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

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William Dean Howells : 

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

  

Howitt : 

"As an errand-boy I had, of course, many hardships to undergo, and to bear with much tyranny; and that led me into reasoning upon men and things, the causes of misery, the anomalies of our societary state, politics &tc., and the circle of my being rapidly out-surged. New power came to me with all that I saw and thought and read. I studied political works, - such as Paine, Volney, Howitt, Louis Blanc, &tc, which gave me another element to mould into my verse, though I am convinced that a poet must sacrifice much if he write party-political poetry."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Massey      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : "A Pedestrian Tour"

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

  

William Dean Howells : A Chance Acquaintance (fifth part)

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 22 June 1873: "I heard from my mother a day or two since that your book is having a sale -- bless it! I haven't yet seen the last part ... Your fifth part I extremely relished ... Kitty [character] is a creation. I have envied you greatly, as I read, the delight of feeling her grow so real and complete ..."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : A Chance Acquaintance

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 9 September 1873, regarding Howells's A Chance Acquaintance (just published): "I had great pleasure in reading it over ... [goes on to praise in detail]"

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : review of Henry James, A Passionate Pilgrim

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 19 or 26 March 1875: "I read this morning your notice of A Passionate Pilgrim ... If kindness could kill I should be safely out of the reach of ever challenging your ingenuity again."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Dean Howells : The Minister's Charge

Henry James to Wiliam Dean Howells, 7 December 1886: "The last thing I did before leaving London three days and a half ago was to purchase 'Lemuel Barker' ... and though I laid him down twenty-four hours ago I am still full of the sense of how he beguiled and delighted and illumined my way. The beauties of nature passed unheeded and the St. Gotthard tunnel, where I had a reading lamp, was over in a shriek. The book is so awfully good that my perusal of it was one uninterrupted Bravo."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : article

Henry James to William James, 5 October 1887 (in letter begun 1 October 1887): "I hadn't seen ... [W. D. Howells's] 'tribute' in the September Harper, but I have just looked it up."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Dean Howells : A Hazard of New Fortunes vol 1

Henry James to William Dean Howells, from Milan, 17 May 1890: " ... I have been reading the Hazard of New Fortunes ... it has filled me with communicable rapture ... I read the first volume just before I left London -- and the second, which I began the instant I got into the train at Victoria, made me wish immensely that both it and the journey to Bale and thence were formed to last longer."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : A Hazard of New Fortunes vol 2

Henry James to William Dean Howells, from Milan, 17 May 1890: " ... I have been reading the Hazard of New Fortunes ... it has filled me with communicable rapture ... I read the first volume just before I left London -- and the second, which I began the instant I got into the train at Victoria, made me wish immensely that both it and the journey to Bale and thence were formed to last longer."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : The Lady of the Aroostook

Henry James to W. D. Howells, 7 April 1879: "The amazingly poor little notice of your novel in the last (at least my last) Nation, makes me feel that I must no longer delay to ... tell you with what high relish and extreme appreciation I have read it. (I wish you had sent it to me ... I have had to go and buy it -- for eight terrible shillings ...)"

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Wiliam Dean Howells : The Undiscovered Country

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 18 April 1880: "I read your current novel with pleasure, but I don't think the subject fruitful, and I suspect that much of the public will agree with me."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Unknown

  

William Dean Howells : The Undiscovered Country

Henry James to Wiliam Dean Howells, 20 July 1880; "I am much obliged to you for the pretty volume of the Undiscovered, which I immediately read with greater comfort and consequence than in the magazine."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Wiliam Dean Howells : Dr. Breen's Practice

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 4 October 1881, on Howells's new story, Dr Breen's Practice: "I won't forego the pleasure of letting you know ... what satisfaction the history of your Doctress gives me. I came back last night from a month in Scotland, and found the October Atlantic on my table; whereupon, though weary with travel I waked early this morning on purpose to read your contribution in bed -- in my little London-dusky back-bedroom, where I can never read at such hours without a pair of candles."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Dean Howells : Ragged Lady

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 29 June 1900: '[...] I've been, of late, reading you again as continuously as possible [...] the result of "Ragged Lady", the "Silver Journey", the "Pursuit of the Piano" and two or three other things (none wrested from your inexorable hand, but paid for from scant earnings) has been, ever so many times over, an impulse of reaction, of an intensely cordial sort'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : Their Silver Wedding Journey

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 29 June 1900: '[...] I've been, of late, reading you again as continuously as possible [...] the result of "Ragged Lady", the "Silver Journey", the "Pursuit of the Piano" and two or three other things (none wrested from your inexorable hand, but paid for from scant earnings) has been, ever so many times over, an impulse of reaction, of an intensely cordial sort'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : 'Pursuit of the Piano' (short story)

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 29 June 1900: '[...] I've been, of late, reading you again as continuously as possible [...] the result of "Ragged Lady", the "Silver Journey", the "Pursuit of the Piano" and two or three other things (none wrested from your inexorable hand, but paid for from scant earnings) has been, ever so many times over, an impulse of reaction, of an intensely cordial sort'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Unknown

  

William Dean Howells : A Pair of Patient Lovers

Henry James to William Dean Howells, 10 August 1901: 'Ever since receiving and reading your elegant volume of short tales ["A Pair of Patient Lovers"]-- the arrival of which from you was affecting and delightful to me -- I've meant to write to you [...] I read your book with joy [...] The thing that most took me was that entitled "A Difficult Case"'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      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

  

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

  

John Howie : Biographia Scoticana

[Marginalia]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge      Print: Book

  

John Howie : The Scots Worthies

'And the monthly parts of "The Scots Worthies" which my father had carried with him from Sanday, and which were now in hopeless confusion, I went over carefully, arranging and repairing them until the book assumed consecutive form. My father was so touched by this act of piety - for he regarded the book as almost a sacred one - that he had it handsomely bound in leather for me: a big tome of a thousand pages. All this passed through my mind; it was poor stuff without a vestige of nourishment, and it did not leave a trace behind.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir      Print: Serial / periodical, bound by father into a volume

  

William Dean Howells : A Modern Instance

'In another letter Arthur praises William Dean Howells's "A Modern Instance" as "a owerful novel - bare, blank, utterly unidealised realism, not by any means the ideal 'imaginative realism', but still, in its lower sphere, what mastery!"'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : 'Easy Chair' column

'Hence I give myself the pleasure of writing to you in order to acknowledge your "Easy Chair" article in this month?s Harper?s.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Serial / periodical

  

W.D. Howells : 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

  

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

  

William Howitt : Rural and Domestic Life of Germany

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 July 1843: 'I am reading William Howitt's Germany with a good deal of interest.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett      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

  

Wiiliam Howitt : 

'[She thanks them for the great pleasure two of their works had given her 'by their charming descriptions of natural scenery and the thoughts and feelings arising from the happy circumstances of rural life'.] [Editors' gloss on contents of part of this letter to William and Mary Howitt]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Book

  

William Dean Howells : Undoscovered Country

'I believe I have not written to you since I saw the end of the Undiscovered Country.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

How : [account of mission]

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

  

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

  

Edmund Howes : The Annales, or Generalle Chronicle of England, Begun First by Maister John Stow, and After Him Continued and Augmented with Matters Forreine and Domesticall unto the End of Yeare 1610, by E. H.

Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 16 August 1797: 'Our Edwards were tolerable considering the day they lived in. I have never thought so highly as our historians of the Black Princes waiting at supper upon the captive King, it was an ill judged condescension & must have been painful to John. he should have supped with him. but Henry after the battle of Agincourt made the his prisoners wait upon him. I find this in an old Chronicler whose name seems almost to have perished. Edmond Howes. he wrote under Elizabeth James & in the earlier years of Charles & expresses obligations to Sir Edward Coke & Master Camden.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey      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 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.'

Unknown
Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville      

  

James Howell : Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ familiar letters, domestic and forren: divided into four books, partly historical, political, philosophical, upon emergent occasions

Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Very extensive reading notes from the sixth edition of James Howell's Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ familiar letters, domestic and forren: divided into four books, partly historical, political, philosophical, upon emergent occasions (1688).

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Pordage      Print: Book

 

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