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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Kenneth Grahame

 

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Kenneth Grahame : The Wind in the Willows

For some reason we were never confronted with the famous animal books in childhood -neither "The Wind in the Willows" nor "Winne-the-Pooh", nor any Beatrix Potter -and when I did meet the works of Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne, at the age of twelve or thirteen, I was past them to the extent that I read from a height, like a connoisseur, with no involvement, accepting with sophistication rather than naivety the clothing, the speecg and the human motives of the animals.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer      Print: Book

  

Kenneth Grahame : [probably The Wind in the Willows etc]

'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

  

Kenneth Grahame : Dream Days

[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

  

Kenneth Grahame : The Wind in the Willows

'I had not heard of "Wind in the Willows" until I read it during the summer holiday of my seventeenth year!'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson      Print: Book

  

Kenneth Grahame : Golden Age

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

  

Kenneth Grahame : 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

 

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