even the Table but insisted on Pen and Ink which was granted, & in less than half an hour he read the following verses to the Company' [the verses are given]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Paterson Manuscript: Unknown
Hester Lynch Thrale : [translation of Voltaire's 'A Madame de Chatelet']
'having shewed her [Sophia Streatfield] the other day three Translations of a few Verses written by Voltaire She immediately guessed one of them to be mine, and pitched upon the right. The Verses are very like some in Parnell, but rather better in my Opinion' [the translation of 'A Madame de Chatelet' follows]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophia Streatfield Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : Female Quixote, The
'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox [sic], Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox [sic], Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Joseph Andrews
'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox [sic], Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Richard Knolles : The generall historie of the Turks
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Richard Baker : A Chronicle of England
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
S.J. Alvaro Semedo : The History of China
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Pietro della Valle : Travels in Persia
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Fernão Mendes Pinto : Pilgrimage of Fernam Mendez Pinto in which is told the many and very strange things he saw and heard in the kingdom of China, in the one of Tartary, in the one of Sornau, usually called Siam, in the one of Calaminhan, in the one of Pegù...
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Rudolf Jakob Camerarius : De sexu plantarum epistola
[List of books read to Sir Thomas Browne by Elizabeth Lyttelton]. Headed in commonplace book: 'The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out'. The books are: 'all Plutarch's Lives, folio; all the Turkish historie, folio ; all the three added of ye Turkish emperours by Rycaut, fol.; all Rycaut's books of ye Turks, fol; all Baker's Cronicle of England, fol; all ye history of China by Semedo, fol; all the history of Josephus, fol; all fox his book of Martyrs, fol; all the Travills of Olearius & Mandelilo, fol; all the Travells of Taverniere, fol; all the Travells of Petrus della valle, fol; all the Travells of Vincent Le Blanck, fol; all the Travells of Pinto, fol; all the Travells of Gage, fol; the Travells of Terre, octavo; all the Historie of the life of Monsieur d' Espernoon, fol; all the historie of naples, fol; all the historie of Venice, fol; all the historie of Queen Elizabeth by Camden, fol; all the history of Herodian, fol; all the history of Procopius, fol; all Sands his Travells, fol; all Olaus Magnus of the Northern Countrys, fol; all Camerarius his observations, fol; all Suetonius of the Twelve Caesars, fol; all appians warrs, fol; all Speed's Cronicle to the life of King James, fol; So some parts of Purchas his Relations; some hundreds of Sermons. Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall Kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down.'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Richard Corbett : Epitaph on King James
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of 'King James his Epitaph by Bishop Corbet'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Aphra Behn : Epitaph on William Fairfax
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Aphra Behn, 'Epitaph on William Fairfax'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Walter Ralegh : Even such is time which takes in trust
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Walter Ralegh, 'Even such is time which takes in trust'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Richard Corbett : To his Son Vincent Corbett
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Richard Corbett, 'To his Son Vincent Corbett'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Richard Corbett : An Elegie upon the Death of his own Father
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Richard Corbett, 'An Elegie upon the Death of his own Father'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Sir Henry Wotton : On the Death of Sr Albertus Morton
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Henry Wotton, 'On the Death of Sr Albertus Morton.'
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Walter Ralegh : Like hermit poor
In Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, a paraphrase of Walter Ralegh's lines 'Like hermit poor', entitled 'A Christian paraphrase on those Verses Like Hermit poor, &c'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Henry Savile : To the King
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Henry Savile, 'To the King'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Richard Fanshawe : A Happy Life out of Martial
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Richard Fanshawe, 'A Happy Life out of Martial'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Charles Aleyn : The Battailes of Crescey and Poictiers
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of a Couplet from Charles Aleyn, 'The Battailes of Crescey and Poictiers'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : A Virgin
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Katherine Phillips, 'A Virgin'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne (attrib.) : Verses beginning 'the Almond florisheth ye Birch trees flowe'
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of lines attributed to Sir Thomas Browne, beginning, 'the Almond florisheth ye Birch trees flowe'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Fragment on meadowes
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Sir Thomas Browne, 'Fragment on meadowes'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Sir Thomas Browne : Seignor verdero in his proper habitt,
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Sir Thomas Browne, 'Seignor verdero in his proper habitt'.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Richard Corbett : King James came in progres to the house of Sr Pope Knight, when his Lady was lately delivered of a daughter, which babe was Presented to the King with a Paper of verses in her hand...
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Richard Corbett, 'King James came in progres to the house of Sr Pope Knight, when his Lady was lately delivered of a daughter, which babe was Presented to the King with a Paper of verses in her hand...'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book
Edward Tenison : anagrams and couplets
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Edward Tenison, a pair of anagrams on Elizabeth Lyttelton's name, and also a pair of couplets, written on the occasion of her marriage to George Lyttelton in 1680.
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Manuscript: Unknown
Sir Henry Wotton : Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earl of Somerset then falling from favour
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Sir Henry Wotton, 'Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earl of Somerset then falling from favour'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Sir Henry Wotton : The Character of a Happy Life
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Sir Henry Wotton, 'The Character of a Happy Life'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Sir Philip Woodhouse : Italian & French Proverbs rythmisd
Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of Sir Philip Woodhouse, 'Italian & French Proverbs rythmisd'.
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton
Frances Burney : Evelina
'I was shewed a little Novel t'other Day which I thought pretty enough & set Burney to read it, little dreaming it was by his second Daughter Fanny, who certainly must be a Girl of good Parts & some Knowledge of the World too, or She could not be the Author of Evelina - flimzy as it is compar'd with the Books I've just mentioned. [by Fielding, Lennox, Richardson and Smollet] Johnson said Harry Fielding never did anything equal to the 2d Vol: of Evelina'. [this remark is added later - Johnson borrowed the book from her around 22nd July so her opinion must date from before that]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'I was shewed a little Novel t'other Day which I thought pretty enough & set Burney to read it, little dreaming it was by his second Daughter Fanny, who certainly must be a Girl of good Parts & some Knowledge of the World too, or She could not be the Author of Evelina - flimzy as it is compar'd with the Books I've just mentioned. [by Fielding, Lennox, Richardson and Smollet] Johnson said Harry Fielding never did anything equal to the 2d Vol: of Evelina'. [this remark is added later - Johnson borrowed the book from her around 22nd July so her opinion must date from before that]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'I was shewed a little Novel t'other Day which I thought pretty enough & set Burney to read it, little dreaming it was by his second Daughter Fanny, who certainly must be a Girl of good Parts & some Knowledge of the World too, or She could not be the Author of Evelina - flimzy as it is compar'd with the Books I've just mentioned. [by Fielding, Lennox, Richardson and Smollet] Johnson said Harry Fielding never did anything equal to the 2d Vol: of Evelina'. [this remark is added later - Johnson borrowed the book from her around 22nd July so her opinion must date from before that]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Burney : [verses on death]
'Johnson says the following 8 lines of Burney are actually sublime - they are the End of a dull copy of Verses enough, but the Lines themselves are most excellent' [the lines follow]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Burney : [verses on death]
'Johnson says the following 8 lines of Burney are actually sublime - they are the End of a dull copy of Verses enough, but the Lines themselves are most excellent' [the lines follow]
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Home, Lord Kames : Sketches of the History of Man
'Lord Kaimes again tells us a wild Story of Savages who eat all their own children & have done so for six Hundred Years backward - he then begins gravely to argue about parental Affection, never reflecting that if the children were eaten the Race could not be continued'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of the Earth and Animated Nature
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be Fed & defended by the fearless Cock. whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.- Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon : Histoire Naturelle
'Goldsmith talks of cows shedding their Horns, & Thompson makes his Hens and Chicks to be Fed & defended by the fearless Cock. whereas the Cock hates the Chickens, & takes all their Meat from them. [Thrale continues to critique Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history] Pennant speaks most rationally about Natural History of any of our Countrymen, and among the Foreigners, Buffon makes amends to [italics] most [end italics] readers by his elegant Style & profound Ratiocination for his frequent Mistakes in the Facts.- Johnson in his Irene frequently mentions singing Birds though I believe the Birds about Constantinople are nearly mute: Thompson observes that in hot Climates the Birds scarce ever sing'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Edward Young : Conjectures on Original Composition. In a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison
'The two [italics] wittiest [end italics] things in our Language in Verse & Prose are Dr Young's Conjectures on Original Composition I think, and Dr Swift's Ballad on the South Sea. The two Tragedies which go nearest one's Heart I think - in our Language I mean - are Southern's Fatal Marriage and Lillo's Fatal Curiosity. The two best Comic Scenes in our Language according to my Taste are the Scene between Squire Richard & Myrtilla in the Provoked Husband, and that between Sir Joseph Wittol, Nol Bluff and Sharper in the Old Batchelor - not the kicking scene but the friendly one. The two best [italics] Declamatory [end italics] Scenes where the Sentiments and Language are most perfect, seem to be the Scene between Juba and Syphax in Addison's Cato, & that between the two Ladies in Johnson's Irene. I know that both are unDramatic, the latter more peculiarly so, than ever was, or ever ought to have been hazarded - but for Language & Sentiment it is most Superb. - Superieure as the French say. Johnson says the finest Tragic Scene in our Language, for Drama sentiment, Language, Power over the Heart, & every Requisite for Theatre or Closet, is the Tomb Scene in the Mourning Bride. [italics] I [end italics] think, that trying to be [italics] every [end italics] thing it escapes being [italics] anything [end italics]'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
George Lillo : Fatal Curiosity: A True Tragedy of Three Acts
'The two [italics] wittiest [end italics] things in our Language in Verse & Prose are Dr Young's Conjectures on Original Composition I think, and Dr Swift's Ballad on the South Sea. The two Tragedies which go nearest one's Heart I think - in our Language I mean - are Southern's Fatal Marriage and Lillo's Fatal Curiosity. The two best Comic Scenes in our Language according to my Taste are the Scene between Squire Richard & Myrtilla in the Provoked Husband, and that between Sir Joseph Wittol, Nol Bluff and Sharper in the Old Batchelor - not the kicking scene but the friendly one. The two best [italics] Declamatory [end italics] Scenes where the Sentiments and Language are most perfect, seem to be the Scene between Juba and Syphax in Addison's Cato, & that between the two Ladies in Johnson's Irene. I know that both are unDramatic, the latter more peculiarly so, than ever was, or ever ought to have been hazarded - but for Language & Sentiment it is most Superb. - Superieure as the French say. Johnson says the finest Tragic Scene in our Language, for Drama sentiment, Language, Power over the Heart, & every Requisite for Theatre or Closet, is the Tomb Scene in the Mourning Bride. [italics] I [end italics] think, that trying to be [italics] every [end italics] thing it escapes being [italics] anything [end italics]'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Ode for Music on St Cecilia's Day
'20: Jan: 1779.] My second Daughter Susanna Arabella who will not be nine Years old till next May, can at this Moment read a French Comedy to divert herself, and these very Holy days her Amusement has been to make Sophy & sometimes Hester help her to act the two or three 1st Scenes of Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme: add to this she has a real Taste for English Poetry, and when Mr Johnson repeated Dryden's Musick Ode the other day, She said She had got the whole poem, & Pope's too upon the same Subject by Heart for her own Amusement'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Arabella Thrale Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Antiquary
'These brave words of Scott remind me of the song in The Antiquary, which I have just re-read ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'The two middle verses of that song have haunted me ever since I was a child and used to go up into the dark drawing-room with a little wax taper in my hand ... a white towel over my head, intoning the dirge from Ivanhoe ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : "The Bugle Song"
From Hallam Tennyson's account of a voyage on the Pembroke Castle (September 1883): '[18 September] In response to an invitation from the hospitable Sir Donald [Currie] the Royalties came to luncheon on board [...] In the small smoking room after luncheon my father, at the request of the Princess of Wales, read "The Bugle Song" and "The Grandmother." The Czarina paid him some very pretty compliment, and he, being very short-sighted, and taking her for a Maid of Honour, patted her on the shoulder and said, "Thank you, my dear."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : "The Grandmother"
From Hallam Tennyson's account of a voyage on the Pembroke Castle (September 1883): '[18 September] In response to an invitation from the hospitable Sir Donald [Currie] the Royalties came to luncheon on board [...] In the small smoking room after luncheon my father, at the request of the Princess of Wales, read "The Bugle Song" and "The Grandmother." The Czarina paid him some very pretty compliment, and he, being very short-sighted, and taking her for a Maid of Honour, patted her on the shoulder and said, "Thank you, my dear."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Sir Galahad
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (extracts)
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : 'dialect poems'
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Roden Noel : poems
Alfred Tennyson to Roden Noel (February 1885): 'Your article in the Contemporary has been sent to me ***. My eyes are very bad. One is entirely gone for all reading purposes, and the other -- I hope it will not fail me utterly before I die; -- but I have looked into your book, and find it full of true poetry -- not concentration enough, perhaps.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Leper's Bride
'1888. At Easter Miss Mary Anderson [actress] was with us again and he [Tennyson] read to her, whom he admired much, and held to be "the flower of girlhood," "The Leper's Bride," just finished.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Homer : Iliad
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Euripides : Iphigenia in Aulis
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil : Georgics (II)
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Bret Harte : Cressy
From Hallam Tennyson's account 'Of My Father's Illness': 'Jan. 27th. and 28th. [1889] We carried him down for the first time to the drawing-room [...] Read Bret Harte's Cressy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Cobbler
From Tennyson's notes on Demeter and Other Poems: 'A lady tells me that when she read "The Northern Cobbler" at a village entertainment, the drunkard of the village, on her coming to the line, 'An' I loook'd [sic] cock-eyed at my noase an' i sead 'im a-gittin o'fire, 'left the room, saying, "Women knoaws too much now-a-daay."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Crossing the Bar'
'"Crossing the Bar" was written in my father's eighty-first year, on a day in October when we came from Aldworth to Farringford. Before reaching Farringford he had the Moaning of the Bar in his mind, and after dinner he showed me this poem written out. 'I said, "That is the crown of your life's work." He answered, "It came in a moment." He explained the "Pilot" as "That Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us." 'A few days before my father's death he said to me: "Mind you put 'Crossing the Bar' at the end of all editions of my poems."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hallam Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Crossing the Bar'
'My father considered Edmund Lushington's translation into Greek of "Crossing the Bar," one of the finest translations he had ever read'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Walter Scott : novels including Old Mortality
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Meredith :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Walter Besant :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Henry James :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Marion Crawford :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
R. D. Blackmore :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Arthur Conan Doyle :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Mary Braddon :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Rhoda Broughton :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Lady Margaret Majendie :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Frances Hodgson Burnett : Surly Tim: A Lancashire Story
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Margaret Oliphant :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Robert Southwell : 'The Burning Babe'
From Hallam Tennyson's journal (1890-91): 'March 8th. [1890] He made me read Southwell's "Burning Babe" to him out of Palgrave's Sacred Song.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hallam Tennyson Print: Book
Homer :
From Hallam Tennyson's journal (1890-91): 'March 17th. [1890] He [Tennyson] had all but recovered from his influenza, and sat in the sun in front of the study window, and read Jebb's Homer'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hallam Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
From Hallam Tennyson's journal (1890-91): 'May 28th. [1890] G. F. Watts left today, having done a fine portrait of my father [...] At the request of Watts, my father read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington" [...] I read "The Golden Bough" and the "Story of a Balaclava Hero" to Watts and my father, while the portrait was in hand.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
From Hallam Tennyson's journal, 1890-91: 'Aug. 6th. [1890] Aldworth. The Duchess of Albany came to luncheon with us in honour of my father's eighty-first birthday [...] At her request he read "Guinevere" aloud."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Dedication, OEnone
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : OEnone
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Sir Edward Reed : 'lines on the Fleet'
'My father spoke at this time [1891] warmly of the gallant spirit of Sir Edward Reed's lines on the Fleet in the St James' Gazette; and said he liked much of Wallace's Darwinism, which he was reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Russel Wallace : Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications
'My father spoke at this time [1891] warmly of the gallant spirit of Sir Edward Reed's lines on the Fleet in the St James' Gazette; and said he liked much of Wallace's Darwinism, which he was reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Rudyard Kipling : 'The English Flag'
'One of the last letters my father wrote during this year [1891] was to the young poet William Watson, whose "Wordsworth's Grave" pleased him [...] He praised too Mr Rudyard Kipling's "English Flag," and Kipling's answer to his letter of commendation gave him pleasure: "When the private in the ranks is praised by the general, he cannot presume to thank him, but he fights the better next day."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Lotos-Eaters
'In January [1892] Dr Hubert Parry stayed with us at Farringford, for he wanted to hear my father read "The Lotos-Eaters" which he was setting to music. 'For the first time my father's voice, usually so strong, failed while reading this poem and the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," which he was anxious that a great composer should set as he read it.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
'In January [1892] Dr Hubert Parry stayed with us at Farringford, for he wanted to hear my father read "The Lotos-Eaters" which he was setting to music. 'For the first time my father's voice, usually so strong, failed while reading this poem and the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," which he was anxious that a great composer should set as he read it.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Passing of Arthur
'In March [1892] he [Tennyson] recovered his voice [which had failed him during January] [...] He read "The Passing of Arthur" to Lord Houghton (now Lord Crewe) and his sister, Mrs Henniker, as well as ever'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (extracts)
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Spinster's Sweet-Arts
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'. 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in hiis reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just ridden the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden (extracts)
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
William Ernest Henley : Athenaeum, 'The Poetry of Byron'
'I like your "Byron" well ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
William Ernest Henley : Cornhill Magazine 'Hector Berlioz: a Biography'
'I liked your ... "Berlioz" better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Frederick Smith : [unknown]
'Yesterday I went to the workhouse to spend the evening with the children; a prospect I have had in view for some time... I took them things for tea: I dreaded going on many accounts, fearing I should not feel at liberty to make any remarks I might wish to the children during their reading which it was my principal object in going to attend. I did not exactly see my way, however, I thought I would (as the Friends say) make my way. I found after tea they did not read till nearly eight, and I could not remain later than a little past seven. I spoke to the governess about it and she was quite willing to alter the hour, and so was the stewardess. I proposed reading a little pamphlet that has lately come out by Frederick Smith to the children. There was a solemnity during reading it; so that Ann Withers was in tears most of the time, and some of the children were disposed that way; afterwards, when we had finished, I endeavoured to weigh up whether I really had any thing to say to them or not; I thought that I had, and therefore took up the book as if to explain it; making my own remarks which appeared to affect the children and the governess so that those who were on the point of tears really wept. Now this event has made me feel rather odd; it is marvellous to me how I got courage to do it before Ann Withers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Fry Print: Book
Priscilla Gurney : Selection of Hymns
E. Fry writes to her husband and daughter, Rachel, of the death of her sister, Priscilla Gurney, dated 25 Mar 1821: 'In the morning she appeared very full of love - put out her hand to several of us - showed much pleasure in your uncle Buxton's being here, and tried to speak to him but could not be understood - expressed her wish for reading, and from her feeling of love and fondness for the chapter and some signs, we believed she meant the thirteenth of 1 Corinthians, and we had a very sweet animating time together, and afterwards our dear brother Fowell spoke very sweetly to her; and besides the Bible she appeared to have some satisfaction in hearing other books read, as it has been her habit during her illness, just like mine when ill ... though she confined it to religious books, yet many of these were of an interesting nature; her hymns [Selection of Hymns, by P. Gurney] interested her much - she liked Samuel Scott's Diary - Piety Promoted - Accounts of the Missions - Watts and How - and many other books of that description ... I think her object in reading was gentle amusement and at times edification - she was very particular not to read the Bible except she felt herself in rather a lively state'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Priscilla Gurney Print: Book
Joseph Gurney Bevan : Piety Promoted
E. Fry writes to her husband and daughter, Rachel, of the death of her sister, Priscilla Gurney, dated 25 Mar 1821: 'In the morning she appeared very full of love - put out her hand to several of us - showed much pleasure in your uncle Buxton's being here, and tried to speak to him but could not be understood - expressed her wish for reading, and from her feeling of love and fondness for the chapter and some signs, we believed she meant the thirteenth of 1 Corinthians, and we had a very sweet animating time together, and afterwards our dear brother Fowell spoke very sweetly to her; and besides the Bible she appeared to have some satisfaction in hearing other books read, as it has been her habit during her illness, just like mine when ill ... though she confined it to religious books, yet many of these were of an interesting nature; her hymns [Selection of Hymns, by P. Gurney] interested her much - she liked Samuel Scott's Diary - Piety Promoted - Accounts of the Missions - Watts and How - and many other books of that description ... I think her object in reading was gentle amusement and at times edification - she was very particular not to read the Bible except she felt herself in rather a lively state'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Priscilla Gurney Print: Book
Alfred de Musset : poems including 'Tristesse'
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father: '"'L'Agonie' by Sully Prudhomme I have just been reading, and think it very beautiful, yet very sad; and there are things of Alfred de Musset like 'Tristesse' which seem to me perfect."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's funeral: 'Many were seen reading "In Memoriam" while waiting before the service.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mourners at funeral of Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Dr Dabbs : account of death of Alfred Tennyson
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson: 'On Monday the 10th [October, 1892], Miss Marryat, daughter of the celebrated novelist, secured for me a copy of the Times, wherein I read the brief and touching account by Dr Dabbs of the passing away of Tennyson.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Newspaper
Alfred Tennyson : Poems including 'The Two Voices'
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'Under the date of Sunday, 20th October, 1850, I find the following [journal] entry: "Up at 6 A.M. and began the day by reading Tennyson. I am acquainted with no spirit so strong, pure, and beautiful. Every line sparkles with empyrean fire, so that it is difficult to make a selection. I will, however, notice 'The Two Voices' [...] In this poem the tempter to despair is furnished with his best weapons, and foiled though armed cap-a-pie.'"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'You were not born when the influence [of Alfred Tennyson] in my case began. Fifty years ago, in the sixth chapter of Carlyle's Past and Present I found the line: "There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew"; 'to which was attached a footnote referring the line to Tennyson [...] This footnote assured me that Tennyson was a poet whose acquaintance must be made without delay. Not very long afterwards, two young men might have been seen eagerly engaged upon a volume, in the corner of a modest hotel in St Martin's Court, Covent Garden. The one read, the other listened. The one, after a life of usefulness and honour, was snatched from us last year by influenza, and now lies in Highgate Cemetery, the other remains to record the fact. The book in which my friend Hirst and I were then absorbed was entitled "Poems by Alfred Tennyson."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hirst Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'You were not born when the influence [of Alfred Tennyson] in my case began. Fifty years ago, in the sixth chapter of Carlyle's Past and Present I found the line: "There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew"; 'to which was attached a footnote referring the line to Tennyson [...] This footnote assured me that Tennyson was a poet whose acquaintance must be made without delay. Not very long afterwards, two young men might have been seen eagerly engaged upon a volume, in the corner of a modest hotel in St Martin's Court, Covent Garden. The one read, the other listened. The one, after a life of usefulness and honour, was snatched from us last year by influenza, and now lies in Highgate Cemetery, the other remains to record the fact. The book in which my friend Hirst and I were then absorbed was entitled "Poems by Alfred Tennyson" [...] 'The late excellent James Spedding, first drew my attention to the definition of poetry as "a fine excess," and certainly the effect of your father's inspired language upon the two young men above referred to could not be better expressed. It was wine to our intellects, and may a night between ten and eleven, during the winter of 1850-51, after the scientific labours of the day were over, we quaffed together of this noble vintage.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hirst and John Tyndall Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'It may be worth while to mention here how I first made the acquaintance of "Maud." Rachel had come to the Haymarket Theatre, for a few representations, and I, anxious to see and hear the great actress, engaged a stall. I had picked up "Maud" at a bookseller's in Piccadilly as I went to the theatre [...] I had read several pages before the play began. I read between the acts, lowering the book to catch sufficient light from the stage. Once I went out, and walked to and fro between St James's Square and the theatre, still reading. Before I reached my lodgings I had finished the poem. I thought it true, strong and beautiful'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'It may be worth while to mention here how I first made the acquaintance of "Maud." Rachel had come to the Haymarket Theatre, for a few representations, and I, anxious to see and hear the great actress, engaged a stall. I had picked up "Maud" at a bookseller's in Piccadilly as I went to the theatre [...] I had read several pages before the play began. I read between the acts, lowering the book to catch sufficient light from the stage. Once I went out, and walked to and fro between St James's Square and the theatre, still reading. Before I reached my lodgings I had finished the poem. I thought it true, strong and beautiful'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Tiresias and Other Poems
John Tyndall to Hallam Tennyson (1893): 'In the year 1885 [...] were published Tiresias, and Other Poems, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. For a copy of this remarkable volume I am indebted to its author [goes on enthusiastically to discuss, and to quote at length from, various pieces in volume]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Tyndall Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'I have heard that Miss Cooper hearing She was to lose her Sight, set about getting the Night Thoughts by heart - so much did She delight in the Poetry of Dr Young - She kept her Eyes however & all went well. The Description of Night by Dr Young is superior to that of either Dryden or Shakespear - & I made Johnson confess it so. [7 lines of Young are quoted]. Oh how excellent are these Lines - but as Granger sweetly says When you struck the tender String Darkness clapt her sable Wing; Aside their Harps ev'n Seraphs flung, To hear thy sweet Complaints oh Young!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
'I have heard that Miss Cooper hearing She was to lose her Sight, set about getting the Night Thoughts by heart - so much did She delight in the Poetry of Dr Young - She kept her Eyes however & all went well. The Description of Night by Dr Young is superior to that of either Dryden or Shakespear - & I made Johnson confess it so. [7 lines of Young are quoted]. Oh how excellent are these Lines - but as Granger sweetly says When you struck the tender String Darkness clapt her sable Wing; Aside their Harps ev'n Seraphs flung, To hear thy sweet Complaints oh Young!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Cooper Print: Book
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire : The Sylph: a Novel
'her [Fanny Burney's] Scoundrel Bookseller having advertised the Sylph along with it [Evelina] lately, and endeavouring to make the World believe it [italics] hers [end italics]; Mrs Leveson runs about Town saying how clever Miss Burney must be! & what Knowledge of [italics] Mankind [end italics] She must have! Knowledge of Mankind! in good time; the Sylph is an obscene Novel, and more [italics] Knowledge of Mankind [end italics] is indeed wanting to't than any [italics] professed [end italics] Virgin should have.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Andrew Erskine : [a poem on a Geranium]
'I have this Moment put into my Hand a Poem concerning the Geranium Flower; tis not very long, and tis I think exceedingly Ingenious: but so obscene I will not pollute my Book with it. Though nobody sees the Thraliana but myself, I can not bear that our Father who seeth in Secret & is of purer Eyes than to behold uncleanness, should know my beastly privacies - though strongly tempted therefore to copy or get it by heart I have done neither, but returned it to Mrs Byron who lent it me - without any Comment. I cannot think of the Man's Name who wrote it but tis mightly clever in its way [italics] that it is [end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : The Witlings
'Fanny Burney has read me her new Comedy; nobody else has seen it except her Father, who will not suffer his Partiality to overbiass his Judgment I am sure, and he likes it vastly. - but one has no Guess what will do on a Stage, at least I have none; Murphy must read an Act tomorrow, I wonder what he'll say to't. I like it very well for my own part, though none of the scribbling Ladies have the Right to admire its general Tendency.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : The Witlings
'Fanny Burney has read me her new Comedy; nobody else has seen it except her Father, who will not suffer his Partiality to overbiass his Judgment I am sure, and he likes it vastly. - but one has no Guess what will do on a Stage, at least I have none; Murphy must read an Act tomorrow, I wonder what he'll say to't. I like it very well for my own part, though none of the scribbling Ladies have the Right to admire its general Tendency.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : The Witlings
'Fanny Burney has read me her new Comedy; nobody else has seen it except her Father, who will not suffer his Partiality to overbiass his Judgment I am sure, and he likes it vastly. - but one has no Guess what will do on a Stage, at least I have none; Murphy must read an Act tomorrow, I wonder what he'll say to't. I like it very well for my own part, though none of the scribbling Ladies have the Right to admire its general Tendency.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Philippe Nericault Destouches : L'Homme Singulier
'[Mrs Thrale proposes writing a comedy, but] as I have not a Spark of Originality about me, I must take a French Model - it shall be "L'Homme Singulier".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Burney : [translation of a provencale ballad]
'Burney has translated a provencale Ballad written by Thibout King of Navarre 500 Years ago, into the prettiest English Verses I ever read, but as they will be published in his 2d Vol: I shall not trouble myself to transcribe them here'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Eloisa to Abelard
'"Ye Grots & Caverns shagg'd with horrid Thorn!" This Verse from Pope's Eloisa was originally Milton's - 'tis in Comus, but I think very little remember'd'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Man
'The Simile to the rope Dancer in Prior's Alma is only a good Versification of Dryden's Thought in the preface to Fresnoy's Art of Painting. "Plac'd on the isthmus of a narrow State" that Thought, & almost the whole Line is taken from Cowley.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Abraham Cowley : Life and Fame
'The Simile to the rope Dancer in Prior's Alma is only a good Versification of Dryden's Thought in the preface to Fresnoy's Art of Painting. "Plac'd on the isthmus of a narrow State" that Thought, & almost the whole Line is taken from Cowley.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'Spent the evening at Home. Read portion of Waverley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Was at home in the evening. Read a Portion of Rob Roy to Polly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Read Rob Roy in the evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
'Stopped at Home in the evening and read Rob Roy to Polly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Critic, The
'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : School for Scandal, The
'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
George Colman : Clandestine Marriage, The
'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Rape of the Lock, The
'I see Mr Pope's skilful Adaptation of Names to his Spirits in the Rape of the Lock, and to his Mud-Nymphs in the Dunciad, are all borrowed from one of Ben Jonson's Masques, perform'd at Court in the Reign of King James the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad, The
'I see Mr Pope's skilful Adaptation of Names to his Spirits in the Rape of the Lock, and to his Mud-Nymphs in the Dunciad, are all borrowed from one of Ben Jonson's Masques, perform'd at Court in the Reign of King James the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Walter Pope : Old Mans Wish, The
'The Sonnet of Mr des Yveteaux the odd Man who shut himself up with a Wench, & played Shepherd & Shepherdess when he was past threescore; beginning Avoir peu de parens, moins de Train que de rente &c. resembles both in its Style & Measure our Ballad of the old Man's wish - without Gout or Stone in a gentle decay. I wonder which was written first, or whether one of the Writers ever heard of the other - most probably not.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
George Lillo : Elmerick; Or Justice Triumphant
'the Story of Elmerick in Lillo's Play seems taken from the Conte d'Andre & Gertrude in the Chevreana, but perhaps Lillo never saw it there - the Charge of Plagiarism should be well supported'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Lord Strafford : [letter to his daughter, 1641]
'I was shewed a curious Thing today - a Letter written by Lord Strafford to his Daughter three Weeks before his Execution - he apparently expected no such Sentence, but rather apprehended Diminution of Income; and in that Apprehension recommends Oeconomy to his Family.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Letter
Richard Fulke Greville : Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
'Greville draws Prose Characters incomparably well; that Man's book of Maxims &c. has not had credit enough in the World - Adrastus, Sicinius & Strabo are admirable in their kind; & shew a vast deal of thinking, besides perfect Knowledge of the gay World'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Burney : [translation of a French Chanson]
'Doctr Burney has translated the famous old French Chanson Militaire - [italics] all about Roland [end italics]: how happy, how skilful, how elegant is that dear Creature's Pen!'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale
George Psalmanazar : [articles contributed to the 'Universal History']
'Psalmanazar wrote the Cosmogony, and the History of the Jews after his Conversion; how odd that he shold quote the Formosan Opinions therefore as corroborative of some Hypothesis; which he certainly does, and with a Touch of his old Effrontery too. see Page 84: Vol: I. Universal History.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [MS of his translations of Homer]
'We have got a sort of literary Curiosity amongst us; the foul Copy of Pope's Homer, with all his old intended Verses, Sketches, emendations &c. strange that a Man shd keep such Things!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne : Letters
'My second Daughter Susan has a surprising Turn for Letter-writing; her Compositions are really elegant, & She delights - odd enough - in reading Voiture and Sevigne.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Arabella Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Dunciad, The
'I love Johnson's Prose better than Addison's, I like the Dunciad beyond all Pope's Poems; I delight in Young's Satires & in Rubens's Painting, Cowley captivates my Heart; & when I read Bruyere, I often catch myself kissing the Book for fondness of the Author['s] strong-marked Characters, glowing Colours, striking Sentiments - to please - H:L: T.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Edward Young : Love of Fame, The Universal Passion
'I love Johnson's Prose better than Addison's, I like the Dunciad beyond all Pope's Poems; I delight in Young's Satires & in Rubens's Painting, Cowley captivates my Heart; & when I read Bruyere, I often catch myself kissing the Book for fondness of the Author['s] strong-marked Characters, glowing Colours, striking Sentiments - to please - H:L: T.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Abraham Cowley :
'I love Johnson's Prose better than Addison's, I like the Dunciad beyond all Pope's Poems; I delight in Young's Satires & in Rubens's Painting, Cowley captivates my Heart; & when I read Bruyere, I often catch myself kissing the Book for fondness of the Author['s] strong-marked Characters, glowing Colours, striking Sentiments - to please - H:L: T.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : The Runners
'"I read "The Runners" last week," he continued, and told her that he had advised John Lane to refuse it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Priestley Manuscript: Manuscript of an unpublished novel.
George Moore : Heloise and Abelard
'Jean's friend lent her George Moore's "Heloise and Abelard" - "one of the loveliest; all that my Wyclif book should have been and was not," Winifred confessed, lamenting that she was required to present prizes just when she wanted to finish it. In spite of the novel's length and these interruptions, its owner reported that Winifred returned it, read from cover to cover, within a couple of days.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Poems
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On March 31st 1849, through the kindness of Henry Hallam, youngest son to the great historian [...] I was asked to meet Tennyson at the house of Hallam's cousin by marriage, W. H. Brookfield, in Portman Street [...] 'At that time the two green volumes of 1842, with "The Princess" in its first form (1847), had been to me, as to thousands more, Gateways into a new Paradise [...]I have preserved no memory of Tennyson during this evening. But at the close, discovering that our routes homeward began in the same direction [...] we set forth together [...] parting with an [Tennyson's] invitation to visit him in his lodgings [...] 'Two days after [...] I accordingly climbed to the upper floor of the lodgings, one of a few houses fronting the Hampstead Road, just south of Mornington Crescent, and found Tennyson in a somewhat dingy room, sitting close over the fire, with many short black pipes in front, and a stout jar of tobacco by his side [...] Tennyson offered to read me certain poems he had written about [Arthur] Hallam [...] He then brought forth a bundle of beautifully copied verse: the name "In Memoriam" I do not think he used; and read several pieces. One was No. CIII "On that last night...," [...] others from the early series describing the ship sailing "from the Italian shore" (No. IX): and that, I think, where parents or sweetheart await a son's or a lover's return. 'Poetry so rich and concentrated as this, and heard now for the first time from the lips of one who loved and mourned so deeply, I could but partly grasp, and knew not how to praise aright. But Tennyson's sweet-natured kindness, when he could give pleasure [...] I have never found exhaustible: and taking up one of those note-books [...] he went on to read certain songs which he thought he might do well to place between the sections of "The Princess." Thus "Sweet and low," "The splendour falls," "Ask me no more" [...] passed before me; giving the sense of some great and splendid procession slowly unrolling itself, and that to the sound of its own music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Turner Palgrave Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Princess
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On March 31st 1849, through the kindness of Henry Hallam, youngest son to the great historian [...] I was asked to meet Tennyson at the house of Hallam's cousin by marriage, W. H. Brookfield, in Portman Street [...] 'At that time the two green volumes of 1842, with "The Princess" in its first form (1847), had been to me, as to thousands more, Gateways into a new Paradise [...]I have preserved no memory of Tennyson during this evening. But at the close, discovering that our routes homeward began in the same direction [...] we set forth together [...] parting with an [Tennyson's] invitation to visit him in his lodgings [...] 'Two days after [...] I accordingly climbed to the upper floor of the lodgings, one of a few houses fronting the Hampstead Road, just south of Mornington Crescent, and found Tennyson in a somewhat dingy room, sitting close over the fire, with many short black pipes in front, and a stout jar of tobacco by his side [...] Tennyson offered to read me certain poems he had written about [Arthur] Hallam [...] He then brought forth a bundle of beautifully copied verse: the name "In Memoriam" I do not think he used; and read several pieces. One was No. CIII "On that last night...," [...] others from the early series describing the ship sailing "from the Italian shore" (No. IX): and that, I think, where parents or sweetheart await a son's or a lover's return. 'Poetry so rich and concentrated as this, and heard now for the first time from the lips of one who loved and mourned so deeply, I could but partly grasp, and knew not how to praise aright. But Tennyson's sweet-natured kindness, when he could give pleasure [...] I have never found exhaustible: and taking up one of those note-books [...] he went on to read certain songs which he thought he might do well to place between the sections of "The Princess." Thus "Sweet and low," "The splendour falls," "Ask me no more" [...] passed before me; giving the sense of some great and splendid procession slowly unrolling itself, and that to the sound of its own music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Turner Palgrave Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Songs for inclusion in new edition of The Princess
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On March 31st 1849, through the kindness of Henry Hallam, youngest son to the great historian [...] I was asked to meet Tennyson at the house of Hallam's cousin by marriage, W. H. Brookfield, in Portman Street [...] 'At that time the two green volumes of 1842, with "The Princess" in its first form (1847), had been to me, as to thousands more, Gateways into a new Paradise [...]I have preserved no memory of Tennyson during this evening. But at the close, discovering that our routes homeward began in the same direction [...] we set forth together [...] parting with an [Tennyson's] invitation to visit him in his lodgings [...] 'Two days after [...] I accordingly climbed to the upper floor of the lodgings, one of a few houses fronting the Hampstead Road, just south of Mornington Crescent, and found Tennyson in a somewhat dingy room, sitting close over the fire, with many short black pipes in front, and a stout jar of tobacco by his side [...] Tennyson offered to read me certain poems he had written about [Arthur] Hallam [...] He then brought forth a bundle of beautifully copied verse: the name "In Memoriam" I do not think he used; and read several pieces. One was No. CIII "On that last night...," [...] others from the early series describing the ship sailing "from the Italian shore" (No. IX): and that, I think, where parents or sweetheart await a son's or a lover's return. 'Poetry so rich and concentrated as this, and heard now for the first time from the lips of one who loved and mourned so deeply, I could but partly grasp, and knew not how to praise aright. But Tennyson's sweet-natured kindness, when he could give pleasure [...] I have never found exhaustible: and taking up one of those note-books [...] he went on to read certain songs which he thought he might do well to place between the sections of "The Princess." Thus "Sweet and low," "The splendour falls," "Ask me no more" [...] passed before me; giving the sense of some great and splendid procession slowly unrolling itself, and that to the sound of its own music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Some time in 1852 Tennyson read over to me his "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," discussing various points of detail. I think this was the sole occasion upon which, moved by the greatness of the man and of the memories which that colossal career called forth, the national sorrow and the loss of heroic example, he showed a certain anxiety about his own work. Yet he need not have feared. Heroism, at least since the days of Pindar or of Virgil, surely has never been sung of so heroically.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Theocritus : Hylas
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'We were sitting (1857 or so) late at night in the Farringford attic-room [...] and Tennyson read over to me the little Theocritan Idyll "Hylas" [goes on to describe the reading further]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Homer :
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Often, I believe, as life advanced, he would renew earlier familiarity with the great poets of all time [...] Thus a portable copy of Homer which some friend had given him he had in his hands on our Cornish journey (1860), and kept sitting down to read as we wandered over a wild rock-island in the Scillies.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pindar :
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Often, I believe, as life advanced, he would renew earlier familiarity with the great poets of all time [...] One evening [...] he read out off-hand Pindar's great picture of the life of Heaven in the second Olympian into pure modern prose, splendidly lucid and musical.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Lucretius : De rerum natura
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Often, I believe, as life advanced, he would renew earlier familiarity with the great poets of all time [...] One evening [...] he read out off-hand Pindar's great picture of the life of Heaven in the second Olympian into pure modern prose, splendidly lucid and musical [...] Another time, late over the midwinter fire, reading the terrible lines in which Lucretius preaches his creed of human annihilation (Book III. especially ll. 912-977, ed. Munro) [...] so carried away and overwhelmed were the readers by the poignant force of the great poet, that, next morning, when dawn and daylight had brought their blessed natural healing to morbid thoughts, it was laughingly agreed that Lucretius had left us last night all but converts to his heart-crushing atheism.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: (Included) Alfred Tennyson and Francis Turner Palgrave Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : 'The Emigrant's Song'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Andrew Marvell : 'To His Coy Mistress
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Petrarch : "Trionfo della Morte"
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos [...] Petrarch [...] furnished a not dissimilar instance, in the ethereally-beautiful lines on the death of Laura ("Trionfa della Morte," Cap.1) [quotes six lines] [...] I remember still the tenderness with which he dwelt on the words, the sigh of delight -- almost, perhaps, the tears -- that came naturally to the sensitive soul, as he ended'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Knight's Tale
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos [...] Petrarch [...] furnished a not dissimilar instance, in the ethereally-beautiful lines on the death of Laura ("Trionfa della Morte," Cap.1) [quotes six lines] [...] I remember still the tenderness with which he dwelt on the words, the sigh of delight -- almost, perhaps, the tears -- that came naturally to the sensitive soul, as he ended [...] 'And Petrarch's own contemporary English admirer [...] supplied Tennyson with another favourite passage; that in the "Knight's Tale," where Arcite, dying, commends his soul as a legacy to his love Emilie [quotes five lines] 'It is with a doubly pathetic echo that the tone, amorously lingering, which [sic] this dear friend always rendered Chaucer's last line ["Alone withouten any compagnie"] now returns to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : Mari Magno
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Tennyson [...] said that Clough as he lay on the grass in some lovely valley near Cauteretz, had read aloud passages from his last and unfinished poem, the series of tales named "Mari Magno" [...] "When he read them his voice faltered at times: like every poet, he was [italics]moved by his own pathos[end italics]."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Hugh Clough Manuscript: Unknown
George Meredith : 'Love in a Valley'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'In G. Meredith's first little volume he was delighted by the "Love in a Valley" (as printed in 1851: the text in later issues has been greatly changed)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On October 27th, 1886, he read aloud to me that piece of almost too terrible beauty, the "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," in which he has concentrated a wealth of thought and observance of life'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Ulysses
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'In Nov. 1888 I visited Aldworth shortly after death had suddenly carried off my dearly-loved adventurous brother [William] Gifford (September 30) at Montevideo [...] Tennyson now read to me the beautiful lines named "Ulysses" after the title of my brother's last narrative of travel: a commemoration the honour of which he did not live to enjoy.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Charles Johnson : A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
'A thousand thanks for Johnson who is a brick.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Ancient History
'As I was reading with Susan and Sophy today in Rollin's Grecian History it struck me, that when Mardonius offered Terms to the Athenians & Aristides rejected 'em; he stretched out his hands to the Sun, & appealing to that Luminary - [italics] doubtless as God of the Persians [italics] for what had he to do with the Sun in particular? he called upon him to revenge the Grecian Cause upon his Worshippers. These Bramin & Persees being here in England turns everybody's Head now like [italics] Clytie's [end italics] to the [italics] Sun [end italics]. We are all deep for the Time forsooth in Persian Mythology.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Thrale and her daughters Sophy and Susanna Print: Book
Francois Fenelon : [Letters]
'When one reads in Fenelon's last Letter to the Kings Confessor "Quand j'aurai l'honneur de voir Dieu, je lui demanderai cette Grace" - speaking of the Life & Health of Louis 14ze one thinks of the Fellow hanged for murder here some Years ago, on his Brother's Evidence: who sayd to the Clergyman that attended him - "When I see God Almighty I will not give my Brother Charles a good Character to him".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Charles Burney : 'St Peter and the Minstrel, a Tale'
'Doctor Burney has permitted me to write out this Imitation of an old French Tale written in the Year 1548. he has always had an astonishing Power of doing such Things. [the tale, of 'St Peterand the Minstrel' follows]
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Marco Capello : [sonnet about Piozzi]
'[Piozzi] brought me an Italian sonnet written in his praise by Marco Capello, which I instantly translated of course: but He prudent Creature, insisted on my burning it, as he said it wd inevitably get about the Town how [italics] he [end italics] was Praised, & how [italics] Mrs Thrale [end italics] translated & echoed his Praises'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Pope : Pastorals
'I have had put into my Hand the First Copy of Pope's Pastorals, with the gradual Alterations and Emendations marked in the Margin: that he should Attain to Perfection by repeated Touches, & slow Degrees, is not at all strange tho' 'tis curious; it is however odd enough that a Man should be so [italics] imbued [end italics] with the classicks as to write Love Verses from one Shepherd to another, because Virgil wote his Corydon & Alexis; The Third Pastoral runs all thro' with the name Thyrsis instead of Delia in the Book before me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: book
Alexander Pope : 'Third pastoral'
'I have had put into my Hand the First Copy of Pope's Pastorals, with the gradual Alterations and Emendations marked in the Margin: that he should Attain to Perfection by repeated Touches, & slow Degrees, is not at all strange tho' 'tis curious; it is however odd enough that a Man should be so [italics] imbued [end italics] with the classicks as to write Love Verses from one Shepherd to another, because Virgil wote his Corydon & Alexis; The Third Pastoral runs all thro' with the name Thyrsis instead of Delia in the Book before me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire : [a Song]
'Two days ago somebody shew'd me a Song written by the Duchess of Devonshire which began thus Boy! bring my Flow'rs and bind my Hair: I could but laugh to think how her Grace had been studying Translations from Horace till She adopted a Style wch [italics] to her [end italics] must appear strangely unnatural'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : Cecilia
'[Fanny Burney's] new Novel called "Cecilia" is the Picture of Life such as the Author sees it: while therefore this Mode of Life lasts, her Book will be of Value, as the Representation is astonishingly perfect: but as nothing in the Book is derived from Study, so it can have no Principle of duration - Burney's Cecilia is to Richardson's Clarissa - what a Camera Obscura in the Window of a London parlour, - is to a view of Venice by the clear Pencil of Canaletti [sic.]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Eloisa to Abelard
'I have heard that all the kept Mistresses read Pope's Eloisa with singular delight - 'tis a great Testimony to its Ingenuity; they are commonly very ignorant Women, & can only be pleased with it as it expresses strong Feelings of Nature & Passion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'What a strange Book is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning, Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence - 'tis printed in the Tatler; Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew. See page 277 of Burton.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Richard Savage : Wanderer, The
'What a strange Book is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning, Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence - 'tis printed in the Tatler; Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew. See page 277 of Burton.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Frances Burney : Cecilia
'Wyndham and Johnson were talking of Miss Burney's new Novel - 'Tis far superior to Fielding's, says Mr Johnson; her Characters are nicer discriminated, and less prominent, Fielding could describe a Horse or an Ass, but he never reached to a Mule.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
club members : The Suggestion Book
'Went to the Mechanics & then to the Yorick Club, not much in the Papers so I amused myself by looking through "The Suggestion Book" in which there were a great many sarcastic remarks some of which showed not over good feeling on the part of some of the members one to the other'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Manuscript: Codex
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Bishop Westcott to Hallam Tennyson: 'When "In Memoriam" appeared, I felt (as I feel if possible more strongly now) that the hope of man lies in the historic realization of the Gospel. I rejoiced in the Introduction, which appeared to me to be the mature summing up after an interval of the many strains of thought in the "Elegies." Now the stress of controversy is over, I think so still. As I look at my original copy of "In Memoriam," I recognise that what impressed me most was your father's splendid faith (in the face of the frankest acknowledgement of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual man as he offers himself for the fulfilment of his little part (LIV., LXXXI., LXXXII. and the closing stanzas). This faith has now largely entered into our common life, and it seems to me to express a lesson of the Gospel which the circumstances of all time encourage us to master.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Brooke Foss Westcott Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam
Bishop Westcott to Hallam Tennyson: 'When "In Memoriam" appeared, I felt (as I feel if possible more strongly now) that the hope of man lies in the historic realization of the Gospel. I rejoiced in the Introduction, which appeared to me to be the mature summing up after an interval of the many strains of thought in the "Elegies." Now the stress of controversy is over, I think so still. As I look at my original copy of "In Memoriam," I recognise that what impressed me most was your father's splendid faith (in the face of the frankest acknowledgement of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual man as he offers himself for the fulfilment of his little part (LIV., LXXXI., LXXXII. and the closing stanzas). This faith has now largely entered into our common life, and it seems to me to express a lesson of the Gospel which the circumstances of all time encourage us to master.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Brooke Foss Westcott Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Idylls of the King
John Ruskin to Alfred Tennyson, from Strasburg (1860): 'I have had the "Idylls" in my travelling desk ever since I could get them across the water, and have only not written about them because I could not quite make up my mind about that increased quietness of style [...] 'The four songs seem to me the jewels of the crown, and bits come every here and there, the fright of the maid for instance, and the "In the darkness o'er her fallen head," which seem to me finer than almost all you have done yet. Nevertheless I am not sure but I feel the art and finish in these poems a little more than I like to feel it [...] 'As a description of various nobleness and tenderness the book is without price: but I shall always wish it had been nobleness independent of a romantic condition of externals in general.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir John Herschel : 'Book I. of the Iliad translated in the Hexameter Metre'
'The note by my father, that originally headed his blank verse translation from the Iliad beginning 'He ceased, and sea-like roar'd the Trojan host, 'ran: "Some, and among these one at least of our best and greatest, have endeavoured to give us the Iliad in English hexameters, and by what appears to me their failure have gone far to prove the impossibility of the task [...]" [...] This was written after reading Sir John Herschel's "Book I. of the Iliad translated in the Hexameter Metre," Cornhill Magazine, May 1862.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : Preface, The Ring and the Book
From Alfred Tennyson's letter-diary to his family (1868): 'Nov. 21st. Browning read his Preface to us last night, full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways; doubtful whether it can ever be popular.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning
Alfred Tennyson : poem on the Holy Grail
From Alfred Tennyson's letter-diary to his family (1868): 'November. The Hollies, Clapham Common. I have sent the "Grail" to be [italics]printed[end italics] [...] I read it last night to Strahan and Pritchard, who professed themselves delighted.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
George Eliot : Adam Bede
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Scenes of Clerical Life
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Silas Marner
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Romola
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Edwin Drood
'Read nearly the whole of the day. Had four numbers of "Edwin Drood" & read them all, then in the evening went to the Yorick & read the fifth number ... I read the Australasian'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : Edwin Drood
'Read nearly the whole of the day. Had four numbers of "Edwin Drood" & read them all, then in the evening went to the Yorick & read the fifth number ... I read the Australasian'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Dickens : Edwin Drood
'Went to the Yorick in the evening & stayed there for some time reading the last number of Edwin Drood & some English Papers.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : School for Scandal
'Was pleased with Harry. This evening he read a scene with me from the School for Scandal & showed a good deal understanding'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Castieau Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : [ghost story]
'In the evening Polly was so deeply interested in a ghost story written by Lord Lytton & said to be the foundation of a "Strange Story" by that nobleman that she left everything go to the bad'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Polly Castieau Print: Unknown
Mark Lemon : Wait for the End
'Was to-night reading Lemon's Story of "Wait for the End" and waited myself for the end which I did not reach until after eleven o'clock though I did little more than skim the reading to get at the Plot & the "denouemont"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Unknown
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'After Muster read "Gil Blas" for a while, then played "Bezique" with Polly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'In the evening read "Gil Blas"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'In the evening I was very lazily inclined & sat over "Gil Blas" for some time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'Mustered in the afternoon & read "Gil Blas" till tea was ready. After tea went to "the Yorick", read for a while & chatted a little, then came away home'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : The Pirate
'Don't read noble old Fred's Pirate anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : unknown
'At that time Winifred's Derbyshire contemporary, the poet and novelist Thomas Moult, was editing a series of "Modern Writers on Modern Writers". When he invited her to contribute a volume and choose her own author, she selected Virginia Woolf, whose novels she had always admired, as a deliberate exercise in intellectual discipline.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : Good Housekeeping magazine "How to Enjoy Bad Health"
'But it was in a "Good Housekeeping" article on "How to Enjoy Bad Health" that she quoted the remarks with which he prefaced his announcement that she could not hope to live for more than two years.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
Winifred Holtby : Virginia Woolf
'In some respects this little work of criticism is the profoundest of Winifred's books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : Mandoa, Mandoa!
'"I am going to call attention in this department," it ran, "to the fact that the most informing - and upsetting - book to read to-day on the Abyssinian crisis is "Mandoa, Mandoa!" I wrote the review in "Books"; this summer I bought the English edition to re-read in the light of present events. Heavens, how well it stood the test!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: May Lamberton-Becker Print: Book
Alexander Pope : [translations of Homer and other works]
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield, The
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
Edward Young :
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
Charles Rollin : Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
Henry Newbolt :
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe :
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence :
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe :
'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas Print: Book
Thomas Edward Lawrence : Seven Pillars of Wisdom
'When "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" appeared at the end of July 1935, Winifred reviewed it in "Time and Tide".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'The weather was very wet all the evening so I was not able to go out & contented myself with reading Gil Blas till nearly bed-time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'In the evening I stayed at home & read "Gil Blas" till it was time to go to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Richard Harris Barham : Ingoldsby Legends
'I stayed at home amusing the children by reading a fairy tale to them. They seemed to take great interest inn the narrative & after I had finished it Flory went [smiling?] home & Sissy & Dotty went away good temperedly to bed. Read "Poor dog [Tray?]" out of ["Ingolitsby"?] to Harry & then sent him off to bed also'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : She stoops to conquer
'Played Bezique with Polly in the evening after I had read aloud three Acts of "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : She stoops to conquer
'In the evening took Polly out for a little walk after I had finished reading [aloud?] "She stoops to conquer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
'Began to-night to read again "The Vicar of Wakefield" & was delighted with its quaint easy style, read two or three chapters to Harry who was very attentive & in a sad state when I had to send him away to his lessons.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth
'Mustered & then lazily read The Cloister & the Hearth by Read until Polly came home to tea'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth
'Came home to tea & spent the evening reading "The Cloister & Hearth".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
'There was a little rain before I got back to the Gaol, then I had dinner & read the Pickwick Papers till about nine o'clock'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Memoirs of a physician
'The ladies did not retire till after eleven & then I laid myself down on the sofa & tried to sleep. The mosquitoes however would'ent allow anything of the kind & so after kicking about & turning over several scores of times I got up again, raised the gas & went on reading Dumas' "Memoirs of a Physician".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Marcus Clarke : The Jolly Beggars
'In the Evening went again to the Club, found no one there but Marcus Clarke & Shillingham. Had a chat with them. Marcus read a portion of a comic Opera he was writing to be called "The Jolly beggars". It was very funny but I should think better adapted for the pages of Punch than for the Stage'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Marcus Clarke Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Eve of Waterloo)
'While Darvall was with us this evening, Harry was anxious to show off his reading & so essayed a Piece. He was however so affected by mumps & Stammering, that his heart failed him & he declined to proceed. To please his mamma I read a dialogue with him. This he managed very well & so we read another then Harry was wound up & would have gone on forever, had I not let him gently down. I continued the entertainment by reading "The Execution of Montrose" & was by particular desire reading Byron's "Battle of Waterloo" when my sweet voice was closed by the arrival of Mr Hadley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'Did not go out but read a little Byron & then played Bezique with Polly till it was bed time'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'I read a little Byron for my own amusement then a number of Aesop's Fables for the amusement of the youngsters. The evening seemed quite short in consequence of the employment & I was still busy reading when Polly & Sissy got back'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Married Beneath Him
'Read a part of a very good novel, "Married beneath him". Heard Harry read & then played a Game of Bezique with Polly'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Peter Parley [pseud.] : [unknown]
'In the evening I read to the youngsters out of Peter [Parley?] & then heard Harry read a Page of Macauley. Went into the office & looked over some of the pages of my last year's Diary.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Guardian Angel
'I read a novel called the Guardian Angel to-day by the Author of "Elsie Vennor". It was quite up to the run of most novels & served to amuse me very well to-day. If it had not been for it & the papers I should have had dull times as I did'ent stir out at all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Frank Swinnerton : Shops and Houses
'I should have read S.& H. ["Shops and Houses"] earlier, despite J. & P. , but I couldn’t get the book off Marguerite. Conjugal unpleasantness became so acute on the point that I was obliged to buy a second copy. I think this book shows marked development on the part of the author. There are about 150 pp. as good as the very best few pages of On the Staircase, & some much better.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
R.S. Surtees : Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour
'I am reading 'Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour'. Rather good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
'I suffered unjustly in the eyes of the world with regard to that tale ['The Brownie of Bodsbeck'], which was looked on as an imitation of the tale of "Old Mortality", and a counterpart to that; whereas it was written long ere the tale of "Old Mortality" was heard of, and I well remember my chagrin on finding the ground, which I thought clear, pre-occupied before I could appear publicly on it, and that by such a redoubted champion.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Frank Swinnerton : September
re: 'September' 'This work is admirably conceived and just about perfectly constructed . . . It is incomparably the best novel by an author under 40 that I have read since 'The Rainbow', and of course vastly superior to that in technical qualities.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
R.H. Cromek : Remains Of Nithsdale And Galloway Song
'I was astonished at the luxuriousness of his [Allan Cunningham's] fancy. it was boundless; but it was the luxury of a rich garden overrun with rampant weeds. he was likewise then a great mannerist in expression, and no man could mistake his verses for those of any other man. I remember seeing some imitations of Ossian by him, which I thought exceedingly good; and it struck me that that style of composition was peculiarly fitted for his vast and fervent imagination. When Cromek's "Nithsdale and Galloway Relics" came to my hand, I at once discerned the strains of my friend, and I cannot describe with what sensations of delight I first heard Mr Morrison read the "Mermaid of Galloway", while at every verse I kept naming the author'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Richard Harris Barham : Ingoldsby Legends
'While Polly was away I read to Harry & Dotty one of the Ingoldsby's Legends'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'then returned home & amused myself for an hour reading "Gil Blas".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
George Moore : Avowals
'George Moore’s 'Avowals' is highly agreeable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Garvice : unknown
‘Wayfarer’ expresses the ignorance of himself and his friends about the late Charles Garvice . . . He brackets Charles Garvice and Mrs Florence Barclay together. This he should not do. Charles Garvice had an immensely greater hold on the public than Mrs, Barclay . . . The work of Charles Garvice has little artistic importance; but he was a thoroughly competent craftsman.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Florence Barclay : unknown
‘Wayfarer’ expresses the ignorance of himself and his friends about the late Charles Garvice . . . He brackets Charles Garvice and Mrs Florence Barclay together. This he should not do. Charles Garvice had an immensely greater hold on the public than Mrs, Barclay . . . The work of Charles Garvice has little artistic importance; but he was a thoroughly competent craftsman.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Moore : Avowals
'. . . There have been 2 supreme books since your regretted departure. G. Moore’s 'Avowals' and the letters of Chekhov . . .'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : School for Scandal
'Spent the evening reading with Harry & Sissy, both of these youngsters have some idea of dramatic reading & like very much to show off their capabilities. Sissy & I read a scene from the School for Scandal. Harry & I soared higher for we tried several Shaksperian (sic) pieces.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Castieau family Print: Book
George MacDonald : The Vicar's Daughter
'In the evening I sat down to read "the Vicar's Daughter" & got so interested in it that I began to read tit bits aloud. Polly who was very tired got interested also & pressed me to go on reading I did so till nearly ten o'clock then we had some toddy & went to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : The Count of Monte Cristo
'In the evening I played a game of bagatelle with Dotty & a game of Bezique with Sissy & with that & "Monte Christo" managed to get through the evening until Polly went to bed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book
Henri Frederic Amiel : Journal Intime
'it was during this year [1884] that she began her translation of Amiel's "Journal".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ward Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Miss Bretherton
'[letter to Mrs Ward from Mr Creighton] I have read "Miss Bretherton" with much interest. It was hardly fair on the book to know the plot beforehand, but I found myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the development of character was traced. The Nuneham scene, the death-bed and the final reconciliation were really touching and powerfully worked out. At the same time it is not a novel of my sort. I demand that I should have given me an entire slice of life, and that I should see the mutual interaction of a number of characters. Your interest centres entirely on one character: your characters all move in the same region of ideas, and that a narrow one.' [the critique continues at length; Creighton asks Mrs Ward] 'Have you read Sainte Beuve's solitary novel, "Volupte"? it is instructive reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Creighton Print: Book
Charles Augustin de Sainte-Beuve : Volupte
'[letter to Mrs Ward from Mr Creighton] I have read "Miss Bretherton" with much interest. It was hardly fair on the book to know the plot beforehand, but I found myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the development of character was traced. The Nuneham scene, the death-bed and the final reconciliation were really touching and powerfully worked out. At the same time it is not a novel of my sort. I demand that I should have given me an entire slice of life, and that I should see the mutual interaction of a number of characters. Your interest centres entirely on one character: your characters all move in the same region of ideas, and that a narrow one.' [the critique continues at length; Creighton asks Mrs Ward] 'Have you read Sainte Beuve's solitary novel, "Volupte"? it is instructive reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Creighton Print: Book
Étienne Pivert de Senancour :
'[from a letter from Mary Ward to her father] I have been reading Joubert's "Pensees" and "Correspondance" lately, with a view to the Amiel introduction. You would be charmed with the letters and some of the [italics] pensees [end italics] are extraordinarily acute. Now I am deep in Senancour, and for miscellaneous reading I have been getting through Horace's Epistles and dawdling a good deal over Shakespeare. My feeling as to him gets stronger and stronger, that he was, strictly speaking, a great poet, but not a great dramatist! [she discusses this at length, concluding] I have always felt it most strongly in Othello, and of course in the last act of Hamlet, which, in spite of the magnificent poetry in it, is surely a piece of dramatic bungling'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ward Print: Book
Henri Frederic Amiel : Journal Intime
'[letter from Mrs Ward's brother William Arnold] I served on a jury at the Assizes last week - two murder cases and general horrors. I sat next to a Mr Amiel - prounounced "Aymiell" - a worthy Manchester tradesman; no doubt his ancestor was a Huguenot refugee. I had one of your vols. in my pocket, and showed him the passage about the family. He was greatly interested, and borrowed it. Returned it next day with the remark that it was "too religious for him". Alas divine philosophy!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Amiel Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Robert Elsmere
'After reading the first volume [of Mrs Ward's "Robert Elsmere"] he [William Arnold] wrote to Mrs Arnold, "You may look forward to finding yourself the mother of a famous woman!".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Arnold Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Original Stories from Real Life
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 10-11 December 1791: 'As I have nothing else to say take a story I read yesterday as a true one which strikes me as an instance of more refined barbarity than any in the annals of cruelty – a prisoner in the dreary cells of the Bastile had familiarized a spider the only tenant except himself of the miserable spot. to a man secluded thus from the light of day & every living creature this reptile was a kind of mournful companion. the Keeper at length took notice of it & told the Governor – the Governor commanded him to tread upon it.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 31 May 1792: 'You understand music. As I am ignorant of the tune I beg you will practise "Lillabullero" to teach me. You see I have been reading Tristram Shandy & I want that whistle as bad as ever Toby did. Watsons Chemical Essay are [sic] my present study & I hope to practice a little chemistry at Oxford when I get there.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : Ode
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 2 July 1792: '...& now in plain sober prose I am much obliged to you for your ode which I like very much. but why will you translate? It is a servile employment & not worthy of you. You want a metre you say for your next. You know Parnells Fairy tale? but I am the worst person to apply to as all my odes are irregular except Ignorance which you have. Gray's Spring & drownd cat are pretty I think — but I am not regular myself & detest regularity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Thomas Gray Gray : Ode on the Spring
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 2 July 1792: '...& now in plain sober prose I am much obliged to you for your ode which I like very much. but why will you translate? It is a servile employment & not worthy of you. You want a metre you say for your next. You know Parnells Fairy tale? but I am the worst person to apply to as all my odes are irregular except Ignorance which you have. Gray's Spring & drownd cat are pretty I think — but I am not regular myself & detest regularity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
Thomas Gray Gray : Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 2 July 1792: '...& now in plain sober prose I am much obliged to you for your ode which I like very much. but why will you translate? It is a servile employment & not worthy of you. You want a metre you say for your next. You know Parnells Fairy tale? but I am the worst person to apply to as all my odes are irregular except Ignorance which you have. Gray's Spring & drownd cat are pretty I think — but I am not regular myself & detest regularity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
Henry Evans Holder : Miscellaneous Poems
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 21 October 1792: 'Some poems have been lately printed here by the Revd. E Holder written between the age of 17 & 20. I only mention them as he happens to have translated two pieces one which you sent me & the other I think you have seen translated by your humble servant & an original by Bunbury & another of your own. Integer vitæ etc is the one. Gray on the grande Chartreuse the other. & seriously the printed ones are the worst of all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : Translation of Horace, Odes, 2:14
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 December 1792: 'I have been reading Eheu fugaces & your translation this moment together. the three last stanzas are certainly best but altogether it is in my opinion very good — tho ‘th’unpardoning God’ I do not like the epithet is rather prosaic — (you see I will point out what appears to me as faulty) a better may easily be found. & now as I have picked your bone take mine to pick cum notis Sancti Basilii.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Mary Augusta Ward : Robert Elsmere
'Matthew Arnold wrote from Wilton, the Pembrokes' house, a week before his death (which occurred on April 15), that he found all the guests there reading or intending to read it [Mrs Ward's Robert Elsmere], and added, "George Russell, who was staying at Ashton Clinton with Gladstone, says it is all true about his interest in the book. He talked of it incessantly and said he thought he should review it for Knowles".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: guests at Wilton Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Robert Elsmere
'The book ["Robert Elsmere"] had moved him [Gladstone] prfoundly and he felt impelled to combat the all too dangerous conclusions to which it pointed. "Mamma and I", he wrote to his daughter in March, "are each of us still separately engaged in a death grapple with "Robert Elsmere". I complained of some of the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this. It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous book". And to Lord Acton he wrote: "It is not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gladstone Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Robert Elsmere
'The book ["Robert Elsmere"] had moved him [Gladstone] prfoundly and he felt impelled to combat the all too dangerous conclusions to which it pointed. "Mamma and I", he wrote to his daughter in March, "are each of us still separately engaged in a death grapple with "Robert Elsmere". I complained of some of the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this. It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous book". And to Lord Acton he wrote: "It is not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Gladstone Print: Book
Mark Pattison : Memoirs
'[Mrs Ward's report of a conversation with Gladstone] 'I spoke of Pattison's autobiography as illustrating Newman's hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison's religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison's last 'Confession of Faith', which Mrs Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gladstone Print: Book
Mark Pattison : Memoirs
'[Mrs Ward's report of a conversation with Gladstone] 'I spoke of Pattison's autobiography as illustrating Newman's hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison's religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison's last 'Confession of Faith', which Mrs Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Mark Pattison : 'Confession of Faith'
'[Mrs Ward's report of a conversation with Gladstone] 'I spoke of Pattison's autobiography as illustrating Newman's hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison's religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison's last 'Confession of Faith', which Mrs Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Manuscript: Unknown
Henri Frederic Amiel : Journal Intime
'[letter from Mrs Ward to Gladstone] Thank you very much for the volume of "Gleanings" with its gracious inscription. I have read the article you point out to me with the greatest interest, and shall do the same with the others. Does not the difference between us on the question of sin come very much to this - that to you the great fact of the world and in this history of man, is [italics] sin [end italics] - to me, [italics] progress [end italics]? I remember Amiel somewhere speaks of the distinction as marking off two classes of thought, two orders of temperament.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : David Grieve
'[letter from T.H. Huxley to Mrs Ward] You will think I have taken my time about thanking you for "David Grieve"; but a virtuous resolution to stick to a piece of work I have had on hand for a long time intefered with my finishing it before last night. The temptation was severe, and as I do not often stick to virtuous resolutions under these circumstances, I parade the fact. I think the account of the Parisian episode of David's life the strongest thing you have done yet. it is alive -every word of it - and without note or comment produces its ethical effect after the manner of that "gifted authoress", Dame Nature, who never moralizes'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Henry Huxley Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : David Grieve
'[letter to Mrs Ward from Edward Burne-Jones] The book has just come - and to my pride and delight with such a pretty autograph: so that to-day I am mightily set up. I cannot tell you how comforting the words read to me - and how sunny they have made this grey day'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Burne Jones Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Bessie Costrell
'[letter from Henry James to Mrs Ward] I think the tale very straightforward and powerful - very direct and vivid, full of the real and the [italics] juste [end italics]. I like your unelambicated rustics - they are a tremendous rest after Hardy's - and the infallibility of your feeling for village life. Likewise I heartily hope you will labour in this field and farm again. [italics] But [end italics] I won't pretend to agree with one or two declarations that have been wafted to me to the effect that this little tale is the best thing you've done". It has even been murmured to me that [italics] you [end italics] think so. This I don't believe, and at any rate I find, for myself, your best in your deallings with [italics] data [end italics] less simple, on a plan less simple.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin (Madame de Genlis) : Theatre de l'Education
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 12-13 January 1793: 'Whether or not man has the stain of original sin I leave to theologians & metaphysicians. That education tends to give it him I do not even doubt. Rousseau's plan is too visionary — it supposes such unremitted attention in the tutor & such natural virtue in the pupil that I doubt its practability of this however when we read Emilius (an occupation I look forward to with pleasure) we will freely determine. Madame Brulerck (late Genlis) appears to me to have struck out a path equally new & excellent — the Emilius of L Homme de la Nature existed only in his imagination. but the two sons of Phillipe Egalitè are living proofs of her capacity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
Mary Augusta Ward : Bessie Costrell
'[letter from Mr Morley to Mrs Ward] It was most pleasant to me to receive the little volume ["Bessie Costrell"] in its pretty dress, and with the friendly dedication. It will take its place among my personal treasures, and I am truly grateful to you for thinking of me. The story is full of interest to me, and in the vein of a true realism, humanising instead of brutalising. The "severity" of the poor dead woman's look, and the whole of that page, redeems with a note of just pity all the sordid elements'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Morley Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : Ode
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 16-21 January 1793: 'Of your ode a few words before I set to transcribing. Before I read the last half sheet I wished you to lengthen it for only three authors are mentioned & only Shakespear of the first rank — Nature had so little to do with Dryden that I wonder at your ranking him with the Swan of Avon — Milton Spenser — Pope — Akenside Collins — Churchill — Beaumont — Fletcher would each afford a fine scope for your fancy & will you refuse one stanza to deck the unnoted grave of Chatterton? When this fault is noticed I have noticed all. If however (as I hope) you mean to lengthen it I would not wish you to fetter yourself in the chains of precedent — regular lyrics are like despotic monarchies they look stately but lose all the energy of freedom.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Edward Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 16-21 January 1793: 'I do not know in the annals of history & barbarity any character which I so much abhor as that of the vain the vile Augustus — the death of Cicero the banishment of Ovid — the black boys & the incestuous daughter the total suppression of liberty these are blots which all the art of Flattery cannot hide from the eye of Reason. “With the same hand & probably with the same frame of mind did he sign the proscription of Cicero & the pardon of Cinna” — you remember Gibbons remark upon Augustuss appearance at the banquet in that very elegant piece of the virtuous Julian.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Sir George Tressady
'[letter from Beatrice Webb to Mrs Ward about her novel "Sir George Tressady"] the story is very touching and you have an indescribable power of making your readers sympathise with all your characters, even with Letty and her unlovely mother-in-law. Of course, as a strict utilitarian, I am inclined to estimate the book more in its character of treatise than as a novel. From this point of view it is the most useful piece of work that has been done for many a long day. You have managed to give the arguments for and against factory legslation with admirable lucidity and picturesqueness - in a way that will make them comprehensible to the ordinary person without any technical knowledge'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Beatrice Webb Print: Book
George Richards : Songs of the Aboriginal Bards of Britain
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 25 January - 8 February 1793: 'The man who gaind the last English verse prize in Oxford has since published two odes which he calls Songs of the Aboriginal Britains — of these the Review speaks very well & yet to me who as you know have written upon the same plan these odes appear ill planned & ill executed — some metaphors are good but young Wynns observation is just that he should have mistaken the odes for burlesque.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : The Man of Feeling
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 4-20 April 1793: 'I have lately read the Man of Feeling — if you have never yet read it — do now from my recommendation — few books have ever pleasd me so painfully or so much — it is very strange that man should be delighted with the highest pain that can be produced — I even begin to think that both pain & pleasure exist only in idea but this must not be affirmed, the first twitch of the toothache or retrospective glance will undeceive me with a vengeance. It is Mackenzies writing if I am not mistaken the author of Julia de Roubigne & La Roche & Louisa Venoni in the Mirror.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Lord Byron : Don Juan
'Byron was a great genius. 'Don' Juan is a terrific work. But there is scarcely a page of it which does not show that an artistic conscience was not Byron’s strong point. . . . Not long since I re-read Quentin Durward. What a book of hasty expedients, adroit evasions of difficulties, and artistic ‘slimness’. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
'Byron was a great genius. 'Don' Juan is a terrific work. But there is scarcely a page of it which does not show that an artistic conscience was not Byron’s strong point. . . . Not long since I re-read 'Quentin Durward'. What a book of hasty expedients, adroit evasions of difficulties, and artistic ‘slimness’.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Mary Berenson : [article on C18th architecture]
'Mrs Mary Berenson’s article on eighteenth century architecture in Spain most interestingly illustrates a principle which is capable of wide application. Our attitude towards architecture is far too much dominated by the aesthetic canons of the past.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Rhodes : [Examination of the trial of a Christian]
[unsure if reading or writing?] 'then I wrett the most part of an examenation or triall of a christian, framed by Mr Rhodes'.
UnknownCentury: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby
Arthur Conan Doyle : The British Campaign in France and Flanders
'I do not agree with you as to Gibbs’ book. . . . I have not yet seen a good war book. Doyle if course is ridiculous. I am sending you a copy of 'Polite Farces' by this post, It is no good, but as you want it you shall have it. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Gifforde : Sermons upon the Songe of Salomon
'After praier in the morninge, I, beinge not well, did heare Mr Rhodes read of Gyffard upon the songe of Sallemon: sone after I went to breakfast'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'after I had supped, I reed of grenhame, and se went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'and reed of Granhame tell supper time'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
George Gifforde : Sermons upon the Songe of Salomon
'and after that I walked, and reed a sarmon of Geferd vpon the song of Salomon'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid I
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856: 'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Virgil : Eclogues I
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856: 'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Alexander Pope : translations from Homer
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856: 'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Charles Long and Lord Mulgrave : letters to Lord Lonsdale
John Wilson Croker to his wife, 28 July 1850: 'After dinner I read some of the letters written by Charles Long and Lord Mulgrave to the late Lord Lonsdale about the time I came into political life, which of course amused me. Lord Mulgrave writes to Lord Lonsdale, in October, 1809, to say that he had written to offer the Secretary of the Admiralty "to Mr. Croker who was active, quick, and intelligent, and who might go off to Canning if he were not attended to." In this last point, at least, Lord Mulgrave was mistaken, for before the offer was made me, I had already answered Mr Canning that I could not take his view of the differences in the Cabinet.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
Gervase Babington : [unknown]
'after, I walked a while, and read of Babington, and then went to supper'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
'a member of the Ursuline Community at Ash' : A Sketch of Irish History
Robert Peel to John Wilson Croker [undated], to accompany 'a collection of choice documents' on Ireland: 'The little volume called "A Sketch of Irish History" is a more infamous work than Cox's magazine [Irish nationalist publication described earlier in letter, a copy of which also enclosed]. I have the volumes from which it contains some excerpta. They contain a regular history of Ireland, and on the first page are these words, printed at the bottom, "Intended chiefly for the Young Ladies educated at the Ursuline Convents. By a member of the Ursuline Community at Ash." 'This work is written with great care -- most mischievous and inflammatory -- and yet it is thought to be impossible to convict the printer for libel. [...] 'Perhaps the most noteworthy and extraordinary document of all is the letter which I send you. It was written by a priest in Longford to one of his flock, whom he suspected of giving information. He admitted the writing of it to Major Wiles, a police magistrate, but he has not been convicted yet, and therefore names must not be used. Pray read it, it is very curious -- an admirable example of the purposes for which the priests of Ireland exert their spiritual influence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Peel Print: Book
'a priest at Longford' : letter to parishioner
Robert Peel to John Wilson Croker [undated], to accompany 'a collection of choice documents' on Ireland: 'The little volume called "A Sketch of Irish History" is a more infamous work than Cox's magazine [Irish nationalist publication described earlier in letter, a copy of which also enclosed]. I have the volumes from which it contains some excerpta. They contain a regular history of Ireland, and on the first page are these words, printed at the bottom, "Intended chiefly for the Young Ladies educated at the Ursuline Convents. By a member of the Ursuline Community at Ash." 'This work is written with great care -- most mischievous and inflammatory -- and yet it is thought to be impossible to convict the printer for libel. [...] 'Perhaps the most noteworthy and extraordinary document of all is the letter which I send you. It was written by a priest in Longford to one of his flock, whom he suspected of giving information. He admitted the writing of it to Major Wiles, a police magistrate, but he has not been convicted yet, and therefore names must not be used. Pray read it, it is very curious -- an admirable example of the purposes for which the priests of Ireland exert their spiritual influence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Peel Manuscript: Letter
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold III
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 18 September 1816: 'I have read with great pleasure the poem you lent me [Childe Harold III]. It is written with great vigour, and the descriptive part is peculiarly to my taste, for I am fond of realities, even to the extent of being fond of localities. A spot of ground a yard square, a rock, a hillock, on which some great achievement has been performed, or to which any recollections of interest attach, excite my feelings more than all the monuments of art [...] But I did not read with equal pleasure a note or two which reflects [sic] on the Bourbon family. What has a poet who writes for immortality, to do with the little temporary passions of political parties? [...] I wish you could persuade Lord Byron to leave out these two or three lines of prose, which will make thousands dissatisfied with his glorious poetry [comments further in defence of French royal family] [...] pray use your influence on this point. As to the poem itself, except a word or two suggested by Mr. Giffard, I do not think anything can be altered for the better.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
George Gordon, Lord Byron :
John Wilson Croker to the Rev. George Croly, 28 November 1816: 'Though I have little time to read poetry,and notwithstanding all the charms of fashion, I read more of Pope and Dryden than I do of even Scott and Byron; that is to say, I do not return to Scott and Byron with the same regular appetite that I do to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Walter Scott :
John Wilson Croker to the Rev. George Croly, 28 November 1816: 'Though I have little time to read poetry,and notwithstanding all the charms of fashion, I read more of Pope and Dryden than I do of even Scott and Byron; that is to say, I do not return to Scott and Byron with the same regular appetite that I do to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Alexander Pope :
John Wilson Croker to the Rev. George Croly, 28 November 1816: 'Though I have little time to read poetry,and notwithstanding all the charms of fashion, I read more of Pope and Dryden than I do of even Scott and Byron; that is to say, I do not return to Scott and Byron with the same regular appetite that I do to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Mrs Delany : letter containing account of Royal visit
From John Wilson Croker's Journal of 1818: 'December 16th. -- Before dinner His Royal Highness told me he had been reading Walter Scott's edition of Swift, which, and particularly the correspondence, amused him; and above all he was surprised to find Dr. Sheridan's character to be so exactly that of poor Sheridan. He said he thought the best letters were Lord Bolingbroke's [...] I had shown H.R.H. in the morning, a copy of a letter written 40 years ago by Mrs. Delany (widow of the Dr. Swift's friend) giving an account of a visit of the Royal family to Bulstrode, in which H.R.H. was mentioned; he was pleased at this revival of early reflections, and assured me every word of the account was true.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Augustus Frederick Prince of Wales Manuscript: Letter, Copied.
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'and then I hard Margaret Rhodes reed of Mr Grenhm'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Rhodes Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'after, I hard Mr Rhodes Read of Grenhame, and then I praied and so went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'after, I wrought, and hard Mr Rhodes read of Mr Grenhame, and so praied priuatly and then went to bed'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Letter to the Editor of My Grandmother's Review'
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 15 September 1819: 'Thank you for the perusal of the letter; it is not very good, but it will vex these old women of British critics, which is perhaps all the author intended. I told you from the first moment that I read "Don Juan," that your fears had exaggerated its danger. I say nothing about what might have been suppressed; but if you had published "Don Juan" without hesitation or asterisks, nobody would ever have thought worse of it than as a larger Beppo, gay and lively and a little loose. Some persons would have seen a strain of satire running beneath the gay surface, and might have been vexed or pleased according to their temper; but there would have been no outcry against the publisher or author.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'and hard Auerill reed of Grenham, and then praied'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Euerill Aske Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Don Juan: cantos I-II
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 18 July 1819: 'I am agreeably disappointed by finding "Don Juan" very little offensive. It is by no means worse than "Childe Harold," which it resembles as comedy does tragedy. There is a prodigious power of versification in it, and a great deal of very good pleasantry. There is also some magnificent poetry, and the shipwreck, though too long, and in parts very disgusting, is on the whole finely described [...] on the score of morality, I confess it seems a more innocent production than "Childe Harold." What "Don Juan" may become by-and-bye I cannot foresee, but at present I had rather a son of mine were Don Juan than, I think, any other of Lord Byron's heroes. Heaven grant he may never resemble any of them.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Horace Walpole : letters to Lord Hertford
Lord Liverpool to John Wilson Croker, 23 August 1824: 'I am very much obliged to you for the specimen which you have sent me of Horace Walpole's letters to Lord Hertford, which I return. I have been very much amused by it, but [...] I believe Horace Walpole to have been as bad a man as ever lived; I cannot call him a violent party man, he had not virtue enough to be so; he was the most sensuous and selfish of mortals [comments further].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool
T. Crofton Croker : Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (vol. 1)
Walter Scott to John Wilson Croker, 26 March 1826: 'I enclose a letter for your funny namesake and kinsman, whose work entertains me very much.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : Sir George Tressady
'[Letter from Rudyard Kipling to Mrs Ward] I am delighted to have "Sir George Tressady" from your hand. I have followed him from month to month with the liveliest wonder as to how the inevitable smash in his affairs was to fall, and now that I have read the tale as a whole I see that of course there was but one way. Like all human books it has the unpleasant power of making you think and bother as one only bothers over real folk: but how splendidly you have done the lighter relief-work!'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rudyard Kipling Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'[At Mrs Ward's Passmore Edwards Settlement] One class, too, she kept as her very own - a weekly reading aloud for boys between eleven and fourteen, in the course of which she read them a great deal of Stevenson and Kipling'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'[At Mrs Ward's Passmore Edwards Settlement] One class, too, she kept as her very own - a weekly reading aloud for boys between eleven and fourteen, in the course of which she read them a great deal of Stevenson and Kipling'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand :
'She had been reading much of Chateaubriand and Mme de Beaumont during the winter, and had felt her imagination kindled by the relationship between the two'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont :
'She had been reading much of Chateaubriand and Mme de Beaumont during the winter, and had felt her imagination kindled by the relationship between the two'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'and from thence came home and reed of Grenhame, and hard Megg Rhodes read'
Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book
Alfred von Harnack :
'[letter from Mrs Ward to her husband describing an inept Cardinal's lack of knowledge about the crypt of St Peters, Rome] I said not a word - and came home and read Harnack!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : [prefaces to Haworth edition of the Brontes' novels]
'[letter from M. Jusserand to Mrs Ward] 'I spent yesternight a most charming evening reading your essay [on the Brontes]. Shall I confess that I feel with Kingsley, having had a similar experience. I could never go beyond the terrible beginning of "Shirley" - and yet I tried and did my best, and the book remains unread, and I the more sorry as my copy does not belong to me, but to Lady Jersey, who charged me to return it when I had finished reading. I really tried earnestly: I took the volume with me on several occasions; it has seen, I am sure, as many lands as wise Ulysses, having crossed the Mediterranean more than once and visited Assuan. But there it is, and I see from my writing-table its threatening green cloth and awful back, with plenty of repulsive persons within. And yet I [italics] can [end italics] read. I have read with delight and unflagging interest Vol. I in-folio of the Rolls of Parliament, without missing a line. "Shirley", I cannot'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: M. Jusserand Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Shirley
'[letter from M. Jusserand to Mrs Ward] 'I spent yesternight a most charming evening reading your essay [on the Brontes]. Shall I confess that I feel with Kingsley, having had a similar experience. I could never go beyond the terrible beginning of "Shirley" - and yet I tried and did my best, and the book remains unread, and I the more sorry as my copy does not belong to me, but to Lady Jerseyu, who charged me to return it when I had finished reading. I really tried earnestly: I took the volume with me on several occasions; it has seen, I am sure, as many lands as wise Ulysses, having crossed the Mediterranean more than once and visited Assuan. But there it is, and I see from my writing-table its threatening green cloth and awful back, with plenty of repulsive persons within. And yet I [italics] can [end italics] read. I have read with delight and unflagging interest Vol. I in-folio of the Rolls of Parliament, without missing a line. "Shirley", I cannot'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: M. Jusserand Print: Book
George Meredith :
'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Arnold Print: Book
George Meredith :
'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
George Meredith : Richard Feverel
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
George Meredith : Egoist, The
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
George Meredith : Vittoria
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
George Meredith : Beauchamp's Career
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Herbert Spencer :
'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Frederick Marryat : Masterman Ready
'[report by Mrs Ward of the library at her Passmore Edwards Settlement] boys were sitting hunched up over "Masterman Ready", or the ever-adored "Robinson Crusoe"; girls were deep in "Anderson's [sic] Fairy Tales" or "The Cuckoo Clock", the little ones were reading Mr Stead's "Books for the Bairns" or looking at pictures'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: boys at the Passmore Edwards Settlement Print: Book
Hans Christian Andersen : Fairytales
'[report by Mrs Ward of the library at her Passmore Edwards Settlement] boys were sitting hunched up over "Masterman Ready", or the ever-adored "Robinson Crusoe"; girls were deep in "Anderson's [sic] Fairy Tales" or "The Cuckoo Clock", the little ones were reading Mr Stead's "Books for the Bairns" or looking at pictures'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: girls at the Passmore Edwards Settlement Print: Book
Julia Ward Howe : Reminiscences
'[in Boston Mrs Ward] met the fine old veteran, Mrs Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", who had lately brought out her memoirs. Mrs Ward had been somewhat wickedly amused by certain passages in the latter: "Imagine Mrs Ward Howe declaring in public that a poem of hers, which a critic had declared to be in 'pitiable hexameters' (English of course) was not 'in hexameters at all - it was in pentameters of my own make - I never followed any special school or rule!' - I have been gurgling over that in bed this morning".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
George Bancroft : History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.
'[letter from Mrs Ward] I have been reading Bancroft this morning, and shall read G.O.T. tonight. We [italics] were [end italics] fools! - but really, I rather agree with H.G. Wells that they make too much fuss about it! [separation from Britain]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : 'Let women say'
'[letter from Lord Bryce to Mrs Ward] Thank you for your admirable article and for the copy of the Memorial, an effective repy to that of the Suffragist ladies'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve :
'[Mrs Ward's average day at Stocks began] at 5.30 a.m, with the reading of Greek, or writing of letters, or much reading, for the reading of many books was still her greatest solace and delight. "For reading, I have been deep in Emile Faguet's "Dix-huitieme siecle", she wrote to Mrs Creighton in August, 1908, "comparing some of the essays in it with Sainte-Beuve, the reactionary with the Liberal; reading Raleigh's Wordsworth, and Homer and Horace as usual. If I could only give three straight months to Greek now I should be able to read most things easily, but I never get time enough - and there are breaks when one forgets what one knew before". Greek literature meant more and more to her as the years went on, and though she could give so little time to it, the half-hour before breakfast which she devoted, with her husband, to Homer, or Euripides, or the "Agamemnon", became gradually more precious to her than any other fraction of the day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta ward Print: Book
Walter Raleigh : Wordsworth
'[Mrs Ward's average day at Stocks began] at 5.30 a.m, with the reading of Greek, or writing of letters, or much reading, for the reading of many books was still her greatest solace and delight. "For reading, I have been deep in Emile Faguet's "Dix-huitieme siecle", she wrote to Mrs Creighton in August, 1908, "comparing some of the essays in it with Sainte-Beuve, the reactionary with the Liberal; reading Raleigh's Wordsworth, and Homer and Horace as usual. If I could only give three straight months to Greek now I should be able to read most things easily, but I never get time enough - and there are breaks when one forgets what one knew before". Greek literature meant more and more to her as the years went on, and though she could give so little time to it, the half-hour before breakfast which she devoted, with her husband, to Homer, or Euripides, or the "Agamemnon", became gradually more precious to her than any other fraction of the day'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta ward Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : David Grieve
'[letter from Mrs Ward to Reginald Smith] I heard such pleasing things about "David [Grieve]" from Lord Arran in Dublin the other day. He knows it absolutely by heart, and he says that when he was campaigning in South Africa two battered copies of "David" were read to pieces by him and his brother-officers, and every night they discussed it round the camp fires'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : David Grieve
'[letter from Mrs Ward to Reginald Smith] I heard such pleasing things about "David [Grieve]" from Lord Arran in Dublin the other day. He knows it absolutely by heart, and he says that when he was campaigning in South Africa two battered copies of "David" were read to pieces by him and his brother-officers, and every night they discussed it round the camp fires'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: army officers Print: Book
George Tyrrell :
'She was deep in the writings of Father Tyrrel, of Bergson and of William James during these years'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Henri Bergson :
'She was deep in the writings of Father Tyrrel, of Bergson and of William James during these years'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book
Courtney Melmoth [pseud.] : Liberal Opinions, upon Animals, Man, and Providence
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 12-15 November 1793: 'I have been reading Courtney Melmoths Liberal Opinions to-day. I know not if you have ever read the book — but it contains the history of Benignus — some parts of which pleasd me much. a young man sets out in life with this principle. To be good is to be happy. of course he becomes miserable by practising or rather by attempting to practise theoretical principles of universal benevolence. Men of feeling (I hate to use the word but no other expresses the meaning) men of feeling are exposed to a thousand pangs which the fool escapes because his faculties are too gross to comprehend them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Martin Scriblerus [pseud.] : Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 22 November - 2 December 1793: 'Your plan of a general satire I am ready to partake when you please. Pope Swift & Atterbury you know once attempted it but malevolence intruded into the design & Martinus Scriblerus bore too strong a resemblance to Dr Woodward. Swifts part is more levelld at follies than at vice. establish the empire of Justice & folly & vice will be annihilated together. draw out your plan & send it me — if you have resolution for so arduous a task.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Horace Walpole Bedford : MS verses
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 11 December 1793: 'Let me turn to more chearful subjects. your verses were particularly good — & they have the additional merit of novelty in manner & metre. write more. fame is a very late consideration — but let us remember that Pope acquired independance by his Homer. let me say Horace that Popes abilities were not above comparison. undertake some great work. it will take up your attention certainly — you certainly have abilities for any work. chuse either epic or a metrical romance. & in the intervals exercise yourself in the lower ranks for with us lyrics are very subordinate.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Cesare Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana : Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (On Crimes and Punishments)
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 12-15 December 1793: 'Lucan & Beccaria dei delitti & delle pene are my pocket companions. the republican Bard & the philosopher of humanity. Lucan pleases me more than any author in despite of his numerous faults. his ninth book is wonderful & when I say that he has not fallen short of Cato in his character of that illustrious stoic panegyric can go no farther. the character of Erictho is wonderfully imagined. how would Lucan have excelled himself in the death of Cato & of Caesar! I will venture to assert that had he finishd his Pharsalia — it would have been the noblest monument of human genius. Mays supplement disappointed me. I expected more from his abilities — forgetting that the sycophant of a Stuart was ill qualified to handle the pen of Lucan. Beccaria pleases me much. I had long been self-convinced that the punishment of death was as improper as inhuman. Godwin carries this idea farther. so far I agree with him that society makes the crime & then punishes it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Henry Headley : Select Beauties of Ancient English poetry
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 22-24 December 1793: 'Monday morning. of last nights verses I have two things to say. the metre is that of Ph. Fletchers purple island. the specimens of the poem in Headleys selection & Warton are beautiful — you promised me some information relative to a late edition. the other remark is that two more letters will probably grow out of this. the last stanza has given birth to a train of thoughts which wait your next for maturity. your last letter I found on my return from Bath — I had prolonged my stay there to enjoy Lovells company. you know the no-ceremony I stand upon when I wish to make a friend — it may be singular but I am sure to me singularly fortunate. as a poet in some walks I do not know his equal — in the plaintive & soft kinds — elegy & sonnet for instance but this is not his only merit — epistles & various other species he has handled with peculiar delicacy. I do not scruple to say that for elegance & simplicity of versification I know no Author in our language that surpasses him. most probably we shall soon publish together.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Lovell : verses
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 22-24 December 1793: 'Monday morning. of last nights verses I have two things to say. the metre is that of Ph. Fletchers purple island. the specimens of the poem in Headleys selection & Warton are beautiful — you promised me some information relative to a late edition. the other remark is that two more letters will probably grow out of this. the last stanza has given birth to a train of thoughts which wait your next for maturity. your last letter I found on my return from Bath — I had prolonged my stay there to enjoy Lovells company. you know the no-ceremony I stand upon when I wish to make a friend — it may be singular but I am sure to me singularly fortunate. as a poet in some walks I do not know his equal — in the plaintive & soft kinds — elegy & sonnet for instance but this is not his only merit — epistles & various other species he has handled with peculiar delicacy. I do not scruple to say that for elegance & simplicity of versification I know no Author in our language that surpasses him. most probably we shall soon publish together.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey
Frank Sayers : Ode to Aurora
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c 26 December 1793: 'I take Milton to have introduced this kind of alcaics into the English language in his translation of Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa &c. it is since used most elegantly by Collins Mrs Barbauld — in the gent. of Devon & Cornwalls poems — & by my favourite Dr Sayers — so here I have strong authority.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Mark Akenside : Pleasures of the Imagination
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 30-31 December 1793: 'Akenside & Lucan are my pocket companions. you would be astonishd at the number of volumes I have read in this manner. it is very seldom that I am without a book in my pocket. & the half & quarters of hours wasted so often in waiting amount to a great deal in the year. ten to one but I read all the way to Bath & should the sun shine it makes glad the heart of man spout vociferously to the edification of all the stage coachmen. this however only happens in abstraction.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Richard Glover : Boadicia
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 24 January - 18 February 1794: '& now to literary subjects. Glover has written the two Tragedies of Boadicea & Medea. in the first I see but one fault it is that the Romans are treated too respectfully — the remark has been made by abler critics & will be confirmd by every one who reads the drama. in Medea he has introduced blank lyric but confined them to Iambics & Trochaics. I speak from memory but think it is right. this is all that I have seen of Glovers.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Richard Glover : Medea
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 24 January - 18 February 1794: '& now to literary subjects. Glover has written the two Tragedies of Boadicea & Medea. in the first I see but one fault it is that the Romans are treated too respectfully — the remark has been made by abler critics & will be confirmd by every one who reads the drama. in Medea he has introduced blank lyric but confined them to Iambics & Trochaics. I speak from memory but think it is right. this is all that I have seen of Glovers.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Richard Glover : Leonidas
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 24 January - 18 February 1794: 'The Leonidas is a very fine poem in my opinion. J. Warton says it is written with the simplicity of an antient; when Glover wrote that simplicity of diction was the fashion — a more vitiated taste prevails at present, since Johnson sonorized our prose & the imitators of Collins & Gray loaded our poetry with awkard imagery & cumbrous metaphor. into this meretricious stile I know myself frequently to have fallen & am pleased to see myself daily reclaiming. simplicity is all in all. you will read the epics of Glover with renewed pleasure upon every perusal.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : translations and verses
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 11-18 May 1794: 'Your Anacreon & Æschylus please me much — unluckily I have neither the one nor the other in the original — & let me add do not want them with such spirited translations. I will however read them as you desire. in your lines ‘Harder than the pointed spear’ the word harder strike me as inappropriate. does the Greek signify the same? something like resistless as the pointed spear, would be more consonant to the intended meaning — your ode Quique pii vates is with me but would be unfair to fill up my letter with transcribing your verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Horace Walpole Bedford : Ode to Indolence
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 7 June 1794: 'In return for your ode to Indolence I know nothing better than these strains to her eldest born. they immortalize a man who is the ne plus ultra of folly.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Allen : Ludi Scenici (unpublished)
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 20-21 July 1794: 'When Coleridges work is published you will see a Latin Poem of Allens which did not gain the praise. the subject Ludi Scenici. of the execution you will judge for my own part I will not scruple to pronounce it very excellent. Coleridge means to translate it. he won the Greek Ode at Cambridge & I have promisd to translate it for his work, so you will have some memorial of us all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Ode on the slave trade
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 20-21 July 1794: 'When Coleridges work is published you will see a Latin Poem of Allens which did not gain the praise. the subject Ludi Scenici. of the execution you will judge for my own part I will not scruple to pronounce it very excellent. Coleridge means to translate it. he won the Greek Ode at Cambridge & I have promisd to translate it for his work, so you will have some memorial of us all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : Ode
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 21 August 1794: 'When your ode reachd me it reminded me of neglect & I blushed as I read.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey (ed.) : The Flagellant
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8-9 February 1795: 'I have been reading the four first numbers of the Flagellant — they are all I possess — my dearest Grosvenor they have recalled past times forcibly to my mind...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Baxter : letter
'This [i.e. letter] had been lying a long while. I must send it off in proof I didn’t quite forget you. I saw yours to the Baronick, and was surprised at one piece of intelligence therein. Mine are always married before I begin, which simplifies things.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Horace :
Sir Henry Ellis to John Wilson Croker, from the British Museum, 29 October 1829: 'I understand from Mr. Murray that you are engaged [as editor] upon a "Life of Dr. Johnson." [...] 'Mr. Cary, the Assistant Keeper of our Printed Books, tells me a very old edition (I think 1504) of "Horace," belonging to the Burney Collection, has a few notes in Dr. Johnson's hand.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Lord Brougham and others : 'The Reformed Ministry and the Reformed Parliament' (extracts)
Sir Robert Peel to John Wilson Croker, 29 September 1833: 'Strange as it may seem, I have not read nor have I seen the Ministerial pamphlet. I saw some extracts from it in the newspapers, which sated my appetite for such reading.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Robert Peel Print: Newspaper
Mary Augusta Ward : Case of Richard Meynell, The
'[letter from Frederic Harrison to Mrs Ward] I am one of those to whom your book ["The Case of Richard Meynell"] specially appeals, as I know so much of the literature, the persons, the questions it dealt with. It has given me the most lively interest both as romance - as fine as anything since "Adam Bede" - and also as controversy - as important as anything since "Essays and Reviews". Meynell seems to me a far higher type than Elsmere, both as a man and as a book, and I am sure will have a greater permanent value'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederic Harrison Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Adam Bede
'[letter from Frederic Harrison to Mrs Ward] I am one of those to whom your book ["The Case of Richard Meynell"] specially appeals, as I know so much of the literature, the persons, the questions it dealt with. It has given me the most lively interest both as romance - as fine as anything since "Adam Bede" - and also as controversy - as important as anything since "Essays and Reviews". Meynell seems to me a far higher type than Elsmere, both as a man and as a book, and I am sure will have a greater permanent value'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederic Harrison Print: Book
Mary Augusta Ward : England's Effort
'[Having asked Lord Rosebery for a Preface to her "England's Effort"] Knowing that he was never strong, she fully expected a refusal, but found instead that he had already done what she asked, being deeply moved by the proofs that she had sent him'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery Print: proofs
Mary Augusta Ward : Fields of Victory
'[letter from General Hastings Anderson to Janet Trevelyan] What strikes me most in your mother's book ["Fields of Victory"] is her marvellous insight into the way of thinking of the soldiers - I mean those who knew most of what was really happening - who were actually engaged in the great struggle. One would say the book was written by one who had played a prominent part in the War in France, and with knowledge of the thoughts of the high directing staffs'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hastings Anderson Print: Book
Henri Beyle [Stendhal] : Lucien Leuwen
'I have read 100 pages of 'L. Leuwen'. [Lucien Leuwen] It is exceedingly fine, but I don’t yet class it with 'La Chartreuse'.[La Chartreuse de Parme]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henri Beyle [Stendhal] : La Chartreuse de Parme
'I have read 100 pages of 'L. Leuwen'. [Lucien Leuwen] It is exceedingly fine, but I don’t yet class it with 'La Chartreuse'.[La Chartreuse de Parme]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
André Gide : Isabelle
'Have you read 'The Pretty Lady'? It was while reading 'Isabelle' that the form of this novel suddenly presented itself to me, and I began to write it at once. Yet nothing could be less like calm 'Isabelle' than this feverish novel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Nichols : Guillty Souls
'About 2/3rds of this play is undoubtedly very fine. I think it weakens in structure in the 3rd act. . . . I only met the dedication tonight. Thanks. It is very agreeable to me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: completed draft of play
George Moore : A Mummer's Wife
'. . . and I wish to tell you that it was the first chapters of 'A Mummer’s Wife' which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district that I had blindly inhabited for over twenty years. You are indeed the father of all my Five Towns books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Heart of the Country: A Survey of Modern Land
'And of all the men who write today it is only Hueffer who writes for love[...]. I took up the "H[eart]of [the]C[ountry]" which was lying there and opening it at hazard I showed sentences here and there asking whether they could have been written from any other conceivable motive.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Norman Douglas : The Island of Typhoeus
'Write your fiction in the tone of this very excellent article if you like. Place it in S. Italy if that will help.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Marcel Proust : Du Coté chez Swann
I have been re-reading 'Du Côté.' Well, it is marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Anna Karenina'. Well, it is more marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Les Frères'. Well, it is most marvellous. Das ist das.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Les Freres Karamazov
I have been re-reading 'Du Côté.' Well, it is marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Anna Karenina'. Well, it is more marvellous. I have also been re-reading 'Les Frères'. Well, it is most marvellous. Das ist das.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Victor Margueritte : La Garconne
I have not read 'La Garçonne'. I got about half way through it and then I had to give up, not because of its indecency but because it its dullness, poorness, and badness. The indecency is only episodic, but I have never read such indecency in the work of a reputable author published by a reputable firm. . . . It has also to be remembered that M. Margueritte has written, whether alone or in collaboration with his late brother, several novels of genuine importance, such as 'Le Désastre'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : minutes of XII Book Club meeting
'The minutes of the first meeting were read and confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Frederick J. Edminson : [paper on Annie Wood Besant's 'An Autobiography']
'Mr Edminson then read a paper on Mrs Besant's autobiography. Some discussion folowed. Mr Morland gave a summary of Fairbairn's Christ in Modern Theology which also excited some remark. Mrs W.H. Smith also commented on some of the points in F. Harrison's Meaning of History in which she was joined by other members'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Andrew Martin Fairbairn : Place Of Christ In Modern Theology
'Mr Edminson then read a paper on Mrs Besant's autobiography. Some discussion folowed. Mr Morland gave a summary of Fairbairn's Christ in Modern Theology which also excited some remark. Mrs W.H. Smith also commented on some of the points in F. Harrison's Meaning of History in which she was joined by other members'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold J. Morland Print: Book
Frederic Harrison : Meaning of History, The
'Mr Edminson then read a paper on Mrs Besant's autobiography. Some discussion folowed. Mr Morland gave a summary of Fairbairn's Christ in Modern Theology which also excited some remark. Mrs W.H. Smith also commented on some of the points in F. Harrison's Meaning of History in which she was joined by other members'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [minutes of XII Book Club meeting]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on William Watson]
'The Secretary read a paper on the poetry of William Watson and with Miss Pollard gave illustrative readings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [XII Book Club minutes]
'The Minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
John Luther Hawkins : [paper of Stopford Brooke's 'Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life']
'Mr Hawkins then read a summary review of Stopford Brooke's Tennyson & his Art of Modern Life which was much appreciated'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Luther Hawkins Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club meeting]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Stopford Brooke : Tennyson: his Art and Relation to Modern Life
'Mr Hawkins then read a summary review of Stopford Brooke's Tennyson & his Art of Modern Life which was much appreciated'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Luther Hawkins Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club Meeting]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Frederick Burgess : [paper on matthew Arnold as man and politician]
'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Burgess Manuscript: Unknown
Frederick Edminson : [paper on Matthew Arnold as essayist]
'Mr Burgess read an introductory paper on him [Matthew Arnold] as a man and a politician and Mr Edminson as an essayist with special reference to Literature and Dogma in culture and Anarchy and Mrs Morland as a poet. In these papers, many, and sometimes conflicting estimates of the author were expressed'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'then I wrought and hard Mr Rhodes read of Grenhame'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : The New Timon
John Gibson Lockhart to John Wilson Croker, 6 August 1846: 'The "Modern Timon" is not, I think, by a [italics]poet[end italics], but it is the work of a clever man, and who understands the construction of lines and the rhythm, and in short, all that people can learn without inspiration. I should suspect the Timon to be by Bulwer or Disraeli, or possibly Dicky Milnes'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gibson Lockhart Print: Book
Arthur Young : Travels in France and Italy During the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849: 'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries. 'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
Arthur Young : 'northern tour'
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849: 'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries. 'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
Arthur Young : Farmer's Calendar
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849: 'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries. 'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
Arthur Young : A Tour in Ireland
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849: 'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries. 'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
Virgil :
The Earl of Lonsdale to John Wilson Croker, 4 September 1849: 'I am a [italics]worshipper[end italics] of Arthur Young's, and from me you will hear only his praises. I think him the most truthful writer and fuller of information upon any subject than any other author [...] He is the only man of eminence of my time that I unfortunately was not acquainted with; I did not then appreciate his merits. Since I have turned my attention to agriculture, I look upon him as the real source of information upon all matters [...] I have a duplicate of his works, one at Lowther and another in London, and some odd ones both at Barnes and Whitehaven. His agricultural tours in France and Italy I consider the only works that give an intelligible account of those countries. 'His tour in Ireland has given me the idea that his views of Ireland were nearer the truth than any other work. When I received your letter yesterday, I was just starting to make a journey with Mr. Parker to look at some land that he had recommended in his northern tour seventy years ago to be cultivated, and drained, and whch is now in the same state as it was at the time he wrote. We found it exactly as he described it [...] I have read everything as regards agriculture, from Xenophon and Virgil, to Mechi and Huxtable. There is everything in Arthur Young [...] His "Farmer's Calendar," which is for the management [of a farm] advising what to do each month by month, is the standard book of all farmers at present, and has gone through many editions. I have three different editions of it.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Earl of Lonsdale Print: Book
Henry Richard Lord Holland : Foreign Reminiscences
Lord Aberdeen to John Wilson Croker, 21 February 1851: 'In reading Lord Holland's book, which I did very cursorily, I was more struck by its dulness than by any other quality. A senseless hostility to all legitimate Kings and Queens, and a ludicrous exaltation of "[italics]that great Prince[end italics]," Bonaparte, might have been expected; but it is wonderful how little the volume contains which has not either been long well known, or which is not worth knowing [discusses text further]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Aberdeen Print: Book
Charlotte Smith :
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth :
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Theodore Hook : Gilbert Gurney
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his. '"Gilbert Gurney" is something of an autobiography, as you say [...] the book might have been called a picture, for which our society furnished the principal sitters; yet I could not read it. I diligently tried to do so, but never accomplished a volume, and I have often debated in my own mind how I, who looked with admiration and wonder at Hook's power of oral amusement, should be so repelled by his novels [...] it led me at first to read no novel, that I might have a better excuse to my poor dear Hook for not reading his; and insensibly I lost the taste for them altogether, partly from mu mind's growing less impressionable, but partly, or perhaps chiefly, from a very matter-of-fact cause, that I happened never to have subscribed to a circulating library, and since I left office I have had, I know not how, less spare time than I had at the Admiralty in the height of the war. I was greatly struck with some early detached tales of Mr. Dickens, and some stray livraisons of his longer works, but I found I could not read them continuously'.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Charles Dickens : short fictions
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his. '"Gilbert Gurney" is something of an autobiography, as you say [...] the book might have been called a picture, for which our society furnished the principal sitters; yet I could not read it. I diligently tried to do so, but never accomplished a volume, and I have often debated in my own mind how I, who looked with admiration and wonder at Hook's power of oral amusement, should be so repelled by his novels [...] it led me at first to read no novel, that I might have a better excuse to my poor dear Hook for not reading his; and insensibly I lost the taste for them altogether, partly from mu mind's growing less impressionable, but partly, or perhaps chiefly, from a very matter-of-fact cause, that I happened never to have subscribed to a circulating library, and since I left office I have had, I know not how, less spare time than I had at the Admiralty in the height of the war. I was greatly struck with some early detached tales of Mr. Dickens, and some stray livraisons of his longer works, but I found I could not read them continuously'.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : novels
John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his. '"Gilbert Gurney" is something of an autobiography, as you say [...] the book might have been called a picture, for which our society furnished the principal sitters; yet I could not read it. I diligently tried to do so, but never accomplished a volume, and I have often debated in my own mind how I, who looked with admiration and wonder at Hook's power of oral amusement, should be so repelled by his novels [...] it led me at first to read no novel, that I might have a better excuse to my poor dear Hook for not reading his; and insensibly I lost the taste for them altogether, partly from mu mind's growing less impressionable, but partly, or perhaps chiefly, from a very matter-of-fact cause, that I happened never to have subscribed to a circulating library, and since I left office I have had, I know not how, less spare time than I had at the Admiralty in the height of the war. I was greatly struck with some early detached tales of Mr. Dickens, and some stray livraisons of his longer works, but I found I could not read them continuously'.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Unknown
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex : Apology of the Earl of Essex against those who falsely and maliciously tax him to be the only hinderer of the peace and quiet of this kingdom
'I spent the after none in my Chamber and hard Mr Rhodes read a book that was mad, as it was saied, by my lord of Esex in defence of his owne Causes'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Canterbury Tales (Prologue)
6 July 1853: 'Read three first characters of Chaucer's Prologue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Guest Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
19 February 1854: 'After breakfast I walked with my boys [i.e. two of her sons] to Trinity College [Cambridge]. They took me through the Great Court [...] and thence into Neville's Court, where it was proposed to beat up Mr. [Charles] Schreiber's quarters, which were 3rd door from West corner on North side of court [...] there we found him, his toilet being only just completed [...] The boys went out to order dinner [...] The oak was forthwith sported to keep out strangers, and I was at peace. Mr. Schreiber meanwhile went on with his breakfast; I sat on the sofa behind him, with Longfellow, my own Longfellow, that I found on the shelves, in my hand.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Guest Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : My Novel
19 May 1854: 'My birthday [...] No cause of congratulations to me, alas, to have completed another year, when more than ever I should wish to be as young as I feel ... The chapter in My Novel [by Bulwer-Lytton] on courage and patience is admirable. It ought to be useful to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Guest Print: Unknown
Frances Burney D'Arblay : Memoirs of Dr Burney
17 March 1856: 'During breakfast I read some of Mme. d'Arblay's Memoirs to dear Charley [husband], who was much interested in her account of Dr. Johnson. he had not read it before, and I had not read it since it first came out.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Frances Burney D'Arblay : Memoirs of Dr Burney
17 March 1856: 'During breakfast I read some of Mme. d'Arblay's Memoirs to dear Charley [husband], who was much interested in her account of Dr. Johnson. He had not read it before, and I had not read it since it first came out.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bertie Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Morte d'Arthur
3 November 1857: 'In the evening we all went over to the Camerons [i.e. Charles Hay, and Julia Margaret Cameron]. Several Pre-Raphaelite artists were there to meet Tennyson [...] When they were all gone Tennyson read us his own Morte d'Arthur, and that really was a pleasure. It is a poem I have always been very fond of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'after I Came home I hard Mr Ardington Read of Grenhame vnto me'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Ardington Print: Book
H. G.(Herbert George) Wells : New Words for Old: A Plain Account of Modern Socialism
'Thanks ever so much for the book. One would want a long and warm talk about it.To set down the several trains of thought suggested by your pages would take many pieces of papers like this. I must resist the temptation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Fifth Queen Crowned
'Thanks for the book. You know what I think of it in so far as I have been able to express it. I did not do it very well. There is a singular fascination about this last volume of the trilogy. I've been dropping into it ever since it came and I am as far as ever from discovering a particularly precise formula of my admiration.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Rhodes? : [papers of instruction]
'After praier I reed ouer certaine papers of instruction [which] I had receiued from Mr Rhodes'
UnknownCentury: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby
Richard Greenham : [unknown]
'this day it pleased god to blesse my reading and medetation, and, in the afternone my hearinge of Mr Vrpith: after, I Came home and Caused Mr Stillington to Read of Grenhame, and, after, I went to priuatt readinge and praier'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Stillington Print: Book
Henry James : A Little Tour in France
'In H. James " Little Tour of France" (which I will send to Ada [Galsworthy] to take west with her for leisurely reading) there occurs a simple sentence which came forcibly to my mind. He had been looking at some picture in a provincial gallery--and he says: All this is painted in a manner to bring tears into one's eyes. I don't quote literally--(the book is downstairs where it is dark and I feel too fagged out doing nothing to move from my chair)--but that's just it!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : Mr. Apollo
' I have just finished the book ["Mr. Apollo"] which reached me this morning [...].It comes off magnificently.' Hence follow 14 lines of almost unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: BookManuscript: proofs
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex : Apology of the Earl of Essex against those who falsely and maliciously tax him to be the only hinderer of the peace and quiet of this kingdom
'I hard this day, after I had praied, Mr Rhodes read the booke of my lord Esixe treason, and I wrought: and so like wise in the after none Iohn Corrow and he did read by Course vnto me tell a litle before I went to priuat praier and medetation'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Some Impressions of my Elders
Many thanks for the book on Methuselahs. ['Some Impressions of my Elders']Shame to say, I’ve only read myself in it yet! The one point on which I would seriously oppose you is your statement that old people who have mannerisms always had them. Briefly, this is not so. In consideration of the generosity & insight you display in dealing with me I overlook the lapse from verity.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Geoffrey Lapage : Tommy Fidler
I am obliged for your letter and the enclosures. I return all the latter, together with my report and adjudication. . . . In my opinion the three best contributions, in order of merit, are: 1. Tommy Fiddler By “Muda” [may have been Lapage] 2. From Bondage By “Cinna” [Geoffrey Bullough] 3. The Best Policy By Kate Simmonds.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Geoffrey Bullough : From Bondage
I am obliged for your letter and the enclosures. I return all the latter, together with my report and adjudication. . . . In my opinion the three best contributions, in order of merit, are: 1. Tommy Fiddler By “Muda” [may have been Lapage] 2. From Bondage By “Cinna” [Geoffrey Bullough] 3. The Best Policy By Kate Simmonds.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Rhodes : letter
'and att night, I had read a letter that Came from Mr Rhodes'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Manuscript: Letter
Katherine Mansfield : The Samuel Josephs
The Lawrence is magnificent. Pity he is falling more & more into the trick of repeating a word or a phrase. It irritates the reader & enfeebles the sturff. Also the connection between trees & human beings is not very strong. But really this article is the goods. The Tomlinson article is also magnificent. Not better stuff than this is being done. The K.M. story is excellently characteristic. Mr. Joiner is good; it halts at the beginning. . . . I think the number is simply splendid—especially for a first number. & you are to be seriously & gravely congratulated upon it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Lord Byron : Don Juan
I have a wonderful miniature edition of Byron’s 'Don Juan', illustrated, for you, with a staggering Victorian preface. I am bound to say, with all my modesty, that it takes me to find these things.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Robert Nichols : Golgotha & Co.
I’ll tell you what I think of ‘Golgotha’. I think it is a prodigious cataract of eloquence, managed with astonishing skill and verve, but too diffuse by far in its movement and somewhat naïve in its philosophy. Do you realise that the main ideas in it are the ideas that dominated such as myself 25 years ago? [Aldous Huxley] is a fine journalist, & I thought that the best things in 'On the Margin' were as good as such things could be. They were about equal to, though quite different from, the essays of that master, Robert Lynd.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
André Gide : Dostoevsky
Your book on Dostoevsky (for which many thanks) has made a very considerable impression upon me. And yet you say almost nothing about his technique, which interests me considerably . . . (If he had any technique!)
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoyevsky : The Eternal Husband
After reading what you said about 'The Eternal Husband', I read that story again. Je le trouve un peu manqué, surtout vers le fin.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : Zoonomia, or, the Laws of Organic Life
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 12 July 1795, 'How wonderfully must the brain be organized to form all these sensations in a twentieth part of the time I wrote them in. how can motion be thought? & yet how can thought be any thing else? is it not as difficult to conceive colour as nothing but motion — & this is demonstrated by Darwin. — & what consequence is it what it is! all useful knowledge is easily acquired.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Sir Philip Sidney : The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1 October 1795, 'A good phrase of Sir P Sidneys for looking foolish. "he lookd like an Ape that had newly taken a purgation".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Jeanne Marie Roland de la Platiere : Appel a L’Impartiale Postérité
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1 October 1795, 'Of Citoyenne Rolands appeal I have read the first
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : Letters from France
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1 October 1795, 'Of Citoyenne Rolands appeal I have read the first
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Nares : Review of work by Southey
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'I am obliged to Nares for a very handsome review. it is my intention next year to write a tragedy. the subject from the Observer. the Portuguese accused before the Inquisition of incest & muder. read the story.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
Richard Cumberland : The Observer
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'I am obliged to Nares for a very handsome review. it is my intention next year to write a tragedy. the subject from the Observer. the Portuguese accused before the Inquisition of incest & muder. read the story.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : verses on Hope
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'Your stanza on Hope may be made excellent. your translation I have not yet compared with the Greek — when I have you shall have my remarks. you should study Pope & Dryden more for your versification.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : The Loves of Hero and Leander
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'If you print your Musæus print the Greek likewise. for my own part — I think the poem of too immoral a nature ever to advise its circulation — & this fault no excellence of diction or splendor of imagination can ever atone for...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Pedro de Azevedo Tojal : Carlos Reduzido, Inglaterra Illustrada
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, December 1795, 'I read the two languages [Spanish and Portuguese] with facility, & am now abridging the Angelica of Lope de Vega & extracting from it — the same with a most curious Portuguese poem — all this you will see if I escape that horrible Bay of Biscay. in the interim take these two fables from the Spanish of Yriarte'. [here follow some verses beginning 'Judge gentle reader as you will...']
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alexander Jardine : Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal &c.
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 29 January 1796, 'We remained five days at Coruña — the only place where I met with the society I wished. Jardine is Consul there — you have probably waded thro his travels — a book that conveys much thought in a most uninteresting manner. such at least was the opinion I formed of it three years ago. he behaved to me with that degree of attention that soon produces intimacy — my time at Coruna was chiefly spent at his house & he gave
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on Wordsworth and Poetic Diction]
'a short paper on Wordsworth and Poetic diction was read by the Secretary'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Harold J. Morland : [paper on William Morris]
'Mr Morland then read a paper on Wm Morris & his writings & gave illustrative readings assisted by Mrs Morland'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold J. Morland Manuscript: Unknown
Bartolomè Leonardo de Argensola : sonnet
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 24 February - 2 March 1796 'Take a sonnet for the Ladies imitated from the Spanish of Bartolomè Leonardo, in which I have given the author at least as many ideas as he has given me. Nay cleanse this filthy mixture from thy hair And give the untrickd tresses to the gale!...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
E.[Edward] V. [Verrall] Lucas : Over Bemerton's: An Easy-going Chronicle
'I have tasted, sipped, and consumed the delectable nectar prepared surely with the milk of human kindness and spiced with your wit. [...]; This is delightful [...].' Hence follow 15 more lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Lucretius : De rerum natura
George Grote to George W. Norman (April 1817): 'I send you down the best "Lucretius" I have [...] Though the reasoning is generally indistinct, and in some places unintelligible, yet in those passages where he indulges his vein of poetry without reserve, the sublimity of his conceptions and the charm and elegance of his language are such as I have hardly ever seen equalled [...] I likewise send you the Tragedies attributed to Seneca, which I think I have heard you express an inclination to read. I have read one or two of them, and they appeared to me not above mediocrity. **** 'I am now studying Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." His reasonings on the subject of morals are wonderfully just and penetrating, and I feel anxious, as I read on, for a more intimate acquaintance with him. Hume's Essays, some of which I have likewise read lately, do not improve, in my view, on further knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Aristotle : Nicomachean Ethics
George Grote to George W. Norman (April 1817): 'I send you down the best "Lucretius" I have [...] Though the reasoning is generally indistinct, and in some places unintelligible, yet in those passages where he indulges his vein of poetry without reserve, the sublimity of his conceptions and the charm and elegance of his language are such as I have hardly ever seen equalled [...] I likewise send you the Tragedies attributed to Seneca, which I think I have heard you express an inclination to read. I have read one or two of them, and they appeared to me not above mediocrity. **** 'I am now studying Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." His reasonings on the subject of morals are wonderfully just and penetrating, and I feel anxious, as I read on, for a more intimate acquaintance with him. Hume's Essays, some of which I have likewise read lately, do not improve, in my view, on further knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Jeremy Bentham : works
'The writings of this remarkable man [Jeremy Bentham] were now beginning to tell upon the thinking portion of young public men and lawyers [...] Grote caught the infection with readiness, and not only became a reader of Bentham's works on Jurisprudence, Reform of the Law, and Political Philosophy, but he also frequented the society of the recluse author'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Lord Shaftesbury : 'letter on Enthusiasm'
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (September 1818): 'September 30th. At Badgemore [family's country residence] 'Rose at 7. Read some of Lord Shaftesbury's letter on Enthusiasm until 9 [...] I finished it after breakfast, and was extremely pleased with it [...] At 12 I read a chapter of the German Bible with my sister.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Lord Shaftesbury : 'letter on Enthusiasm'
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (September 1818): 'September 30th. At Badgemore [family's country residence] 'Rose at 7. Read some of Lord Shaftesbury's letter on Enthusiasm until 9 [...] I finished it after breakfast, and was extremely pleased with it [...] At 12 I read a chapter of the German Bible with my sister.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Don Carlos
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818): 'Threadneedle Street, 14th October, 1818. 'Rose soon after 6. Read Say's chapter on Commercial Industry [...] After dinner read some of Schiller's "Don Carlos," then practiced on the bass from 1/2 past 7 till 9; at 9 I drank tea, then read some more of Say, on the mode in which capital operates.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Don Carlos
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818): 'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed. 'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Friedrich Schiller : Don Carlos
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818): 'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed. 'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Laocoon
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819): 'January, 1819. 'Sunday -- Rose about 9. After reading Ricardo for some little time, I set to and wrote down some stuff upon Foreign Trade [...] At 1 I mounted my horse and rode to the Park [...] Returned to dinner at 6, very tired; read some of Lessing's "Laocoon" [...] After tea set to at Ricardo again, but not finding my attention sufficiently alive, I dropt him, and looked over Melon's "Essai sur le Commerce," which I had had some curiosity to see. I found it the stupidest and most useless volume I ever opened.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : 'theological writings'
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819): 'Dined at 1/2 past 5; played on the bass for 1 hour, and then read some of Lessing's theological writings'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Aristotle : Politics
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (1819): 'Read part of the first book of Aristotle's Politics, with a view to ascertain his notions on the original barrenness of money, and trade in general.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Norman Douglas : The Isle of Typhoeus
'I have the complete text of "The Isle" in my possession.[...]. The short passage [on Giovanni de Procida, 13th century Sicilian doctor and instigator of the Sicilian Vespers massacre] interested us very much.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Sheet
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Frederick Burgess : [letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Letters were read from Mr Hawkins and Mr Burgess resigning membership in the Society'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Letter
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Henry Woodd Nevinson : The New Spirit in India
'The India book is most interesting. Nevinson is a dear. What is happening now there only shows that nations as well as men may find themselves in a bitterly false position.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Frederick J. Edminson : [paper on The Tempest]
'F.J. Edminson read an able and interesting paper on "The Tempest".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Charles Kingsley :
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Charles Kingsley :
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Charles Kingsley :
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lilian Goadby Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Kingsley as religious leader]
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Frederick Edminson : [paper on Kingsley]
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry James : The American
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning,not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry James : The American
'They have arrived--the 6 of them; I have felt them all in turn and all at one time as it were, and to celebrate the event I have given myself a holiday for the morning,not to read any of them --I could not settle to that, but to commune with them all, and gloat over the promise of the prefaces. But of these last I have read one already, the preface to "The American",the first of your long novels I ever read--in '91.[...] I could not resist the temptation of reading the beautiful and touching last ten pages of the story. There is in them a perfection of tone which calmed me; and I sat for a long time with the closed volume in my hand going over the preface in my mind and thinking--that's how it began,that's how it was done!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 24 May, 1796: 'The reliance that I can place on my own application renders me little anxious for the future — & for the present I can live like a silkworm by spinning my own brains. have I published too hastily? — remember that Virgil in the spirit of poetical prophecy gives to Fames the epithet of malesuada.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Edward Young : The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 12 June 1796: 'Have you read Fawcetts Art of War? with all the faults of Young it possesses more beauties — & is in many parts — in my opinion — excellent.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : Cabal and Love
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 31 July-2 August 1796: 'Have you read Cabal & Love? in spite of a translation for which the translator deserves hanging — the fifth act is dreadfully affecting.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Charles Collins : On Hastings Castle
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 29 August- 7 September 1796: 'Charles Collins wrote a Sonnet upon Hastings Castle — which Horace once showed me — it was ——— fourteen lines.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on Le Gallienne's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam]
'The programme on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham [sic] was as follows. Reading of the poem by Mrs Edminson and Mrs Rawlings Paper on the life of the poet by Mrs Smith Song from Omar by Mr Goadby Paper on Fitzgerald's Life and Omar's Philosophy by C.E. Stansfield Notes on Lefalliennes Rhubaiyat [sic] by A Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : The Ghost Seer
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: '[Matthew] Lewis's poetry is contemptible — except the Water King — & Alonzo & Imogine — of which the story is bad — & the most striking part very inferior to what appears to me its original the Franciscan monk at the marriage of Lorenzo in the Ghost-Seer of Frederick Schiller. an author compared to whom the sublimity of Eschylus & Shakespere is little have you read Fiesco? Stodhard of Christ Church is one of the translators. you may hear something of him from Collins — if you still retain his acquaintance: with friendship I believe him totally unacquainted.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller : Fiesco; or the Genoese Conspiracy: A Tragedy
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: '[Matthew] Lewis's poetry is contemptible — except the Water King — & Alonzo & Imogine — of which the story is bad — & the most striking part very inferior to what appears to me its original the Franciscan monk at the marriage of Lorenzo in the Ghost-Seer of Frederick Schiller. an author compared to whom the sublimity of Eschylus & Shakespere is little have you read Fiesco? Stodhard of Christ Church is one of the translators. you may hear something of him from Collins — if you still retain his acquaintance: with friendship I believe him totally unacquainted.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Henry Tresham : The Sea-Sick Minstrel; or, Maritime Sorrows. A Poem, in Six Cantos
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: 'Somebody (a painter I believe — Tresham?) has [MS torn] a poem called the Sea Sick Minstrel lately. tis a villainous subject.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [Paper on Life of Fitzgerald and Omar's Philosophy]
'The programme on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham [sic] was as follows. Reading of the poem by Mrs Edminson and Mrs Rawlings Paper on the life of the poet by Mrs Smith Song from Omar by Mr Goadby Paper on Fitzgerald's Life and Omar's Philosophy by C.E. Stansfield Notes on Legalliennes Rhubaiyat [sic] by A Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Sheridan : Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 25 September - 14 October, 1796: 'I have been reading Sidney Biddulph. Grosvenor what a mass of misery do prejudices occasion? the distress of many novels turns upon the discovery of incest — where is the crime if a brother & sister should marry unknowingly? or knowingly? — here again is a young woman must not marry the man she loves because he is a Bastard forsooth: the very reason says Mr Shandy why she should: & there was wisdom in all his systems.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : Paul et Virginie
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 25 September - 14 October, 1796: 'Have you read St Pierre? if not, read that most delightful work & you will love the author as much as I do.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre : Etudes de la Nature
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 25 September - 14 October, 1796: 'Have you read St Pierre? if not, read that most delightful work & you will love the author as much as I do.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Joseph Dacre Carlyle : Specimens of Arabian Poetry, From the Earliest Time to the Extinction of the Kaliphat, with some Account of the Authors
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8 December, 1796: 'I have just read Carlyles Arabic Translations — Zounds what stuff is called Poetry!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Robert Browning : 'One Word More'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'May and Death'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Prospice'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Phedippides'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Evelyn Hope'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Garden Fancies'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allan Goadby Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha'
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allan Goadby Print: Book
Robert Browning :
'A programme of the works of Robert Browning arranged by the committee appointed at the previous meeting was then entered up [?] Mrs Stansfield read a paper on some characteristics of the poet. Mr Goadby read Garden Fancies & Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha. Mrs Rawlings read Evelyn Hope. Mr Edminson Phedippides Mrs Smith May & Death & Prospice A Rawlings One Word More.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read and passed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & passed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Reynolds : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & agreed to'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Rudyard Kipling :
'The programme on Rudyard Kipling & his books was opened by the reading of a published paper on the author by H. M. Wallis, by the Chairman followed by an interesting discussion. Readings were then given by Mr Goadby, Mr Cass, Mr Stubington, Mr Stansfield & A Rawlings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'The programme on Rudyard Kipling & his books was opened by the reading of a published paper on the author by H. M. Wallis, by the Chairman followed by an interesting discussion. Readings were then given by Mr Goadby, Mr Cass, Mr Stubington, Mr Stansfield & A Rawlings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Stubington Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'The programme on Rudyard Kipling & his books was opened by the reading of a published paper on the author by H. M. Wallis, by the Chairman followed by an interesting discussion. Readings were then given by Mr Goadby, Mr Cass, Mr Stubington, Mr Stansfield & A Rawlings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: T.T. Stubington Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'The programme on Rudyard Kipling & his books was opened by the reading of a published paper on the author by H. M. Wallis, by the Chairman followed by an interesting discussion. Readings were then given by Mr Goadby, Mr Cass, Mr Stubington, Mr Stansfield & A Rawlings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stubington Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'The programme on Rudyard Kipling & his books was opened by the reading of a published paper on the author by H. M. Wallis, by the Chairman followed by an interesting discussion. Readings were then given by Mr Goadby, Mr Cass, Mr Stubington, Mr Stansfield & A Rawlings'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allan Goadby Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Robert Glasgow Brown : letter
'You are quite right, according to me, in being dissatisfied with my work; but not right at all in expressing your dissatisfaction as you did. I have never written rudely to you. Although hastily and curtly without doubt; and so you have no possible excuse for writing rudely to me. I shall give you the Feuilleton as far as I can without personal inconvenience. As for reading three volumes and writing an article in two days, I shall make an attempt this once without promising success; but I must ask you not to put me again in the same position […] As to the Whispering Gallery, it is only right to point out that one of your stories was in the "World" a month ago and in the "Queen" the week after.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Katherine Mansfield : Letters and diary
'Katherine Mansfield is a cunt, but I share a hell of a lot of common characteristics with her. I should like to read her letters again. The trouble with her seems to be that she luxuriated in emotion far too much. Admittedly the head is an evil thing & I'm a tied-up bugger, but anyone who can spew out their dearest and closest thoughts, hopes, and loves to J. M. Murry must be a bit of an anus.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin
David Herbert Lawrence : Kangaroo
'I have just read DH Lawrence's "Kangaroo". How I hated (in italics) it! Altho I think the Chapter about the War is well written, but it is so full of Spite, bitterness & nasty "cur" like ( in italics) snarly feeling. Odd again, for I never saw that side of him. have you read his "Letters"?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ottoline Morrell Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : [poetry]
'It was strange that, as a girl of fifteen, my greatest friend should have been this Colonel Berkeley. The thirty years difference in our ages did not seem to matter. He was fond of reading and we read poetry together, a great deal of Tennyson, and although I had read George Eliot's novels, I was surprised that she who produced the dry prose of "Daniel Deronda", should also have produced "The Spanish Gipsy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
George Eliot : The Spanish Gipsy
'It was strange that, as a girl of fifteen, my greatest friend should have been this Colonel Berkeley. The thirty years difference in our ages did not seem to matter. He was fond of reading and we read poetry together, a great deal of Tennyson, and although I had read George Eliot's novels, I was surprised that she who produced the dry prose of "Daniel Deronda", should also have produced "The Spanish Gipsy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
'It was strange that, as a girl of fifteen, my greatest friend should have been this Colonel Berkeley. The thirty years difference in our ages did not seem to matter. He was fond of reading and we read poetry together, a great deal of Tennyson, and although I had read George Eliot's novels, I was surprised that she who produced the dry prose of "Daniel Deronda", should also have produced "The Spanish Gipsy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : [poetry]
'Early in 1888 my grandmother was taken ill, and my sister Mary and I went daily to Albert Hall Mansions to help my eldest sister and do errands for her. I spent many hours sitting on the floor by one of the rosewood vaneer book cases, which I still possess, reading a varied assortment of works ranging from the Ehtics of Aristotle, through all the nineteenth century poets, down to the poems of Bulwer Lytton, written under the name of Owen Meredith.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : The Loves of Hero and Leander
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 29 January 1797: 'I have received Bedfords book this morning — he has much amended it since I saw the manuscript.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
François Rabelais : [unknown]
'Although Mrs Craigie carried out her "duties" as a Roman Catholic, she took her religion lightly, and from her writings it was easy to read that she did not mind jests about the saints ... She told me that her conversion was entirely due to her reading Rabelais, which at the time I believed literally'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie Print: Book
Mary Hays : articles in the Monthly Magazine
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 13 March 1797: 'When I was with George Dyer one morning last week Mary Hayes & Miss Christall entered, & the ceremony of introduction followed. Mary Hayes writes in the M. Magazine under the signature M.H. & sometimes writes nonsense about Helvetius there. she has lately published a novel — Emma Courtney — a book much praised & much abused; I have not seen it myself. but the severe censures passed upon it by persons of narrow mind, have made be curious, & convinced me that it is at least an uncommon work. Mary Hays is an agreable woman — & a Godwinite.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
George Meredith : [novels]
'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
George Meredith : [poetry]
'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Sir William Blackstone : Commentaries on the Laws of England
Robert Southey to John James Morgan, 6 March, 1797: 'Blackstone & I agree better than perhaps you imagine. true it is that I should like to write Commentaries upon his Commentaries — but mine would be an illegal book. the study fixes my attention sufficiently, when my attention begins to flag, I relieve myself by employing half an hour differently, & then set to again with fresh spirits. '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux : [plays]
'I kept my hours conscientiously, but when I had no work to do I read continuously. I read parts of "The Times", the "Standard" and the "Morning Post" ever day. The theatrical and policitcal news interested me more than anything else. The study was lined with book shelves, and besides all the classical writers there was a large section filled with the works of French dramatists. I read several plays by Marivaux, and found, to my astonishment, that a serial I had read in the "Girls' Own Paper" had its origin in one of his plays. Encouraged by this, I wrote a play which also derived from a play by Marivaux.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Honoré de Balzac : [unknown]
'Pearl's conversation was always full of references to the works of the French novelists of the period, so I proceeded to read books by Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Anatole France and Colette. I had to read the Italian poets in translation. All this was a great joy to me, and, as I have said, a wonderful education.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette : [unknown]
'Pearl's conversation was always full of references to the works of the French novelists of the period, so I proceeded to read books by Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Anatole France and Colette. I had to read the Italian poets in translation. All this was a great joy to me, and, as I have said, a wonderful education.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter Print: Book
John Prior Estlin : The Nature and Causes of Atheism, Pointed Out in a Discourse, Delivered at the Chapel in Lewin’s-Mead, Bristol. To Which Are Added, Remarks on a Work, Entitled Origine de Tous Les Cultes, ou Religion Universelle. Par Dupuis, Citoyen François
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 9 April, 1797: 'Mr Estlin has sent me his sermon — a most superb copy — tho not I have not the one he sent — for Johnsons man could not find it & so he gave me another. it is I think the best paper I ever saw. I wrote to day to thank him — & make a few remarks upon his book, freely & respectfully — therefore properly.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
George Dyer : The Poet’s Fate, a Poetical Dialogue
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 9 April, 1797: 'George Dyer gave me what he calls his “crotchet” & what I call an indifferent poem. “I could not bring in Wordsworth & Lloyd & Lamb in the poem (said he to me) but I put them in in a note —.” that man is all benevolence — he even shows it in notes to his dedication.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Mary Wollstonecraft : Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Robert Southey to Thomas Southey, 28 April, 1797: 'Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecrafts letters from Sweden & Norway? she has made me in love with a cold climate & frost & snow, with a Northern moonlight.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Robinson : Ecclesiastical Researches
Robert Southey to John May, 4 June, 1797: 'The books with me are more than I wish when moving, & fewer than I want when settled. whilst I was packing them up, a friend brought me Robinsons Ecclesiastical Researches. he has as much wit as Jortin & yet never ceases to be serious, & with erudition at least equal to Mosheim, possesses a candour & discrimination which Mosheim wanted. have you read George Dyers life of Robert Robinson? it is the history of a very extraordinary man told with infinite simplicity by one as extraordinary as himself.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
George Dyer : Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Robert Robinson
Robert Southey to John May, 4 June, 1797: 'The books with me are more than I wish when moving, & fewer than I want when settled. whilst I was packing them up, a friend brought me Robinsons Ecclesiastical Researches. he has as much wit as Jortin & yet never ceases to be serious, & with erudition at least equal to Mosheim, possesses a candour & discrimination which Mosheim wanted. have you read George Dyers life of Robert Robinson? it is the history of a very extraordinary man told with infinite simplicity by one as extraordinary as himself.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Grosvenor Charles Bedford : The Rhedycenian Barbers
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, c. 25 June, 1797: '“The Rhedycenian Barbers” is Grosvenor Bedfords — & a most incomparable parody it is.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon : unknown
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: '...the French never can have a good epic poem till they have republicanized their language; it appears to me a thing impossible in their metres; & for the prose of Fenelon Florian & Bitaubè — I find it peculiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read the works of Florian aloud; his stories are very interesting & well conducted, but in reading them I have been felt obliged to simplify as I read & omit most of the similes & apostrophes. they disgusted me & I felt ashamed to pronounce them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this stile, there is a melancholy obscurity in the history of Ossian & of almost
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian : unknown
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: '...the French never can have a good epic poem till they have republicanized their language; it appears to me a thing impossible in their metres; & for the prose of Fenelon Florian & Bitaubè — I find it peculiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read the works of Florian aloud; his stories are very interesting & well conducted, but in reading them I have been felt obliged to simplify as I read & omit most of the similes & apostrophes. they disgusted me & I felt ashamed to pronounce them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this stile, there is a melancholy obscurity in the history of Ossian & of almost
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Paul Jérémie Bitaubè : unknown
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: '...the French never can have a good epic poem till they have republicanized their language; it appears to me a thing impossible in their metres; & for the prose of Fenelon Florian & Bitaubè — I find it peculiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read the works of Florian aloud; his stories are very interesting & well conducted, but in reading them I have been felt obliged to simplify as I read & omit most of the similes & apostrophes. they disgusted me & I felt ashamed to pronounce them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this stile, there is a melancholy obscurity in the history of Ossian & of almost
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Marie-Jeanne Roland de la Platiere : Appel a l’Impartiale Posteritè
Robert Southey to John May, 26 June, 1797: 'Have you seen Madame Rolands Appel a l’impartiale Posteritè? it is one of those books that makes me love individuals & yet dread detest & despise mankind in a mass.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Bernando Tasso : Amadis of Gaul
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 19 July 1797: 'The old Lady Strathmore has some curious books. I hope to get from her library the Amadigi of Tassos father.if he had been a very bad poet Tasso would never have published his works — & I love every thing belonging to Amadis & Galaor.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Pierre Le Moyne : Saint Louis
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 28 July 1797: 'Since you left me I have been reading the Saint Louis of Le Moyne: an epic poem in 18 books. Le Moyne had genius — but he has introduced the most incredibly ridiculous thing in his poem. Louis is wounded with a poisoned arrow, for which there is no earthly cure, but he is healed by the waters of a fountain in which the Virgin Mary had, on the way to Egypt, washed her little boys clouts!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Sir William Blackstone : Commentaries on the Laws of England
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 9 August 1797: 'I have now gone thro Blackstone often & attentively, so repeatedly reperusing the more important parts, that I think I know the book well. nor does farther study of it now appear necessary or useful.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Loveday : Cléopâtre
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 24 August 1797: '...tis in the translation of the huge romance Cleopatra by a Robert Loveday, who from the recommendatory verses prefixd to his book seems to have possessed more celebrity than diffidence.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Francis Quarles : Argalus and Parthenia
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 12 September 1797: 'I doubted not that you would agree with me in thinking very highly of quaint old Quarles. you shall see his Argalus & Parthenia when we meet, it is more ridiculous than his Emblems, but often very fine & never tame.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
André Maurois : Ariel: ou la vie de Shelley
I will strive to let you have a note about André Maurois’s 'Ariel ou la vie de Shelley'. It is a very bright thing.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Gregory Lewis Way : Fabliaux or Tales, Abridged from French Manuscripts of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries by M. Le Grand, Selected and Translated into English Verse
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 20 October 1797: 'I have procured an old translation of De Serres. but I am told the best account of the Maid [of Orleans] is in the Histoire de l’Eglise Gallican par Berthier,a book I have sought for in vain. in Weys book from Le Grand there is a note from the Journal of Paris at that period, relating to her, which furnished me with subject for some of my best lines — they relate to a place she frequented in Lorraine called the Fountain of the Fairies. do you know either of these books?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 20 October 1797: 'In Chaucer I for ever find the ribible — but nothing else & no explanation of that. now tho I have used one word which nobody understands. the jazerent of double mail — I shall not take the same liberty with another. jazerina often occurs in the Guerras Civiles de Granada.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Marcel Jouhandeau : Clodomir l'assassin
Now as regards the 'N.R.F'., am I unjust? All I know is that under Copeau, I panted monthly for the 'N.R.F'. Under Rivière, I pass a fortnight before opening it. The foremost is fundamental and unanswerable literary criticism! Yes, I had read 'Clodomir l’assassin'. It was marvellous. Inspired by your letter, I searched out the Numbers containing it and read it again. . .
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Lamb : 'Written Soon after the Preceding Poem’
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 12 November 1797: 'I know that our tastes differ much in poetry. & yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb. I believe you know his history — & the dreadful death of his mother'. Southey then quotes several lines beginning: 'Thou shouldst have longer lived, & to the grave...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Mark Rutherford : The Novels of Mark Rutherford
'We have just had a new edition of the works of Hale White (Mark Rutherford). It is a miserable and ill-printed edition, but it exists, and I am reading him all over again. Hale White is a great writer who adopted a form which he never learnt how to use: the novel. His construction is usually naïf to the point of absurdity. But he is full of great stuff, and a most genuine stylist—one of the best, I think.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Johannes Ravisius Textor : De Memorabilibus et Claris Mulieribus: Aliquot Diversorum Scriptorum Opera
Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 14 December 1797: 'Your parcel & its contents arrived safe. I found it on my return from a library belonging to the dissenters — in Redcross Street; from which, by permission of Dr Towers one of the Trustees, I brought back books of great importance for my Maid of Orleans. a hackney coach horse turned into a field of grass falls not more eagerly to a breakfast which lasts the whole day, than I attacked the old folios so respectably covered with dust. I begin to like dirty rotten binding, & whenever I get among books pass by the gilt coxcombs & yet disturb the spiders. — But you shall hear what I have got. a Latin poem in four long books upon Joan of Arc. very bad — but it gives me a quaint note or two — & Valerandus Valerius is a fine name for a quotation. a small quarto of the Life of the Maid, chiefly extracts from forgotten authors, printed at Paris. 1612. with a print of her on horseback, & another on foot in the same dress & attitude as the one I have. A sketch of her life, by Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis — bless the length of his erudite name! — this is short but the most valuable of all, inasmuch as I have his authority for her prediction of her
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Frank Swinnerton : Young Felix
'I cannot understand the small sale of 'Felix' ['Young Felix'] in this bloody country.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read and passed by the Club.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of the XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were confirmed'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Walter Wilkinson : Puppets into Scotland
I am reading "Puppets into Scotland" by W. Wilkinson - it makes one very homesick'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Walter Wilkinson : Puppets into Scotland
'I finish the "Puppets" book; it induced too great a longing for home and freedom and the end of this nightmare the world is plunged into - to appreciate it as I should have done'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Thumb the Great
Walter Scott adapts one line from Henry Fielding's 'Tom Thumb the Great'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Rupert Brooke : [unknown]
'At 8pm, there is a very good St George's Day concert by D-Block. They read extracts from the works of Shakespeare, Rupert Brooke and Kipling, as well as Noel Coward's "Cavalcade". It is very inspiring; it ends with "God Save The King".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: prisoners of war Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : [unknown]
'At 8pm, there is a very good St George's Day concert by D-Block. They read extracts from the works of Shakespeare, Rupert Brooke and Kipling, as well as Noel Coward's "Cavalcade". It is very inspiring; it ends with "God Save The King".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: prisoners of war Print: Book
R.H. Bruce-Lockhart : Guns and Butter
'In "Guns and Butter" by Bruce-Lockhart (written October 1938), he says: "To anyone who knows the East, it was already clear that, whoever won the war between Japan and China, the white races have already lost it'. It is probably true in the long run, but, now that the East has seen, the time may be postponed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Richard Doddridge Blackmore : Lorna Doone
'I get "Lorna Doone". It is a good book so far.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Accident
'I finish "Accident" by Arnold Bennett, write up my diary, and so to bed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield, The
'I finish reading "The Vicar of Wakefield". The world has changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 150'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
Brian Kitching : [letter]
'I have Brian's letter. The opening words are: "Dear Mum and Dad, I hope you are all right". This fills me with gloom. It can only mean that they have heard nothing of Nora.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Manuscript: Letter
Edward Jenner : Signs of Rain
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of 'Signs of Pain: An excuse for not accepting the Invitation of a Friend to make a Country Excursion', beginning 'The hollow winds begin to blow,/ The clouds look black, the glass is low...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
Barry Cornwall : Anacreontic Lay
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of 'Anacreontic Lay', beginning 'Sing! - who sings!/ To her who weareth a hundred rings? / Ah who is this Lady fine? The Vine boys! the Vine!...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
St. George Tucker [attrib.] : Days of my Youth
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of 'Lines written on the Author's being asked why he ceased his Poetical effusions', beginning, 'Days of my youth - ye have glided away/ Hairs of my youth - ye are frosted and grey...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
Robert Southey : March to Moscow
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of 'March to Moscow, Southey', beginning, 'Buonaparte he would set out/ For a summer excursion to Moscow...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
R.J.H.S. : Diary
'I finish reading the 1942 diary of R.J.H.S. (another internee). It is an intensely personal document totally unlike mine, though we live under precisely similar conditions and environments.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Manuscript: Unknown
Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin Comtesse de Genlis : Memoirs of the Countess of Genlis, Written by Herself
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Translation of Madame la Countess de Genlis invocation at the beginning of her own history. London 1825'. This begins, 'If I were conscious in my heart of the slightest resentment - of any rancour against the persons of whom I am to speak...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Crabbe : Parish Register
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of '"Crabbe's Paris Register" - Burials', beginning '"True, I'm a sinner", feebly he begins/ "But trust in Mercy to forgive my sins..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Thomas Abercromby Trant : Two Years in Ava, from May 1824-May 1826
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of information about the Burmese, 'Vid. 2 Years in Ava, 182'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Marie Blanche de Grignan : unidentified
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of lines by '"Maria Blanche - eldest daughter of Madame de Grignan. She became a Nun in the Convent of St Marie D'Aix and died there at the age of 62."' The lines read: '"Would you know a soldiers life, it is this, when the army is on the march, we work like horses, when it halts nothing can exceed our idleness. We are always in extremes. For three or four days perhaps we do not close our eyes or else for three or four days we never quit our beds; we feast, or we starve."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal marquise de Sévigné : The Letters of Madame de Sévigné, to her Daughter and her Friends
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'March 1837'. Transcription of various of Madame de Sévigné's letters.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Aristotle :
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin (1819): 'Mr Bury brought me Ricardo's pamphlets this day. Between 4 and 5 I set to and read his Pamphlet on the depreciation of our paper currency. Dined at 1/2 past 5; played on the bass; read some more Ricardo -- his reply to Mr. Bosanquet, which is most able [...] spent the evening in going on with my "thoughts,' looking at some parts of Xenophon and Aristotle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal marquise de Sévigné : The Letters of Madame de Sévigné, to her Daughter and her Friends
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Of M. De Glessir, Tutor to the young Marquis Grignan (Admirable advice!), "The Chevalier is of more use to the dear boy, than can easily be imagined; he is continually striking the full chords of honour and respectability, and takes an interest in his affairs, for which you cannot sufficiently thank him, he enters into everything, attends to every thing, and wishes the Marquis to regulate his own accounts, and incur no necessary expenses..." M. de Sevigne to Mad de Grignan Letter DCCCXXII. Vol. VL.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Theodore Hook : Love and Pride
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Under title 'Lord Snowdon': '"...and so he went on expatiating upon his honour and his feelings, his conviction and his independence, seeing before him more plainly and distinctly than the mighty murderer saw the 'air-drawn dagger'..." From Theodore Hook's "Love and Pride"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Lord Eldon : Speech against the appeal of the Test and Corporation Act
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Under title 'Lord Eldon's speech against the appeal of the Test and Corp. Act. April 1828' is transcribed a paragraph, in full here: 'The Church of England if properly furnished within, might defy all danger from without; but if those who ought to be its pillars are to be mere weights hanging from the roof - dragging down that which it is their duty to support - it must follow the fate of the Brunswick Theatre, and in that calamity, it will be little consolation that its authors will be the first victims."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
Jeremy Bentham : 'upon Legislation'
From George Grote's diary, kept for his fiancee Harriet Lewin, Thursday 25 March 1819: 'Between 4 and 5 I read some of Kant's Prolegomena [...] went up to Palsgrave Place; drank tea with [Charles] Cameron; we conversed about Kant, and read some of Bentham upon Legislation.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote and Charles Cameron Print: Unknown
Theodore Hooke : Jack Bragg
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcribed a paragraph from 'T. Hooke, Jack Bragg', beginning, 'The certain Nobodies, who happen to have fine houses, have been glad to let the few Somebodies they chance to know, invite the Everybodies of their acquaintance to ball and parties in order to make a display...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Voltaire : Dictionnaire [?philosophique]
From George Grote's Journal, 4 December 1822: 'Rose at 6. Read Goguet on the different Arts until breakfast; after breakfast read some articles in Voltaire's Dictionn. Philosoph.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
George Crabbe : The Mother's Funeral
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Then died lamented in the strength of life 1827 "Called not away, when time had loosed each hold/ On the fond heart, and each desire grew cold; / But when to all that knit us to our kind,/ He felt fast-bound, as Charity can bind..." Crabbe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon] Print: Book
Voltaire : Dictionnaire [?philosophique]
From George Grote's Journal, 6 December 1822: 'Continued the perusal of Wolf's Prolegomena, which contains very much instruction as to the literature and MSS. of antiquity. 'In the evening read some excellent articles in Volt. "Dict. Ph."; particularly articles Consequent and Democratic. Perused Wolf until bed-time.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Shakespeare]
'Mr Edminson then made some interesting remarks on the subject of Shakespeare's [?? illegible] and portraits as an introduction to readings & songs from the poet's works, the programme consisting of the folowing. Song. Sigh no more Ladies Mrs Cass Reading from Cymbeline A.F.H. Rawlings " from Hamlet Mrs Stansfield Paper on Hamlet C.L. Stansfield reading from Taming of Shrew Mr and Mrs Cass " " Much Ado Miss Neild " " Henry V Mr and Mrs Edminson song Who is Sylvia Mrs Cass'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Anna Brownell Jameson : Diary of an Ennuyee
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Several pages are transcribed from the 'Diary of an Ennuyee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon] Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were read & confirmed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
William Edward Hartpole Lecky : Map of Life
'Mrs Edminson then read an interesting paper on Lecky's Map of Life'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
Voltaire : 'Miracles'
From George Grote's Journal, 9 December 1822: 'Rose at 6. Employed all my reading-time this day upon Diodor., and got through 80 pages, taking notes. He seems a more sensible writer than I had expected. A few articles in the "Dictionn. Philos." filled up odd moments. The article on Miracles is admirable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [Paper delivered to XII Book Club]
'Mrs Goadby then sang a song which was followed by a paper by Mr Stansfield on "The Hasty"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
William Henry Smith : [Paper on Ruskin]
'Mr W. H. Smith then read a paper on the life of John Ruskin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Rev. J.E. Hankinson : St Paul at Philippi
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'St Paul at Philippi, from the Seatonian Prize Poems. - By the Revd. J.E. Hankinson M. A. - 1833.' A poem beginning 'Twas a lone spot, that shrine of prayer!/ Some river nymph's deserted haunt/ Whose sacred springlet diamond clear/ Welled bubbling from its rocky front...' is then transcribed.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: C.M.G. [anon]
Charles Stansfield : [Paper on Ruskin's Economics]
'[Discussion of Ruskin] was followed by a reading by Mrs Ridges from "The Crown of Wild Olive". Mrs Stansfield read a paper on Ruskin's Economics principally with reference to "Unto this Last".' [the lengthy discussion that ensued is given in the MS]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on Ruskin as art critic]
'After a period of refreshment A. Rawlings then read a paper on Ruskin as an art critic, in which he gratuituously attacked the literary style of Modern Painters with which the paper chiefly dealt. The style was condemned as quite unsuited to the subject by reason of its verbosity its looseness of expression & inexact terminology. This view met with strong dissent. Extracts were then read from Modern Painters showing the argument of the work which was criticised later'. [the critique is summarised]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the minutes of the previous meeting were confirmed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Red. G. Walker : sermon
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'Given me by the Revd. G. Walker.' Follows transcription of a sermon on the history of the sects of the Church.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Sheet
Victor Cousin : Documens pour servir a l'Histoire de France
George Grote to Sir William Molesworth (c.1838-40): 'The other day at the Athenaeum I took up one of the volumes of the "Documens pour servir a l'Histoire de France," which I found to be the production of Victor Cousin, and to relate to the philosophy of the Middle Ages during the age of Abelard and Roscellinus. There are some clear and instructive reflections in it on the controversy of that day between the Nominalists and Realists.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on "Tennyson and his Books"]
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Aristotle :
George Grote to G. C. Lewis, 16 December 1840: 'I have been reading, and am still reading, B. de St. Hilaire, "De la Logique d'Aristote.' I have been going through several parts of the Analyse which he gives, and comparing it with the original [...] The more I read of Aristotle, the more I am impressed with profound admiration of the reach of thought which his works display. He is, however, excessively difficult, and the process of reading him is slow, almost to tediousness.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : poetry
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : poetry
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : poetry
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: T.T. Cass Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : poetry
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Allan Goadby Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'Sir Galahad'
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ridges Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 'St Agnes' Eve'
'Mr Stansfield read an interesting paper on "Tennyson & his books" & in continuation of the subject readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson, Mr Cass & Mr Goadby. Mr Ridges also recited Sir Galahad and St Agnes Eve'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ridges Print: Book
George Waddington : The History of the Reformation
'Early in 1841 Grote was called upon to add another duty to the already full catalogue, for his friend Dr. Waddington now entreated him to look through his ponderous and learned work, "The History of the Reformation," then preparing for publication! [...] True to the obligations of friendship, Grote immediately "set to," [a favourite expression of Grote's] upon his critical labours. It certainly was a sacrifice of time and thought to acquiesce in Waddington's modest request, and wade through those thick volumes: and I remember his making humorous observations upon his own disqualification -- I might add, his distaste -- for the task, which he regarded as lying outside his own familiar sphere of study. Nevertheless, the "History of the Reformation" was conscientiously scanned; letters and disquisitions on the subject frequently passing between the two friends.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
Frederick Edminson : [paper on Burns's personality]
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Burns : 'To a Mouse'
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Robert Burns : 'To a Mountain Daisy'
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Robert Burns : 'Cotter's Saturday Night'
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Robert Burns :
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Francis Jeffrey : Edinburgh Review: Combinations of Workmen
'Read Jeffrey's neat and well intended address to the Mechanics upon their combinations.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Charles Stansfield : [Paper on Charles Lamb]
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Lamb :
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Pollard Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Charles Lamb :
'The meeting at Ingleside on May 20th was of a very pleasant character, in that among other reasons it was devoted to the works of Charles Lamb. Papers were read by Miss Goadby and C.E. Stansfield and readings were given by Miss Pollard, Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Ridges and A Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Goadby Print: Book
Mr Stubington : [letter of resignation from XII Book Club]
'A letter was read from Mr Stubington expressing regret at withdrawing from the Club on account of leaving the town.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Letter
Alfred Rawlings : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'After reading the minutes the arrangements for the next meeting were made'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
George Eliot :
'various readings from George Eliot in character & otherwise were then given by members bringing a very pleasant meeting to a close.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Frederick Edminson : [paper on Morley's life of Oliver Cromwell]
'F. Edminson read an able review of Morley's Life of Cromwell and A. Rawlings read a ['charming' inserted in another hand and crossed out] paper on Wm Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on William Morris]
'F. Edminson read an able review of Morley's Life of Cromwell and A. Rawlings read a ['charming' inserted in another hand and crossed out] paper on Wm Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Roger Martin du Gard : Jean Barois
I want you to tell R.M. du Gard how highly I esteem 'Barois'. When I first bought it, ages ago, I was so impressed by it that I had it charmingly bound, and I often read in it again. . . . I am very pleased with 'Amants, heureux amants', especially that last story; Valery’s best work, I think.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Valery Larbaud : Amants, heureux amants
I want you to tell R.M. du Gard how highly I esteem 'Barois'. When I first bought it, ages ago, I was so impressed by it that I had it charmingly bound, and I often read in it again. . . . I am very pleased with 'Amants, heureux amants', especially that last story; Valery’s best work, I think.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Valery Larbaud : Amants, heureux amants
I ought to have written to you before about 'Amants, heureux amants', which you were so kind as to send me. It is, in my opinion, a very fine book, highly distinguished, and certainly your best work. I enjoyed it immensely. Especially the last story, which throws light on many things—including yourself. We have no new young novelists in England. D.H. Lawrence is the best, & he is very uneven; also he is growing older. Of course there is Joyce. Your study of him was very useful to me when I wrote a review of 'Ulysses' some time ago. I think that he also is too uneven ever to be quite first-rate. But his best chapters amount to genius.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Norman Douglas : Siren Land
His [Norman Douglas's] intention is to offer his MS [" Siren Land"] to Mr Methuen. It is jolly good--a distinguished and interesting pice of work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Garnett : The Feud
'Thanks for the play ["The Feud"] which reached me today and as you may imagine was read at once.' Hence follow a page of praise, including a comparison with the middle plays of Ibsen, and some rather subjective criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: playscript
Reginald Perceval Gibbon : Afrikander Memories
'I wrote yesterday to P[erceval] G[ibbon] about his Afrikander memories. I didn't quite tell him how good they are for fear he should think I was gushing. But really, in that short production, look at the poetic vision, the existence of simple language, the breadth and force of the effects.' Hence follow 15 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the wind
'I finish reading "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell - A most remarkable book. I enjoyed it very much, but what a little bitch Scarlet O'Hara is! Vic's invariable comment is: "What a wonderful book for a WOMAN to have written!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Faith
'Its really good of you to have sent "Faith". Your magic never grows less; each of your prefaces is a gem and my enthusiasm is roused always to the highest pitch by your amazing prose. I have already read (the book arrived but two hours ago) "The Idealist" and "The Saint". Admirable in concepton and feeling are these two sketches.[...] This afternoon I shall sit down with the book and forget my miseries in the delight of your art so strong and human.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Mary Webb : [unknown]
'At 7.15pm, I go to a new series of readings from famous authors on the English countryside - selections from Mary Webb, D.H. Lawrence and Adrian Bell. The commentary, is read by the Bishop of Singapore.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: prisoners of war Print: Book
Adrian Bell : [unknown]
'At 7.15pm, I go to a new series of readings from famous authors on the English countryside - selections from Mary Webb, D.H. Lawrence and Adrian Bell. The commentary, is read by the Bishop of Singapore.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: prisoners of war Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 1 and 2)
G. C. Lewis to George Grote, 5 April 1846: 'I cannot resist writing to express to you the satisfaction, as well as instruction, which I have gained from reading the two published volumes of your "History." You have succeeded completely in placing the whole question of the mythology and legendary narrations of the Greeks upon what I believe to be their true footing [comments further on text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. C. Lewis Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 1 and 2)
Henry Hallam to George Grote, 7 December 1846: 'I have a good apology for writing to you so late about your "History" -- namely, that the avocations of London at the one time, and a tour on the Continent afterwards, gave me no leisure till lately to do more than look cursorily at one volume. I have now had the pleasure of going through it, and cannot refuse myself that also of telling you how greatly I admire your work, and of congratulating you on the very high place it entitles you to take among living historians [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Hallam Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 1 and 2)
Henry Hallam to George Grote, 7 December 1846: 'I have a good apology for writing to you so late about your "History" -- namely, that the avocations of London at the one time, and a tour on the Continent afterwards, gave me no leisure till lately to do more than look cursorily at one volume. I have now had the pleasure of going through it, and cannot refuse myself that also of telling you how greatly I admire your work, and of congratulating you on the very high place it entitles you to take among living historians [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Hallam Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 1 and 2)
The Bishop of St David's to George Grote, 21 June 1847: 'My expectations, though they had been raised very high, were more than fulfilled by your first two volumes; and in its progress the work appears to me to have been continually rising, not perhaps in merit, but in value.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bishop of St David's Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 3 and 4)
The Bishop of St David's to George Grote, 21 June 1847: 'My expectations, though they had been raised very high, were more than fulfilled by your first two volumes; and in its progress the work appears to me to have been continually rising, not perhaps in merit, but in value.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bishop of St David's Print: Book
George Grote : Letters from Switzerland
G. C. Lewis to George Grote, 5 November 1847: 'I received yesterday the volume on "Swiss Politics" which you were so good as to send me. I have since read it with great interest, and feel much indebted to you, both for having written the book, and having sent me a copy of it. The narrative is lucid and flowing, and the view taken of the whole series of events appears to me perfectly just and discriminating. It carries one back to the seventeenth century and seems to place one in the midst of the Thirty Years' War.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. C. Lewis Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece
Sarah Austin to Harriet Grote, wife to George Grote, 29 August 1847: 'His [Austin's husband John] great comfort, during his tedious illness, has been Mr. Grote's History, which Alexander Gordon brought over to him. To me it has been a heartfelt pleasure to hear him ejaculating at intervals, "What a conscientious book!" "It is delightful!" "There is all Grote's honesty!" and so on.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Austin Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 5 and 6)
John Stuart Mill to George Grote, January 1849: 'I have just finished reading the two volumes with the greatest pleasure and admiration. 'The fifth volume seems to be all that we had a right to expect, and the sixth is splendid! [...] Every great result which you have attempted to deduce seems to me most thoroughly made out.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book
Lord Hervey : Memoirs
George Grote to G. C. Lewis, 22 January 1849: 'I have recently read Lord Hervey's Memoirs, on the recommendation of a friend. If you have not read them I recommend them to your notice, for they really afford the best expose of the real interior of a court which I ever happened to light upon, resting, too, upon evidence which seems above all suspicion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : Article on George Grote's History of Greece
George Grote to Harriet Grote (wife), 14 October 1853: 'I immediately sent for the "Edinburgh Review," and have read [italics]the[end italics] article with much satisfaction and even delight. 'It seems to me executed in John's best manner [...] It is certainly complimentary to me, in a measure which I fear will bring down upon me the hand of the reactionary Nemesis.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical
Wilfred Owen : Strange Meeting
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon : [poems]
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Friedrich Nietzsche : [unknown]
'Nietzsche is one of the very few philosophers who remain poets in the midst of their philosophising; perhaps he is the only one. His words are often as near to actual living as it is possible for words to be - they are very nearly made of flesh. Often, when reading Nietzsche, one feels as if one were on a high hill in a bright windy day; we are always aware of action, space and an atmosphere which is best rendered by the word "caller". We may call Nietzsche's philosophy pantomimic - every word is a bold gesture, a moment in a noble dance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Karl Marx : Capital
'Finished "Capital" - the cenotaph of its subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Lewis Grassic Gibbon : Sunset Song
'Finished "Sunset Song". No doubt at all about the richness, the routhiness of this book. Careless, often unnecessarily "course", to employ his own far too much over-worked word, but the humanity is there, and the bright objectiveness which is the need of modern art.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Gerard Manley Hopkins : [poems]
'What I gather from the few poems of Hopkins that I have read is that the passion in his verse is predominantly intellectual and has a tortured quality about it; indicative almost of an unnatural constriction of the body: and this may be so, as Hopkins was a Jesuit priest.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Lewis Grassic Gibbon : Grey Granite
'Finished reading "Grey Granite" by Grassic Gibbon. Hasn't the richness of "Sunset Song" but has much of its verve. One is ever conscious of a certain rank liveliness about G's work: much of it fermentive - like maure'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Alfred Edward Housman : More Poems
'Having read again Housman's "More Poems", one is forced to the conclusion that his philosophic attitude had been definitely exploited in his previous two collections; and his self-awareness is shown in limiting his work to these.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Alexander Hume : The Day Estivall
'Such a shocked surprise came to me the pther day on opening T.F. Henderson's book on "Scottish Vernacular Literature" to find out what he had to say by way of comment on Hume's "The Day Estivall". I had just been reading this poem again - a poem to which I am often persuaded to return when prompted by a lovely day - and, having its freshness so vividly in my mind, it was all the more astonishing to be confronted by Henderson's contemptuous aside: "...'The Day Estivall', if absurdly prosaic, is occasionally picturesque."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Rudolph Roeber : Anarcho-Syndicalism
'Finished reading "Anarcho-Syndicalism" by Rudolph Roeber. This is my introduction to Anarchism, and I find that there is something in its basic recognition of the living struggle of the people which essentially appeals to me. It has an element of humanness which seems lacking in Marx-Leninism, but at present I am not qualified to compare and contrast the two.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
'There are besides, Sir Adam Fergusson, Colin Mackenzie, James Hope, Dr. James Buchan, Claud Russell, and perhaps two or three more of and about the same time period. But Rari apparent nantes in gurgite vasto.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Henri-Frédéric Amiel : The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel
'Finished reading Amiel's "Journal Intime" today. How easy for a critic to lapse into a patronising attitude towards this most sensitive man who was so critical of himself. But it is Amiel who reveals the world's malformities in the undistorted mirror of his self-revelation'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
George Burnett [ed] : Book of Scottish Verse
'I finished reading a "Book of Scottish Verse" yesterday - edited by George Burnett. What a number of minor Scottish poets there are of the latter part of last century and the beginning of this who are remembered in the one or two poems. How circumscribed the themes; how limited the vocabulary; yet within their narrow field they were assured of the usage of their speech'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
Walter De La Mare : [poems]
'It is very difficult to assess the poetry of De la Mare. Compared with Davies and Housman (for example), he is the most comprehensive poet of the three, and has definitely created a world of imagination; but Davies and Housman have a reality in their poems which is often absent from De la Mare, and in the optimism of the one and the fatalism of the other we are ever conscious of listening to human utterance, the warmth of the flesh is in the words.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
John Stuart Mill : articles 'upon the Principles of Utility'
George Grote to John Stuart Mill (January 1862): 'I have just been reading your three articles in "Fraser's Magazine," upon the Principle of Utility, having waited until I could peruse them all de suite. I consider the essay altogether a most useful and capital performance.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical
Edward Gibbon :
From Harriet Grote's diary (1868): 'Mr. Grote [husband] said he had, in the course of the last few months, taken down Gibbon's work and read occasionally therein; and, he added, he had been penetrated with admiration of the exactitude and fidelity of the references [...] Grote had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness, on several points, by reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and candid. Dr. William Smith said that he too had compared the references in Gibbon with the works cited, and that he was affected by the same feeling of respect and admiration [comments further on George Grote's enthusiasm for Gibbon].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
anon ('ancient writers') :
From Harriet Grote's diary (1868): 'Mr. Grote [husband] said he had, in the course of the last few months, taken down Gibbon's work and read occasionally therein; and, he added, he had been penetrated with admiration of the exactitude and fidelity of the references [...] Grote had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness, on several points, by reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and candid. Dr. William Smith said that he too had compared the references in Gibbon with the works cited, and that he was affected by the same feeling of respect and admiration [comments further on George Grote's enthusiasm for Gibbon].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Edward Gibbon :
From Harriet Grote's diary (1868): 'Mr. Grote [husband] said he had, in the course of the last few months, taken down Gibbon's work and read occasionally therein; and, he added, he had been penetrated with admiration of the exactitude and fidelity of the references [...] Grote had tested Gibbon's trustworthiness, on several points, by reference to ancient writers, and invariably found his statements correct and candid. Dr. William Smith said that he too had compared the references in Gibbon with the works cited, and that he was affected by the same feeling of respect and admiration [comments further on George Grote's enthusiasm for Gibbon].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Harris Print: Book
George Grote : A History of Greece (vols 1-5)
'Sir William Gomm served for some time in India, and indeed had been commander of the forces there. Being at Simla, he occupied himself with the study of Grote's "History of Greece," having got hold of the first five volumes. He was so absorbed in the book, that he made copious notes upon portions of it; which I have since had the privilege of reading, and Mr. Grote also looked through them. The observations and comments indicate an attentive following of the author's text, especially in connection with the military incidents, on which Sir W.'s remarks are pertinent and even instructive.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Gomm Print: Book
Sir William Gomm : Annotations to George Grote, A History of Greece (vols 1-5)
'Sir William Gomm served for some time in India, and indeed had been commander of the forces there. Being at Simla, he occupied himself with the study of Grote's "History of Greece," having got hold of the first five volumes. He was so absorbed in the book, that he made copious notes upon portions of it; which I have since had the privilege of reading, and Mr. Grote also looked through them. The observations and comments indicate an attentive following of the author's text, especially in connection with the military incidents, on which Sir W.'s remarks are pertinent and even instructive.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grote
Sir William Gomm : Annotations to George Grote, A History of Greece (vols 1-5)
'Sir William Gomm served for some time in India, and indeed had been commander of the forces there. Being at Simla, he occupied himself with the study of Grote's "History of Greece," having got hold of the first five volumes. He was so absorbed in the book, that he made copious notes upon portions of it; which I have since had the privilege of reading, and Mr. Grote also looked through them. The observations and comments indicate an attentive following of the author's text, especially in connection with the military incidents, on which Sir W.'s remarks are pertinent and even instructive.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote
Voltaire : L'Enfant prodige
Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgina Cavendish (November 1797): 'You can't imagine, G. how tourty [sic] we are of an afternoon, my aunt reads and tells us storys. The last thing she read us was Voltaire's "enfant prodige," it is beautiful. Only think how good my dear dear aunt was to me last night; I took some pills and she came and read me a very interesting story while I took them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Ponsonby Print: Book
George Lamb : 'John O'Thanet'
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 23 September 1802: 'I am now going, my dearest G. (depending upon your secrecy), to transcribe for you some of George's verses, which he gave me last night. Some lines are very good and some very bad, but it will give you a good idea of our proceedings and I think them very amusing. It is a parody on Burns' Tim [sic] O'shanter, and called John O'Thanet. The beginning is long and tiresome, so I shall not send it you. You must know that [italics]John[end italics] is making a tour round the Island, and arrives at Ramsgate just in time for the ceremonies' ball:-- [transcribes 17 lines of satirical poem on Ramsgate social life, opening: '"When now the moon shot forth her gleams And ocean glistened in her beams, When winds blow cold and loud and drear And Ladies 'gin to walk the Pier, When chattering teeth by Luna's light Just stammer out a 'charming night'"] 'I send you these merely because they give a faithful account of our evening walks.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Manuscript: Unknown
Germaine de Stael : Delphine
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth (February 1803): 'I have been crying my eyes out over "le Nouveau pere de famille." I wonder I did not hear more of it, as it seems to me quite beautiful; the 3rd volume heartbreaking. I believe I am going to read "Amelie de Mansfield." They are all [italics]dying[end italics] over it and it is the general opinion that as I have read "Delphine" [by Madame de Stael] I may read anything.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Hester Piozzi : biography of Samuel Johnson
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 9 November 1803: 'I have at present a [italics]Johnson[end italics] mania upon me, which I hope you will allow is better than a [italics]novel[end italics] one. I have been [italics]re[end italics]-reading Mrs. Piozzi and Boswell. The latter I think very entertaining, and it is so long since I had read it that I had almost forgotten it. I have hardly patience with Boswell's conceit and pride and wish he would fancy himself a secondary personage [French], as he almost always prefers telling one what he thought and did, to Johnson, and he is too uninteresting to make it ever excusable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Hester Piozzi : biography of Samuel Johnson
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 9 November 1803: 'I have at present a [italics]Johnson[end italics] mania upon me, which I hope you will allow is better than a [italics]novel[end italics] one. I have been [italics]re[end italics]-reading Mrs. Piozzi and Boswell. The latter I think very entertaining, and it is so long since I had read it that I had almost forgotten it. I have hardly patience with Boswell's conceit and pride and wish he would fancy himself a secondary personage [French], as he almost always prefers telling one what he thought and did, to Johnson, and he is too uninteresting to make it ever excusable.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
Carl Murrell Marris :
'You know Marris--the man of the East who wrote the letter I read to you? Well he is going back to his Malay princess wife and his kid, right away. I have asked him to come on Monday here for the day.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Letter
Jean Charles Leonarde Simonde de Sismondi : Italian Republics
'Looking at Sismondi's "Italian Republics" an odd fit of industry came over me in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Jean Charles Leonarde Simonde de Sismondi : Italian Republics
'Staid in all day for cold, but sketched some figures from window, and heard some of Sismondi's "Italian Republics", and my day has been rather profitable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Walter Pater : Studies in the History of the Renaissance
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia
'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
John Henry Newman : The Grammar of Ascent
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Alain-Rene Le Sage : Gil Blas
'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Two Essays on Miracles
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
John Henry Newman : The Idea of a University
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Captain Frederick Marryat : Diary in America
'Marryat's diary on Continent gives many interesting anecdotes of animals, but I am afraid to remember them, lest they should not be true'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : History of the Jews
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Frederick William Farrar : Life and Works of St Paul
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth: a romance
'I began the "Poissons" regularly; pretty hard work; finished "Kenilworth". I think Amy deserved her fate, she is unworthy of being one of Scott's heroines. The book wants both a hero and a heroine, for Tressilian, who is unsuccessful in almost all he does, is too unlucky. Leicester too vacillating. Raleigh and Elizabeth have more of the interest, or of claim to it at least.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Complete Poems
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : Complete Works
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Sir Archibald Alison : History of Europe
'I have begun Alison's "Europe" - a pompous title, by the by, for an account of the Bedlam devilries of the French revolution. Good deal of inaccurate English, but clever on the whole.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Joseph Ernest Renan : Vie de Jesus
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Joseph Ernest Renan : The Apostles
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Thomas Henry Newman : Critical and Historical Essays
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Complete Works
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, July 1896-December 1896, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source text author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Greek Testament, Milman's History of the Jews; Farrar's St Paul, Tennyson's Poems (complete in one volume), Percy's Reliques (the collection of old ballads), Christopher Marlowe's Works, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Life of Frederick the Great, A prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Keats's Poems, Chaucer's Poems, Spenser's Poems, Renan's Vie de Jesus and The Apostles, Ranke's History of the Popes, Critical and Historical Essays by Cardinal Newman, Emerson's Essays (If possible in one volume), Cheap edition of Dickens's Works.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Walter Pater : Gaston de Latour
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Henry Hart Milman : History of Latin Christianity
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
John Henry Newman : Essay on the miracles recorded in Ecclesiastical History
'Curious essay of Newman's I read some pages of - about the ecclesiastical miracles; full of intellect but doubtful in tendency. I fear insidious, yet I like it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Robert Burns : Poems
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Morte d'Arthur
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Henry Thomas Buckle : History of Civilisation
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Friend
'Read some of Coleridge's "Friend", which gives one a higher notion of him than even his poetry'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Pater : Miscellaneous Essays
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Sir Archibald Alison : History of Europe
'Read a little Alison and much chemistry, but a little headachy and out of order.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Gustav Friedrich Waagen : [unknown]
'Read a little Plato; wrote a long letter to Brown; wrote a chapter of book; walked; read some Italian, and got some valuable notes out of Waagen, and then a game at Chess.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Alexis François Rio : De la Poesie chretienne dans son principle, dans sa matiere at dans ses formes
'Have done some Plato - some Pliny - looked for Genus Chara (in Freshwater basin of Paris) everywhere and couldn't find it - and a little bit of Rio.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Gustav Friedrich Waagen : [unknown]
'Read a little Italian. Finished first vol. Waagen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Gustav Friedrich Waagen : [unknown]
'Got a good deal out of Waagen, but he is an intolerable fool - good authority only in matters of tradition.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Robert Southey : Sir Thomas More; or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society
'a little reading of Southey's "Colloquies" with which I was much pleased.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Richard Owen : Fossil Mammalia
'Read first number of Owen's "mammalia" in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
Sir Joshua Reynolds : The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds
'Read some Sir Joshua"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Richard Hooker [?] : [unknown]
'Read some of Spencer in the morning, and learned it, then some of Hooker.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Joshua Reynolds : The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds
'read a little Sir Joshua'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Maurice Baring : C
I offer you my sincere & almost violent congratulations on 'C'. I have been greatly impressed by it. It held me throughout its immense length.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Hubert Griffith : Tunnel Trench
I have now read 'Tunnel Trench'. The copy which you kindly gave me got lost—I don’t know how, but I obtained another one. . . . Of course the play is not ‘nice’ reading, and of course we who never went to the front in a fighting capacity hate to be reminded by those who did so go that there ever was a war. But all that does not matter. My criticism of the play, or of myself, would be that I cannot quite find the central moral idea upon which it is based.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George [?] Berkeley : Guardian
'I have been reading Berkeley's paper, no. 55, in the "Guardian". There is this curious inconsistency in it, that setting out with deprecating any intention to turn argument into satire, by attributing ill designs to his opponents, the writer yet uses no argument throughout but what is derived from designs supposed of one sort or another...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
Margaret Kennedy : The Constant Nymph
I think the 'C.N.' is fine. It is bound to make you respected among those whose respect alone is a comfort in moments of depression. For myself, I have been more impressed by it than by any novel from a new writer for years.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Herbert : [poems]
'I was struck this morning, in comparing the poems of George Herbert with those of Henry Vaughan, by the perfect ease and power of the former, the labour and short falling of the latter'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Unknown
Henry Vaughan : [poems]
'I was struck this morning, in comparing the poems of George Herbert with those of Henry Vaughan, by the perfect ease and power of the former, the labour and short falling of the latter'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Unknown
George Smith : Hints for the times
'Read a pamphlet by the Revd. George Smith, lent me by Macdonald: "Hints for the times", true and useful, but a painful instance of the weak and conventional writing which does so little honour to its cause.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Frederick Joseph Harvey Darton : Arnold Bennett
I venture to write a very few words about your book on me. It has given me great pleasure. . . . The book is incomparably better than Darton’s—at any rate than the first edition of Darton’s. I never read the second.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Francis Garden : 'travelling Memorandums'
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 14 November 1807: 'Miss Trimmer [former governess and companion] went out of town yesterday morning and I therefore spent almost the whole day here [at grandmother's London residence]. My grandmother and I had a dinner after our own hearts, a little in style of Cumberland's jew, Egg shells and potatoe skins, but quite enough for people on regimes as strict as ours. We played 5 games at Chess, read above a hundred pages of Forbes' life of Beattie, and 60 of Lord Gardenstone's travelling Memorandums, not a new book but a very entertaining one. Played old songs upon the harpsichord, and before the carriage came to fetch me, were both all but fast asleep upon our chairs.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Georgiana, Countess Dowager Spencer and Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : [unknown]
'I staid in and read Byron'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
John Charles Ryle : [unknown]
'Anniversary of martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer. Curiously enough, I read J.C. Ryle's lecture on them in the morning, by chance, not knowing it was the day on which they both suffered.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Unknown
Sir John Gardner Wilkinson : Egypt
'read some of Wilkinson's "Egypt".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Henriette Cabrieres : La dame aux cheveux gris
'Read "La dame aux cheveux gris" all the evening to my mother.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Hans Christen Andersen : [tales]
'Wet all day. Read Andersen's tales. There is a strange mingling of false sentiment - unchildlike - with their delicate fancy and wit; too much of rosebowers and crystal palaces, prettily heaped together but without detail of parts or bearing on the story. On the whole, I am disappointed in him. The ugly duck is perfect; the "fat needle" very good. Nearly all the others, too much of opera nymph in them, or of pure ugliness and painfulness - the princess maing the nettle-shirts, and the "grand Klaus" killing his nurse, and many other such pieces, quite spoiling the tone of the book for me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
George Sand : La Petite Fadette
'Reading "La Petite Fadette" all day, and able to think of nothing else. Nothing learned today but the finish and passion of George Sand among French writers, and her sense of goodness among general thinkers.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
George Sand : Le peche de M. Antoine
'Reading "Le peche de M. Antoine", diluted and romantic; not good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
George Sand : Le peche de M. Antoine
'Nothing but going to the Louvre and reading George Sand. Note in the "Peche" first, Emile and Carpenter lying when it suits them; then Carpenter so angry at the blow of the cane and shouting at his work"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
George Sand : Francois le Champi
'Reading "Francois le Champi" all day to my mother; a beautiful tale. These three women, Madeline, Fanchon Fadette and la petite Marie, are enough to justify all Mrs Browning's love of George Sand.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Alexandre ` Dumas : La Dame aux Camélias
'Read ".'Dame aux Camelias"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Franz Horn : Unknown
'Jeffrey has sent me a note requesting the Ops Majus by the middle of next month, and enclosing a draft of twenty guineas for the article on Richter. You may conceive whether I am in a hurry, for I have not yet put pen to paper! I have merely been reading Horn, somewhat of Fichte, Schelling, etc., and have not yet shaped the thing into any form.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Jeremias Gotthelf : Anne Babi
'Read "Anne Babi".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Jeremias Gotthelf : Anne Babi
'Read "Anne Babi" to my mother in evening'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Jeremias Gotthelf : Anne Babi
'Mama up again, read nice bits of "Anne Babi" to her after dinner'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Bleak House
'Read "Bleak House" in evening'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Fortunes of Nigel
'Pleasant tea and "Nigel", but I much depressed all the afternoon.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
'Chess and "Quentin Durward".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Quentin Durward
'Finished "Quentin Durward"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Jeremias Gotthelf : Tour de Jacob
'Began "Tour de Jacob" again.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'Read "Ivanhoe" to end in evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Mary Elizabeth Braddon : Lady Audley's Secret
'Strangely, instead of Plato, took up "Lady Audley's Secret" this morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
J.R. Seeley : Ecce Homo
'Read the gist of "Ecce Homo".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Ormond
'Dream of being at court of Louis XV, in consequence of reading "Ormond".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'Take Mr Lillyvick's "I don't think nothink at all of that langwidge" as an example of people's having "a right to their opinion".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Elizabeth Barret Browning : [poems]
'Looked at Mrs Browning's "last poems" in evening; not so good as I thought, depressing me with doubts of my own judgement.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
George Sand : Mademoiselle de Merquem
'I hardly know how the Monday past, chiefly in reading George Sand's "Madamoiselle de Merquem", and listening to noise of marriage party.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Ernest Renan : St Paul
'Took up Renan's "St Paul" as I was dressing, and read a little. A piece of epistle in smaller type caught my eye as I was closing the book: "Graces a Dieu pour son ineffable don."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Arthur Helps : Conquerors of the New World
'Read chief part of Helps' "Conquerors of the New World".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Francis Hackett : That Nice Young Couple
Now my sweet Francis I have read your book in this Alpine district. . . . There is not, really, much fault to be found with 'T.N.Y.C.' It is well-constructed; and the pace is maintained; I mean it doesn’t flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Edward Knoblock : stories [unidentified]
I enclose 2 brief notes about your 2 stories. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that you can produce excellent saleable stories. I have practically no fault to find with these technically.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown
Maurice Baring : Cat's Cradle
I’ve finished Baring’s 'Cat’s Cradle'. 770 large pages. Well, it isn’t so bad, though highly curious in technique. . . . I’m now reading Stendhal’s 'Promenades dans Rome'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frederick Edminson : [Paper on Thomas Moore and Thomas Hood]
'The meeting at the Lawn on Dec 9 1901 was devoted to the life & works of Moore & Hood. F.J. Edminson read a paper on their works and Miss Goadby one entitled Reminiscences of Moore. Mr Goadby read The Demon Sleep [?] and Nellie Gray, Mrs Edminson the Song of the Shirt & Mrs Rawlings selections from Lalla Rookh.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Harold Fielding Hall : Soul of a People
'At a meeting held at Grove House on Feb. 17 a discussion on the Soul of a People was opened by a paper by C. E. Stansfield. The comparison suggested by Fielding in his book of Christianity & Buddhism necessitated impartiality between the religions on the part of critic [sic]. The role of philosophic doubter assumed for the time by the writer added greatly to the interest of the paper & the discussion which followed. Mrs Ridges afterwards read from the Light of Asia & Mrs Stansfield from Dhammapada'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on 'The Soul of a People']
'At a meeting held at Grove House on Feb. 17 a discussion on the Soul of a People was opened by a paper by C. E. Stansfield. The comparison suggested by Fielding in his book of Christianity & Buddhism necessitated impartiality between the religions on the part of critic [sic]. The role of philosophic doubter assumed for the time by the writer added greatly to the interest of the paper & the discussion which followed. Mrs Ridges afterwards read from the Light of Asia & Mrs Stansfield from Dhammapada'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia
'On board the steamer between Marseilles and Malta, besides reading "Hypatia", which was "too highly coloured" for his taste, and re-reading "Tancred", and writing "more than half the preface" to his lectures, he found time to send home a long letter'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Print: Book
Mrs Henry Wood : East Lynne
'there is unlimited room for reading between these well-known and monotonous banks. The Prince set his mind on my reading "East Lynne", which I did at three sittings. Yesterday I stood a tolerable examination in it. A brisk cross-examination took place between H.R.H., A.P.S, Meade and Keppel. I came off with flying colours, and put a question which no one could answer: "with whom did Lady Isabel dine on the fatal night?"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Print: Book
Dorothy Wellesley : Hogarth Living Poets
'Dear Lady London,the Lawrence letters & Hogarth Living Poets have arrived......I am not half-way thro' it yet, as it takes turn with Shakespeare and Gibbon, & catching the English mail which leaves tomorrow.....The same night they arrived I had a huge fire in my shack outside & read nearly thro' the 'Living Poets'. Do not feel your kindness was wasted if I say I loved its company more than its contents. I loved its blue cover, crisp new paper & Londonish presence in my lonely Antarctic room. It took me back to London people and parties, the talk & the fashions & the jungle of reputations. This is how you solaced & delghted me for an evening by sending it......By adding the 'Poets' to the Letters you added a delicate melting sweet to a meal. It was just to my taste. The Lawrence letters are so far delightful. he is among the great letter-writers, of a lighter kind. I have been lately reading the Keats' letters you gave me in London. His matter is more searching and profound. His far greater fame attracts a far greater attention. How unbearably sad they are at the end. I had to to rush to the poems to reassure myself, that such a life was not a tragedy but a triumph.......Last night by a log-fire, I seemed the loneliest most contented man in the world. I was reading Romeo and Juliet and beginning this letter to you...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell Print: Book
Horace :
'Poetry and shoemaking were part of the daily round [for the young Anne Isabella Milbanke]; a grander ambition was taking shape. Translations from Horace [...] Three lines and a half of English verse ... and then this phoenix sank for evermore amid its scanty ashes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Charles Dickens : American Notes
'Read end of Charles Dickens' "American Readings, &c; dreadful beyond words.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Maurice Baring : Cat's Cradle
I read C.C. ['Cat's Cradle'] very carefully in a fortnight: about 50 pp. a day. It held me all right, though not quite so strongly as 'C'. As with 'C'., 'C. C.' is strongest & best in the last ¼ or 1/3. . . . My boy, you may have made 70 corrections in the new edition, but there are plenty more to make. . . .
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Chester Francis Cobb : Mr Moffat
I have now read 'Mr Moffat'. If the author is very young I regard it as a pretty sound book. Fundamentally true throughout, with a good plot well constructed and improving as it goes on. . . . As for the alleged originality of technique, I cannot honestly agree that there is any. James Joyce has already done the ‘running accompaniment of thought’ business far more elaborately, realistically, and brilliantly than Mr. Cobb. And Joyce is already responsible for a school.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Maurice Barres : Jardin de Bérénice
Barrès is all right sometimes. The 'Jardin de Bérénice' is his best work. You ought to read Charles Louis Philippe’s 'Bubu de Montparnasse'. And Roger Martin du Gard’s 'Jean Barois'. These books will hold you. I should suggest also Colette’s 'Chéri', only I gravely doubt if you would be able to follow its very difficult colloquialisms. . . . Roulette is a bit of a lark, but very dangerous. See the diary of Madame Dostoevsky on the subject of Feodor’s gambling mania. It is appalling.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Louis Philippe : Bubu de Montparnasse
Barrès is all right sometimes. The 'Jardin de Bérénice' is his best work. You ought to read Charles Louis Philippe’s 'Bubu de Montparnasse'. And Roger Martin du Gard’s 'Jean Barois'. These books will hold you. I should suggest also Colette’s 'Chéri', only I gravely doubt if you would be able to follow its very difficult colloquialisms. . . . Roulette is a bit of a lark, but very dangerous. See the diary of Madame Dostoevsky on the subject of Feodor’s gambling mania. It is appalling.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Roger Martin du Gard : Jean Barois
Barrès is all right sometimes. The 'Jardin de Bérénice' is his best work. You ought to read Charles Louis Philippe’s 'Bubu de Montparnasse'. And Roger Martin du Gard’s 'Jean Barois'. These books will hold you. I should suggest also Colette’s 'Chéri', only I gravely doubt if you would be able to follow its very difficult colloquialisms. . . . Roulette is a bit of a lark, but very dangerous. See the diary of Madame Dostoevsky on the subject of Feodor’s gambling mania. It is appalling.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Charles Dickens : [ghost story]
'read a Dickens ghost story (the old nurse's) and so early to bed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Marmion
'In afternoon, the trance-teaching, and the reading of "Marmion" with companions...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Old Mortality
'Sound sleep after walk and long reading of "Old Mortality".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
George Sturt : A Small Boy in the Sixties
I have just written an introduction to a posthumous work of George Sturt’s (who generally wrote under the name of George Bourne—very good. I mean really). In order to write it I read through all the letters I received from him in the course of about 28 years.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Frederick J. Edminson : [essay on Matthew Arnold]
'F.J. Edminson read a paper on Matthew Arnold with special reference to Literature & Dogma. Readings from both the prose & poetical works of Matthew Arnold were given by various members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
John Greenleaf Whittier : Meeting, The
'A short programme of selections from American authors had been arranged but time only sufficed for the reading of The Meeting by Whittier the rendering of which by Mrs Edminson was much appreciated'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
Marcus Aurelius :
'Miss M. A. Wallis read an excellent paper on Marcus Aurelius which was followed by an interesting discussion'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: M.A. Wallis Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Spenser]
'C.E. Stansfield read a paper on Ed. Spenser & his times & the Faerie Queene. Readings were given by Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Edminson & H.M. Wallis'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Emerson]
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Pollard Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Little Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson :
'The meeting at Ingleside on April 29 1904 was devoted to the life & works of Emerson. Mrs Ridges read a paper on his life & C.E. Stansfield on his philosophic standpoints. Selections from his writings were read by Miss Pollard, Edward Little & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
George Sand : Marquise de Villemer
'At George Sand's "Marquise de Villemer", in evening, and enjoyed it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Cardinal Wiseman : [unknown]
'Read also Cardinal Wiseman on Chartres and the Chemise - very wonderful and delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Cuthbert Collingwood : [poems]
'Collingwood's poem, read last night, not without its meaning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Edward Fitzgerald : Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
'I up to coffee, reading "Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Thomas More : [unknown]
'Read Sir T. More in evening'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Dombey and Son
'A horribly faint despairing evening, giving up the ghost of myself in bed, and complicated by reading the horrible death of Mrs Skewton in Dickens' abominable "Dombey".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Vicar of Wakefield, The
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Citizen of the World, The
'Read "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Citizen of World" at coffee, and was sick of both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Fortunes of Nigel
'Playing chess, and marbles, with myself, and reading "Nigel" to Lollie.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin
Horace-Bénédicte de Saussure : Voyage dans les Alpes
'Helped marvellously finding Wedderburn's entry in Vol. 3 of Saussure, and his cloud lightning on Col du Fours before Franklin! Then, helped infinitely by Alciat's four emblems'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Andrea Alciati : Emblems
'Helped marvellously finding Wedderburn's entry in Vol. 3 of Saussure, and his cloud lightning on Col du Fours before Franklin! Then, helped infinitely by Alciat's four emblems'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harry and Lucy
'exciting discoveries of things in "Harry and Lucy" at coffee'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Sir Walter Scott : Abbot, The
'Yesterday dined quietly with Diddie and Clennie came down to dessert, and I read the "Abbot" in the evening to them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Radclyffe Hall : The Well of Loneliness
'I told Forster that I was prepared to stand absolutely for both the merits and the decency of the book.' [The Well of Loneliness]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : Magdalen Walks
'Wilde later said that it was his mother who inspired him to write verse [....] When his poems first appeared in magazines she compiled a scrapbook of them, and frequently offered her enthusiastic criticisms. Of "Magdalen Walks" she wrote: "the last lines have a bold, true thought, bravely uttered... I recognise you at once...there is Oscar!"'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Speranza Wilde
Charles Maturin : Melmoth the Wanderer
'Wilde praised "Melmoth" [the Wanderer] as a pioneering work of European Gothic fiction. He admitted, however, that it was stylistically "imperfect" and laughed at its aburdity'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Chartres Biron : Pious Opinions
I am told that in a book of Sir Chartres Biron there is a passage against book censorship. Can you give me the reference to this passage? One of them is entitled 'Pious Opinions'. I have it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Radclyffe Hall : The Well of Loneliness
On the conclusion of the 'Well of Loneliness' case, I propose to devote an article to it in the Evening Standard. I need not tell you that I am anti-police.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Chartres Biron : To the Pure
I have read 'To the Pure', in the American edition, and I brought it into an article for the Standard which I wrote and delivered before the summons was taken out. As the summons preceded the day for publication of the article. The article of course had to be held over. I shall embody the substance of it in another article which will appear as soon as Biron has delivered himself.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Virgil :
'"The flowing beauty of his oral translations in class, whether of Thucydides, Plato, or Virgil was," one of his peers recalled, "a thing not easily to be forgotten." He "startled everyone", too, "in the classical medal examination, by walking easily away from us all in the viva voce on [Aeschylus's] 'Agamemnon'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Charles Dickens : novels
'His peers were surprised to hear him speak disparagingly of Dickens, the most popular novelist of the day. While Wilde admired the author's humour and his gift for caricature he loathed Dickens's moralising.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
André Gide : The Vatican Swindle
I have read a lot of 'The Vatican Swindle' and also 'The School of Women'. I see in the course of a year a large number of American translations, and I have not yet seen one which was not extremely inferior to Madame Bussy’s translation of you.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
André Gide : The School of Women
I have read a lot of 'The Vatican Swindle' and also 'The School of Women'. I see in the course of a year a large number of American translations, and I have not yet seen one which was not extremely inferior to Madame Bussy’s translation of you.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Heinrich Heine :
'As a boy [Wilde] "cared little for German literature, excepting only [Heinrich] Heine and Goethe."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Lost Illusions
'Wilde's love of French culture was intensified and perhaps even prompted by his reading. Three novels, which were written at the beginning of the nineteenth century by two acknowledged masters of imaginative realism, impressed him particularly - Balzac's "Lost Illusions" and "A Harlot High and Low" (whose hero is Lucien de Rubempre), and Stendhal's "Scarlet and Black", which featured Julien Sorel. Wilde would nominate the pair as the "two favourite characters" of his boyhood.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : A Harlot High and Low
'Wilde's love of French culture was intensified and perhaps even prompted by his reading. Three novels, which were written at the beginning of the nineteenth century by two acknowledged masters of imaginative realism, impressed him particularly - Balzac's "Lost Illusions" and "A Harlot High and Low" (whose hero is Lucien de Rubempre), and Stendhal's "Scarlet and Black", which featured Julien Sorel. Wilde would nominate the pair as the "two favourite characters" of his boyhood.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
André Gide : L'Ecole des Femmes
I wish I could write short novels like your completely admirable 'L’Ecole des Femmes'. But I can’t.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Richard Hughes : A High Wind in Jamaica
Thank you for your appreciative letter. I am glad to have it. I did not say that 'A High Wind' would be the best book of the autumn. As for Powys, he is a friend of mine, but I could not get on with his book, and so I have said nothing about it. I think that you have touched its weak spot in saying that it is too abnormal.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
John Cowper Powys : Wolf Solent
Thank you for your appreciative letter. I am glad to have it. I did not say that 'A High Wind' would be the best book of the autumn. As for Powys, he is a friend of mine, but I could not get on with his book, and so I have said nothing about it. I think that you have touched its weak spot in saying that it is too abnormal.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Aristotle : Ethics
'The annotations in Wilde's copy of J.E.T. Rodgers's edition of [Aristotle's] "Ethics", which is inscribed "Oscar Wilde, Magdalen College, October 1877", illustrate his passionate opposition to [the Historicist] view. Interleaved with the Greek text are around 200 pages on which Wilde has written copious notes in English and Greek. In them he creates a bridge between the past and the present by comparing Aristotle to modern writers such as David Hume and Tennyson...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Hector Berlioz : Soirées de l'Orchestre
Reading Berlioz’s 'Soirées de L’Orchestre' the other day I found that an opera on the Aztec subject was actually written and composed in Berlioz’s time.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Algernon Swinburne : unknown
'Wilde loved to curl up with a book in bed. In one letter he mischievously described himself as "lying in bed... with Swinburne (a copy of)"; in another, he mentioned "The Imitation of Christ, the pious manual for Christian living penned by the fifteenth-century German monk Thomas a Kempis. Wilde read the book before going to sleep...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Walter Pater : Studies in the History of the Renaiisance
'It was during Michaelmas term of 1874 that Wilde first opened "Studies in the History of the Renaissance", a collection of art essays penned by the Oxford Classics don Walter Pater in 1873.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Herman Melville : The Piazza Tales
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Herman Melville : Pierre: or the Ambiguities
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Herman Melville : Typee
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Herman Melville : Omoo
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Meredith : Evan Harrington
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
George Meredith : Beauchamp's Career
'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
A very fine book indeed, recently published, is Siegfried Sassoon’s 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'. I thought that I could never tolerate another war book, but this one, after the first 30 or 40 pages is really extremely distinguished. It has style, wit, beauty and truthfulness.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Bruce Lockhart : Evening Standard
In the main, the reviews of I.P. [Imperial Palace] have been excellent. But it is curious that 2 out of 3 of Max’s papers were excessively rude about it, the third (Sunday Express) was fulsome. I wrote privately to the Editor of the Standard pointing out grave misstatements in fact in Bruce Lockhart’s article on it. He could offer no defence whatever. Similarly I protested to the editor of the Times Lit. Supplement about its assertion that I had been imitating Priestley’s fashion of length, for the sake of gain. . . . Maugham’s Cakes & Ale is 1st rate. But easily the finest of all recent novels is D.H. Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gipsy. Nothing else exists by the side of it. Believe me. It is marvellous, truly.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Newspaper
Siegfried Sassoon : The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
When you have read 'The Virgin and the Gipsy' you might get the volume of stories called 'The Woman who Rode Away' and read the title-story. After that 'The Rainbow'—if you can get it. It was suppressed here by the police and I have no copy. Some unprincipled friend has stolen it from me. I am delighted that you enjoyed 'Evan Harrington'. . . . I agree with you that 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' is an even better book than 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
When you have read 'The Virgin and the Gipsy' you might get the volume of stories called 'The Woman who Rode Away' and read the title-story. After that 'The Rainbow'—if you can get it. It was suppressed here by the police and I have no copy. Some unprincipled friend has stolen it from me. I am delighted that you enjoyed 'Evan Harrington'. . . . I agree with you that 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' is an even better book than 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Howard R. Smith : [paper on H. G. wells's 'Mankind in the Making']
'A meeting was held at Whinfield [?] on Dec 8 1904 devoted to H.G. Wells's Mankind in the Making. Howard R. Smith gave a good resume of the political and social proposals and C.E. Stansfield of the Educational system suggested by the author. Both papers prompted considerable discussion'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [paper on H. G. Wells's 'Mankind in the Making']
'A meeting was held at Whinfield [?] on Dec 8 1904 devoted to H.G. Wells's Mankind in the Making. Howard R. Smith gave a good resume of the political and social proposals and C.E. Stansfield of the Educational system suggested by the author. Both papers prompted considerable discussion'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
George Meredith :
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
Walter Rowntree : [resume of Meredith's 'Diana of the Crossways']
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Meredith's works]
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
George Meredith : [two poems]
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
George Meredith : [poetry and prose]
'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on Tolstoy's philosophy]
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Little : [paper on Tolstoy]
'At a meeting held on March 20 1905 at the home of Edward Little at 33 Marlborough Avenue Tolstoi's Life & Works were considered. Edward Little read a paper on his Life. J. Ridges also gave a reading from [text uncertain but this line is inserted above the following sentence on 'The Resurrection'] H.R. Smith read an extract from The Resurrection. A. Rawlings dealt with his philosophy. C. E. Stansfield read extract [sic] from 'Ivan the Fool' while A. Rawlings also read some extracts from the author's 'Life'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Little Manuscript: Unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer : Rhyme of Sir Thopas
'Mrs Edminson & C. E. Stansfield also read from the Canterbury Tales - The Prioress' Tale & the Rhyme of Sir Topas (Fit i) [i.e. section 1] respectively'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : Prioress' Tale
'Mrs Edminson & C. E. Stansfield also read from the Canterbury Tales - The Prioress' Tale & the Rhyme of Sir Topas (Fit i) [i.e. Section 1] respectively'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [Paper responding to Departmental Committee's Report on Physical Deterioration]
'There was a very full attendance & a lively discussion of the Departmental Committee's Report on Physical Deterioration was discussed in many of its bearings, introduced by C.E. Stansfield in a paper having special reference to the housing problem. It was generally considered that there was much more in the report offering material for interesting discussion so that the committee appointed to arrange the programme of the evening was continued with the addition of Mrs Wallis to prepare a programme for the next meeting'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'the previous minutes were read & confirmed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
Florence Reynolds : [paper entitled 'Cycling on the Arctic Circle' ]
'Mrs Reynolds then read a paper entitled 'Cycling on the Arctic Circle' describing actual experiences of a friend'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [paper entitled 'An Argument for Peace']
'Mr Ridges read a paper on Napoleon & A. Rawlings one entitled an 'Argument for Peace'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [paper on Keats's poetry]
'Mrs Smith then read an interesting biography of Keats which was followed by a reading of "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill" by Helen Rawlings. Howard R. Smith read from Endymion & Mrs Ridges the Ode to a Nightingale. Alfred Rawlings read a paper upon the poetry of Keats & Mrs Edminson some of the sonnets & H.M. Wallis a portion of "Isabella".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Homer : Iliad
'Annabella was now [in 1812] reading Cowper's Iliad and annotating every second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to Evelina. In Evelina she was disappointed [...] There was study of Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina
'Annabella was now [in 1812] reading Cowper's Iliad and annotating every second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to Evelina. In Evelina she was disappointed [...] There was study of Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
'Annabella was now [in 1812] reading Cowper's Iliad and annotating every second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to Evelina. In Evelina she was disappointed [...] There was study of Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Robert Southey : Madoc
'The "Lakers," as Byron called them, were making themselves strongly felt [in 1812], and (at this moment) Southey most strongly of all. So Annabella waded through Madoc. She found some passages wearisome, but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets." Her prophecy may have come true, for it is impossible to tell what she meant by it. She was often guilty of this woolly kind of writing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : novels
'She [Anne Isabella Milbanke] read enormously [...] A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though it did include some novels -- Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's [sic] sensation-making Vathek, in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, "Lord Byron's Childe Harold." Childe Harold's only rival in her poetic reading was The Faerie Queene.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'She [Anne Isabella Milbanke] read enormously [...] A list of her books makes the unregenerate blood run cold, though it did include some novels -- Miss Edgeworth's and Beckford's [sic] sensation-making Vathek, in which she detected the source of some passages in the Book of the Season, "Lord Byron's Childe Harold." Childe Harold's only rival in her poetic reading was The Faerie Queene.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'To Caroline Lamb, Queen of the Drawing-Rooms, a very early copy of Childe Harold was lent by Samuel Rogers [...] Instantly Rogers was summoned to Melbourne House, where the William Lambs were then living. '"I must see him -- I am dying to see him!" '"He has a club-foot," said Rogers, "and he bites his nails." '"If he is as ugly as Aesop, I must see him!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (cantos I and II)
'On March 15 [1812] [...] [Anne Isabella Milbanke] dined at Lady Melbourne's [...] [William Lamb] may have been genuinely tired of the principal topic as recorded in Annabella's journal -- Childe Harold, poem and poet, about both of whom his wife [Lady Caroline Lamb] had lost her head [...] 'Annabella could not join in that discussion, for she had not read Childe Harold. And she let another week go by before she did read it [...] on the following Sunday she surrendered to the spirit of the season, and began. Two days later she had finished the two cantos of which it then consisted; in her diary for March 24, she set down her opinion: '"It contains many stanzas in the best style of poetry. He is rather too much of a [italics]mannerist[end italics], that is, he wants variety in the turns of his expression. He excels most in the delineations of deep feeling, and in reflections relative to human nature." [...] 'Annabella met him the day after that entry in her diary.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Giaour
'Annabella had [...] written to her aunt [Lady Melbourne; during autumn 1813], after having read the enlarged edition of the Giaour. "The description of Love almost makes [italics]me[end italics] in love ... I consider his [Byron's] acquaintance so desirable that I would incur the risk of being called a Flirt for the sake of enjoying it."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : ode to Napoleon Bonaparte
Anne Isabella Milbanke to Lord Byron (1814): 'Your ode to Buonaparte was read in the company which I have just left. It was thought not perfectly lyrical -- of this I cannot judge, but it appeared to me like a spontaenous effusion.... I was amazed indeed when his "magic of the mind" melted into air. I rejoice in the hope of peace, yet could not join in the triumphant exultation over his fall -- a very serious, if not melancholy contemplation'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
'At present [August 1814] she [Anne Isabella Milbanke] was reading Sismondi's Italian Republics. And she had read Lara.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
'They [newly married Lord and Lady Byron] read books together, and discussed them; Scott's Lord of the Isles was sent to Byron by [John] Murray [his publisher]. It they did not only discuss, for he pointed out to her, "with a miserable smile," the description of the wayward bridegroom: '"She watched, yet feared to meet, his glance, And he shunned hers, till when by chance They met, the point of foemen's lance Had given a milder pang."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Byron Print: Book
Erasmus Darwin : article 'on Diseased Volition'
'[Byron] was reading an article by [Erasmus] Darwin on Diseased Volition (a semi-anticipation of Freud) and pointed out to her [Anne Isabella, his wife] a passage upon the patient's making a mystery of the diseased association, "which if he could be persuaded to divulge, the effect would cease." Acting upon this hint from Darwin, and from him, she led him on to speak of his infirmity [i.e. his club foot]. He came to talk familiarly of his "little foot" (as he called it) and said that some allowance must surely be made to him on the Day of Judgment, that he had often wanted to revenge himself on Heaven for it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Unknown
Erasmus Darwin : article 'on Diseased Volition'
'[Byron] was reading an article by [Erasmus] Darwin on Diseased Volition (a semi-anticipation of Freud) and pointed out to her [Anne Isabella, his wife] a passage upon the patient's making a mystery of the diseased association, "which if he could be persuaded to divulge, the effect would cease." Acting upon this hint from Darwin, and from him, she led him on to speak of his infirmity [i.e. his club foot]. He came to talk familiarly of his "little foot" (as he called it) and said that some allowance must surely be made to him on the Day of Judgment, that he had often wanted to revenge himself on Heaven for it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Byron Print: Unknown
Cicero :
'[During autumn 1817] she [Lady Byron] was well and happy with M. G. [i.e. her friend Lady Gosford] at Kirkby, reading Cicero and admiring his rejection of Expediency, "his assertion of the duties we owe to our Natures."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto III)
'[John] Murray [Byron's publisher] sent an advance-copy of the new Harold. She [Lady Byron] read the imprecation, supposed to be spoken in the Colosseum: '"... Let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain -- shall [italics]they[end italics] not mourn?" '-- with the two lines which prophesied his immortality of personal rather than poetic fame: '"But I have that within me that shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire." 'She feigned indifference at first. "The passage was probably intended to make a great impression on [italics]me[end italics]. Whilst I am so free from disordered brains, this will at least be postponed." It was not long postponed. A day or two later she was "well, but very [italics]weak[end italics] ... The new canto is beautiful indeed"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan
'Early in July [1819] appeared the first part of Don Juan. "The impression was not so disagreeable as I expected, wrote Annabella [Anne Isabella, Byron's estranged wife]. '"In the first place I am very much relieved to find that there is not anything which I can be expected to notice [...] I do not think that my sins are in the pharisaical or pedantic line, and I am very sure that he does not think they are, but avails himself of the prejudices which some may entertain against me, to give a plausible colouring to his accusations. I must however confess that the quizzing in one or two passages was so good as to make me smile at myself -- therefore others are quite welcome to laugh.... I do not feel inclined to continue the perusal. It is always a task to me now to read his works, in which, through all the levity, I discern enough to awaken very painful feelings."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
David Herbert Lawrence : Lady Chatterley's Lover
'On the way up I read Lady Chatterley's Lover, in the new full continental edition a friend got from Germany. I now retract what I said that DHL's letters are more important than his novel. Lady C. is a vastly important book. I understand it. I understand it as necessary. It is delicate and pure. One of the purest things I have ever read. It is far too long. But the strong necessary teaching is there. In parts its as direct and simple as the Bible. Its an amazing love-song; no not a love-song, a life-song. It has given me confidence and courage. It could purge the world.Nevertheless I feel its a thing, a teaching, I must take and pass. I could not stay just in that region. That was Lawrence. But I feel that my goal is quite different. I salute Lady Chatterley, & I will not say leave it behind, but leave it aside. As I said in my last, sex is to art what sleep is to waking life. Full spiritual wakefulness is without sex & is a new innocence, a new childishness if you like.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'Moore had owned that the Memoirs [of Byron] were of "such a low pot-house description" that [John Murray] could not have published them'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord John Russell Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Holland Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'There were conflicting voices among those who had read the MS. [of Byron's Memoirs]. Lord John Russell and Lord Holland said there were at most four or five indelicate pages [...] Lord Rancliffe told [John Cam] Hobhouse that "the flames were the fit place for it," and that no decent person could regret the destruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Rancliffe Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Giaour
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : 'Fare thee well' (lyric verses)
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : 'the Satire'
'Early in 1831 there is the following entry in a diary [of Lady Byron's]: "Read to Ada the beautiful lines on Greece in The Giaour, the Fare thee well, and the Satire. With the first she was highly pleased, from its [italics]effusion-of-feeling[end italics] character; the 2nd she thought laboured and inferior in pathos; the 3rd very amusing though very unlike the person." This disproves once for all the legend the legend invented by Teresa Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] that Ada never heard of her father's poetry until a year before she died in 1852!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Five Years of Youth
'The girl [Ada Byron] was then [1831] seventeen; her mother had been reading Harriet Martineau's Five Years of Youth, and wrote to a friend: "It is very good -- chiefly directed against Romance, and therefore not necessary for Ada."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
George MacDonald : Within and Without
'Lady Byron was to [George] MacDonald the protectress, the adviser, and once at least the extremely rigorous critic. 'It was through the reading of his narrative poem, Within and Without (published in 1855, but written a few years earlier), that their acquaintance began. She wrote to him of her admiration, and soon afterwards they met.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron Print: Book
Howard R Smith : [paper on the House of Lords]
'Howard R. Smith then read a paper on the history of the House of Lords which was followed by considerablee discussion. Mr Binns then followed with an exhaustive paper which was much appreciated & which also led to free expression of opinion'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [a paper on Carlyle]
'The programme devoted to Carlyle & his works was then proceeded with but owing to the length of the discussion was not completed. Mr Stansfield read a paper on Carlyle & his philosophy and Mrs Stansfield an extract from Sartor Resartus. Mr Rowntree gave a general resume of Sartor Resartus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Rowntree : [resume of Sartor Resartus]
'The programme devoted to Carlyle & his works was then proceeded with but owing to the length of the discussion was not completed. Mr Stansfield read a paper on Carlyle & his philosophy and Mrs Stansfield an extract from Sartor Resartus. Mr Rowntree gave a general resume of Sartor Resartus.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R Smith : [paper on life of RL Stevenson]
'An excellent programme illustrative of R.L. Stevenson's work was then proceeded with. A biographical paper was read by H. R. Smith & a critical appreciation of the works by J. Ridges & selections by several members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'An excellent programme illustrative of R.L. Stevenson's work was then proceeded with. A biographical paper was read by H. R. Smith & a critical appreciation of the works by J. Ridges & selections by several members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'An excellent programme illustrative of R.L. Stevenson's work was then proceeded with. A biographical paper was read by H. R. Smith & a critical appreciation of the works by J. Ridges & selections by several members.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ridges Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'Mr Smith read a paper on Shelley & Mrs Ridges selections from a paper by Dr Scott on the poet's literary characteristics while other members read selections from his works'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Smith Print: Book
Dr Scott : [paper on Shelley]
'Mr Smith read a paper on Shelley & Mrs Ridges selections from a paper by Dr Scott on the poet's literary characteristics while other members read selections from his works'.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges
Percy Bysshe Shelley :
'Mr Smith read a paper on Shelley & Mrs Ridges selections from a paper by Dr Scott on the poet's literary characteristics while other members read selections from his works'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII book Club Print: Book
Walter Savage Landor :
'Mr Binns then read a paper on W.S. Landor which was followed by a reading by Mrs Edminson, a paper by William [?] Harris & other readings by other members'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
Walter Savage Landor :
'Mr Binns then read a paper on W.S. Landor which was followed by a reading by Mrs Edminson, a paper by William [?] Harris & other readings by other members'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Romola
'Mr Kaye followed [a talk on the artists of Florence] with a life of Savonarola after which Miss Joyce Heelas & Miss Angus [?] gave readings from Romola'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joyce Heelas Print: Book
George Eliot [pseud.] : Romola
'Mr Kaye followed [a talk on the artists of Florence] with a life of Savonarola after which Miss Joyce Heelas & Miss Angus [?] gave readings from Romola'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Angus [?] Print: Book
Walter Rowntree : [paper on 'Punch' artists]
'W.S. Rowntree then read a very interesting paper on four Punch artists which was followed by readings from Punch of a very varied nature by S. A. Reynolds, Miss J. Heelas, H.M. Wallis, H.R. Smith, Helen Rawlings, C.E. Stansfield & A. Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Princess Wilhelmine : Memoirs (vol. 1)
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth (August 1812): 'La Princesse Wilhelmine is not as interesting as she might be. There is so much detail of the pettiest kind, all the valets and governesses brought so much sur la scene, but I have only read the first volume. Her descriptions, her abuse and her coarseness, put me much in mind of the Princess of Wales, whose early life was probably spent in much the same way.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Horace :
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 12 August 1818: 'Yesterday evening Granville [husband], Hart [her brother, the Duke of Devonshire] and I looked over books. A beautiful edition of Camoens, brown and gold, with D. and the coronet inlaid in diamonds. It is like a book in a fairy tale. The Duchess of Devonshire's editions of Horace's journey. The prints are from beautiful drawings, one by herself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Duke of Devonshire and Lord and Lady Granville (his brother-in-law and sister) Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 22 July 1819: 'I think parts of "Don Juan" more beautiful than anything he has written, some wit and a great deal of bad taste.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 28 August 1819: 'I admire F. Lamb perhaps more than I like him. I think him uncommonly agreeable and clever, but he sees life in the most degrading light, and he simplifies the thing by thinking all men rogues and all women ----. He looks old and world-beaten, but still handsome. He seems to enjoy being here [Bolton Abbey], and sport, food, and sleep fill up his time. At any spare moment he reads the "Heart of Midlothian," of which he says: "Why, if you wish for my opinion, I think it the worst novel I ever read."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: F. Lamb Print: Book
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : School for Scandal
'I begin to find like Joseph Surface that too good a character is inconvenient.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : The Critic
'I don't know what I have done to gain so much credit for generosity but I suspect I owe it to being supposed, as Puff says, one of "those whom Heaven has blessed with afluence."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Robert Southey :
A letter from Southey, malcontent about Murray having accomplished the change in the Quarterly without speaking to him and quoting the twaddle of some old woman, male or female, about Lockhart's earlier jeux d'espirt but concluding most kindly that in regard to my daughter and me he did not mean to withdraw. That he has done the yeoman's service to the Review is certain - and his genius, his universal reading, his powers of regular industry and at the outset a name which though less generally popular than it deserves is still to respectable to be withdrawn without injury.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Letter
Henry Mackenzie : The Man of Feeling
The whole three are sitting sewing in the most peaceful manner at my hand: our Mother has been reading the Man of Feeling and my last Paper (with great estimation) in the Edinburgh Review.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Carlyle Print: Book
George Moir : Preface to 'Constable's Miscellany' vol. 18, Schiller's Thirty Years War, I
Now the other morning Dr Irving shows me the last vol. of Constable's Miscellany, and a most magnificent passage in the Preface about this very book. Be so good as to look at that before we go farther.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Norman Douglas : The Caves of Siren Land (and 2 other pieces cited in evidence
'I sent about a fortnight ago, three of your papers to Austin Harrison [...] the present editor of the E[nglish] R[eview]. [...] The "[The]Headland of Minerva" and the "Caves of [the]S[iren Land]" I just cut in half. The "Upland[s] of Sorrento" I sent whole. I did this to give your prose a better chance for they are everlastingly cramped for room in that Review. Of course I didn't touch the text.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Woodd Nevinson : Sitting at a Play
'In the same No. [of Harper's Magazine] Nevinson has a story-- and Lord it is bad. The whole No. is so inept that I feel sick to see myself there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Francis Warrington Dawson : The Scar
'I didn't dare to look at your book ["The Scar"] till I finished a rather long thing which I was writing.[...] I have not been disappointed.There is power to begin with, and a great charm of style, a soberness of presentation which appeals to me extremely, [...] for as you can imagine I am not writing this after one reading only.' Hence follow nine lines of further praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Norman Douglas : unidentified
'I have read the story. It's marvellous in a way but we must talk it over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Garnett : Hogarth
'It was ever so good of you to have sent me the Hogarth little book. I knew practically nothing of the man and I was glad to learn.' Hence follow 13 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Abbot
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 15 September 1820: 'We are all at "The Abbot." I have only read the first volume. I delight in even the faults of his novels, "Ivanhoe" excepted.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet, Countess Granville and family and houseguests Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Abbot (volume 1)
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 15 September 1820: 'We are all at "The Abbot." I have only read the first volume. I delight in even the faults of his novels, "Ivanhoe" excepted.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 15 September 1820: 'We are all at "The Abbot." I have only read the first volume. I delight in even the faults of his novels, "Ivanhoe" excepted.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 8 October 1820: 'To-day I perform alone upon a roast chicken, and mean to devour "Kenilworth" with it. There are different opinions. Charles Greville told me last night that he did not stir out or go to bed till five in the morning of the day he begun it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Greville Print: Book
George Howard : Paestum
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth (October 1821): '"Paestum" was in the "Times" to-day. I have cut it out for Berry, who wished to see it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Newspaper
George Gordon Lord Byron : Cain
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 1 January 1822: 'I think "Cain" most wicked, but not without feeling or passion. Parts of it are magnificent, and the effect of Granville [husband] reading it out loud to me was that I roared [i.e. wept] till I could neither hear nor see. The scene, too, in "Sardanapalus" where Myrrha says "Oh, frown not on me," and the speech, "Why do I love this man?" I think beautiful and affecting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Granville Leveson Gower Print: Book
David (dr) Brewster : Recommendation
'I [ac]cordingly wrote off to St. Andrews; and the next day, to all the four winds in quest of recommendations. To Goethe, to Irving, to Buller, to Brewster &c &c. These same recommendations are now beginning to come in upon me: I had one from Brewster two days ago (with the offer of farther help); and this morning, came a decent testificatory letter from Buller, and a most majestic certificate in three pages from Edward Irving.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Manuscript: Letter of recommendation
George Gordon Lord Byron : Sardanapalus
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 1 January 1822: 'I think "Cain" most wicked, but not without feeling or passion. Parts of it are magnificent, and the effect of Granville [husband] reading it out loud to me was that I roared [i.e. wept] till I could neither hear nor see. The scene, too, in "Sardanapalus" where Myrrha says "Oh, frown not on me," and the speech, "Why do I love this man?" I think beautiful and affecting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
George Howard : verses
Harriet Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, from The Hague (June 1824): 'What a pretty book Captain Hall's is [...] George's verses gave me the greatest pleasure. I prefer the first, which I think beautiful. The last are full of soul and subject; but I think there is a little confusion dans la marche.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville
(Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle) Mrs Henry de La Pasture : Peter's Mother
'The appeal to my literary opinion was not fair. Suppose I had been in one of my cantankerous hours when the book came. But I daresay you were confident. And with reason. No native or acquired cantankerousness could resist the charm of style, the delicate simplicity of expression[...].' Hence follow four more lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Alfred Rawlings : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The minutes of the previous meeting were read'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: book
George Borrow :
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readiings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ridges Print: Book
R. Heelas : [paper on Life of George Borrow]
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readiings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R. Heelas Manuscript: Unknown
George Borrow : Bible in Spain, The
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
George Borrow : Lavengro
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Marriage Print: Book
George Borrow : Lavengro
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E.P. Kaye Print: Book
George Borrow : Romany Rye, The
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
George Borrow : Romany Rye, The
'Papers were then read by Mr Ridges on the Works of Borrow & on the Life of Borrow by R. Heelas. Readings were given by Mrs W.H. Smith from the Bible in Spain, Miss Marriage & Mr Kaye from Lavengro & H.R. Smith & W.J. Rowntree from Romany Rye'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Frederick Edminson : [paper on English ballads]
'The subject of the evening - 'English Ballads' - was then discussed in two papers, by F.J. Edminson & H.M. Wallis, and illustrated by readings recitations & songs. Recitations were given by Rosamund Wallis & Mrs Ridges. Readings by H.M. Wallis, Mrs Smith & Mrs Edminson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on English ballads]
'The subject of the evening - 'English Ballads' - was then discussed in two papers, by F.J. Edminson & H.M. Wallis, and illustrated by readings recitations & songs. Recitations were given by Rosamund Wallis & Mrs Ridges. Readings by H.M. Wallis, Mrs Smith & Mrs Edminson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Herbert Ernest Bates :
[Lengthy, uncomplimentary quote from H. E. Bates on D. H. Lawrence] 'Perhaps you would like to know who is writing this? H. E. Ballocks. I mean H. E. Bastard. That is, H. E. Bates: [Quotes H. E. Bates comparing Lawrence unfavourably to Rilke]... No, I can't go on. When will these sodding loudmouthed cunting shitstuffed pisswashed sons of poxed-up bitches learn that there is something greater than literature? A bastard who can bastard well write bastard shit like that bastard well ought to be bastard well stuffed with broken glass, the bastard.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Thomas Hardy]
'The programme on Thos Hardy & his works was as follows Mr Binns read an interesting account of the author's life & H.M. Wallis one on the minor poems. F.E. Reynolds read selections from Tess & S.A. Reynolds from Under the Greenwood Tree'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Rowntree : [Paper on W.W. Jacobs]
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [Paper on William Pett Ridge]
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
William Wymark Jacobs :
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
William Wymark Jacobs :
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
William Wymark Jacobs :
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
William Wymark Jacobs :
'The following was the programme for the evening Viz a paper by W.S. Rowntree on W.W. Jacobs' works. C.E. Stansfield, C.I. Evans & W.S. Rowntree gave illustrative readings from his works H.R. Smith read a paper on Pett Ridge & his works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on parodies]
'The programme on parodies consisted of a paper by H.M. Wallis & C.I. Evans & readings by Miss Marriage, Mrs Evans, C.I. Evans, W. Binns, H.M. Wallis & Helen Rawlings'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: H.M. Wallis and Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'On a Cornelian Heart which was broken'
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“On a Cornelian Heart that was broken" - Lord Byron', beginning 'Ill-fated Heart! and can it be,/ That thou should'st thus be rent in twain?'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'To My Daughter'
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"To my Daughter" - Lord Byron'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
George Gordon Lord Byron : memoranda
Sunday, 20 November 1825 (first entry): 'I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular [journal] [...] I have bethought me on seeing lately some volumes of Byron's notes that he probably had hit upon the right way of keeping such a memorandum-book by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and order and marking down events just as they occurred to recollection. I will try this plan'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Mackenzie : 'Essay on Dreams' (extract)
Monday, 5 December 1825: 'Dined at the Royal Society Club where as usual was a pleasant meeting of from 20 to 25. It is a very good institution. We pay two guineas only for six dinners in the year present or absent. Dine at 5 or rather 1/2 past 5 at the Royal hotel [...] till half past seven then coffee and we go to the Society [...] 'Henry Mackenzie now in his eighty second year read part of an Essay on Dreams.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Mackenzie
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Bright be the place of thy soul'
From the Commonplace Book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“Bright be the place of thy Soul” Lord Byron', beginning (first verse): 'Bright be the place of thy soul!/ No lovelier spirit than thine/ E'er burst from its mortal control,/ In the orbs of the blessed to shine.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Harriet Wilson : Memoirs
Friday, 9 December 1825: 'The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson [...] She must have been assisted in the style spelling and diction though the attempt at wit is very poor -- that at pathos sickening. But there is some good retailing of conversations in which the stile of the speakers so far as known to me is exactly imitated [comments further on text and its author]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sir Gilbert Eliot, first Earl Minto : poems
Friday, 23 December 1825: 'Sir Gilbert [the first Earl Minto] was indeed a man among a thousand. I knew him very intimately at the beginning of the century [...] He loved the Muses and worshipd them in secret and used to read some of [his] poetry which was but middling. One upon a walk with his lady which involved certain conclusions (most delicately couchd) but which it is not usual to allude [to].'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Gilbert Eliot, first Earl Minto
Dr Arnott : An Account of the Last Illness, Decease, etc. of Napoleon Bonaparte
Thursday, 2 March 1826: 'Slept indifferently and dreamd of Napoleon's last moments and last illness of which I was reading a medical account last night by Dr. Arnott. Horrible death -- a cancer on the pylorus'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Captain George Longmore : Tales of Chivalry and Romance
Friday, 10 March 1826: 'Breakfasted with me Mr. Francks [...] and Captain Longmore of the Royal Staff. He has written a book of poetry, Tales of Chivalry and Romance, far from bad yet wants spirit'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Henry Weber : Metrical Romances
Friday, 10 March 1826: '[Henry Weber] was a man of very superior attainments, an excellent linguist and geographer and a remarkable antiquary. He publishd a collection of antient Romances superior I think to the elaborate Ritson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Charlotte Smith : Desmond
Thursday, 16 March 1826: 'In the evening after dinner read Mrs. Charlotte Smith's novel Desmond, decidedly the worst of her compositions.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Walter Scott : Marmion
Monday, 27 March 1826: 'I answerd two modest requests [for assistance with sons' career advancement] from widow Ladies -- One whom I had already assisted on some law business on the footing of her having visited my mother [...] Another widowed dame whose claim is having read Marmion and the Lady of the Lake besides a promise to read all my other works [...] demands that I shall either pay £200 to get her cub into some place or settle him in a seminary of education [...] I do believe your destitute widow, especially if she hath a charge of children and one or two fit for patronage, is one of the most impudent animals living.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
Monday, 27 March 1826: 'I answerd two modest requests [for assistance with sons' career advancement] from widow Ladies -- One whom I had already assisted on some law business on the footing of her having visited my mother [...] Another widowed dame whose claim is having read Marmion and the Lady of the Lake besides a promise to read all my other works [...] demands that I shall either pay £200 to get her cub into some place or settle him in a seminary of education [...] I do believe your destitute widow, especially if she hath a charge of children and one or two fit for patronage, is one of the most impudent animals living.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Major Denham, Captain Clapperton, and Doctor Oudney : Narrative of Travels in Northern and Central Africa in 1822, 1823, and 1834 [sic in source]
Wednesday, 5 April 1826: 'Read Clapperton's journey and Denman's [sic] into Bornou -- very entertaining and less botheration about mineralogy botany and so forth than usual. Pity Africa picks up so many brave men however.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Wentworth Smith : The Hector of Germany, or The Palsgrave
Tuesday, 1 August 1826: 'Yesterday evening [...] I took to arranging the old plays of which Terry had brought me about a dozen and dipping into them scrambled through two -- One called Michaelmas Term full of traits of manners and another a sort of bouncing tragedy called The Hector of Germany or The Palsgrave. The last, worthless in the extreme, is like many of the plays in the beginning of the 17th. Century written to a good tune [goes on to comment further on language in seventeenth- century drama].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Ellis : Specimens of the Early English Poets
'Scott admired [George Ellis's] Specimens of the Early English Poets and Specimens of Early English Romances, and their common interests drew them into close and friendly correspondence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Ellis : Specimens of Early English Romances
'Scott admired [George Ellis's] Specimens of the Early English Poets and Specimens of Early English Romances, and their common interests drew them into close and friendly correspondence.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth : Sir John Chiverton
Tuesday, 17 October 1826: 'Read over Sir John Chiverton and Brambletye House, novels in what I may surely claim as the stile [quotes from Jonathan Swift, "On the Death of Dr. Swift," lls. 57-8] '"Which I was born to introduce Refined it first and showd its use." 'They are both clever books, one in imitation of the days of chivalry, the other by John Smith [...] dated in the time of the civil wars and introducing historical characters. I read both with great interest during the journey [to London].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Howard Smith : [paper on Subliminal Consciousness]
'The subject of Occultism was introduced in a general & comprehensive way [by] C. Stansfield. H.R. Smith read a paper on Subliminal Consciousness & W.S Rowntree on Evidence of continued existence after corporeal death.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Rowntree : [paper on Evidence of continued existence after corporeal death]
'The subject of Occultism was introduced in a general & comprehensive way [by] C. Stansfield. H.R. Smith read a paper on Subliminal Consciousness & W.S Rowntree on Evidence of continued existence after corporeal death.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margery Rawlings Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Peer Gynt
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Doll's House, The
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Pillars of Society, The
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Marriage, Henry Marriage Wallis, Percy Kaye and Walter Rowntree Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : Doll's House, The
'The programme on Ibsen's work was opened by a reading on Peer Gynt by Helen Rawlings from P.H. Wicksteed's book on Ibsen. Kathleen Rawlings sang a song from Peer Gynt composed by Grieg. Helen & Margery Rawlings & the Secretary gave readings & Kathleen Rawlings another song from the same play. F.J. Edminson gave a few biographical details of Ibsen & a synopsis of the plot of the Doll's House followed by a reading from the play. Miss Marriage, H.M Wallis, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye took part in a reading from Pillars of Society'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells : The New Machiavelli
' This is really great, great in every dimension. [...] I have read the book ["The New Machiavelli"] yesterday and this evening I re-read it from p.290-504. I don't know what a "masterpiece" may be --but I know what masterwork is when I see it. And this is it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc
'Phew! This [ "The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc" ] is fine.Just one word as the curtain falls for the last time.[...]. I'll with your leave keep the MS for 3 days before I read it again. I wanted to give the very freshest first impression just now, but won't say more at present.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Norman Douglas : Siren Land
'The book ["Siren Land"]'s certain to be well noticed -- maybe attacked too; but that's no harm. I've been delighted. There are mighty fine things there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Arthur Symons : unidentified
'No end of thanks for the little vol: so charming inside and outside--in its slender body containing a gently melodious soul. I see quite a new aspect of you in these few delightful pages.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Thomas : Light and Twilight
'Thanks for the little book ["Light and Twilight"] so full of good things. You know I have a prediliction for your prose with its quiet,flowing felicity of phrase and what I call "penetrative" power of expression.' Hence follow 11 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
W.H.(William Henry) Hudson : A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs (probable)
'Thanks very much for the books. You are indeed very good to me. Hudson's volume is fine, very fine, infinitely loveable, and as one reads on, one feels one's affection increase at every page.' Hence follow 8 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Walter Rowntree : [paper on Dante & Florence]
'W.S. Rowntree read a paper on Dante & Florence [,] H.R. Smith explained the Vita Nuova from which Mrs W.H. Smith & Mrs Edminson read selections'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Manuscript: Unknown
Frederick Edminson : [paper on Dante's Purgatorio]
'Miss Marriage explained fully with aid of diagrams, Dante's progress through the Inferno, selections from which were read by other members. Mr Edminson read a paper on the Purgatorio which was also supplemented with readings by various members. A. Rawlings gave a few selections from Plumtree's [sic] notes on Dante, concerning the Paradiso.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Young : The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of lines from Edward Young's Night Thoughts, beginning 'Celestial Happiness, when’er she stoops. To visit earth, one shrine the Goddess finds…'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'If that high world'
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"If that high World" - Byron', beginning 'If that high world -- which lies beyond Our own, surviving love endears...'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Mrs O’Neil : Ode to the Poppy
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of 'Ode to the Poppy, By the Honble Mrs O’Neil', beginning 'Not for the promise of the cultured field/ Not for the good the yellow harvests yield…’
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
George Gordon, Lord Byron : To Mary
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"To Mary" - Byron', beginning 'RACK'D by the flames of jealous rage, By all her torments deeply curst, Of hell-born passions far the worst, What hope my pangs can now assuage'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Robert Southey : The Well of St Keyne
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“The Well of St Keyne” [unattributed, but by Southey] beginning 'A well there is in the West Country, / And a cleverer one never was seen…’
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Walter Scott : Rokeby
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of four lines from “Rokesby” (for Rokeby), beginning 'When lovers meet in adverse hour/ Tis like a sun glimpse through a shower…’
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
George Gordon, Lord Byron : The Bridge of Abydos
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of four lines lines from the "Bride of Abydos" [Byron].
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Mary Queen of Scots : Sonnet
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: 'The following lines are a translation of a Latin Sonnet written by Mary Queen of Scots when in the vessel which conveyed her from France.' The lines begin ‘Stay cruel breeze, rude ocean cease thy roar….’
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Lord Palmerston : Epitaph on Vicountess Palmerston
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"Epitaph on Viscountess Palmerston written by her Husband” Romsey Church.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen Print: tombstone
Princess Amelia :
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“Lines by the Princess Amelia” beginning 'Unthinking, idle, wild and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked and sung…'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Rev. Francis Murray : Friendship
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of “Friendship” by the Revd Francis Murray.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Richard Brinsley Sheridan : Verses
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of 'Verses by R. B. Sheridan Esq'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Henry James : The Outcry
'Thank you for the fine present.[...] While reading delightedly this little work which shines with so soft a brightness, I have for a moment been able to forget the passage of time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
(Francis) Warrington Dawson : unspecified
'I have read the MS. I have read it twice.' Hence follow 20 lines of quite strong but constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Frederic Andre : letter
'Translation enclosed, very literal, for the fun’s sake. I have taken stock/made acquaintance of the ["Treatise of Marine Works" which you have published in 1874 […] Kindly accept, Mister and dear colleague, the expression of my sentiments of perfect estime. (signed) Fred Andre'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Henri Ghéon : Nos Directions
'Thank you for the book. So judicious, so interesting, so touching--why shouldn't I say so when I have been touched?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : Lords and Masters
'I hadn't turned over the 3rd page when I let out a whistle of respectful admiration.' Hence follows a page of praise with one minor reservation.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: playscript
Robert Southey : History of the Peninsular War
Thursday, 19 October 1826: 'I rose at my usual time [7 am] but could not write so read Southey['s] History of the Peninsular War. It is very good indeed, honest English good principle in every line, but there are many prejudices and there is a tendency to augment a work already too long by saying all that can be said of the history of ancient times appertaining to every place mentioned.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
R. B. Sheridan : The Critic
Thursday, 4 January 1827: 'After tea I broke off work and read my young folks the farce of The Critic and "merry folks were we."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Christian Isobel Johnson : Elizabeth de Bruce
Tuesday, 23 January 1827: 'Betwixt dinner and tea while husbanding a tumbler of whisky and water I read the new novel Elizabeth de Bruce -- part of it that is'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Christian Isobel Johnson : Elizabeth de Bruce
Saturday, 27 January 1827: 'Read Elizth. de Bruce -- it is very clever but does not show much originality: the characters though very entertaining are in the manner of other authors and the finishd and filldup portraits of which the sketches are to be found elsewhere. One is too apt to feel on such occasions the pettied resentment that you might entertain against one who had poachd on your manor. But [...] a claim set up on having been the first who betook himself to the illustration of some particular class of characters or department of life is no more a right of monopoly than that asserted by the old buccaneers by setting up a wooden cross and killing an Indian or two on some new discovered Island.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Peter Tytler : 'essay [...] on the first encourager of Greek learning in England'
Monday, 5 February 1827: 'Dined at the Royal Society club -- above 30 present. Went to the Society in the evening and heard an essay by Peter Tytler on the first encourager of Greek learning in England.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Lord Frederick Leveson Gower : Tale of the Mill
Saturday, 10 February 1827: 'I got a present of Lord Frederick Leveson Gower's printed but unpublishd "Tale of the Mill" -- it is a fine tale of terror in itself and very happily brought out. He has certainly a true taste for poetry. I do not know why, but from my childhood I have seen something fearful or melancholy at least about a Mill [speculates on possible reasons for this] [...] So I enterd into the spirit of the terror with which Lord Frederick has invested his haunted spot.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
Horace Walpole : Historic Doubts on Richard III
Thursday, 1 March 1827: 'By the bye it is the anniversary of Bosworth field. In former days Richd. IIId. was always acted at London on this day [...] Walpole's Historic Doubts threw a mist about this Reign. It is very odd to see how his mind dwells upon [them] at first as the mere sport of imagination till at length they become such Dalilahs of his imagination that he deems it far worse than infidelity to doubt his Doubts.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sir James Melville : Memoirs
Saturday, 10 March 1827: 'About three o'clock I got to a meeting of the Bannatyne club [...] Thomson is superintending a capital edition of Sir James Melville's Memoirs. It is brave to see how he wags his Scots tongue and what a difference there is in the force and firmness of his language compared to the mincing English edition in which he has hitherto been alone known.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
André Gide : L'Immoraliste
'I admit, then, that I read and admired "The Immoralist" all of two years ago. Davray gave it to me. I have not said anything but someone has filched my copy; and I wanted to get the book from you. As to the volume of criticism, all I can tell you is that I am so much in accord with the sentiment of this book that the sympathy--permit me to say affection-- that I felt for you from the first moment is infinitely increased.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
André Gide : unknown
'I admit, then, that I read and admired "The Immoralist" all of two years ago. Davray gave it to me. I have not said anything but someone has filched my copy; and I wanted to get the book from you. As to the volume of criticism, all I can tell you is that I am so much in accord with the sentiment of this book that the sympathy--permit me to say affection-- that I felt for you from the first moment is infinitely increased.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Ward : De Vere
Sunday, 22 April 1827: 'Wrought [i.e. worked] in the afternoon and tried to read De Vere, a sensible but heavy book written by an able hand -- but a great bore for all that'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sir James Melville : Memoirs
Friday, 8 June 1827: 'I was fatigued and sleepy when I go[t] home [from business meetings] and nodded, I think, over Sir James Melville's Memoirs.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Walter Scott : Life of Napoleon
Thursday, 28 June 1827: 'Visited on invitation a fine old little commodore Trunnion who, in reading a part of Napoleon's history with which he had himself been interested as commanding a flotilla, thought he had detected a mistake, but was luckily mistaken to my great delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Robert Ward : De Vere
Wednesday, 4 July 1827: 'Read De Vere the rest. It is well written in point of language and sentiment but has too little action in it to be termd a pleasing Novel. Every thing is brought out by dialogue, or worse, through the medium of the author's own reflections, whiich is the clumsiest of all expedients.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Walter Scott : article on E. T. W. Hoffmann
Wednesday, 1 August 1827: 'Smoked a cigar after dinner, laughd with my daughters and read them the review of Hoffmann's production out of Gillies's new Foreign review.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Serial / periodical
Pryce Gordon : Memoirs
Friday, 3 August 1827: 'Huntley Gordon lent me a volume of his father's Manuscript Memoirs. They are not without interest, for Pryce Gordon though a bit of a roue, is a clever fellow in his way [comments further on text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Kingsley : The Water Babies
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 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Collected Plays
Transcript of interview: 'The one [book] that I was given was Bernard Shaw. We went into a bookshop and my father said you can have any book you like which was very unwise because I plumped for the most expensive book in the shop which was 3 guineas, which was terrifically expensive when you think that someone got 2 pounds 3 shillings a week wage.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Hervey Allen : Anthony Adverse
Transcript of interview: 'The school library had a reasonably wide selection – we could take out one fiction and one non-fiction a week but the English teacher would vet them to see what we were taking out. There was a book called Anthony Adverse that fell open at a specific page because it had what we thought was a scene of terrifically kinky sex – I think actually that it was probably really very mild – just the woman was on top and we were very intrigued by it. I’m sure the English teacher had never read that.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Georgette Heyer : [novels]
Transcript of interview: 'We [Hilary and schoolfellows] used to recommend things to each other a lot, and we had crazes – Georgette Heyer, D.K. Broster, Cronin, Axel Munter, Hugh Walpole. And then there were F Brett Young and my own particular favourite Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard – I read that when I was about 15 and I read it almost every year for about 6 years afterwards. I loved it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Francis Brett Young : [novels]
Transcript of interview: 'We [Hilary and schoolfellows] used to recommend things to each other a lot, and we had crazes – Georgette Heyer, D.K. Broster, Cronin, Axel Munter, Hugh Walpole. And then there were F Brett Young and my own particular favourite Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard – I read that when I was about 15 and I read it almost every year for about 6 years afterwards. I loved it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Margaret Irwin : Still She Wished for Company
Transcript of interview: 'And another one that I loved was when I had mumps and was in the san which had a very small library and I read Still She Wished for Company which was a ghost story. And I had a soft spot for Harrison Ainsworth, who wrote historical novels about the plague, and the fire of London and so forth. I had a strong sense of the macabre. I loved Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which I read when I was 15/16 and I was very interested in books on medical discoveries, medical research and so on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth :
Transcript of interview: 'And another one that I loved was when I had mumps and was in the san which had a very small library and I read Still She Wished for Company which was a ghost story. And I had a soft spot for Harrison Ainsworth, who wrote historical novels about the plague, and the fire of London and so forth. I had a strong sense of the macabre. I loved Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which I read when I was 15/16 and I was very interested in books on medical discoveries, medical research and so on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
Transcript of interview: 'And another one that I loved was when I had mumps and was in the san which had a very small library and I read Still She Wished for Company which was a ghost story. And I had a soft spot for Harrison Ainsworth, who wrote historical novels about the plague, and the fire of London and so forth. I had a strong sense of the macabre. I loved Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which I read when I was 15/16 and I was very interested in books on medical discoveries, medical research and so on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Dornford Yates : various
Transcript of interview: 'She [mother] introduced me to Dornford Yates, and I devoured him when I was about 16.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
Frederick J. Edminson : [Essay on Goldwin Smith as historian]
'J.J. Cooper introduced the subject of the life and Work of Goldwin Smith in an interesting essay. F.J. Edminson dealt with his historical work & his position as an historian & A. Rawlings read some extracts from his Life of Wm Lloyd Garrison'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Manuscript: Unknown
Henri Bergson :
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Henri Bergson :
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Henri Bergson :
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
Mary Hayward : [paper on Henri Bergson]
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R. Smith : [paper on Henri Bergson]
'The subject of this evening's discussion was The Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Interesting papers were given by C.E. Stansfield who introduced the discussion; by Howard R. Smith & Mary Hayward who dwelt particularly on Bergson's views upon Instinct, Intuition & Intelligence.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
George Bernard Shaw : Doctor's Dilemma, The
'The programme on G. Bernard Shaw & his work was then entered upon by C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on the man & his work. H.M. Wallis gave a reading from "The Doctor's Dilemma" & next F.J. Edminson, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye a part reading from "Man & Superman" & C.I. Evans completed the programme by reading in the Introduction to Fabian Essays'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Fabian Essays
'The programme on G. Bernard Shaw & his work was then entered upon by C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on the man & his work. H.M. Wallis gave a reading from "The Doctor's Dilemma" & next F.J. Edminson, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye a part reading from "Man & Superman" & C.I. Evans completed the programme by reading in the Introduction to Fabian Essays'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [essay on Shaw's Life and Works]
'The programme on G. Bernard Shaw & his work was then entered upon by C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on the man & his work. H.M. Wallis gave a reading from "The Doctor's Dilemma" & next F.J. Edminson, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye a part reading from "Man & Superman" & C.I. Evans completed the programme by reading in the Introduction to Fabian Essays'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
George Bernard Shaw : Man and Superman
'The programme on G. Bernard Shaw & his work was then entered upon by C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on the man & his work. H.M. Wallis gave a reading from "The Doctor's Dilemma" & next F.J. Edminson, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye a part reading from "Man & Superman" & C.I. Evans completed the programme by reading in the Introduction to Fabian Essays'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson, Percy Kaye & Walter Rowntree Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw :
'The programme on G. Bernard Shaw & his work was then entered upon by C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on the man & his work. H.M. Wallis gave a reading from "The Doctor's Dilemma" & next F.J. Edminson, W.S. Rowntree & Percy Kaye a part reading from "Man & Superman" & C.I. Evans completed the programme by reading in the Introduction to Fabian Essays'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Robert Chambers : History of the Rebellion 1745-6
Thursday, 15 November 1827: 'Met with Chambers and complimented him about his making a clever book of the 1745 for Constable's Miscellany. It is really a lively work and must have a good sale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
James Fenimore Cooper : Prairie
Monday, 28 January 1828: 'I have read Cooper's Prairie, better I think than his Red Rover in which you never got foot on shore and to understand entirely the incidents of the story it requires too much nautical language. It is very clever though.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Theodore Hook : Sayings and Doings (third series)
Thursday 21 February 1828: 'Last night after dinner I rested from my work and read third part of Sayings and Doings, which shows great knowledge of life in a certain sphere and very considerable powers of wit which somewhat damages the effect of his tragic [scenes]. But he is an able writer and so much of his work is well said that it will carry through what is manque.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Gerald Griffin : Tales of the Munster Festivals
Thursday, 13 March 1828: 'I found that like the foolish virgins the servants had omitted to get oil for my lamp so I was obliged to be idle all the evening. But though I had a diverting book, the Tales of the Munster Festivals, yet an evening without writing hung heavy on my hand. The tales are admirable. But they have one fault, that the crisis is in more cases than one protracted after a keen interest has been excited, to explain and to resume parts of the story which should have been told before. Scenes of mere amusement are often introduced betwixt the crisis of the plot and the final catastrophe. This is impolitic. But the scenes and characters are traced by a firm, bold and true pencil and my very criticism shows that [the] catastrophe is interesting, otherwise who would care for its being interrupted?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Frances Burney : notes 'about her novels'
Monday, 26 May 1828: 'I walkd down to call with [Samuel] Rogers on Mrs. D'Arblay. She shewd me some notes which she was making about her novels which she induced me to believe had been recollected and jotted down in compliance with my suggestions on a former occasion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Unknown
The Revd. Dr. R. Henry : History of Great Britain; from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the death of Henry VIII
Tuesday, 10 February 1829: 'I read over Henry's History of Henry VI and Edward IV. He is but a stupid historian after all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Robert Chambers : Picture of Scotland
Sunday, 15 February 1829: 'I wrought [i.e. worked at writing] to day but not much -- rather dawdled and took to reading Chambers' Beauties of Scotland which would be admirable if they were more accurate. He is a clever young fellow but hurts himself by too much haste.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Sir William Hamilton : 'On the size of the brain and the proportion of its parts, as affected by age, sex, or sexual mutilation.'
Monday. 16 February 1829: 'Went to the Royal Society. There Sir William Hamilton read an Essay, the result of some anatomical investigations, which containd a maskd battery against the phrenologists. It seems these worthies are agreed that the cerebellum is that part of the headpiece which influences the sexual organs and according to this hypothesis that same cerebellum should be stronger in men than in women, in adults than in children, in old men than in youths, in persons mutilated than in those who are in the natural state [...] But if Sir William's course of experiments are correct the very opposite is the truth.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Hamilton
The Revd. C. H. Hartshorne : Ancient Metrical Tales
Friday, 20 February 1829: 'I glanced over some romances metrical publishd by Hartshorne several of which have not seen the light. They are considerably curious but I was surprized to see them mingled with "Blanchflour" and "Florice" and one or two others which might have been spared. There is no great display of notes or prolegomena and there is moreover no glossary. But the work is well edited.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie : The Man of Feeling
'Now hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour I have got the goodhumoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M-' (Footnote: Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) author of Man of Feeling).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
T.R. Malthus : Principle of Population
'Colonel R. told me that the European government had discoverd an ingenious mode of diminishing the number of burnings of widows...This is the reverse of our system of increasing game by shooting the old cock-birds. It is a system would aid Malthus rarely.' (Footnote: Scott sent to Lockhart on 17 February a short article on the burnings for publication in the Representative).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Walter Villiers : Sir Claude the Conqueror (in Young Folks)
'See No. 571, last page; an article, called Sir Claude the Conqueror ... The story in question, by the by, was a last chance given to its drunken author; not Villiers - that was a nom de plume - but Viles, brother to my old boyhood's guide, philosopher and friend, Edward Viles ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Bracebridge Hemyng : Bondage of Brandon
'Talking of which, in Heaven's name, get the Bondage of Brandon (3 vols) by Bracebridge Hemming.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : letter to Sidney Colvin
'We have just had Oscar Wilde's incredible letter to Colvin and have roared over it ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Oscar Wilde : Poems
'We have just had Oscar Wilde's incredible letter ... I read his poems and found, with disappointment, they were not even improper.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : review of Vol 3 Letters of Charles Dickens in Athenaeum
'I had already spotted your Dickens; very pleasant and true.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on historical setting of Browning's 'Sordello']
'Browning's Sordello was introduced by some prefatory notes by H.M. Wallis read by E.E. Unwin. H.M. Wallis then read a paper describing the historical setting of the poem. Selections were read by Miss Marriage and C.I. Evans'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [prefatory notes to Browning's 'Sordello']
'Browning's Sordello was introduced by some prefatory notes by H.M. Wallis read by E.E. Unwin. H.M. Wallis then read a paper describing the historical setting of the poem. Selections were read by Miss Marriage and C.I. Evans'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : Sordello
'Browning's Sordello was introduced by some prefatory notes by H.M. Wallis read by E.E. Unwin. H.M. Wallis then read a paper describing the historical setting of the poem. Selections were read by Miss Marriage and C.I. Evans'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles I. Evans Print: Book
Robert Browning : Sordello
'Browning's Sordello was introduced by some prefatory notes by H.M. Wallis read by E.E. Unwin. H.M. Wallis then read a paper describing the historical setting of the poem. Selections were read by Miss Marriage and C.I. Evans'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Marriage Print: Book
Robert Browning : Sordello
'Browning's Sordello was introduced by some prefatory notes by H.M. Wallis read by E.E. Unwin. H.M. Wallis then read a paper describing the historical setting of the poem. Selections were read by Miss Marriage and C.I. Evans'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Robert Browning : Evelyn Hope
'A series of more or less five minutes essays or talks on various aspects of Browning by the folowing members were then given. viz C.I. Evans, E.E. Unwin, W.S. Rowntree, E.A. Smith, H.R. Smith & A. Rawlings. Mrs Robson, E.E. Unwin, & Kathleen Rawlings contributed songs & Margery Rawlings read Evelyn Hope'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margery Rawlings Print: Book
Charles Evans : [Paper on Henry Newbolt]
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Paper on John Masefield]
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Newbolt :
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Robert Bridges :
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John James Cooper Print: Book
Henry Charles Beeching :
'J.J. Cooper read a paper on Robert Bridges & some selections from his poetry. C.I. Evans dealt with Newbolt & E.E. Unwin with Masefield in a similar way. Alfred Rawlings gave brief readings from Beeching, Alice Maynell [sic] & Frogley's Voice from the Trees'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonais
'A programme devoted to Shelley was arranged which included readings from Adonais, the Skylark & Francis Thompson's Essay on Shelley'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Skylark, The
'A programme devoted to Shelley was arranged which included readings from Adonais, the Skylark & Francis Thompson's Essay on Shelley'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Francis Thompson : Shelley
'A programme devoted to Shelley was arranged which included readings from Adonais, the Skylark & Francis Thompson's Essay on Shelley'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Maurice, Count Maeterlinck :
'A series of readings from Maeterlinck were given by various members'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : Countess Cathleen
'The Programme on Recent Irish Literature consisted of the following. 1. A reading of The Tinker's Wedding by Synge 2. A paper by E.E. Unwin on the neo-Irish theatre 3. A reading from the Playboy of the Western World 4. Two Songs by E.E. Unwin 5. readings from Countess Cathleen etc.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
ernest E. Unwin : [paper on neo-Irish theatre]
'The Programme on Recent Irish Literature consisted of the following. 1. A reading of The Tinker's Wedding by Synge 2. A paper by E.E. Unwin on the neo-Irish theatre 3. A reading from the Playboy of the Western World 4. Two Songs by E.E. Unwin 5. readings from Countess Cathleen etc.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Arthur Patchett Martin : Sweet Girl Graduate: A Christmas Story and Random Rhymes
It would not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present….I can assure you, your little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure and encouragement in the world...' [Note 1]Martin read RLS’s essay ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ in "Cornhill" for August 1876 and wrote to him expressing his pleasure.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Reginald Heber : Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India
Wednesday, 12 March 1829: 'I read Reginald Heber's journal after dinner. I spent some merry days with him at Oxford when he was writing his prize-poem. He was then a gay young fellow, a wit and a satirist and burning for literary fame. My laurels were beginning to bloom and we were both mad-caps -- Who would have fortold our future lot?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Doom of Devorgoil
Sunday, 26 April 1829: 'Looking for something I fell in with the Little drama long amissing calld the Doom of Devorgoil. I believe it was out of mere contradiction that I sate down to read and correct it merely because I would not be bound to do aught that seemd compulsory [i.e. current novel in progress]. So I scribbled at [the] piece of nonsense till two o'clock [...] spent the evening in reading the Doom of Devorgoil to the girls who seemd considerably interested. Anne objects to the mingling of the comick goblinry which is comic with the serious which is tragic. After all I could greatly improve [it] and it would [not] be a bad composition of that odd kind to some pick-nick receptacle of all things.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Unknown
General Miller : Memoirs of General Miller, in the Service of the Republic of Peru
Monday, 15 June 1829: 'I read Genl. Miller's account of the South American War. I liked it the better that Basil Hall brought the author to breakfast with [me] in Edinr., a fin[e] tall military figure, his left hand withered like the prophet's gourd and plenty of scars on him. There have been rare doings in that vast continent but the strife is too distant, the country too unknown, to have the effect upon the imagination which European wars produce.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Ursula Unwin : [biography of Tolstoy]
'Mrs Unwin then read a biography of Leo Tolstoi. C.I. Evans then dealt with him as a schoolmaster - H.M. Wallis as a literary artist & R.H. Robson summarised the message of Tolstoi.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of the last two meetings were read'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Unwin Manuscript: book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Latter Day Warnings'
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John J. Cooper Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Poet at the Breakfast Table, The
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Professor at the Breakfast Table, The
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : Elsie Venner
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: K. Evans Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Chambered Nautilus, The'
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Oliver Wendell Holmes : 'Deacon's Masterpiece, Or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Reginald Robson : [paper on Holmes's 'the Professor at the Breakfast Table']
'The Life & Works of Oliver W. Holmes were then dealt with. John J. Cooper read an interesting biographical paper, concluding with a reading "Latter Day Warnings" for The Autocrat. Mrs Robson a reading from "The Poet at the Bt table" Mrs Evans [ditto marks] from "Elsie Venner" R.H. Robson read a paper dealing with the characters of "The Professor at the Bt table". The paper was illustrated by well selected readings from the book - making a most interesting communication. C.I. Evans read "The Chambered Nautilus" & "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting were read'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting were read'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Unwin Manuscript: book
Alfred Russel Wallace : My Life; A Record of Events and Opinions.
'The Meeting then considered the Life & Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Walter S. Rowntree gave us an account of Wallace's life from the autobiography reading a number of well chosen extracts. This was followed by a paper from Henry M. Wallis on his scientific work and one from Mrs Smith on his psychical work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter S. Rowntree Print: Book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [Paper on A.R. Wallace's scientific writings]
'The Meeting then considered the Life & Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Walter S. Rowntree gave us an account of Wallace's life from the autobiography reading a number of well chosen extracts. This was followed by a paper from Henry M. Wallis on his scientific work and one from Mrs Smith on his psychical work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Russel Wallace : [psychical writings]
'The Meeting then considered the Life & Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Walter S. Rowntree gave us an account of Wallace's life from the autobiography reading a number of well chosen extracts. This was followed by a paper from Henry M. Wallis on his scientific work and one from Mrs Smith on his psychical work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Alfred Russel Wallace : [scientific writings]
'The Meeting then considered the Life & Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Walter S. Rowntree gave us an account of Wallace's life from the autobiography reading a number of well chosen extracts. This was followed by a paper from Henry M. Wallis on his scientific work and one from Mrs Smith on his psychical work.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Ernest Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Unwin Manuscript: book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Chaucer's Life and Times]
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Evans : [paper on Chaucer's poetry]
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer : Knight's Tale, The
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Wallis Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : General Prologue
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : [poetry, including the General Prologue]
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest Unwin Manuscript: book
Rabindranath Tagore : Chitra
'The evening was then given to a series of readings from the works of Tagore, including Chitra by Helen, Janet & Alfred Rawlings The Crescent Moon - Katherine I. Evans King of the Dark Chamber - Violet Wallis The Gardener - C.E. Stansfield Post Office - C.I. Evans'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Helen and Janet Rawlings Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore : Crescent Moon, The
'The evening was then given to a series of readings from the works of Tagore, including Chitra by Helen, Janet & Alfred Rawlings The Crescent Moon - Katherine I. Evans King of the Dark Chamber - Violet Wallis The Gardener - C.E. Stansfield Post Office - C.I. Evans'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore : King of the Dark Chamber
'The evening was then given to a series of readings from the works of Tagore, including Chitra by Helen, Janet & Alfred Rawlings The Crescent Moon - Katherine I. Evans King of the Dark Chamber - Violet Wallis The Gardener - C.E. Stansfield Post Office - C.I. Evans'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Wallis Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore : Gardener, The
'The evening was then given to a series of readings from the works of Tagore, including Chitra by Helen, Janet & Alfred Rawlings The Crescent Moon - Katherine I. Evans King of the Dark Chamber - Violet Wallis The Gardener - C.E. Stansfield Post Office - C.I. Evans'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
Rabindranath Tagore : Post Office
'The evening was then given to a series of readings from the works of Tagore, including Chitra by Helen, Janet & Alfred Rawlings The Crescent Moon - Katherine I. Evans King of the Dark Chamber - Violet Wallis The Gardener - C.E. Stansfield Post Office - C.I. Evans'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Peter Christen Asbjorsen : Round the Yule Log
'Thank you for your beautiful book, which I admired with my eyes and then read with great amusement.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Mrs Fry :
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle (April 1834): 'The anxiety of the last two months has given me an impossibility of feeling happy [...] I make to myself all sorts of reproaches. I read in a little book I like, Mrs. Fry's last, "Fear is not sorrow."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Mrs Fry :
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle (April 1834): 'The anxiety of the last two months has given me an impossibility of feeling happy [...] The only thing that calms my nerves is sitting at an open window, reading Mrs. Fry or Adams' "Private Thoughts;" but my religion is like my feeling, and I do not find its influence when I have the immediate occupation of it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Mrs Norton :
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 4 June 1835: 'I am with the window open, the orange flower smelling too strong, the nightingales singing too loud, and this in the middle of a city is very delicious. There is a beautiful passage in Mrs. Norton's book about that, the gifts so impartially granted to all and what ought to be our gratitude. How excellent, how beautiful I think some of her writing; but somehow or other [...] she is not in keeping with her own opinions and feelings, and it is impossible to bind her up with her own stories.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford : Belford Regis
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her brother, the Duke of Devonshire, 20 June 1835: 'Lord Fitzwilliam [...] and five offspring came [...] Meg took them under her especial care, hurried them off to a couch in the ball-room, got partners for the girls, offered her own two pretty little things up to the boys. But the youngest, Wentworth, preferred sitting all night in the drawing room, studying the comic annual, and, that done, beginning "Belford Regis."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wentworth ?Fitzwilliam Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [paper on life and works of Richard Jefferies]
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula D. Unwin Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Richard Jefferies :
'The evening was then devoted to Richard Jefferies - Poet-Naturalist. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper dealing with his life & the main aspects of his work. In this it was shown how the changes in environment & in health affected the style of his writings & an attempt was made to give a critical appreciation of his work. This was helped by numerous readings given by H.M. Wallis, Rosamund Wallis, C.I. Evans, Ursula D. Unwin, Howard R. Smith, & Ernest E. Unwin'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Cervantes]
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Eagle: A Fragment'
'I stared at the sea far below, and thought of our English master declaring how clever Tennyson had been in saying of his soaring eagle 'the wrinkled sea beneath him crawled'. Yes, it was like that. Then we hit an air pocket and we seemed to be dropping alarmingly, and I forgot about Tennyson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Ulysses'
'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Robert Browning : 'Epilogue to Asolando'
'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : 'Peace'
'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : 'The Dead'
'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Rupert Brooke : 'The Soldier'
'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Alfred Noyes :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Henry Newbolt : Clifton Chapel
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Henry Newbolt : Vitai Lampada
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Henry Newbolt : Ballad of John Nicholson, A
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Henry Newbolt : Vigil, The
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Henry Newbolt :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Alfred Noyes :
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Print: Book
Ursula Unwin : [paper on Alfred Noyes]
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Henry Newbolt]
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Reginald Robson : [paper on Rupert Brooke]
'The evening was then given up to the consideration of three modern poets. Alfred Noyes. A paper by Mrs Unwin with readings from his works. Henry Newbolt. A paper by C.E. Stansfield with readings Clifton Chapel C.I. Evans Vitai Lampada H.M. Wallis A Ballad of John Nicholson A. Rawlings The Vigil Mrs Robson & two songs. Drake's Drum & the Old Superb Mr Unwin. (3) Rupert Brooke a paper by R.H. Robson with readings by Mrs Rawlings Mrs Evans Mrs Robson & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Meredith]
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
George Meredith :
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
George Meredith :
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
George Meredith : Richard Feverel
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
George Meredith : Egoist, The
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
George Meredith : 'Juggling Jerry'
'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Mr Sheil : speech
Harriet, Countess Granville to her brother, the Duke of Devonshire, 12 June 1843: 'We read about Ireland with great interest [...] Georgy [daughter] reads us Mr. Sheil's speech, as Mlle. Rachel [famous actress] would say it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Georgiana Leveson Gower Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : 'tales'
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 10 January 1844: 'Tell me more about Miss Martineau's book [Letters on Mesmerism]. I am afraid of it. The old tales, which I have been re-reading, have such an effect upon me that I can scarcely read them. She writes in a way that harrows up every feeling. It is, I think, quite a strange power, because no writer is so simple and so strong upon sorrows that come to all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau : 'tales'
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle, 10 January 1844: 'Tell me more about Miss Martineau's book [Letters on Mesmerism]. I am afraid of it. The old tales, which I have been re-reading, have such an effect upon me that I can scarcely read them. She writes in a way that harrows up every feeling. It is, I think, quite a strange power, because no writer is so simple and so strong upon sorrows that come to all.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau :
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle (February 1844): 'I should like Miss Martineau, if somebody would translate it. I have only read a chapter, which I cannot understand.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Unknown
Lady Georgiana Leveson Gower : Ellen Middleton
Harriet, Countess Granville to her sister, Lady Carlisle 8 March 1844: '"Ellen Middleton" is no longer a secret and will be out in three weeks [...] Opinions given without her name being known have been more than gratifying, and Mrs. Sartoris read till four in the morning with intense interest that never flagged for a moment.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Sartoris
Lady Georgiana Leveson Gower : Ellen Middleton
Lady Georgiana Fullerton [nee Leveson Gower] to her mother, Harriet, Countess Granville [from letter enclosed in letter of 4 April 1844 from Lady Granville to her sister Lady Carlisle]: 'I am rather angry with Charles Granville for having shown the proof sheets [of Ellen Middleton] to Lord Clarendon, and I regret for my own sake that he praises it so extravagantly. I think it is like when a new beauty appears. Instead of prepossessing people in its favour, it will make them find fault with it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Clarendon Print: Unknown, In proof
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Charles Evans : [paper on William Barnes and / or West Country songs]
'The meeting then considered the subject of Wm Barnes & west country folk songs. C.I. Evans read a paper & a number of readings and songs were given as under. What Dick & I did S.A. Reynolds The Sky Man W.S. Rowntree Ellen Brine of Allenburn Mrs Reynolds The Waggon (a tripartite dram. prem) by Whinfell family Praise o' Dorset Mrs Evans The Settle C.I. Evans [a list of songs and singers follows]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Mary Hayward : [paper on life of Lewis Carroll]
'The evening was then given over to the life & works of Lewis Carroll. Mary Hayward Life of Lewis Carroll. Songs. Well you walk etc Mrs Robson. Walrus & C. E.E.U. Speak gently. Mary Hayward. Readings by S.A. Reynolds, C.E. Stansfield, The Rawlings & Unwin families.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: BookManuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: BookManuscript: book
Reginald Robson : [paper on Dostoevsky]
'Dostoieffsky [sic] occupied our attention for the remained [sic] of the evening. We were much indebted to R.H. Robson for an interesting & valuable introduction dealing with his life as the background of his works. All his writings are in the main autobiographical & the story of his life is necessary for a study of his work. One of the main lessons of his writings is a new & deeper meaning in the term 'brotherhood'. It may be that the Russians will reveal the true democracy to the world. Readings from his novels were given by C. E Stansfield, Mrs Evans, E.E. Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Dostoieffsky [sic] occupied our attention for the remained [sic] of the evening. We were much indebted to R.H. Robson for an interesting & valuable introduction dealing with his life as the background of his works. All his writings are in the main autobiographical & the story of his life is necessary for a study of his work. One of the main lessons of his writings is a new & deeper meaning in the term 'brotherhood'. It may be that the Russians will reveal the true democracy to the world. Readings from his novels were given by C. E Stansfield, Mrs Evans, E.E. Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Dostoieffsky [sic] occupied our attention for the remained [sic] of the evening. We were much indebted to R.H. Robson for an interesting & valuable introduction dealing with his life as the background of his works. All his writings are in the main autobiographical & the story of his life is necessary for a study of his work. One of the main lessons of his writings is a new & deeper meaning in the term 'brotherhood'. It may be that the Russians will reveal the true democracy to the world. Readings from his novels were given by C. E Stansfield, Mrs Evans, E.E. Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Dostoieffsky [sic] occupied our attention for the remained [sic] of the evening. We were much indebted to R.H. Robson for an interesting & valuable introduction dealing with his life as the background of his works. All his writings are in the main autobiographical & the story of his life is necessary for a study of his work. One of the main lessons of his writings is a new & deeper meaning in the term 'brotherhood'. It may be that the Russians will reveal the true democracy to the world. Readings from his novels were given by C. E Stansfield, Mrs Evans, E.E. Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky :
'Dostoieffsky [sic] occupied our attention for the remained [sic] of the evening. We were much indebted to R.H. Robson for an interesting & valuable introduction dealing with his life as the background of his works. All his writings are in the main autobiographical & the story of his life is necessary for a study of his work. One of the main lessons of his writings is a new & deeper meaning in the term 'brotherhood'. It may be that the Russians will reveal the true democracy to the world. Readings from his novels were given by C. E Stansfield, Mrs Evans, E.E. Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Mark Twain :
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Mark Twain :
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Mark Twain :
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Mark Twain :
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
Mark Twain :
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [essay on Twain]
'Mark Twain A very humorous essay written by C.E. Stansfield & read by R.H. Robson gave us a delightful introduction to this great American 'wit' [?] Readings from his works were given by Mrs W.H. Smith. Mrs Evans. Miss Mary Hayward. Mr Robson. Mr Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Bruce Bliven : Current History
'But in "Current History" for September, Bruce Bliven, an editor of "The New Statesman", ventured upon a prophecy: "An active progressive movement is needed as it has never been before.... Such a progressive movement may not play a part in the national campaign in 1928 or 1932, but when it finally comes it will amount to something!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [paper on life of William Morris]
'William Morris - Craftsman - Socialist was the subject of the meeting. The Secretary read a paper dealing with the main currents of Morris's life & the parts that art & socialism took in determining his course in life. [the contents of the paper are summarised'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Francis Bret Harte : 'Waif of the Plains, The'
'The members then considered Bret Harte & his work. The committee overwhelmed by the inability (through health & other unavoidable circumstances) of 3 members to introduce the [underlined] Man [end underlining] to the Club boldly inaugurated a new procedure & in the capable hands of C.I. Evans became a great success [this was for every member to furnish some facts about him - these are redacted] We then had some readings from his works 'The Waif of the Plains' by Miss Wallis 'Luck of Roaring Camp' by Mrs Rawlings This last was the short story with which he leaped into fame as a short-story writer of Western mining life. Mr Evans read a story from the published biography - a book that seemed well worth reading, & Mrs Unwin read two of his poems. other members read poems & the discussion upon his work was continued. To many of us - the Secretary is one of these - the evening introduced us to a new novelist - we had heard of the short poems - 'Jim' & 'In the Tunnel' but The Luck of Roaring Camp & his other prose work are surely worthy to rank with the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Wallis Print: Book
Francis Bret Harte : 'Luck of Roaring Camp, The'
'The members then considered Bret Harte & his work. The committee overwhelmed by the inability (through health & other unavoidable circumstances) of 3 members to introduce the [underlined] Man [end underlining] to the Club boldly inaugurated a new procedure & in the capable hands of C.I. Evans became a great success [this was for every member to furnish some facts about him - these are redacted] We then had some readings from his works 'The Waif of the Plains' by Miss Wallis 'Luck of Roaring Camp' by Mrs Rawlings This last was the short story with which he leaped into fame as a short-story writer of Western mining life. Mr Evans read a story from the published biography - a book that seemed well worth reading, & Mrs Unwin read two of his poems. other members read poems & the discussion upon his work was continued. To many of us - the Secretary is one of these - the evening introduced us to a new novelist - we had heard of the short poems - 'Jim' & 'In the Tunnel' but The Luck of Roaring Camp & his other prose work are surely worthy to rank with the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Francis Bret Harte : [poems]
'The members then considered Bret Harte & his work. The committee overwhelmed by the inability (through health & other unavoidable circumstances) of 3 members to introduce the [underlined] Man [end underlining] to the Club boldly inaugurated a new procedure & in the capable hands of C.I. Evans became a great success [this was for every member to furnish some facts about him - these are redacted] We then had some readings from his works 'The Waif of the Plains' by Miss Wallis 'Luck of Roaring Camp' by Mrs Rawlings This last was the short story with which he leaped into fame as a short-story writer of Western mining life. Mr Evans read a story from the published biography - a book that seemed well worth reading, & Mrs Unwin read two of his poems. Other members read poems & the discussion upon his work was continued. To many of us - the Secretary is one of these - the evening introduced us to a new novelist - we had heard of the short poems - 'Jim' & 'In the Tunnel' but The Luck of Roaring Camp & his other prose work are surely worthy to rank with the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Print: Book
Francis Bret Harte : [poems]
'The members then considered Bret Harte & his work. The committee overwhelmed by the inability (through health & other unavoidable circumstances) of 3 members to introduce the [underlined] Man [end underlining] to the Club boldly inaugurated a new procedure & in the capable hands of C.I. Evans became a great success [this was for every member to furnish some facts about him - these are redacted] We then had some readings from his works 'The Waif of the Plains' by Miss Wallis 'Luck of Roaring Camp' by Mrs Rawlings This last was the short story with which he leaped into fame as a short-story writer of Western mining life. Mr Evans read a story from the published biography - a book that seemed well worth reading, & Mrs Unwin read two of his poems. Other members read poems & the discussion upon his work was continued. To many of us - the Secretary is one of these - the evening introduced us to a new novelist - we had heard of the short poems - 'Jim' & 'In the Tunnel' but The Luck of Roaring Camp & his other prose work are surely worthy to rank with the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Francis Bret Harte : [short poems]
'The members then considered Bret Harte & his work. The committee overwhelmed by the inability (through health & other unavoidable circumstances) of 3 members to introduce the [underlined] Man [end underlining] to the Club boldly inaugurated a new procedure & in the capable hands of C.I. Evans became a great success [this was for every member to furnish some facts about him - these are redacted] We then had some readings from his works 'The Waif of the Plains' by Miss Wallis 'Luck of Roaring Camp' by Mrs Rawlings This last was the short story with which he leaped into fame as a short-story writer of Western mining life. Mr Evans read a story from the published biography - a book that seemed well worth reading, & Mrs Unwin read two of his poems. Other members read poems & the discussion upon his work was continued. To many of us - the Secretary is one of these - the evening introduced us to a new novelist - we had heard of the short poems - 'Jim' & 'In the Tunnel' but The Luck of Roaring Camp & his other prose work are surely worthy to rank with the best.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Gilbert Murray]
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Gilbert Murray : Rise of the Greek Epic, The
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Gilbert Murray : Rise of the Greek Epic, The
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Gilbert Murray : [translations]
'Gilbert Murray & his work was the subject for the evening & a paper was read by H.M. Wallis. This afforded an interesting & useful introduction to the evening's subject & it was followed by several readings from his work. Mrs Rawlings read from 'The Rise of the Greek Epic' & H.M. Wallis later also read from the same book. Miss Marriage also read some extracts from one of his volumes of translations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Francis William Bain : 'Bubbles of the Foam'
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Bain's Indian Stories. It is impossible for one, not steeped in Indian mythology & with no knowledge of Indian life, to do justice to these extraordinary books. That they are beautiful with the overpowering scents & colours of the East is too obvious - that the author has a wonderful power of description hardly a word out of place or a jarring note is also obvious - that they are unique in literature is very likely - but --- perhaps I had better give the programme. [all extracts from] Bubbles of the Foam by E.E. Unwin Ashes of a God " Rosamund Wallis Syrup of the Bees " Alfred Rawlings In the Great God's Hair " Miss Marriage Digit of the Moon " Mrs Reynolds The club is indebted to Alfred Rawlings for introducing us to a new type of literature and if it left some of us gasping as with asthma in its rather overscented & sensuous atmosphere so that we longed for the moors & the winds of Heaven - others, whose breathing organs can cope with this Eastern air & whose palates are tickled by The Syrup of the Bees will feel that a new star has entered their literary constellation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Francis William Bain : 'Ashes of a God'
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Bain's Indian Stories. It is impossible for one, not steeped in Indian mythology & with no knowledge of Indian life, to do justice to these extraordinary books. That they are beautiful with the overpowering scents & colours of the East is too obvious - that the author has a wonderful power of description hardly a word out of place or a jarring note is also obvious - that they are unique in literature is very likely - but --- perhaps I had better give the programme. [all extracts from] Bubbles of the Foam by E.E. Unwin Ashes of a God " Rosamund Wallis Syrup of the Bees " Alfred Rawlings In the Great God's Hair " Miss Marriage Digit of the Moon " Mrs Reynolds The club is indebted to Alfred Rawlings for introducing us to a new type of literature and if it left some of us gasping as with asthma in its rather overscented & sensuous atmosphere so that we longed for the moors & the winds of Heaven - others, whose breathing organs can cope with this Eastern air & whose palates are tickled by The Syrup of the Bees will feel that a new star has entered their literary constellation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Francis William Bain : 'Syrup of the Bees'
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Bain's Indian Stories. It is impossible for one, not steeped in Indian mythology & with no knowledge of Indian life, to do justice to these extraordinary books. That they are beautiful with the overpowering scents & colours of the East is too obvious - that the author has a wonderful power of description hardly a word out of place or a jarring note is also obvious - that they are unique in literature is very likely - but --- perhaps I had better give the programme. [all extracts from] Bubbles of the Foam by E.E. Unwin Ashes of a God " Rosamund Wallis Syrup of the Bees " Alfred Rawlings In the Great God's Hair " Miss Marriage Digit of the Moon " Mrs Reynolds The club is indebted to Alfred Rawlings for introducing us to a new type of literature and if it left some of us gasping as with asthma in its rather overscented & sensuous atmosphere so that we longed for the moors & the winds of Heaven - others, whose breathing organs can cope with this Eastern air & whose palates are tickled by The Syrup of the Bees will feel that a new star has entered their literary constellation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Francis William Bain : 'In the Great God's Hair'
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Bain's Indian Stories. It is impossible for one, not steeped in Indian mythology & with no knowledge of Indian life, to do justice to these extraordinary books. That they are beautiful with the overpowering scents & colours of the East is too obvious - that the author has a wonderful power of description hardly a word out of place or a jarring note is also obvious - that they are unique in literature is very likely - but --- perhaps I had better give the programme. [all extracts from] Bubbles of the Foam by E.E. Unwin Ashes of a God " Rosamund Wallis Syrup of the Bees " Alfred Rawlings In the Great God's Hair " Miss Marriage Digit of the Moon " Mrs Reynolds The club is indebted to Alfred Rawlings for introducing us to a new type of literature and if it left some of us gasping as with asthma in its rather overscented & sensuous atmosphere so that we longed for the moors & the winds of Heaven - others, whose breathing organs can cope with this Eastern air & whose palates are tickled by The Syrup of the Bees will feel that a new star has entered their literary constellation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book
Francis William Bain : 'Digit of the Moon'
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Bain's Indian Stories. It is impossible for one, not steeped in Indian mythology & with no knowledge of Indian life, to do justice to these extraordinary books. That they are beautiful with the overpowering scents & colours of the East is too obvious - that the author has a wonderful power of description hardly a word out of place or a jarring note is also obvious - that they are unique in literature is very likely - but --- perhaps I had better give the programme. [all extracts from] Bubbles of the Foam by E.E. Unwin Ashes of a God " Rosamund Wallis Syrup of the Bees " Alfred Rawlings In the Great God's Hair " Miss Marriage Digit of the Moon " Mrs Reynolds The club is indebted to Alfred Rawlings for introducing us to a new type of literature and if it left some of us gasping as with asthma in its rather overscented & sensuous atmosphere so that we longed for the moors & the winds of Heaven - others, whose breathing organs can cope with this Eastern air & whose palates are tickled by The Syrup of the Bees will feel that a new star has entered their literary constellation.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
George Gissing : Private Papers of Henry Rycroft, The
'The meeting then entered the gloomy portals of New Grub St & attempted to follow the fortunes of George Gissing. The Book Club members were evidently in no mood to apreciate the side of life painted by Gissing. However the Secretary protests that there is need for all sides of 'Life' to be depicted & that we cannot obtain the all round knowledge so essential to a right understanding of the problems of living without our Gissings, Hardys. Kiplings & Masefields. The details of the programme included an introductory paper by E.E. Unwin New Grub Street by H.R. Smith The Odd Women by H.M. Wallis Private Papers of Henry Rycroft by C.S. Stansfield'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
George Gissing : New Grub Street
'The meeting then entered the gloomy portals of New Grub St & attempted to follow the fortunes of George Gissing. The Book Club members were evidently in no mood to apreciate the side of life painted by Gissing. However the Secretary protests that there is need for all sides of 'Life' to be depicted & that we cannot obtain the all round knowledge so essential to a right understanding of the problems of living without our Gissings, Hardys. Kiplings & Masefields. The details of the programme included an introductory paper by E.E. Unwin New Grub Street by H.R. Smith The Odd Women by H.M. Wallis Private Papers of Henry Rycroft by C.S. Stansfield'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
George Gissing : Odd Women, The
'The meeting then entered the gloomy portals of New Grub St & attempted to follow the fortunes of George Gissing. The Book Club members were evidently in no mood to apreciate the side of life painted by Gissing. However the Secretary protests that there is need for all sides of 'Life' to be depicted & that we cannot obtain the all round knowledge so essential to a right understanding of the problems of living without our Gissings, Hardys. Kiplings & Masefields. The details of the programme included an introductory paper by E.E. Unwin New Grub Street by H.R. Smith The Odd Women by H.M. Wallis Private Papers of Henry Rycroft by C.S. Stansfield'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [paper on Gissing]
'The meeting then entered the gloomy portals of New Grub St & attempted to follow the fortunes of George Gissing. The Book Club members were evidently in no mood to apreciate the side of life painted by Gissing. However the Secretary protests that there is need for all sides of 'Life' to be depicted & that we cannot obtain the all round knowledge so essential to a right understanding of the problems of living without our Gissings, Hardys. Kiplings & Masefields. The details of the programme included an introductory paper by E.E. Unwin New Grub Street by H.R. Smith The Odd Women by H.M. Wallis Private Papers of Henry Rycroft by C.S. Stansfield'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
George Gissing :
'The meeting then entered the gloomy portals of New Grub St & attempted to follow the fortunes of George Gissing. The Book Club members were evidently in no mood to apreciate the side of life painted by Gissing. However the Secretary protests that there is need for all sides of 'Life' to be depicted & that we cannot obtain the all round knowledge so essential to a right understanding of the problems of living without our Gissings, Hardys. Kiplings & Masefields. The details of the programme included an introductory paper by E.E. Unwin New Grub Street by H.R. Smith The Odd Women by H.M. Wallis Private Papers of Henry Rycroft by C.S. Stansfield'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Voltaire : works
'Besides studying Greek and Latin, Gifford learnt French and Spanish while at Oxford. He went through Moliere's plays twice and Voltaire's works once.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
Moliere : plays
'Besides studying Greek and Latin, Gifford learnt French and Spanish while at Oxford. He went through Moliere's plays twice and Voltaire's works once.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lay of the Last Minstrel
John Murray to Walter Scott, 27 June 1812: 'I cannot refrain [...] from mentioning to you a conversation which Lord Byron had with H. R. H. the Prince Regent, and of which you formed the leading subject. He was at an evening party at Miss Johnson's this week, when the Prince, hearing that Lord Byron was present, expressed a desire to be introduced to him; and for more than half an hour they conversed on poetry and poets [...] the Prince's great delight was Walter Scott, whose name and writings he dwelt upon and recurred to incessantly. He preferred him far beyond any other poet of the time, repeated several passages with fervour, and criticized them faithfully. He spoke chiefly of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which he expressed himself as admiring most of the three poems.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Prince of Wales Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I and II
Walter Scott to John Murray, 2 July 1812, with enclosed letter of appreciation to Lord Byron: 'I trouble you with a few lines to his Lordship [...] I hope he will not consider it as intrusive in a veteran author to pay my debt of gratitude for the high pleasure I have received from the perusal of "Childe Harold," which is certainly the most original poem which we have had this many a day'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Bride of Abydos
John Murray to Lord Byron (November 1813): 'I am so very anxious to procure the best criticism upon the "Bride [of Abydos]," that I ventured last night to introduce her to the protection of Mr. Frere. He has just returned, quite delighted; he read several passages to Mr. Heber as exquisitely beautiful. He says there is a simplicity running through the whole that reminds him of the ancient ballad. [...] I asked if it was equal to the "Giaour;" he said that the "Giaour" contained perhaps a greater number of splendid passages, but that the mind carries something to [italics]rest upon[end italics] after rising from the "Bride of Abydos." It is more perfect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Giaour
John Murray to Lord Byron (November 1813): 'I am so very anxious to procure the best criticism upon the "Bride [of Abydos]," that I ventured last night to introduce her to the protection of Mr. Frere. He has just returned, quite delighted; he read several passages to Mr. Heber as exquisitely beautiful. He says there is a simplicity running through the whole that reminds him of the ancient ballad. [...] I asked if it was equal to the "Giaour;" he said that the "Giaour" contained perhaps a greater number of splendid passages, but that the mind carries something to [italics]rest upon[end italics] after rising from the "Bride of Abydos." It is more perfect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Moore Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: ?Richard Heber Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Disraeli Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Murray to Lord Byron, 3 February 1814, on first reception of The Corsair: 'Never, in my recollection, has any work, since the "Letter of Burke to the Duke of Bedford," excited such a ferment [...] I sold, on the day of publication, -- a thing perfectly unprecedented -- 10,000 copies; and I suppose thirty people, who were purchasers (strangers), called to tell the people in the shop how much they had been delighted and satisfied. Mr. Moore says it is masterly, -- a wonderful performance. Mr. Hammond, Mr. Heber, D'Israeli, every one who comes [...] declare their unlimited approbation. Mr. Ward was here with Mr. Gifford yesterday, and mingled his admiration with the rest [...] Gifford did what I never knew him do before -- he repeated several passages from memory [...] I was with Mr. Shee this morning, to whom I had presented the poem; and he declared himself to have been delighted [...] I have the highest encomiums in letters from Croker and Mr. Hay; but I rest most upon the warm feeling it has created in Gifford's critical heart.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara: 'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara: 'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara: 'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara: 'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir J. Malcolm Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
John Murray to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, on first reception of Lara: 'Mr. Frere likes the poem greatly, and particularly admires the first canto. I mentioned the passages in the second canto -- descriptive of the morning after the battle, which delighted me so much, and indeed Mr. Wilmot and many other persons. His [Frere's] remark was that he thought it rather too shocking. This is perhaps a little fastidious. Sir Jno. Malcolm [...] called to express his satisfaction; and by the way, I may add that Mr. Frere has been here this moment to take another copy with him to read again in his carriage. He told me that Mr. Canning liked it equally. Mr. Frere, and in his report, Mr. Canning, are the only persons who have spoken in praise of "Jacqueline"; but they say it is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'[John Murray] was confirmed in his idea that Walter Scott was the author [of Waverley] after carefully reading the book. Canning called on Murray next day; said he had begun it, found it very dull, and concluded: "You are quite mistaken; it cannot be by Walter Scott." But a few days later he wrote to Murray: "Yes, it is so; you are right: Walter Scott, and no one else."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'[John Murray] was confirmed in his idea that Walter Scott was the author [of Waverley] after carefully reading the book. Canning called on Murray next day; said he had begun it, found it very dull, and concluded: "You are quite mistaken; it cannot be by Walter Scott." But a few days later he wrote to Murray: "Yes, it is so; you are right: Walter Scott, and no one else."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Bride of Abydos
Walter Scott to John Murray, 6 January 1814: 'I have read Lord Byron's "Bride of Abydos" with great delight, and only delay acknowledging the receipt of a copy from the author till I can send him a copy of the "Life of Swift."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Lara
William Blackwood to John Murray, 8 November 1814: 'Since I was a little better [following illness] I have been again reading "Lara," and the delight it afforded me was exquisite. The very incongruities which a number of our small critics have been nibbling at, afforded me the highest enjoyment.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : poems
From recollections of John Murray junior: 'Sometimes, though not often, Lord Byron read passages from his poems to my father. His voice and manner were very impressive. His voice, in the deeper tones, bore some resemblance to that of Mrs. Siddons.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Wells's 'Romances']
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Herbert George Wells : [a short story]
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [novels]
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : Mankind in the Making
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [novels]
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : [extracts from novels]
'The meeting then considered the work of H.G. Wells. The chief item of interest was undoubtedly a paper by Henry M. Wallis upon Wells's romances but a better title would be 'A Critique of the Wells Method in Story-writing'. This was certainly one of the ablest papers which H.M.W. has contributed to the Book Club in recent years and gave rise to interesting discussion. R.H. Robson read one of the short stories to illustrate this side of Wells's literary works. Mrs Smith read a paper upon Mankind in the Making and Mary Hayward dealt with the novels, showing by extracts his views upon the English middle class, marriage, social life & religion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : Narrative of Events in France in 1815
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (1815): 'I have just finished Miss Williams's narrative [...] I consider it a [italics]a capital work[end italics], written with great skill, talent, and care; full of curious and new developments, and some facts which we did not know before. There breathes through the whole a most attractive spirit, and her feelings sometimes break out in the most beautiful effusions [...] it must be popular, as it is the most entertaining [book] imaginable; one of those books one does not like to quit before finishing it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Print: Book
Helen Maria Williams : Narrative of Events in France in 1815
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (1815): 'I have just finished Miss Williams's narrative [...] I consider it a [italics]a capital work[end italics], written with great skill, talent, and care; full of curious and new developments, and some facts which we did not know before. There breathes through the whole a most attractive spirit, and her feelings sometimes break out in the most beautiful effusions [...] it must be popular, as it is the most entertaining [book] imaginable; one of those books one does not like to quit before finishing it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Print: Book
C. R. Maturin : Bertram
John Murray to Walter Scott, 25 December 1815: 'I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy, which Lord Byron received late in the evening and read through, without being able to stop. He was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager [at Drury Lane theatre], the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it was, could not go to bed without finishing it. The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the [theatre] Commitee; they, or rather Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of Covent Garden.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
C. R. Maturin : Bertram
John Murray to Walter Scott, 25 December 1815: 'I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy, which Lord Byron received late in the evening and read through, without being able to stop. He was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager [at Drury Lane theatre], the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it was, could not go to bed without finishing it. The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the [theatre] Commitee; they, or rather Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of Covent Garden.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Hon. George Lamb
Robert Southey : article on Parliamentary Reform
S. T. Coleridge to John Murray, 26 March 1817: 'I read Southey's article [...] It is, in my judgement, a very masterly article.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : review of Thomas Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming etc
Thomas Campbell to John Murray, 2 June 1809: 'I received the review, for which I thank you, and beg leave through you to express my best acknowledgements to the unknown reviewer. I do not by this mean to say that I think every one of his censures just [...] But altogether I am pleased with his manner, and very proud of his approbation. He reviews like a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Campbell Print: Serial / periodical
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth / Parisina
John Murray to Lord Byron (December 1815): 'I tore open the packet you sent me, and have found in it a Pearl. It is very interesting, pathetic, beautiful -- do you know, I would almost say moral [...] I have been most agreeably disappointed (a word I cannot associate with the poem) at the story, which -- what you hinted to me and wrote -- had alarmed me; and I should not have read it aloud to my wife if my eye had not traced the delicate hand that transcribed it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Unknown, In hand of Anne Isabella, Lady Byron
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray (December 1815): 'I find myself, this morning, so strangely affected by the perusal of the poem last night, that I feel it is one which stands quite by itself [...] There is no scene, no incident, nothing so marvellous in pathos and terror in Homer, or any bard of antiquity [comments further ] [...] Homer has never conveyed his reader into a vast Golgotha, nor harrowed us with the vulture flapping the back of the gorged wolf, nor the dogs: the terror, the truth, and the loneliness of that spot will never be erased from my memory [...] I never read any poem that exceeded in power this, to me, extraordinary production. I do not know where I am to find any which can excite the same degree of emotion.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816): 'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Parisina
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816): 'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Parisina
John Murray to Byron (c. January 1816): 'I enclose Ward's note after reading the "Siege of Corinth." I lent him "Parisina" also, and he called yesterday to express his mind at your hesitation about their merits [...] I lent Parisina to Mr. Hay (Mr. Wilmots friend) last night, and I enclose his note. I send the proof [...] I will send a revise of "Corinth" to-night or to-morrow.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Parisina
John Murray to Byron, 4 January 1816: 'Nothing can be more interestingly framed and more interestingly told than this story [Parisina] [...] I read it last night to D'Israeli and his family, and they were perfectly overcome by it [comments further on text].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Murray Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Prisoner of Chillon
Dr John Polidori, Byron's secretary, to John Murray, 10 July 1816: 'Since it has given you hopes of entering well into the literary world next winter, that "Childe Harold" has got another canto [...] you will be more pleased to hear of another poem of 400 lines called "The Castle of Chillon" [sic]; the feelings of a third of three brothers in prison on the banks of the Geneva Lake. I think it very beautiful, containing more of his tender than his sombre poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Polidori Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold IV
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816, on William Gifford's response to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV: 'He has been exceedingly ill with jaundice [...] He said he was unable to leave off last night, and that he had sat up until he had finished every line of the canto. It had actually agitated him into a fever [...] He had persisted this morning in finishing the volume [...] He says that what you have heretofore published is nothing to this effort. He says also, besides its being the most original and interesting, it is the most finished of your writings; and he has undertaken to correct the press for you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:-- '"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:-- '"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Sketch from Private Life
'The "Sketch from Private Life" was one of the most bitter and satirical things Byron had ever written [...] Mr. Murray showed the verses to Rogers, Frere, and Stratford Canning. In communicating the result to Byron, he said:-- '"They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it [goes on to add readers' suggestions]."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Stratford Canning Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Monody [on Sheridan]
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816: 'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know." 'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir James Mackintosh
George Gordon Lord Byron : Monody [on Sheridan]
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816: 'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know." 'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford
George Gordon Lord Byron : Monody [on Sheridan]
John Murray to Byron, 12 September 1816: 'Respecting the "Monody," I extract from a letter which I received this morning from Sir James Mackintosh: "I presume I have to thank you for a copy of the "Monody" on Sheridan received this morning. I wish it had been accompanied by the additional favour of mentioning the name of the writer, at which I only guess: it is difficult to read the poem without desiring to know." 'Generally speaking it is not, I think, popular, and spoken of rather for fine passages than as a whole [...] Gifford does not like it; Frere does.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere
George Gordon Lord Byron : poems [apparently including Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III]
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817: 'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817: 'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817: 'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III
John Murray to Byron, 22 January 1817: 'I had a letter from Mr. Ward, to whom, at Paris, I sent the poems, and he is delighted; and Mr. Canning, most particularly so with the third canto [...] Walter Scott always mentions you with kindness in his letters, and he thinks nothing better than Canto III.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Walter Scott : Review of George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III
Byron to John Murray, 3 March 1817: 'In acknowledging the arrival of the article from the Quarterly, which I received two days ago, I cannot express myself better than in the words of my sister Augusta, who (speaking of it) says, that it is written in a spirit "of the most feeling and kind nature."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh Print: Serial / periodical
George Gordon Lord Byron : 'Swiss Journal [letter]'
Maria Graham to John Murray (March 1817): 'A thousand thanks, my dear sir, for the loan of the Journal, which I have perused with the greatest interest. A more superstitious age would certainly have believed him possessed of the [italics]art magic[end italics], so completely does he continue to force attention and sympathy wherever he pleases [comments further in praise of text and author] [...] I always forget myself when I think of our greatest genius [i.e. Byron]. Therefore I will hasten to thank you for the two dramas. The French one amuses me, the other does so for a different reason.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Graham Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV
John Cam Hobhouse to John Murray, from Venice, 7 December 1817: 'Your new acquisition is a very fine finish to the three cantos already published [comments further] [...] it is possible that all other readers may agree with my simple self in liking this fourth canto better than anything Lord B. has ever written. I must confess I feel an affection for it more than ordinary, as part of it was begot, as it were, under my own eyes; for some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk or evening ride at La Mara.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Beppo
John Murray to Byron, 16 June 1818: 'Mr. Frere is at length satisfied that you are the author of "Beppo." He had no conception that you possessed the protean talent of Shakespeare, thus to assume at will so different a character.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan, Cantos I and II
'Lady Caroline Lamb informed [John] Murray [Byron's publisher]: "You cannot think how clever I think 'Don Juan' is, in my heart."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Corsair
John Cam Hobhouse to John Murray, 22 October 1821, prior to publications of Byron's plays Cain, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus: 'If it be not presumptuous of me to say so, I should venture to assert that tragedy-writing is not Lord Byron's forte; that is to say, it will not turn out to be the best thing that he can do. According to my poor way of thinking, the "Corsair" and the Fourth Canto [of "Childe Harold"] will always bear away the palm.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Sardanapalus
'Mr. Hobhouse wrote that [Sardanapalus] interested him very deeply, though it might be thought fantastical and unnatural by some [goes on to quote letter from Hobhouse to Murray of 22 October 1821].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cam Hobhouse Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Cain, a Mystery
Walter Scott to John Murray, regarding Byron's Cain: 'I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton upon his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers [...] But then they must condemn "Paradise Lost" if they have a mind to be consistent [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Cain, a Mystery
Sharon Turner (lawyer) to John Murray, 31 January 1822: 'Mr. Shadwell, whom I have just seen, has told me that he had read "Cain" some time ago, -- that he thinks it contains nothing but what a bookseller can be fairly justified in publishing, that it is not worse in many parts than "Paradise Regained" and in "Paradise Lost" [...] He is King's Counsel and a religious man. He thinks it can hurt no reasonable mind. He will lead the case.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Life of Napoleon
'Say, too, that I received his Life of Napoleon, and have read it this winter - in the evening and at night - with attentino from beginning to end. To me it was full of meaning to observe how the first novelist of the century took upon himself a task and business, so apparently foreign to him, and passed under review with rapid stroke those important events of which it had been our fate to be eyewtinesses. The division into chapters, embracing masses of intimately connected events, gives a clearness to the historical sequence that otherwise might have been only to easily confused, while, at the same time, the individual events in each chapter are described with a clearness and a vividness quite invaluable.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on H.G. Wells' religious development]
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Herbert George Wells : First and Last Things. Confession of Faith and Rule of Life
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : God the Invisible King
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : Soul of a Bishop, The
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Hayward Print: Book
Herbert George Wells :
'The meeting then continued the discussion of H.G. Wells & his religious development. C.E. Stansfield had prepared an able paper dealing with this subject. He traced the growth of Wells' mind & thought as revealed in the series of published writings and showed by extracts from '1st & last things', 'God the invisible King' & 'The Soul of a Bishop' the striking development of his religious nature. Miss Hayward & Mrs Smith read extracts in support of this view.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Reginald Robson : [paper on Conrad]
'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style. C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Apology for Idlers
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Janet Rawlings Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : 'Christmas at Sea'
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : 'Tropic Rain'
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : 'Vagabond'
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Travels with a Donkey
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Master of Ballantrae, The
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : [letters]
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Katherine Evans Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Island Nights' Entertainments
'The remainder of the evening was given over to R.L. Stevenson & his work. [the format of the evening's discussion on the question of whether Stevenson's work will live is explained] To enable us to review his work readings were given as under from the Essays - 'An Apology for Idlers' by Alfred vice Janet Rawlings Poems - 'Christmas at Sea' 'Tropic Rain' 'Vagabond' [all read by] Mrs W.H. Smith Travel Books - 'Travels with a Donkey' by E.E. Unwin Novels - 'Master of Ballantrae' by H.M. Wallis Letters - Mr & Mrs Evans. [some remarks on songs sung by various members] It is difficult for any one to sum up the results of the discussion - it was soon apparent that to some members his essays were the one & only thing worth having, to others his stories, 'Treasure Island', 'Island Nights Entertainments' & so on reveal his greatness: to others, his letters are the thing & so one might proceed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [paper on psychic phenomena]
'The evening was then devoted to the subject of Psychical Phenomena. The Secretary (Ernest E. Unwin] read a brief introductory paper, giving some indication of the way in which the subject had come under his notice, and one or two general fundamental points which he was prepared to accept. This was followed by a paper dealing with the sub-conscious mind by Mary Hayward. The very great importance of the subconscious - the way in which we can use it to free our minds of worry - the relationship between mind & mind or telepathy were clearly brought out. Then Mrs Smith read a paper which gave a deeper note to the subject. She dealt with communications from the spirit world with living people - giving personal experiences & experiences of her friends'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Hayward : [paper on the sub-conscious]
'The evening was then devoted to the subject of Psychical Phenomena. The Secretary (Ernest E. Unwin] read a brief introductory paper, giving some indication of the way in which the subject had come under his notice, and one or two general fundamental points which he was prepared to accept. This was followed by a paper dealing with the sub-conscious mind by Mary Hayward. The very great importance of the subconscious - the way in which we can use it to free our minds of worry - the relationship between mind & mind or telepathy were clearly brought out. Then Mrs Smith read a paper which gave a deeper note to the subject. She dealt with communications from the spirit world with living people - giving personal experiences & experiences of her friends'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on an altar stone found near Carthage]
'Essays were then read. The Secretary does not feel able to do more than indicate the general nature of these essays. 1. Read by R.H. Robson. An essay written by H.M.W. about the remains of an altar stone found near Carthage. Vivid & interesting, bloodstained though the stone was, with human sacrifice. 2. Mrs Smith read a very interesting paper dealing with the mind & its training. 'My mind to me a kingdom is'. Considerable discussion followed. 3. Mr Stansfield read a fantasia (written surely by a historian. R.H.R.) relating the musings of Mendax II giving expression to a cynical prophecy of European politics if events evolved or devolved along present lines. We hope that the assassination of Ld. George by a Quaker pacifist & the suppression of L.P.S. will not be fulfilled. 4. E.E. Unwin read a paper entitled 'The Humours of Man' which consisted of a number of humorous stories lightly linked together'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Reginald Robson : [paper on political situation]
'Essays were then read. The Secretary does not feel able to do more than indicate the general nature of these essays. 1. Read by R.H. Robson. An essay written by H.M.W. about the remains of an altar stone found near Carthage. Vivid & interesting, bloodstained though the stone was, with human sacrifice. 2. Mrs Smith read a very interesting paper dealing with the mind & its training. 'My mind to me a kingdom is'. Considerable discussion followed. 3. Mr Stansfield read a fantasia (written surely by a historian. R.H.R.) relating the musings of Mendax II giving expression to a cynical prophecy of European politics if events evolved or devolved along present lines. We hope that the assassination of Ld. George by a Quaker pacifist & the suppression of L.P.S. will not be fulfilled. 4. E.E. Unwin read a paper entitled 'The Humours of Man' which consisted of a number of humorous stories lightly linked together'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [essay on 'The Humours of Man']
'Essays were then read. The Secretary does not feel able to do more than indicate the general nature of these essays. 1. Read by R.H. Robson. An essay written by H.M.W. about the remains of an altar stone found near Carthage. Vivid & interesting, bloodstained though the stone was, with human sacrifice. 2. Mrs Smith read a very interesting paper dealing with the mind & its training. 'My mind to me a kingdom is'. Considerable discussion followed. 3. Mr Stansfield read a fantasia (written surely by a historian. R.H.R.) relating the musings of Mendax II giving expression to a cynical prophecy of European politics if events evolved or devolved along present lines. We hope that the assassination of Ld. George by a Quaker pacifist & the suppression of L.P.S. will not be fulfilled. 4. E.E. Unwin read a paper entitled 'The Humours of Man' which consisted of a number of humorous stories lightly linked together'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper introducing Balzac]
'Balzac We were introduced by Henry M. Wallis to the novels of Balzac by an introduction to & readings from The Wild Asses Skin. A general discussion on the novel & the author followed and Mrs Unwin read some extracts from an article upon Balzac published some few years ago in 'Everyman'. [these extracts, summarising Balzac's career are quoted at length] Mrs Robson read from 'Le Pere Goriot' 'Old Goriot' Rosamund Wallis read 'Christ in Flanders' with its fine description of a ferryboat in a storm & the mysterious stranger who lead [sic] those who had faith walking over the waters to safety when the boat capsized'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Honore de Balzac : Wild Ass's Skin, The
'Balzac We were introduced by Henry M. Wallis to the novels of Balzac by an introduction to & readings from The Wild Asses Skin. A general discussion on the novel & the author followed and Mrs Unwin read some extracts from an article upon Balzac published some few years ago in 'Everyman'. [these extracts, summarising Balzac's career are quoted at length] Mrs Robson read from 'Le Pere Goriot' 'Old Goriot' Rosamund Wallis read 'Christ in Flanders' with its fine description of a ferryboat in a storm & the mysterious stranger who lead [sic] those who had faith walking over the waters to safety when the boat capsized'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Pere Goriot
'Balzac We were introduced by Henry M. Wallis to the novels of Balzac by an introduction to & readings from The Wild Asses Skin. A general discussion on the novel & the author followed and Mrs Unwin read some extracts from an article upon Balzac published some few years ago in 'Everyman'. [these extracts, summarising Balzac's career are quoted at length] Mrs Robson read from 'Le Pere Goriot' 'Old Goriot' Rosamund Wallis read 'Christ in Flanders' with its fine description of a ferryboat in a storm & the mysterious stranger who lead [sic] those who had faith walking over the waters to safety when the boat capsized'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Christ in Flanders
'Balzac We were introduced by Henry M. Wallis to the novels of Balzac by an introduction to & readings from The Wild Asses Skin. A general discussion on the novel & the author followed and Mrs Unwin read some extracts from an article upon Balzac published some few years ago in 'Everyman'. [these extracts, summarising Balzac's career are quoted at length] Mrs Robson read from 'Le Pere Goriot' 'Old Goriot' Rosamund Wallis read 'Christ in Flanders' with its fine description of a ferryboat in a storm & the mysterious stranger who lead [sic] those who had faith walking over the waters to safety when the boat capsized'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Newbolt : [writings on Nature of poetry]
'The Nature of Poetry. C.I. Evans brought before us the recent book by Henry Newbolt dealing with 'The Nature of Poetry' & gave as the final requisite [underlined] Rhythm [end underlining]. [This definition is discussed at length with quotation and contrary views from other members] Alfred Rawlings gave us Th. Walls Dutton's [?] ideas of poetry quoting him as expressing his own views almost entirely.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Reginald Robson : [essay on Keats' life]
'The subject of the evening's programme was John Keats. R.H. Robson read an essay dealing with his life. The main influences & friendships of his short life were well brought out. H.M. Wallis folowed with an appreciation written in the delightful style of which our Friend is so great a master & a reading of the Grecian Urn ode by Miss Marriage completed the first part of the programme. On our return from physical refreshment Charles I. Evans described the Poems of 1820 and some readings were given by Mrs Evans, Mrs Robson & C.E. Stansfield.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [essay on Keats]
'The subject of the evening's programme was John Keats. R.H. Robson read an essay dealing with his life. The main influences & friendships of his short life were well brought out. H.M. Wallis folowed with an appreciation written in the delightful style of which our Friend is so great a master & a reading of the Grecian Urn ode by Miss Marriage completed the first part of the programme. On our return from physical refreshment Charles I. Evans described the Poems of 1820 and some readings were given by Mrs Evans, Mrs Robson & C.E. Stansfield.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & confirmed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on the Comic]
'The evening then became a 'Comic One'. The chief contribution was a paper by H.M. Wallis on 'the Comic' as reflected in the works of the writers of last century. Readings were given & stories told as illustrations'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Leslie's 'The End of a Chapter']
'The main business of the evening was then proceeded with - 5 mins essays upon some book read recently. Mrs Evans read 'An English Lumber Camp' - from internal evidence it is probably true that this was an essay drawn from real life rather than from any book read. It was a magnificent literary effort in the author's best style. Perhaps more of 'H.M.W.' than 'Ashton Hillier'. Mrs Smith read a paper upon 'The Garden of Survival' a book by Alg. Blackwood. The paper gave rise to much interest. The extraordinary beauty of the extracts read from the book and the insight into the spiritual meaning of 'Guidance' displayed by the author impressed us all. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper on 'The End of a Chapter' by Shane Leslie - this paper was written by H.M. Wallis & introduced most of us to a new writer of power. The change in the world, in the balance of the classes & their future importance formed the theme of the book. Mary Hayward described her discovery of 'The Story of my Heart' by Richard Jefferies & read some extracts from it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Algernon Blackwood : Garden of Survival, The
'The main business of the evening was then proceeded with - 5 mins essays upon some book read recently. Mrs Evans read 'An English Lumber Camp' - from internal evidence it is probably true that this was an essay drawn from real life rather than from any book read. It was a magnificent literary effort in the author's best style. Perhaps more of 'H.M.W.' than 'Ashton Hillier'. Mrs Smith read a paper upon 'The Garden of Survival' a book by Alg. Blackwood. The paper gave rise to much interest. The extraordinary beauty of the extracts read from the book and the insight into the spiritual meaning of 'Guidance' displayed by the author impressed us all. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper on 'The End of a Chapter' by Shane Leslie - this paper was written by H.M. Wallis & introduced most of us to a new writer of power. The change in the world, in the balance of the classes & their future importance formed the theme of the book. Mary Hayward described her discovery of 'The Story of my Heart' by Richard Jefferies & read some extracts from it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Richard Jefferies : Story of my Heart, The
'The main business of the evening was then proceeded with - 5 mins essays upon some book read recently. Mrs Evans read 'An English Lumber Camp' - from internal evidence it is probably true that this was an essay drawn from real life rather than from any book read. It was a magnificent literary effort in the author's best style. Perhaps more of 'H.M.W.' than 'Ashton Hillier'. Mrs Smith read a paper upon 'The Garden of Survival' a book by Alg. Blackwood. The paper gave rise to much interest. The extraordinary beauty of the extracts read from the book and the insight into the spiritual meaning of 'Guidance' displayed by the author impressed us all. Ernest E. Unwin read a paper on 'The End of a Chapter' by Shane Leslie - this paper was written by H.M. Wallis & introduced most of us to a new writer of power. The change in the world, in the balance of the classes & their future importance formed the theme of the book. Mary Hayward described her discovery of 'The Story of my Heart' by Richard Jefferies & read some extracts from it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Print: Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin
'Another [woman prisoner] read and re-read "Uncle Tom's Cabin," till she must have known by heart every incident of that famous work. She was partial to telling the story to those women who were unable to read; and she would relate with such animation the villainies and atrocities of Legree, that considerable virtuous indignation would be aroused in the breasts of her listeners. "What an awful wretch that man must have been!" was the remark made on that personage, by a woman suffering a long sentence for the cold-blooded murder of her child.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Mrs Molesworth : The Tapestry Room
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Pigeon Pie
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Walter Scott : Redgauntlet
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Talisman
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : St Ives
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Alain-Réné Lesage (Le Sage) : The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santilane
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I belive it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquatance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Black Arrow
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Caged Lion
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Little Duke
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : The Jungle Books
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : The Maltese Cat
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
William Harrison Ainsworth : Boscobel
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Puck of Pook’s Hill
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Rewards and Fairies
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge : The Armourer’s Apprentice
Books read by William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp (politician, 1872-1938) to his daughters Lettice (1906-73) and Sibell (1907-2005) between June 1915 and December 1916 at Madresfield Court, Worcestershire: The Tapestry Room (Mrs Molesworth) The Pigeon Pie (Charlotte M. Yonge) Lilian’s Golden Hours (Eliza Meteyard) The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton) Wandering Willie (from Scott’s Redgauntlet?) The Talisman (Walter Scott) Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) St Ives (Robert Louis Stevenson) Theodora Phranza (J. M. Neale) The House of Walderne (A. D. Crake) The Black Arrow (Robert Louis Stevenson) The Caged Lion (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Little Duke (Charlotte M. Yonge) The Jungle Books (Rudyard Kipling) The Maltese Cat (Rudyard Kipling) Boscobel (William Harrison Ainsworth) Puck of Pook’s Hill (Rudyard Kipling) Rewards and Fairies (Rudyard Kipling) The Armourer’s Apprentice (Charlotte M. Yonge) and some poetry.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz de Poraj : Pan Tadeuz
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I belive it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquatance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Nicholas Nickleby
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I belive it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquaintance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication. When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr. Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Holland Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication. When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr. Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord John Russell Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication. When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr. Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Memoirs
'During the period that Mr. Moore had been in negotiation with the Longmans and Murray respecting the purchase of the Memoirs [of Byron], he had given "Lady Holland the MS. to read." Lord John Russell also states, in his "Memoirs of Moore," that he had read "the greater part, if not the whole," and that he should say that some of it was too gross for publication. When the memoirs came into the hands of Mr. Murray, he entrusted the Memoirs to Mr. Gifford, whose opinion coincided with that of Lord John Russell. A few others saw the memoirs, amongst them Washington Irving and Mr. Luttrell.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Luttrell Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering
William Blackwood to John Murray (early January 1815), on having seen a copy of Guy Mannering during a visit to his fellow publisher, Ballantyne: 'He [Ballantyne] would not allow me to look at it, but he read me a few pages. The painting is admirable and quite graphic -- Scottish to the life. [...] it will be a wonderful performance, and greatly superior to "Waverley" both in interest and effect.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group:
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
'At the beginning of Janaury 1815 Blackwood wrote to Murray that he had seen Ballantyne, and found a copy of "Guy Mannering" lying on his table [from which Ballantyne had read to him] [...] Blackwood had also seen and read "The Lord of the Isles," avowedly by Scott, but he was grievously disappointed by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Book
Walter Scott : Guy Mannering (vols I and II)
William Blackwood to John Murray (early 1815): 'Yesterday I wrote a letter of thanks to Ballantyne for the delight I had received [from Guy Mannering], and expressed my feelings in the best way I could with regard to this beautiful production. I did not of course appear in it at all as the Bookseller, but merely as the Amateur. I know he will have shown my letter to the author, and though humble the offering, as it will be the first, it may perhaps be of some use to the Bookseller.' [Source author continues] 'He [...] refers to "Guy Mannering," the first two volumes of which he had now finished, and was even more delighted with it than before [when Ballantyne had read out extracts to him].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Field of Waterloo
'In October [1815] Scott published his poem, the "Field of Waterloo," and its appearance convinced Blackwood [incorrectly] that Scott was not the author of "Guy Mannering."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : The Siege of Corinth
'When Murray was about to publish Byron's "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," he promised to send the early sheets to Blackwood, who proposed to hold a dinner in honour of the occasion, to which Scott, Erskine, and James Ballantyne were to be invited. Scott [...] unfortunately, could not accept the invitation for the day named; but, to secure his attendance, the dinner was put off for a week, and then he made his appearance with Erskine and Ballantyne. The poems were read, to the immense delight of the audience.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
George Gordon Lord Byron : Parisina
'When Murray was about to publish Byron's "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," he promised to send the early sheets to Blackwood, who proposed to hold a dinner in honour of the occasion, to which Scott, Erskine, and James Ballantyne were to be invited. Scott [...] unfortunately, could not accept the invitation for the day named; but, to secure his attendance, the dinner was put off for a week, and then he made his appearance with Erskine and Ballantyne. The poems were read, to the immense delight of the audience.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Holland and family Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Glenbervie Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Hookham Frere Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Hallam Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Heber Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lamb Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of My Landlord
John Murray to Walter Scott, on reception of Tales of My Landlord, 14 December 1816: 'Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: "Opinion? we did not one of us go to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, and Boswell; Lord Glenbervie came to me with tears in his eyes. "It is a cordial," he said, "which has saved Lady Glenbervie's life." Heber, who found it on his table on his arrival from a journey, had not rest till he had read it. He has only this moment left me, and he, with many others, agrees that it surpasses all the other novels. Wm. Lamb also; Gifford never read anything like it, he says; and his estimation of it absolutely increases at each recollection of it. Barrow with great difficulty was forced to read it; and he said yesterday, "Very good to be sure, but what powerful writing is [italics]thrown away[end italics]."' '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
Henry Mackenzie :
A rare thing this literature or love of fame or notoriety which accompanies it. Here is Mr H.M. [Henry Mackenzie] on the very brink of human dissolution as actively anxious about it as if the curtain must not soon be closed on that and every thing else...No man is less known from his writings.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Archibald Constable : Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications in the Various Departments of Literature, the Sciences, & the Arts
Received a letter from Sir W. Knighton mentioning that the King acquiesced in my proposal that Constable's Miscellany should be dedicated to him.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Patrick Walker : 'Lives of Cameron [etc]'
Walter Scott to John Murray, 23 March 1818: 'I laid Kirkton aside when half finished, from a desire to get the original edition of the "Lives of Cameron," &c., by Patrick Walker, which I had not seen since a boy, and now I have got it, and find, as I suspected, that some curious morceaux have been cut out by subsequent editors.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Patrick Walker : 'Lives of Cameron [etc]'
Walter Scott to John Murray, 23 March 1818: 'I laid Kirkton aside when half finished, from a desire to get the original edition of the "Lives of Cameron," &c., by Patrick Walker, which I had not seen since a boy, and now I have got it, and find, as I suspected, that some curious morceaux have been cut out by subsequent editors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : works
Maria Graham to John Murray, 2 November 1817: 'Pray what is the 4th Canto of "Childe Harold" doing? and where is Lord Byron? You know my admiration for his works, and my thoughts for the best, the very best, of the man [...] I have seen but one new book -- a Danish account of the north of Africa, interesting and curious [...] It is straight from the Baltic, having been comissioned by my good friend, Dr. Ross'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Graham Print: Book
Francis Cohen : 'Astrology and Alchemy'
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 22 December 1821: 'I am happy to tell you that your Review is abominably bad -- happy for your sake, because, as you will, I dare say, sell 12,000, it only shows that you have an estate which produces wholly independent of its culture. All that ridiculous importance given to Dupin, a wretched ecrivasseur, and that affectation of naval statistics, I think very unsuitable. Your "Alchemy" is appropriate enough, great elaboration and pomp of work ending in smoke and dross. If Dalzell's "Lectures" are as obscure and dull as your commentary, they were not worth reviewing, no more than the commentary is worth reading [...] The article on Hazlitt is good, and that on the Scotch novels [italics]excellent[end italics].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Ellis : Journal of the Proceedings of the late Embassy to China, comprising a Correct Narrative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy, of the Voyage to and from China, and of the Journey from the Mouth of the Peiho to the Return to Canton
The Marchioness of Abercorn to John Murray, 4 December 1817, in reponse to a gift of books: '[The Marquess of Abercorn] returns Walpole, as he says since the age of fifteen he has read so much Grecian history and antiquity that he has these last ten years been sick of the subject. He does not like Ellis's account of "The Embassy to China," but is pleased with Macleod's narrative. He bids me tell you to say the best and what is least obnoxious of the [former] book. The composition and the narrative are so thoroughly wretched that he should be ashamed to let it stand in his library.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Marquess of Abercorn Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
Isaac D'Israeli to John Murray, 4 August 1818: 'It was with your usual kindness that you sent us the "Heart of Midlothian," which we return with our best thanks. All that concerns the Deans family, David and Jeanie, is the masterly production of the same genius, and I like the broad and natural humour of many of the characters. [italics]Character-painting[end italics] is his forte, and he is both pathetic and humorous. With all these excellences there is too much alloy of modern romance-writing in the fourth volume [...] But the first of our novelists likes to have [italics]make-weights[end italics], and must have, for so many thousand pounds.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli and family Print: Book
Lady Caroline Lamb : Ada Reis
William Lamb to John Murray, 20 December 1822: 'The incongruity of, and objections to, the story of "Ada Reis" can only be got over by power of writing, beauty of sentiment, striking and effective situation, &c. [...] Mr. [William] Gifford [Murray's reader], I dare say, will agree with me that since the time of Lucian all the representations of the infernal regions, which have been attempted by satirical writers, such as Fielding's "Journey from this World to the Next," have been feeble and flat. The sketch in "Ada Reis" is commonplace in its observations and altogether insufficient [...] I think, if it were thought that anything could be done with the novel, and that the faults of its design and structure can be got over, that I could put her [i.e Lady Caroline Lamb] in the way of writing up this part a little, and giving it something of strength, spirit, and novelty, and making it at once more moral and more interesting. I wish you would communicate these my hasty suggestions to Mr. Gifford, and he will see the propriety of pressing Lady Caroline to take a little more time to this part of the novel. She will be guided by his authority, and her fault at present is to be too hasty and too impatient of the trouble of correcting and recasting what is faulty.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: The Hon. William Lamb Manuscript: Unknown
Frederick James Furnivall : Review in The Academy
'I knew I had forgot something: Furnivall is too free; it is permitted to be insolent, but not to be so strangely dull.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : Sordello
'As for Sordello, I read it four times in youth, and never could make out who was speaking; yet I liked it - as one likes the moon, I fancy'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Hardy's life and work]
'The meeting then considered the works of Thomas Hardy. H.M. Wallis gave a paper outlining the main features of Hardy's life and gave some idea of the succession of works and a general criticism of his writing. The announced programme for the evening then came to an abrupt end - for health kept Mr Evans away & Mr Stansfield also was unable to come, and these two members had arranged to introduce the novels & poems of Hardy & also to start a discussion upon Hardy's religious views. We were very sorry to miss our friends & their contribution & hope that we may have another evening upon Hardy at some future time. To fill this gap in our programme H.M. Wallis told in his graphic way the short story called The 3 Travellers & Rosamund Wallis read the wife auction scene from 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' & the Secretary read a critique by Lawrence Binyon on the poems of Hardy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Laurence Binyon : [criticism of Hardy]
'The meeting then considered the works of Thomas Hardy. H.M. Wallis gave a paper outlining the main features of Hardy's life and gave some idea of the succession of works and a general criticism of his writing. The announced programme for the evening then came to an abrupt end - for health kept Mr Evans away & Mr Stansfield also was unable to come, and these two members had arranged to introduce the novels & poems of Hardy & also to start a discussion upon Hardy's religious views. We were very sorry to miss our friends & their contribution & hope that we may have another evening upon Hardy at some future time. To fill this gap in our programme H.M. Wallis told in his graphic way the short story called The 3 Travellers & Rosamund Wallis read the wife auction scene from 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' & the Secretary read a critique by Lawrence [sic] Binyon on the poems of Hardy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
R.B. Graham : [paper on Gilbert & Sullivan]
'The evening was then given up to the subject Gilbert & Sullivan's operas. Mr R.B. Graham read an able paper dealing with the subject in a most interesting & vivid way'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [paper on Miracle and Morality plays]
'The Secretary then read a paper upon English Miracle & Morality Plays. He described the Miracle Cycle at York with some illustrative readings from one or two of the earlier episodes. Then briefly traced the growth of the religious drama through the stages of its association with the Liturgy to its divorce from the Church & its elaboration by the city guilds. The development of Moralities was referred to & Mrs Unwin gave a reading from 'Everyman'.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown
Frances Burney : 'Memoirs of Dr Burney'
Mary Shelley to John Murray, acknowledging his gift of Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (1831): 'I have read "Boswell's Journal" ten times: I hope to read it many more. It is the most amusing book in the world [...] I do not see, in your list of authors whose anecdotes are extracted, the name of Mrs. D'Arblay; her account of Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, &c., in her "Memoirs of Dr. Burney," are highly interesting and valuable [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Horace Walpole : 'Letters to Mr Mason' vol 1
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 7 May 1828: 'I return, having read through, the first volume of "Horace Walpole's Letters to Mr. Mason" [discusses text further] [...] [These letters] are the least amusing of Walpole's. The reason is that he and Mason had at this time no [italics]common[end italics] acquaintance, and no [italics]common[end italics] topic, but Mason's "Life of Gray" [discusses further]."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Sir John MacNeill : 'England, France, Russia, and Turkey'
Sir Alexander Burnes to John Murray, 'On the Nile,' 30 March 1835: 'The Quarterly is lying before me [...] I have been reperusing the very article which treats of Mahommed Ali in that able essay regarding the encroachment of Russia. The Journal from which the quotations are made regarding the state and government of Egypt prove the writer to have been an accurate and an acute observer, but I do think that he has been too severe on the Pasha. To be sure he [Pasha] is a wholesale merchant and a wholesale oppressor, but compare him with his predecessors in this land of bondsmen, and then judge [comments further].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Alexander Burnes Print: Serial / periodical
Frances Kemble : Francis the First
Joanna Baillie to John Murray, 16 March 1832: 'I thank you very heartily for your great courtesy in sending me a copy of Miss Kemble's tragedy. I have read it very eagerly and found it a very extraordinary work, written with much force and ability, containing many traits of real genius. It well deserves the success which I see by to-day's papers it has met with, and I doubt not it will continue to enjoy the favour of the public. If you have an opportunity I should be very much obliged to you to convey my congratulations to the young authoress on this brilliant beginning of her career as a dramatic writer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joanna Baillie Print: Book
George Gordon Lord Byron : Don Juan
Caroline Norton to John Murray, 4 November 1837: 'I have received "Don Juan" and the October Quarterly [Review]. ... In thanking you for the two volumes of Byron belonging to the present beautiful edition, I must tell you that I had never read "Don Juan" [italics]through[end italics] before, which very few women in England of my age in England could say, -- and which I do not mind owning, since it adds greatly to the pleasure with which I perused the poem. I am afraid, in spite of the beauty, the wit, and the originality of the work, I think, with the Guiccioli [Byron's last mistress] -- "Mi rincrese solo che Don Giovanni non resti al inferno." It is a book which no [italics]woman[end italics] will ever like, whether for the reasons given by the author, or on other accounts, I will not dispute. To me the effect is like hearing some sweet and touching melody familiar to me as having been sung by a lost friend and companion, suddenly struck up in quick time with all the words parodied.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Norton Print: Book
Catherine Gore : Cecil
Caroline Norton to John Murray, 4 March 1840: 'Blessed be he [sic] who lately wrote "Cecil" (though it be but a novel), for it beguiled me through a weary night, and made me forget I had a pain in my side.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Caroline Norton Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : 'A Note on Japanese Art' in Magazine of Art
'The Mag has come; the only thing I liked was your Japanese.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Jean-Pierre Lanfry : Histoire de Napoleon 1er
'O boy, I'm deep in Lanfry.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald : Life of George IV
'His Majesty, once more disobeying the Dook's orders, had granted to some creature an Irish peerage. 'I observe' wrote Arthur (I quote from memory), that your Majesty has been misinformed. I shall reserve the patent until I have an opportunity of learning your Majesty's pleasure upon it!!' O the groans of George, who knew his man, and whimpered under the rod.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Goethe's 'Faust']]
'C.E. Stansfield dealt in detail with Goethe's Faust. he showed that Faust started by Goethe at the age of 20 & finished when over 80 yrs is an expression of his own life & the influences which played upon it during the period of 60 years a period beginning in storm & stress & ending in calmness. The paper brought out very well the story of the bargain, the fulfilling of the terms & the final rescue of Faust by a horde of angels.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Christopher Marlowe : Dr Faustus
'The remainder of the evening was occupied by the reading of Dr Faustus. The various parts were read by the members - the chief being Mephisto - C.I. Evans Faustus - R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club including Charles Evans and Reginald Robson Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of the last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of the last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: book
Charles Evans : [paper on Ben Jonson]
'The Secy. (who was absent) has received the folowing summary from R.B. Graham. a) C.I. Evans read a paper on Ben Jonson, by the request of the committee, 'Short & suggestive'. It fulfilled both these requisites & was also interesting. b) Short poems were illustrated by H. Marriage Wallis & R.B.Graham c) Miss Bowman Smith sang 'Drink to me only' d) Mrs Smith dealt with the proverbial sayings e) Miss R. Wallis gave a lively & lucid description of the play 'A Tale of a Tub'. This deals with the affairs of a fetching but impartial damsel yclept Audrey Turfe whose matrimonial adventures form a complicated & amusing plot f) Miss Bowman Smith sang 'Have you seen but the white lily grow?' (The Devil's an Ass)
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
Lord Wellesley : 'Letter [on the character of Pitt, addressed to J. W. Croker]'
Lord Mahon to John Murray, 11 December 1836: 'I am much obliged to you for the early copy of the [Quarterly] Review which I am reading with great pleasure. The article on myself was very gratifying to me. Its approbation of the work is joined to so much knowledge of the subject as to make the former truly valuable. Pray, when you see Mr. Lockhart, tell him how highly I appreciate it. 'Lord Wellesley's letter is quite beautiful -- no less noble in sentiment than nervous in language [...] 'The third article on Napier makes me think the following no bad plan [goes on to suggest collection of all Quarterly Review article on this subject in a 'a pocket volume, for the use of the army']'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Mahon Print: Serial / periodical, 'early copy'
Sir George Murray : 'article on Napier'
Lord Mahon to John Murray, 11 December 1836: 'I am much obliged to you for the early copy of the [Quarterly] Review which I am reading with great pleasure. The article on myself was very gratifying to me. Its approbation of the work is joined to so much knowledge of the subject as to make the former truly valuable. Pray, when you see Mr. Lockhart, tell him how highly I appreciate it. 'Lord Wellesley's letter is quite beautiful -- no less noble in sentiment than nervous in language [...] 'The third article on Napier makes me think the following no bad plan [goes on to suggest collection of all Quarterly Review article on this subject in a 'a pocket volume, for the use of the army']'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Mahon Print: Serial / periodical, 'early copy'
Captain W. Cornwallis Harris : Wild Sports in South Africa
W. J. Broderip to John Murray, submitting Captain W. Cornwallis Harris's Wild Sports in South Africa, 8 April 1839: 'Capt. Harris's book is entertaining, and seems to be the work of an honest man devoted to sport, and not caring what he suffers provided he gets his shot [...] There is a little expression here and there in the Captain's book, that might be changed for the better -- such as a rhinoceros giving up "the ghost"!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: W. J. Broderip Manuscript: Unknown
Alexander Ireland : List of the writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt : chronologically arranged with notes, descriptive, critical, and explanatory; and a selection of opinions regarding their genius and characteristics, by distinguished contemporaries and friends as we
'I have your List of Writings etc: a copy of it was lent to me by Mr Bain the bookseller.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edward Leedes : English Examples. To be Turned into Latin
Transcribed (not entirely accurately) in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Notes from a later edition of the grammar by Edward Leedes, headmaster of King Edward VI's School at Bury St Edmunds, originally published in 1676: extracts from the preface; seven 'Examples of Exercises preparatory to Themes' ('Of the Spring', 'Of The Summer', 'Of Autumn', 'Of Winter', 'Of Laziness', 'Of Drunkenness', and 'Of Covetousness'); two 'Examples of Themes according to the method usually prescribed' ('Trust, but know whom' and 'We all desire Peace'); three 'Examples of Themes in a more loose and free method' ('Fortune helps the daring', 'All things obey Money', and 'Rest doth much delight the wearied man'); three 'Examples of the Concords' (unheaded); and thirteen 'Examples in English, fitted to the Grammar Rules' (also unheaded).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Pordage Print: Book
Richard Saunders : Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie, The Symmetrical Proportions and Signal Moles of the Body, … Whereunto is Added the Art of Memory
Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Notes on Raymond Lull's Art of Memory, copied from the second edition of Richard Saunders's Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie, The Symmetrical Proportions and Signal Moles of the Body, … Whereunto is Added the Art of Memory (1671), pp. 371-7.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Pordage Print: Book
Francis Bacon : Of the proficience and advancement of learning
Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Notes on memory from Francis Bacon's Of the proficience and advancement of learning (1605).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Pordage Print: Book
Robert Ferguson : A View of an Ecclesiastick in his Socks & Buskins, or a Just Reprimand given to Mr Alsop, for his Foppish, Pedantick, Detractive, and Petulant Way of Writing.
Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Extensive reading notes from Robert Ferguson's A View of an Ecclesiastick in his Socks & Buskins (1698).
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Pordage Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
R.B. Graham : 'Pious Atrocity, The'
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts. 1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith 2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith 3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings 4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole 5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin 6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham 7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds 8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson 9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith 10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin 11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis 12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith 13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds 14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis 15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto] 16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson 17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith 18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith 19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin 20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
Rudyard Kipling : 'How the Camel got his Hump'
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts. 1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith 2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith 3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings 4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole 5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin 6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham 7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds 8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson 9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith 10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin 11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis 12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith 13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds 14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis 15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto] 16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson 17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith 18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith 19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin 20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Smith Print: Book
Reginald Robson : 'Bad Morality & Bad art'
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts. 1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith 2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith 3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings 4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole 5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin 6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham 7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds 8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson 9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith 10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin 11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis 12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith 13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds 14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis 15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto] 16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson 17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith 18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith 19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin 20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R. Smith : 'Etaples & the Air raids'
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts. 1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith 2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith 3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings 4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole 5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin 6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham 7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds 8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson 9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith 10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin 11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis 12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith 13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds 14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis 15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto] 16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson 17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith 18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith 19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin 20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : 'In a gondola'
'The following miscellaneous programme was then gone through. This change in the subject was caused by the imposibility of getting cheap copies of The Dynasts. 1. Pianoforte solo. Selection from Debusy [sic] Miss Bowman Smith 2. Reading. Modern Froissart Chronicles Mrs W.H. Smith 3. Reading. Migrations. Anon. Contrib. from Punch by Alfred Rawlings 4. Recitation. In a Gondola (Browning) Miss Cole 5. Song. 2 French Bergerettes. Mrs Unwin 6. Essay. 'The Pious Atrocity' R.B. Graham 7. Reading. Wedding Presents (Punch) Mrs Reynolds 8. Song. My dear Soul. Mrs Robson 9. Reading 'How the Camel got his Hump' W.H. Smith 10. Song. The Camel's hump. E.E. Unwin 11. Reading. The Man of the Evening (A.A. Milne Punch) Miss R. Wallis 12. Song. Hebrides Galley Song. Miss Bowman Smith 13. Reading. Arms of Wipplecrack S.A. Reynolds 14. Reading. Joints in the Armour. E.V. Lucas. H.M. Wallis 15. Song-Chant Folk Song [ditto] 16. Essay. 'Bad morality & bad art' R.H. Robson 17. Song. Winter. Miss Bowman Smith 18. Essay 'Etaples & the air raids' H.R. Smith 19. Recitation. These new fangled ways. E.E. Unwin 20. Song. Goodnight. Mrs Robson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Muriel Bowman-Smith Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Browning's The Ring & the Book]
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : Ring and the Book, The
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Robert Browning : Ring and the Book, The
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Robert Browning : Ring and the Book, The
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Gidham Print: Book
Robert Browning : Ring and the Book, The
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Robert Browning : Ring and the Book, The
'the rest of the evening was devoted to Browning's The Ring & the Book. Henry M. Wallis read a masterly paper in introduction. This enabled those who had not read the long poem to understand the story & the way in which Browning treated the story. The success of the evening was largely due to this introduction. The story from several standpoints was then dealt with by members of the club. R.H. Robson read a description of the 1st Guido A. Rawlings read extracts from the book Capansacchi Mrs Evans [ditto] Pompilia Mr Gidham [ditto] Pope Mr Robson [ditto] Guido in prison'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : Far Away and Long Ago - A History of My Early Life
'Miss R. Wallis described & read from the beginning of 'Long ago & far away' [sic] the autobiography: which was written during a convalescence, in which the past events of the author's life, long forgotten, floated before his eyes as he lay in a semi-trance. E. E. Unwin described his Naturalist writing & read from The Book of a Naturalist. Mrs Unwin read an extract from Hampshire Days. Mr Evans described his books dealing with life among the village [sic] abutting on Salisbury plain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : Book of a Naturalist, The
'Miss R. Wallis described & read from the beginning of 'Long ago & far away' [sic] the autobiography: which was written during a convalescence, in which the past events of the author's life, long forgotten, floated before his eyes as he lay in a semi-trance. E. E. Unwin described his Naturalist writing & read from The Book of a Naturalist. Mrs Unwin read an extract from Hampshire Days. Mr Evans described his books dealing with life among the village [sic] abutting on Salisbury plain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : Hampshire Days
'Miss R. Wallis described & read from the beginning of 'Long ago & far away' [sic] the autobiography: which was written during a convalescence, in which the past events of the author's life, long forgotten, floated before his eyes as he lay in a semi-trance. E. E. Unwin described his Naturalist writing & read from The Book of a Naturalist. Mrs Unwin read an extract from Hampshire Days. Mr Evans described his books dealing with life among the village [sic] abutting on Salisbury plain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : [naturalist writing]
'Miss R. Wallis described & read from the beginning of 'Long ago & far away' [sic] the autobiography: which was written during a convalescence, in which the past events of the author's life, long forgotten, floated before his eyes as he lay in a semi-trance. E. E. Unwin described his Naturalist writing & read from The Book of a Naturalist. Mrs Unwin read an extract from Hampshire Days. Mr Evans described his books dealing with life among the village [sic] abutting on Salisbury plain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : [writing on Hampshire villages]
'Miss R. Wallis described & read from the beginning of 'Long ago & far away' [sic] the autobiography: which was written during a convalescence, in which the past events of the author's life, long forgotten, floated before his eyes as he lay in a semi-trance. E. E. Unwin described his Naturalist writing & read from The Book of a Naturalist. Mrs Unwin read an extract from Hampshire Days. Mr Evans described his books dealing with life among the village [sic] abutting on Salisbury plain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last two meetings read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Thomas Love Peacock]
'The subject before the meeting was Thomas Love Peacock, novelist & poet. H.M. Wallis read an introductory paper which gave us the facts of Peacock's life & a general account of his writings. Extracts from his works were read C.I. Evans The War Songs [sic] of Dinas Vawr Miss Cole Love & Age E.E. Unwin extracts from Nightmare Abbey R.B. Graham Some of the poems from his novels C.I. Evans Three men of Gotham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
17 July 1859: 'I sat, very sad, in the garden [at Exeter House], took up Tennyson's Guinevere, and was engrossed with it. Arthur is the noblest creature that ever lived in fiction. What a speech is that of his on parting with the Queen. I can never read it without tears.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hereward
8 February 1875: 'We had an agreeable journey to Folkestone where we took ship [for china-collecting expedition in Europe] [...] I was driven below by the intense cold so I lay down and read, with the greatest interest, my friend Charles Kingsley's Hereward. The subject is laid in my own Lincolnshire, and I know all the scenery he describes o'er well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities
18 July 1876: 'Left Paris by tidal service at half-past nine, reaching London before seven... I am reading again, with great delight, Thackeray's Esmond. Since I left England [on ceramics-collecting expedition] I have read Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Mrs Elliot's Old Court Life in France, various in style, all in their way of much interest to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Mrs Elliot : Old Court Life in France
18 July 1876: 'Left Paris by tidal service at half-past nine, reaching London before seven... I am reading again, with great delight, Thackeray's Esmond. Since I left England [on ceramics-collecting expedition] I have read Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Mrs Elliot's Old Court Life in France, various in style, all in their way of much interest to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Mrs Edwards, ed. : Selections from the Poets
[following journal entry for 15 October 1879] 'A few days later Lady Charlotte was immersed in Mrs. Edwards' Selections from the Poets.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Harrison Ainsworth : South Sea Bubble
[between journal entries for 20 October and 1 November 1879] 'Lady Charlotte had now for the moment deserted Shakespeare of an evening for Harrison Ainsworth's South Sea Bubble and John Law.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Francis Warrington Dawson : Le Nègre aux Etats-Unis
'And now more thanks for the book [" Le Nègre aux Etats-Unis"]. You have a most attractive French style--and very French it is too and yet with something individual-- and even racial--glowing through it and adding to the fascination of the perfectly simple diction.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Harriet Wilson : Memoirs
'The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Unknown
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Charity
'[...] the volume ["Charity"] which on my first visit to London in many months I carried off home. From the first word of the wonderful preface to the last short sketch of the Pampa as it was, it has been one huge delight. Of course some of these stries--gems--I've read (The incomparable "Aurora" is a long time ago first) but the cumulative effect is magnificent in its pictorial force and emotional power.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Brothers Karamazov
'I do hope you are not too disgusted with me for not thanking you for the "[The Brothers] Karamazov" before. It was very dear of you to remember me; and of course I was extremely interested. But it's an impossible lump of valuable matter. It's terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating. Moreover I don't know what D[ostoevsky] stands for or reveals, but I do know he is too Russian for me. [..] Of course your wife's translation is wonderful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
H.|Henry] M.[Major] Tomlinson : The Fog
'Thanks for the houseflags little book. I have marked in it all the ships I used to know--a good many of them.[...]. After you went away I re-read your Fog on the River paper. In the E.[nglish] R.[eview]. Jolly well done and rightly felt and artistically expressed. '
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Serial / periodical
Norman Douglas : Fountains in the Sand: Rambles among the Oases of Tunisia
'This ["Fountains in the Sand"] is first rate. I have seldom read prose d'une si belle tonalité.' Hence follow 23 lines of praise and constructive commentary.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, Serial / periodical
Francis Warrington Dawson : The Sin
'If the novel at which he [Warrington Dawson] is working now and of which he read me the first four chapters is, as a whole, up to that sample then it is distnctly stuff that can be handled.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Warrington Dawson Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Curle : Shadows out of the Crowd
'In the meantime I thank you heartily for your more than in one way very interesting vol.["Shadows out of the Crowd"]. We shall have a talk about it when you come, with the corpus delicti there before us to refer to.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : Leonora
'From that far distant day [in 1903] when (you remember?) you sent me "Leonora" it's great fundamental quality of absolutely genuine expression has been with me an unshakable conviction. I often look through the book noting on the pages those gifts which have found now their fullest expression.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
By or on behalf of Edme-Patrice-Maurice MacMahon : [political manifesto]
'Sunday morning, as I was out getting chocolate, I found two new manifestoes on the walls. One from a private person, editor of a Radical journal, calling on the people to be calm, and rest on the weight of their majority. The other, a declaration of the President’s, which made me so mad that I could have broken his head if he had been within my reach. It was written, I firmly believe, with the intention of driving on the Republicans to extremities, and shook the cat in the air with a sort of paternal menace, that must have been maddening to the Opposition.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster, election posters.
William Ernest Henley : 'The Omadhaun at the Queen's'.
'"The Omadhaun" was very funny by the Lord; I saw Constable who said both Payn and Kegan Paul had very highly lauded you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Account of an Irish melodrama by H.P. Grattan.
Tristan Bernard : unknown
'[Tristan] Bernard is very engaging. I do not know why but he is.[...] It is very good of you to have sent me that volume with the others. [Elémir] Bourges--ah, that's another matter.There are magnificent pages there. But all together more than anything else, it's surprising. You say to yourself: so that is "Le Crépuscule des Dieux"! And you continue to be struck by the poverty of the subject.[...]. You told me to start with that book. After fnishing it I opened the other ["Les oiseaux s'en volent et les fleurs tombent"]. It moved me by its splendour, the colours, the movement.' Hence follow 16 lines of reserved comment.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Elémir Bourges : Le Crépuscule des Dieux: Moeurs Contemporaines
'[Tristan] Bernard is very engaging. I do not know why but he is.[...] It is very good of you to have sent me that volume with the others. [Elémir] Bourges--ah, that's another matter.There are magnificent pages there. But all together more than anything else, it's surprising. You say to yourself: so that is "Le Crépuscule des Dieux"! And you continue to be struck by the poverty of the subject.[...]. You told me to start with that book. After fnishing it I opened the other ["Les oiseaux s'en volent et les fleurs tombent"]. It moved me by its splendour, the colours, the movement.' Hence follow 16 lines of reserved comment.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Elémir Bourges : (probably) Les oiseaux s'en volent et les fleurs tombent
'[Tristan] Bernard is very engaging. I do not know why but he is.[...] It is very good of you to have sent me that volume with the others. [Elémir] Bourges--ah, that's another matter.There are magnificent pages there. But all together more than anything else, it's surprising. You say to yourself: so that is "Le Crépuscule des Dieux"! And you continue to be struck by the poverty of the subject.[...]. You told me to start with that book. After fnishing it I opened the other ["Les oiseaux s'en volent et les fleurs tombent"]. It moved me by its splendour, the colours, the movement.' Hence follow 16 lines of reserved comment.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Francis Warrington Dawson : The Novel of George (published as The Pyramid)
'The novel --Good! Très fort!! As Pinker could not have done much with it before Easter I held it up here for a second reading.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
André Ruyters : Le Mauvais Riche
'Forgive me for the delay in thanking you for the volume you were so kind to as to send me. How well done, well conceived, well said! Your "Ariane" is easily the most charming morality given to me to read in this vale of tears and grimaces where I have wandered for nearly 53 years. In the sequel to "Robinson Crusoe" the most delightful thing is to see how you have succeeded in capturing the charm of this good animal that only ever walked on four legs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marguerite Poradowska : Hors du Foyer
'It was a joy to have your book ["Hors du Foyer"]. A thousand thanks. I have just finished reading it and, and I am charmed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
James Marie Hopper : Caybigan
'I had read some of your Philipino [sic] stories--and was looking for more of your work.I spotted it first in the old MacClure Mag.;certainly without any help from anyone.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Sara Morgan Dawson : A Confederate Girl's Diary
'Just a word to tell you I have finished your Mother's book ["A Confederate Girl's Diary"]. Admirable.' Hence follow 14 lines of praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Proofs (see letter and fn.3 p.243 of source text)
Francis Warrington Dawson : Grand Elixir (The Green Moustache)
'I am sending today the "Grand Elixir" to London.[...] That the story is clever, that the writing is in many respects admirable there can be no doubt.' Hence follow 12 lines of constructive criticism.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Valéry-Nicolas Larbaud : A.O.Barnabooth
'It is dificult to express the joy I felt at the arrival of the "Complete Works of M. Barnabooth".[...].The first reading of the "Journal Intime" makes an unforgettable impression.' Hence follow 16 lines of unqualified praise.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : The Problems of Philosophy
'Many thanks. I've just read the first chapter at once to take possession and have laid the book ["The Problems of Philosophy"] aside till Monday -- when the short story will be off my hands.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : Philosophical Essays
'I am glad I read the little book ["The Problems of Philosophy"] before coming to your essays ["Philosophical Essays"]. If in reading the first I felt moving step by step, with delight, on the firmest ground, the other gave me the sense of an enlarged vision in the clearest, the purest atmosphere.' Hence follow another 10 lines of praise and gratitude.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Radclyffe Hall : The Well of Loneliness
'November brought a peculiar police-court case, which made literary history, after Radclyffe Hall's novel, "The Well of Loneliness", had been suppressed for impropriety. I had reviewed this earnest and harmless story on publication, and now joined the thirty-nine "expert" witnesses who appeared before the Bow Street magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Storm Jameson : No Time Like the Present
'I had hesitated, knowing that "The New Statesman" and "The Week-end Review" regarded each other as rivals; two days later I agreed to write the notice, and subsequently reviewed a number of well-known books which included Storm Jameson's autobiographical "No Time Like the Present".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Arthur Symons : Knave of Hearts
'Infinite thanks for the most precious and admirable volume [Knave of Hearts] [...] meanwhile I am as ever yours with admiration of the poet and affection for the man...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
André Gide : Les Caves du Vatican (Book 1)
'I am proud to learn that there is [a phrase in "Lord Jim"] worthy to serve as an epigraph to one of the books of "Les Caves du Vatican". What a beautiful start! What things you have put in the so characteristic and interesting pages of this fine beginning!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: see additional information
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : A Hatchment
'That's why [an attack of gout] I did not write to thank you for your book ["A Hatchment"] (and the Ranee's) ["My Life in Sarawak"] as soon as I ought to have done. Upon my word it's a marvellous volume [...]. The Ranee's book is delightfully ladylike but her sentiment for the land and the people is so obviously genuine that all her sins of omission shall be forgiven her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
(Lady) Margaret Brooke : My Life in Sarawak
'That's why [an attack of gout] I did not write to thank you for your book ["A Hatchment"] (and the Ranee's) ["My Life in Sarawak"] as soon as I ought to have done. Upon my word it's a marvellous volume [...]. The Ranee's book is delightfully ladylike but her sentiment for the land and the people is so obviously genuine that all her sins of omission shall be forgiven her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Howard R. Smith : [paper on Bunyan's life]
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography. R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House. In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [paper on Bunyan's writing]
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography. R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House. In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read and signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Maurice Hewlett : Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay, The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : Forest Lovers, The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : [article in The Nation]
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Serial / periodical
Maurice Hewlett : Queen's Quair Or The Six Years' Tragedy
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : Forest Lovers, The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett : Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay , The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Maurice Hewlett :
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to the writings of Maurice Hewlett. [C.I. Evans outlined a few facts of his life] H.R. Smith gave an account of The Forest Lovers - by giving an outline of the story with one or two extracts he was able to bring us into the story & to illustrate the strange archaic manner of writing adopted in this novel. E.E. Unwin introduced 'Richard Yea & Nay' as a fine study of personality. Two short extracts were read to show the style of vigorous writing with vivid word pictures. Queen's Quair was discussed by H.M. Wallis who carried us into a discussion of the history of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a very able contribution though it erred on the side of being more history than Hewlett. C.I. Evans described the modern novels & pointed out the increasing simplicity of his style & R.B. Graham read a part of an article recently published in 'The Nation' in which Maurice Hewlett makes great play of the wail of the Duke of Bedford for housemaids to keep up Welbeck House. This illustrated a modern development of Hewlett's writing for he seems to be very keen upon a right settlement of the land problem & indeed the whole social problem.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Richard Curle : Life is a Dream
'You don't mind if I suggest that you should take a glance at Curle's short stories "Life is a Dream"-- not all in the vol. but three of them. Read first "Blanca Palillos", then the "Remittance Man" and finish with the one called "A Memory". Each in its way has a distinct value [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : Tolstoy:A Study (also catalogued as Tolstoy: His Life and Writings)
'You have succeeded so well in effacing your personality in that little book ["Tolstoy: A Study"] ( and very interesting it is too) that but for an occasional turn of phrase I--even I! can't see you there at all.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : Henry James:A Critical Study
'If we had telephonic communication I would call you up and hear me thump my chest and cry mea culpa for not having written to him [Ford Madox Ford] about the [Henry] James book for which the precise word is: delightful.' Hence follow 6 lines of praise for Ford's new book.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
A.[Andrew] C.[Cecil] Bradley : Shakespearean Tragedy:Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
'I keep the two books a little longer. "Shakespeare" is good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Raymond Swing : Harper's Magazine
'In puzzled words Raymond Gram Swing commented in "Harper's Magazine" on "the complete refusal of the British public to face the serious facts of their decline", while Harold Laski sustained this verdict by writing in "The Forum" on Britain's "prevailing temper of depression" and "widespread fatalism".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
Winifred Holtby : South Riding
'Not until I read the fictitious account of this consultation four years afterwards in "South Riding" did I realise that the diagnosis then given her amounted to a verdict of early death, which she understood and accepted.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on History of Berkshire]
'5. The Club now considered the subject for the evening - Berkshire - & the opening paper was by H.M. Wallis who touched upon the History of the County in his inimitable way from the Piltdown race to Archbishop Laud. Alfred & his battles. Reading & the 35 religious houses & the breweries are prominent features of the story & may be responsible for the saying Piety Spiders & Pride. 6. Rosamund Wallis read a gruesome story from Thomas of Reading about a couple of Reading inhabitants who had murdered 60 people by the simple device of a trapdoor floor to the spare bedroom & a cauldron of boiling water below. 7. 3 Berkshire folksongs were then given by Mrs Robson & E.E. Unwin. 8. S.A Reynolds read a Ballad entitled 'A Berkshire Lady', though speaking as a mere male I doubt whether her conduct would be considered quite lady-like today'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Piltdown Woman]
'The rest of the evening concerned Prehistoric Man & Woman. H.M. Wallis read a paper entitled 'The Piltdown Woman'. This was a learned & valuable paper upon the problems of prehistoric man, problems of date, of mental capacity, of relationships & of ancestry. These were dealt with in an interesting way & the paper was assisted greatly by a number of drawings giving details of the skulls & the reconstructions of facial peculiarities.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of the last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Oliver Goldsmith : Good-natured Man, The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : Good-natured Man, The
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : She Stoops to Conquer
'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a play-reading from Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Goodnatured Man'. Although this play was Goldsmith's first experiment in writing for the theatre & contains many obvious faults it succeeded in obtaining a fair hearing at its first production in 1768 & brought the author a sum of £500. It has a rather weak plot & the character of Honeywood is not well brought out. Undoubtedly Croaker saved the piece, with help from Lofts. The reading of the play by members of the club made an interesting & enjoyable evening. The play certainly goes better in dialogue than when read through to oneself, although there is too little action in it for any success for acting. In this respect it is much inferior to 'She Stoops to Conquer'. [a lengthy cast list is given]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read and signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Thomas Edward Brown : My Garden
'The subject of the meeting was 'Gardens' & all members were asked to bring contributions [...] The following is a list of the contributions. C.E. Stansfield a reading from 'Paradise Lost' followed by a short essay entitled "The Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life" Mary Hayward. Song "Now sleeps the crimson petals" C.I. Evans. Two Readings. Of an Orchard. Higson. The Apple. John Burrough. Mrs Robson. Song. "Thank God for a Garden" Miss Cole. Recitation. 'The Flower's Name'. Browning. E.E. Unwin. Song. "Come into the Garden Maud" Mrs Evans. Reading from "The Small Garden Useful" dealing with the Cooking of Vegetables. C.I. Evans. Reading. "My Garden" interval for supper Miss Wallis. Reading by Request 'My Garden' - a parody Miss Cole. Recitation. Gardens. by Kipling Miss Hayward. Song. R.H. Robson Violin Solo C.I. Evans. Reading. A ballad of trees & the master Mrs Robson. Song.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [essay entitled 'Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life']
'The subject of the meeting was 'Gardens' & all members were asked to bring contributions [...] The following is a list of the contributions. C.E. Stansfield a reading from 'Paradise Lost' followed by a short essay entitled "The Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life" Mary Hayward. Song "Now sleeps the crimson petals" C.I. Evans. Two Readings. Of an Orchard. Higson. The Apple. John Burrough. Mrs Robson. Song. "Thank God for a Garden" Miss Cole. Recitation. 'The Flower's Name'. Browning. E.E. Unwin. Song. "Come into the Garden Maud" Mrs Evans. Reading from "The Small Garden Useful" dealing with the Cooking of Vegetables. C.I. Evans. Reading. "My Garden" interval for supper Miss Wallis. Reading by Request 'My Garden' - a parody Miss Cole. Recitation. Gardens. by Kipling Miss Hayward. Song. R.H. Robson Violin Solo C.I. Evans. Reading. A ballad of trees & the master Mrs Robson. Song.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : 'Flower's Name, The'
'The subject of the meeting was 'Gardens' & all members were asked to bring contributions [...] The following is a list of the contributions. C.E. Stansfield a reading from 'Paradise Lost' followed by a short essay entitled "The Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life" Mary Hayward. Song "Now sleeps the crimson petals" C.I. Evans. Two Readings. Of an Orchard. Higson. The Apple. John Burrough. Mrs Robson. Song. "Thank God for a Garden" Miss Cole. Recitation. 'The Flower's Name'. Browning. E.E. Unwin. Song. "Come into the Garden Maud" Mrs Evans. Reading from "The Small Garden Useful" dealing with the Cooking of Vegetables. C.I. Evans. Reading. "My Garden" interval for supper Miss Wallis. Reading by Request 'My Garden' - a parody Miss Cole. Recitation. Gardens. by Kipling Miss Hayward. Song. R.H. Robson Violin Solo C.I. Evans. Reading. A ballad of trees & the master Mrs Robson. Song.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Cole Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : 'Gardens'
'The subject of the meeting was 'Gardens' & all members were asked to bring contributions [...] The following is a list of the contributions. C.E. Stansfield a reading from 'Paradise Lost' followed by a short essay entitled "The Lost Art of Living - A Gardener's Life" Mary Hayward. Song "Now sleeps the crimson petals" C.I. Evans. Two Readings. Of an Orchard. Higson. The Apple. John Burrough. Mrs Robson. Song. "Thank God for a Garden" Miss Cole. Recitation. 'The Flower's Name'. Browning. E.E. Unwin. Song. "Come into the Garden Maud" Mrs Evans. Reading from "The Small Garden Useful" dealing with the Cooking of Vegetables. C.I. Evans. Reading. "My Garden" interval for supper Miss Wallis. Reading by Request 'My Garden' - a parody Miss Cole. Recitation. Gardens. by Kipling Miss Hayward. Song. R.H. Robson Violin Solo C.I. Evans. Reading. A ballad of trees & the master Mrs Robson. Song.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Cole Print: Book
W. H. (William Henry) Davies : either The Bird of Paradise and other Poems OR Nature
'Thanks very much for the book and the "Spectator" page.[...] These are all delightful pieces. You must autograph the book for me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Frederic Harrison : The German Peril: Forecasts 1864-1914, Realities 1915, Hopes 191-
'Your father's book is wonderful. I read the articles of course at the time; but now collected, in the mass, they astonish one by their marvellous insight into the future.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : EITHER Between St Dennis and St George: A Sketch of Three Civilisations OR When Blood is their Argument: An Analysis of Prussian Culture
'Many thanks for the book which is excellent and super excellent; even to the point of making me uneasy lest its true and vibrating notes be lost in the beating of the pans and (more or less) savage yowling of the market place.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
R.(Robert) B.(Bontine) Cunninghame Graham : Bernal Diaz de Castillo:Being Some Account of Him Taken From His True History of the Conquest of New Spain
' I've just finished "B[ernal] Diaz". The terminal pages of the preface are just lovely with their irresistable reference to the tempi passati. As to the book itself no personal friend of the old Conquistador could have put it together with greater skill and more tender care.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) : The Good Soldier
'I was writing something so I refrained from looking at "The Good Soldier" (according to my time-honoured practice) till I got a few pages out of the way.' Hence follow six lines of praise for the novel.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Minutes of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [essay on Pepys]
'The rest of the evening was spent in the company of Samuel Pepys (Peeps) The Club was much indebted to H.M. Wallis and to H.R. Smith for able essays giving an outline of Pepys' life & an estimate of his character. From H.R. Smith we were introduced to Pepys as the competent official who by keenness made himself master of his job. Readings from the diary were given by Rosamund Wallis on "The Great Fire" Mrs Robson on Mrs Pepys E.E. Unwin on "The Plague" & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R. Smith : [essay on Pepys]
'The rest of the evening was spent in the company of Samuel Pepys (Peeps) The Club was much indebted to H.M. Wallis and to H.R. Smith for able essays giving an outline of Pepys' life & an estimate of his character. From H.R. Smith we were introduced to Pepys as the competent official who by keenness made himself master of his job. Readings from the diary were given by Rosamund Wallis on "The Great Fire" Mrs Robson on Mrs Pepys E.E. Unwin on "The Plague" & R.H. Robson'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Mary Hayward : [paper on ballads]
'The subject of the evening, 'Ballads', now occupied attention. From an introductory paper prepared by Mary Hayward & from readings by Rosamund Wallis we learnt what a ballad is or was & is not. [this is summarised at length] The programme was divided into six parts dealing with the six main varieties of ballads. Some of these ballads were read & others were sung. Part 1. dealing with Magic Song The Two Musicians Mr & Mrs Unwin Reading The Demon Lover Mr Rawlings [ditto] Thomas the Rhymer Miss R Wallis Part 2. Stories of Romance Song Lord Rendel The Book Club Reading Edward Edward (Binnorie) R.B Graham Instead of Binnorie we were favoured by a rendering of a Berkshire version of this story by Mr Graham. In fact he broke forth into song & was assisted in the chorus refrain by the whole Club who sang with differing emphasis "And I'll be true to my love - if my love'll be true to me". part 3. Romance Shading into History reading Sir Patrick Spens Mr R.H. Robson [ditto] Bonnie house of Airly [sic] Mr H.R. Smith Part 4. Greenwood & Robin Hood Reading Nut Brown Maid Mr & Mrs Evans [ditto] Death of Robin Hood Mr Rawlings H.M. Wallis read at this stage an interesting paper upon the subject [contents summarised] Part 5. Later History Reading Battle of Otterburn Miss Marriage [ditto] Helen of Kirconnel H.M. Wallis Part 6. Showing gradual decline Song Bailiff's Daughter of Islington Mrs Robson Reading Undaunted Mary Mrs Rawlings Song Mowing the Barley All Song The Wealthy Farmer's Son Mr & Mrs Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hayward Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on ballads]
'The subject of the evening, 'Ballads', now occupied attention. From an introductory paper prepared by Mary Hayward & from readings by Rosamund Wallis we learnt what a ballad is or was & is not. [this is summarised at length] The programme was divided into six parts dealing with the six main varieties of ballads. Some of these ballads were read & others were sung. Part 1. dealing with Magic Song The Two Musicians Mr & Mrs Unwin Reading The Demon Lover Mr Rawlings [ditto] Thomas the Rhymer Miss R Wallis Part 2. Stories of Romance Song Lord Rendel The Book Club Reading Edward Edward (Binnorie) R.B Graham Instead of Binnorie we were favoured by a rendering of a Berkshire version of this story by Mr Graham. In fact he broke forth into song & was assisted in the chorus refrain by the whole Club who sang with differing emphasis "And I'll be true to my love - if my love'll be true to me". part 3. Romance Shading into History reading Sir Patrick Spens Mr R.H. Robson [ditto] Bonnie house of Airly [sic] Mr H.R. Smith Part 4. Greenwood & Robin Hood Reading Nut Brown Maid Mr & Mrs Evans [ditto] Death of Robin Hood Mr Rawlings H.M. Wallis read at this stage an interesting paper upon the subject [contents summarised] Part 5. Later History Reading Battle of Otterburn Miss Marriage [ditto] Helen of Kirconnel H.M. Wallis Part 6. Showing gradual decline Song Bailiff's Daughter of Islington Mrs Robson Reading Undaunted Mary Mrs Rawlings Song Mowing the Barley All Song The Wealthy Farmer's Son Mr & Mrs Unwin'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
George Burrow : [paper on Dr Johnson]
'The evening was then devoted to Samuel Johnson as seen through the biography of Boswell. Two papers were contributed. By Mr Burrow on "a Second Hand Book" which threw an interesting sidelight on Dr Johnson & By H.R. Smith who gave us an interesting account of the biographer. Readings from the biography were given by Mr Rawlings, Mr Unwin, Mr Evans & Mr Wallis, Mr Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R. Smith : [paper on Boswell]
'The evening was then devoted to Samuel Johnson as seen through the biography of Boswell. Two papers were contributed. By Mr Burrow on "a Second Hand Book" which threw an interesting sidelight on Dr Johnson & By H.R. Smith who gave us an interesting account of the biographer. Readings from the biography were given by Mr Rawlings, Mr Unwin, Mr Evans & Mr Wallis, Mr Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Richard Curle : The Echo of Voices
'I will talk to you at length about the stories when you are well enough to come down here for the weekend.[...]. The value of these tales relies in the "nuances" of colour of half light and in [an] almost evanescent tremor of emotions.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Horace Walpole : Walpoliana
[between journal entries for 30 September and 10 October 1880] 'A visit to Dresden was richly rewarded by the acquisition of six valuable fans to add to Lady Charlotte's collection, but it was a regret to have reached the end of the reading of Walpoliana and Pepys' Journal.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
[between journal entries for 10 October and 19 November 1880] 'The evening readings of Tristram Shandy created in Lady Charlotte a feeling of disgust, and she thought it sad that a man who could write so finely should have so perverted his talents, though she recognized the number of beautiful passages.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : A Sentimental Journey
19 November 1880, from Paris: 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Walter Scott :
'Progress was so slight [in Charles Schreiber's recovery following disorder of lungs in spring 1883] that the doctors recommended a sea journey to South Africa. On October 26 [1883] they [Schreiber and his wife, Lady Charlotte] left England in the Hawarden Castle, and on November 14 anchored in Table Bay. Lady Charlotte found solace during an uneventful journey in Shakespeare and Walter Scott.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Pickwick Papers
'As Charles Schreiber's condition appeared to grow worse instead of better [following voyage to South Africa recommended by doctors, and stay at Wynberg] a move to Ceres was recommended, and just before Christmas they settled there [...] Lady Charlotte read to him a great deal as they sat out in front of the house. The books she chose included the Pickwick Papers, Stanley's Jewish Church, Green's History of England and Junius' Letters.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Ellen (Anderson Gholson) Glasgow : Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's Courage
'I was delighted with Miss Glasgow's novel ["Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's Courage"]; the insight, the mastery of her craft, the interest and charm of the narrative-- all this is of the very first order.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry James : A Small Boy and Others
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry James : Notes of a Son and Brother
'His [Henry James] autobiographical two books are admirable; but what makes them so wonderful are the very same qualities that make his novels admirable.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Arthur Symons : Figures of Several Centuries
'Ever so many thanks for the honour of the dedication; and for the copy [of "Figures of Several Centuries"] which reached me yesterday. I sat up with it of course. There are marvellous pages there.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting were read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
George Bernard Shaw : Candida
'The rest of the evening was devoted to a Play-Reading of Bernard Shaw's Candida.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII book Club Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on Laurence Housman]
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
R.B. Graham : [paper on Housman's 'Little Plays of St.Francis']
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Manuscript: Unknown
Reginald Robson : [paper on Housman's 'New Child's Guide to Knowledge']
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Laurence Housman : Queen, The! God Bless Her
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage, Ernest Unwin & Alfred Rawlings Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Laurence Housman : Englishwoman's Love-letters, An
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Laurence Housman : Sheepfold, The
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine and Charles Evans Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Laurence Housman : Little Plays of St. Francis, The
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Laurence Housman : New Child's Guide to Knowledge
'The rest of the evening was devoted to the works of Laurence Housman. Most of the members had seen & heard Mr Housman recently so there is no need to give any personal details & H.M. Wallis's encyclopaedic summary of Housman's artistic gifts & works put us in touch with the versatility of the man. "A charming man" says H.M.W. & so say all of us tho' I'm not sure whether someone did not say "a little effeminate". It was news perhaps to some to know that "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" published some years ago anonymously were by Housman. The bill of fare was varied & we were introduced to a novel, a St Francis play, a Victorian play & the Child's Guide to Knowledge. The choice whether conscious or otherwise gave us a rather curious result for in the main it dealt with the struggles & characters of women. Mrr & Mrs Evans dealt with The Sheepfold which relates the spirited history of a woman, 'Jane Sterling'. R.B. Graham chose out of all the St Francis cycle the coming of Sister Clair into the monkish community. Miss Marriage. E.E. Unwin & Alfred Rawlings gave a part-reading of "The Queen God Bless Her" which brought into prominence the foibles of Victoria and showed her in relation to two intimates, John Brown her favourite man-servant & Beaconsfield - her favourite minister. There was but little time left for R.H. Robson to display the fun of "A Child's Guide to Knowledge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Ernest E. Unwin : [minutes of XII Book Club]
'Mins of last meeting read & signed'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: book
Harold Begbie : [book of 'backstairs biographies']
'The subject of the evening was L.P. Jacks. A few moments sufficed to pool our information as to the man. Too late the Secretary remembered that that indefatigable polisher of mirrors & duster of painted windows - Mr Harold Begbie - had included Jacks in his latest volume of backstairs biographies: perhaps it was just as well for it concentrated attention on the writings & these gave us amusement, interest & profit. Mr Evans out of "From the Human End" read about the change from individual to cooperative gardening with an amusing but very neat indication of the gains & losses of such social changes. Mr & Mrs Stansfield selected readings from "Among the Idol makers". the Magic Formula - "Please will you tell me the time" is a delightful story of the young for the old. "Made out of Nothing" takes us behind the scenes in the antique furniture manufactory and missionary enterprise is seen from a new angle. H.R. Smith read an account of an old farmer "Farmer Jeremy & his Ways" & told of farmers he knew of whom this account was aa true picture. E.E. Unwin read a story about two tramps sheltering from rain with the author in a shepherd's box. "Macbeth & Bangus upon the blasted heath", a story in which humour & pathos went hand in hand. He also spoke about the "Snarley Bob" series in which a famous shepherd with curious psychic powers is the hero of the stories. Through most of the stories & essays runs irony & every one of his writings gives us furiously to think - for Jacks strips the rags & coverings from off our conventions & our conventional thought, & with remorseless logic leads us face to face with our inconsistencies & prejudices.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
Ernest E. Unwin : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of the last meeting were read & signed'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
Mrs Barry Pain : 'A Lesson in Pearls'
'Mr & Mrs Unwin & Miss Bowman Smith gave a vivacious reading of a clever & witty sketch, "A Lesson in Pearls" by Mrs Barry Pain.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest & Ursula Unwin & Muriel Bowman Smith Print: Unknown
Herbert George Wells : Modern Utopia
'My diary for October 5th, 1932, recorded the impression made upon me by the writer whose "Modern Utopia" had been a beacon light of my schooldays:'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Vera Brittain : Testament of Youth
'Amid several warmly appreciative judgements came a frank note from St. John Ervine, who wrote that my book had entirely changed his opinion of me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: St. John Ervine Print: Book
Vera Brittain : Testament of Youth
'Yet the previous December, after reading my first nine chapters, G. had written to me at Halifax: "Your book, I think, is a very great, a very moving book...powerful, significant, important - for me it is oppressive also - to it I am an outsider, intruding, shamefaced, feeling very unworthy, painfully unworthy to the verge of tears."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Catlin Print: Book
Walter Scott : Rob Roy
16 March 1884, from Lisbon, en route home from South Africa: 'I am now reading to C. S. that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop [...] C.S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Barnaby Rudge
16 March 1884, from Lisbon, en route home from South Africa: 'I am now reading to C. S. that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop [...] C.S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charles Dickens : The Old Curiosity Shop
16 March 1884, from Lisbon, en route home from South Africa: 'I am now reading to C. S. that charming book Rob Roy. Scott never palls. In the steamer we amused ourselves with Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop [...] C.S. likes my reading, and it has the blessed effect of often sending him to sleep, when he seems indisposed and restless.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Charlotte Bertie Guest : journals of c.1833
3 April 1887: 'Today I have been tempted to open old journals of 54 years ago. Many of the circumstances to which allusion is made in them, are now forgotten, and all is painful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bertie Guest : journals
4 April 1887: 'Woke early and resumed the reading [from 3 April] of the old journal. What strikes me most is that I speak several times of being tired, and once of having a headache. I did not think I ever had one, and have no recollection of such a thing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Layard : 'book on his early travels'
1 October 1887: 'Henry [Layard, son-in-law] has given me the revises of a new book on his early travels, which Murray is about to bring out, and I have been reading them over to make any corrections that may strike me. I have gone through them carefully and found many errors. I don't think Spottiswoode prints as he ought to do.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: In proofs from John Murray
Horatio Brown : Venetian Studies
[between Journal entries for 1 October 1887 and 6 January 1889] 'Horatio Brown, the well-known writer on Venetian history and art, was one of the English colony who came to Ca' Capello, and Lady Charlotte read his Venetian Studies which he had just published.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : New England Tragedies
'Only recently I discovered its origin in Longfellow's "New England Tragedies", read and re-read during my childhood when Longfellow and Matthew Arnold were the only poets in the parental library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Winifred Holtby : South Riding
'At the time of her death I had read only part of "South Riding", which was to bring her back to me, and I found no reason to change the words which I had written in my notebook as she lay dying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: typescript
Howard R. Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of the last meeting were read & approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
Howard R. Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of last meeting were read & agreed'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
Geoffrey Young [?] : 'Mountain Playmates'
'C.I. Evans read Geoffrey Young's [?] poem 'Mountain Playmates' & Mary Hayward read Leslie Stephen's account of the first ascent of the Rothorn. R.B. Graham circulated snapshots illustrating this reading & his own climb of the same mountain. After supper R.B. Graham gave a general chat on Mountaineering with views. A passage by Whymper on accidents was summarised by A. Rawlings who then read Whymper's account of an extraordinary accident he himself sustained. To conclude the Secretary read a parody of Wadsworth [Wordsworth?] 'We are Seven' composed by H.M. Wallis on climbing at Arolla'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Edward Whymper : [on mountaineering accidents]
'C.I. Evans read Geoffrey Young's [?] poem 'Mountain Playmates' & Mary Hayward read Leslie Stephen's account of the first ascent of the Rothorn. R.B. Graham circulated snapshots illustrating this reading & his own climb of the same mountain. After supper R.B. Graham gave a general chat on Mountaineering with views. A passage by Whymper on accidents was summarised by A. Rawlings who then read Whymper's account of an extraordinary accident he himself sustained. To conclude the Secretary read a parody of Wadsworth [Wordsworth?] 'We are Seven' composed by H.m. Wallis on climbing at Arolla'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Henry Marriage Wallis : [parody of 'We are Seven']
'C.I. Evans read Geoffrey Young's [?] poem 'Mountain Playmates' & Mary Hayward read Leslie Stephen's account of the first ascent of the Rothorn. R.B. Graham circulated snapshots illustrating this reading & his own climb of the same mountain. After supper R.B. Graham gave a general chat on Mountaineering with views. A passage by Whymper on accidents was summarised by A. Rawlings who then read Whymper's account of an extraordinary accident he himself sustained. To conclude the Secretary read a parody of Wadsworth [Wordsworth?] 'We are Seven' composed by H.m. Wallis on climbing at Arolla'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Arthur Quiller-Couch : 'Once aboard the lugger'
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : [a short story]
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic]and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : [a poem]
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : Interlude: On Jargon
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : Mayor of Troy, The
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : [a short story]
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch :
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
Arthur Quiller-Couch : Foe-Farrell
'Mr Robson then gave us some short notes on Sir A.T. Quiller Couch and read us his short story "Once aboard the lugger". H.M. Wallis gave us an appreciation of 'Q's' work & read a tragic short story & poem. Mr Evans read from Couch's lecture on the Art of Writing an Interlude on Jargon. H.R. Smith read from the Mayor of Troy Mr Stansfield whose health unfortunately did not allow him to be present sent a short appreciation of Quiller Couch's novel Pho & Farrell [sic] and Miss Marriage read a short story (very sad). Perhaps the selection of his work put before us was a little one-sided for the club certainly got the impression of a writer too fond of the gloom & pain of life'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Henry Layard : article on Lord Beaconsfield
[following journal entry for 19 February 1889] 'That evening [Lady Charlotte Schreiber's] youngest daughter, Blanche, dined and read to her the article on Lord Beaconsfield in the Quarterly Review. Lady Charlotte's comment was: "This I am sure could have been written by no one but Henry Layard." It was so.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Countess of Bessborough Print: Serial / periodical
Alexander Pope : Lines to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
'As soon as I had learned to read, my great delight was that of learning epitaphs and monumental inscriptions. A story of melancholy import never failed to arrest my attention, and, before I was seven years old, I could correctly repeat Pope's Lines ot the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady; Mason's Elegy on the Death of the beautiful Countess of Coventry; and many smaller poems on similar subjects.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Darby Print: Book
Mary Darby : poems
'[At boarding school in Chelsea] I applied rigidly to study, and acquired a taste for books, which has never, from that time, deserted me. Mrs [Meribah] Lorrington frequently read to me after school hours, and I to her: I sometimes indulged my fancy in writing verses, or composing rebuses; and my governess never failed to applaud the juvenile compositions I presented to her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Meribah Lorrington Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Robinson : 'pastoral [poem]'
'I was correcting a proof sheet of my volume [of poetry], when the servant abruptly announced Mr. Fitzgerald! [...] The next subject of praise [following Fitzgerald's compliments on Robinson's baby daughter] was my poetry [...] Mr. Fitzgerald took up the proof sheet and read one of the pastorals.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George Robert Fitzgerald Print: Unknown, In publisher's proofs
George Burrow : [paper on George Sand]
'Mr Geo Burrow read a paper on George Sand indicating her semi-patrician origin & the County surroundings in which she lived. We were given some indication of her passionate nature & of how the various subjects of her passion were first adored on a pedestal & then fell through successive states to one of severe criticism if not contempt. The apt epigram was quoted that "George Sand did not behave as a perfect Gentleman". Readings as under from her work were then given, bringing out her love of country life & her considerable powers of descriptive writing, also the romantic cast of her tales. From Tillage of the Soil Celia Burrow Consuelo H.R. Smith The Devil's Pool C.E. Stansfield Countess of Rudolfstadt F.E. Reynolds'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
George Sand : Tillage of the Soil, The
'Mr Geo Burrow read a paper on George Sand indicating her semi-patrician origin & the County surroundings in which she lived. We were given some indication of her passionate nature & of how the various subjects of her passion were first adored on a pedestal & then fell through successive states to one of severe criticism if not contempt. The apt epigram was quoted that "George Sand did not behave as a perfect Gentleman". Readings as under from her work were then given, bringing out her love of country life & her considerable powers of descriptive writing, also the romantic cast of her tales. From Tillage of the Soil Celia Burrow Consuelo H.R. Smith The Devil's Pool C.E. Stansfield Countess of Rudolfstadt F.E. Reynolds'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
George Sand : Consuelo
'Mr Geo Burrow read a paper on George Sand indicating her semi-patrician origin & the County surroundings in which she lived. We were given some indication of her passionate nature & of how the various subjects of her passion were first adored on a pedestal & then fell through successive states to one of severe criticism if not contempt. The apt epigram was quoted that "George Sand did not behave as a perfect Gentleman". Readings as under from her work were then given, bringing out her love of country life & her considerable powers of descriptive writing, also the romantic cast of her tales. From Tillage of the Soil Celia Burrow Consuelo H.R. Smith The Devil's Pool C.E. Stansfield Countess of Rudolfstadt F.E. Reynolds'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
George Sand : Devil's Pool, The
'Mr Geo Burrow read a paper on George Sand indicating her semi-patrician origin & the County surroundings in which she lived. We were given some indication of her passionate nature & of how the various subjects of her passion were first adored on a pedestal & then fell through successive states to one of severe criticism if not contempt. The apt epigram was quoted that "George Sand did not behave as a perfect Gentleman". Readings as under from her work were then given, bringing out her love of country life & her considerable powers of descriptive writing, also the romantic cast of her tales. From Tillage of the Soil Celia Burrow Consuelo H.R. Smith The Devil's Pool C.E. Stansfield Countess of Rudolfstadt F.E. Reynolds'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
George Sand : Countess of Rudolfstadt, The
'Mr Geo Burrow read a paper on George Sand indicating her semi-patrician origin & the County surroundings in which she lived. We were given some indication of her passionate nature & of how the various subjects of her passion were first adored on a pedestal & then fell through successive states to one of severe criticism if not contempt. The apt epigram was quoted that "George Sand did not behave as a perfect Gentleman". Readings as under from her work were then given, bringing out her love of country life & her considerable powers of descriptive writing, also the romantic cast of her tales. From Tillage of the Soil Celia Burrow Consuelo H.R. Smith The Devil's Pool C.E. Stansfield Countess of Rudolfstadt F.E. Reynolds'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence E. Reynolds Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : Land of Heart's Desire
'Land of Heart's Desire by W. B. Yeats was read by members of the Club. The parts were distributed among the members as follows and those who read entered very charmingly into the spirit of the piece. Maureen Bruin by H.M. Wallis Bridget Bruin [ditto] F.E. Reynolds Shawn Bruin [ditto] R.B. Graham Mary Briuin [ditto] K.S. Evans Father Hart [ditto] Geo Burrow A Faery Child [ditto] E.A. Smith After supper Celia S. Burrow recited Down by the Salley Gardens & half a dozen short readings from Yeats poetry were given by the members which was followed by a desultory discussion on Irish Humour, Fairies &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : [poetry]
'Land of Heart's Desire by W. B. Yeats was read by members of the Club. The parts were distributed among the members as follows and those who read entered very charmingly into the spirit of the piece. Maureen Bruin by H.M. Wallis Bridget Bruin [ditto] F.E. Reynolds Shawn Bruin [ditto] R.B. Graham Mary Briuin [ditto] K.S. Evans Father Hart [ditto] Geo Burrow A Faery Child [ditto] E.A. Smith After supper Celia S. Burrow recited Down by the Salley Gardens & half a dozen short readings from Yeats poetry were given by the members which was followed by a desultory discussion on Irish Humour, Fairies &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book
William Butler Yeats : 'Down by the Salley Gardens'
'Land of Heart's Desire by W. B. Yeats was read by members of the Club. The parts were distributed among the members as follows and those who read entered very charmingly into the spirit of the piece. Maureen Bruin by H.M. Wallis Bridget Bruin [ditto] F.E. Reynolds Shawn Bruin [ditto] R.B. Graham Mary Briuin [ditto] K.S. Evans Father Hart [ditto] Geo Burrow A Faery Child [ditto] E.A. Smith After supper Celia S. Burrow recited Down by the Salley Gardens & half a dozen short readings from Yeats poetry were given by the members which was followed by a desultory discussion on Irish Humour, Fairies &c.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
Francis Pollard : [essay on Trollope]
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Anthony Trollope. C.E. Stansfield read an amusing passage from Dr Thorne. H.M. Wallis gave us a full & racy sketch of Trollopes life interspersed with short extracts from his works illustrative of his love of Fox hunting & his broad grasp of the social life of English upper class & clerical life. H.R. Smith read from "The Prime Minister" & F.E. Pollard gave a short appreciation of Trollopes work from which it appeared that he was not quite in the first rank of Victorian writers, he does not attempt the greatest problems but he does quite perfectly the job he sets out to do; his pictures of life are real his, [sic] characters are not mere puppets but are all alive. R.H. Robson read from the Warden & F.E. Pollard from "the three Clerks" bringing to a conclusion a delightful evening in which many renewed old acquaintances whilst others were introduced to much that was new to them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [essay on Trollope, with extracts from his works]
'The rest of the evening was devoted to Anthony Trollope. C.E. Stansfield read an amusing passage from Dr Thorne. H.M. Wallis gave us a full & racy sketch of Trollopes life interspersed with short extracts from his works illustrative of his love of Fox hunting & his broad grasp of the social life of English upper class & clerical life. H.R. Smith read from "The Prime Minister" & F.E. Pollard gave a short appreciation of Trollopes work from which it appeared that he was not quite in the first rank of Victorian writers, he does not attempt the greatest problems but he does quite perfectly the job he sets out to do; his pictures of life are real his, [sic] characters are not mere puppets but are all alive. R.H. Robson read from the Warden & F.E. Pollard from "the three Clerks" bringing to a conclusion a delightful evening in which many renewed old acquaintances whilst others were introduced to much that was new to them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] :
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Autobiography of Mark Rutherford: Dissenting Minister
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham and Francis Pollard Print: Book
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Series of Character Sketches
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Revolution in Tanner's Lane, The
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Catharine Furze
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Mark Rutherford's Deliverance
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Burrow Print: Book
George Burrow : [paper on Mark Rutherford]
'The Club then turned its attention to Mark Rutherford. Mr Burrow gave some outline of Hale White [sic] life telling us how he had passed through several occupations student for Ministry School Master & Publisher's Assistant before settling down as an Author and Admiralty Official. In style he is simple & effective in manner he reminds sometimes of Hardy or Gissing. Three of his novels are semi-biographical & have the interest that attaches to a truthful diary. The rest of the evening was devoted to Readings designed to give us an insight into different aspects of his work. We gathered that although his plots were poor & scrappy his characters were vivid & intensely living. The readings were as followed. R.B. Graham & F.E. Pollard from Autobiography of Mark Rutherford Mrs Evans A Series of Character Sketches Mrs Robson Revolution in Tanners Lane Mrs Reynolds Catherine [sic] Furze Mrs Burrow Mark Rutherfords Deliverance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : 'Isles of Greece, The'
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Giaour, The
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
Charles Stansfield : [essay on Byron]
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
George Gordon, Lord Byron : Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
'H.R. Smith then gave some account of Lord Byron's Life. Mrs Burrough [sic] read part of Mazzeppa [sic]. C.E Stansfield then read a critique of Byron's work showing he belonged to the Romantic Movement especially as it was a Recoil of the Human Spirit against Tyranny. His work is witty & vitriolic full of energy & passion. Mr Robson expounded Childe Harold to us and Alfred Rawlings read to us from the same poem 4th canto. Mr Robson then read The Isles of Greece and Mr Pollard a stirring passage the Giaour'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Mark Twain : Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Andrew Lang : Story of Joan of Arc, The
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Andrew Lang : Story of Joan of Arc, The
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Mark Twain : Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : St Joan
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : St Joan
'R.H. Robson opened the subject of Joan of Arc by giving a historical sketch of her life & then attempting to "Put her in her Place" which latter process involved a general & interesting discussion the substantial result being that she refused to be so put. Mrs Evans read a fervid passage from De Quincey & H.R. Smith & C.I. Evans gave some estimate of the Lives by Mark Twain & Andrew Lang & read short passages from these works. After supper Mr Graham Mr Pollard Mr Robson & Miss M.B. Smith read in parts most spiritually the first scene from Shaw's St Joan; Mr Evans read from the Epilogue, & another general discussion brought a most fascinating evening to a conclusion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Rosamund Wallis : [paper on Anglo-India and Forster]
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Pollard : [paper on Forster's 'A Passage to India']
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book
Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A
'The subject of Forster's "A Passage to India" was then taken Rosamund Wallis reading a notable paper on the problem of Anglo-India with citations from the book. F.E. Pollard followed giving more the Indian Attitude with a reading to explain this. After an interval for Refreshments there was an interesting discussion on these papers and on the Book and its problems. R.B. Graham read a good portion of the trial scene and Miss Marriage read a part of the last chapter bringing a most interesting evening to a conclusion leaving us more than doubtful as to how far we had fathomed the author's purpose & ideas.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Rosamund Wallis : Some Thoughts on Racing
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Reginald Robson : Intimations of Immortality
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Mrs R.B. Graham : Lady of the Marsh, The
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
R.B. Graham : If Christianity had Won
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
George Burrow : Revolt of the Innocents, The
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Evans : Revenge or Justice
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition
'Various anonymous essays by members of the Club were then read with the following titles and at the conclusion of the meeting whilst the authorship of some was quickly acclaimed others proved very difficult to locate. Some thoughts on Racing attributed to R. Wallis One Generation & the next or Jobson on False Freedom C.E. Stansfield Intimations of Immortality R.H. Robson The Lady of the Marsh Mrs R.B. Graham If Christianity had Won R.B. Graham The Revolt of the Innocents Geo Burrow Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals H.M. Wallis Revenge or Justice C Evans Five minutes Thoughts upon present Condition H.M. Wallis A Scandalous Affair [illegible symbol]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Manuscript: Unknown
Herman Melville : Typee
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
Herman Melville : Moby Dick
'The subject for the evening Herman Melville was then proceeded with & R.H. Robson gave a short account of his life following which Mrs Robson read two passages from Typee. After supper R.B. Graham C.I. Evans K.S. Evans Geo Burrow & H.R. Smith gave readings from Moby Dick giving us glimpses of the power & wonder of this work of genius.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Arthur Patchett Martin : Bret Harte in Relation to Modern Fiction.
'I wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of the "Review", for I know I wished to say something on that head more particularly than I can from memory; […] I was very much pleased with the article on Bret Harte; it seemed to me just, clear, and to the point.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Catherine Spence :
'I agreed pretty well with all you said about George Eliot […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
'Did you − I forget − did you have a kick at the stern works of that melancholy puppy and humbug Daniel Deronda himself? − the Prince of Prigs: the literary abomination of Desolation in the way of manhood: a type which is enough to make a man forswear the love of women, if that is how it must be gained….'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Patchett Martin : 'Noll and Nell'; 'England - 1877'.
'Of your poems I have myself a kindness for ‘Noll and Nell’. Although I don’t think you have made it as good as you ought: verse five is surely not [italics]quite melodious[end italics]. I confess I like the Sonnet in the last number of the "Review"− the ‘Sonnet to England’.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Serial / periodical, Both (2 poems, one in a book, one in a periodical).
Aphra Behn : [?]Oroonoko
Quoted from 'one of Sir Walter Scott's works of biography', in chapter entitled 'Oroonoko': '"The editor was acquainted by an old lady of family, who assured him that in her younger days Mrs. Behn's novels were as currently upon the toilette as the works of Miss Edgeworth at present; and described with some humour her own surprise when the book falling into her hands after a long interval of years, and when its contents were quite forgotten, she found it impossible to endure at the age of fourscore what at fifteen she, like all the fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of impropriety."'
Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Aphra Behn : [?]Oroonoko
Quoted from 'one of Sir Walter Scott's works of biography', in chapter entitled 'Oroonoko': '"The editor was acquainted by an old lady of family, who assured him that in her younger days Mrs. Behn's novels were as currently upon the toilette as the works of Miss Edgeworth at present; and described with some humour her own surprise when the book falling into her hands after a long interval of years, and when its contents were quite forgotten, she found it impossible to endure at the age of fourscore what at fifteen she, like all the fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of impropriety."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Alexander Pope : 'works'
From chapter entitled 'Madame d'Arblay': 'Whilst her mother read Pope's works and Pitt's AEneid with her eldest daughter Esther, Fanny [Burney] sat by and listened, and learnt by heart the passages which her sister recited.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Burney and daughter (also Esther) Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid
From chapter entitled 'Madame d'Arblay': 'Whilst her mother read Pope's works and Pitt's AEneid with her eldest daughter Esther, Fanny [Burney] sat by and listened, and learnt by heart the passages which her sister recited.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Burney and daughter (also Esther) Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
'The town soon went wild about the story [Evelina] [...] Mrs. Thrale read it, and liked it better than Madame Riccoboni's Tales [...] she lent it to Dr. Johnson. He was very unwilling to read it -- but once he was persuaded to begin the story, he was delighted with it. "Why, madam, what a charming book you lent me," he said to Mrs. Thrale, on finishing the first volume, and he anxiously asked to know whom Evelina married. He protested, too, that there were passages in it that would do honour to Richardson, and that Henry Fielding never drew such a character as Mr. Smith.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Thrale Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
'The town soon went wild about the story [Evelina] [...] Mrs. Thrale read it, and liked it better than Madame Riccoboni's Tales [...] she lent it to Dr. Johnson. He was very unwilling to read it -- but once he was persuaded to begin the story, he was delighted with it. "Why, madam, what a charming book you lent me," he said to Mrs. Thrale, on finishing the first volume, and he anxiously asked to know whom Evelina married. He protested, too, that there were passages in it that would do honour to Richardson, and that Henry Fielding never drew such a character as Mr. Smith.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
'"Evelina" fascinated everyone. Burke began it one morning at seven, and sat up all night to finish it. Sir Joshua Reynolds did as much on a day when he had no time to spare, and declared he would give fifty pounds to know the author.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Burke Print: Book
Frances Burney : Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
'"Evelina" fascinated everyone. Burke began it one morning at seven, and sat up all night to finish it. Sir Joshua Reynolds did as much on a day when he had no time to spare, and declared he would give fifty pounds to know the author.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Joshua Reynolds Print: Book
Frances Burney : Cecilia
'In 1782 "Cecilia" [...] made its appearance [...] Burke called it an extraordinary performance, and the public were delighted with it.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Burke Print: Book
Henry Fielding :
'We know comparatively little of [Jane Austen's] literary tastes. Some are peculiar. Her fondness for the gentle, close truth and quiet power of Cowper is consistent; but it is perplexing to find that the grave, moral, austere Dr. Johnson was her favourite prose writer. The coarseness of Fielding she could not forgive, and though she admired "Sir Charles Grandison," she thought Richardson tedious.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Rosamond
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Sophia Scott, Anne Scott, and other Scott children Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [?The] Purple Jar
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Sophia Scott, Anne Scott, and other Scott children Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Simple Susan
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Sophia Scott, Anne Scott, and other Scott children Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Simple Susan
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Rosamond
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : [?The] Purple Jar
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Harry and Lucy
'[Walter Scott] read with much delight, and made his children read, Rosamond and the Purple Jar and Simple Susan; even, perhaps, the conversation on scientific subjects between Harry and Lucy and their father, though in the character and teaching of that amazing parent Scott found much room for criticism.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
Walter Scott : Journal (extracts)
'[Thomas] Carlyle saw Scott's greatness in the extracts from the Diary given by Lockhart. The stern critic rightly recalls the feelings and conduct evidenced by those extracts "tragical and beautiful"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Robert Burns : Tam o' Shanter
'The storm around might roar and rustle We didna mind the storm a whistle'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
Sarah Fielding : The Governess
[Miss] J. Collier to Samuel Richardson, 4 October 1748: 'I have been further considering of that part in Mrs Fielding's proof, which relates to Mrs. Teachum's method of punishing her scholars; and give me leave to tell you my reasons for thinking it rather better to remain as she has left it, than to have it altered even as [italics]you[end italics] proposed [goes on to discuss treatment of theme of punishment in text in detail].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: J[?ane] Collier Print: Unknown, In proof
Lord Orrery : Letters on Swift
J. Duncombe, of Benet College, Cambridge, to Samuel Richardson, 17 November 1751: 'I have been reading lately, with great satisfaction, the Letters of Lord Orrery on Dr Swift; and pleased myself with reflecting on the resemblance they bear to those of Cicero, in the tender expressions of his love for his children [comments further]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Duncombe Print: Book
Plutarch : Morals
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 15 July 1751: 'I am fallen in love with Plutarch's Morals, a little of which my lord reads us now and then out of a very so so translation. They seem to me the most amiable, the most lively, and the least dry of any moral book, but 'tis indeed very little I have heard of them. I am deep in the Memoires [sic] of the Duc de Sully, and exceedingly entertained by them. I make him my companion with pleasure, as he seems to have an honest, brave, and worthy heart [...] I am reading many other books, but will not trouble you with my thoughts of them till I have read them through.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Secker Print: Book
Edmé-Patrice-Maurice MacMahon, comte de :
'I was in Paris during the elections for the Chamber, when a triumphant majority was returned, as of course you know, against the very bad, or very stupid, or else both, person, Marshal MacMahon. It was an interesting time, you may imagine. On the morning of the elections, a manifesto of the President’s came out. I was living at the time in what we call Bohemian style, buying and cooking my own food, and had occasion to go out early for some chocolate. When I read the proclamation, which was on all the walls, I could have beaten MacMahon with my cane. It was a scandalous attempt to insult the poor people and so drive them to the barricades; if that was not the intention of the document, it was either written by a man out of his mind, or I do not know the meaning of words when I see them. They disappointed him for one while; but how it is all to end, who can foresee?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
Christopher Smart : On the Eternity of the Supreme Being
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 12 August 1751: 'I have not seen the Oxford and Cambridge Verses. The only late publication I have met with is Mr Smart's Prize Verses.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Unknown
Alexander Pope : The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq.
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 August 1751: 'Our present after-supper author is Mr Pope, in Mr Warburton's edition. Is it because one's strongest partialities, when in any point deceived, turn to the strongest prejudice of dislike, that I read those admirable poems and letters with a considerable mixture of pain and indignation? [...] one can scarce help looking upon all those eloquent expressions of benevolence and affection as too much paradox, while one sees them overbalanced by such bitterness and cutting severity [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Bernard de Montfaucon : French Antiquities
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 24 October 1751: 'I am sick of all human greatness and activity, and so would you be if you had been turning over with me five great folios of Montfaucon's French Antiquities, where warriors, tyrants, queens, and favourites, have past before my eyes in a quick succession, of whose pomp, power, and bustle, nothing now remains but quiet Gothic monuments, vile prints, and the records of still viler actions [...] [later comments, in same letter] Let me do justice to human nature and French history; my last night's reading afforded some instances of most charming generosity [...] and of real goodness.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle : Plays
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 December 1751: 'I want to talk to you of Fontanelle's Plays, have you seen them? They are incomparable. Truth, virtue, simplicity, and good sense, are the characteristics of his heroines, and there is besides something agreeably odd and uncommon in the whole manner.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Charlotte Lennox : The Female Quixote
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 March 1752: 'I have begun reading a book which promises some laughing amusement, "The Female Quixote;" the few chapters I read to my mother last night while we were undressing were whimsical enough and not at all low.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia (volumes 1 and 2)
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 March 1752: 'I have begun reading a book which promises some laughing amusement, "The Female Quixote;" the few chapters I read to my mother last night while we were undressing were whimsical enough and not at all low. I have not read Amelia, yet, but have seen it read and commented upon much to my edification by that good Bishop of Gloucester, who seldom misses spending two or three days of the week at this deanery [...] I have been particularly delighted with some of our afternoons, when we have sat unmolested by my dressing-room fire-side, he reading Amelia (and quarreling excessively at the two first volumes) my mother and I reading or working, or following our own devices as it might happen, and every one mixing little interruptions of chat as things come into their heads; with not a single ring at the door to disturb us.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Benson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Amelia
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 30 March 1751: 'How to account for Miss Mulso's unmerciful severity to Amelia is past my skill, as it does not appear that she was in very good health when she read the book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Mulso Print: Book
Hester Mulso : verses
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 22 April 1752: 'I thank you for your offer of sending me Miss Mulso's verses, Mr Richardson has been so good as to shew them to me. I admire her and them as I ought, and indeed from all I have heard of her character, or seen of her writing, I love and esteem her much.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot
Henry Fielding : Amelia
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 22 April 1752: 'At last we have begun Amelia, it is very entertaining. I do love Dr Harrison and the good Serjeant; and Mrs James's visit to Amelia has extremely diverted me. How many Mrs James's in that good-for-nothing London! But Mr Fielding's heroines are always silly loving runaway girls. Amelia makes an excellent wife, but why did she marry Booth?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family. Print: Book
Con. [Teresia Constantia] Phillips : An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter [c. July 1752, following illness with fever]: 'What have I been doing since I came here [a 'pretty place in Surry']? giving trouble and reading idle books to while away the hours of prescribed solitude [...] Dear, dear, with what companions have I been spending my lonely hours! Arlequin, a stupidissima Princess Mesirida, an infamous Con. Philips, and a ten times more profligate Jack Connor!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Mary Jones : Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter [c. July 1752]: 'I never answered you about the authoress of certain Miscellanies. Is it possible you could really admire them? Is it the cleanliness or delicacy of Holt Waters, or the Letter to a Physician, that delights you? The Letters appear to me in a forced style -- in the very "false gallop" of wit! [comments further]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Françoise d'Aubigné de Maintenon : Letters
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 December 1752: 'Did I ever tell you I was reading Madame de Maintenon's Letters? [...] She seems to have been both a great and a good woman. [comments further]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sevigne : Letters (vol. 7)
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, from Cuddesdon, 21 July 1753, in account of a day excursion in the local countryside (around Oxford): 'Yesterday we set off soon after four [...] Our road lay through a most pleasant country. In the coach we amused ourselves with some of the seventh volume of Mad. de Sevigne's Letters, and some of Mrs Fielding's. 'Tis vexatious in the last-named book to find such a mixture of refinement a perte de vue proceeding from her inclination to support, I fancy, a false system [...] But where she writes naturally one loves and honours her extremely; there is a goodness of heart and a delicacy of sentiment that makes me think you happy in her acquaintance.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : Letters
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, from Cuddesdon, 21 July 1753, in account of a day excursion in the local countryside (around Oxford): 'Yesterday we set off soon after four [...] Our road lay through a most pleasant country. In the coach we amused ourselves with some of the seventh volume of Mad. de Sevigne's Letters, and some of Mrs Fielding's. 'Tis vexatious in the last-named book to find such a mixture of refinement a perte de vue proceeding from her inclination to support, I fancy, a false system [...] But where she writes naturally one loves and honours her extremely; there is a goodness of heart and a delicacy of sentiment that makes me think you happy in her acquaintance.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Elizabeth Singer Rowe :
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 21 July 1753: 'I scarce know a greater pleasure than reading over a book one is fond of with persons of taste and candour, to whom it is entirely new. A great deal of this pleasure I have had lately. Mrs Rowe's excellent works were an undiscovered treasure to Mrs Berkeley, and she values them as they deserve. We read one night a certain Vision in the Rambler, that I saw fixed her whole attention.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Carlo Maria Maggi : Sonnet 'Care dell'alma stanca Albengatrici...'
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 10 June 1754: 'I will send you a sonnet that I am extremely fond of, from no modern author, but from one whom I am sure you never met with, because you never mentioned him, Carlo Maria Maggi [...] [reproduces sonnet opening "Care dell'alma stanca Albengatrici..."] Is not this sonnet perfect in its way? And is it not utterly untranslatable?'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot
Richard Owen Cambridge : papers (i.e. essays)
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 10 June 1754: 'Your cousin [Richard Owen] Cambridge has writ many lively papers in the World this winter from the mere motive of charity; and some of them are very pretty.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Serial / periodical
Carlo Maria Maggi : Sonnet 'Care dell'alma stanca Albengatrici...'
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 10 July 1754: 'I am beyond description charmed with the Italian sonnet you sent me. I am afraid your opinion is too well grounded of its being absolutely untranslatable, at least into our Gothic language.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Manuscript: Letter, Transcribed by Catherine Talbot in letter of 10 June 1754.
Sarah Fielding : The Cry
Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 14 September 1754: 'Have you ever read the "Cry?" [...] It never fell in my way till very lately, and I read it with low spirits, but upon the whole it pleased me mightily. There is sometimes rather too strong a spirit of refining in it, which I believe is the case in all Mrs Fielding's compositions, and she often puts me in mind of Tacitus. But is she not in general a most excellent writer?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : The Cry
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 26 November 1754: 'Yes, I did read the "Cry" last spring, but was too much out of charity with one sign-post painting in it, to name it to you. Ferdinand's way of making love did charm me, but his hard-hearted, dishonest, lying, unnatural absurdity of behaviour at last provoked me absolutely beyond all patience.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Jawaharlal Nehru : Towards Freedom
'He did not mention that as a prisoner he himself had written an autobiography, of which H. N. Brailsford was to comment in the "New Statesman" the following May: "This book ... is the most vital contribution that any Indian has yet made to political literature."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Noel Brailsford Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : The Outline of History
'They could no more accept it than they or any other powerful nation had ever accepted the teaching of his Master and Friend - for "to take him seriously", as H.G. Wells wrote of "this Galilean" in "The Outline of History", "was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness...."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Romain Rolland : Declaration of the Independence of the Mind
'Years afterwards, I was to discover the "Declaration of the Independence of the Mind" issued to his fellow brain-workers by the French writer, Romain Rolland, from Villeneuve in 1919.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown
Marie Tempest : [letter published in the "Sunday "Times"]
'In the "Sunday Times" for September 12th, a letter of protest from Dame Marie Tempest had coincided with another from G., who described the contrasting practice of the Spaniards in the Civil War.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper, Unknown
Marie Tempest : [Letter published in the "Sunday Times"]
'In the "Sunday Times" for September 12th, a letter of protest from Dame Marie Tempest had coincided with another from G., who described the contrasting practice of the Spaniards in the Civil War.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper, Unknown
Walter Raymond : The Book of Simple Delights
'K.S. Evans assisted [her husband's discussion of superstition] by reading from Walter Raymond's "The Book of Simple Delights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
Henry Marriage Wallis : "The Price of his Soul"
'After refreshment Geo Burrow told us of Meinholt's [sic] book "The Amber Witch" & of witchcraft & Howard R. Smith read a story written by H.M. Wallis who was unable to be present entitled "The Price of his Soul" dealing with sin eating in Wales'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
William Henry Hudson : Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest
'C.I. Evans read a short essay on W.H. Hudsons story Green Mansions H.R. Smith followed on Rates & Taxes & Geo Burrow read a short paper of H.M. Wallis on some points in recent Geology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Charles Evans : [paper on Hudson's "Green Mansions"]
'C.I. Evans read a short essay on W.H. Hudsons story Green Mansions H.R. Smith followed on Rates & Taxes & Geo Burrow read a short paper of H.M. Wallis on some points in recent Geology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Manuscript: Unknown
Howard R. Smith : [paper on "Rates and taxes"]
'C.I. Evans read a short essay on W.H. Hudsons story Green Mansions H.R. Smith followed on Rates & Taxes & Geo Burrow read a short paper of H.M. Wallis on some points in recent Geology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [paper on geology]
'C.I. Evans read a short essay on W.H. Hudsons story Green Mansions H.R. Smith followed on Rates & Taxes & Geo Burrow read a short paper of H.M. Wallis on some points in recent Geology'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne : [letter]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Unknown
Victor Hugo : [letter]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo. C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : [letters]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo. C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Unknown
George Bernard Shaw : [letter to Mrs Patrick Campbell]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo. C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Unknown
Charles Lamb : [letters]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo. C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Unknown
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : [letter to his son]
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with. Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing. Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo. C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action. Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son. The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Print: Book
Charles Reade : Christie Johnson
'The subject of Chas Reade & his work was then taken. H. R. Smith gave some description of Reade's life & Mrs Pollard read from Christie Johnson of a thrilling rescue from drowning. F.E. Pollard spoke of the characteristics of Reades work. Following & arising from his remarks a lively discussion arose on Art & Propaganda & the artists right to exaggerate and T.C. Elliott read a vivid & amusing scene from "the Cloister & the Hearth". C.I. Evans also read from "Hard Cash".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Charles Reade : Cloister and the Hearth, The
'The subject of Chas Reade & his work was then taken. H. R. Smith gave some description of Reade's life & Mrs Pollard read from Christie Johnson of a thrilling rescue from drowning. F.E. Pollard spoke of the characteristics of Reades work. Following & arising from his remarks a lively discussion arose on Art & Propaganda & the artists right to exaggerate and T.C. Elliott read a vivid & amusing scene from "the Cloister & the Hearth". C.I. Evans also read from "Hard Cash".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: T.C. Elliott Print: Book
Charles Reade : Hard Cash
'The subject of Chas Reade & his work was then taken. H. R. Smith gave some description of Reade's life & Mrs Pollard read from Christie Johnson of a thrilling rescue from drowning. F.E. Pollard spoke of the characteristics of Reades work. Following & arising from his remarks a lively discussion arose on Art & Propaganda & the artists right to exaggerate and T.C. Elliott read a vivid & amusing scene from "the Cloister & the Hearth". C.I. Evans also read from "Hard Cash".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
Charles Reade : [novels]
'The subject of Chas Reade & his work was then taken. H. R. Smith gave some description of Reade's life & Mrs Pollard read from Christie Johnson of a thrilling rescue from drowning. F.E. Pollard spoke of the characteristics of Reades work. Following & arising from his remarks a lively discussion arose on Art & Propaganda & the artists right to exaggerate and T.C. Elliott read a vivid & amusing scene from "the Cloister & the Hearth". C.I. Evans also read from "Hard Cash".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Miscellanies
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 5 March 1755:] 'I am obliged to you for the account of the new books, not one of which have reached Deal, except some novels, which I had not patience to read through. My present study is Plato's Republic. I have got through as much as I can read of Fielding's Miscellanies, which I never saw before. Did you ever read them? and are they not extremely good and extremely bad?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Sarah Fielding : The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 29 July 1757:] 'My mother's passion is feeding chickens, in this too I share with her, and we study the various characters of the poultry with infinite amusement. Two of our hens are called Cleopatra and Octavia, my mother named them, and with perfect justice, and we divert ourselves with studying how the chickens take after them. These names put me in mind to ask you how could Mrs Fielding who is so good a woman make Octavia self-sufficient under suffering and trials, and not so much as hint the smallest degree of uninstructed piety as even heathens had [...] I do not love any dialogues of the dead, because it is representing a true and awful state in generally a false light [...] Fine people are too apt to think they may live very happy, and be very remarkably good without any religion, and Octavia will convince them of it, for her story is enchantingly told, and in some parts made [italics] even me [end italics] cry very heartily -- [italics] even me [end italics] as if I was of adamant.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Robert Dodsley : The Ladies' Memorandum Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter [1758] following stay in London with Carter:] 'I have looked in Dodsley, to see if any events had happened between your leaving town [on 'Wednesday last'] and this time worth mentioning.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Serial / periodical
Charlotte Lennox : Henrietta
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter [1758]:] '"Henrietta" has been useful to us here, but there are many things in it that I dislike, and that tally with my opinion of the writer. That brother is execrable. -- There are bits of pride and sauciness in Henrietta, and reflections in one place tending to ridicule the belief of a particular Providence, to which I object very greatly.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Françoise Langlois de Motteville : Memoirs for the History of Anne of Austria
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 16 June 1758:] 'Since I came home I have picked up [reading] at Mrs Gambieu's the Memoirs of Anne of Austria, in a vile and most unintelligible translation; yet I keep reading on, and am much inclined to love Madame Motteville a great deal better than her heroine, against whom I have just now an irreconcileable quarrel for leaving her to all the dangers and miseries of a siege.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Pierre de Marivaux : Le Spectateur Francois
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 15 August 1758, following Talbot's stepfather's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, and his household's change of residence:] 'I have not had any spare time, not but that I have lounged away many a half hour over Ben Jonson, Marivaux's Spectateur Francois, and any such idle books as chance presented me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Unknown
Horace : The Art of Poetry
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Edward Verrall Lucas :
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
Gilbert Keith Chesterton : 'Lepanto'
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: T.C. Elliott Print: Book
Alfred Noyes : The Torch Bearers
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : [poems]
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
Rupert Brooke :
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows: A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry" T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto" Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds" D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers" C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy G. Burrow poems by his brother F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland" C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany : Fame and the Poet
'Four one act plays were then read: "Windows by J. Galsworthy, "the Dear Departed" by Stanley Houghton, "The Boy Comes Home" by A. A. Milne, "Fame & the Poet" by Lord Dunsany & a delightful evening was spent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Alan Alexander Milne : The Boy Comes Home
'Four one act plays were then read: "Windows by J. Galsworthy, "the Dear Departed" by Stanley Houghton, "The Boy Comes Home" by A. A. Milne, "Fame & the Poet" by Lord Dunsany & a delightful evening was spent.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book
Marco Polo : Travels of Marco Polo
'Mrs Rawlings read from Polo's description of the Great Khan.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
Marion Cran : The Story of my Ruin
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history. F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known" Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden" Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
Dorothy Brain : [essay on Hampton Court Gardens]
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history. F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known" Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden" Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Stansfield : [essay on gardening]
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history. F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known" Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden" Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Walter de la Mare : 'Sunken Garden'
'The subject of the evening "Gardens" was then taken. Geo Burrow reminded us that the world began in the garden of Eden. Miss Bowman-Smith played Debussy's "Garden Under the Rain" Miss D. Brain gave us an essay on Hampton Court gardens & their history. F.E. Pollard a song Summer Afternoon Rosamund Wallis read from Sir Wm Temple on Gardens Mrs F. E. Pollard read Michael Drayton's Daffodil Alfred Rawlings charmed us by showing a series of his Water Colour drawings "Gardens I have Known" Mrs Robson sang two songs June Rapture & Unfolding After supper Mrs Stansfield read a paper by Mr Stansfield who was prevented by a severe cold from being present on Gardening in which he showed how Gardening is one of the fine Arts in fact the noblest of the plastic Arts F. E. Pollard sang Andrew Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden" Mrs Burrow read Walter de la Mare's Sunken Garden Mrs Stansfield read from The Story of my Ruin and in a concluding reading Geo Burrow brought our minds back to the Garden of Eden'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
Howard R. Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'After supper the Secretary read the Minutes of the last Meeting'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
Howard R. Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club]
'The Minutes of last Meeting were read & approved'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard R. Smith Manuscript: book
Rudyard Kipling : 'Cold Iron'
'The Subject of Fairy Stories was introduced shortly by C. E. Stansfield who followed with a reading from Rewards & Fairies. "Cold Iron" F. E. Pollard sang "Do you wonder where the Fairies are?" C. I. Evans read "True Thomas" & H. M. Wallis contributed an original Phantasia [?] on Rigmarole After Refreshments Muriel B. Smith played two passages from Pier Gynt. This was followed by a somewhat desultory & inconclusive discussion on Fairies & Fairy Stories & in conclusion Miss Brain read a Swedish Tale & Mrs Rawlings told the story of Puss in Boots.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : [article on Hardy]
'F. E. Pollard read an article on Thos Hardy by Arnold Bennett S. A. Reynold [sic] spoke on Hardy's country with books & illustrations & R.H. Robson read from "Far from the Madding Crowd. T. C. Elliott read some of Hardy's poems. Mrs Rawlings read a description of Egdon Heath from "the return of the Native" Muriel B. Smith read from The Mayor of Casterbridge & Miss Brain from Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Geo Burrow gave a short introduction to & some readings from the Dynasts. In conclusion F. E. Pollard made some provocative remarks which achieved their object'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Unknown
Euripides : The Phoenician Women
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 January 1760:] 'For want of other nonsense books, I am reading an Italian translation of Euripides. -- A pretty good one, I fancy, though, what in Italian is peculiarly provoking, rugged and inharmonious. The Phenicians, and the Medea, filled me with horror [comments further] [...] The Orestes amused me very well, for its turn is rather comic; and I am now breaking my heart over the Hecuba.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Euripides : Medea
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 January 1760:] 'For want of other nonsense books, I am reading an Italian translation of Euripides. -- A pretty good one, I fancy, though, what in Italian is peculiarly provoking, rugged and inharmonious. The Phenicians, and the Medea, filled me with horror [comments further] [...] The Orestes amused me very well, for its turn is rather comic; and I am now breaking my heart over the Hecuba.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Euripides : Orestes
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 January 1760:] 'For want of other nonsense books, I am reading an Italian translation of Euripides. -- A pretty good one, I fancy, though, what in Italian is peculiarly provoking, rugged and inharmonious. The Phenicians, and the Medea, filled me with horror [comments further] [...] The Orestes amused me very well, for its turn is rather comic; and I am now breaking my heart over the Hecuba.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Euripides : Hecuba
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 January 1760:] 'For want of other nonsense books, I am reading an Italian translation of Euripides. -- A pretty good one, I fancy, though, what in Italian is peculiarly provoking, rugged and inharmonious. The Phenicians, and the Medea, filled me with horror [comments further] [...] The Orestes amused me very well, for its turn is rather comic; and I am now breaking my heart over the Hecuba.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Roger Boyle : Parthenissa
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 April 1760:] 'As you was, upon the whole, I believe, very determined to go into the country [following visit to Talbot 'on Tuesday'], I denied myself the telling you how very sorry and grieved I was to part with you. Perhaps I did wrong [...] I have learnt from the heroines of Parthenissa that these sorts of offences are never to be forgiven. Oh dear, what a precious treasure of false thoughts, and refinements, and hyperbole have you brought me in that volume. It does me a vast deal of good, for its absurdities make me laugh more than any book of intended humour could do.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : Letters (as 'Orinda')
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 9 June 1761:] 'Did you ever chance to see Orinda's Letters? They are rather stiff, but seem to have an air of genuineness -- and were not printed for Curl, but Lintot.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : Letters to Sir Charles Cotterel
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 13 June 1761:] 'I never had the least doubt but Mrs Phillips's Letters to Sir Charles Cotterel were genuine; it is so long since I met with them that I remember very little what they were. All that I recollect of her poetry is, that it is very moral and sentimental; and all that I know of herself is, that her genius and character are mentioned with the highest respect, admiration, and reverence by the writers of that time. I believe her Poems are very scarce; I have two or three little pieces in a miscellany, which if you have any curiosity to see I will send you. I never saw Mr Hanway's two volumes but in an advertisement, nor do I know what they are about, but am glad they have afforded you an agreeable amusement.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Katherine Phillips : poetry
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 13 June 1761:] 'I never had the least doubt but Mrs Phillips's Letters to Sir Charles Cotterel were genuine; it is so long since I met with them that I remember very little what they were. All that I recollect of her poetry is, that it is very moral and sentimental; and all that I know of herself is, that her genius and character are mentioned with the highest respect, admiration, and reverence by the writers of that time. I believe her Poems are very scarce; I have two or three little pieces in a miscellany, which if you have any curiosity to see I will send you. I never saw Mr Hanway's two volumes but in an advertisement, nor do I know what they are about, but am glad they have afforded you an agreeable amusement.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
George Lord Lyttelton : The Vision
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 September 1762:] 'Thank my stars, I have torn it this minute all to bits! What? Why a reflection upon the Vision, but that was of a kind I will not suffer myself to write [...] 'I am enclosing back the Vision the very night I received it, to prevent all temptations to dishonesty or carelessness; 'tis certainly very elegant.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Unknown
Edward Young :
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 September 1762:] 'Yesterday evening we were entertained by one of the noblest storms I ever enjoyed, and truly this was not enjoyed without some mixture of terror. My mother sat with me till past one, and I tried to amuse away her fears as suitably as I could by reading her some of the noblest passages in Dr Young. By that hour we were both, even in spite of [italics] him [end italics], somewhat sleepy, and there was an interval of lightning (I mean an interval of darkness) that made the hall just passable.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Carlo Maggi : 'Prologue to a comedy of Plautus'
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 26 April 1763:] 'Your Carlo Maggi, were he not such a horrible papist, is a most excellent companion to me. Do you remember the laughing prologue to a comedy of Plautus? Surely it is quite original: and whether Carlo is penitential, or merry, or critical, or satirical, or complimental, one sees the same pure amiable good mind through every form. Indeed it hurts me grievously that he should have been born in a popish country, and some flights of his popery are quite shocking [...] but surely there might be a scelta made even with parts of his Letters to Rosa, that would be a most valuable book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Carlo Maggi : Letters to Rosa
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 26 April 1763:] 'Your Carlo Maggi, were he not such a horrible papist, is a most excellent companion to me. Do you remember the laughing prologue to a comedy of Plautus? Surely it is quite original: and whether Carlo is penitential, or merry, or critical, or satirical, or complimental, one sees the same pure amiable good mind through every form. Indeed it hurts me grievously that he should have been born in a popish country, and some flights of his popery are quite shocking [...] but surely there might be a scelta made even with parts of his Letters to Rosa, that would be a most valuable book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Carlo Maggi : poems
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 10 May 1763:] 'Carlo Maggi is, indeed, a most excellent companion, and I agree with you in lamenting that one cannot recommend the most elegant, the most amiable, and the most useful of all the Italian poets without so many cautions and qualifications [...] I fear some of his finest pieces have often a mixture of popish wildness and absurdity. I do not particularly recollect the prologue ["to a comedy of Plautus"] you mention, and perhaps never read it, as I am apt to skip the humorous pieces, but I will look over it on your recommendation.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Carlo Maggi : 'the Death of Adam'
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 May 1763:] 'Some of [Carlo Maggi's] prose is delightful. Pray do not read the death of Adam. It is extremely fine, but so painful, that at first it gives one's thoughts a wrong turn -- one cannot get it out of one's head; yet if one thinks it thoroughly over, one may get a great deal of good out of it. We shall have a very different one after supper, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. They are very amusing for that half hour, and I dare say genuine. Mrs Montagu whom I saw a few days ago, first told me of them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu : Turkish Embassy Letters
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 May 1763:] 'Some of [Carlo Maggi's] prose is delightful. Pray do not read the death of Adam. It is extremely fine, but so painful, that at first it gives one's thoughts a wrong turn -- one cannot get it out of one's head; yet if one thinks it thoroughly over, one may get a great deal of good out of it. We shall have a very different one after supper, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. They are very amusing for that half hour, and I dare say genuine. Mrs Montagu whom I saw a few days ago, first told me of them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Frances Brooke : The History of Lady Julia Mandeville
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 21 July 1763:] 'I am curious to know whether you have at Spa (as at all places of that sort here) a circulating bookseller: if you have I shall not wonder you have no time to write, for as his shop must contain the whole collected nonsense of Europe, it must be a temptation irresistible. We have a Lady a Julia Mandeville here, written by Mrs Sheridan [sic], that has faults and excellencies enough to raise it above this denomination.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Desiderius Erasmus : 'Dialogues'
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 15 October 1763:] 'It is more from the testimony of others than from any recollection of my own, that I had formed the idea that Erasmus was in some parts of his works a very indecent writer [...] It is I believe more than thirty years since I read his dialogues, and then only those which were pointed out to me.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock : Messiah
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 28 November 1763:] 'Shall I send your subscription copy of the Messiah, or keep it till you come? I admire many things in it extremely, but am grievously hurt and disappointed at many more. I wish Dr Young had been the translator, and I the correctress.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Catherine Macaulay : 'History' [extracts]
[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 5 December 1763:] 'Have you read Mrs Macaulay's history? I have seen only some extracts from it, which seemed to be writ with strength and spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Unknown
Richard Hurd : Dialogues on the Uses of Foreign Travel Considered as a Part of an English Gentleman’s Education
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, during stay in Canterbury, 12 February 1764:] 'I brought with me Hurd's Dialogues on Education, which have entertained his Grace very well, and a silly harmless story book called Maria, which serves to entertain myself at minutes when I am fit for nothing else.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Secker Print: Unknown
Edward Kimber : Maria; The genuine memoirs of an admired lady of rank and fortune, and of some of her friends
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, during stay in Canterbury, 12 February 1764:] 'I brought with me Hurd's Dialogues on Education, which have entertained his Grace very well, and a silly harmless story book called Maria, which serves to entertain myself at minutes when I am fit for nothing else.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Horace Walpole : Memoirs of Lord Herbert of Cherbury
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 August 1764:] 'Pray has Mrs M. got one of Mr Walpole's Memoirs of Lord Herbert [of Cherbury]? So few copies are dispersed, that I know Lord Chesterfield was not able to get one, and it is so amusing I wish you had it to wear away a rainy evening.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Robert Leighton : Sermons
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 25 June 1765:] 'The book I am happiest in reading at present, is a volume of Sermons of Abp. Leighton, strongly recommended to me by the Bishop of Man.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Robert Leighton : Works including 'Exposition of the Lord's Prayer'
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 25 November 1765:] 'Abp. Leighton's works are great favourites with me at present. There is, I think, the best exposition of the Lord's Prayer I ever read; were I to educate a child, instead of teaching it prayers by rote, I would, as soon as it was old enough to comprehend any thing, read to it with proper familiarisations the most striking parts of this exposition, till it had learnt that one prayer word by word, with full sense of the meaning of every one.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Charles Morrell : The Tales of the Genii
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 12 June 1766:] 'I have been reading your third volume of Peruvians with pleasure, and though the objection you made is just, it does not hurt me in these as in the Tales of the Genii. The Peruvian seems a patriarchal religion before it grew corrupted, but Christian piety with Mahometan doctrines, is "a jewel of gold in a swine's snout."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Pedro de Ribadeneira : ?Flos Sanctorum
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 3 September 1766:] 'Little puss is sitting by me on a huge folio of popish saints, on which I have wasted many a half hour lately. -- It is a translation of Ribadeneira, lent me by Dr Hawkesworth, whom I like mightily, and his wife likewise.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
George Lyttelton : History of the Life of Henry II
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 9 July 1767:] 'We are deep (for our after supper book) in Lord Lyttleton [i.e. his History of Henry II]. For my own amusement I am glad he digresses so much; but does he not digress too much for a biographer? I am much entertained with the History of the Crusades, though indeed it is terrible. If you ever meet with the History of Nourjahad it will interest and amuse you [...] the only shocking part is when he grows what the author meant for very pious, and aspires after the beatific vision of that rascal Mahomet.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
Bodmer Johann Jakob : Noah. Attempted from the German of Mr. Bodmer. In twelve books.
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 10 October 1767: 'Pray, pray get on as fast as you can with your Arabic, that you may be fit to translate for us forty-four Assemblies, or ingenious conversations, by Hariri, the son of Himam; there are fifty of them, six just translated by a gentleman of Cambridge, and we are undone to know whether the whole fifty can be equally dull and unedifying. Did you ever read Noah? it seems to me even in the translation delightfully fine.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Gautier de Costes de la Calprenède : Pharamond; or the History of France
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 May 1768:] 'This day I finish Pharamond: is Mrs Sutton still in town, that I may return it to her? if not, when you write, pray return my thanks for the amusement it has afforded me. This day I also begin Mrs Montagu's [copy of] "Chevaliers de Malthe." I rejoice to hear so good an account of her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Rene Aubert de Vertot : Histoire des Chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 31 May 1768:] 'This day I finish Pharamond: is Mrs Sutton still in town, that I may return it to her? if not, when you write, pray return my thanks for the amusement it has afforded me. This day I also begin Mrs Montagu's [copy of] "Chevaliers de Malthe." I rejoice to hear so good an account of her.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim : ?An Ecclesiastical History, ancient and modern, from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the present century
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 October 1768, during a visit to the Cornwall family:] ''We found them here reading Mosheim. They are in the second volume, which we read in the evenings; and I have got the first in my room here studying it with great pleasure.' Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 October 1768: 'Mosheim has really convinced me that the desart [sic] unsociable system is a very wrong and a false one. In the main he seems a very sensible and candid writer -- now and then we differ, and I grumble over my book.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Talbot and Cornwall family Print: Book
Oswald Garrison Villard : Inside Germany
'In a lecture at Friends' House he spoke of a new Blitzkrieg timed to start on May 1st, and designed to overthrow England in Polish fashion by the end of the summer. His series of "Daily Telegraph" articles, subsequently republished as a small book called "Inside Germany", caused a sensation by supplying chapter and verse for this prophecy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Francis Warrington Dawson : The True Dimension
'The story you sent me (I'm glad to have it) I remembered of course very well. It isn't the sort of thing that is ever forgotten.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
Carlo Maggi : Malincolia d'Alicino
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 29 April 1763:] 'I am rather scandalized that you should even ask how I like the Malincolia d'Alcindo, which is beautiful in the highest degree, and it is impossible to be unaffected by it without an absolute want of all taste and all feeling [comments further]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 6 August 1766:] 'Be so good as to tell Mrs Handcock that I do like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and likewise that I do not [...] Indeed it has admirable things in it, though mixt with provoking absurdities, at which one should not be provoked if the book in general had not great merit [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Edward Fairfax :
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 6 August 1766:] 'I thank you for your transcript from Fairfax [translator of Torquato Tasso], which is very pretty.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Manuscript: Unknown, Transcribed by Elizabeth Vesey.
Horace Walpole : ?Royal and Noble Authors
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 18 March 1768:] 'I fancy you were not greatly edified by the study of Mr Walpole's book. There is always some degree of entertainment in what he writes, but less I think in this than usual, and it is rather more peevish and flippant. It is a great pity he should ever write any thing but Castles of Otranto, in which species of composition he is so remarkably happy [comments further on Walpole as a history writer]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Horace Walpole : The Castle of Otranto
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 18 March 1768:] 'I fancy you were not greatly edified by the study of Mr Walpole's book. There is always some degree of entertainment in what he writes, but less I think in this than usual, and it is rather more peevish and flippant. It is a great pity he should ever write any thing but Castles of Otranto, in which species of composition he is so remarkably happy [comments further on Walpole as a history writer]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield : Letters to His Son
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 29 July 1774:] 'Lord Chesterfield's Letters are, I think, the most complete system of French morality that ever disgraced the English language. A system founded neither on principles of virtue, nor sentiments of heart, but upon those selfish motives, which aim at nothing higher than mere bienseance, and which never yet, through the general course of life, procured to any character, confidence, or esteem, or love [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
?Thomas Francois ?Raynal :
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 9 January 1782:] 'Alas, my dear friend, it is not a reflection on the writings or conversation of a licentious profligate infidel like the Abbe R---- that can compose the astonished mind amidst the awful terrors of a midnight storm, such as you so nobly describe: you well know that from sources such as these no solid comfort can be derived, why then will you idly spend your time in reading what ought never to have been written? But you do it, you say, merely for amusement: 'tis dangerous amusement to a mind like yours, indeed to any mind.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Vesey Print: Book
Hester Mulso : 'Odes'
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 28 February 1752:] 'I often entertain myself with reading over those charming Odes of Miss Mulso's, and admire them more and more every time I read them. I am so proud of the honour she has done me in one of them, that my gratitude has forced from me another sonnet [...] which I desire you to give her.'
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
Alexander Pope : 'Essays'
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 20 March 1752:] 'As to Mr Pope, though I had some acquaintance with him, and admired him as a poet, yet I must own I never had any great opinion of him in any other light [...] With all his affectation of humanity and a general benevolence, he was certainly a very ill-natured man; and can such a one easily be a good man? 'But were I ever so indisposed, what can I vindicate? Not the morality of his essays, for I think it very faulty. Mr Warburton has, indeed, tinkered it in some places to make it look orthodox, but yet it will not hold water [comments further on Warburton's edition of Pope]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
Hester Mulso : sonnet
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 5 March 1753:] 'I am much obliged to you for the sonnet; it is very pretty'.
UnknownCentury: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards
Roman Dmowski : Russian Realities and Problems (chapter) or Problems of Central and Eastern Europe
'Thank you very much for sending me your contribution towards the solution of the great problem [Polish independence].[...] Your arguments and your conclusions seem to me absolutely incontrovertible.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, see additional comment, identity of text uncertain
Edward Garnett : Turgenev: A Study
'Your opening pages [of "Turgenev: A Study"] are excellent , excellent! I was much delighted with your masterly thrusts to all that thick headed crowd. As to the rest of the book you know that I do know it well.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Virginia Woolf : The Waves
'She preferred to say - in words written ten years ago at the end of "The Waves" which might stand for her epitaph - "Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
Thornton Wilder : Bridge of San Luis Rey, The
'I had not known Thornton Wilder, though I had been among the thousands who read "The Bridge of San Luis Rey".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
John Frederick Charles Fuller : article in the "Evening Standard"
'In the "Evening Standard", Major-General Fuller commented acidly that the gigantic forces being raised in America suggested preparation for the next war rather than this.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper, Unknown
Reginald Perceval Gibbon : article published in "Daily Chronicle"
'This morning [Reginald Perceval] Gibbon's corespondence [on the aftermath of the battle of Caporetto] in the "D[aily]C[hronicle]" was very reserved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
Ezra Pound : Pavannes and Divisions
'Thank you very much for the books. Monahan I like. E[zra] P[ound] is certainly a poet but I am afraid I am too old and too wooden-headed to appreciate him as perhaps he deserves.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Charles Kirkwood Ensor : Miniature History of the War
'According to R.C.K. Ensor's "Miniature History of the War", "the annihilating raid on Lubeck...and the raid of 1,130 bombers on Cologne...each marked an epoch" in Allied achievement.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke : Essays
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755:] 'You have a very just opinion of St. John's works [...] As far as I have seen, and I read at Ember the last volume, which contains his essays, there is nothing in his objections but what has been published and answered over and over [...] I know not whether his system may be more properly called deistical, or atheistical; since, though in words he allows a God, he seems to make him such a one as Epicurus did; and to think that we are beneath his notice, or have very little to do with him. He laughs at all notions of revelation, or a particular providence, and reckons the present life the whole of man's existence. These essays, by the way, afford us abundant and irrefragable proof, that the plan of the Essay on Man was St. John's, and not Pope's [...] You have here the whole scheme, the thoughts and in many places the very words of the poem; and a more consistent scheme it is here, than it appears there, after the poet and the parson had laid their heads together to disguise and make it pass for a christian system [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
Alexander Pope : Essay on Man
Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755: 'You have a very just opinion of St. John's works [...] As far as I have seen, and I read at Ember the last volume, which contains his essays, there is nothing in his objections but what has been published and answered over and over [...] I know not whether his system may be more properly called deistical, or atheistical; since, though in words he allows a God, he seems to make him such a one as Epicurus did; and to think that we are beneath his notice, or have very little to do with him. He laughs at all notions of revelation, or a particular providence, and reckons the present life the whole of man's existence. These essays, by the way, afford us abundant and irrefragable proof, that the plan of the Essay on Man was St. John's, and not Pope's [...] You have here the whole scheme, the thoughts and in many places the very words of the poem; and a more consistent scheme it is here, than it appears there, after the poet and the parson had laid their heads together to disguise and make it pass for a christian system [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Voyage to Lisbon
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 28 May 1755:] 'I have lately read over with much indignation Fielding's last piece, called his Voyage to Lisbon. That a man, who had led such a life as he had, should trifle in that manner when immediate death was before his eyes, is amazing. From this book I am confirmed in what his other works had fully persuaded me of, that with all his parade of pretences to virtuous and humane affections, the fellow had no heart.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
Mary Delany to Samuel Richardson, 16 August 1751: 'I am now reading Dr Young's Night Thoughts, and can hardly forbear sending him a rapture of thanks for the entertainment and delight they give me, and above all for raising my mind so much above [italics]This poor terrestrial citadel of man[end italics].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Delany Print: Book
Corder Catchpool : On Two Fronts: Letters of a Prisoner.
'His books, "On Two Fronts" and "Letters of a Prisoner", described those early experiences.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Arthur Harris : Bomber Offensive
'In a post-war record entitled "Bomber Offensive", Sir Arthur Harris himself described the ordeal of Hamburg, which caused civilian casualties variously estimated at between ten and sixty thousand.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
George Lyttelton : Advice to a Lady
[Maria Branwell to her fiance, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, 5 December 1812:] 'Since I began this [letter] Jane put into my hands Lord Lyttleton's Advice to a Lady. When I read those lines, "Be never cool reserve with passion joined, with caution choose, but then be fondly kind, etc.," my heart smote me for having in some cases used too much reserve towards you. Do you think you have any cause to complain of me? If you do, let me know it. For were it in my power to prevent it, I would in no instance occasion you the least pain or uneasiness. I am certain no one ever loved you with an affection more pure, constant, tender, and ardent than that which I feel [...] I long to improve in every religious and moral quality, that I may be a help, and if possible an ornament to you. Oh let us pray for much wisdom and grace to fill our appointed stations with propriety, that we may enjoy satisfaction in our own souls, edify others, and bring glory to the name of Him who has so wonderfully preserved, blessed and brought us together.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Branwell Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Lord of the Isles
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 22 January 1816:] 'Read Lord of the Isles again.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 21 June 1817:] 'Read Old Mortality; did not like it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Edward Young : Night Thoughts
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 13 May 1818:] 'Read Young's Night Thoughts.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Henry Kirke White : The Remains of Henry Kirke White, of Nottingham
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 22 May 1818:] 'Read Remains of H. K. White.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 2 January 1819:] 'Read the Heart of Midlothian.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Oliver Goldsmith : History of Rome
[From the diary of Elizabeth Firth, 6 January 1820:] 'Read Goldsmith's History of Rome.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Firth Print: Book
Walter Scott : Tales of a Grandfather
'There is a copy of the Imitation of Christ extant, given to Charlotte [Bronte] in 1826, and there are other books that we know the [Bronte] children read during this period, including Scott's Tales of a Grandfather.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bronte children (Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, Anne) Print: Book
Voltaire : Henriade
'A very fair measure of French and some skill in drawing appear to have been the most striking accomplishments which Charlotte carried back from Roe Head [school] to Haworth. There are some twenty drawings of about this date, and a translation into English verse of the first book of Voltaire's Henriade.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
[Charlotte Bronte to her schoolfriend Ellen Nussey, 1 January 1833:] 'I am glad you like "Kenilworth"; it is certainly a splendid production, more resembling a Romance than a Novel, and in my opinion one of the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great Sir Walter's pen. I am exceedingly amused at the characteristic and naive manner in which you expressed your detestation of Varney's character [...] he is certainly the personification of consummate villainy, and in the delineation of his dark and profoundly artful mind, Scott exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature, as well as surprising skill in embodying his perceptions so as to enable others to become participators in that knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Nussey Print: Book
Walter Scott : Kenilworth
[Charlotte Bronte to her schoolfriend Ellen Nussey, 1 January 1833:] 'I am glad you like "Kenilworth"; it is certainly a splendid production, more resembling a Romance than a Novel, and in my opinion one of the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great Sir Walter's pen. I am exceedingly amused at the characteristic and naive manner in which you expressed your detestation of Varney's character [...] he is certainly the personification of consummate villainy, and in the delineation of his dark and profoundly artful mind, Scott exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature, as well as surprising skill in embodying his perceptions so as to enable others to become participators in that knowledge.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Dorothy Thompson : [article in the "Sunday Chronicle"]
'My first real understanding of the "terrific sensation" came from an article published in the "Sunday Chronicle" on March 12th by the American columnist, Dorothy Thompson. [Brittain then proceeds to quote from the article.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper
Oswald Garrison Villard : Last Plea for Europe
'From the United States Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, inspired by the same thought, sent me an article called "Last Plea for Europe" which he had published in "The Christian Century".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: article published in a periodical
Branwell Bronte :
[Branwell Bronte to Francis H. Grundy, 9 June 1842:] 'Mr James Montgomery and another literary gentleman who have lately seen something of my "head work" wish me to turn my attention to literature, and along with that advice, they give me plenty of puff and praise. All very well, but I have little conceit for myself, and great desire for activity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Montgomery Manuscript: Unknown
Branwell Bronte :
Branwell Bronte to Francis H. Grundy, 9 June 1842: 'Mr James Montgomery and another literary gentleman who have lately seen something of my "head work" wish me to turn my attention to literature, and along with that advice, they give me plenty of puff and praise. All very well, but I have little conceit for myself, and great desire for activity.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Gollancz : What Buchenwald Really Means
'Within the next few days I read a new Gollancz pamphlet, "What Buchenwald Really Means".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain
Victor Gollancz : article in the "Left News"
'In the "Left News" for July, 1944, Victor had also published a document from Underground France on the future of Germany.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
Victor Gollancz : Article in the "Left News"
'In the "Left News" for July, 1944, Victor had also published a document from Underground France on the future of Germany.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
George Orwell : Article in "The Observer"
'Even George Orwell, who had dismissed "Seed of Chaos" with contempt the previous year, now expressed deep misgivings in "The Observer" for April 8th.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Newspaper
Howard Spring : Article in "St Martin's Review"
'But the real clue had been given by Howard Spring in an unpretentious article which appeared in "St. Martin's Review", the monthly magazine of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, for September 1942.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Serial / periodical
Somerset Maugham : A Christmas Holiday
'More stimulating was the reading of Somerset Maugham's short novel, "A Christmas Holiday".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book
Jean Henri Merle D'Aubigne : "Letter"
[Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 31 March 1846:] 'I received the number of the Record you sent and despatched it forwards to Mr Young &c. am I right? I read D'Aubigne's letter -- it is clever and in what he says about catholicism very good -- the evangelical alliance part is not very practicable yet certainly it is more in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel to preach unity amongst Christians than to inculcate mutual intolerance and hatred'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[W. M. Thackeray to W. S. Williams, 23 October 1847:] 'I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period with the printers I know wailing for copy. Who the author can be I can't guess, if a woman she knows her language better than most ladies do, or has had a "classical" education. It is a fine book though, the man and woman capital, the style very generous and upright so to speak. I thought it was Kinglake for some time. The plot of the story is one with wh. I am familiar. Some of the love passages made me cry, to the astonishment of John, who came in with the coals. St John the missionary is a failure I think but a good failure, there are parts excellent [...] I have been exceedingly moved and pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a woman's writing, but whose? Give my respects and thanks to the author, whose novel is the first English one (and the French are only romances now) that I've been able to read for many a day.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Makepeace Thackeray Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[George Henry Lewes to Elizabeth Gaskell:] 'When Jane Eyre first appeared, the publishers courteously sent me a copy. The enthusiasm with which I read it made me go down to Mr Parker, and propose to write a review of it for Fraser's Magazine [...] Meanwhile I had written to Miss Bronte to tell her the delight with which her book filled me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: Book
George Henry Lewes : Ranthorpe
[Charlotte Bronte (as 'Currer Bell') to G. H. Lewes, 22 November 1847:] 'I have now read "Ranthorpe." I could not get it till a day or two ago; but I have got it and read it at last; and in reading "Ranthorpe" I have read a new book -- not a reprint -- not a reflection of any other book, but a [italics]new book[end italics]. 'I did not know such books were written now. It is very different to any of the popular works of fiction; it fills the mind with fresh knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the reader's; and to an author, at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[Charlotte Bronte (as 'Currer Bell') to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 11 December 1847:] 'There are moments when I can hardly credit that anything I have done should be found worthy to give even transitory pleasure to such men as Mr Thackeray, Sir John Herschel, Mr Fonblanque, Leigh Hunt, and Mr Lewes -- that my humble efforts should have had such a result is a noble reward.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Herschel Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[Charlotte Bronte (as 'Currer Bell') to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 11 December 1847:] 'There are moments when I can hardly credit that anything I have done should be found worthy to give even transitory pleasure to such men as Mr Thackeray, Sir John Herschel, Mr Fonblanque, Leigh Hunt, and Mr Lewes -- that my humble efforts should have had such a result is a noble reward.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Henry Leigh Hunt Print: Book
Richard Hengist Horne : Orion
Charlotte Bronte (as Currer Bell) to Richard Hengist Horne, 15 December 1847: 'You will have thought me strangely tardy in acknowledging your courteous present, but the fact is it never reached me till yesterday [...] 'I have to thank you, not merely for the gift of a little book of 137 pages, but for that of a [italics]poem[end italics]. Very real, very sweet is the poetry of "Orion"; there are passages I shall recur to again and yet again -- passages instinct both with power and beauty. All through it is genuine -- pure from one fault of affectation, rich in noble imagery [...] You could not, I imagine, have written that epic without at times deriving deep happiness from your work.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : Sermon on Spiritual Freedom
'very good, rather political in character'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : Sermon on the Imitableness of Christ
'very good, with his peculiar views'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : Sermons on Love to Christ
'good, with the Unitarian views'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
George Stillman Hillard : The Relation of the Poet to His Age
'a vague subject, but treated in the refined & elevated spirit peculiar to him'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
William Ellery Channing : Sermon on Dr Tuckerman
'the founder of the Ministry at large, excellent. I must have talk with Ly Byron about this subject, & the similar institution that has been set on foot here'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
Henry Melvill : Sermon on the Ascension
'fine imagery, but is too speculative'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Unknown
William Ellery Channing : Lecture on the Present Age
'very interesting & able. I have read the entire contents of his published works, and every page has impressed upon me increased admiration, sympathy & veneration. I make of course the deduction which is to be set down to his Unitarian doctrines, though even with respect to these what I have read has led me to modify much that was uncharitable and ignorant'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
George Selwyn : Correspondence
'entertained me much, though they would probably have not so much interest out of this family, to which so many of them relate. My father is much annoyed at having so many particulars disclosed'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
Edward Garnett : Truth's Welcome Home
'I return to you the type and the proof which you have sent me. The "English Review" thing is wonderfully done, [...]. The Edward Grey in Paris article is very cleverly done. It is mordant, it is witty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: proof
Edward Garnett : A Week in Paris
'I return to you the type and the proof which you have sent me. The "English Review" thing is wonderfully done, [...]. The Edward Grey in Paris article is very cleverly done. It is mordant, it is witty.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: typescript
Roger Ascham : ?'Toxophilus' and 'The Scholemaster'
'I have got old Ascham, and read a little of him, when I have done work, every evening.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle
Sir William Hamilton : Review of Victor Cousin's 'Cours de Philosophie' (Paris, 1828) in Edinburgh Review, XCIV (OCt 1829), 194-221
'Did you read Sir W Hamilton on Cousin's Metaphysics in the last Edinburgh Review? And what inferences are we to draw from it? Pity that Sir W. had not the gift of delivery! He has real knowledge on those matters; but all unsorted, and tumbled topsy-turvy like a "bankrupt stock."'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
Theodore James Gordon Gardiner : The Reconnaissance
'I will confess at once that I have read the book ["The Reconnaissance"] once only, and that of course is not enough;[...].The subject in itself is certainly a very difficult one because of its deep nature and its necessarily superficial aspects.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts :
'Your R.A.F. paper is very good [...].'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
Arthur Symons : Colour Studies in Paris
'That vol[ume]["Colour Studies in Paris"] is full of charm and contains many pages of rare distinction and luminous like pearls[...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Friedrich Henrich von der Hagen : Literarischer Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Poesie von der altesten Zeit, bis in das sechzhnte Jarhrundert
'Do you know Doven's and Hagen's Hist. of German Poetry? I have seen it in the Edinr College Library, but read only a few pages of it.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Patrick Fraser Tytler : History of Scotland
'I am much obliged to you for Tytler, which I have read with pleasure and not without profit: it is a smooth, easy Book; seems well-founded, accurate, authentic; and without pretending to be a classical History, may well enjoy several years of extensive popularity. I shall be very glad to see the First and all the other Volumes, when they appear.'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Henry James Mercier : Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred
[Charlotte Brontë to the grandson of Henry James Mercier, 1 June 1848:]
'I have read 2,500 with pleasure. It is a very clever and ingenious production, Your grandfather must have been an intellectual, clever and accomplished man.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
John Stores Smith : Mirabeau: A Life History
[Charlotte Brontë, as Currer Bell, to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 15 June 1848:] 'I duly received Mirabeau from Mr Smith [...] When I have read the book, I will tell you what I think of it — its subject is interesting. One thing a little annoyed me — as I glanced over the pages I fancied I detected a savour of Carlyle's peculiarities of style. Now Carlyle is a great man, but I always wish he would write plain English; and to imitate his Germanisms is, I think, to imitate his faults.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Friday 20 November 1840]. Before prayers work with my Father- cards at night- shooting - read Stahl- Clarendon- Burnet (Own Time, began).
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Saturday 21 November 1840]. [...] read Clarendon- Burnet - worked on Ch. & State [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Monday 23 November 1840]. [...] read Burnet - Clarendon- worked on Ch. & State [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Tues 24 November 1840]. read Burnet - Bruce on Assam- Clarendon- [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Weds 25 November 1840]. [...] read Burnet - Neal - Clarendon- [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Thurs 26 November 1840]. [...] read Burnet - Clarendon Life- d[itt]o Reln and Policy- Poems- Tyler- H[enry] V. [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Fri 27 November 1840]. [...] read Burnet - Clarendon- worked on Ch. & St. [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Gilbert Burnet : History of His Own Time
[Sat 28 November 1840]. [...] read Burnet - Clarendon- worked on Ch. & St. [...].
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Algernon Swinburne : A Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
'I ought to have thanked you before, for the very curious pamphlet containing Swinburne's sweet little joke. I enjoyed both the verse and the prose (especially the prose) immensely.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
Edward Garnett : Papa's War and Other Satires
'I didn't thank you for the book ["Papa's War and Other Satires" ] by letter because I knew I was coming to town at once. You know my opinion of all the pieces composing it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry Major Tomlinson : Old Junk
'I write to thank you for the book [...]. I have already seen most of the papers composing your new vol. ["Old Junk"] and I have appreciated their graphic power, personal point of view and felicity of expression. I glanced in here and there with renewed pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[Sidney Biddell to Ellen Nussey, 15 February 1885:]
'I am having a great treat in Cross's "Life of George Eliot." Most wonderful woman! [...] Writing to a correspondent in June 1848, she says, "I have read 'Jane Eyre' [...] All self- sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcase. However the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre
[A former pupil of Cowan Bridge School, Yorkshire (the model for 'Lowood' in Jane Eyre), to Charlotte Bronte's widower, Arthur Bell Nicholls:]
'On first reading Jane Eyre several years ago I recognised immediately the picture there drawn [of the school], and was far from considering it in any way exaggerated. In fact, I thought at the time, and still think the matter rather understated than otherwise [comments further on points of comparison between the real and fictional schools] [...] I had no knowledge of Mrs Nicholls [Bronte] personally, therefore my statement may fairly be considered an impartial one.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anon Print: Book
Wilfred Scawen Blunt : My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events,1888-1914
'I return here the first volume with many thanks. It is very curious reading, but somehow one cannot take it very seriously.'
[Hence follow thirteen lines of mainly negative comments.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Bradshaw (ed) : Bradshaw's Monthly General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide for Great Britain and Ireland
'I fully share your admiration for Bradshaw tho' I think he goes too much into detail so that all sense of reality is lost and the book produces the effect of being a mere fairy-tale. It's imposible to believe that all this takes place every day! The more popular and picturesque treatment of the same subject in the "A.B.C." carries more conviction to my frivolous mind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Christopher Sandeman : [untitled]
'This is a very interesting journal and I read it with a particular pleasure derived both from the matter and from the expression of the writer's personality.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Gerald Cumberland (pseud.) : Tales of a Cruel Country
'At the beginning I must say that I have not read the tales ["Tales of a Cruel Country"] through as yet'.
[Conrad then makes several comments indicating that he has at least read some of them.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham : Brought Forward
'I am just fresh from the second reading of your vol ["Brought Forward"]'. Hence follow twelve lines of admiring comment.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Richard Curle : Wanderings
'Just a line to thank you for the book. As I turn the pages my consideration for you grows to the proportions of respect. There is a beauty of easy moving prose - charm of phrase — felicity of words which give the strongest possible impression of mastery of language [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham : A Brazilian Mystic, being the Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro
'Ever so many thanks too for the "Life and Miracles" which I have just read for the second time.There is no one but you to render so poignantly the pathetic and desperate effects of human credulity. It is a marvellous piece of sustained narrative and of intensely personal prose.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Rodney Mundy : Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes Down to the Occupation of Labuan, from the Journals of James Brooke
'The book ["The Rescue"] which has found favour in your eyes has been inspired in a great measure by the history of the first Rajah's enterprise and even by the lecture [i.e.reading] of his journals as partly reproduced by Captain Mundy and others.[...]. It was a great pleasure to read "My Life in Sarawak" [...] I have looked into that book many times since.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Grey, Viscount Grey of Fallodon : Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes Down to the Occupation of Labuan, from the Journals of James Brooke
'E. [Edward] Grey's book, of which I have already read a considerable portion, has certainly the charm of a genuine feeling expressed in plain language worthy of a great fisherman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Prosper Mérimée : Tamango
'I do know the Mérimée story you speak of. It is "Tamango". A rather good piece of work. [...] I read it years ago.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Gérard Jean-Aubry : Mérimée
'Pray forgive me keeping your article on Mérimée so long. I read it as soon as it arrived — and then re-read it yesterday. It is one of the best pieces by you I've read, though your work never fails to delight.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Sheet
André Gide : La Symphonie Pastorale
'Many thanks indeed for your good letter and for the little book ["La Symphonie Pastorale"] whose precious pages I will cut tonight "in the silence of my study" in a peaceful house where everyone has gone to bed.[...] For me that is the moment for friends' books.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Cortes Holliday :
'Thank you very much for Mr Holliday's book, which has certainly got a lot of good things in it and which I enjoyed greatly.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham : Cartagena and the Banks of the Sinu
'What to me [...] seems most wonderful in the Carthagena book is its inextinguishable vitality, the unchanged strength of feeling, steadfastness of sympathies and force of expresssion. I turned the pages with unfailing delight [...].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Henry Fynes Clinton : Fasti hellenici: the civil and literary chronology of Greece
'Began Clinton's Introduction &c.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Henry Fynes Clinton : Fasti hellenici: the civil and literary chronology of Greece
'Bland — Clinton — a little Herodotus.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Henry Fynes Clinton : Fasti hellenici: the civil and literary chronology of Greece
Thucydides — Clinton — Public Lecture in Diff. Calc — reading it & Questions ...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Henry Fynes Clinton : Fasti hellenici: the civil and literary chronology of Greece
Read Juvenal all the morning- (save that I now read a few verses of Greek Testament the first thing)- finished Clinton's Introduction.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Edward Burton : Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ
[Sunday] Church 11 A.M. 3 P.M. [...] Worked on Index. Read Burton's Testimonies to the Trinity.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Edward Burton : Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ
[...] Finished Burton [...]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Bruno Winawer : Ksiega Hioba (The Book of Job)
'Thank you for sending me the comedy. I found it [...] interesting and greatly entertaining, which however dd not prevent me from taking your work quite seriously.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: playscript
Bruno Winawer : Groteski
'I must begin by thanking you for the little book of satirical pieces ["Groteski"] which I read with great enjoyment and in that sympathetic mood which your work arouses in me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
André Gide : Les Caves du Vatican
'A few days ago in fact I re-read "Les Caves du Vatican", with the same intetest but with an admiration that grows on each new reading. The infinity of things you put into that book, where the hand is so light and the thought so deep, is truly marvellous.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Frederick O'Brien : White Shadows in the South Seas
'Let me thank you warmly for the two magnificent and interesting vol[ume]s about the South-Sea Isles which you have been good enough to send me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Frederick O'Brien : Mystic Isles of the South Seas
'Let me thank you warmly for the two magnificent and interesting vol[ume]s about the South-Sea Isles which you have been good enough to send me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Margaret Isabella Stevenson :
'Your last letter was very nice.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
William Ernest Henley :
'At last, son of night, I receive a communication […] Oh no, it is not the penny. It is the one-volume story demanded by Hueffer for the New Tarterly [sic]. It’s a real story, damned fine; but the dénouementdoesn’t please me yet: the beginning is so good, that it is difficult to get up to that pitch again, and the story sort of dies away.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Harold Waldo : Stash of the Marsh County
'I want to thank you at once for the book you have been good enough to send me.It is of course of the greatest interest and secures my personal sympathy by the kindly attitude of the author towards the people he treats, [i.e. Polish immigrants in U.S.] of and by the poignancy of the action.'
[Hence follows alomost a page of constructive criticism.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Bertrand Russell : Analysis of Mind
'As for yourself — I have been dwelling with you mentally for several days between the covers of your book [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Francis Warrington Dawson : The Gift of Paul Clermont
'Now I have absorbed it I send you my thanks for "The Gift of Paul Clermont". It is a very charming and touching performance which one likes more the deeper one gets into it.'
[Hence follow nine lines of praise.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Alfred Comyn Lyall :
'Many thanks for the book which has given me the greatest of pleasure. I have always had a great admiration for Sir Alfred [Lyall] whose verse and prose appeal strongly to my mind and feelings.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Alexandr Fredro : Trzy po Trzy
'Thank you, my dearest for all the books you have presented me with, in particular for Fredro, qui m'a donné un plaisir extrème à lire et à regarder les images.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Garnett : Friday Nights: Literary Criticism and Appreciation, First Series
'I must thank you for the volume which has just arrived.[...]. What I have felt and thought is more suitable for talk, warm and many coloured than for the cold blue tint of the typewriter.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham : The Conquest of New Granada, being the Life of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada
'I would have written to you before about my delight in "The Conquest of Granada" if it had not been for the beastly swollen wrist which prevented me from holding the pen.'
[Hence follow eight lines of praise.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Bruno Winawer : Slepa latarka (Dark Lantern)
'I dictate these few words to thank you most heartily for your letters and especially for your little tale which I have read with absolute delight and appreciation of every point, and greatest sympathy wth the mind which conceived it and the literary gift which guided the pen. During the last few weeks I have been finishing a novel and have been too absorbed to write to anyone.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Garnett : The Dumas Maquet Case (and) Dumas and Maquet
'I read with the greatest of interest your communications to the "Times [Literary Supplement]" in the Dumas-Maquet affair. All this story is quite new to me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Bertrand Russell : The Problem of China
'When your book ["The Problem of China"] arrived we were away for a few days. Perhaps [...] I should have acknowledged the receipt at once. But I preferred to read it before I wrote. Unluckily a very unpleasant affair was sprung on me and absorbed all my thinking energies for a fortnight. I simply did not attempt to open the book till all the worry and flurry was over, and I could give it two clear days.'
[Hence follow three pages of commentary.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Clarence Andrews : Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas
'I hasten therefore to tell you without a moments delay what did mean to write (or have perhaps written) that the book ["Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas"] in its human zest for impressions, in its pervading sympathy for strange mankind, its acuity of observation [...] has given me a very real pleasure [...] You will see that neither the lapse of 2 months [since receiving and reading the book?] nor the fact of re-reading, has altered my original judgement "by first impression".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Fryniwyid Tennyson Jesse : The White Riband; Or a Young Female's Folly
'Ever so many thanks for the little book of fantasy and charm and sharp irony seasoning the tragic story of poor Loveday, who had no other name.[...] Its a gem in its way.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marcel Proust : Swann's Way (Du coté de chez Swann
'I've lately read nothing but Marcel Proust.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marcel Proust : Swann's Way (Du coté de chez Swann
'In the volumes you sent me I was much more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation.'
[Hence follows another page and a half of commentary on the translation and on Proust in general.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Richard Curle : Into the East: Notes on Burma and Malaya
'Best wishes for the book's career begun yesterday—wasn't it?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Bruno Winawer : Roztwor profesora Pytla (Professor Pytel's Solution)
'Your Comédie du Laboratoire is perfect. Très chic — as French painters used to say of their pictures. This formula expresses the highest praise.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book, or playscript
Bruno Winawer : R.H., Inzynier
'I liked "Engineer" very very much indeed! The idea, the execution, the style.[...] Shall I return the MS to you?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Sheet
Richard Curle : Scandals of the Dole
'I was just about to write to you on the "Dole " articles. They are wonderfully the right thing: matter, tone, attitude, interest.[...] Jessie is lost in admiration.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
Hubert Wellington : William Rothenstein
'Warmest thanks for the vol and for the inscription. Oh my dear how good how profoundly appealing all this is — this little selection.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Bruno Winawer : Jeszcze o Einstein: teoria wzglenosci z lotu ptaka (More about Einstein: A Bird's-eye View of the Theory of Relativity
'Heartfelt thanks for your letter and the pamphlet about Einstein which for me is a small masterpiece of its kind.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
Christopher Morley : Inward Ho!
'Thank you for your little book of innermost thoughts.[...] And you have proved your excellent humanity by the manner and matter of your essays.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
William Henry Hudson : 153 Letters from W. H. Hudson
'I have been laid up for days and days and your volume of H[udson]'s letters was the most welcome alleviation to the worry and general horror of the situation. I think that your little introduction at the beginning is the most charming and touching thing that I ever remember having read. The letters themselves are of course particularly interesting.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Christopher Ward : The Triumph of the Nut and Other Parodies
Sorry I am late in thanking you for the little book and the friendly inscription. I greatly enjoyed the parodies on those writers I have read.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Enoch Arnold Bennett : Riceyman Steps
'I am wholly delighted with your "R.[iceyman] S.[teps]. Wholly. You will give me credit for not having missed any special gems but it is the whole achievement as I went from page to page that secured my admiration. [...] I closed the book at 7 in the morning after the shortest sleepless night of my experience [...]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Roman Dyboski : Modern Polish Literature: a course of lectures delivered in the School of Slavonic studies, King's College, University of London
'I am sorry I am so late in thanking you for the two vols of Polish Literature which I have read with the highest appreciation — and for the brochure on the religious element in Polish national life which told me many things I did not know before.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Roman Dyboski : Periods of Polish Literary History: Being the Ilchester lectures for the year 1923
'I am sorry I am so late in thanking you for the two vols of Polish Literature which I have read with the highest appreciation — and for the brochure on the religious element in Polish national life which told me many things I did not know before.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Roman Dyboski : ?The Religious Element in Polish National Life
'I am sorry I am so late in thanking you for the two vols of Polish Literature which I have read with the highest appreciation — and for the brochure on the religious element in Polish national life which told me many things I did not know before.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad
Richard Curle [writing as 'John Blunt'] : I Say
'Today's "J[ohn] B[lunt]" is particularly good. [...] The last three "Blunts" were remarkably good.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Newspaper
Ford Madox Ford : Some Do Not
'As to the novel I think that between us two, if I tell you that I consider it "tout à fait chic" you will understand perfectly how much that "phrase de l'atelier" means to the initiated.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Horatio Nelson :
'Many thanks for letting me have a view of the Nelson letter which is most interesting. I appreciate very much you taking the risk of loss in order to give me that pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Letter
André Gide : Incidences
'Forgive me for not thanking you sooner for the book ["Incidences"]. It's my gouty wrist I can barely hold a pen. But I don't need to tell you that I find your pages always congenial beyond measure. In the volume you so kindly sent to me there are some pages that I know. I did not know the Prefaces. I read them with delight — and also the reflections on mythology.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Louis-Marie-Emile Roché : Temps perdu
'My gouty wrist has kept me from thanking you immediately for the volume of poems that you so kindly sent me. [...] What more can I say to give you an idea of the pleasure (complete and faultless) that the reading of your verses has given me?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Francis McCullagh : The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity
'My warm thanks for the inscribed copy of "Bolshevik Persecution" you have been kind enough to send me. I have read with interest this most remarkably able account of a significant episode in the long tale of religious persecution.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Lancelot Sanderson : An Episode of Southern Seas
'As to your verses. May I keep them? Of course now you say you will not finish the poem — and it may be true — now.[...] But its charm and music are for me. I have read it more than once.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Norman : The Peoples and Politics of the Far East:Travels and Studies in the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese Colonies, Siberia, China, Japan, Korea, Siam and Malaya
'Even H. Norman corroborates me out of his short experience. See his "Far East".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
François-Marie Arouet Voltaire : Candide
'It is years since I have read "Candide" of course in French. I must tell you I have been immensely pleased by the particular quality of this translation.'
[Hence follow five lines of further praise for the translation.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Gaspard Gourgaud : Journal de Ste. Hélène 1815-1818
'Throughout his career Conrad was haunted by the idea of writing a Napoleonic novel, for which he did a prodigious amount of background reading.[...] However it was not until June 1920 that he eventually started to write "Suspense", and early in 1921 he spent two months in Corsica to saturate himself in Napoleonic atmosphere, revive memories of harbours and sailors and do further background reading, as the list of books borrowed from the Ajaccio library, recorded by Jean-Aubry, indicates.' [see note 118, p.316]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Marcellin Pellet : Napoléon à l'île d'Elbe
'Throughout his career Conrad was haunted by the idea of writing a Napoleonic novel, for which he did a prodigious amount of background reading.[...] However it was not until June 1920 that he eventually started to write "Suspense", and early in 1921 he spent two months in Corsica to saturate himself in Napoleonic atmosphere, revive memories of harbours and sailors and do further background reading, as the list of books borrowed from the Ajaccio library, recorded by Jean-Aubry, indicates.' [see note 118, p.316]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
George Bourne [pseud. of George Sturt] : The Ascending Effort
'It my be that I failed to understand "The Ascending Effort", but I did not mean to treat Bourne disrespectfully. [But] you will admit that Bourne's writing in its slightly grotesque heaviness made it very difficult to read the whole book in a spirit of impartiality[...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Edward Lear : Nonsense Songs and Stories
'When I was a bit older he read to me from Edward Lear's "Nonsense Songs and Stories". "Mr Yongy Bongy Bo", "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" and "The Old Man from the Kingdom of Tess", were favorites, but he enjoyed reading all of them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Alfred Russel Wallace : The Malay Archipelago The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise
'At other times he would tell me about the Malay Archipelago and the Malays and show me pictures in A. R. Wallace's book about that part of the world.
[...]
He would read to me about far away places, explaining how the natives built their houses on poles driven into the river beds of eastern rivers.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
William Wymark Jacobs :
'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Adler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham :
'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Ad[e]ler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
José Raul Capablanca : My Chess Career or Chess Fundamentals
'[...] two or three times a week after dinner we got out the chessmen and board and spent a couple of hours playing through the games in Capablanca's book. We played every game in the book, J[oseph] C[onrad] reading the moves, stopping where Capablanca had made a comment, so we could write down our own observations.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Gilbert Frankau :
'We reached his room about eleven. To do what? Not a blessed thing but to sit before a fire and talk and read again. He read me extracts from a book by Mr. Gilbert Frankau and proved to me what I could not have believed, that Mr. Frankau is a man of real high spirits which frequently almost achieve wit and humour.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Cyril Lionel Robert James Print: Book
Alexander Smith : "Barbara"
'The tent flaps were laced over, the rain had ceased, the guns were silent and Jimmy Harding lay motionless. I ate slowly and dully, staring at my candle. I took my Palgrave from the valise head; it opened at "Barbara" and I read quite coldly and critically until I came to the lines
In vain, in vain, in vain
You will never come again.
There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful fringe
of rain
then with a great gulp I knocked my candle out and buried my face in the valise.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Stephen Campion Vaughan Print: Book
Robert Greene : Pandosto
'I said rather dazedly aloud - to Beston - I wonder what time the next train to London goes - & a stranger with a time-table told me. I had just time to catch it. I had a carriage to myself & tried to read the "Triumph of Time" - through tears.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Asquith Print: Book
Gilbert Keith Chesterton : Backfile of his own articles published in the "Daily Herald."
'One Friday afternoon I went to the [italics] Daily Herald [end italics] office to call on a friend. As I entered the building a taxi stopped at the door and I found G. K. C. [G. K. Chesterton] by my side. "I have half an hour for my article," said he, rather breathlessly. "Wait here till I come back." The first sentence was addressed to himself, the second to the taxi-driver, but as we were now in the office the driver heard nothing. Chesterton called for a back file of the [italics] Daily Herald [end italics], sat down, lit a cigar and began to read some of his old articles. I watched him. Presently he smiled. Then he laughed. Then he leaned back in his chair and roared. "Good - oh, damned good!" exclaimed he. He turned to another article and frowned a little, but a third pleased him better. After a while he pushed the papers from him and sat a while in thought.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gilbert Keith Chesterton Print: Newspaper
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 23 March 1928]
A Meeting held at Mark Ash Tuesday May 8th 1928 C. J. Evans in the Chair 1 Minutes of last approved
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
George Burrow : [A very short introduction to Elizabethan drama other than Shakespeare]
'The subject of the evening Elizabethan Drama other than Shakespear was then taken. Geo Burrow read a very short introduction to the subject.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus
The Club was then much impressed by a reading from Christopher Marlows Doctor Faustus parted as under Thos. C Elliot Faustus R H Robson Metistopholes [sic] A Rawling An old Man
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Live dramatic reading featuring T. C. Elliott, R. H. Robson, and A. Rawling of XII Book Club
Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus
The Club was then much impressed by a reading from Christopher Marlows Doctor Faustus parted as under Thos. C Elliot Faustus R H Robson Metistopholes [sic] A Rawling An old Man
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
Robert Browning : The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
'Dined with 'A' Company. Read the Browning Love Letters at night, in bed. Disappointed, though not displeased. Felt I could have written a better love letter myself in spite of my tender years - and lack of experience.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
'Church parade. Cricket against Royal Scots. Did rather well. Won by 1 run. Reading the Browning Love letters in my spare time.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Book
Gilbert Frankau :
'I've read so many descriptions in newspapers of the ruin and desolation caused in this war. Famous literary men have tried their powers of description and All (with the possible exception of Gilbert Frankau) have failed to convey the repulsiveness and awfulness of the scene. The Ecole was one of these places - That's all!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Unknown
Robert Browning : The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
'Sunday 12th. August. Church parade. New minister. Rather enjoyed the sermon. Easy afternoon. Finished Vol. 1 of the Browning Letters - rather a feat for Active Service!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
'Meant to go to church, but couldn't find it, so had a fine lazy day instead. Read Browning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
Robert Browning : The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
'Finished the Browning Letters - one of the biggest feats of the war! It has taken a tremendous effort of will on my part to get through them. Felt that if I had been in love I could have written better letters than those!!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : Ann Veronica
'Saw most exciting smash of an aeroplane against the buildings and tents of the 13th. Squadron R.F.C. Machine turned turtle and nose dived. Pilot unhurt. Am doing a fair amount of reading. Enjoying "Ann Veronica" by H.G.Wells.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
Edward Verrall Lucas : Mr. Ingleside
'Sunday 17th. Am pretty sure I will get back to the Battalion soon. Went to St. Pol, had lunch, bought some books. Stopped a staff car, and got back to Aubigny for tea. Shifted into a fine comfortable hut with a fire. Finished "Mr Ingleside".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
Henry Jones : ?Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher
'April 1st. 1918. We came out of the line at night. Back to Arras. H.Q. in cellars in the Hotel de Ville, or Town Hall. Poor Arras! It is in a worse condition than ever before. All our new erections, Y.M.C.A., huts, transport lines, and canteens and officers club are no more. I salvaged a copy of Jones' "Life of R. Browning" from the wreckage of the Y.M.C.A. Library. Our quarters are damp, and they smell. There are also rats, and the place is dark. Some of the Tommies had had a good time. There has been a bit of looting of such wine cellars and estaminets as previous bombardments had left.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: BookManuscript: Letter, Sheet
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting held 8 May 1928]
A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue [Oct 19/28]
Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[This apparently refers both to the minutes of the meeting held 8 May 1928, which were signed off by the chair of the current meeting on 19 October, and to the minutes/report of the picnic meeting held on 12 June 1928, which are also signed off by Miss Stevens.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : [Minutes/report of the picnic meeting held 12 Jun 1928]
A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue [Oct 19/28]
Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting approved
[This apparently refers both to the minutes of the meeting held 8 May 1928, which were signed off by the chair of the current meeting on 19 October, and to the minutes/report of the picnic meeting held on 12 June 1928, which are also signed off by Miss Stevens.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Henry Marriage Wallis : War Time Tree Fellings
H. M. Wallis delighted us with an account of War Time Tree fellings
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 13 November 1928]
'A Meeting held at 9 Denmark Rd 13/11/1928 F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
8[.] Essays were read (1) Alfred Rawlings on Beauty (2) R H Robson on The Abolition of the House of Commons'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Alfred Rawlings : Beauty
'A Meeting held at 9 Denmark Rd 13/11/1928 F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
8[.] Essays were read (1) Alfred Rawlings on Beauty (2) R H Robson on The Abolition of the House of Commons'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Edward Gibbon : The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
'January 3rd. Cloudy day. Went with Col Pasteurs to look over the French Hospital at the Imperial Hotel. Read the "Decline and Fall" all afternoon and evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Wentworth Littlewood Print: Book
Reginald H. Robson : The Abolition of the House of Commons
'A Meeting held at 9 Denmark Rd 13/11/1928 F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
8[.] Essays were read (1) Alfred Rawlings on Beauty (2) R H Robson on The Abolition of the House of Commons'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [Minutes/report of the meeting held 13 November 1928]
'A meeting held at School House 4/12/28 T. C. Elliott in the chair
1 Minutes of the last read and approved
[...]
4 The Most Part of the Tempest was then read the Play being cast as follows.
Alonso King of Naples Mrs Stansfield.
Sebastian, his brother Miss Brain.
Prsopero [sic], the right Duke of Milan Mr Stansfield.
Antonio, his brother, usurping Duke of Milan Mr Elliott.
Ferdinand, son to King of Naples Mr Reynolds.
Gonzalo, honest old Counsellor Mr Rawlings.
Adrian, a Lord Mrs Pollard
Caliban, a savage and deformed slave Mr Pollard.
Trinculo, a Jester Mr Smith.
Stephano, a Drunken Butler Mr Robson
Miranda, daughter to Prospero Miss Bowman Smith
Ariel, an airy Spirit Miss Wallis
Mrs Rawlings read the stage directions
Mrs [or Mr.?] Robson sang some of Ariel’s songs.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting held 4 Dec 1928]
'A Meeting held at Whinfell 21/1/29 Alfred Rawlings in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of Plato was then taken F. E. Pollard explained briefly the subject and manner of "The Republic" following which Alfred and Janet Rawlings read one of the earlier dialogues. H. B. Lawson then gave us a most fascinatingly interesting account of Plato's life and work.
After supper Chas E. Stansfield read from Book 7 of the "Republic" "The Cave" this reading being illustrated by a diagram kindly made and explained by F. E. Pollard. F. E. Pollard then outlined for us the main thoughts of Platos [sic] Philosophy Ideas the true reality[.] The evening concluded by T. C. Elliott reading the affecting account of Socrates death in the Phaedo. Thus came to an end a most interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Francis Pollard : Plato’s Philosophy: Ideas the true reality
'A Meeting held at Whinfell 21/1/29 Alfred Rawlings in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of Plato was then taken F. E. Pollard explained briefly the subject and manner of "The Republic" following which Alfred and Janet Rawlings read one of the earlier dialogues. H. B. Lawson then gave us a most fascinatingly interesting account of Plato's life and work.
After supper Chas E. Stansfield read from Book 7 of the "Republic" "The Cave" this reading being illustrated by a diagram kindly made and explained by F. E. Pollard. F. E. Pollard then outlined for us the main thoughts of Platos [sic] Philosophy Ideas the true reality[.] The evening concluded by T. C. Elliott reading the affecting account of Socrates death in the Phaedo. Thus came to an end a most interesting evening.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 21 Jan 1929]
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : [A brief sketch of Victor Hugo's life]
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Frances D'Arblay : The Wanderer
[Letter 24 March 1814]
'''The Wanderer'' is to be out on Monday. It is the most interesting novel I have ever read.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Allen Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Booz endormi, from La légende des siècles
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
Victor Hugo : L’Expiation (section on Waterloo)
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Misérables
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. Dorothy Brain Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer)
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-treize)
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief sketch of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French literature following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: H. B. Lawson Print: Book
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 26 Feb 1929]
'A. Meeting held at Frensham 19/3/1929 H. R. Smith in the chair
Min 1 Minutes of last read and approved
Min 2 The date of the next Meeting was fixed for Friday May 3rd at Grove House by kind invitation of Mrs Lawson[.] Mr H. B. Lawson was added to the committee
Min 3 Three short Plays of John Galsworthy were then read in parts. The first was "Hall Marked" not a great success as it depends so much on exit. [illegible word similar to ‘cutranas’] glances & backs. After supper Came "The Little Man" which was much enjoyed and finally Punch & Go which also gave much pleasure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 19 Mar 1929]
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Geoffrey Chaucer : Canterbury Tales (General Prologue)
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Prioress's Tale, from The Canterbury Tales
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Wife of Bath's Tale, from The Canterbury Tales
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
Charles Dickens : David Copperfield
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book
Charles Lamb : [a letter]
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings
Jerome K. Jerome : Three Men in a Boat
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard
Hilaire Belloc : Cautionary Tales for Children
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
Robert Graves :
'Robert Graves lent me his manuscript poems to read: some very bad, violent and repulsive. A few full of promise and real beauty. He oughtn't to publish yet.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon
Howard Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club meeting, 3 May 1929]
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Francis Pollard : [A survey of modern American literature]
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Thornton Wilder : The Bridge of San Luis Rey
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
George Santayana : [An essay on war]
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott
Sinclair Lewis : Babbitt
'A Meeting held at Broomfield June 6 1929
Geo H Burrow in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 The Subject of the evening Modern American Literature was then taken F. E. Pollard introducing us to a number of Authors in a short general Survey. Geo Burrows then read us several short examples in Verse[.]
Rosamund Wallis read two passages from "the Bridge of St Louis Rey" by Thornton Wilder[.]
Thos C. Elliott read an essay on "War" by George Santiana[.]
Chas E Stansfield read a poem "Renaissance by E. St Vincent Millay[.]
R. H. Robson gave us two readings from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
Howard Smith : [Minutes of XII Book Club meeting, 6 June 1929]
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Muriel Bowman-Smith : [letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Letter
Reginald H. Robson : [essay on a family holiday]
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
George Burrow : The Jamboree and Thoughts thereon
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : [essay on a Swiss holiday]
'A Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 25th September 1929 C. E Stansfield in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last time read and approved
2 Mrs T C Elliott was wellcomed to the club in a felicitous speech by the chairman
3 The Secretary read a letter of resignation of Membership from Muriel Bowman Smith he was directed unanimously to ask her to reconsider the matter.
[...]
7 Holiday Essays were read R H Robson a family holiday at Mort[?] Geo Burrow The Jamboree & thoughts thereon C. E. Stansfield on a Swiss Holiday whilst H M Wallis chatted on some aspects of Bordighera.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 25 Sep 1929]
'A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue 19/10/29 Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 F E Pollard then introduced "The Alcestis" of Euripides by reading from Gilbert Murray's
introduction of his translation of the play, Which was read in parts after refreshments the
parts being taken as follows
Apollo S.A. Reynolds
Thanatos C. I. Evans
Elders C. E Stansfield & Miss Brain
Choros T. C. Elliott
Handmaid Mrs Pollard
Admetus F. E. Pollard
Alcestis Mrs Elliott
Little Boy Mrs Pollard
Heracles H. R. Smith
Phaeres [sic] Geo Burrow
Servant S. A. Reynolds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
Gilbert Murray : [Introduction to his translation of Euripides’ Alcestis]
'A Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue 19/10/29 Miss E. C. Stevens in the chair
1. Minutes of last time read and approved
[...]
5 F E Pollard then introduced "The Alcestis" of Euripides by reading from Gilbert Murray's
introduction of his translation of the play, Which was read in parts after refreshments the
parts being taken as follows
Apollo S.A. Reynolds
Thanatos C. I. Evans
Elders C. E Stansfield & Miss Brain
Choros T. C. Elliott
Handmaid Mrs Pollard
Admetus F. E. Pollard
Alcestis Mrs Elliott
Little Boy Mrs Pollard
Heracles H. R. Smith
Phaeres [sic] Geo Burrow
Servant S. A. Reynolds'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
Howard Smith : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 3 Dec 1929
Meeting held at Reckitt House 27/2/30 R. H. Robson in the chair 1. Minutes of last Meeting approved 5. The subject of “Medieval Social Life” which by some strange metamorphosis had changed into “Renaissance Social Life” was then taken. Mrs T. C. Elliott read a paper on “Domestic Life in the Fifteenth Century as seen in the Paston Letters”. Alfred Rawlings read a paper on “Medieval Artists and their Methods”, illustrated by Medici reproductions of Giotto’s fresco St. “Francis: the birds”, Fra Angelico’s fresco “The Annunciation”, and Mantegna’s painting “Madonna and Child with Cherubim”[.] This was followed up by some readings anent the development of painting and the Renaissance. R. H. Robson read a paper on “Vittorino da Feltre”, a Renaissance Schoolmaster & a “Romance of Federigo, Duke of Urbino”, illustrated by a Medici card reproduction of Piero della Francesca’s portrait of Duke Federigo. Mr Burrow read extracts from Children of the Olden Time [sic] by Eliz[abe]th Godfrey particularly on the education of Royal Children.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 3 June 1930
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Notebook
George Burrow : [an account of the life of John Masefield]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge July 10th 1930
H. M. Wallis in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last meeting approved
[...]
5 The subject of John Masefield was then taken
Geo Burrow gave some account of his life
Mrs Burrow read 2 poems "Beauty" & "Posted Missing"
H. M. Wallis read from the novel Sard Harker a thrilling account of an escape from a bog.
Violet Clough read from "Midsummer Night".
After refreshments "Phillip the King" was read in parts & much enjoyed the parts being taken as
opposite.
King Phillip C. B. Castle
His Daughter the Infanta Mrs Castle
Various Ghosts Mrs Pollard
The Captain H.R. Smith
De Leyva S.A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Pierre Lanfrey : History of Napoleon I
'I have been reading Lanfrey's memoirs of Napoleon I. It is refreshing to read a Frenchman's book who cares nothing for ''la gloire''... '
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Robert Story : The Poetical Works Of Robert Story
'Dear Sir,—I have received your beautiful volume, probably the finest bit of typography that ever came before me; and have looked over it with interest and pleasure—certainly with hearty good will to the amiable and worthy brother-man who sketches out in that manner his pilgrimage through this confused world, alongside me. A certain rustic vigour of life, breezy freshness, as of the Cheviot hills; a kindly healthiness of soul breathes every where out of the book. No one that reads it, I should think, but will feel himself better for its influences. I can honestly wish success to it; and to its author, peace and comfort for the days and years that remain. With many thanks and regards, I remain, yours sincerely. T. CARLYLE.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve : Causeries du lundi (Monday Chats)
[Letter] 'I am taking to some of the St Beuve ''Causeries'', and find them very pleasant, especially anything about the time of Louis XIV always amuses me...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book, Newspaper
Charles Buxton : Notes of Thought
[Letter] 'I make C. Buxton's book quite my Bible at present. He hits so many small nails on the head that suit my feelings and opinions so exactly, and I think he is so very acute, and sometimes a little cynical to my surprise.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Robert Southey : [extracts from the "Epics" published in the "Monthly Review"]
'When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em, - a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review, and the short passages in your Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Serial / periodical, Extracts from book in periodical.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Religious Musings
'Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad that you have given up that Paper - it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your disposition.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Serial / periodical, Extracts from poems in periodical.
Victor Alexander : Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 31 May 1931
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
George Burrow : [an introduction to the topic of the Sitwells]
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : Southern Baroque Art
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Osbert or Sacheverell Sitwell :
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
Osbert or Sacheverell Sitwell :
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings
Osbert or Sacheverell Sitwell :
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield
Osbert or Sacheverell Sitwell :
'Meeting held at 70, Northcourt Avenue: 2. VI. 31 Charles E. Stansfield in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 7. The subject of the Sitwells was introduced by George Burrow who read spicy biographical extracts from Who's Who about the father Sir George Reresby, the sister Edith, and the brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. [...] Relieved by this happy if unexpected dénouement we settled ourselves in renewed confidence to listen to readings from the poetry of Edith. Alfred Rawlings read us parts of Sleeping Beauty & Celia Burrow the story of Perrine. Then for the work of Osbert and Sacheverell. H. M. Wallis gave us an amusing & tantalising paper entitled "Southern Baroque Art". This was followed by further reading from Mary Pollard, Alfred Rawlings, Charles Stansfield, & George Burrow.'
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow
Victor Alexander : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 2 June 1931
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park: 16. IX. 31. Victor Alexander in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved. [...] 4. John L. Hawkins then read us his paper on the Natural History of the neighbourhood [...] 6. After the interval Henry Marriage Wallis gave a vivid account of two or three bird nesting exploits undertaken with James Crosfield in Scotland.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Henry Marriage Wallis : [an account of two or three bird nesting exploits undertaken with James Crosfield in Scotland]
Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park: 16. IX. 31.
Victor Alexander in the chair
'Meeting held at School House, Leighton Park: 16. IX. 31.
Victor Alexander in the chair
1. Minutes of last approved.
[...]
4. John L. Hawkins then read us his paper on the Natural History of the neighbourhood
[...]
6. After the interval Henry Marriage Wallis gave a vivid account of two or three bird nesting
exploits undertaken with James Crosfield in Scotland.'
1. Minutes of last approved.
[...]
4. John L. Hawkins then read us his paper on the Natural History of the neighbourhood
[...]
6. After the interval Henry Marriage Wallis gave a vivid account of two or three bird nesting
exploits
undertaken with James Crosfield in Scotland.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 16 September 1931
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 16. X. 31. Ethel C. Stevens in the chair. 1 Minutes of last were read[...].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
William Ewart Gladstone : England's Mission
[Letter] 'The two articles in the ''Fortnightly'' by Greg and Gladstone are very striking; I think the first G. so reasonable and cool and the second so fiery and full of elan.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Serial / periodical
William Rathbone Greg : Is popular judgement in politics more just than that of the higher classes?
[Letter] 'The two articles in the ''Fortnightly'' by Greg and Gladstone are very striking; I think the first G. so reasonable and cool and the second so fiery and full of elan.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Serial / periodical
Frederic Soulie : La Lionne
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : La Comtesse de Monrion
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne, followed by La Comtesse de Monrion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Le Fils de la Folle
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne, followed by La Comtesse de Monrion... I have also read a play by him: Le Fils de la Folle.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 22 March 1932]
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
br/>[...]
4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Booklet
Francis E. Pollard : [on the spirit of cricket]
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
br/>[...]
4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Francis Thompson : ?"At Lords"
'Meeting held at Fairlight: 9 Denmark Rd. 18th April 1932.
Francis Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
br/>[...]
4. F. E. Pollard then spoke on the spirit of Cricket, telling some good anecdotes to illustrate its fun and its art, both for those who play & those who frequently see it.[...]
5. Readings were then given by Victor Alexander from Nyren, by Howard Smith from Francis Thompson, & by R. H. Robson from de Delincourt's "The Cricket Match".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 18 April 1932]
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [an outline of the career of Molière and a sketch of the life of the XVIIth Century in France]
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd, 31.5.32.
George Burrow in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last approved
[...]
6. Victor Alexander then gave an outline of the career of Molière, & a sketch of the life of the XVIIth Century in France.
[...]
7. There followed a reading of the Misanthrope - abridged - in translation. The parts were taken as follows:
Philinte Charles Stansfield
Alceste Frank Pollard
Oronte George Burrow
Célimène Rosamund Wallis
Basque Sylvanus Reynolds
Eliante Mary S. W. Pollard
Clitandre Edgar Castle
Acaste Henry M. Wallis
A Guard Victor Alexander
Arsinoë [Arsinoé] Mary E. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 31 May 1932]
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher, poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long", except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther, especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe. In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Reginald H. Robson : [a paper on the life of Goethe]
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher, poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long", except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther, especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe. In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Mary. E Robson : [a description of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther]
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher, poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long", except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther, especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe. In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : [a paper on Goethe]
Meeting held at Reckitt House, Leighton Park: 22.6.32
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of the last read. It was felt that Minute 6 needed some amplification, & Charles Stansfield was asked to do this. His more than kind amplification is appended.
[...]
8. After adjournment for supper, the Goethe evening was begun by Mary E Robson. She sang the song "Knowst thou the land". The music is by Beethoven. In this and her other songs Mary Robson was kindly accompanied by Caroline Pollard.
9. A Reading from Goethe was next given by Mary S. W. Pollard.
10. Reginald H. Robson read a paper on the life of Goethe. If there were any who had thought of Goethe exclusively as a poet, they must have been amazed at his vesitality. Philosopher, poet, statesman, scientist, he seems to have been "everything by turns and nothing long", except indeed a lover [...].
11. We had been much intrigued with Mrs Robson's description of the Sorrows of Werther, especially when our friend warned us that those who came under the spell of this book usually commited suicide after reading it. We felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Robson who had read it on our behalf, and flirted with death for our sakes, and not a little apprehensive when Janet Rawlings read us an extract from it. All passed off well, however. [...]
12. George Burrow read a song from Goethe's Gefunden.
13. Mary Robson sang "My peace is o'er" from Faust.
14. A Reading from the same play was given by Elisabeth & Victor Alexander
15. Another song "Little wild rose, wild rose red." was sung by Mary Robson.
16. Finally Charles E. Stansfield gave us his paper on Goethe. He referred to the lack of the political sense in the German people of those days, & showed Goethe as quite content to acquiesce in the paternal government of his small state. He described the influence of Herde[,] Klopstock, Lessing, Shakespeare, &, quaintly enough, of Goldsmith on Goethe. In speaking of the poet's scientific interests he told us of his discovery of the intermaxillary bone & of Goethe's ceaseless efforts to acquire truth.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 22 June 1932]
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue, 20.ix.'32.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 20 September 1932]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Francis E. Pollard : [an account of the life of Walter Scott]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Rawlings : [on Walter Scott as a poet]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : [on the later work of Walter Scott]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Walter Scott : Old Mortality
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge, Kendrick Rd., 13.x.32.
Henry M. Wallis in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
[...]
5. Francis E. Pollard then gave us an account of the life of Scott, interspersed with racy anecdotes. He gave us a lively picture of Scott's romantic outlook & of his keen historical interests.
6. Alfred Rawlings, who is endeared to us among other reasons as the stormy petrel of the Club, next launched an attack upon Scott as a poet, decrying his imperfections and slovenliness.
7. Henry M. Wallis then entertained us with the later work of Scott. Speaking as one wizard of another he almost succeeed in making us believe that he had been Scott's contemporary, & under his spell we caught something of the dazzling popularity of Scott's writings throughout the whole of Europe, and in particular of the cult for the Highlands and the Highlanders which sprang into being from his pen.
8. Towards the end of the evening we heard three readings, the first from Ivanhoe by Charles Stansfield who used the supper scenne in which Friar Tuch entertains the unknown knight, the second from the Heart of Midlothian by Frank Pollard in which Jeannie Deans pleads for her sister's life, & the third from Old Mortality by Rosamund Wallis describing the interrogation and torture inflicted upon the Covenanters.
All three readings held us enthralled, & all three papers aroused the maximum of discussion which a benevolent Chairman and a lenient hostess could allow. The time sped on beyond our usual hours, and as we took our leave we were still talking Scott.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 13 October 1932]
Meeting held at 30, Northcourt Avenue: 15.XI.32
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
5. The Secretary then performed the invidious task of putting the dozen books favoured by the Selection Committee before the Meeting.
[...]
The other seeded books then underwent their ordeal and the subsidiary list was read a first time.
[...]
Nevertheless twelve books emerged with no less than 11 votes apiece. They are:
They were defeated R. Macaulay 8/6 E. T. Alexander
The Cruel Victorians Forty Authors 8/6 H. R. Smith
Flowering Wilderness J. Galsworthy 7/6 C. E. Stansfield
The New Morality G. E. Newsom 6/- G. Burrow
Sir W. Scott[?] Buchan 9/6 G. Burrow
Strawberry Roan A. G. Street 7/6 E. D. Brain
Bonnie Prince Charlie Wickinson 12/6 R. H. Robson
Nansen Reynolds 10/6 E. D. Brain
As we are E. F. Benson 15/- E. C. Stevens
Northern Lights Chapman 18/- M. S. Stansfield
Youth looks at the World Fletcher 7/6 H. M. Wallis
Land and Labour in China Tawney 7/6 S. A. Reynolds
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 18 January 1933]
Meeting held at Reckitt House, L. P. : 17. ii. 33
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 17 February 1933]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Alfred Rawlings : [a thoughtful essay]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mignon Castle Manuscript: Unknown
Henry M. Wallis : [Of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Howard Smith : [A paper on English justice]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Reginald H. Robson : [The life and writings of John Galsworthy]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Manuscript: Unknown
Edgar Castle : The English - are they modest?
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : [Safety First]
Meeting held at Fairlight, Denmark Rd.: 21.iii.33
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. Eight anonymous essays were then read. In some of these the subject treated or the style of the author made recognition comparatively easy, but others were provocative of much ingenious speculation. A paper on English Justice proved to be the most discussed during the interval. Rival tipsters gave in confidence the names of Mrs. Stansfield & Robert Pollard as the author, one of them purporting to recognize - or coming perilously close to so doing - Mrs. Stansfield’s opinion of her fellow magistrates, while the other detected just that ingenious combination of Fascism and Bolshevism that Robert Pollard would enjoy putting up for the Club’s mystification. Further conflicting theories attributed the authorship to Henry Marriage Wallis or Howard Smith, & this last proved correct[....]
Another essay which stirred debate told of a medium, a photograph, a Twentieth Century Officer & a suit of medieval armour. It was told with that precision of detail that marks either the experienced writer of fiction or the worshipper of truth. And as if to darken counsel there was an open allusion to Bordighera. Suspicious though we were, & in spite of every appearance of our being right, we adhered to the view that the author must be H. M. Wallis.
Time & space do not allow adequate record of all the papers, but it must be mentioned that three of the eight came from the Rawlings family: a thoughtful essay by Alfred Rawlings needed a second reading if it were to be seriously discussed, some interesting reminiscences by Helen Rawlings made very good hearing, & Moroccan memories by Janet helped to make a most varied programme.
Other essays were "Safety First" by Charles E. Stansfield, and "The English - are they modest? " by Edgar Castle, both of which added some humorous touches to the evening.
A list of essayists, & their readers, follows.
Mrs Castle read a paper by Alfred Rawlings
Janet Rawlings read a paper by Helen Rawlings
Charles Stansfield read a paper by Henry M. Wallis
Reginald Robson read a paper by Howard Smith
George Burrow read a paper by Reginald Robson
Alfred Rawlings read a paper by Edgar Castle
Howard Smith read a paper by Janet Rawlings
Mrs Pollard read a paper by Charles E. Stansfield.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 21 March 1933
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Dorothy Brain : [on old Berkshire Ballads]
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : [an introduction to 'Sumer Is Icumen In']
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Francis E. Pollard : [a short account of the life and work of Mary Russell Mitford]
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Mary Russell Mitford : 'The Gypsy', from Our Village
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time & space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from "Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 16 Feb 1934]
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : Newcomers to Reading
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Marriage Wallis : My dear Twelve
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : Canaries
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Unknown, Notebook
Dorothy Brain : Hors d’Oeuvres
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Russell Brain : Spoonbill
Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Av, 20.3.34.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved, in the teeth of one dissident.
[...]
5. We then proceeded to the anonymous essays and members felt on excellent terms with themselves at the prospect of hearing some attractive reading and of eluding or inflicting a good hoax or two.
The first essay opened discreetly without title on the theme of “Newcomers to Reading”, going on to a description of the neighbourhood, its beauties its quaint place names and historical associations. […]
6. Next came a paper on “Uniforms”. The writer was considered by one or two to show the observation of the masculine mind and the style of the feminine. […]
7. Then came a letter to "My dear Twelve" written with the unmistakeable touch of the practised writer. […]
8. We listened, too, with equal interest to a paper called “Canaries”, telling us something of the progress and perambulations of our latest migrant members. Moreover two or three of our number were able to follow their doings with particular appreciation, having mad much the same trip themselves. […]
9. All of us were a good deal non plussed by “Hors d’Oeuvres”, an essay not inappropriately named, for it contained a perplexing mixture of fare, and certainly stimulated our appetite. […]
10. Hardly less difficult was “Glastonbury”. Many of us had visited it, and so were able to follow closely the author’s points. But few of us knew enough of its history and legend to be sure whether or no our one professional historian had set his wits before us. So we gave up reasoning and just guessed. […]
11. Finally we heard “Spoonbill”. It was a noteworthy paper, combining the love of the naturalist for the birds he watches with the craft of the writer in the language he uses. […]
12. Here is the complete list. —
“Newcomers to Reading” by H. R. Smith, read by F. E. Pollard
“Uniforms” by Janet Rawlings, read by Elizabeth Alexander
“My dear Twelve” by H. M. Wallis, read by S. A. Reynolds
“Canaries” by C. E. Stansfield, read by Dorothy Brain
“Hors d’Oeuvres” by Dorothy Brain, read by R. H. Robson
“Glastonbury” by Mrs Goadby, read by H. R. Smith
“The Spoonbill” by W. Russell Brain, read by Mrs. Robson
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 20 March 1934]
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: XII Book Club Manuscript: Notebook
Howard Smith : [An account of the life of William Morris]
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Percy Corder : The Life of Robert Spence Watson
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Reginald H. Robson : [On the artistic and socialist aspects of William Morris’s work]
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Unknown
[Acting secretary of the XII Book Club] : Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 20 April 1934
Meeting held at 9 Denmark Road, 20 IV. 1934
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved with one correction, in the absence of the secretary.
[...]
4. Howard R. Smith told us of Morris’s life. The meeting gasped with unanimity and amazement to learn that he (Morris i.e.) had read all the Waverley novels by the age of seven; we gathered that the background of his life had been a blend of Epping Forest & shares in a coppermine, and that his appearance accounted for his lifelong nickname of Topsy. Of his friendships, his labours to restore beauty to Victorian homes, to prevent vandals from restoring cathedrals & other ancient monuments, his Kelmscott Press, his poems & prose romances, his turning to Socialism as the only way to a society in which men would find happiness in sound and beautiful work – of all these things and many more which made up his extraordinarily full and fruitful life, it is impossible to make a summary.
5. Mary S. W. Pollard read a short extract from Percy Corder’s life of Robert Spence Watson telling of a visit of Wm Morris to Bensham Grove. Members afterwards inspected his signature in the Visitors’ book.
6. Ethel C. Stevens read an interesting account of Kelmscott Manor, revealing other sides of this vigorous and many sided personality.
7. R. H. Robson gathered together the artistic & socialist aspects of Morris’s work, emphasised the greatness of the man, & read extracts from MacKail’s Biography. It was clear that Morris would wish to cancel out the last four hundred years & start again on different lines. Time was wanting to reveal all the varieties of opinion that this might have elicited, & we parted in united awe at the mans capacity for work, & his important contributions to our life & ideals.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 14 May 1935]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital, Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Marjorie C. Cole : [letter expressing interest in the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital, Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Howard Smith : [A paper on the early history of London]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 18. 6. 35.
Charles E. Stansfield in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. The Secretary then read a letter from Marjorie C. Cole, expressing her interest in the Book Club and offering us a book “Gone Rambling” by Cecil Roberts which she had recently read with enjoyment. [...]
[...]
6. The large subject of London was then opened by Howard Smith. He spoke of the extraordinary insistence of the divergent views as its origin, leaning to the opinion that it owed its beginnings to to a variety of causes.
[...]
7. Extracts from Defoe’s Journal of the Great Plague were then read by Victor Alexander.
[...]
8. From Defoe we turned to Pepys, and Reginald Robson described the Great Fire.
[...]
9. We next enjoyed a delightful picture of old London which Edith Goadby gave us, making the acquaintance of Gabriel Bardon the locksmith, his pretty daughter Dolly and Simon the apprentice. It was all too short, but at least we left them happily seated before their jolly round of beef, their Yorkshire cake and quaintly shaped jug of ale.
10. A further scene was depicted for us by Ethel Stevens, old Crosby Hall, Chelsea Hospital, Cheyne walk as it used to be, and Carlyle’s house, where he entertained Tennyson in the kitchen. We were introduced to John Stuart Mill and his great concern over the loss of his fiend’s manuscript of the French Revolution, and we took glimpses at William de Morgan + Sir Thomas More.
11. Finally Charles Stansfield read us Wordsworth’s Sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, and Henry Marriage Wallis quoted happily ten lines from William Morris.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Bridges : The Spirit of Man
'More enduring [than the chocolates sent by Eden's mother, which were eaten by rats] was a copy of Robert Bridge's The Spirit of Man, sent to me by my cousin Violet Dickinson who alone among my family had an unerring instinct for the present which would delight one most ... the Bridges anthology, which naturally contained much that was a revelation to a nineteen-year-old boy, made a perfect retreat for the sensibilities. Battered now, it still has a place in my library.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Anthony Eden Print: Book
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev :
'I ordered a Russian grammar from home. For some reason nearly all the translations of Russian writers in those days, at least in the Windlestone library [at Windlestone Hall, Durham, the Eden family's country seat], were into French. The single exception was Constance Garnett's brilliant translations of Turgenev. In my last visits to Windlestone and encouraged by my father, I had broken into the Russian novelists who soon proved a joyous revelation to me. It was then that I made up my mind to read them in their own language. Even an adjutant could find time heavy on his hands in winter in Flanders. My plan was to snatch at least an hour's study every day and in addition to learn by heart some grammar exercise every morning while shaving. I persevered for many weeks but then had to accept disappointment at my slow rate of progress.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Anthony Eden Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 18 June 1935]
Meeting held at School House, L. P. : 13.9.35
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Reginald H. Robson : The Excursion – Saturday July 13th. 1935: Byways of the Chiltern Hills
Meeting held at School House, L. P. : 13.9.35
Francis E. Pollard in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. Account of the Excursion, contributed by R. H. Robson, read and approved.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Manuscript: Notebook, with photographs of the excursion pasted alongside the text.
Charles Lutwidge Dodson : Alice Adventures in Wonderland
'On the whole my experience of being read to by my parents was not a success. Alice in Wonderland was spoiled by my constant habit of asking questions and my intolerance of frustration. The mouse's tail made me feel, well, like the animals. Why was it dry? Who was Fury? Why? What was he furious about? Why did the mouse's tail get smaller later? Yes, but why do mice's tails...? My father was torn between the desire to be patient and the wish to get on with the book. "It gets better later", he said, but it did not.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Print: Book
Frederick W. Farrar : Eric, or, Little by Little
'On Wednesdays the bells of St. Michael's Church on the neighbouring hill pealed for a service or, as some said, "choir practice". They filled me with dread, a reminder of Sunday yet to come. In Eric or Little by Little which I had begun to read, the bell was always tolling. Or the World of School it said, and in that school it seemed that the boys died off like flies.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Print: Book
Frederick W. Farrar : Eric, or, Little by Little
'Religion was a sore trial ... Dean Farrar contributed to my suspicion of God, and my suspicion of God — "I haven't done anything; really I haven't" — gave ghastly reality to Eric's school in which the mortality should have attracted the attention of authority.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : The Wife of Sir Eric Harman
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : Anne Veronica
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Herbert George Wells : The Wife of Sir Eric Harman
'C. [David Lloyd George] is in very good spirits after a week-end rest. Yesterday I went down to W.H. [Walton Heath] & spent the afternoon with him, & we had a jolly time. We have both been reading Wells' last book The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman and C. thinks it is his most brilliant work. Wells has modified his views considerably, though, since he wrote Anne Veronica!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
Victor Hugo : Les Miserables
'"I think it was Victor Hugo's book Les Miserables that decided me to do what I could to alleviate the distress and suffering of the poor. That story gives you such a vivid picture of the under side of life, all the wretched & sordid details of the troubles of the poor -- troubles that could be lessened."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
Henrik Ibsen : A Doll's House
'C. [David Lloyd George] says that Ibsen's Doll's House was the work that converted him to woman suffrage, & presented the woman's point of view to him.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
George Meredith : The Egoist
'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman — the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
George Meredith : The Egoist
'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman -- the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson Print: Book
Francis E. Pollard : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 21 April 1937]
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [A paper on Jane Austen’s life and literary style]
Meeting held at 30 Northcourt Avenue: 21.4.37.
Ethel C. Stevens in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
6. V. W. Alexander read a paper on Jane Austen, half biographical sketch & half an appreciation of her style.
7. F. E. Pollard quoted from Lucy Harrison’s Literary Papers some telling and illuminating remarks, particularly about Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
8. Readings were then given
from Northanger Abbey by Celia Burrows
from Persuasion by Rosamund Wallis
from Sense and Sensibility by Francis & Mary Pollard
from Love and Friendship by Elizabeth Alexander
from Pride and Prejudice by Victor Alexander
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Charles E. Stansfield : [a biographical sketch of Percy Bysshe Shelley with an estimate of his views and character]
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ode to the West Wind
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth T. Alexander
Percy Bysshe Shelley : Adonaïs
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander
Victor Alexander : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 21 April 1937
Meeting held at School House, L.P. :- 28. v. 37.
C. E. Stanfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
4. Charles Stansfield then read a biographical sketch of Shelley, followed by an estimate of Shelley’s views and character.
5. Readings were then given by the following
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Mary Pollard
Prometheus Unbound by Reginald Robson
Ode to the West Wind by Elizabeth Alexander
Adonaïs by Victor Alexander.
These were all discussed; and a further short reading, from William Watson’s poetry, was given by Alfred Rawlings.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 5 May 1937]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Henry Marriage Wallis : [a paper on witchcraft]
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Manuscript: Unknown
Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho!
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Print: Book
Mary Webb : Precious Bane
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
UnknownCentury: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 3 July 1937]
Meeting held at Hillsborough :- 14. 9. 37.
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
2. Charles Stansfield then introduced the momentous question of the evening. Was the Book Club to end its existence? He had felt for some time that it was moribund. [...]
He referred to E. B. Castle who shared his concern and to a letter which he believed had been
written to the Secretary by E. B. Castle.
3. The Secretary then read this; it supported the opinions expressed by C. E. Stansfield.
4. The subject was then discussed informally.
[...]
9. We then turned to the work of Barrie. Howard Smith gave us a chat – he would not call it a paper – on the plays he had seen.
[...]
A considerable part of “What every woman knows” was then read in which a number of people
took part.
Charles Stansfield appropriately gave a reading from My Lady Nicotine.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Edgar Castle : [Letter to the Secretary of the XII Book Club]
Meeting held at Hillsborough :- 14. 9. 37.
Reginald H. Robson in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
2. Charles Stansfield then introduced the momentous question of the evening. Was the Book Club to end its existence? He had felt for some time that it was moribund. [...]
He referred to E. B. Castle who shared his concern and to a letter which he believed had been
written to the Secretary by E. B. Castle.
3. The Secretary then read this; it supported the opinions expressed by C. E. Stansfield.
4. The subject was then discussed informally.
[...]
9. We then turned to the work of Barrie. Howard Smith gave us a chat – he would not call it a paper – on the plays he had seen.
[...]
A considerable part of “What every woman knows” was then read in which a number of people
took part.
Charles Stansfield appropriately gave a reading from My Lady Nicotine.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford : [article on submarine warfare in the "Weekly Dispatch"]
'Do you read Blatchford in the Weekly Despatch? He is very good this week on "The Danger of the Submarine" and warns us again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry William Williamson Print: Newspaper
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club (those not relating to the future of the club) 14 September 1937]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club (those relating to the future of the club) 14 September 1937]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Edgar and Mignon Castle : [Letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Dorothy Brain : [Letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Victor Alexander : [A brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Unknown
Victor Alexander : [A review of We were Seven, by William Fryer Harvey]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander
William Fryer Harvey : Laughter and Ghosts
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : Caprimulgus
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth T. Alexander Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : August Heat
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : Patience
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Rawlings Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : Laughter and Ghosts
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : Laughter and Ghosts
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
William Fryer Harvey : The Tortoise
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Edgar and Mignon Castle : [Letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Dorothy Brain : [Letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at Whinfell, Upper Redlands Rd. 23.10.’37
Alfred Rawlings in the Chair
1. The Secretary asked permission to reserve the reading of some of the minutes until after the literary part of the programme had been taken, as these minutes would bear directly upon the discussion which would necessarily follow as to the future of the Club. This permission was given and the other minutes were then read and approved.
2. Victor Alexander then gave a brief account of the career of William Fryer Harvey, followed by an appreciation and review of “We were Seven” which he had previously written for the Bootham Magazine.
3. Helen Rawlings read several of Harvey’s poems from the volume “Laughter and Ghosts[”].
4. Elizabeth T. Alexander read a chapter from “Caprimulgus”.
5. Frank Pollard read “August Heat” from Midnight House.
6. Janet Rawlings read “Patience” from Quaker Byways.
7. Charles E. Stansfield read two more poems from “Laughter and Ghosts”
8. Howard R. Smith read “The Tortoise” from Midnight House.
9. The Secretary then read the minutes referring to last time’s discussion on the Club’s future, and also two letters of resignation. These were from Edgar and Mignon Castle and from Dorothy Brain.
10. Discussion then followed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of meeting of the XII Book Club held 23 October 1937]
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Laurence Housman : Victoria Regina
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
Laurence Housman : Victoria Regina
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book
Laurence Housman : Victoria Regina
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Laurence Housman : Victoria Regina
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel C. Stevens Print: Book
Laurence Housman : Victoria Regina
'Meeting held 219 King’s Road: 27. 11. 37.
L. Dorothea Taylor in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
2. A number of scenes from Victoria Regina were then read. The young Queen’s part was read by Rosamund Wallis who abdicated later in favour of Celia Burrow. The Duchess of Kent was read by Ethel Stevens, and Francis Pollard was Prince Albert. Other members took subsidiary parts.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Un-named members of the XI Book Club Print: Book
Victor Alexander : [Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 27 Nov 1937]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Victor Alexander : [letter acknowledging receipt of letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Manuscript: Letter, Notebook
Victor Alexander : [letter acknowledging receipt of letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Castle Manuscript: Letter, Notebook
Victor Alexander : [letter acknowledging receipt of letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mignon Castle Manuscript: Letter
Victor Alexander : [letter acknowledging receipt of letter of resignation from the XII Book Club]
'Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
C. E. Stansfield in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. It should have been mentioned in last meeting’s minutes that the Secretary was asked to write to Dorothy Brain and to Edgar & Mignon Castle acknowledging their letters of resignation. [...] This was duly done and all three offered their best wishes for the Club’s happy continuance.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Manuscript: Letter
Sinclair Lewis : Dodsworth
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
[...]
6. The evening was completed by the reading of extracts from the works of various authors who
had recently been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. In the interests of truth it should
perhaps be mentioned that the reading from French and Russian authors were given from English
translations.
R. H. Robson read from Dodsworth by Sinclair S. Lewis
Mary S. W. Pollard [read from] The Village [by] Ivan Bunin
L. Dorothea Taylor [read from] All God’s Chillun Got Wings [by] Eugene E. O'Neill
H. R. Smith [read from] Les Thibault by Roger M. du Gard
S. A Reynolds [read from] White Monkey [by] J. Galsworthy
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
Roger Martin du Gard : Les Thibault
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue: 14. 12. 37
[...]
6. The evening was completed by the reading of extracts from the works of various authors who
had recently been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. In the interests of truth it should
perhaps be mentioned that the reading from French and Russian authors were given from English
translations.
R. H. Robson read from Dodsworth by Sinclair S. Lewis
Mary S. W. Pollard [read from] The Village [by] Ivan Bunin
L. Dorothea Taylor [read from] All God’s Chillun Got Wings [by] Eugene E. O'Neill
H. R. Smith [read from] Les Thibault by Roger M. du Gard
S. A Reynolds [read from] White Monkey [by] J. Galsworthy
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Victor Alexander : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 14 Dec 1937
Meeting held at St. Margaret’s, Shinfield Road: 20. 1. 38.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
6. C. E. Stansfield opened the proceedings on Æ [A-E ligature, the name adopted by George William Russell] by a detailed biographical sketch of some length, in the course of which we gained some idea of the contradictions and complexities of A. E.’s character. [...] An interesting personal touch was added to the sketch by F. E. Pollard who had been present at one of Æ’s “salon” receptions.
7. Extracts from A. E’s prose were then read by Mary S. W. Pollard on “Gandhi,” and by F. E. Pollard on “The one dimensional mind”.
8. Finally F. E. Pollard and V. W. Alexander read three of A.E.’s poems.
9. By this time most of us were more than ready for a little lighter matter, and we thoroughly appreciated some delightful touches from The Tinker’s Wedding by Synge which Rosamund Wallis gave with evident relish.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Charles E. Stansfield : [A detailed biographical sketch of Æ (AE, or George William Russell)]
Meeting held at St. Margaret’s, Shinfield Road: 20. 1. 38.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
6. C. E. Stansfield opened the proceedings on Æ [A-E ligature, the name adopted by George William Russell] by a detailed biographical sketch of some length, in the course of which we gained some idea of the contradictions and complexities of A. E.’s character. [...] An interesting personal touch was added to the sketch by F. E. Pollard who had been present at one of Æ’s “salon” receptions.
7. Extracts from A. E’s prose were then read by Mary S. W. Pollard on “Gandhi,” and by F. E. Pollard on “The one dimensional mind”.
8. Finally F. E. Pollard and V. W. Alexander read three of A.E.’s poems.
9. By this time most of us were more than ready for a little lighter matter, and we thoroughly appreciated some delightful touches from The Tinker’s Wedding by Synge which Rosamund Wallis gave with evident relish.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Manuscript: Unknown
George William Russell : Gandhi
Meeting held at St. Margaret’s, Shinfield Road: 20. 1. 38.
F. E. Pollard in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
6. C. E. Stansfield opened the proceedings on Æ [A-E ligature, the name adopted by George William Russell] by a detailed biographical sketch of some length, in the course of which we gained some idea of the contradictions and complexities of A. E.’s character. [...] An interesting personal touch was added to the sketch by F. E. Pollard who had been present at one of Æ’s “salon” receptions.
7. Extracts from A. E’s prose were then read by Mary S. W. Pollard on “Gandhi,” and by F. E. Pollard on “The one dimensional mind”.
8. Finally F. E. Pollard and V. W. Alexander read three of A.E.’s poems.
9. By this time most of us were more than ready for a little lighter matter, and we thoroughly appreciated some delightful touches from The Tinker’s Wedding by Synge which Rosamund Wallis gave with evident relish.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Pollard Print: Book
Victor Alexander : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 20 Jan 1938
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
Benjamin Robert Haydon : Autobiography
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret L. LLoyd Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : Autobiography
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : Autobiography
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book
Benjamin Robert Haydon : Autobiography
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have
been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts
& Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions
contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by
a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly
likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the
respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...].
This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to
the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and
members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A
time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red
William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s
Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd
remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those
English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Moore Print: Book
Kurt Von Stutterheim : Those English!
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Kurt Von Stutterheim : Those English!
February 15th was the date chosen for the next time and the subject “Books that people have been reading”
Meeting held at Oakdene: Northcourt Av.–15.2.38 Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read and approved
[...]
4. The first reading came from Reginald Robson who gave us an amusing extract from “Beasts & Superbeasts” by H. H. Munro
5. Mary S. Stansfield read from “Lawrence by his Friends” some interesting impressions contributed by some of these friends to a book edited by Lawrence’s brother. One passage by a man who knew Lawrence as a fellow aircraftman gave us a picture of him as a thoroughly likeable and popular hero, admired for his prowess as a motorcyclist.
6. Howard L. Sikes then read from Africa View by Julian Huxley. The passage concerned the respective advantages of Indirect and Direct Rule[...]. This reading produced considerable discussion on the same questions, and spread over on to the attitude of the French and the British toward their African dependant peoples, and members found something to ask or to say about almost every corner of Africa[...].
7. Elizabeth T. Alexander followed with an entertaining reading from Halliday Sutherland’s “A time to keep”. We shall carry in our minds for some time the dramatic appearance of Red William in his nightshirt urging the ladies in evening dress to run for their lives.
8. Roger Moore gave us some excellent fun in his reading from Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Autobiography, and we made some discoveries about Charles Lamb and Wordsworth too.
9. F. E. Pollard, greatly daring, then read from the “Comments of Bagshott” [sic] some shrewd remarks about the male and female of the human species[...].
10. H. R. Smith completed the programme with some well chosen paragraphs from “Those English” by Carl [i.e. Curt] von Stutterheim.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis E. Pollard Print: Book
Victor Alexander : Minutes of the meeting of the XII Book Club held 15 Feb 1938
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Notebook
George A. Birmingham : Spanish Gold
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
George A. Birmingham : Spanish Gold
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Preface to John Bull’s Other Island
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge: 14.3.38.
1. Minutes of last read and approved.
[...]
4. Readings from Irish Literature were then given as follows:-
C. E. Stansfield from G. A. Birmingham’s “Spanish Gold”;
H. R. Smith from a story about an illicit still;
Mary Robson from the preface of Bernard Shaw’s “John Bull’s Other Island;”
Rosamund Wallis[;]
Victor Alexander from Ross and Somerville’s “An Irish R.M.”[;]
Elsie Sikes from ? some Irish Bulls
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary E. Robson Print: Book
Robert Curzon : Visits to Monasteries in the Lavant
'Another sharp frost and thick fog this morning. Reading Curzon's Monasteries in the Lavant which Meiklejohn sent me at Christmas. More amusing than Eothen, but Doughty's Arabia Deserta spoils one for every other book of that sort.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Siegfried Sassoon Print: Book
Frederic Harrison : Theophano: The Crusade of the Tenth Century
'After a stormy passage I find myself once more at Alexandria and Sheyk Obeyd. During the voyage I read Frederick [sic] Harrison's novel which he has just published, a strange mixture of historic fact of the most interesting kind, and melodrama of the most conventional. The romantic episodes will not, I think, redound to Harrison's philosophic fame, for it is naively unreal, but these take up but a few pages, and might as well have been omitted altogether, while the historic background is vigorous and well told, only, as in every historical novel, the parts that are true ought to be printed in sober type, the parts untrue in red.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Print: Book
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt : The Shame of the Nineteenth Century: A Letter Addressed to the "Times"
'With Cockerell to Parkstone to see Alfred Russel Wallace, the Grand Old Man of Science ... He complimented me on my pamphlet, "The Shame of the XIXth Century" and expressed strong views on the pauperization of India. There was a number of the paper "Light" lying on his table, and I asked him if he still adhered to his belief in spiritualism, and he said very postively that he had not receded from it in the smallest degree.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Russel Wallace
Ralph Milbanke : Astarte: A Fragment of Truth Concerning Lord Byron
'Lunched with Ralph [Milbanke]. He has decided at last to publish the great Byron secret, and has drawn up the case against Byron and Mrs. Leigh in the form of a book called "Astarte." This is very ably done, but to my mind is marred by an introduction violently attacking Murray, the publisher, with whom he has quarrelled over Murray's recent edition of Byron's Works. I shall endeavour to get him to modify this; indeed, I think the whole thing might without much injustice to Lady Byron's memory be let to sleep. It is an ugly story, however told.''
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Manuscript: Unknown
Margaret Oliphant : Squire Arden?
'I bought for 3s. a novel by Mrs Oliphant, ''An English Squire'', with the same irritable young man one knows so well. A very clever description of the feelings of a widow on losing a dull husband she did not much care for...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Unknown
'I am wading through Emerson, as I really wanted to know what transcendentalism means, and I think that it is that intuition is before reason (or facts). It certainly does not suit Wedgwoods, who never have any intuitions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling :
'Talking of slang, the Tommies' name for England is "Blighty". This puzzled me for a bit, till I remembered one of Kipling's stories in which [italics]"Belait"[end italics] occurs as a Hindustanee word for Europe. I suppose they brought it from India.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Book
George William Russell : "Shadows and Lights"
'I have just come across these lines by A. E., which I like, because the stars are your only companions on sentry duty in the trenches; and they seem filled with majesty and peace, as does the sunrise too [quotes stanza five of A. E.'s poem "Shadows and Lights"].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Douglas Herbert Bell Print: Unknown
Henry Jones : Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher
'This last week many little amenities have softened our lot; after a fornight's detention we had the good fortune to have our grand-motherly sergeant as chief of the guard. In our recent tour of the home counties under his superintendence we had established a certain authority over him by reason of his dependence upon us for remembering his documents, catching trains, and most principally, not losing ourselves! Thanks to this moral ascendancy, we were able to raid our kits and get almost anything we wanted — toilet things and books were the greatest desiderata — and since then I have been enjoying Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher. I hope to finish this and then do Sartor again, so as to take Browning's and Carlyle's philosophies of life with me to think over during the Scrubs [detention] months.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Richard Weymouth : The Naval, Military and Village Hymn Book
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Walther Rauschenbusch : Christianity and the Social Crisis
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Harry Emerson Fosdick : The Meaning of Prayer
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Harry Emerson Fosdick : The Manhood of the Master
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Charles Hugo : ?German Grammar Simplified
'The sergeant of the guard one day asked me to lend him a book to read. I said I was afraid I'd nothing he'd care for, but I'd look. This was my Detention Cell Library: Fellowship Hymn Book and Weymouth; Rauschenbusch Christianity and the Social Crisis; The Meaning of Prayer, The Manhood of the Master, and Prayers for Students (S.C.M.); Otto's and Hugo's German grammars; Luther's Testament, and Goethe's Faust!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book
Charlotte Mary Yonge :
'My mother had a school-board pupil-teacher to read aloud to her during part of the winter; she wrote: ''I embarked with her in such a frivolous novel all about flirtations and lovers that I have changed it for Miss Yonge — all about scarlet-fever and drains.'''
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Charles Waldstein : The Work of John Ruskin: Its influence on Modern Thought and Life.
''I have been reading Waldstein's ''Ruskin''. The admiring part I did not feel up to, but the chapter on social questions delights me as speaking so strongly of his narrow want of sympathy...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
'Steady downpour all day long. Weather is worse than we get in England. No wonder Uncle Toby in [italics] Tristram Shandy [end italics] said "our armies swore terribly in Flanders". They had the same sort of weather and probably less comfort.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert John Martin Print: Book
Siegfried Sassoon : Counter-Attack and Other Poems
'Received a parcel from Elsie containing tobacco (most welcome), papers and a little book of war poems called [italics] Counter-attack [end italics] by Siegfried Sassoon. Very good and very outspoken, revealing things as they actually are, not as they are represented by the daily press. They will do old Glasspoole's heart good when he reads them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert John Martin Print: Book
Robert Browning : "The Wanderers"
'... as we drifted gaily down the sparkling river [Tigris] in perfect autumnal weather, I thought of Browning's [italics] Wanderers [end italics] .... For on my kelek I had my [italics] Book of Verses [end italics], my Loaf of Bread and even my Jug of Wine and I only lacked some visionary "Thou" beside me.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Collis Spackman Print: Book
Erskine Childers : The Riddle of the Sands
'Shaved, breakfast - porridge, bread & butter, tea. Read "The Mystery of the Sands" [sic]. Dinner of roast beef, cabbage & potatoes, rice. Slept a little. Head shaved, wound dressed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
Gertrude Page : The Edge o' Beyond
'Read. Received kit. Read "The Edge o' Beyond". Inoculated.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
Robert W. Service : Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
'Read "Barbe of Grand Bayon". Wound dressed. Head finished. Bath, read, cut dressings. Read "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
Henry Seton Merriman : Barlasch of the Guard
'Read ... "Barlash [sic] of the Guard". Dressed & sat by the fire. Dominoes.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
Gilbert Parker : An Adventure of the North
'Read "An Adventure of the North".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
George Otto Trevelyan : The Life and Letters of Lord Macauley
'Matheson is reading ''Macauley's Life'' to me, and his letters are delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell : Cranford
'My reader is a great success. It is ''Cranford'', and ''D-n Dr Johnson'' comes in. She stopped dead and said ''a slang expression''. I can't perceive she is ever amused.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
Mrs Humphry Ward : The Coryston Family
'Read "The Coryston Family". Was again fitted with a uniform. Wrote to Mrs Davies.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Ernest Maltravers
'Still here [in camp] doing nothing and enjoying books. One book Ernest Maltravers by Lytton has impressed me very much.'
